Death to Spies

Fawcett, Quiim. Death to Spies, New York Tom Doherty Publishers,... 

SMERSH, as Fleming explains in his prefatory author s note to FRWL, is a contraction of Smiert Prionam— Death to spies—and remains today the most secret department of the Soviet government. ... 

Oswald Job, another German spy, was sentenced to death in 1944 when the invisible chemicals were discovered in a hollow key he was carrying in his pocket. 

The Maestro might have accused me of childish babbling to conceal fear and for once I would not have argued. The Venetian Council of Ten runs the finest international spy network in Europe, but it also knows everything about everyone within the Republic itself. Its members come and go, but its secretaries remain forever, and Sciara must have more secrets fluttering around inside his memory than San Marco has pigeons. Whatever personal hopes or motives he may have are hidden behind a mask of absolute loyalty to the state. I suspect he has been dehumanized by all the uncountable death sentences and forced confessions he must have recorded. 

To prevent an escalation of the partisan warfare in Rome, the Wehrmacht Supreme Command reacted to this assassination (which had violated international law) by posting placards announcing that if the perpetrators did not turn themselves in, 10 civilians would be shot for every policeman that had been killed. Kappler even released captured partisans with the order to inform the assassins in the underground of this announcement and to persuade them to surrender. When no one had given themselves up by March 24, 335 persons were executed in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome Kappler had assembled this group mostly of prisoners, and of criminals, saboteurs, spies and partisans who had already previously been sentenced to death. 

The severe health effects of exposure to Polonium-210 became frontpage news in 2006 when former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died. Litvinenko (44), who had sought political asylum in Great Britain in 2000, fell ill in November of 2006 and died several weeks later due to severe radiation poisoning. The source of the poisoning was a mystery and his death was investigated as a murder. 

It is in the documentary film-maker s futile attempts to interview key players that the film s adversarial stance towards Shakespeare is crystallised when told that the film was written by a contemporary of Shakespeare s, John Webster, Hayek s character asks to interview Webster. The target of the joke is not the interviewer s ignorance as much as the Shakespeare industry s erasure of Shakespeare s historical specificity. Instead of taking its inspiration from the Shakespeare industry or from heritage films (Merchant-Ivory productions are explicitly attacked in the film). Hotel draws its roots from Jarman. Jarman s Tempest is alluded to in the casting of Heathcote Williams (Jarman s Prospero), who plays both the scriptwriter-within-the-film and Bosola, the spy who embodies the normative order and surveillance that lead to the death of the Duchess (see Fig- 4)-... 

To be fair, not every bad girl is swayed by a tryst with James Bond. Fiona in Thunderball and Elektra in The World Is Not Enough have their fun with the super-spy and remain happily on the side of evil. Until they re shot to death, that is. Fatima Blush of Never Say Never Again emerges from her dalliance with 007 as gleefully rotten as ever...until she explodes. 

Let s stay with the novel Casino Roy ale (written in 1953) for a moment, since that s going to be the next him. In Fleming s novel Bond sleeps with a fellow British agent called Vesper Lynd (she later turns out to be a Russian double agent, and kills herself). He s unhappy that he has to work with a female agent in the first place ( women were for recreation, he complains). The sex We re told that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape. When he learns of her death, he says only, [T]he bitch is dead. Look again at those lines. You think this reflects an individual who likes women (From For Your Eyes Only, 1960 Don t be a silly bitch, this is man s work. From The Spy Who Loved Me, 1962 All women love semi-rape. From You Only Live Twice, 1964 This is man s work. )... 

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