Continuing our discussion of the book Octopussy, an anthology with four short stories. This is the second.
THE BOOK: OCTOPUSSY
The Story: "PROPERTY OF A LADY"
The Year: 1966
The Author: Ian Fleming
THE PLOT
The Resident Director — the top Russian agent in London — will pay off a double agent working in MI6 by bidding on a Fabergé egg they gave to her. But MI6 is aware of the traitor, and Bond attends the auction to ID the Resident Director.
THE COMMENTARY
As the story begins, a bored Bond is reading reports. The report at hand is about the Soviet use of cyanide pistols — like the one Bond used when he was brainwashed by the KGB to assassinate M in The Man with the Golden Gun. There is no mention of the connection in the text. Maybe Bond's brain really was fried by electroshock!
Bond is called into M's office, where a jewelry expert awaits. Bond has no idea who this guy is or why Bond was called in. He actually mentally criticizes M for his "puckish, rather childishly malign desire to surprise." I don't think Bond's ever criticized M before, even internally. Is Fleming losing his blind reverence for authority?
From his dandyish manner of dressing, Bond thinks the jewelry expert probably has "homosexual tendencies" — a phrase used in The Man with the Golden Gun also, and I laughed both times. Outside of Bond books, I can't remember the last time I heard this creaking, archaic phrase. Probably 1960s.
The trio discuss Maria Freudenstein, who works for MI6 but is a double agent for the KGB. In real life, MI6 was embarrassed a great many times by moles working for them. Of course, we have no idea how many moles they caught that we didn't hear about — or, in the case of Maria Freudenstein, moles they uncovered, but pretended not to, in order to use them to send disinformation to the Soviets.
The red flag that prompted this meeting is that Freudenstein has inherited a Fabergé egg worth at least £100,000, or as Bond says (possibly to help foreign-money-illiterate American readers), "a small fortune." The expert is there to tell M and Bond what they already suspect, that it is unlikely she inherited the egg. More likely is that this is the payoff for her service to the KGB. She has not received any other payment in the three years she's worked for the Soviets.
Bond lets us know through his thoughts that MI6 has taken steps to minimize the danger of keeping a Soviet agent so close. For example, Freudenstein works in a bubble she isn't aware of that keeps her away from any actual intelligence. Bond thinks she might overhear something in the cafeteria, but the chance is worth taking. And he assures himself that "she was not attractive enough to form liaisons which could be a security risk."
That made me laugh, too. What a weird assumption. Plain people have friends. Plain people have sex, too. But even if Bond is right, if she really is hard up for friends or sex, and is lonely and unhappy, that just makes her a bigger target for the Soviets.
Actually, M makes this point for me. As Messervey rattles off Freudenstein's history, he notes she was initially compromised by "some unattractive sexual matter."
Whoops! Now we have a contradiction! Did Fleming create the contradiction on purpose, to show us Bond's blind spots? Or was the contradication accidental, and he was inadvertently showing us his own?
Bond further ruminates on what would happen to Freudenstein if the Soviets twigged to the fact that they were being fed disinformation. They would undoubtedly think Freudenstein had switched sides and eliminate her. All well and good, except the text indicates the Soviets would kill her as a double agent. But she was already a double agent. If she turned, she'd be an MI6 agent pretending to work for the KGB by pretending to work for MI6. She'd be a triple agent!
After the jeweler leaves, the story would be over, except Bond hatches a plan. I mention this, because usually there's some crisis that M calls in Bond to handle. In this case, there is no crisis. It just sort of happens.
Anyway, Bond and M assume that Freudenstein has no handler, because she is transmitting the information to the Soviets herself. They further assume that only the Resident Director knows about her existence. They further, further assume the RD will make sure the bidding rises to the promised £100,000 to pay off the traitor. They further, further, further assume that the RD will do this in person.
There are a few holes in this plan:
- What if the RD doesn't care if the bidding reaches £100,000? He coud easily make up the shortfall via another method, like a paper bag in St. James's Park.
- Or he could just shrug. What's Freudenstein going to do if she's underpaid? Quit? Rat him out? She'd end up in prison for life if she squeals, or dead if the Soviets got hold of her. And there's no guarantee she has ever seen the RD.
- What if people other than the Resident Director know about Freudenstein, and one of them — a known operative, say — shows up instead? They learn nothing, lose the egg and a traitor gets rich.
- What's to stop the Resident Director from sending some flunky who doesn't know why he's been ordered to bid, and couldn't be traced back to the spymaster?
- What's to stop the Resident Director from bidding by telephone as, it's hinted, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art does?
Those were just the first ones that occurred to me. But M and Bond don't consider them, or second-guess their own assumptions.
Later, Bond finds a way to visit Freudenstein's work area. He thinks, "She was an unattractive girl with a pale, rather pimply skin, black hair and a vaguely unwashed appearance. Such a girl would be unloved, make few friends, have chips on her shoulder — more particularly in view of her illegitimacy — and a grouse against society. Perhaps her only pleasure in life was the triumphant secret she harboured in that flattish bosom — the knowledge that she was cleverer than all those around her, that she was, every day, hitting back against the world — the world that just despised, or just ignored her, because of her plainness — with all her might. One day they'd be sorry! It was a common neurotic pattern — the revenge of the ugly duckling on society."
This was a well-written argument for Bond's belief that plain people don't have friends and/or sex, but it's pretty bone-headed. As noted, most plain people do have a social life. (Any time you're in a room with a lot of people, look around. Almost everyone in there is having sex with someone. And they are certainly not all pretty.) And Bond doesn't consider the possibility that Freudenstein might be gay, and doesn't need love and/or validation from handsome, heterosexual he-men like Bond. Bond shows real tunnelvision here, seeing a world where only attractive, heterosexual people can be happy.
And via that reasoning, Bond explains "a common neurotic pattern." Oh, so? If this is a common neurosis, I find it hard to explain away by some people being too plain, since most people don't look like movie stars. There may be other reasons for women to be angry, and men like Bond might be one of them. Also, it hasn't always been great to be a woman in England — there wasn't even universal suffrage until 1928 (when Fleming was 20).
So Bond (or Fleming) is making a point. I just don't think it's the one he thinks he's making.
Bond goes to the auction house and we learn quite a bit about how this business works (and about Fabergé eggs). I think that's the point of the story, much like Diamonds Are Forever was a primer on diamond smuggling. I learned quite a bit, so kudos to Ian Fleming.
When the auction takes place, Bond does not bid (as opposed to the movie). And his plan succeeds without a hitch. The end.
RANDOM BULLETS
- Fleming refers to women with "chips on their shoulders." I thought chips in England were French fries, like biscuits are cookies and scones are biscuits. I wonder what English people think they're saying when they use that expression, which is clearly American. Do they think that in America we put French fries on our shoulders when we're spoiling for a fight?
- In the movies, the auction takes place in Octopussy, and Bond name-drops "property of a lady" twice. The "Lady" in the book is Maria Freudenstein, who does not exist in Octopussy, and the plot's so convoluted in that film, I'm not sure which lady is the one in question. Magda was at the auction, but she could have been a proxy (for Octopussy), a possibility mentioned in the film.
THE MOVIES
Replies
I thought chips in England were French fries
Yeah, no. I think that we can be reasonably certain that the British are aware that the word "chip" can have more than one meaning. I'm sure that the existence of wood chips is known there.
I do like the image, though. "Oh yeah? Knock this French fry off my shoulder, twerp!"
Another short story that "is what it is." The most interesting thing about this story is that it is a point of trivia in the Octopussy movie.
I'd rather read "Property of a Lady" a dozen times than sit through Octopussy again. It has its flaws, but it's a pretty good little story, compared to the movie.
Also, I just realized "twerp" is another word I haven't heard or read in decades.