Moonraker

by Ian Fleming

Moonraker is a story of one man's war against the country he blames for the demise of his own, and the attempts of James Bond and Gala Brand to thwart his enterprise.

The story opens with a curious episode: an attempt by M, head of MI6 and James Bond's boss, Basildon, Chairman of the fictional Gentleman's club, Blades and Bond himself to corner Hugo Drax - prominent member of Blades, originator and head of the Moonraker project (Britain's attempt to create a rocket capable of delivery a nuclear warhead) and suspected card cheat - to quietly expose his cheating and to correct this errant behaviour.

Hugo Drax

Hugo Drax is at the centre of Moonraker, the novel and the project. (The novel doesn't have any relation to the James Bond film of the same name - they only share the name.) Hugo Drax is even at the end of the novel something of a mystery. He is half English and half German, but all Nazi and this is where the curious fascination of this character comes from.

Basildon, who comes over as a sort of gentleman's gentleman, so upright are his motives, has come to a view that Drax has been cheating at cards at Blades, which is really a sort of grand private pub where Lords, Admirals, MPs and millionaires can gather to gamble for pleasure or profit. The narrative makes mention of the Tranby Croft affair. Ruin awaits Drax if, no when he is caught: ruin also for the Moonraker project and possibly for Britain's chance of a solid Cold War defence strategy. In such circumstances, Basildon will consider any trick, no matter how dirty, to stop the exposure of Drax and the ruin that must inevitably follow.

Basildon solicits the assistance of M, who is a member of Blades - M is after all an Admiral - who borrows a willing Bond to investigate Drax. Discovering Drax's method of cheating, the three men conspire to cheat Drax of a small fortune - teach him a lesson; stop his cheating; avoid his exposure. The scheme works. But at the end of the night Drax advises Bond who wins (or rather cheats) the equivalent from Drax of say a million Pounds in today's money to be quick about spending his money.

Ironic advice. Drax presumably assumes that by the time it comes for Bond to collect his winnings, Blades, many of its members and a large part of London will have been reduced to radioactive cinders. The encounter occurs on a Monday night, the Moonraker is to be launched on the Friday. Of necessity, this novel must end by the Saturday. It does. And it is this compact timescale which helps to explain some of Moonraker's taut, suspenseful atmosphere and gripping pace. The plot itself is thin material: flimsy, not really believable and the success of the novel lies in Fleming's approach to the action which all emanates from Drax's intense hatred for his British hosts and his desire to seek revenge on the country from the odd perch of being one its most famous and celebrated heroes.

Moonraker

After the encounter at Blades, news arrives from the Moonraker project that two of its personnel are dead. One - a German technician - has shot a security officer and then shot himself. The source of this dispute is a tug-of-love between Major Tallon, who is a security officer at the Project and the love-struck German technician, over Gala Brand, Drax's glamorous secretary. Or is it? Tallon phoned his superiors at the Ministry of Supply shortly before his murder. Something was worrying him.

M arranges for Bond to go to the Moonraker project to take Tallon's place. This is unusual because M is head of a service dedicated to operations outside of the UK. Bond somewhat resents this arrangement (why, Fleming never really clarifies), but this is balanced somewhat by the fact that he has developed a keen interest in Drax who he senses is some sort of loose canon. And soon Bond finds himself falling in love (can Bond love?) with Gala Brand.

Drax attempts to murder Bond and Brand on the second day of Bond's stay at the project and it is from that point the the plot of the novel begins to weaken.

The twist in the narrative whereby Bond - an agent of a service that shouldn't even be operating within the UK is essential to the plot. Gala Brand is in fact a spy at the project, placed there by Scotland Yard to basically keep an eye on Drax and the project. Scotland Yard is inevitably going to take a lead and no matter what problems Bond encounters, any decisive action must be cleared with M who, if careful, must walk always two steps behind Vallance, assistant head of Scotland Yard. This situation results in an overcautious approach from M such that Drax's attempt to devastate London nearly comes to fruition.

Bond and Brand do of course triumph - at enormous personal cost (but they're both made of rubber so what does it matter) - over Drax. His plan is partly foiled - the bomb explodes, but over the North Sea, not on London. And a major cover-up ensues.

Drax's Scheme

Moonraker is best understood from Drax's point-of-view. Drax is an English boy, born of a German father and an English woman. Wealthy, they send him to a private school where he may well have been bullied. Finishing his education in Germany he is swept - willingly - in the Nazi tide and is involved in fighting against the Allies.

Tragedy strikes during an attempt to blow up an Allied station when Drax, disguised in Allied uniform, is gunned by a Nazi aircraft and after being taken to an Allied hospital, is caught up in the very explosion he engineered. In England Drax pretends to have lost his memory - amnesia - and having undergone reconstructive facial surgey assumes the name of Hugo Drax: a genuine British soldier from Liverpool who may well have met a tragic end during the war.

Up until this point it is possible to view Drax with some sympathy, eventhough he is a committed Nazi. He happened to be on the losing side of the war. He is embittered. In taking on the persona of Drax - which is sort of pressed on him by his well-meaning Doctors - Drax is taking the risk of an unmasking, and perhaps it is a reasonable step: afterall can anyone say with any confidence that he would have been treated well by the authorities if he declared himself an enemy soldier to his hosts? (German POWs were in actual fact used as a source of forced labour by the post-war British Government).

Drax's rise to prominence however commences with the murder and robbing of a money-lender. This is the crossing of the line. Drax, after this, is not merely another ex-combatant. He is a murderer.

He uses the money with extreme shrewdness to construct a fortune with the intention of obtaining some revenge against the English for the war.

But even now, there emerges again a side to Drax that is difficult not to admire: Battered by war wounds, he nonetheless triumphs against the odds and achieves tremendous financial success. He becomes a sort of post-war Richard Branson. And only someone with an insight into the private thoughts of Drax would have any reason not to admire him.

Why does Drax cheat at cards? He is loved by the British public and he obviously has utter contempt for the society he find himself at the center of. The people would have Drax as Prime Minister; he would have them six feet under. At some stage his loathing overwhelms his guile and he allows the mask to slip. Or does it? Is it not more accurate to say that his loathing combines with his guile to produce his mean-minded cheating at the card table at Blades?

To those who witness his cheating, Drax comes over as a curious animal. Why does he do it? He is a millionaire. What is his motive? Is he mad? Does his have a pathological desire to win? Drax, Sir Hugo Drax enjoys the confusion his actions inspire. He derives sadistic pleasure from his cuckoo-in-the-nest position and wants to take every advantage of every opportunity it presents. He believes his status as a national icon and leader of the Moonraker project will protect him against any difficulties that he might encounter. He is right. But only to an extent.

After the war Drax achieves success through metal trading. He corners the market in a rare earth metal - Columbite - and is able to dictate his own terms, not only with the traders who must buy from him, but also to the Russians who are interested in the metal for its resilience and usefulness in rocket manufacture. In his sadistic mind a scheme evolves to gain revenge against the English for their involvement in the defeat of the Nazis. He himself is a confirmed Nazi, but more than that he is also half-English and something in his past appears to have made him want to thoroughly reject that side of himself. Fleming thus gives Drax the option: he can side with the English and their fight against the imperial Dictatorships of Europe or he can side with the Nazis. Drax chooses one side against the other and engages in the war with such zeal that it is impossible to not draw the conclusion that some horrendous flaw exists in the man, even as exists in the system he so fully identifies with.

Drax is however a rational schemer. He works his way through the financial markets - understanding the psychology of the traders who he knows will accept pretty much any price to acquire the Columbite he astutely acquires. He understands the psychology of the Russians who are as keen on Columbite as anyone else and who angling for a ruckus. His scheme is to replace the research-instruments in the Moonraker with a nuclear warhead and the Russians are obliging in this regard. He intends to aim the missile during its test launch not at some empty piece of the North Sea, but rather straight at the heart of the nation. The Russians evidently approve and provide him with the means of escape - a submarine. Once London lays in ashes it will be the revenge that Drax wants, and the provocation to a war that the Russians are hell bent on.

The scheme collapses due to a sequence of events which Drax himself essentially provokes. It is the sign of a quality author that he is able to estimate the course that his characters will pursue at every stage and to weave their motives into the plot. Drax cheats at cards (it's in his nature to), he is suspected, found out and quietly, cunningly punished.

When his scheme draws towards completion, he throws caution to one side: orders the murder of Major Tallon after that keen sighted officer witnesses the Russians arriving at night to supply Drax with his warhead; he attempts the murder of Bond and Brand by dynamiting the cliff face as they lay on the beach below; he kidnaps and imprisons Brand after she belatedly becomes suspicious and at the 11th hour he organises a coup: the selling short of millions of Sterling to profit from the inevitable financial collapse and panic the approaching destruction of London must cause. But it is his decision to murder Tallon and his attempt on James Bond's life which prove to be his nemesis.

Drax is able to play the political game just as well as he plays the financial game. He in effect corners the market in national security: offering a solution to the atomic threat that no one else has and thereby making himself utterly indispensible both to the military and the government.

The man's skill and cunning is admirable and his strategy gives him the status he needs to thwart, in the cradle, any opportunities his enemies might have to challenge him.

M's Suspicions

M is astute enough to sense that Drax is probably crooked: attributing his egregious behaviour at Blades to a crooked streak and sensing it might have been this that helped to establish him financially. After the death of Tallon he positively engineers Bond's involvement with the Moonraker project. Throughout the story his suspicions about the Drax and his project are hinted at. He has dual reasons for anxiety. The Moonraker project is of fundamental defence importance and its success a political imperative. Secondly his agency screened the 50 Germans who work at Moonraker - including the man who murders Tallon and who affirms the Furhrer before committing suicide.

M's hands are tied by tact, circumstances and protocol. To Ministers, he cannot voice his concerns with ease - he must not pre-empt Scotland Yard. Neither can he voice anything other than substantial and substantiated concerns: rumour and gut-feeling will not do - the dismissive response of the government to the murder of Tallon has shown that. Drax is also a national hero and voicing any suspicions about Drax, even at the height of the crisis, would make him seem ridiculous unless he can back up his claims.

In spite of his eventually successful intervention, M does not come out looking well in this tale. His service has let the country down badly, by allowing 50 ardent Nazis into the country to work on a project central to the country's defence. Even as it becomes clear that Scotland Yard's attempts to infiltrate the project and to measure (and contain?) the risks associated with it are inadequate he hesitates, putting enormous pressure on Bond to solve the riddle.

At the end of the story M is confident that, if a cover up can be sustained, his service and Scotland Yard will find it easier to carry out their security business... and one has to wonder what he will do with the revelation that not one but all fifty of the Germans brought into the project were Nazi sympathizers that his service failed to weed out. Just how many coverups does M anticipate occuring here?

Gala Brand

Gala Brand is the attractive secretary planted on Drax by Vallance. Nothing strikes her as queer about the Moonraker operation until Drax tries to exterminate her and Bond. She doesn't seem intrigued even by the taking of Tallon's life by a man whose avowed love for her she must have though odd since he never showed any affection for her.

Blinded by patriotic sentiments, she fails to pick up any signal that something might be amiss whilst living amongst a crowd who must all have some degree of resentment for her. And when Bond arrives, whilst evidently interested by the man, she doesn't quite realize his value until he saves her life when the cliff face is brought down on them by Drax. Only then do her suspcions began to take form. The only thing that she could have done to expose Drax before, she now thinks of doing: examining the gyro figures for controlling the Moonraker that he keeps secret from her in his little black book. And that, when she does belatedly examine them, provide the one piece of evidence that anyone might consider worth a damn. Hard evidence that Drax intends to target London.

Fortunately, if Brand is not the brightest spark, she does still triumph at the end of the story. She shows no limit to her heroism once the nature of the crisis shows itself. And she puts aside any doubts she has about Bond - who by the end of the story has twice saved her life - and formulates the scheme by which she may not only save London, but do so without Bond having to take his own life in destroying the Moonraker. In the end the piece of metal she gets at Buckingham Palace - whether its an OBE or MBE I forget - doesn't do justice to the bravery, courage and sacrifice she has shown.

James Bond's Adventure

James Bond really does come out of this adventure looking well. He is All Hero from start to finish. There is something of a problem with the resilience and robustness he shows throughout the adventure. He survives one of the white cliffs of Dover being chucked down on him, a car crash engineered for him by Drax, an impromptu sauna session with Brand inside one of the ventilation shafts of the Moonraker and the searing heat of the Moonraker's blast from an uncomfortable proximity. Clearly the Secret Service employs men who are one part muscle and one part rubber - the whole coated in space-grade teflon.

His gallantry and sense of duty is evident throughout as is his temper and rounded sense of judgement which never escapes him bar the one time, under the infuence of drugs, he throws caution to the wind, allows his ego to get ahead of him and gets into a battle of wits with Drax at the card table in Blades.

At all other times Bond manages to balance his doubts and his aggressive feelings towards Drax, with his sense of patriotism and sense of duty towards M. He takes no unwarranted risks regardless of what provocation he experiences and the importance of the Moonraker project is never far from his mind. Only when Drax forces an uncareful young racer off the road does the gun come out.

This need for caution allows a different side of Bond to come out: his careful attempts to judge the character of Drax and to weigh up the situation he encounters at the Moonraker project; the meanderings of his detective's mind over the many sinister and ambiguous clues he uncovers - all this makes for interesting reading, if fact it's decidely more entertaining than the action adventure element of the story.

In spite of saving the nation, and preventing World War III, at the end of the show, no gong, no woman, only a new gun for his next adventure.

The Plot

The novel is a classic Cold War thriller with a plot that has two distinct stages. The first excellent portion and the second rather doubtful conclusion.

The action in the novel is distributed around two axes. Firstly the need to gain an understanding of Drax and his cuckoo-in-the-nest behaviour (which is more than thoroughly explained at the end of the novel), and the second axis the need to understand the odd situation which exists at the Moonraker project - not only the hard evidence such as the murder of Tallon, but also the bizarre, Midwich Cuckoos feel of the personnel with their shaven heads and ubiquitous moustaches. These two axes provide huge scope for mystery and suspense which Fleming utilizes to solid effect. Once the mystery is resolved we get into standard Cold War adventure territory and the fizzle goes out.

The demise of the novel at that stage is reflected in Fleming's lacklustre attempt to tie together the loose threads. We do get to see very real heroism from Bond and Gala once Drax imprisons them in his offices and also that dash of romantic sauce that Bond wishes to build upon. But the finale with Drax and his crew perishing by the dread hand of their own design is rather too neat (the deja vu is fine by me though), the possibilities of repercussions for the failure of MI6's work neatly avoided and the motives and actions of the Russians see rather far fetched even for a Cold War novel.

This finish doesn't do justice to the novel which is in respect of character, suspense and narrative a first class piece of fiction. If the plot isn't exactly always consistent in quality, the inconsistency doesn't involve characters undergoing an unbelieveable shift in personality which is the hallmark of a flawed work. And the weakness in the plot is consistent with an attempt to bring the action to a prompt halt once the central mysteries of the work are resolved and this is, from an artistic point of view, a better judgement than forcing the reader to wade through a carefully constructed series of more plausible scenarios.