Legally Bond
The real-life 007 had a girl in every city and $50,000 burning a hole in his pocket
Into the Lion’s Mouth The True Story of Dusko Popov: World War II Spy, Patriot, and the Real-Life Inspiration for James Bond by Larry Loftis Berkley
“My name is Popov, Dusko Popov.”
Well, it doesn’t have the same bite as “My name is Bond, James Bond,” but Dusko Popov, a Yugoslavian double agent during World War II, may well have been the man who inspired fiction’s most famous spy.
That’s the case Larry Loftis makes in “Into the Lion’s Mouth,” a lively biography of the hard-drinking, highliving, girl-bedding Popov.
Sifting through declassified documents from World War II — as well as hotel bills, letters and long-forgotten memoirs — Loftis painstakingly pinpoints the exact moment Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, first encountered this real-life 007.
It happened, of course, at a baccarat table.
During the war, Fleming worked for British naval intelligence, overseeing operations designed to confuse the Germans in a fog of misinformation. In the summer of 1941, Fleming spent several weeks in Lisbon, Portugal. One of his favorite haunts was the Casino Estoril, which would become the model for Casino Royale, the setting of Fleming’s first Bond novel.
Popov was in Lisbon the same time, and he too spent many nights at the Casino Estoril. He was pretending to spy for the Nazis but in fact was working for the British. His code name was Tricycle.
(It’s a good thing Fleming changed that to 007, which sounds far more lethal. Can you imagine —“James Bond Tricycle, license to ride on the sidewalk ”?)
Fleming, as an intelligence officer, would have known all about Popov. During his stay in Lisbon, Popov was carrying $50,000, which belonged to Her Majesty’s Government. Loftis thinks Fleming was assigned to keep tabs onthe Popov— and to makesure that the $50,000 did not became a casualty of the war.
Fleming never forgot what he saw at the baccarat table that night.
He was at the bar, drinking a martini we can safely say, when Popov arrived. The agent slipped into a seat at the gambling table and sized up his opponents. One of them was named Bloch, a rich Jewish merchant from Lithuania who was fleeing the Nazis. Popov had seen him at the table before and thought he was an arrogant gambler.
Bloch announced the stakes that night were “unlimited.”
Fine, Popov said and then placed Her Majesty’s $50,000 on the table.
“Players and onlookers gasped,” Loftis writes. “The amount was more than 10 times what most people made in a year. The casino fell silent. Dusko glanced at Fleming, thinking he might be pale. He wasn’t. His face was green.”
Bloch demurred, and the casino refused to stake him $50,000. Popov swept all the money off the table and said, “I hope the management will not permit such irresponsible play in the future. It is a disgrace and annoyance to serious players.”
In 1952, Fleming opened “Casino Royale” this way: “The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nau- seating at three in the morning.”
James Bond observes the arrogant LeChiffre, a cold-blooded murderer working for the Russians, playing baccarat. Bond, whose assignment is to bankrupt LeChiffre, ups the ante with funds from the British government.
So begins one of the most famous card games in literature, adapted in 2006 for Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond in the movies.
“That scene in the casino is drawn from what really happened in 1941 at the Estoril,” says Loftis. “It all starts there.”
Popov smoked and drank as much as James Bond does in the books. Fleming describes Bond as being slim with short black hair, blue-gray eyes and a “cruel” mouth. Popov, who was athletic, had short black hair and steely eyes. In one photograph he looks as if he could kill you without a flicker of sympathy in those eyes. His, mouth, however, was too full to be cruel. It was almost voluptuous.
Popov shared another trait with James Bond — womanizing. He slept with dozens, including actress Simone Simon, who starred in the creepy 1942 movie “Cat People.”
“James Bond had one girlfriend in every book,” says Loftis. “Popov had two or three girlfriends in every city. He had so many women, he makes James Bond look like a boy scout.”
Fleming probably never exchanged any words with Popov. He certainly wouldn’t have gone over to him at the casino that night, since it would have blown Popov’s cover as a double agent, Lofits says. And Fleming never confirmed that Popov inspired James Bond. If he had, he would have broken the law. The British government’s official secrets act barred him from talking about his wartime activities.
Fleming died in 1964. In the 1970s, former spies began to discuss what they did in the war, including Popov, who wrote a memoir. He also talked openly about that night at the Lisbon casino and somewhat sheepishly admitted he was the model for James Bond. He died in 1981.
Like all nonfiction writers, Fleming drew on many sources to create his hero. Another model for James Bond is said to be Anthony Hugill, who was a member of the No. 30 Commando, a World War II intelligence unit organized by Fleming.
Hugill was Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s father-in-law.
James Bond also was a fictionalized version of Fleming himself, the tip off being that Bond smokes Fleming’s favorite brand of cigarettes — Morland.
“Over the course of 14 books, it is likely Fleming drew on a number of people,” says Loftis. “But the question is, who was the inspiration — who was the original model? And that can be answered by looking at ‘Casino Royale.’ Because without that book, there would have been nothing else.”