Recently I have been watching some old James Bonds. There is this criminal organization SPECTRE which in some sense resembles mafia or Illuminati of a kind, but one thing that has bothered me for some time is that Agatha Christie’s “They came to Baghdad”(1951) tells of a rather similar evil secret organization. Is there a connection?
Ian Fleming did not admit any such connection. He told that he took the name James Bond from the ornithologist James Bond, whose book he as a bird watcher in Jamaica had naturally read. One Agatha Christie short story, Rajah’s Emerald (1934), has a hero James Bond, but this can be a coincidence and who would read a so old book, but a Christie book from 1951 may be something a writer could read in 1952 in Jamaica. There is namely another coincidence in names. In two first James Bond novels, Casino Royal (1953) and Moonrakes (1955) the looks of James Bond are said to resemble the good looks of Hoagy Carmichael. This Carmichael was an American composer and a jazz pianist who wrote such classics as Georgia on my mind, Stormy weather and Stardust. He had nothing to do with spying, nor does he appear to have been famous as a womanizer. In Christie’s They came to Baghdad there is a character Henry Carmichael, called Fakir. Fakir Carmichael spoke six Oriental languages and could disguise as an Arab. In “You only live twice” James Bond tells that he took Oriental languages in Oxford and could fluently speak Japanese, probably any of those languages. He disguises himself as Japanese in the movie. Fakir Carmichael was naturally a British spy. He told of some organization which much resembled SPECTRE and had fantastical installations and underground laboratories. That sounds like James Bond. Fakir Carmichael was not a womanizer, but Agatha’s book has a male character, Edward Goring, that no woman can resist. Edward, which this Nazi-sounding surname, is the (local) leader of evil guys.
Anyway, Ian Fleming did not mention any influence of Agatha Christie. In the first eight James Bond novels the opponent of Bond is SHMERSH, death to the spies, a Soviet counterintelligence organization that initially in 1953 (Casino Royal) resembles the real Shmersh (1943-46) and in 1960 (For your eyes only) has grown to the size of the real KGB. But in 1961 (Thunderbird) Ian Fleming changed the evil organization to SPECTRE. SPECTRE was created by old SHMERSH agents, but there were many old Nazis. The head of SPECTRE, Ernst Stavro Blofelt, is a Nazi and in “You only live twice” he tries to start a war where the West and Communists destroy each other and a new superpower, apparently the Nazis, takes their place. So, Fleming chose the Fourth Reich form of the New World conspiracy. In James Bond films SHMERSH is always replaced by SPECTRE, even in the first movie, Dr. No (1962). This change occasionally confuses the logic, like in Daniel Craig version of Casino Royal the character Le Ciffre invests money of some gangsters or freedom fighters to risky stock market speculation. Naturally, this is not believable. Freedom fighters do not have money, they always need funding, while gangster money nobody would dare to invest in a risky way. The outcome would be just what happened to Le Ciffre. In the novel le Ciffre is a Soviet agent, like is Vesper Lynd, Bond’s great love, and the money Le Ciffre loses is from SHMERSH. This is a bit more believable. Of course, believability is never the main goal in James Bond stories.
Believability is not a strong point of Agatha Christie’s books either, but “They came to Baghdad” is a bit more ambitious in this respect. Here and there it describes how Iraq was in 1950. The evil organization is described in much greater detail than SPECTRE in James Bond. In Christie’s book the organization is very rich. One proof of its existence is the money flow, explained by a private secretary (Anna Scheele) of an American banker (Anna does not tell the banker she is going to explain anything). The organization funds both Communists and rightists with the goal of dividing the world into two camps, so it is not trying to get the two camps into a war. It just funds terrorist strikes and such to build tension.
Another proof of the existence of the organization was given by Fakir Carmichael to two traveling Arabs, who for small money show a film of the past of Western countries to anybody interested. The book does not tell what this Carmichael’s evidence is, so we can assume it is the history of the West. The book briefly explains what the film of Europe shows: Blacks in America collecting wheat, Empress Eugenia (wife of Napoleon III), Royal palace in Montenegro and World Fairs, Prince Consort, Disraeli, Norwegian fiords, Swiss skaters. This is a nice puzzle: how would you connect this list to a conspiracy?
Let’s see, starting from the easier ones. Disraeli wrote a book Coningsby (1844) telling of a conspiracy (probably the Rothschild conspiracy). Empress Eugenia had a palace not in Montenegro but in Biarretz, while Biarretz (1868) is a book by Hermann Goedshe telling of a conspiracy (the Jewish Elders conspiracy). These can point to a conspiracy.
The Prince Consort must be Albert Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, the husband of Queen Victoria. Both Victoria and Albert were friends of Eugenia. Albert was heavily involved in arranging the World Fairs of 1851 and he supported abolition of slavery (Blacks collecting wheat). These really point only to a time around 100 years before Christie’s book. At that time Freemasons and certain bankers were behind all conspiracies of the time.
The two last ones may refer to oddities of the Second World War. The British made an operation in Norway in the beginning of the WWII, but why were the Germans able to take the country? The UK had a better navy and Norwegians were on their side. There was one very interesting clearing bank in Switzerland during the WWII. Axis and Allied bankers were all the time in close contact through this bank. Christie’s conspiracy involves money and Switzerland is known for its banks.
There is also a third poof, which mentions Antichrist and a group of mainly young people with evil intentions. In the plot there is a reading society of mainly young people. That is the evil people. They speak of brotherhood of all peoples and have leftist tendencies. Freemasons, Theosophists and the Thule Society all used reading societies as a cover, and the two first spoke of brotherhood. Annie Besant’s Theosophy had leftist tendencies and mixed with politics. In a Christian setting the conspiracy is always associated with the end of the times and the Antichrist. It simply means Jewish Messianism.
Summarizing from these, the conspiracy in Agatha Christie’s book is Masonic (Freemasons or more probably Theosophists) and has support of certain bankers. Ian Fleming in Casino Royal modeled Le Ciffre after Aleister Crowley, who was a Freemason and Rosicrucian. The banking support of Masonic and Communistic activities was the same as the banking support behind Zionism, thus the conspiracy in Christie’s book is just the normal one.
The original idea in Christie’s book is that this conspiracy wanted to divide the world into two camps. This may be so. Even if the conspiracy lost control of the Communist part, by dividing the world, it got a stronger hold of the Free world. Notice that this higher tension forced the USA to have the CIA help American and (some) Western private enterprisers through overthrow of governments, assassinations and similar operations. In the old days Sam Zemurray (who captured the United Fruit Company in an interesting way) had to hire two mercenaries and overthrow a government himself, later operations of this type were gifts from the CIA to the free economy. Let us now combine this to what we know of the conspiracy after the Second World War. It was not so that bankers funded Freemasons. It was so that the CIA was smuggling ex-Nazis through rat lines run by the Catholic Church and in Italy there was the P2 (regular) Masonic lodge, completely criminal, but trying to stop Communists. And it was so that there was the Iran-Contra scandal, where Israel was a player, and drugs were sold. None of this has any bankers from any ethnic group, and these are rightist, often extreme right. But let us also notice that some party, and that party controlled the media and had money, so there we have it, supported leftists and Communists. This was not always the Soviet Union. These two seem not to go together, but they do. If the idea is to have the world divided into two parts. One part you cannot control as there is currently a totalitarian dictator, but the other part you can control. Dividing the world into two camps helps you in controlling the part you can control. They accept control, even tank you for it, thinking that you are protecting them from the other camp, while in reality you are funding activists who represent the other camp and in this way increase the threat. This could be the simple solution. There should always be a simple solution to apparent paradoxes.
But naturally, you cannot learn much anything from spy novels. Not even as much as from so called serious conspiracy books. Yet every small bit is some step forward. In 1950, when Christie wrote the novel, theosophists (Annie Besant) were separating India from the UK (these theosophists were active in the leftist Fabian Society), and there just was the vote in the UN for the creation of Israel and before that Jewish terrorist strikes. (Fakir Carmichael was friends with Arabs. Bernandotta’s assassination is mentioned in the book.) We can assume Christie meant these theosophists, especially as the last words of Fakir Carmichael included Lucifer. (Theosophists had a publising house, Lucis trust, originally named as Lucifer publishing company.) But as it it, this stage of history lasted a very short time. Theosophists stopped being active. (In fact, theosophy only created Nazis (The Thule Society was theosophic) and that was their main achievement. In the novel Edward Goring is a superhuman and elsewhere is mentioned the superhuman philosophy, so it is quite clear that Christie thought of Nazis and theosophists.) Had Christie written the book a bit later, there would have been the CIA and the P2 lodge, but also this time passed. Now it is globalists. This demonstrates the problem of locating where the evil organization is. It is acting through fronts that keep on changing, but the organization exists and has never changed.