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1-Page Summary of From Russia With Love
Overall Summary
From Russia, With Love is a spy thriller by Ian Fleming. It follows James Bond as he foils the Russian agency SMERSH’s attempt to kill him and get him involved in a sex scandal. He does this because From Russia, With Love is book number five of twelve books in the series written by Ian Fleming. The series also has twenty-six movies that were based on it as well as comic strips.
The novel opens as a group of Soviet officials discuss their failures and how they can redeem themselves. They plan to assassinate a foreign intelligence agent, whom the Soviet government has declared an enemy. The Soviet officials decide that Bond is the best candidate for this task because he’s foiled several previous assassination attempts by them.
A Russian spy agency, SMERSH, has devised a plan to entrap James Bond. One of their agents will pretend to defect from Russia and offer the British Secret Service a Spektor decoder that they know the British can’t resist. Even if they doubt her motives, the British won’t be able to resist this offer. After meeting with Bond, she’ll assassinate him by spreading false evidence that he was collaborating with Russians through her.
Tatiana is told of the plan to defect with the Spektor (a Russian encryption device) only when she’s in Istanbul. She offers to defect, but only if James Bond will come and pick her up. Britain doesn’t know what to make of this deal, so they send him anyway. His contact is Darko Kerim, who works for British intelligence in Istanbul. As he and Bond tour around Istanbul looking for Tatiana, they quickly become friends. While out on a boat ride together one day while searching for Tatiana, members of a local gang attack them. They are hired by Russia to kill Kerim because he knows too much about their plans at that point (which involve stealing secrets from NATO). The two men decide it would be best to take out the head of the gang before he can cause more trouble later on down the line; before long there will probably be more attacks like today’s attempted assassination attempt against Kerim and Bond by this same group of criminals working for Russia.
Bond returns to his hotel room that night and finds Tatiana waiting in bed. Bond wants to take Tatiana and the Spektor back to Britain with him, but she insists they travel by train instead. She charms Bond into agreeing with her plan, so he asks Kerim Bey if he will go along as well.
Kerim is nervous because he recognizes three Russian agents on the train. He bribes officials to have two of them removed, but he’s still worried about the third one. Therefore, Kerim suggests that they get off the train and fly to London instead. However, Bond refuses this idea because he’s attracted to Tatiana and wants to stay with her on the train. The next day, Kerim is found dead alongside a body of a Russian agent who was killed by another agent in order for him not to talk about their secret plans. Because only one Russian agent remains alive now, Bond thinks that danger has passed and decides it’s safe for him and Tatiana to continue their trip without protection from MI6 (British Secret Service). Then an MI6 officer approaches him offering his help as well as sharing his stateroom with them both during rest of their journey across Europe—Nash offers his assistance so that nothing can happen between Bond and Tatiana while they’re alone together in one room.
The next morning, Bond finds out that Red Grant is really SMERSH’s executioner. He also learns about their plan to kill him: he will shoot Bond through the heart and plant footage of him having sex with Tatiana in his luggage. He’ll then kill Tatiana as well. The Spektor device is rigged to explode when it’s examined, so they can blame everything on Bond. This information gives Bond time to slip a metal cigarette case between the pages of the book he’s holding, because when Grant fires at him, the bullet hits it instead of hitting him directly. Then, after Grant steps over him (thinking he killed him), Bond attacks and kills Grant before escaping with Tatiana into Istanbul by train.
