ABSTRACT
When Ian Fleming’s magnificent villain Auric Goldfinger schemes to burgle Fort Knox of its $15 bn worth of gold, his plan of action is in essence hardly different from Ned Kelly’s daring raid in the tin suit. To carry out Operation Grand Slam, Goldfinger intends first to poison the water supply with ‘the most powerful of the Trilone group of nerve poisons’ (Goldfinger, 1964, p. 186). Assisted by gangsters from the six main American Mafia families he will then smash down the vault doors with a stolen Corporal tactical nuclear missile, evacuate the many tons of gold by human chain, load it onto a hijacked train and thence to a waiting Russian cruiser off the coast of Virginia. The coup, of course, depends on a co-operative indifference by American authorities to daylight robbery of the national treasure.
