Meanwhile, London passes on the information that an unspecified enemy, implied to be a Soviet contact, intends to poison Wormold at a trade association luncheon, where he is the speaker. Together, Beatrice, who still believes the contacts to be real, and Wormold try to save the real people who share names with his fictional agents. From then on, Wormold's manufactured universe overlaps with reality, with threats made to his "contacts". However, to his surprise, a real person with the same name is killed in an apparent car accident. Under pressure, Wormold develops an elaborate plan for his fictitious agent "Raúl". Her first request is to contact the pilot Raúl. On arriving, Beatrice tells Wormold she has orders to take over his contacts. In the light of the new developments, London sends Wormold a secretary, Beatrice Severn, and a radio assistant codenamed "C" with much spy paraphernalia. However, Hawthorne keeps quiet for fear of losing his job. In London, nobody except Hawthorne, the only one to know that Wormold sells vacuum cleaners, doubts this report. Hasselbacher, about his spy work, hiding the truth from Milly.Īt one point, he decides to make his reports "exciting" by sending to London sketches of what he describes as a secret military installation in the mountains, actually vacuum cleaner parts scaled to a large size. Wormold tells only his friend and World War I veteran, Dr.
Some of the names in his network are those of real people (most of whom he has never met), but some are made up.
Because he has no information to send to London, Wormold fabricates his reports using information found in newspapers and invents a fictitious network of agents. Since Wormold does not make enough money to pay for Milly's extravagances, he accepts the offer of a side job in espionage. Wormold's wife had left him and now, he lives with his beautiful 17-year-old daughter, Milly, who is devoutly Catholic, but also materialistic and manipulative. James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner retailer, is approached by Hawthorne, who tries to recruit him for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). The novel, a black comedy, is set in Havana during the Fulgencio Batista regime.
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