Richard Hannay, on the run for a murder he did not commit, figures out that “the thirty-nine steps” refers to a staircase down to the sea at a house in Kent, where German spies plan to escape with British naval secrets.

James Bond foils Auric Goldfinger’s plan to rob the gold reserves at Fort Knox by sending a message hidden in a plane, and the operation is stopped.

James Bond beats the Soviet agent Le Chiffre at baccarat, survives torture and recovers with the help of Vesper Lynd, with whom he falls in love and plans to quit.

George Smiley, brought out of retirement, unmasks the Soviet mole at the top of British intelligence: Bill Haydon, a charismatic senior officer and Smiley’s wife Ann’s former lover.

British agent Alec Leamas learns that his mission to frame East German intelligence chief Hans-Dieter Mundt was really designed to protect Mundt, a British double agent, and to destroy his rival Fiedler.

Cyrano dies in Roxane’s arms after she realizes that he was the author of the letters she loved.

Yanek Gruener, a Jewish boy from Kraków who survived ten Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz and a death march, is liberated by American soldiers at Dachau in 1945.

The Jackal, an English assassin hired by the OAS to kill French President Charles de Gaulle, gets within one shot of success on Liberation Day in Paris in 1963, but de Gaulle bends forward at the last moment and the bullet misses.

Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius defects to the United States with the Red October, a silent nuclear submarine.

Graduate students Chris Hughes, Kate Erickson and André Marek travel back to 1357 France with quantum technology to rescue their professor, Edward Johnston.