Moneypenny has sat outside M’s office since 1962, which means every bill James Bond sends home crosses her desk first. Most are easy. A car was destroyed, the car was expensive, here is the paperwork. Some of them are not easy at all.
So we pulled eight invoices from the pile and ranked them by how hard each one would be to justify to an auditor. The weirdest bill wins, not the biggest.
8 to 6: Expensive, but There’s a Paper Trail
8. One Aston Martin DB10, Last Seen Entering the Tiber, Spectre (2015)
Q had the DB10 ready for Bond, then reassigned it to 009, which Bond treated as a scheduling suggestion. He drove it to Rome, out of a SPECTRE meeting and through the city with Hinx close behind, then ejected and let the car carry on into the river. It’s the biggest number on this list, and it sits at the bottom because the story is easy to tell: a car chase, a killer, a river. The awkward part is the name on the sign-out sheet.
Item: Aston Martin DB10 (009’s)
Amount: £2,434,500
Note from Moneypenny: Please forward to 009 with our apologies. He’s still waiting for his car.
7. One BMW Rental, Returned Through the Rental Office, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Q met Bond at Hamburg Airport in an Avis uniform and handed over a BMW 750iL as if it were any other rental. Bond later drove it around a multi-storey car park from the back seat with his phone (that trick is covered in our white elephant gift list), sent it off the roof, and watched it cross the street and land inside an Avis office. Hard to explain? Not really. It’s a rental with a damage claim, and Bond even brought it back to the right company.
Item: BMW 750iL rental
Amount: $19,200
Note from Moneypenny: Could someone check whether he ticked the insurance box?
6. One Paris Taxi, in Two Pieces, A View to a Kill (1985)
When May Day jumped off the Eiffel Tower and opened a parachute, Bond wanted a taxi. The nearest driver was on his break and had no interest in following a parachute, so Bond took the car without him. He drove the blue Renault 11 down a flight of steps, jumped it onto the roof of a bus, lost the roof under a barrier and lost the back half in a collision. He kept going in the front half. Then he leapt from a bridge onto a boat and landed in a wedding cake, which is a separate invoice we have chosen not to open.
Item: Renault 11 taxi, in two halves
Amount: £4,200
Note from Moneypenny: The driver’s statement says he declined the fare. The car went anyway.
5 to 3: Accounting Would Like a Word
5. One Tank, Borrowed, GoldenEye (1995)
Ourumov drove off with Natalya, and Bond needed something to follow him in. What he found was a tank. He chased the general’s car through St. Petersburg, flattening cars and walls along the way, drove straight through a truck loaded with Perrier, and carried a horse statue on the roof for part of the trip. An auditor will ask where he got a tank. The honest answer is that one was available.
Item: T-55 tank, plus a truckload of Perrier
Amount: 44,640 Romanian lei plus VAT
Note from Moneypenny: On the bright side, a used tank starts cheaper than a used BMW. The catch is that you have to take it apart yourself.
4. One Flying Lesson, Wings Not Included, Live and Let Die (1973)
Running from Kananga’s men at a small airfield outside New Orleans, Bond jumped into a Bleeker Flying School Cessna where an elderly student, Mrs. Bell, was waiting for her lesson. He told her he was her replacement instructor. The plane never left the ground. It did lose its wings, and Mrs. Bell had the most eventful lesson of her life without logging a minute in the air.
Item: Flying lesson and Cessna, wings off
Estimate: $20,950
Note from Moneypenny: The flying school would like to know who certified Commander Bond as an instructor. So would I.
3. One Hotel Upgrade for Two Lottery-Winning Teachers, Quantum of Solace (2008)
Bond landed in La Paz with Mathis and was met by Fields from the consulate, whose orders were to put him on the first plane to London. She had booked a cheap hotel to fit their cover as teachers on sabbatical. Bond refused it, moved them to a far grander hotel and told the front desk: “We’re teachers on sabbatical and we’ve just won the lottery.” The cover story survived the upgrade. The budget did not, and an agent who was supposed to be on a plane home is now billing for a suite.
Item: Luxury hotel suite, La Paz
Estimate: Bs 14,100
Note from Moneypenny: The expense form asks for the business purpose. “Won the lottery” is not one of the options.
2 to 1: There Is No Box on the Form for This
2. Storage for a Dead Agent’s Belongings, Skyfall (2012)
After Bond was shot off a train in Turkey and presumed dead, MI6 did the tidy thing. It sold his flat and put his belongings into storage, which M explained was standard procedure when an unmarried employee with no next of kin dies. Then Bond turned up alive, unshaven and uninvited, in M’s own home. Her reply: “You should have called.” That leaves a storage bill for a man who isn’t dead, a flat that no longer exists and an agent asking where he’s supposed to sleep. Not at M’s. She was clear about that.
Item: Storage for a living agent’s belongings
Estimate: £1,285 a month
Note from Moneypenny: Every other invoice on this desk is for something Bond broke. This one is for something we did to him, by the book. Try explaining that to an auditor.
1. Retrieving 007 From a Pipeline, Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Knocked out with gas, Bond was driven into the desert outside Las Vegas by Wint and Kidd and sealed inside a section of pipeline that was then buried and connected up. He woke in the dark, met a rat, then met the machine that runs through the pipe, and stopped it. Two workers opened a hatch to see why it had stopped, and Bond climbed out and told them he’d been out walking his rat and lost his way. No car was wrecked. No tank was borrowed. The only thing to price is one short-circuited machine. The rest is an agent standing somewhere he could not possibly have been, with an explanation that explains nothing.
Item: One agent, removed from a buried pipeline; one pipe welding machine, repaired
Estimate: $57.12 (1971 prices)
Note from Moneypenny: He was buried alive in Nevada and came back with a $57 repair bill. Rejected: “walking my rat” is not an approved reason for travel.
The Auditor’s Verdict
The biggest number on the desk, a £2.4 million car in a river, finished last. The winner is the smallest bill on the desk, $57.12. Moneypenny’s rule of thumb holds: the more a Bond bill costs, the easier it is to explain.
Verdict: pay the Aston, frame the pipeline.