Auric Goldfinger

History
Bond: "Do you expect me to talk?"

Goldfinger: "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."



In the novel, Auric Goldfinger is a 42-year-old expatriate who emigrated at age 20 in 1937 from Riga, Latvia. He is 5 feet (152 cm) tall, has blue eyes, red hair, and has a passion for his tan.

Goldfinger is the treasurer of SMERSH, Bond's nemesis. Goldfinger fancies himself an expert pistol shot who never misses, and always shoots his opponents through the right eye. He tells Bond he has done so with four mob heads at the end of the novel.

Goldfinger is also the owner of "Enterprises Auric A.G." in Switzerland, maker of metal furniture, which is purchased by many airlines including Air India. Twice a year, Goldfinger drives his vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost car from England to Enterprises Auric. Bond learns that Goldfinger makes dead drops of gold bars for SMERSH along the way.

Description
Goldfinger is obsessed with gold, going so far as to have yellow-bound erotic photographs, and have his women painted head to toe in gold so that he can make love to gold. (He leaves an area near the spine unpainted, but painting this area also is what kills Jill Masterton, as in the film). He is also a jeweller, a metallurgist, and a smuggler.

When Goldfinger first meets Bond in Miami, he claims that he is agoraphobic; a ploy to allow him to cheat a previous acquaintance of Bond's at a game of two-handed Canasta. Bond figures out how Goldfinger is managing this, and blackmails him by forcing him to admit his deception. This incident also establishes Goldfinger as boundlessly greedy - as whatever sums he can gain by this elaborate cheating are negligible compared with what he already has in his possession.

Goldfinger is also an avid golfer, but is known at his club for being a smooth cheater there, also. When Bond contrives to play a match with Goldfinger, he again cheats the cheater by switching Goldfinger's Dunlop 1 golf ball with a Dunlop 7 he had found while playing.

In teh novel, after the failed attempt at Operation: Grand SLam, after the betrayal of Pussy Galore, in the novel, Goldfinger and his henchman learn from SMERSH who Bond is, and determine to take him with them in defecting to the Soviet Union. They pose as doctors to incapacitate crew and passengers (including Bond) with drugged inoculations. Then they hijack the BOAC Boeing 377 Stratocruiser (service ceiling 32,000 ft), carrying Goldfinger's total savings of gold. The hijacked plane is headed for Soviet Union airspace. In the novel, Goldfinger's henchman Oddjob meets his end by being sucked through an airliner window after Bond pierces it with a knife. Goldfinger then attacks James by kicking him. Bond and Goldfinger have a brief struggle, which Bond ends, after being described as "going berserk" for the first time in his life, by strangling Goldfinger to death by hand. Bond then turns to the pilots and forces the airplane to turn back from its intended flightpath, and this causes it to ditch in the ocean after running out of fuel. The airplane sinks rapidly (presumably due to its payload of gold), and Bond and Pussy Galore are the only survivors.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auric_Goldfinger