Gloria Keller

Gloria Keller
Character information
Age	39
Born	1918, Texas, United States
Died	1957, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Hair	Blonde, curled, shoulder-length
Relatives	Thomas Keller (husband)
Nationality	American
Occupation	Cocktail waitress
Status	Deceased, suicide via defenestration
Behind the scenes
First seen	Trigger Mortis
Last seen	Trigger Mortis

Gloria Keller was a cocktail waitress and wife of Thomas Keller - a German (now American) physicist and rocket engineer employed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). The character appeared in Anthony Horowitz's 2015 James Bond continuation novel Trigger Mortis.

Biography

Described as short and "a little plump", with blonde hair which fell in curls to her shoulders, Gloria was originally from Texas and worked as a cocktail waitress. In 1948, in her mid-twenties, she met her future husband Thomas in Mexico, enthralled by his seemingly exciting life as a top-secret rocket scientist. At the time, Mr. Keller, having been smuggled into the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip, had been continuing his rocket research for the Americans at Fort Bliss, an American army base near El Paso, Texas. The pair jointly decided to move north, choosing Salisbury, Maryland due to its proximity to his new employers; the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) rocket launch site on Wallops Island, Virginia.

Since that time, their relationship had deteriorated. They had been unable to have children and, despite the appearance of marital stability, Gloria was bored of her life and secretly harbored intense revulsion for her husband. Thomas Keller was subsequently approached by an operative of Jason Sin, identifying himself as Harry Johnson. He offered to pay the engineer a quarter of a million dollars to sabotage the Vanguard space rocket under construction at Wallops Island. Encouraged by his unusually enthusiastic wife, Keller carried out the deed and returned home with a cash-filled attaché case. The pair counted the money and, while ostensibly looking for a corkscrew to open a celebratory bottle of champagne, Mrs Keller drew a kitchen knife from the drawer and stabbed her husband to death. She subsequently doused the house with gasoline, took the dead man's car, and escaped to Las Vegas, Nevada with the money. There, she drew attention to herself while drinking, gambling, and spending frivolously, burning $5000 in just one session, playing roulette. Management tipped off the Nevada State Police, who sent two patrolmen to her room to investigate. Mrs Keller subsequently panicked and jumped from the window of her twenty-first floor room. The money was subsequently discovered to be counterfeit, drawing the attention of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the secret service.