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"It wasn't meant to be forever. But at least we had our day."
― Sixtine's dying words, loosely referencing the title[3]

Joanne Brochet, also known as Madame 16 or Sixtine, was a fictional intelligence operative employed by Special Operations Executive. The character appeared as the main Bond girl in the 2018 James Bond continuation novel Forever and a Day by Anthony Horowitz.

The time that Bond spent with Sixtine during his first mission as a 00-agent would shape the man that he became, and give him many of the hallmarks that his character is now known for. While he already enjoyed his special martini recipe, he picked up the practice of shaking instead of stirring from Sixtine, who later suggested he smoke Morelands cigarettes, and gave him her gunmetal cigarette case.

Biography

Early Life

Born in New Zealand to a French railroad engineer father and a British dressmaker mother, Brochet's family moved to Paris when she was five, but she had little time to enjoy the new and exciting city before World War I broke out. Her father left to build the railway, and her mother worked in a factory, leaving Brochet to be brought up by an elderly neighbor in Montrogue.[4] She grew up friendless at a Catholic school and learned to look after herself. On August 30th 1914, a bombing raid killed her mother, and her father killed himself shortly after.

After the war she moved to London to live with her aunt Lucy. She went to college to become a secretary, and took a job at an insurance company, where she met Danny Salgado. The two fell in love, and he afforded her a lavish lifestyle and they soon were married. He taught her to play vingt-et-un, but when she became pregnant with their son Julian, they felt their spark vanish. It soon came to light that Salgado had not been his real name, and that he was a wanted gangster. Following this, she left him and returned to her aunt, but still received money from her ex-husband, until one day the money stopped, and she confirmed with Scotland Yard that he had been killed. Her skills in the French language saw her suggested for work in intellingence, and she spent three years at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, working in the indexing hut before she was selected by the Special Operations branch of the British Government in 1943. She received training and was given the codename Sixtine before parachuting into France, not knowing that she had been betrayed. A mole in the government had let the Nazis know that she and several other spies were coming, and although the British knew about this leak, they allowed Sixtine and the others to be tortured and killed to keep German attention away from the D-Day landings. When she was released and learned of this betrayal, she swore off allegiance to any country.

She reappeared several years later and sold a lost and stolen file back to the British government.[5] She had worked several times with SMERSH, and in 1950 was on an assignment of Industrial Espionage to obtain new technicolor film manufacturing plans from Irwin Wolfe. She sent Julian to a house she owned in the Bahamas, and figured they were happier apart.

Forever and a Day (2018)

One night in 1950, Brochet visited the Monte Carlo Casino with a coalition of four other players with the intent of collaborating in order to win 100,000 francs at the vingt-et-un table. It was a well rehearsed scheme that relied on Joanne's sharp wits and knowing how many cards were left in the deck, and guessing which cards they were. After giving the signal for her co-conspirators to leave the table, she was about to be dealt the winning hand when a man she knew to be SIS agent James Bond, 007. His presence threw off the numbers, and he ended up taking the 100,000 franc prize. He later met her in the casino bar, and they exchanged information over martinis. Bond told Brochet about his having saved the casino from Nikolai Stolypin, and she revealed to Bond that she was not in contact with local gangster Jean-Paul Scipio, and knew nothing about the previous 007. She did however invite him to a party at Irwin Wolfe's estate Shame Lady. At the party, she introduced Bond to Wolfe who invited Bond aboard his ship the Mirabelle. Bond noted that she allowed Wolfe to openly grope her without losing composure. She left with Wolfe but soon returned to Bond, who seemed intent on leaving. She convinced him to stay, and they went for a walk in the gardens. In a Japanese-styled pavilion, Bond revealed that she was the prime suspect of murdering 007, which she quickly shot down, claiming that she was in Nice for her own purposes, completely separate from Bond. He then asked if she was sleeping with Wolfe, which greatly offended her, as it was not his concern. He asked again and then kissed her, causing Sixtine to patronize the agent by asking if he always resulted to force when he couldn't get what he wanted. She then made it clear that he was not to touch her again without her consent and that he was still to come to the Mirabelle to conduct business.

They met briefly aboard Wolfe's ship before taking off in her MG TD to a house she had in Antibes, where Sixtine allowed Bond to have sex with her before the two had dinner, and she told him her story to cement their working relationship. However, seeing as she thought Bond "made love like a schoolboy", she took control of him after dinner. In the morning they went to Wolfe's facility in Menton, and parked at the mouth of the access road. She and Bond made their way through the forest with caution and were able to get to the interior fence and view the facility thanks to Sixtine's previous trip and familiarity with the traps lain therein. However, they were found by three of Wolfe's men. They were only captive for a moment before three members of Sixtine's squad of compatriots, Marco, Georges, and Frédéric were hiding in the woods as agreed upon with her as protection against Bond should he try to betray her. They then returned to Castellar and planned their infiltration of the compound. After coercing a local baker who supplied the facility's cantine into lending them his van, the two managed to enter the main facility and discovered that it was a front for a massive heroin producing operation. Unfortunately they were found out and had to flee the grounds. They commandeered a jeep and were pursued along the road back to town, with Sixtine providing cover fire. However, they drove over some crowsfeet scattered on the road, and went over a nearby cliff. Sixtine escaped first and waited for Bond to surface, but they were quickly captured and taken to the Mirabelle.

While aboard, they were taken to Wolfe and Scipio, and despite James' protests that she try to save herself, she maintained that if they were going to escape it would be together. She was then forced to watch while Scipio pummeled her partner, and when they returned to their cabin, the ship's physician Dr. Borghetti injected Bond with heroin before leaving. Just after the injection, Sixtine grabbed Bond's arm and created a tourniquet with his torn shirtsleeve before using a piece of glass to open his puncture wound to begin bloodletting. When she was convinced that she had allowed enough of the heroin out without taking too much blood, she bandaged the wound and waited for him to wake up. Together they tricked the guards into opening the door by feigning Bond's death, and despite her partner's bidding her to tie up their unconscious guards, Sixtine broke their necks to save time. She then allowed Bond to lead their escape and partook in his plan to sink the ship. They fashioned an explosive with fireworks that were aboard to damage the ship's intake valve for cooling the engine, causing an overheat and scuttling the ship before destroying the control pannel, crippling it further and causing it to sink. Now facing attackers as they tried to escape, Sixtine shot the translator of John-Paul Scipio who was stuck in a hatch before heading to the lifeboats with Bond. They dove over the side while under fire, but she took a bullet in the process. Bond didn't realize, and believed they would escape. Knowing she would die, Sixtine encouraged Bond to leave her. He watched the life leave her eyes, and left her in the water to be pulled under in the suction caused by the sinking ship.

Gallery

Trivia

  • Brochet is named for Joann McPike, who made a substantial donation to an Old Vic auction, at which Horowitz offered the chance to have a character named after them. Reade Griffith won, but the author thanked McPike by naming Sixtine "Joanne Brochet", with Brochet being the French word for pike.[6]
  • It is Sixtine who first suggests to Bond that
  • Brochet's skin is described as Cafe au Lait, a French term used to refer to people biracial people.
  • Bond's famous preference for Martini's that are "Shaken, not stirred" was picked up from his first meeting with Brochet, whose ex-husband made a point of having his "stirred not shaken", and Brochet's desire to do the opposite of whatever he had told her.[7]
  • It is Sixtine who first suggests to Bond that he begin using the Morelands tobacconists to replace his Canadian "Du Maurier" cigarettes.

References

  1. Anthony Horowitz (2018). Forever and a Day. Ian Fleming Publications, 61. ISBN 0062873628. 
  2. Horowitz, Anthony (2018). "Chapter 11: Shame Lady", Forever and a Day (in English). Great Britain: Jonathan Cape, p.120. ISBN 978191214779. 
  3. Anthony Horowitz (2018). Forever and a Day. Ian Fleming Publication, 259. ISBN 006287362. 
  4. Anthony Horowitz (2018). Forever and a Day. Ian Fleming Publications, 152. ISBN 0062873628. 
  5. Anthony Horowitz (2018). Forever and a Day. Ian Fleming Publications, 6. ISBN 0062873628. 
  6. Anthony Horowitz (2018). Forever and a Day. Ian Fleming Publications, 282-283. ISBN 0062873628. 
  7. Anthony Horowitz (2018). Forever and a Day. Ian Fleming Publications, 70. ISBN 0062873628. 
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