There’s an exotic cast to Baseless. It’s replete with grim “cryptonyms”, such as GIBBETT (a “sarin nerve gas plant” under construction in Alabama) and CARCASS (an operation to train ex-Nazi collaborators to foment insurrection in the Soviet Union), and sinister-sounding anagram-like names: Detlev Bronk, Oram Woolpert, Alenda Crymble, Hubertus Strughold. (Bland or effeminate names are vivified with macho sobriquets – Hugh “Iron Pants” Johnson, Claire “Leatherface” Chennault.)
With the lethal gadgetry and hare-brained schemes (a time-release “bomb gondola” that “opened like a clamshell” to spill a payload of crop-spoiling “spores”; an idea to unleash bats synched into “napalm vests” on Tokyo during the second World War), it all suggests James Bond hokum.
