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[MajorB]

Having seen QoS twice now, I'm in the phase of trying to fit together pieces of the plot that I didn't necessarily follow, and I'd like some feedback on whether I'm understanding things right. Strictly speaking, I have two questions and should maybe have put them in separate threads, but they're kind of related.

First, it seemed like the main reason Camille was going after Greene was because she knew Greene was in cahoots with Medrano and that staying in touch with Greene would eventually connect her with Medrano so she could kill him. But if that's the case, why was she so interested in Greene's Tierra Project--to the extent of trying to get Greene's geologist to give her info on the project? Had she somehow worked out that Tierra was the scheme Greene and Medrano were in together, and the more she knew about it, the more likely she'd get access to Medrano? Since she seemed to have no trouble keeping track of Greene, looking into the Tierra thing seems like an unnecessary effort. I can't quite get that whole part of the story to line up.

Second, I'm puzzled by aspects of Slate's role. What I came away with was: Greene had found out that his geologist (whom I'll call Digger) had been contacted by Camille and had been persuaded to give her a report on the Tierra Project. Greene paid Slate (unknowingly with tagged bills) to pretend to be Digger and kill Camille. Greene also had Digger killed, and the body ended up in the harbor where Greene is hanging out. My question is, who killed Digger? If Greene had Slate kill Digger before going to kill Camille, why would Digger's body turn up so incriminatingly near Greene--wouldn't the whole point of hiring Slate be so that the murder could happen somewhere nice and distant from Greene? On the other hand, if Greene, or one of Greene's henchmen, was the one who killed Digger--that is, if Greene felt brazenly comfortable doing a murder that could easily be traced to him--why not have the same henchman kill Camille? Why pay Slate a ton of money to fly in and do the job? They could have set up the same rendezvous as Slate did and just shoot her from a window or as a drive-by.

In other words, it doesn't make sense to have different people kill Digger and Camille. But it doesn't make sense for Slate to have killed Digger because of the location of the body. Or am I missing something?

Of course, the answers to my two questions may be (1) If Camille weren't intersted in Tierra, Bond would never find out what Greene was up to. (2) If Greene didn't hire Slate, there'd be no money trail to lead Bond to Slate to Camille to Greene. Given the heavy rewriting of the script, it wouldn't surprise me if some of these complexities turned out to be nonsensical when you think them through. But I'd be happier if there were an actual explanation that I'm just not seeing.