In Ian Fleming's novels, SPECTRE is a commercial enterprise led by Blofeld. The top level of the organisation is made up of twenty-one individuals, eighteen of whom handle day-to-day affairs and are drawn in groups of three from six of the world's most notorious organisations—the Nazi German Gestapo, the Soviet SMERSH, Yugoslav Marshal Josip Broz Tito's OZNA, the Italian Mafia, the French-Corsican Unione Corse, and a massive Turkish heroin-smuggling operation. The remaining three members are Blofeld himself and two scientific/technical experts. Their début is in the ninth Bond novel, "Thunderball" (1961). When Fleming was writing the novel in 1959, he believed that the Cold War might end during the two years it would take to produce the film, and came to the conclusion that the inclusion of a contemporary political villain would leave the film looking dated; he therefore thought it better to create a politically neutral enemy for Bond. Fleming's SPECTRE has elements inspired by mafia syndicates and organised crime rings that were actively hunted by law enforcement in the 1950s. The strict codes of loyalty and silence, and the hard retributions that followed violations, were hallmarks of American gangster rings, the Italian Mafia, the Unione Corse, the Chinese Tongs and Triads, and the Japanese Yakuza and Black Dragon Society. During the events of "Thunderball", SPECTRE successfully hijacked two nuclear warheads for ransom.