Now the grey-blue eyes looked back at him from the tanned face with the brilliant glint of suppressed excitement and accurate focus of the old days. He smiled ironically back at the introspective scrutiny that so many people make of themselves before a race, a contest of wits, a trial of some sort. He had no excuses. He was ready to go.
(The Man with the Golden Gun, page 95)
This is Fleming’s final Bond novel, written when he was in failing health. Hard to read without this knowledge shedding a twilight glow. As in so many of the previous novels, it’s a strange combination of the garishly new and the surprisingly tried and tested, hackneyed, even.
Bond’s amnesia
Novel and arresting is the opening scene: At the end of You Only Live Twice Bond had lost his memory after a fall in the old castle rented by his arch-enemy Blofeld. He manages to blow up the castle but a further fall into the sea further damages his head, resulting in complete amnesia. He is rescued by the Japanese pearl diver, Kissy Suzuki, who had fallen in love with him while Bond used her island community of divers as cover for his mission.
But after 6 months of bliss, with Bond unaware of his identity, a chance reading of the word ‘Vladivostok’ stirs ancient feelings. The amnesiac Bond knows it’s an important word, he must go there and find out why… Sadly, Kissy helps Bond travel to mainland Japan from where he goes to Vladivostok.
Bond the assassin
This novel opens with Bond back in London, making contact with MI6, but behaving oddly, causing comment about his strangely mechanical unemotional aspect. He makes it through all MI6’s screening processes, causing increasing concern, until he gets his wish of a personal interview with M. Breaking into a sweat and reciting a KGB-written speech, Bond accuses the man he loves most in the world of being a warmonger and pulls out a cyanide shooting device — just as M presses a button to let a bullet-proof shield fall in front of his desk. Phew! This is probably the most gadgety gadget in all the books (p.24). Bond has clearly been picked up and brainwashed by the KGB to assassinate his former boss. Now, collapsed and unconscious, Bond is packed off to a Service sanatorium, ‘the Park’.
Scaramanga
One month and 24 sessions of electro-shock therapy later (!) Bond is restored to his steely-eyed self and has been given a tasty mission. It is literally as if nothing had happened. There’s a little retrospective explanation of the treatment (pp.49-50) and then, whoosh! it’s business as usual.
A notorious assassin has come to prominence in the Caribbean since the Cuban revolution, one Scaramanga. As with all his other baddies, Fleming gives us a detailed background and psychological profile of this stony killer (pp.32-41), including a long-winded and preposterous account of his boyhood with a travelling circus. It was here that he looked after a performing elephant who, one day, jeered by the crowd, ran amok, crushed a few people, but Scaramanga was lovingly calming down when the local police chief shot it dead. According to the two-penny, ha-penny psychology of the Service ‘expert’, this accounts for Scaramanga’s psychopathy.
‘The subject is in my opinion a paranoiac in subconscious revolt against the father figure (i.e. the figure of authority) and a sexual fetishist with possible homosexual tendencies’ (p.41).
Whatever the cause, Scaramanga has carried out a number of high profile assassinations throughout the Caribbean – including five British Service agents – with his special gold-plated gun, hence the title. (In fact Scaramanga refers to himself as ‘the man with the golden gun’ on page 71.)
And so M sends Bond (after rest & recuperation and then intensive retraining etc) to ‘eliminate’ him (p.51). Bond is using the cover name Mark Hazard, and is now working for ‘the Transworld Consortium’ (p.46) – the cover name ‘Universal Export’ having been blown long ago, not least by all these James Bond books!
Bond has spent 6 weeks following Scaramanga’s spoor around the Caribbean, and has stopped off in Jamaica before pursuing him to his home base of Cuba.
Jamaica! The island where Fleming himself, of course, lived and worked and – not coincidentally – the setting of many of his greatest adventures, as he himself reminisces, sitting in the departure lounge running over the characters he’s met – Solitaire and Mr Big, Honeychile Rider and Dr No, to name the two obvious ones (p.45). [It is odd that this supposedly globe-trotting spy, active at the height of the Cold War, ends up spending so much of his time on a fun-loving, tropical island, nowhere remotely near Russia or the Soviet bloc?]
Funny coincidence department
As always there is little or no detection involved: Bond is waiting at Kingston airport for a flight on to Cuba and, flicking through the local newspaper, comes across the sale of a property in Love Lane. Then in the message rack (which they apparently had in airports in those days) he simply finds a letter left for ‘Scaramanga’! Handy! He opens the letter and it refers to a rendezvous at the very same Love Lane address which he just happened to be reading about (p.46). Ha! What a lucky coincidence!
So Bond decides to cancel his flight on to Cuba and go check out this Love Lane address, in the southern town of Savannah La Mar.
Mary Goodnight
Bond contacts the station commander of Jamaica, only to find – in another lovely coincidence – that the station’s assistant is none other than the fragrant Mary Goodnight, the good-looking ex-WREN who was Bond’s own secretary in smoggy old London, before being posted out here (p.47).
In no time at all she’s slipped into something more comfortable and is meeting him at a luxurious bar where they sip Martinis and she explains the practical arrangements she’s made: money and the old Sunbeam Alpine (p.53) which belonged to Strangways (the former station chief who we saw being assassinated at the start of Dr No). She’s also worried about the current station head, Ross, who went off a few days earlier to look for someone called Scaramanga (Bond keeps quiet about the details of his mission).
[Bond and Goodnight discuss the international situation, specifically the hefty subsidies Moscow has to pay Cuba to keep the fledgling revolutionary state afloat, and how Moscow wants Cuba’s sugar crop in return. Goodnight (reflecting Fleming’s views?) gives Castro another 6 months before the regime collapses. It is, of course, now over fifty years later, and Castro is still there albeit no longer in power – the country is ruled by his brother, Raúl Castro.]
No detection
Bond motors 120 miles over bad roads from Kingston to the south coast of Jamaica, which is where the town of Savannah La Mar is, to the Love Lane address in Scaramanga’s letter. He finds it is a rather genteel whorehouse kept by a pretty black girl, Tiffy, who flirts with Bond in the cheap bar, pours him a beer and plays with her two tame local birds, Jamaican grackles called Joe and May (p.63).
At which point Scaramanga enters the bar, cold and cruel. He is tough and confrontational with Bond and when Tiffy is a bit lippy, shoots her two birds dead (p.67). Bond pumps up his cover story, playing ‘Mark Hazard international security consultant’. After a lot of male antagonism and insulting each other, Scaramanga reveals he needs some ‘protection’ at an event he’s hosting. He’s poured money into a hotel development along the coast, but the tourist market has collapsed, it’s only half built and a number of ‘investors’ are flying in to discuss its future. Scaramanga shouldn’t mind a bit of extra ‘security’ to keep watch on the event: does Bond want to earn a quick $1,000?
Wondering what he’s getting himself into, Bond says yes. He walks out of the Love Lane whorehouse with Scaramanga and into his chauffeur-driven car. For a moment he realises he could just shoot Scaramanga in the nape of the neck and fulfil his mission: but he hates killing in cold blood and also – he’s intrigued.
At Scaramanga’s hotel
So Bond finds himself arriving at the half built hotel, shown to a comfortable room, showering, padding round his hotel room naked (as usual) changing and enjoying a nice dinner, and sleeping like a baby. Next morning he checks out the perimeter, all the buildings and familiarises himself with the layout. Then the ‘business partners’ start to arrive.
They are hoods, gangsters, cut from the same cloth as the Las Vegas gangsters in Diamonds Are Forever or the gangsters Goldfinger invites to join him in his scheme to capture Fort Knox. Only on a smaller scale, somehow. Investing in a crooked hotel is hardly the same as holding the Western world to ransom with atom bombs or raiding the US Gold Reserve.
Bond – exactly as in Goldfinger – acts as a secretary to the meeting, ticking off the names, circulating and getting to know them. After a hotel lunch they have a big meeting in the conference room. Bond eavesdrops and learns they are a Group or Syndicate dedicated to much wider criminal activities than just investing in this hotel: the Group has interests in the sugar market, in pushing prices up and so is behind the recent spate of fires and sabotage to the Jamaican sugar crop. He learns that ‘Mr Hendricks’, the Dutch man, is almost certainly KGB, and Hendricks warns Scaramanga, in front of the group, that British Intelligence have sent a man named James Bond to assassinate him.
When they leave the room and from that point onwards, the assembled hoods look askance at Bond for the rest of the proceedings. In fact, Bond overhears Scaramanga boast in the room that he recently killed another British agent who came snooping after him – Ross. So. Being head of station J (for Jamaica) seems like the most dangerous job in the Service: first Strangways (in Dr No), now Ross, have been bumped off! So Bond’s mission to eliminate Scaramanga has become personal.
That evening Bond livens up the tame calypso band by shooting the pineapple off the head of the girl singer, telling them all to play louder and faster and the girls to do a strip tease. This transforms the ‘entertainment’, with the girls performing semi-naked, doing limbo dancing, and one oiled naked woman doing rude gyrations around a life sized model of a hand. The hoods appreciate the more lively entertainment but still treat Bond like a leper.
Enter Goodnight
Bond is woken from a deep sleep in his hotel bed by Goodnight banging on the window. What the hell? She’s driven down in person from Jamaica to tell him that Hendriks is a KGB assassin, tasked with killing Bond. She’s half way through the explanation when the light goes on and Scaramanga is standing in the room (having entered through a secret passage in the wardrobe – just as Sluggsy does in The Spy Who Loved Me). Bond play acts that Mary is his fiancée come to tell him his mother is unwell. Scaramanga pretends to buy the story, but tells Bond to his face that he’s heard that a certain James Bond from the British Secret Service is on his tail: you wouldn’t happen to be him, would you?
I suppose, Mr Hazard, that your real name wouldn’t be James Bond? You showed quite a turn of speed with the gun tonight. I seem to have read somewhere that this man Bond fancies himself with the hardware. I also have information that he’s somewhere in the Caribbean and that he’s looking for me. Funny coincidence department, eh?’ (p.125)
Bond sticks to his cover story but doubts whether Scaramanga believes him, and Bond realises his time has pretty much run out.
Felix Leiter
In the final and most preposterous coincidence, Bond stumbles on the fact that the hotel is also being staked out by his old old buddy, Felix Leiter, supposedly retired to work for the Pinkerton Agency but somehow constantly being called back by the CIA to help with just the same missions James Bond happens to be one. Here he is posing as senior hotel staff, with an assistant named Henderson. [What hotel would hire a man with a big steel hook instead of a hand?]
The boys have been bugging the conference room and confirm that Hendriks is a KGB hit-man, tasked with executing Bond. They inform Bond that the second day of the ‘conference’ is going to feature ‘entertainment’ in the form of a ride on the miniature train round the hotel estate, followed by a fishing trip out to an island. The attempt on Bond’s life might come at any moment. [If they know all this, why don’t they just shoot Scaramanga and flee in a fast car?]
A web of crime
Bond eavesdrops on one further conversation between Scaramanga and Hendriks in which he learns that the Group’s subversive activities are far more wide-ranging than he initially thought: The KGB is directly funding Scaramanga to carry out assassinations, organise sabotage of the sugar and bauxite industries, promote marijuana smuggling between Jamaica and the States, and in a plan to pay off Jamaican politicians with a view to introducing a casino industry. The idea behind this is not only to make a profit but to stir up the social trouble that always accompanies gambling. They go on to talk about recruiting a new member of The Group and this leads them to a useful review of the leading criminals in Venezuala, Guiana and Mexico.
The purpose of this five-page scene is to big Scaramanga up, to try and make him more than a local hoodlum who’s good with a gun and show that he is a lynchpin in organised crime across the Caribbean, and that this crime itself is only a sub-set of the ways the Russians are seeking to destabilise the whole region and, ultimately, America.
It is a naked attempt by Fleming to try and boost Scaramanga’s importance to the same kind of global level as a Drax or Goldfinger or Blofeld.
The Belle locomotive
So Bond knows that Scaramanga knows that he is Bond and Bond knows that Scaramanga is planning to murder him, somewhere during the day’s ‘entertainment’ for the gathered gangsters. They all pile into cars and drive to a mock-up of a 19th century Wild West railroad station, complete with beautiful old engine, named The Belle, and one open carriage behind and a brake car (p.147). The plan is to take this through the sugar cane plantations to a jetty and then a cruise out to some island.
But Scaramanga starts openly taunting Bond – who is riding in the locomotive, with the hoods in the single carriage and Scaramanga at the back. Scaramanga starts kind of joky shooting, by shooting down a vulture flying near the train. When Bond tells him it’s a protected species, Scaramanga puts a few shots past his ears so Bond ducks back into the safety of the locomotive. But then he sees something on the track ahead. Something pink with, yes, billowing blonde hair. At which point Scaramanga cheerfully tells the hoods he has found the squeeze of this Secret Service man Bond – some dame called Goodnight – and his men stripped her and laid her across the line, old movie-style (p.151).
Bond goes into panic mode. Poking his head out from the protection of the locomotive’s steel frame, he sees Hendriks with gun in hand but expecting Bond the other side of the locomotive and so looking in the wrong direction. Bond shoots him dead between the eyes. Bullets wing past from Scaramanga and Bond hears a scream. Scaramanga has shot dead the Rasta driver of the train. Bond leaps for the controls, reducing speed and applying the brake, but there’s only fifty yards to go to the body on the line, it’s far too late, he hears two shots wing past then a third slams into his shoulder, throwing him to the floor, at the edge of the footplate and it’s from there that he sees the train thunder over the figure on the track which is… a shop window mannequin!
Even as Bond’s fevered brain processes the realisation that it’s not the real Mary at all, he hears Felix Leiter’s voice from the back of the train. Good God, somehow Felix hid in the back of the brake van and has now emerged with the drop on the bad guys. Felix tells the hoods to drop their guns then there’s a loud bang. One of them was a bit slow so Felix shot him dead; the others hastily obey. Now when he looks out, Bond sees the three remaining hoods cowering in fear, Hendriks lolling dead, and Scaramanga on his knees in the brake van, his shirt covered in blood.
Felix yells at Bond to jump off the train. Why? It takes a couple of yells before Bond – now swaying and dizzy from his shoulder wound – realises how urgent Felix is, so he jumps, landing in a great morass of swamp mud which immediately releases vile stinks in his face.
But something goes wrong, because further down the track he sees Felix himself be thrown from the train instead of carefully jumping, followed by a tall, thin figure – Scaramanga! So he wasn’t dead after all! (p.156). Then, as Bond watches, the runaway train arrives at the big bridge over a river, and suddenly bridge and train blow up in a huge gout of flame – crash – with all the shattered pieces slowly falling down into the river gorge. So that’s why Felix was so urgent. He and his boys had booby-trapped it!
[Having a restored Wild West locomotive as the centrepiece of the showdown is very reminiscent of the climactic scenes of Diamonds Are Forever with its speeding locomotive chasing Bond and Tiffany Case through the desert, before reaching an explosive end.]
Showdown in the swamp
Bond, badly wounded in the shoulder and feeling the appalling heat of the Jamaican sun at mid-day, hauls the unconscious Leiter into the shade of some mangroves, then sets about stalking Scaramanga. Fleming draws out this final sequence as long as he can, maybe to pad out what feels like a thin story.
Eventually, after sneaking slowly through the jungle in the sweltering heat, Bond hear a quiet cough which leads him to the clearing where the tall man is lying propped against a tree. Bond watches fascinated while a venomous snake slides towards him as if for the kill. Scaramanaga appears too wounded, lying there drenched in blood and sweat, to do anything. But in fact at the snake comes into reach, like lightning the tall man leaps forward and skewers the snake with a concealed stilleto, before filleting it and eating it raw. Yuk. And that’s the moment Bond walks into the clearing, pointing his gun at the bloody figure.
And then there’s the corny movie-house scene where Bond finds he can’t, he just can’t, kill a wounded man in cold blood. He tries to rouse his temper by reminding Scaramanga (and himself) of one of the Service agents, Margesson, who he shot in both elbows and knees then forced to crawl across the floor and kiss his shoes before killing him. But even as he tells the story, Bond feels faint, and can hear his voice wavering. To his surprise Scaramanga asks to say a final prayer. Bond, weakening, lets him, and fails to notice one of the tall man’s hands moving slowly towards his right ear.
Suddenly, whiplash fast, he pulls out a pocket Derringer pistol and shoots Bond in the guts. As Bond spins and falls he fires all five of his bullets in Scaramanga’s direction then, from his position in agony on the ground, watches the tall assassin’s body finally collapse to the floor, shot through the heart.
Fleming had previously described not only the snake but the land crabs, among other fauna, which inhabited the mangrove. In an effective piece of word painting, he describes how the crabs wait a while after the last of the thuds, and then slowly emerge from their holes to feast on this rich array of fresh carrion…
Wind-up
Leiter, Bond and Scaramanga are found by Constable Percival Sampson of the Negril Constabulary, who had been called to the scene of the railway bridge explosion. In the hospital at Savannah La Mar the local doctor realises the bullet Scaramanga shot Bond in the gut with was tipped with horse poison, and administers an antidote [exactly as Bond is saved from fugu poison at the end of From Russia With Love].
Cut to Bond in his hospital bed in Kingston, one week later. To his embarrassment he is attended by the Commissioner of Police, a Judge of the Supreme Court, ‘Colonel Bannister’ from Washington (presumed CIA) Head of Station C (Caribbean) who’s flown in, and Mary Goodnight to take notes. The Judge reads out an ‘official’ account of events which not only exonerates Bond and Leiter of any crime but a) reinforces the scope and scale of Scaramanga’s criminal activities and attempts to undermine Jamaica b) awards him and Leiter medals, specifically the Jamaican Police Medal for gallantry and meritorious services to the Independent State of Jamaica.
Smiles, applause, the officials troop out, Leiter says farewell (to Bond and us devoted readers), Bond – exhausted by the effort – falls asleep.
Goodnight
A week later Bond is on the mend when Goodnight visits, looking trim in her 1960s office outfit. Not for the first time Bond fantasises about slipping it slowly off her to reveal the delights below. But in fact she has brought a ciphered message for Bond. She decodes it: Bond is being offered a knighthood. Goodnight is gleeful with happiness for him. Bond is sardonic and tells her to send a message turning it down: ‘My principal reason is that I don’t want to pay more at hotels and restaurants’ (p.188).
Goodnight says he’s allowed to leave hospital but needs to rest for another three weeks before flying back to London. She shyly tells him she’s got a nice bungalow up in the hills. With a spare room. With a great view. Near a good club where he can play golf during the day and bridge in the evening. Would he like to… you know…
Knowing what it will lead to, but knowing he will never settle down, that one woman will never be enough, that the world, in fact, is not enough, Bond agrees to stay with her and so ends his last adventure with the promise of some warm Jamaican loving.
Bond biographical snippets
Most of Bond’s biography was given in the obituary M wrote for him at the end of You Only Live Twice. Here we learn that M’s full name is Admiral Sir Miles Messervy (p.10). M’s number 2 is the Chief of Staff, Bond’s friend Bill Tanner.
Jamaica
Jamaica, where Fleming built his beloved house, Goldeneye and wrote most of the Bond novels, gained independence from Britain in 1962. According to its Wikipedia article, some ‘60% of Jamaicans would push to once again become a British territory’, due to decades of mismanagement and economic decline.
Credit
The Man With The Golden Gun by Ian Fleming was published in April 1965 by Jonathan Cape. Page references are to the 1989 Coronet paperback edition.
Related links
Other thrillers published in 1965
- High Citadel by Desmond Bagley
- The Berlin Memorandum by Adam Hall
- The Strode Venturer by Hammond Innes
- The Looking Glass War by John le Carré
- Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell
- The movie version of Thunderball was released in December 1965
- The American TV series I Spy and Get Smart were launched.
Books & Boots 