The Hero: James Bond; The Villain: Colonel Sun Liang-tan; The Bond Girl: Ariadne Alexandrou; Supporting Characters: “M”, Bill Tanner, Niko Litsas, Major Piotr Gordienko, Von Richter, Evgeny Ryumin, DeGraff, Dr. Lohmann, Doni Madan, Luisi Tartini; Locations covered: London, Athens, Vrakonisi Island; First Published: 1968
Four years after the death of Ian Fleming, Kingsley Amis, author of The James Bond Dossier, was asked to try and continue the legacy of 007. Under the penname Robert Markham, Amis produced the unique Bond adventure Colonel Sun.
The story starts off one year after the events chronicled in The Man With the Golden Gun. The Bond we see here has spent his time trying to recover from his earlier adventures, but has the sense that he is slowing down, that he has lost the edge. While playing golf with his good friend Bill Tanner, Bond questions his easy lifestyle. We see a Bond who doubts himself, who doesn`t feel up to the challenge that his 007 status dictates. This is a very different Bond than that of Fleming`s writings. Later on, Bond is tailed by a car on his way to see M. Markham`s Bond shows a dulling of his sixth sense:
“Although he had been under close surveillance for over six weeks, Bond had noticed nothing out of the ordinary. When not on an assignment abroad, a secret agent does not expect to be watched.”
The Bond of Ian Fleming would. Old enemies like SPECTRE and SMERSH never limit themselves to missions abroad, and Bond would have been incredibly alert, no matter where he was.
Bond arrives at Quarterdeck – M`s home – to find M under heavy sedation and held hostage by a nameless group of thugs. Bond is able to escape, though he passes out in the nearby woods due to an injection that the thugs give him. When he comes to, M is missing, M`s staff is murdered, and one of the thugs Bond grappled with has been shot in the face. On his body, Bond finds a subtle clue that points to Athens, Greece. Everyone knows that it`s a trap, a planted clue that is meant to lure 007 to the chase. Bond, however, has no choice but to go.
In Athens, he is picked up by the beautiful Ariadne Alexandrou, whom Bond suspects to be part of the plot. However, her contacts are unfamiliar to her, and she and Bond fight together to escape. It turns out she works for the Soviet Union and reports to Major Gordienko. A Soviet summit conference is coming up, and Gordienko is in charge of security. He is suspicious of Bond`s presence in Greece at the same time as the summit, but both sides figure out that they are working against a common unknown enemy.
The plot becomes even more interesting when Colonel-General Igor of the KGB also finds out that Bond is in Greece. His desire is to forever be remembered as the “man who killed James Bond”. He ends up contributing to the mayhem instead of being able to stop the real foe.
That real foe is Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People`s Liberation Army of China. He is a master at the arts of torture. His plan is to lure Bond to his hideout on Vrakonisi Island – the same island where the summit meeting is to take place – torture Bond to the point of death purely for his own investigative studies, blow up the meeting, and frame Bond and M, whose bodies would be found amidst the rubble, along with some very incriminating evidence.
Bond ends up playing right into Sun`s hands. Gordienko and his staff are all gunned down, leaving Bond, Ariadne, and Ariadne`s longtime friend Niko Litsas to rescue M. From a gunfight at sea with Sun`s thugs to a boat exchange that causes an innocent man and his son to be ruthlessly murdered, the action in this story is definitely present. In the end, though, Bond and his colleagues are all captured by Sun. It seems as if there is no escape possible for Bond. Markham does a wonderful job of bringing the reader to the last final shreds of dispair; then dumping the most descriptive torture scene I`ve ever read in a Bond story right on top!
The story, overall, is a very well-written and entertaining adventure of espionage; yet throughout the book, I found myself reflecting upon the adventure as more of a Magnum P.I. story rather than a Bond one. Markham is a very detailed and descriptive writer, which unfortunately slows down the plot between the action sequences in a way that no Fleming book ever did. In addition, we never lose sight of the Bond who has doubts about his abilities, a Bond who simply is not in control of his being. With this sense about him, he almost has no choice but to become the pawn in Sun`s game. We know Bond won`t die in the end, but he has no ability whatsoever to save himself. He must rely on a surprisingly secret ally to save the day.
Markham`s Bond doesn`t even have the characteristic Bond-isms about him that Fleming readers have come to expect. Never once does Bond order a martini; in fact, although everybody still seems to know his favorite drink, that drink is whiskey rather than the martini. In addition, Markham presents no Bond gadgets, no technical surprises that typically help the flair and sophistication of a Bond adventure. In the 1993 reprinting of the story, Amis makes note of this side of his Bond in his introductory remarks:
“But the James Bond of Dr. No or Goldfinger would have needed far more in the way of technical expertise than I could supply. . . . No hovercraft, no helicopters, no rockets, and no double portions of Beluga caviare served in candlelit restaurants by white-jacketed waiters. He finds no use for the picklock and baby transmitter and the rest of the gadgets supplied by Q Branch on his departure.”
Thus, what we end up with is a James Bond story that doesn`t at all read like a James Bond story. The story is good, to be sure, but dedicated fans can spot the differences in a second. I have heard that the novel was not well received as a result, though I must confess I wasn`t old enough to have been concerned at the time. I did actually enjoy it, and as different as it is, I feel it is a must for any Bond story collector.
Ironically enough, Markham shows an incredible amount of insight into world politics at the end of the story. A Mr. Yermolov of the Soviet Union thanks Bond for a job well done, and in doing so, leaves us with this little piece of prophecy:
“`I`d like you to know that what you`ve done is extremely important. It`s helped to show my bosses, not just who our real enemy is – we know much more about Chinese ambitions than your observers do – but who our future friends are. England. America. The West in general.`”
In 1968, these words were written. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. Not a bad bit of prophecy, wouldn`t you say?