Draft:Double or Nothing (James Bond)

Double or Nothing is a James Bond spinoff novel written by Kim Sherwood. It is the first in a trilogy, followed by A Spy Like Me.

In Syria, Aazar Sidding "Sid" Bashir (009) is on a mission to free Johanna Harwood: 003 and her ex-fiancé. She is held prisoner in a Rattenfänger camp , a paramilitary organization which engages in terrorism in exchange for money. Bashir infiltrates the camp, creating a diversion but is put in difficulty by a colonel named Mora with whom he has an altercation. As he is about to die, Harwood saves him by shooting Mora.

Bashir and Harwood manage to escape the camp and reach Turkey, where they tell each other that they still love each other.

While Harwood recovers at Shrublands (see Operation Thunder ), Moneypenny (now the head of Section 00) arrives at MI6 HQ and reminisces about James Bond (007). This one went missing about 17 months ago (and is presumed dead). He had been sent on a mission to Barcelona with Bashir, with the aim of helping Mikhail Petrov (Russia's leading climate scientist) and his wife Anna cross to England. Petrov wanted Bond to take on this mission because he had taken a liking to him after seeing him seduce his wife. Since Petrov died, his wife and Bond have disappeared, and he suspected that Rattenfänger was involved. Bashir, angry at having lost track of Bond during this mission, then separated from Harwood.

Moneypenny summons Joseph Dryden (004) to his office to assign him a mission. Tech billionaire Sir Bertram Paradise has a geoengineering project called Cloud Nine that could save humanity from the climate crisis. One of its chief scientists, Dr. Zofia Nowak, and its head of security, Robert Bull, have disappeared. Since Paradise wires a lot of money, it could be that they were kidnapped and someone is blackmailing him. Moneypenny wants Dryden to investigate by being recruited by Paradise's new head of security, Luke "Lucky" Luck, a former army comrade of Dryden's and his former lover.

Before leaving, Dryden will box against Harthrop-Vane (000), a fight during which his hearing aid is damaged (Dryden was injured in Afghanistan where he lost most of his hearing; an implant in his body helps compensate for this. his deafness and be in permanent communication with the Q-Branch). He goes to the Q-Branch to have it repaired and learns in the process that Nowak recently contacted a human rights lawyer, Ruqsana Choudhury, a childhood friend of Bashir.

Dryden goes to meet Luke and Paradise in London. The billionaire explains to him that thanks to his yacht Ark he will be able to deploy technology capable of creating clouds on demand, allowing for example to deploy rain or protect the ice floe from the sun's rays. Dryden is recruited and then accompanies Paradise and his advisors as a bodyguard to the Monto Carlo casino, then to the island of Vozrojdénia (which Paradise intends to clean up ecologically). Luke tells her that Robert Bull was sexually harassing Nowak and that she is currently on leave.

Meanwhile, M (Emry Ware, the head of MI6), goes to visit Bashir who is participating in a chess tournament. With the recent deaths of many 00 agents, he suspects that Rattenfänger has somehow infiltrated MI6 and wants to make sure the leak doesn't come from Harwood. He asks her to continue to watch her closely.

Bashir visits Harwood at her home at the Barbican Estate. They continue to reconnect and when he wakes up alone in bed, he discovers armed men nearby with whom he has a skirmish. Harwood told him that she had gone out to wash her clothes and he concluded that they were other MI6 men assigned to monitor Harwood.

In reality Harwood went out to meet Colonel Mora of Rattenfänger, whom she had only hurt. He told her that Nowak had discovered that Rattenfänger was financing Paradise and that the latter had ordered Bull to silence her. Bull has failed and Rattenfänger does not know where she is and needs her to access Celestial, Paradise's quantum computer (the latter having decided to restrict Rattenfänger 's access to it). Mora also wants Harwood to kill Bull because Rattenfänger does not tolerate failure. (This is only later revealed to the reader).

The reader is also unaware at this point in the novel that this is a ploy by Moneypenny and Harwood. The latter being a triple agent: having been sent by Moneypenny to Syria with the aim of being captured by Rattenfänger and making them believe that they had succeeded in turning her around. This is with the aim of making her a double agent and thus collecting information on Rattenfänger, including the identity of their mole at MI6 and Bond's status.

Bashir and Harwood will meet Ruqsana Choudhury in a building occupied by climate protesters. They flee the scene during the police assault and Choudhury reveals to them that Nowak was afraid of Bull because he was harassing her and that she was seeing someone in Berlin named Felix Leiter.

Dryden accompanies Paradise, his advisors and the press to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which Paradise purchased so he could launch his satellites which he uses as part of his Cloud Nine project. There he ends up reconnecting/sleeping with Luke and discovers that one of the members of Paradise's entourage, Yuri Litvinnof, is not who he claims. The Q-Branch identifies him as Michael Dobra. Moneypenny goes to visit Mary Ann Russell (see Good Kisses from Paris ) who had made a report on him and learns that Dobra is a member of Rattenfänger and that he had in the past tried to recruit Bond.

Dryden attempts to isolate and capture Dobra, but it is Dobra who captures him. The latter brings Dryden to an old hangar in Buran where he prepares to kill him, not without previously revealing to him that Rattenfänger financed Paradise and that Paradise is now trying to separate from them. Dryden manages to kill Yuri before the reverse happens and loses consciousness.

Moneypenny visits Dolores Keator of the Q-branch at Major Boothroyd's grave, telling her about Bill Tanner who appears to have knowingly failed to report details about Dobra. Moneypenny then goes to talk to Tanner on the Lewes side. Not having enough proof of his innocence or guilt, it is decided to suspend/isolate Tanner so as not to take any risks.

When Dryden wakes up, he is in the company of Paradise who admits to knowing from the beginning that he is an agent 00: Paradise has planted enough clues for MI6 to take an interest in him and thus rid him of Dobra de Rattenfänger. Paradise also tells him he knows about his hearing implant. While he was unconscious Paradise modified the implant so that it would no longer transmit to the Q-Branch and added a function capable of frying Dryden's brain if he was uncooperative.

Dryden accompanies Paradise to Macau where he must attend a boxing match and a freefight match (both of which Paradise rigged; he notably had the son of a boxer named Chao kidnapped so that he could lie down on the 3rd round). Luke is one of the fighters in the freefight and Dryden, who does not recognize what has become of his former lover, decides to show up in the arena to fight against him. While they are fighting, Zhang Yi (who manages gambling in Macau on behalf of the Triads), approaches Paradise and tells him that Rattenfänger asked him to detain him. Zhang Yi declares that the fight between Dryden and Luke will be to the death and gets St John (Paradise's financial manager) killed.

Dryden gets Luke to hit him in the implant, grabs a Triad weapon, and exfiltrates Paradise outside with Luke's help. They get into two cars and a vehicle chase against the Triad begins on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao bridge, during which they are helped remotely by the Q-Branch who understood that something was wrong following the malfunction of the 'implant.

Pursued by the Triads, Dryden goes to Chungking Mansions to free Chao's son. He succeeds but gets tazed by Luke.

Meanwhile, Bashir, Harwood and Choudhury traveled to Berlin to try to find Nowak. Harwood went to meet Felix Leiter and they went to his villa by Lake Wannsee where they reminisced about Bond and where he told him that Robert Bull was arrested near Nowak's house with blood on his clothes which was not not just him.

For their part, Bashir and Choudhury went to question one of Nowak's friends named Anna in a park, and were kidnapped by Rattenfänger. Rattenfänger informed Harwood of this.

Leiter leads Harwood to a secret CIA prison located in the old Operation Gold tunnel where Bull is being held. Harwood questions him and learns that Nowak might be hiding at his grandmother's house. She concludes the interrogation by killing Bull.

In an abandoned hospital, Bashir is interrogated/tortured by Mora who wants to know where Nowak is. He has poisoned Choudhury and offers to give him the antidote if he talks. Harwood joins them and says he knows where Nowak is and that he killed Bull. Bashir then thinks that Harwood is a traitor until Leiter nearby opens fire on Mora's men with a sniper rifle and comes to save him.

Harwood flees the scene in her Alpine A110 S, pursued through the Taunus mountains to Frankfurt by Mora and his men in two Mercedes, whom she hopes to lead on a false trail. She manages to get rid of her pursuers, in particular thanks to a gadget that emits a blinding strobe light on her rear headlights.

Leiter goes to visit Nowak's grandmother in her retirement home. She tells him that Nowak has gone to see someone, probably from the press. Leiter and Harwood travel to Lake Bled in Slovenia where Nowak is to meet a journalist named Elena Ilić. However, Mora is present with a sniper and manages to kidnap Nowak before their eyes, injure Leiter and kill Ilić.

Leiter and Harwood go to Dagger Complex to recover from their injuries and reunite with Bashir. They believe that Nowak is being held in the underground complex of the Rattenfänger base in Syria at the beginning of the novel. Harwood and Bashir go there and find Nowak and Celestial there. However, they fall into an ambush from Colonel Mora; they manage to free Nowak but Bashir is killed by Mora. Harwood captures Mora alive and asks Nowak to locate Paradise with Celestial (the satellites the latter had launched prevented MI6 from finding his location).

During this time, Dryden shared a cage with a chained white tiger on Paradise's yacht Ark. He told him that he did not want to slow down the climate crisis but on the contrary accelerate it. Paradise aims to darken the clouds above the Sea of ​​Okhotsk towards which they are heading in order to melt the ice and create new maritime routes from which it intends to make financial profits. A little later Luke tried to free him, but was spotted and arrested.

Dryden managed to lure Paradise near the cage by offering him a coin toss and doubling the bet each time (“ double or nothing ”). The cage eventually broke due to the cold and Dryden's efforts to excite the tiger and the animal then tore Paradise to pieces, killing him. Dryden, aided by Luke, then attempted and succeeded in stopping Cloud Nine before the point of no return, while fighting off the remaining guards. Reinforcements led by Tiger Tanaka (see the novel You Only Live Twice ) sent by MI6 who managed to locate Ark ended up joining the yacht and bringing them to safety for good.

Tanner is identified as the mole at MI6; Rattenfänger threatened the life of his illegitimate son. He committed suicide by hanging before being interrogated.

Further exploring the Rattenfänger camp, Harwood discovers that James Bond was at one time imprisoned in a cell there.

= Main characters and other names = Characters:


 * Joseph "Joe" Dryden, 004 : Former Special Forces, he was injured in Afghanistan where he lost most of his hearing. A Q-Branch implant in his body makes it possible to compensate for his deafness (and to be in permanent communication with the Q-Branch). He has black skin (with Jamaican origins) and is gay.
 * Johanna Harwood, 003 : Brunette, born to a Northern Irish father and a mother of French-Algerian origin, she grew up in Paris before leaving for London to study medicine to become a surgeon. She was Bond's lover, before eventually leaving him for Sid Bashir.
 * Aazar Sidding “Sid” Bashir, 009 : born to a father of Sudanese origin and a mother of Pakistani origin, he is a big fan of chess and mathematics. He is 003's lover.
 * Bertram “Bertie” Paradise : Tech billionaire. Heir to a family that made its fortune in mining, most people assume that he intends to wash away their environmental sins by dedicating his life to saving humanity from the climate crisis. In reality he wants to accelerate the crisis to create new maritime routes and thus enrich himself: “my friends are paying me for the new trade routes that I am going to open”. He also wants to free himself from Rattenfänger with whom he had associated himself.
 * Colonel Mora : Ruler of Rattenfänger, his nickname is derived from the mythology of the "Kikimora". Has a sphingid butterfly tattoo on his neck and chest.
 * Luke "Lucky" Luck : Dryden's former army comrade and his former lover. He is Sir Bertram Paradise's head of security.
 * Felix Leiter : CIA agent and friend of James Bond.
 * Emery Ware, M : Former 00 Agent, then former head of Section 00, became head of MI6 when Sir Miles Messervy retired.
 * Moneypenny : Former secretary to Miles Messervy, she is now the head of Section 00 since Ware was promoted to Mr.
 * Bill Tanner
 * Dr. Zofia Nowak : Chief Scientist to Sir Bertram Paradise.
 * Robert Bull : Former head of security for Sir Bertram Paradise.
 * Yuri Litvinnof : member of Sir Bertram Paradise's entourage. His real name is Michael Dobra, a former Albanian mafioso member of Rattenfänger.
 * Entourage of Sir Bertram Paradise : among the advisors who surround Bertram: Ahmed (in charge of the agenda/organization), St John (financial manager), Hester (publicist).
 * Foal : Member of Paradise's security staff.
 * Members of the Q-Branch : Dolores Keator (leader of the Q-Branch since the death of Major Boothroyd), Ibrahim Suleiman and Aisha Asante.
 * Mary Ann Russell : (see Good Kisses from Paris ) former MI6 agent, left the service for the private sector around twenty years ago. She has a husband and a daughter.
 * Elena Ilić : journalist from Al Jazeera.
 * Zhang Yi : gambling manager in Macau on behalf of the Triads and collaborator of Rattenfänger.
 * Bob Simmons : elevator guard at MI6 HQ.
 * Tiger Tanaka : (see the novel You Only Live Twice ) he appears briefly at the end of the novel to help 004.
 * Harthrop-Vane, 000 : also nicknamed “Double O Nothing” or “Triple O”.
 * Phoebe Taylor : Moneypenny's assistant.
 * Sniper : Mora teams up with a sniper at Lake Bled. Harwood and Leiter put forward the hypothesis that it could be “Trigger” (see the short story The Living Daylights ), but the identity of the shooter ultimately remains unknown.
 * James Bond, 007 : approximately 45 years old, has been missing for approximately 17 months. His location and status are unknown during this novel. Rattenfänger is involved in his disappearance.