“The face of war is changing. The other side doesn’t play by the rules much anymore. There’s thinking, in some circles, that we need to play by a different set of rules too . . .”
James Bond, in his early thirties and already a veteran of the Afghan War, has been recruited to a new organization. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of MI5, MI6 and the Ministry of Defense, its very existence deniable. Its aim: To protect the Realm, by any means necessary.
A Night Action alert calls James Bond away from dinner with a beautiful woman. Headquarters has decrypted an electronic whisper about an attack scheduled for later in the week: Casualties estimated in the thousands, British interests adversely affected.
And Agent 007 has been given carte blanche.
Firstly, shouldn't it be "it operates independent
ly of MI5...."? Not having a dig, but a serious question.
Secondly, I wonder whether this blurb gives away the plot and its main "twist". 007 is assigned to stop a terrorist attack that Islamists are thought to be planning.
So he heads off to Dubai or wherever and has the usual girl-chasing romps, car chases, shootouts and punchups. Towards the very end, though, it's revealed that Islamic terrorists are not behind the impending attack at all. Instead, it's a "false flag" operation organised by shadowy factions within British Intelligence - those "in some circles" who believe "that we need to play by a different set of rules too".
These right wing lunatics within the British establishment intend the attack to go ahead so that it may be blamed on Muslim extremists and result in various things they've been hankering after, e.g. a total ban on immigration, a vastly increased budget for British Intelligence, a police state with unprecedented powers of surveillance and civil liberties curtailment, and maybe grounds for a war in which they can grab another country's oil.... Bond has been sent to stop this "Islamist" outrage so that afterwards it'll look as though the Brits did all they could to prevent it, but our hero has unknowingly been set up to fail, and the assassins on his trail are being manipulated by bad apples within his own organisation and government.
Right at the end of the book, Bond rumbles the baddies but they make a desperate last-ditch attempt to persuade him to come over to their side and allow the attack to happen, playing on his own upper-crust credentials and sense of "patriotism" ("You know as well as I do that this country is going to the dogs, old boy, and you of all people ought to long for the day when England is once again what she was - thousands of people will die, yes, but millions more will perish over the coming years unless something happens to let us crack down on these fanatics once and for all"). Bond pretends to think about this for a while, but only to buy himself time to get out of whatever corner they've boxed him into. Naturally, he has no intention of joining them. Instead, he kills them.
I dunno. Too obvious, maybe, but perhaps I'm on the right track. Not long before we find out.
