James Bond (Modern)

James Bond is the son of Andrew Bond and Monique Delacroix Bond. His father was a Senior Accounts Manager for Vickers Defence Systems (now BAE Systems Land & Armaments Group) originally from Glencoe, Scotland, while his mother was originally from Yverdonm Canton de Vaud, Switzerland.

Until age 11, Bond was educated in Switzerland and Germany, where his father was stationed as a Vickers executive. Both parents died in a climbing tragedy while attempting to scale north-east ridge of the Aiguille de la Persévérance. After the death of his parents, he was privately tutored by his aunt and guardian, Miss Charmain Bond of Pett Bottom, Kent. From age 12 to 13, Bond attended Eton until he was expelled for repeated curfew violations and 'trouble' with one of the maids. He then attended his father's alma mater, Fettes. While there he won numerous athletic competitions and twice boxed for the school as a light weight. He also formed the first intermural judo league for the public school circuit. During his teens, he spent time studying both climbing and skiing with local Austrian instructor Hannes Oberhauser of Kitzbühel during term breaks at Fettes. Bond's one strong relationship, this friendship ended when Oberhauser disappeared mysteriously. Bond has referred to Oberhauser as a second father. During a stint at the University of Geneva under an exchange program with Fettes, Bond led an expedition to the very mountain where his parents had died. Bond climbed it with friends and never told them of his personal and tragic link to the location.

After graduating from Fettes at the age of 17, Bond began attending the Britannia Royal Naval College. While there, Bond excelled in all areas of training. Bond matriculated from his coursework at BRNC with passable marks. However, whilst excelling at athletic competitions, strategic operations, and counter-intelligence courses, his unconventional approach to his education, his diffident attitude to some of his superiors, and a lack of respect for curfew drew him many demerits. On more than one occasion, a fellow candidate was strongly suspected of lying to protect Bond from punishment. In his later teens, Bond lost his one surviving close relative, his aunt Charmain Bond.

Bond conducted his year of Sea Service with high recommendations from his Chief Petty Officers and Warrant Officers. He applied for and was uniformly recommended for work in Naval Intelligence. Bond served as an intelligence officer on HMS Edinburgh (D97) and later was able to transfer to submarine service, touring on the HMS Triumph (S93). His natural abilities, mental quickness and confidence impressed his commanding officers. Within the year of being assigned to HMS Triumph, it became apparent that Bond was not being sufficiently challenged with his duties, so Bond volunteered for the Special Boat Service. Bond excelled at SC3 and Underwater and Aquatic Warfare training. He constantly equaled or bested his superior officers and instructors in all areas after nominal experience.

Bond earned the distinction of being the only candidate to entirely escape detection during the night limpet placement operation at Plymouth. There was some doubt as to whether Bond had actually accomplished the mission per the assignment until he demonstrated his rather ingenious method of eluding the underwater infra-red cameras and sonar systems in-place. His techniques were rapidly included in future training. Upon completion of UAW training, Bond commenced Advanced Commando Parachute training at Brize Norton.

Bond's record with training earned him placement with the 030 Special Forces Unit, rather than deployment as a swimmer-canoeist with the standard SBS Units in Poole. During further training with 030 SFU, Bond earned certifications for the operation of assault helicopters, Harrier-class jets, fixed wing aircraft, hovercrafts, marine assault vessels, armored vehicles, and other crafts. Bond served with distinction in the 030 Special Forces Unit. He proved adept at training other candidates, initiating athletic competitions, and fostering a creative environment. During his three-year tenure with the 030 SFU, Bond rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Upon completion of a tour of duty in Iraq, he was recruited by the RNR Defence Intelligence Group and awarded the rank of Commander.

Bond's work with the Defence Intelligence Group at Defence Intelligence and Security Centre, Chicksands, proved highly exceptional and during his tenure at the DI Group RNR, he attended specialized courses at Cambridge (where he achieved a first in Oriental Languages), Oxford and other institutions. Eventually, his exemplary work caught the attention of a high-level Defence Ministry official who believed he would be perfect for a newly-established and highly unconventional clandestine services organization. In short order, Bond was recruited into a top-secret agency called the Overseas Development Group.

Officially the ODG is an obscure private firm that assists British-based companies in opening or expanding foreign operations and investing abroad. In actuality, it is a covert operational and tactical unit of British security operating largely independently but ultimately under the control of the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Formed to serve as a modern-day version of the World War II-era Special Operations Executive espionage and sabotage group, the ODG's mission is to identify and eliminate threats to the United Kingdom by extraordinary means; quite simply to "protect the Realm...by any means necessary." Its personnel are given carte blanche to operate outside of the law. For example, agents within the 00 Section of the ODG's O (Operations) Branch are essentially entrusted with a license to kill -- the authorization to, at their own discretion, commit acts that might be otherwise considered murder in order to complete a mission, without having to seek permission from headquarters first. The ODG's director-general is a retired Royal Navy admiral known only as "M."

Soon after accepting the position with the Overseas Development Group, Bond retired from the Royal Navy. He then underwent an intensive operational training course to train him in so-called "operational intelligence" or "tradecraft" espionage skills. Bond received exceptionally high marks for physical endurance, logic, and psychological ops exercises. After training, he joined the ODG's 00 Section and was given the code number "007" and the official cover of a "security and integrity analyst" whose job is to travel the world and assess business risks for the ODG's clients.

On his first mission as Agent 007, Bond was sent to the outskirts of Novi Sad in Serbia where an Irish combat engineer-turned-enforcer named Niall Dunne was planning to derail a train carrying three hundred kilograms of methyl isocyanate, dumping it into the Danube. He was able to prevent the catastrophe by derailing the train himself at a much safer place along the line. However, he was unable to detain Dunne, who killed Bond's Serbian contacts in the course of his escape.

Using what little intelligence Bond was able to gather from the operation in Serbia, the ODG was able to establish a connection to Green Way International, a waste disposal consortium contracted to demolish a British Army base in March, Cambridgeshire. Because Bond was not authorised to act on British soil, he was forced to work with an MI5 agent named Percy Osborne-Smith. The two men clashed over the interpretation of the intelligence, prompting Bond to manipulate Osborne-Smith into pursuing a lead Bond knew to be false, and allowing him to investigate the March Army base on his own. While exploring the base hospital, he was sealed inside by Niall Dunne, who intended to kill him by bringing the hospital down in a controlled demolition. Bond escaped by improvising an explosive device.

He then turned his attention to Green Way International, led by the enigmatic Severan Hydt. The Dutch-born Hydt was a "rag-and-bone man", who made his fortune in the disposal of waste. He had an intense fascination with death, which MI6 intelligence analysts believed to be a sexual fetish. The Overseas Development Group authorise Bond to investigate Hydt when intelligence surfaced suggesting he was also known as "Noah" and a key player in the derailment in Serbia, which was believed to be a prelude to a much bigger attack that would affect British interests. Bond got wind of a second attack, to occur later in the week, killing up to one hundred people. He tracked Hydt to Dubai and with the help of CIA officer Felix Leiter, eavesdropped on a conversation with one of Hydt's senior researchers. Concerned that the attack was imminent, Bond attempted to anticipate Hydt's next move and was on the verge of evacuating a crowded museum when he realised that Hydt was there for an exhibit of the bodies of ninety tribal nomads who were killed a millennium ago. Aborting his planned evacuation, Bond returned to Hydt's facility to find that Leiter had been attacked by an unknown assailant and a local CIA asset had been murdered.

Hydt left Dubai for Cape Town, with Bond following closely. Once inside South Africa, he met Bheka Jordaan, a local police operative. Bond was able to get close to Hydt by posing as a Durban-based mercenary, and fueled Hydt's fixation with death by promising him access to mass graves across the African continent. Hydt was taken by Bond's proposal of exhuming the bodies and recycling them into consumer products such as building materials, and gradually welcomed him into his inner circle. Bond attended a fundraiser for the International Organisation Against Hunger with Hydt, where he met Felicity Willing, the charity's spokeperson. After helping Willing deliver the left-over food from the fundraiser to a distribution centre, the two begin a relationship.

Using his mercenary cover, Bond was able to infiltrate Hydt's operations in South Africa. His relationship with Bheka Jordaan soured, particularly when he encountered the assailant who attacked Felix Leiter in Dubai: the brother of one of his contacts who was killed in Serbia. As the deadline for the attack - known as Gehenna (derived from the Hebrew word for Hell) - approached, the ODG was ordered to pull Bond out of South Africa and send him to Afghanistan as Whitehall believed the attack would happen there as they could see no connection between Hydt and Gehenna. M was not convinced and managed to keep Bond in South Africa, but the future of the Overseas Development Group depended on his being correct in suspecting Hydt.

On the day of the Gehenna attacks, Bond deduced that the target was somewhere in York, but his report was ignored by Osborne-Smith, who believed it was aimed at a security conference in London. Bond managed to access Hydt's research and development facility, where he uncovered plans for a weapon developed by Serbia known as "the Cutter", which fired razor-sharp shards of steel at hypervelocity. Hydt had been using his operations to steal sensitive information, from which he had acquired the blueprints to the Cutter. Bond realised that the derailment in Serbia was a false flag operation: its intention was not to drop methyl isocyanate into the Danube, but to allow Niall Dunne the opportunity to steal scrap metal from the train for use in the prototype Cutter. Hydt was employed by an American pharmaceutical corporation to detonate a Cutter at the University of York, killing a cancer researcher on the verge of a breakthrough that would bankrupt the pharmaceutical corporation. Evidence planted at the scene would suggest the attack was aimed at a fellow lecturer who was a vocal opponent of the Serbian government. With the help of Hydt's personal assistant, Bond was able to stop the attack. Hydt was arrested, but Dunne escaped and shot his employer at long range.

Bond was uncomfortable with the conclusion, feeling that there were too many loose ends at hand. Research showed that the ODG had been misled, and their intelligence misinterpreted; Severan Hydt was never known as Noah. Rather, it is an acronym for the National Organisation Against Hunger, which recently expanded to provide food aid on an international scale. Niall Dunne was an associate of Felicity Willing, whose organisation had expanded to the point where she directly controlled one-third of all food aid arriving in Africa. She intended to use this power to strategically distribute food throughout east Africa, giving the Sudanese government a pretext to go to war with rebels and prevent Southern Sudan from seceding. Bond lured Willing into a trap at an abandoned inn where she confessed the plot. Niall Dunne then reappeared, attacking the party before Bond and Bheka Jordaan shot and killed him. Willing was the taken to a black site after MI6 spread stories suggesting she was embezzling from her own charity.

Since that daring and death-defying assignment, James Bond has distinguished himself as the Overseas Development Group's premier 00 agent and one of the most extraordinary secret agents employed by the British government.