For Your Eyes Only

The British information-gathering vessel St Georges, which holds the Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (ATAC), the system used by the Ministry of Defence to co-ordinate the Royal Navy's fleet of Polaris submarines, is sunk after trawling an old naval mine in the Ionian Sea. The British ask marine archaeologist Sir Timothy Havelock secretly to locate the St Georges. However, he and his wife are then murdered on their yacht (Triana) by Cuban hitman Hector Gonzales. Havelock's daughter Melina witnesses the murders, and vows revenge. The head of the KGB, General Gogol, also has learned of the fate of the St Georges and has notified his contact in Greece. MI6 agent James Bond is ordered by the Minister of Defence, Sir Frederick Gray, and MI6 Chief of Staff Bill Tanner to retrieve the ATAC before the Soviets do so, for the transmitter could order attacks by the submarines' Polaris ballistic missiles. Bond goes to Spain to learn who hired Gonzales. While spying on Gonzales's villa, Bond is captured by his men, but escapes as a crossbow bolt kills Gonzales. The assassin was Melina, who escapes with Bond. Aided by Bond, Q uses the computerised Identigraph to identify the man Bond saw paying off Gonzales as Emile Leopold Locque and goes to Locque's possible base in Cortina, Italy. There, Bond meets his contact, Luigi Ferrara, and a well-connected Greek business magnate and intelligence informant, Aris Kristatos, who reveals that Locque is employed by Milos Columbo, known as "the Dove" in the Greek underworld, Kristatos's former Greek resistance partner during the Second World War. After Bond goes with Kristatos's protégée, figure skater Bibi Dahl, to a biathlon course, a group of three men, which includes East German biathlete Eric Kriegler, chases Bond, trying to kill him. Bond escapes and goes with Ferrara to bid Bibi farewell in an ice rink, where he fends off another attempt on his life by three men in ice hockey gear. Ferrara is killed in Bond's car, with a dove pin in his hand. Bond then travels to Corfu in pursuit of Columbo. There, at the casino, Bond meets Kristatos and asks how to meet Columbo, not knowing that Columbo's men are secretly recording their conversation. After Columbo and his mistress, Countess Lisl von Schlaf, argue, Bond offers to escort her home with Kristatos's car and driver. The two spend the night together and the next morning, Lisl and Bond are ambushed on the beach and Lisl is killed by Locque, who mows her down in a beach buggy before speeding away. Bond is captured by Columbo's men before Locque can kill him; Columbo then tells Bond that Locque was actually hired by Kristatos, who is working for the KGB to retrieve the ATAC. Bond accompanies Columbo and his crew on a raid on one of Kristatos's opium-processing warehouses in Albania, where Bond uncovers naval mines similar to the one that sank the St Georges. After the base is destroyed, Bond chases Locque and kills him by shoving his car off a cliff while he is trapped inside. Afterwards, Bond meets Melina, and they recover the ATAC from the wreckage of the St Georges, but Kristatos is waiting for them when they surface and takes the ATAC. The two escape an assassination attempt and discover Kristatos's rendezvous point when Melina's parrot, Max, repeats the phrase "ATAC to St Cyril's". Aided by Columbo and his men, Bond and Melina break into St Cyril's, an abandoned mountaintop monastery. Bond scales the peak and dispatches Apostis, a henchman of Kristatos. As Columbo confronts Kristatos, Bond kills Kriegler. Bond retrieves the ATAC system and stops Melina from killing Kristatos after he surrenders. Kristatos prepares to kill Bond with a hidden flick knife, but is killed by a knife thrown by Columbo; Gogol arrives by helicopter to collect the ATAC, but Bond throws it off the cliff, maintaining the relatively peaceful status quo, and Gogol departs in amused understanding. Bond and Melina later spend a romantic evening aboard her father's yacht while Melina's parrot fields a call from MI6 and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Plot from For Your Eyes Only (film)CC BY-SA 4.0