The pre-title sequence finds Bond in Bilbao, Spain, retrieving from a Swiss Bank a large sum of money that belongs to Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and close personal friend of M. Though Bond returns to London successful, King is killed by a bombing inside MI6 Headquarters—the recovered money had been rigged to explode, detonated by King's lapel pin. Bond immediately hastens to pursue the perpetrator of the bombing/assassination—the cigar girl from the Swiss Bank in Bilbao—in a boat on the Thames. The chase ends at the Millennium Dome, where the assassin attempts to escape via hot air balloon. Bond jumps from his pursuit vehicle just in time to grab a safety line dangling from the balloon and asserts MI6's protection in return for her cooperation, but she refuses and destroys the hot air balloon, killing herself in the process. Bond lets go of the safety line, falling a short distance to the dome and sustaining a severe shoulder injury on impact.
After King's funeral, Tanner tells Bond that, because of his shoulder injury, he's off the active duty roster until he is cleared by a physician. Bond earns his reinstatement in classic Bond fashion—the doctor who treats Bond is female—and searches for information about King's assassination and the abduction of his daughter, Elektra. In doing so, he finds a connection between the money he recovered and Elektra's kidnapper, a terrorist to whom Bond refers in a briefing as "Renard, the anarchist." Renard survived an assassination attempt by 009, but with the intended bullet lodged in his brain. The female doctor who cleared Bond for duty appears and explains that the bullet is "moving through the medulla oblongata, killing off [Renard's] senses; touch, smell, he feels no pain. He can push himself harder and longer than any normal man. The bullet will kill him, but he will grow stronger every day until the day he dies." M assigns Bond to protect King's daughter; as Renard previously abducted and held Elektra for ransom, MI6 believes that Renard will be targeting her.
James Bond with Elektra King
James Bond with Elektra King
Bond flies to Azerbaijan, where Elektra is overseeing the construction of an oil pipeline that will travel through the Caucasus, from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. Checking on the route for the proposed pipeline in the mountains, Bond and Elektra are attacked by a team of gunmen in airborne snowmobiles. Bond causes them to crash and protects Elektra in the ensuing avalanche with his inflatable jacket provided by Q. While there, Bond visits a casino owned by his ally, Valentin Zukovsky, to get some information. Elektra shows up there to assume her father's credit line of $1 million, which she quickly loses to Zukovsky. Bond tries to talk her out of the high-stakes bet, to which she nonchalantly responds, "There's no point in living if you can't feel alive." That night, Bond discovers that Elektra's head of security, Davidov, is secretly in league with Renard. He stows away in Davidov's car to a nearby airstrip, Bond kills Davidov and boards a plane bound for a former Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan. There, Bond poses as Russian nuclear scientist Mikhail Arkov to enter the silo and find out why Renard's men are there. On his way into the facility, he encounters Colonel Akakievich and American nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones, who is immediately suspicious of his true identity.
Inside the silo, Bond watches as Renard removes the GPS locator card and a half quantity of weapons-grade plutonium from a bomb, but Bond is unable either to see or recognize the theft. He isolates and is just about to execute Renard, saying he will do so and feel nothing—referring to Renard's condition—to which Renard responds, "There's no point in living if you can't feel alive." Bond is distracted by this comment long enough to allow the colonel and Dr. Jones to expose him. Renard kills the colonel and escapes with the bomb, leaving Bond and Dr. Jones to die in the booby-trapped missile silo. Bond retrieves the locator card, and he and Dr. Jones just manage to escape the exploding silo. Back in Azerbaijan, Bond confronts Elektra, who denies working with Renard. Elektra has just contacted M to invite her to Azerbaijan under the pretense that she wants more reliable protection.
As M arrives at the pipeline, Bond discloses to her that Elektra may not be as innocent as she seems; M quickly dismisses his theory because he has no solid evidence, but he does give her the locator card as proof of the theft. An attack is launched on the pipeline—the pilfered bomb from the ICBM base in Kazakhstan is attached to a welding rig (a panel that travels through the pipeline to detect and repair cracks), which is headed toward the pipeline's oil terminal. The detonation would set the construction of the pipeline back significantly. Bond and Dr. Jones enter the pipeline ahead of the bomb on another rig, and Dr. Jones discovers as she attempts to defuse it that half of the plutonium is missing (as Renard had removed it earlier). She explains to Bond that even though the bomb isn't nuclear, the explosion would still be enough to kill both of them. She removes the plutonium, but Bond stops her from defusing the bomb, explaining after they survive the blast that Elektra will think that they are dead. Bond radios in and learns that M and Elektra are missing, and everyone else at the workstation is dead; he surmises that Elektra has indeed been working with Renard all along.
Renard presents Elektra with the other half of the stolen weapons-grade plutonium.
Renard presents Elektra with the other half of the stolen weapons-grade plutonium.
In the middle of the night, Zukovsky drives with his underling, Mr. Bullion (a.k.a. Bull), to his caviar factory to answer an apparent break-in, which turns out to have been perpetrated by Bond and Dr. Jones. Bond confronts Zukovsky about his involvement with Elektra and the payoff he took in the casino, which Zukovsky tells him was in exchange for the use of a submarine captained by Zukovsky's nephew, Nikolai, near Istanbul. Meanwhile, Elektra and Renard meet in Istanbul, where he presents the plutonium to her, and Elektra shows him the gift she has brought for him—M, his would-be executioner. Elektra exits the room, and Renard sets an alarm clock on a stool a few feet from the cell in which M is being held, promising he will kill her at dawn, but that he will not miss where she (through orders to 009) had failed previously. Renard kills Captain Nikolai and his crew; Renard and his men board the submarine and begin processing the plutonium. M remembers the locator card and tries to snatch the alarm clock from its perch. The next morning, Bond, Dr. Jones, Zukovsky, and Bull have arrived in Istanbul and are attempting to locate Nikolai and his submarine. Nikolai's submarine is a Victor III class submarine; if Renard puts the plutonium into the submarine's nuclear reactor, the resulting meltdown would level Istanbul, killing over eight million people and sabotaging the Russians' transportation of oil from the Caspian Sea; furthermore, this would clear the way for only one source of oil: Elektra's pipeline is set to go around the Caspian Sea on land through the ruins of Istanbul, which would dramatically increase the value of her own oil.
M manages to get ahold of the alarm clock, and she uses its battery leads to power up the locator card, revealing her location coordinates—and those of Renard and Elektra—to Bond. No sooner do Zukovsky, Bond, and Dr. Jones pick up the location (Maiden's Tower), however, than Bull leaves a bomb to kill them. Bond and Dr. Jones escape unscathed, but are immediately captured by Bull and several of Elektra's henchmen, leaving Zukovsky for dead. Renard returns to give Nikolai's captain's cap to Elektra and give her a final embrace before leaving to fulfill his mission on the submarine. Bond, Dr. Jones, and their captors arrive at Elektra's hideout; Bond is restrained in an ancient torture device, while Dr. Jones is taken to Renard in the submarine. An injured Zukovsky storms into the room where Elektra is torturing Bond, demanding to know where the hijacked submarine is. Bond gestures to the table on which Elektra has placed Nikolai's cap, and Zukovsky, realizing that his nephew is dead, commands Elektra to bring him the cap. Instead, Elektra shoots Zukovsky and starts back Bond to kill him. With his last breath, Zukovsky uses his cane—a one-bullet gun—to shoot at Bond, breaking one of the restraints that bind him to the torture device. Bond escapes and chases Elektra through the building, pausing momentarily to free M. When he catches up with Elektra, he instructs her to tell Renard to call off his plan and shoots her dead when she tells Renard to continue.
Bond boards the submerging seafarer, where he frees Dr. Jones and shares with her his plan to make the submarine surface so that it will show up on radar; the navy can then come and destroy the submarine. Bond has a brief battle with Renard's men and, in the confusion, causes the submarine to dive rather than surface, then sabotages the controls. The submarine hits bottom, driving its nose into the sea floor and causing everyone and everything to fall in that direction. Bond catches up to Renard at the reactor, where Renard is just shoving the tip of a rod (made from the plutonium) into the reactor. Bond pushes Renard away from the reactor and removes the rod. He and Renard trade blows, but Renard gains the upper hand and begins again to put the rod into the reactor. Bond climbs up to the reactor pressure ejector, where he reconnects the pressure hose and causes the hole into which Renard has completed putting the plutonium rod to backfire, impaling Renard with the rod. Bond and Dr. Jones exit the reactor room, and Bond seals it, allowing it to flood, which will contain the inevitable explosion. They then use the torpedo tubes to get back to the surface only moments before the reactor room causes the submarine to explode. That evening, Bond and Dr. Jones enjoy some champagne and time together in Istanbul.
