The Man with the Golden Gun (novel) who managed the Tate & Lyle plantations in West Indies after the war and the book's main villain, Francisco Scaramanga, was named after George Scaramanga, an Etonian contemporary of Fleming's: the pair are said to have fought at school. The effects of the two Eon Productions Bond films released prior to the writing of the novel ("Dr. No" and "From Russia with Love") were reflected in the novel through the increased number of gadgets used. One of these was the poison gun used in the scene of the attempted assassination of M. The idea was taken from the story of
Francisco Scaramanga Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and Batista of Cuba where he settled in 1959, in Havana. While remaining a Batista supporter, he started an undercover work for Fidel Castro's party, becoming an "enforcer" for DSS after the revolution. By the time Bond finally encounters him in "The Man with the Golden Gun", Scaramanga works as a freelance assassin, often working for Castro's secret police, in addition to being engaged in other criminal enterprises such as drug-running into the United States in partnership with the KGB. MI6 has evaluated Scaramanga as one of the finest shots in the world, and M