Carl Hamilton (fictional character)
Encyclopedia
Count
Carl Hamilton (code names Coq Rouge and Trident) is a fictional
spy
created by Jan Guillou
and appearing in a number of Guillou's spy novels, as well as film and TV adaptations.
noble. He rejected his family values and became involved in leftist activity. In the 1970s he was active in pro-Palestine
movements and in a Swedish Maoist organisation called Clarté
. He entered compulsory military service with intent to infiltrate the system, in order to strengthen it. While training to be an attack diver, he was given an offer. The state would pay for a double education for him in the United States
: he would study computer
s openly and special operations
secretly (in Navy SEAL training) for five years. He accepted, and so he became Sweden's newest weapon for (counter)intelligence. During his training, he got his code name he and his colleagues used in the field: Trident. When he lived in the US
, he was involved with Tessie O'Conner, an American woman of Mexican and Irish descendence, but she eventually left him because he could not tell her what he was doing half of his time.
After returning from United States
as a lieutenant
(Navy reserve), there was no place for him in military intelligence
. He was temporarily assigned to the Swedish Security Police (SÄPO), where he investigated the murder of a SÄPO agent. The investigation resulted in Hamilton single-handedly confronting an Israeli assassination squad in action at the (unofficial) embassy of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO). The operation was an extension of Operation Wrath of God
. He was however too late in stopping the massacre, only one of the victims survived, but he killed the entire Israeli command of soldiers from Sayeret Matkal
.
During this investigation, the director of SÄPO gave Hamilton the code name Coq Rouge, the red rooster. He received a medal of valor (För tapperhet i fält
) from the Swedish Government for his actions.
His next assignment was to infiltrate a terrorist group in Germany, part of the Red Army Faction
(RAF), that supposedly were planning an operation in Sweden. He becomes one of the group, takes part in bank robberies (the preferred way of the RAF to finance their operations. In the end, when all terrorists are in one place he leads the German Counter-terrorism
unit GSG 9
to the location.
He plays his role so well that he identifies himself with the terrorists, and briefly is not far from fighting with the terrorists. Nevertheless, for his help, he received another medal, this time from West Germany
.
He finally was transferred to where he belonged, to Sweden's military intelligence. His first job there was to escort a defecting Soviet
Admiral
from Cairo
to Sweden
. He did this, but in order to defeat his opposition's attempts to recapture the admiral, he had to kill plane hijackers, and hijack said plane himself. These actions drew quite a lot of attention in the press but his identity was kept from the public.
Through the defector, Hamilton and his superiors found out that the Soviet Union
had three secret underwater bases for special operations, set to target Sweden's highest political and military leaderships in case of a war. Hamilton and two junior members of his team, also graduates of dual Navy SEAL and civilian skills training, destroyed the installations, killing 228 or 248 Soviet special operations soldiers. He got another medal, this time in secret.
In the middle of all this, Hamilton accidentally killed a woman he was seeing. In the interest of national security, however, the investigation was removed from civilian police, and a court martial acquitted him.
Hamilton met and married a police officer, Eva-Britt Jönsson. They had a daughter, Johanna Louise.
Shortly after the destruction of the Soviet base, a phony defector fed Sweden false information that Hamilton was a double agent, working for Soviet Union
. This allegation was investigated, and the information was eventually found to be false. It was found out that the Swedish spy Stig Sandström (who was based on the real-life convicted spy Stig Bergling
) was behind the information used by the phony defector. A Swedish businessman visiting Moscow identified Stig Sandström as he went into his apartment building, and Carl Hamiltion was dispatched to Moscow as a Military attaché
, with the covert mission to assassinate Sandström. After fooling GRU
, he kills Sandström and returns home.
However, an information leak blew Hamilton's cover, and the international press got a new hero: his past actions in SÄPO and during the plane hijacking incident became public knowledge. The Soviet base incident remained secret, though. Hamilton was brought before a parliamentary committee for questioning. "Do you have a license to kill?" was one of the questions. He answered that every member of the military was licensed and even required to use lethal force in certain situations.
Hamilton's college sweetheart, Tessie O'Connor, came to Sweden after learning the truth about who Hamilton was, and he divorced to marry her. They had a son, Ian Carlos.
Hamilton led a mission to Italy
to rescue Swedish businessmen from the Mafia
. After a diplomatic session with the mafia leader Don Tommasso, which evolved into a desperate fight to survive inside Tommasso's villa, Hamilton's companion and friend Joar Lundwall was gunned down and killed on an open street in Palermo. This event affected Hamilton hard which made him to take bloody and un-conventional tactics to rescue the Swedish businessmen. Even though Hamilton managed to finish the mission with help from his associates at the military intelligence, Åke Stålhandske and Luigi Bertoni-Svensson, many people died during the desperate fight to free the businessmen. Don Tommasso was one of them. The effect of this was a vendetta
against Hamilton.
Hamilton is now tasked with preventing nuclear warheads from being smuggled out of Russia. An operation is underway to transport a number of warheads from Murmansk
into Finland, and then on to Libya. Hamilton and a number of Swedish airborne rangers perform a HAHO
infiltration over the Russian border, locate the smugglers and execute them all, on order from the US, Russian and Swedish governments.
It is later found that this was just a diversion, there was another, less modern, nuclear warhead smuggled out another way, and it made it all the way to Libya. Hamilton is again working with the PLO military intelligence, and takes part in an operation to blow up the warhead inside Libya, as well as kill all the western scientists helping Muammar al-Gaddafi
getting the bomb operational.
In the mean time, the Sicilian mafia waited. When the time was right, they first tried to kill Hamilton right outside Rosenbad
, the Prime Minister's office. Hamilton survided, with serious injuries, and managed to kill the two assassins. The mafia killers decided then to go after his loved ones instead. One by one, his ex-wife: Eva-Britt, wife: Tessie, children: Johanna Louise and Ian Carlos and even his mother were killed. He was alone and haunted.
Hamilton had advanced to the rank of Vice Admiral
. He became the director of SÄPO, where he was called the Black Admiral by the personnel.
During his leadership of SÄPO a number of immigrants were serial-murdered. An investigation discovered that the murderer was the Black Admiral himself. At his trial, he did not defend himself - he even helped the prosecution. Finally, he informed the world that what he did had to be done to clean up SÄPO. The organisation were using informants that were either forced to work for them with threats, or by being paid. This caused innocent people to be listed as terrorists, put in jail and even expelled from Sweden. The victims were all connected to this, and had in some cases indirectly caused multiple deaths by their actions.
He said he would accept the punishment the law ordered for him. After a few weeks in prison, he escaped and fled to America under a pseudonym, Hamlon.
Hamilton lived there in America (in La Jolla to be exact) for ten years under the new identity, keeping his body in shape and getting psychologial help. But then on a spring day his old friend: the Palestinian intelligence officer Mouna al Husseini came to him with an offer he couldn't refuse. To be a part of a big secret project of striking down the Israeli fleet.
He has a particular talent for sharpshooting, which works as meditation for him: No matter how chaotic his emotional or physical situation, he becomes calm when aiming a gun, "blanking out everything except the line between eye, sight and target."
He sometimes visualizes his inner demons as "blocks of black ice surfacing in a raging river", and routinely suppresses them.
after he had been sentenced to prison for espionage
- for exposing a secret spy organization inside the Swedish military (see the IB affair). His aim with the Coq Rouge books was to write what he knew about the world of counterintelligence, even though he was forbidden to tell.
Count
A count or countess is an aristocratic nobleman in European countries. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning "companion", and later "companion of the emperor, delegate of the emperor". The adjective form of the word is...
Carl Hamilton (code names Coq Rouge and Trident) is a fictional
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
spy
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
created by Jan Guillou
Jan Guillou
Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou is a Swedish author and journalist. Among his books are a series of spy fiction novels about a spy named Carl Hamilton, and a trilogy of historical fiction novels about a Knight Templar, Arn Magnusson...
and appearing in a number of Guillou's spy novels, as well as film and TV adaptations.
Hamilton's life
Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton was born a SwedishSweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
noble. He rejected his family values and became involved in leftist activity. In the 1970s he was active in pro-Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
movements and in a Swedish Maoist organisation called Clarté
Clarté
Clarté is a non-partisan socialist students' organisation in Sweden. It publishes a periodical with the same name. Clarté was established in 1921, and was in its first years notable for its resolute opposition to Fascism...
. He entered compulsory military service with intent to infiltrate the system, in order to strengthen it. While training to be an attack diver, he was given an offer. The state would pay for a double education for him in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
: he would study computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s openly and special operations
Special operations
Special operations are military operations that are considered "special" .Special operations are typically performed independently or in conjunction with conventional military operations. The primary goal is to achieve a political or military objective where a conventional force requirement does...
secretly (in Navy SEAL training) for five years. He accepted, and so he became Sweden's newest weapon for (counter)intelligence. During his training, he got his code name he and his colleagues used in the field: Trident. When he lived in the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, he was involved with Tessie O'Conner, an American woman of Mexican and Irish descendence, but she eventually left him because he could not tell her what he was doing half of his time.
After returning from United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
(Navy reserve), there was no place for him in military intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
. He was temporarily assigned to the Swedish Security Police (SÄPO), where he investigated the murder of a SÄPO agent. The investigation resulted in Hamilton single-handedly confronting an Israeli assassination squad in action at the (unofficial) embassy of the Palestine Liberation Organization
Palestine Liberation Organization
The Palestine Liberation Organization is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed...
(PLO). The operation was an extension of Operation Wrath of God
Operation Wrath of God
Operation Wrath of God ,This title was an invention of later writers, and was most likely not used by the Mossad itself. also called Operation Bayonet, was a covert operation directed by Israel and the Mossad to assassinate individuals alleged to have been directly or indirectly involved in the...
. He was however too late in stopping the massacre, only one of the victims survived, but he killed the entire Israeli command of soldiers from Sayeret Matkal
Sayeret Matkal
Sayeret Matkal is a special forces unit of the Israel Defence Forces , which is subordinated to the intelligence directorate Aman. First and foremost a field intelligence-gathering unit, conducting deep reconnaissance behind enemy lines to obtain strategic intelligence, Sayeret Matkal is also...
.
During this investigation, the director of SÄPO gave Hamilton the code name Coq Rouge, the red rooster. He received a medal of valor (För tapperhet i fält
För tapperhet i fält
För tapperhet i fält and För tapperhet till sjöss are two Swedish military medals awarded to officers and soldiers of the Swedish Armed Forces who have—as the medal names suggest—shown valour in the field or at sea in wartime...
) from the Swedish Government for his actions.
His next assignment was to infiltrate a terrorist group in Germany, part of the Red Army Faction
Red Army Faction
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...
(RAF), that supposedly were planning an operation in Sweden. He becomes one of the group, takes part in bank robberies (the preferred way of the RAF to finance their operations. In the end, when all terrorists are in one place he leads the German Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
unit GSG 9
GSG 9
The GSG 9 der Bundespolizei , is the elite counter-terrorism and special operations unit of the German Federal Police.-History and name:...
to the location.
He plays his role so well that he identifies himself with the terrorists, and briefly is not far from fighting with the terrorists. Nevertheless, for his help, he received another medal, this time from West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
.
He finally was transferred to where he belonged, to Sweden's military intelligence. His first job there was to escort a defecting Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
Admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
from Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
to Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. He did this, but in order to defeat his opposition's attempts to recapture the admiral, he had to kill plane hijackers, and hijack said plane himself. These actions drew quite a lot of attention in the press but his identity was kept from the public.
Through the defector, Hamilton and his superiors found out that the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
had three secret underwater bases for special operations, set to target Sweden's highest political and military leaderships in case of a war. Hamilton and two junior members of his team, also graduates of dual Navy SEAL and civilian skills training, destroyed the installations, killing 228 or 248 Soviet special operations soldiers. He got another medal, this time in secret.
In the middle of all this, Hamilton accidentally killed a woman he was seeing. In the interest of national security, however, the investigation was removed from civilian police, and a court martial acquitted him.
Hamilton met and married a police officer, Eva-Britt Jönsson. They had a daughter, Johanna Louise.
Shortly after the destruction of the Soviet base, a phony defector fed Sweden false information that Hamilton was a double agent, working for Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. This allegation was investigated, and the information was eventually found to be false. It was found out that the Swedish spy Stig Sandström (who was based on the real-life convicted spy Stig Bergling
Stig Bergling
Stig Svante Eugen Bergling, later Sandberg and Sydholt is a former police officer who spied for the Soviet Union.- Espionage and conviction :...
) was behind the information used by the phony defector. A Swedish businessman visiting Moscow identified Stig Sandström as he went into his apartment building, and Carl Hamiltion was dispatched to Moscow as a Military attaché
Military attaché
A military attaché is a military expert who is attached to a diplomatic mission . This post is normally filled by a high-ranking military officer who retains the commission while serving in an embassy...
, with the covert mission to assassinate Sandström. After fooling GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
, he kills Sandström and returns home.
However, an information leak blew Hamilton's cover, and the international press got a new hero: his past actions in SÄPO and during the plane hijacking incident became public knowledge. The Soviet base incident remained secret, though. Hamilton was brought before a parliamentary committee for questioning. "Do you have a license to kill?" was one of the questions. He answered that every member of the military was licensed and even required to use lethal force in certain situations.
Hamilton's college sweetheart, Tessie O'Connor, came to Sweden after learning the truth about who Hamilton was, and he divorced to marry her. They had a son, Ian Carlos.
Hamilton led a mission to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
to rescue Swedish businessmen from the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
. After a diplomatic session with the mafia leader Don Tommasso, which evolved into a desperate fight to survive inside Tommasso's villa, Hamilton's companion and friend Joar Lundwall was gunned down and killed on an open street in Palermo. This event affected Hamilton hard which made him to take bloody and un-conventional tactics to rescue the Swedish businessmen. Even though Hamilton managed to finish the mission with help from his associates at the military intelligence, Åke Stålhandske and Luigi Bertoni-Svensson, many people died during the desperate fight to free the businessmen. Don Tommasso was one of them. The effect of this was a vendetta
Feud
A feud , referred to in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, or private war, is a long-running argument or fight between parties—often groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds begin because one party perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another...
against Hamilton.
Hamilton is now tasked with preventing nuclear warheads from being smuggled out of Russia. An operation is underway to transport a number of warheads from Murmansk
Murmansk
Murmansk is a city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia. It serves as a seaport and is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland...
into Finland, and then on to Libya. Hamilton and a number of Swedish airborne rangers perform a HAHO
Haho
Haho was the 2nd Mo'i of Maui. He was the titular chieftain or king of the island of Maui. He is believed to have succeed his father Paumakua...
infiltration over the Russian border, locate the smugglers and execute them all, on order from the US, Russian and Swedish governments.
It is later found that this was just a diversion, there was another, less modern, nuclear warhead smuggled out another way, and it made it all the way to Libya. Hamilton is again working with the PLO military intelligence, and takes part in an operation to blow up the warhead inside Libya, as well as kill all the western scientists helping Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
getting the bomb operational.
In the mean time, the Sicilian mafia waited. When the time was right, they first tried to kill Hamilton right outside Rosenbad
Rosenbad
Rosenbad is a building in central Stockholm, precinct of Norrmalm, designed by Art Nouveau architect Ferdinand Boberg and completed in 1902. It is located on Strömgatan on the North side of the river Norrström...
, the Prime Minister's office. Hamilton survided, with serious injuries, and managed to kill the two assassins. The mafia killers decided then to go after his loved ones instead. One by one, his ex-wife: Eva-Britt, wife: Tessie, children: Johanna Louise and Ian Carlos and even his mother were killed. He was alone and haunted.
Hamilton had advanced to the rank of Vice Admiral
Vice Admiral
Vice admiral is a senior naval rank of a three-star flag officer, which is equivalent to lieutenant general in the other uniformed services. A vice admiral is typically senior to a rear admiral and junior to an admiral...
. He became the director of SÄPO, where he was called the Black Admiral by the personnel.
During his leadership of SÄPO a number of immigrants were serial-murdered. An investigation discovered that the murderer was the Black Admiral himself. At his trial, he did not defend himself - he even helped the prosecution. Finally, he informed the world that what he did had to be done to clean up SÄPO. The organisation were using informants that were either forced to work for them with threats, or by being paid. This caused innocent people to be listed as terrorists, put in jail and even expelled from Sweden. The victims were all connected to this, and had in some cases indirectly caused multiple deaths by their actions.
He said he would accept the punishment the law ordered for him. After a few weeks in prison, he escaped and fled to America under a pseudonym, Hamlon.
Hamilton lived there in America (in La Jolla to be exact) for ten years under the new identity, keeping his body in shape and getting psychologial help. But then on a spring day his old friend: the Palestinian intelligence officer Mouna al Husseini came to him with an offer he couldn't refuse. To be a part of a big secret project of striking down the Israeli fleet.
Hamilton's character
Hamilton displays very little personality throughout the books. His actions are described with journalistic neutrality, but his thoughts and feelings usually entirely left out. He has no fear of darkness, "harboring a well-grounded belief that he is the thing that go bump in the night." He likes fair play, disdainfully stating that "it's not so strange that a diver should dive better than a cop" after outmatching a number of police officers in a diving contest.He has a particular talent for sharpshooting, which works as meditation for him: No matter how chaotic his emotional or physical situation, he becomes calm when aiming a gun, "blanking out everything except the line between eye, sight and target."
He sometimes visualizes his inner demons as "blocks of black ice surfacing in a raging river", and routinely suppresses them.
Hamilton in the Swedish society
Carl Hamilton was created by author and journalist Jan GuillouJan Guillou
Jan Oskar Sverre Lucien Henri Guillou is a Swedish author and journalist. Among his books are a series of spy fiction novels about a spy named Carl Hamilton, and a trilogy of historical fiction novels about a Knight Templar, Arn Magnusson...
after he had been sentenced to prison for espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
- for exposing a secret spy organization inside the Swedish military (see the IB affair). His aim with the Coq Rouge books was to write what he knew about the world of counterintelligence, even though he was forbidden to tell.