Mission 2: When Doves Cry

Theme Song: When Doves Cry by Prince

Plot Summary: An exiled Afghan prince has recovered after the failure of his scheme in league with Octopussy. He hatches a scheme to use a nuclear device to further his aims in Afghanistan with the aid of the CIA.

Sessions:

  1. The three double-ohs break into a building in London to determine the identity of Mr. Khan -- who turns out to be Prince Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince who was implicated in the Octopussy affair. They follow leads to Monte Carlo, where they all manage to go undercover as criminal specialists recruited by him for a job.
  2. The three go under cover to extract a scientist from a convention in East Berlin, with three criminal cohorts: Louis Luca (the Italian infiltrator), Eric Klug (the German knife fighter), and Victoria Savage (the Irish helicoptor pilot). During the process, though, they find that the operation was a double-cross in which Prince Kamal was turning 008 (Falstaff) over to the East German authorities in exchange for turning a blind eye to his operation. Falstaff and Cannon escape, but the scientist is taken and Hyde remains undercover.
  3. Hyde is taken prisoner and interrogated at Khan's chateau in the mountains of Pakistan. Cannon and Falstaff go in to rescue him. They capture Prince Kamal and CIA agent Holly Goodhead, while killing the scientist and escaping with the nuclear material and blowing up the lab.

Featured Characters:

Date: April 1984

Experience: 4000 (three sessions at 1000 each, with the final one doubled for a successful ending).
Fame Points: +13 for Cannon, +3 for Falstaff, +8 for Hyde.

Real-world Background: This adventure drew on the history of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Kamal Khan as a villian from Octopussy had been described as an "exiled Afghan prince", but here I put it into more real-world context. The king of Afghanistan Zahir had been overthrown in 1973, but the republic that followed was itself overthrown in the Saur Revolution of 1978 by marxists backed by the Soviets. Meanwhile, in 1984, Dr. A. Q. Khan (known as the father of Pakistan's uranium enrichment program) announced that the Kahuta plant had succeeded in enriching uranium (although not to weapons-grade); other developments lead to increasing evidence of Pakistan's nuclear program.


J. Hanju Kim <jhkim-at-darkshire-dot-net>
Last modified: Thu Jun 24 22:44:06 2004