- "‘I have orders from my Chairman to carry out summary executions. The bodies are to be left as a warning, with special marks: a kind of ritual. You understand?’"
- ― General Konstantin Chernov.
General Konstantin Nikolaevich Chernov, also known by the cryptonym "Blackfriar", was a Soviet Chief Investigating Officer of the KGB's Department Eight of Directorate S – formerly known as SMERSH. The character served as the primary antagonist of John Gardner's 1987 James Bond continuation novel, No Deals, Mr. Bond.
Biography[]
Early life[]
By 1987, General Kolya Chernov, also known by the cryptonym "Blackfriar", was Chief Investigating Officer of the KGB's counterintelligence section, Department 8 of Directorate S – the spiritual successor of SMERSH. During his highly successful career, Chernov was awarded many medals and titles, including the Order of Lenin and Hero of the Soviet Union. Extremely intelligent and cunning, Blackfriar was well established as a dirty tricks planner of immense ingenuity and had been responsible for dozens of successful black operations against both the British and American intelligence communities. He was notable as one of the few senior KGB officers to survive the purge which followed the defection of Oleg Lyalin to the United Kingdom in 1971 and was subsequently responsible for rebuilding the department. As an investigator he was tenaciously shrewd and had been responsible for sending at least thirty members of the KGB and GRU to their deaths or the Gulag for infringements of discipline.
No Deals, Mr. Bond[]
During the early 1980s, Chernov was part of a conspiracy to infiltrate a British honeytrap operation in East Germany, code-named "Cream Cake", and expose potential high-ranking traitors within the GRU and HVA – namely Colonel Maxim Smolin and Captain Susanne Dietrich, respectively. The operation was successful and its chief mole, a KGB operative named Irma Wagen, was unknowingly exfiltrated to Britain by the Secret Intelligence Service. Five years later, Chernov left the safety of Moscow and ventured into the West to exact vengeance on SMERSH's nemesis, James Bond, and the members of Cream Cake; murdering the women and leaving a grisly reminder of their betrayal by cutting out their tongues. Using the traitorous Wagen, now named "Heather Dare", and a corrupt Gardaí officer, Inspector Norman Murray, Chernov successfully killed two members of the team across the British Isles, abducted Smolin and led Bond, who had been dispatched to protect the group, to Hong Kong.
There, Bond and the last Cream Cake honeytrap, Ebbie Heritage, were taken prisoner to join the captive Smolin, Dietrich, and Franz Belzinger at a villa on Cheung Chau Island. All were scheduled for execution, with Chernov organising a fitting death for his respected foe, 007: he would be hunted around the Estate by a team of four murderous Soviet inmates code-named "Robinsons". He was preparing to personally conduct the executions when Bond returned to the Villa triumphant, having killed all four assassins and Wagen. The KGB officer was offered a temporary reprieve by the arrival of Inspector Murray, who briefly held 007 at gunpoint before being shot dead by the spy's dart-firing pen gun. Chernov was subsequently shackled and flown to London for interrogation by the Secret Intelligence Service.
References[]
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