Emilio Largo

Background

Fleming's novel describes him as a ruthless Neapolitan black marketeer and fence who spent five years smuggling out of Tangiers and five more masterminding jewel robberies on the French Riviera before moving up to the international crime scene; he is supposedly the last of a once-famous Roman family. He rose to be second-in-command of SPECTRE. In the film he is "No. 2" and head of extortion operations, while in the novel he is "No. 1", the numbers rotating monthly for security, and he commands "Plan Omega" as Blofeld's successor.

His two main headquarters are in the Bahamas. The first is his estate Palmyra, which has a giant swimming pool filled with sharks; Bond is thrown into the pool but escapes. The second is his private yacht, the Disco Volante, a hydrofoil bought with SPECTRE funds for £200,000, which plays a pivotal role in seizing and transporting the two nuclear weapons. His plan is to steal the bombs from NATO at sea and hold Britain or the United States to a £100 million ransom, a scheme reused so often that it became a joke in the Austin Powers films. Failure means death: when the henchman Quist fails to kill Bond, Largo feeds him to the sharks, and he tortures his own mistress Domino when he learns she has betrayed him.

The henchman Ladislav Kutze frees Domino, and as Largo gains the upper hand over Bond she shoots him in the back with a spear gun; he falls onto the Disco Volante's controls, jamming them, and the yacht hits the rocks and explodes. Fleming gives him a Roman emperor's profile, a hooked nose and hairy hands likened to tarantulas; Celi resembles that description but has white hair and an unexplained black eye patch, and his voice was dubbed by Robert Rietty. In Never Say Never Again Klaus Maria Brandauer plays Maximillian Largo, and the character inspired Number Two in the Austin Powers films.