Bond (Pierce Brosnan) recovers money for Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and friend of M, but the money is booby-trapped and kills King shortly afterwards. Bond traces the money to Renard, a KGB agent-turned-terrorist, who had previously kidnapped King's daughter Elektra. MI6 believes that Renard is targeting Elektra King a second time and Bond is assigned to protect her: the pair are subsequently attacked.
Bond visits Valentin Zukovsky and is informed that Elektra's head of security, Davidov, is in league with Renard: Bond kills Davidov and follows the trail to a Russian ICBM base in Kazakhstan. Posing as a Russian nuclear scientist, Bond meets American nuclear physicist Christmas Jones. The two witness Renard stealing the GPS locator card and a half quantity of weapons-grade plutonium from a bomb and set off an explosion, from which Bond and Jones escape. Elektra kidnaps M after she thinks Bond had been killed and Bond establishes that Elektra intends to create a nuclear explosion in a submarine in Istanbul in order to increase the value of her own oil pipeline. Bond frees M, kills Elektra and then disarms the bomb on the submarine and kills Renard.