Francisco Scaramanga is a fictional character and one of the main antagonists in the James Bond novel and film version of The Man with the Golden Gun. Scaramanga is an assassin who kills with his signature weapon, a pistol made of solid gold. In the novel, the character is nicknamed "Pistols" Scaramanga and is also called "Paco" (a Spanish diminutive of Francisco). In the film, the character was played by Christopher Lee (the real-life step-cousin of James Bond creator Ian Fleming). As with another of James Bond's nemeses, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Scaramanga's name is believed to have come from a schoolmate of Fleming's, George Ambrosios (Ambrose) Scaramanga. Novel biography Francisco Scaramanga, of Spanish (Catalonia) origin, became a trick shot while a youngster, and he performed in a circus owned by his father Enrico. Francisco also cared for one of the circus elephants, which he stated was his only real friend. When the elephant went on a rampage during the circus visit to Trieste, Scaramanga witnessed a policeman kill him. The enraged boy, who was 16 at the time, retaliated by shooting the policeman through the heart. He then made his way to the United States from Naples, where he found employment as an enforcer for the Spangled Mob, an outfit that plays a role in two other Bond novels: Diamonds Are Forever (where they were the main foe of Agent 007) and Goldfinger as an accomplice to Auric Goldfinger's Operation Grandslam. He posed as a pitboy at the casino of Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, while in fact he was executioner of cheats and other transgressors within and outside the gang. In 1958 he was forced to emigrate from the US because of his gun duel with Ramon "The Rod" Rodriguez, his opposite from the Purple Gang of Detroit (also featured in the novel Goldfinger), in which he killed Ramon, earning $100,000. He spent some time travelling the Caribbean as a representative of Las Vegas interests in real estate and plantation dealing, later switching to Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and Fulgencio Batista of Cuba where he settled in 1959, in Havana. While remaining a Batista supporter, he started an undercover work for Fidel Castro's party, becoming an "enforcer" for DSS after the Cuban Revolution. By the time Bond finally encounters him in The Man with the Golden Gun, Scaramanga works as a freelance assassin, often working for