Carl Hamilton (fictional character)

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Carl Hamilton (code name Coq Rouge) is a fictional spy created by Jan Guillou and appearing in a number of Guillou's spy novels, as well as film and TV adaptations.

[edit] Hamilton's life

Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton was born a Swedish noble. He rejected his family values and became involved in leftist activity. In the 1970s he was active in pro-Palestine movements and in a Swedish Maoist organisation called Clarté. He entered compulsory military service with intent to infiltrate the system, in order to strengthen it. While training to be an attack diver, he was given an offer. The state would pay for a double education for him in the United States: he would study computers openly and special operations secretly (in Navy SEAL training) for five years. He accepted, and so he became Sweden's newest weapon for (counter)intelligence. During his training, he got his code name he and his colleagues used in the field: Trident. When he lived in the US, he was involved with a local woman, but she eventually left him because he could not tell her what he was doing half of his time.

After returning from United States as a lieutenant (Navy reserve), there was no place for him in the military intelligence bureau. He was loaned to the Swedish Security Police (SÄPO), where he investigated the murder of a SÄPO agent. The investigation resulted in Hamilton single-handedly stopping a mass murder in a foreign embassy, by killing the perpetrators. During this investigation, the director of SÄPO gave Hamilton another code name, Coq Rouge, the red rooster. He received a medal of valor from Sweden's king for his actions.

His next assignment was to infiltrate a terrorist group in Germany that supposedly planned a strike in Sweden. He plays his role so well that when the bloody end comes, he was not far from fighting for the terrorists. Nevertheless, for his help, he received another medal, this time from West Germany.

He finally was transferred to where he belonged, to Sweden's military intelligence. His first job there was to escort a defecting Soviet Admiral from Cairo to Sweden. He did this, but in order to defeat his opposition's attempts to recapture the admiral, he had to kill plane hijackers, and hijack said plane himself. These actions drew quite a lot of attention in the press but his identity was kept from the public.

Through the captain Hamilton and his superiors found out that the Soviet Union had three secret underwater bases for special operations, set to target Sweden's highest political and military leaderships in case of a war. Hamilton and two junior members of his team, also graduates of dual Navy SEAL and civilian skills training, destroyed the installations, killing 228 or 248 Soviet special operations soldiers. He got another medal, this time in secret.

In the middle of all this, Hamilton accidentally killed his current girlfriend. In the interest of national security, however, the investigation was removed from civilian police, and a court martial acquitted him.

Hamilton met and married a police officer. They had a daughter.

Shortly after the destruction of the Soviet base, a phony defector fed Sweden false information that Hamilton was a double agent, working for Soviet Union. This allegation was investigated, and the information was eventually found to be false. However, an information leak blew Hamilton's cover, and the international press got a new hero: his past actions in SÄPO and during the plane hijacking incident became public knowledge. The Soviet base incident remained secret, though. Hamilton was brought before a parliamentary committee for questioning. "Do you have a license to kill?" was one of the questions. He answered that every member of the military was licensed and even required to use lethal force in certain situations.

Hamilton's college sweetheart returned after learning the truth about what Hamilton was, and he divorced to marry her. They had a son.

Hamilton led a mission to Italy to rescue Swedish businessmen from the Mafia. The effect of this was a vendetta against Hamilton. One by one, his ex-wife, wife and children were killed. He was alone and haunted.

Hamilton had advanced to the rank of Vice Admiral. He became the director of SÄPO, where he was called the black Admiral by the personnel.

During his leadership of SÄPO a number of immigrants were serial-murdered. An investigation discovered that the murderer was the black Admiral himself. At his trial, he did not defend himself - he even helped the prosecution. Finally, he informed the world that what he did had to be done to clean up SÄPO (which was known to be not very good at holding secrets, and the victims were connected to this). He said he would accept the punishment the law ordered for him.

After a few weeks in prison, he escaped and fled to America under a pseudonym, Hamlon.

Carl Hamilton is set to return as a character in Jan Guillou's next novel called Madame Terror

[edit] Hamilton's character

Hamilton displays very little personality throughout the books. His actions are described with journalistic neutrality, but his thoughts and feelings usually entirely left out. He has no fear of darkness, "harboring a well-grounded belief that he is the thing that go bump in the night." He likes fair play, disdainfully stating that "it's not so strange that a diver should dive better than a cop" after outmatching a number of police officers in a diving contest.

He has a particular talent for sharpshooting, which works as meditation for him: No matter how chaotic his emotional or physical situation, he becomes calm when aiming a gun, "blanking out everything except the line between eye, sight and target."

He sometimes visualizes his inner demons as "blocks of black ice surfacing in a raging river", and routinely supresses them.

[edit] Hamilton in the Swedish society

Carl Hamilton was created by author and journalist Jan Guillou after he had been sentenced to prison for espionage - for exposing an illegal spy organization inside the Swedish military (see the IB affair). His aim with the Coq Rouge books was to write what he knew about the world of counterintelligence, even though he was forbidden to tell.

See also: Hamilton (film)