THE NAME THEY BURIED

A James Bond / The Rock Crossover Novel

An unofficial alternate history following Sean Connery’s James

Bond from the final moments of Diamonds Are Forever (1971) to the arrival of Stanley Goodspeed in The Rock (1996).

24 Chapters - 1971 to 1996

What if James Bond and John Patrick Mason were the same man?

The Name They Buried is an alternate-history espionage thriller that bridges the twenty-five-year gap between Sean Connery's final appearance in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and his portrayal of the mysterious British prisoner John Patrick Mason in The Rock (1996).

The story begins where James Bond's world of diamonds, deception and international espionage should have ended. After uncovering a conspiracy reaching deep into British and American intelligence, Bond discovers that the greatest threat to his life comes not from an enemy organisation, but from the very governments he has spent his career serving.

To protect their secrets, those in power erase James Bond from existence. His death is officially announced, his funeral is held, and the world moves on without him.

But Bond is very much alive.

Forced to live under the identity of John Patrick Mason, he attempts to build a new life with Evelyn Laurent, a woman who knows the truth about his past. Together they have a daughter, Jade, offering Bond something he has rarely known: a future worth protecting.

That future is shattered when Evelyn is murdered and Bond is drawn back into the conspiracy. Imprisoned by the Americans without trial, he becomes a ghost within their intelligence system — a man too dangerous to release, too valuable to kill and too stubborn to surrender what he knows.

Over the following decades, Bond endures interrogation, betrayal and isolation. Even when he escapes, he discovers that freedom comes at a terrible price: the safety of his daughter.

As the Cold War ends and the world forgets James Bond, John Mason remains imprisoned, carrying secrets powerful enough to threaten the reputations of governments on both sides of the Atlantic.

Then, in 1996, a crisis unfolds on Alcatraz Island.

The American government needs someone who knows the prison better than anyone alive. Someone who once escaped its supposedly inescapable walls.

And somewhere in a classified detention facility sits an ageing British prisoner whose real name has been buried for almost a quarter of a century.

Before he was John Patrick Mason, he was James Bond.

This is the story of how the world's most famous secret agent became the man nobody was supposed to know existed.