With Q's assistance, 007 uses a highly sophisticated database called an Identigraph, to identify the man who paid Gonzales at the pool party. He is revealed to be Emile Leopold Locque, a Belgian assassin who has worked as an enforcer for numerous crime syndicates.

Glühwein (roughly translated as "glowing-wine", from the temperature the wine is heated to) is popular in German-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas holidays.

When Bond meets Kristatos in the Italian ski resort of Cortina, he mentions that Columbo is known as "the dove". Bond puts two and two together, realizing that Locque leaves a dove-shaped badge at the scene of his crimes, for instance the murder of agent Luigi Ferrara who was stabbed to death while waiting in Bond's car.

Bibi Dahl, An ice-skating prodigy who is training with the financial support of Kristatos, tries to seduce Bond in his hotel room, but he refuses her advances due to her young age.

After pumping Bibi for information, Bond is attacked by three masked hockey players. As he dispatches them in the goaltender's net, an electronic goal detector awards him points. For the final goal, Bond climbs into an unusually fast-moving zamboni which he uses to clobber the last goon.

At a casino in Corfu, Columbo intentionally quarrels with his mistress, Countess Lisl von Schlaf, hoping to attract Bond's attention. Knowing it's a trap, Bond nevertheless accepts the bait, offering to drive Lisl to Columbo's beachfront property where she seduces him with champagne and oysters.

Bond is taken to Columbo's yacht, where the smuggler tries to convince 007 that Kristatos is the real villain and the one behind the search for the ATAC. As a means to prove this, he invites Bond to accompany his men to Albania, where Kristatos is using a shipping warehouse to process heroin.

Bond and Columbo find Locque overseeing a shipment of raw opium smuggled in enormous rolls of newsprint. They also discover some old naval mines, implying that the sinking of the St. Georges was no accident, as well as diving equipment for depths of more than 300 feet.

Kristatos tows Bond and Melina behind his yacht, dragging them along the coral reef and using them as "bait" to attract hungry sharks. But Bond is able to snap the line binding them and they retreat to a SCUBA tank Melina left on the ocean floor.

Max the parrot, who remembers everything, repeats the phrase "ATAC to St Cyril's." Q informs Bond that there are over 300 locations with that name in Greece, but Columbo directs them to a monastery in the northern mountains.