Kofi Bambera

Kofi Bambera was the new British Defence Secretary in 1975. He was a black man with a wrestler's physique, though by 1975 his hair had started to go grey.

His father had been a private in the army and told him a story about being assigned to latrine duty with another soldier; when that private complained, the sergeant told him that at least he was white. Bambera took pride that his father had punched both men for that. He would end up following in his father's footsteps and served in the British Army during the Cold War. (PROSE: Birds of Passage)

While in Zambia with her father and older brother, an eight-year-old Winifred Bambera played with a lost leopard cub in Musi-O-Tunya National Park. This attracted the cub's mother. Young Winifred had to use her father's rifle to protect her and her mauled brother, and she was later beaten by her father as punishment. (PROSE: Downtime)

Bambera entered politics in the hope of cleaning up the mess of establishment corruption and would end up serving as Defence Secretary under Jeremy Thorpe. (Men like Peter Walsingham, CEO of Woden Armaments, viewed Bambera as a "token appointment".)

He was a supporter of the Auderly House Accords, believing rapproachment with China would mean they could focus on the true enemy, the Soviet Union. He also feared the racist political Harry Whateley, believing if he gained power it would mean black Britons and other minorities would end up interned. He feared what that would mean for his daughter's generation. As the USSR got aggressive with British interests, Bambera oversaw the Project Cerberus project with Woden: high-power laser weapons disguised as communication satellites. However, he'd suspected for the best part of a decade that Woden was trying to get close to the USSR and was aware of rumours that the company was close to an association of groups & people, including Whateley, but their corruption was getting ignored as long as they were part of the establishment.

As the Thorpe government lost support over immigration and increasing Soviet incursions of British airspace, Bambera became aware Whateley's Freedom Party would play 'kingmaker' in the next general election and use that to make the man Prime Minister. He approached Ian Gilmore, then working at Woden, to investigate the company in the hope of bringing both them and the Freedom Party down. When contact was lost with Project Cerberus, Bambera brought Gilmore in for an in-person meeting and tasked him to help MI6 agents retrieve a Soveit defector from East Berlin. However, Bambera was unaware that MI6's Stanhope was a double-agent for Whateley and Woden.

Bambera was in a late-night Cabinet meeting over the loss of Cerberus, though he couldn't tell if Thorpe was more worried about cities being targeted or losing the election. He returned to his home in Kensington to find Gilmore, framed for murder, had broken in; an unphased Bambera argued he hadn't framed him and that Gilmore had been secretly grateful to be recruited by him. After Bambera became aware of the conspirators being in bed with the Soviets, he was badly wounded by a sniper. He would survive and was assigned a protection detail, with the true details of the assassination attempt covered up. (PROSE: Birds of Passage)

Behind the scenes

 * Winifred Bambera's father goes unnamed in the earlier novel Downtime, while Birds of Passage doesn't mention a son.
 * Which party he's an MP from goes unmentioned, though working for "Jeremy" implicitly makes him a Liberal Party MP, and a residence in Kensington would mean that's his constituency. Whether he's been an MP for the full decade he's suspected Woden is unclear.
 * In real life, the first black Cabinet Minister was in 2002 and the first black Secretary of State was  in 2021.