Pistachio-chewing Greek smuggler, ex-resistance fighter, and casino owner on Corfu, perfectly portrayed by Israeli actor Topol in For Your Eyes Only. The first impression James Bond (Roger Moore) gets of Columbo is based on the lies of Soviet agent Aris Kristatos (Julian Glover), who claims Columbo is a drug smuggler, sex trafficker, and contract murderer. In reality, Columbo is a smuggler known as “the Dove,” but his activities are limited to gold, diamonds, cigarettes, and pistachio nuts—not heroin, which is Kristatos’s domain. Columbo also runs a fleet of intercoastal freighters in the Aegean Sea.

There is a blood feud between Columbo and Kristatos, dating back to World War II, when both fought the Nazis as resistance fighters on Crete. Unfortunately, Kristatos was a double agent who betrayed his countrymen to the Germans—an act that Columbo will never forget.

Columbo eventually captures Bond on a beach in Corfu—after Kristatos’s henchman Locque (Michael Gothard) runs down Columbo’s mistress, Lisl (Cassandra Harris). The smuggler sets the record straight about Kristatos’s true identity and joins forces with 007, helping Bond track his foe to the monastery/fortress of St. Cyril’s in the Meteora cliffs, where a wounded Columbo finally takes care of Kristatos with a knife.