Colonel Rosa Klebb

Head of Otydel II, the execution department of SMERSH

Making her name fighting for the socialists in the Spanish Civil War, Klebb, a muscular, severe woman, rises through the Russian intelligence ranks by avoiding Stalin’s purges. By 1953, she is head of Operations and Executions (Otydel II) at SMERSH, where she takes an unusually hands-on approach to the torture of prisoners. After the deaths of SMERSH operatives Mr Big and Le Chiffre, Klebb is assigned Bond as her next target. She enlists Tatiana Romanova to distract Bond while her agents neutralise him. When this plan falls through, she attempts to assassinate him herself, with the help of poison-coated knitting needles and a venom-tipped blade hidden in her shoe.

DID YOU KNOW?

Rosa’s name is a pun on the popular Soviet phrase for women’s rights, хлеб и розы (Khleb i rozy), which means ‘bread and roses’.