Rosa Klebb

Colonel Rosa Klebb is a fictional character, the main antagonist in the James Bond 1957 novel and 1963 film From Russia with Love, in which she is played by Lotte Lenya. She was a Soviet counter-intelligence operative until being discharged and joining SPECTRE. Klebb's name is a pun on the popular Soviet phrase for women's rights, khleb i rozy (Cyrillic: хлеб и розы), which in turn was a direct Russian translation of the internationally used labour union slogan "bread and roses". In the novel, Klebb is a veteran of Spanish Civil War, where she served as an infiltrator in the ranks of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). She was rumoured to be both the mistress of Andreu Nin i Perez and the assassin who killed him. In the present of the novel, she is in her late 40s when tasked by her superior to get revenge on James Bond for his involvement in the deaths of three SMERSH operatives. After questioning one of her allies, Bond confronts Klebb in Paris. She successfully poisons Bond with a toxin-laced blade, but she is captured by Bond's friend René Mathis. The following novel depicts Bond's recovery from the toxin, but mentions that Klebb died in the intervening time between the novels. The circumstances of her death are not explained. Klebb and Pussy Galore have been described as the "two memorable lesbians" from Ian Fleming's Bond novels, but Klebb is depicted as a typical butch.