Sarila Karatan was a freelance arms dealer and intelligence operative employed by the American foreign intelligence service, the Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP). The character served as a minor ally in Steve Cole's 2016 Young Bond novel, Heads You Die.
Biography[]
Sarila Karatan was a freelance arms dealer, operating out of the Middle East and the Caribbean. During 1934, a sinister Cuban biologist and industrialist named Scolopendra drew the attention of the Americans, after conducting clandestine poison trials on employees of his wildlife sanctuary and research centre. One such fatality was the sister of CIP agent Valentine Barbey. Barbey didn't buy Scolopendra's "tragically lost at sea" excuses and started looking into things more closely. He approached the industrialist's research chemist Gerald Hardiman and his former chief enforcer, now harbourmaster, Chester MacLean. In the late summer of 1934, he employed Karatan to break into Scolopendra's laboratory on Isla de Pinos and steal a strongbox containing poison-laced counterfeit bank notes. During her escape from the facility she stole a custom-built cruiser and made for mainland Cuba and the Zapata peninsula to meet her employer, as arranged. However, barely a mile away from shore of Playa Caimito she was shot and her vessel sunk by Scolopendra's seaplane.
