Darko Kerim

**Darko Kerim** was the fictional Head of the British Secret Service's "Station T" in Istanbul and an ally of James Bond during his time there.

## History

### Early life and career

Darko Kerim was born into a large polygamous family of 15 children in Trezibond to a Turkish father, a famed sword-fish fisherman, and an English mother, a governess from Somerset. At the age of twenty, Darko went to live in two small rooms on the waterfront in order to hide his romantic liaisons. To her disgust, his mother discovered that he had kept a naked Bessarabian girl chained under a table, whom he had supposedly won from a local band of gypsies.

Kerim likewise became a fisherman, and was recruited into the British Secret Service by a Major Dansey, the previous head of Station T, who wanted information about the Russian oil installations and naval base at Batoum, only 50 miles away. He later infiltrated Soviet Georgia as a strongman and wrestler in a travelling circus. He obtained his taste for raw meat from his training as a professional strong man.

He became Head of Station T in Istanbul in the late 1930s. M has a great respect for Kerim and notes that he is one of the best men in the service; a respect which is returned by Darko and his sons. He uses his many sons and uncles as agents, running a profitable business trading spices as cover. In his office Bond notices certificates showing that he has two Mentions in Dispatches and the military OBE.

### The konspiratsia

He meets James Bond and arranges for false papers in order for Bond and Tatiana Romanova to leave the country. Later he takes Bond through a rat-infested tunnel to a periscope he had installed below the Russian Embassy. This gives Bond his first look at Tatania. He then takes Bond to the Gipsy Camp (also used by Kerim as agents) where they witness the girl-fight, before being attacked by "The Faceless Ones", Bulgarian thugs employed by the Russians.

Afterwards Kerim (with Bond's help) kills Krilencu, leader of the Bulgars, with a sniper rifle concealed in a walking stick, as the Bulgarian attempts to leave his apartment using an escape hatch hidden behind a film poster. He then accompanies Bond and Tatania on the train out of Turkey. He arranges for two of the three MGB men following Bond to be arrested, but is stabbed to death by the third as he slept, killing his assassin in the process. Finding him dead in his carriage, Bond laments to himself, "this wonderful man who had carried the sun with him. Now he was extinguished, totally dead." Kerim's sons would later detonate a bomb under the Russian Embassy, avenging their father's death.

## Character

Kerim is described as 6 feet 2 inches (1.88m) tall, powerfully built, dark, with a broken nose and a small thin gold ring wore in the lobe of his right ear. He smokes *Diplomates* Turkish cigarettes (naturally), and has an insatiable appetite for raw food, coffee, alcohol, and women. Kerim was modeled after Fleming's Turkish friend, Nazim Kalkavan. Fleming met the Oxford-educated shipowner in Istanbul whilst doing research for *From Russia, With Love*.

## References

1. ↑ Griswold, John (2006). *Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's Bond Stories* (in English). Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, p 170. ISBN 9781425931001.