Olga Romanov is an independent spymaster.
As a person matures in life, it is not uncommon to look back at the various 'hats' the person has worn throughout the years. In the case of Romanov, hers are especially interesting, if not a good deal harrowing. The one I have placed on her, that of 'spymaster', is the one she wears through most of the recorded adventures we have of her but the other ones decidedly helped mold her into that shape.
We first meet her in 1979 when she, 25 years old at the time, is living and working in Sverdlovsk (now known as Yekaterinburg) in the USSR. She is married to Vladimir and mother to young Fania and Little Vlady. She is also a research scientist, holding a Ph.D. in microbiology, at Military Compound #19 at the government facility in that city, working alongside several others analyzing the deadly anthrax bacterium. It is in that facility that a fire and human error would cause horrible damage and release the deadly pathogen into the air. Her children at a nearby daycare would not survive and her husband would take his own line a few weeks late.
Moving ahead a half decade, we find Romanov a 'patient' at a mental hospital, forced there for her own protection as she suffered, according to the official KGB documents, from PTSD and schizophrenia - in truth she was being held because she knew the truth about the incident and refused to back the lie of a meat contamination. There she repeatedly endured horrible treatment, include multiple rapes by a night security guard, and near constant drug injections to keep her sedated and calm. It would have continued until her death except for the intervention of an ex-KGB colonel who ran a special organization called Wildfire. He offered her a new life.
Wildfire is described as "a private intelligence organization that gathers intelligence for sale to third parties. It specializes in biological weapons, which can be the Third World's weapons of mass destruction".
Romanov would undergo intense and often very painful instruction in a wide variety of topics, learning to be the perfect field operative capable of protecting herself at all times while also accomplishing whatever mission she was given. In a very short time once she became operational, she earned the nickname of 'the Leopard' and as such she became known to numerous intelligence agencies around the world as a very deadly and successful assassin. Romanov had earned yet another 'hat'.
She would transition to yet another one when in time she replaced Wildfire's founder (that in itself is a fascinating episode in her life) and under her control, "the organization metamorphosed into a more benign intelligence gathering body. No longer involved in terrorist activities, they took on only carefully vetted assignments, projects Olga herself deemed justified. Olga, a very secretive person, code-named 'the Leopard', lived in the clandestine intelligence world's shadows using multiple aliases. All contact with her and her associates came through encrypted email and text messages. Government entities and secret underground societies feared her, yet few had laid eyes on her. She was a "ghost".
And that would not be the last 'hat' she would don.