 Adopted surreptitiously as a niece by General Varakov, after her real parents were killed by the KGB.After her surrogate parents died in a road accident, Natalia trained as a KGB agent, reaching the rank of major by the beginning of the war.Married to the unpredictable and often exceedingly ruthless Vladimir Karamatzov—the head of the KGB in the U.S.—whom she eventually left after being beaten and otherwise mistreated—she developed a close relationship with Rourke.