Fatima Blush (also known as Number Twelve) was a fictional professional assassin employed by the secretive criminal organization SPECTRE. The character is a reimagining of the character Fiona Volpe, who appeared in EON Productions’ 1965 James Bond film, Thunderball. A secondary antagonist portrayed by actress, former model, and Playboy cover girl Barbara Carrera, she appeared in the unofficial 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again.
Biography
Fatima Blush is first seen requesting access to a safe deposit box in an unidentified French bank. It is revealed that the bank is a cover for SPECTRE, a criminal organization run by Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Opening a hidden door, Blush proceeds to a secret underground meeting room, where Blofeld outlines his organization’s latest and most audacious scheme – the theft of two atomic warheads. Blush is assigned as the handler of Captain Jack Petachi, a US Airforce communications officer whom SPECTRE has turned via heroin addiction. Now their willing and obedient servant, Petachi has undergone a surgical operation to replace his right eye with a replica of the president of the United States. Shortly thereafter, he is moved by Fatima to the Shrublands convalescent clinic near London to recover.
James Bond first encounters the criminal operative at the clinic, disguised as a nurse, as she gives a sadomasochistic beating to Petachi in a nearby room. After Fatima finishes beating, Bond sees the captain using a machine that scans his eye. However, Bond is seen by Blush and an attempt is subsequently made to kill him in the clinic gym. Shortly thereafter, Petachi uses his retinal implant to circumvent security at an American military base in England. While doing so, he replaces the dummy warheads in two cruise missiles with live nuclear warheads; SPECTRE then obtains the warheads to extort billions of dollars from NATO governments. Blush subsequently murders Petachi by throwing a snake into his car and finishes the job with C4 explosives.
On the way, Fatima and Bond have passionate sex before they start their underwater tour. In the Bahamas, Bond spots Blush while she is waterskiing in front of him. She approaches Bond, flirts, and suggests that she can show him the best places to dive. She tries to kill him with remote-controlled sharks, which she lures to him with a tracking device she planted on his air tank. Bond manages to escape, and a frustrated Blush notices his return to shore on board another woman’s boat. She attempts to blow them up with C4 as they make love in the hotel; however, the pair decide to go into her room instead of his, resulting in another failure.
Fatima later attends a charity ball in Nice, held by her SPECTRE superior, Maximillian Largo. After Bond upstages him at the event and attempts to make contact with Petachi’s sister Domino, Largo sends Number 12 to assassinate him. Bond returns to his villa to find Nicole, his French contact, dead, having been killed by Blush. After a vehicle chase on his motorbike, Blush captures Bond and holds him at gunpoint. In a neurotic twist, 007 is forced to write his memoirs putting her as the “Number One” sexual partner he encountered, Bond uses his Q Branch fountain pen to shoot Blush with a rocket dart. Ironically, nothing is left but her high heel shoes.
Personality
Fatima Blush is a very sexy brunette woman in her late 30s. Being SPECTRE number 12, she is depicted as a top assassin and operative tasked to execute the organization’s plans.
She has a very high opinion of herself and considers herself a superior woman. Having an inferiority complex, she is a misandrist and hates men, and loves to kill them. She enjoys wearing sexy clothes and being seductive with her enemies, and, being a single lady, sometimes allows herself to have sex with them.
Unfortunately for her, she pays for her narcissism with her life: whereas she is about to kill 007, she asks him to declare she was the best sexual partner he ever had. When Bond says she wasn’t, she gets highly wounded in her self-love, probably because having sex with 007 was the best sexual intercourse she ever had for herself. Fatima is frustrated and distracted, Bond then takes advantage of this situation to detonate a bomb on her, and Fatima is killed; her body is entirely disintegrated.
