Tamara Knight

"You're next to me"

- Tamara makes a joke about Alex Rider in the football game

Tamara Knight is a protagonist in the Alex Rider sixth novel Ark Angel. She pretends to be a personal assistant to Drevin and a "cold blooded businesswoman" but she is actually a CIA agent.

Origins
According to Tamara, an "Agency" recommended her in applying for Drevin's personal assistant. This is actually part of the truth. Although its reminiscent of Mrs Baylock's statement that "the Agency" recommended her for precisely the same reasons, Tamara is defending her country from traitors like Drevin, so she's the complete opposite of Mrs Baylock from The Omen and Tamara means it honestly.

Biography
Tamara is first introduced when Jack Starbright and Alex visit Nikolei Drevin, the sixth richest man in the world, in his London hotel. He appears thankful that Alex saved his son from the four thugs known as Force Three, and Drevin invites them both to his estate in the country. He says he'll take Alex with him to the United States of America and the Caribbean, where he'll witness his private rocket being launched to finish the Ark Angel space hotel. Jack is very impressed by Drevin and recommends Alex go. Tamara is the girl who takes Jack and Alex to see Drevin and Alex immediately thinks Tamara's beautiful and wishes she would be more human, all she does is smile coldly.

Alex gets to see more of Tamara (Jack goes to see her family in Washington) when he is living with Drevin in his palace. Alex meets Drevin's son Paul again, because Paul was the reason Drevin feels indebted to Alex because Alex saved Paul from being kidnapped and tortured by Force Three. Drevin actually tries killing Alex in a quad bike race, and becomes more dangerous as the visit progresses. Paul actually says "Don't make him your enemy" to Alex. Tamara also warns Alex of Drevin, by saying "I hope you're staying out of trouble."

At a football game between Chelsea and Drevin's team, Tamara escorts Alex to the delegate's box, and she sits next to him. Tamara seems to warm to Alex during the match and becomes more human. Tamra is shown to be wearing red and black earrings, showing that she "hasn't forgotten her team colours."

Unfortunately, Drevin's team loses dramatically, and the goalkeeper, Adam Wright, makes a dramatic win - for the opposing team! Drevin is humiliated and next thing Alex sees, Force Three are talking to Adam and ordering him to put on a "gift" - a necklace of caesium, an acidic metal. ("Getting hold of it can be murder.") Adam Wright dies of blood poisoning in the shower, and Force Three confess his murder. Tamara does her best to protect Alex when he returns to her and says he was almost abducted by Force Three who are out for vengeance against his "humiliation" of them earlier that month. Tamara also puts a news blackout saying that Alex wasn't present when Wright was found dead.

Tamara naturally travels with them to the USA, where she is held up at Customs by three men in suits accosting Alex for saying his passport is illegal and out of date. Surprise, it is all fake and the men are actually CIA agents, who want to recruit Alex. They tell him Drevin is a mass murderer, and their director, Joe Byrne, tells Alex that he has an agent in Drevin's business already, meaning Tamara, but Alex isn't prepared to believe she's an agent yet.

When Alex says to Byrne that Drevin isn't running away, Byrne sends Alex back to Drevin again, this time armed with Smither's gadgets from MI6. Drevin is annoyed with Alex for the holdup - he already suspects that the CIA were briefing him because Magnus Payne, his security guard, said Alex was an intelligence agent - and Drevin prepares to have a man, Kolo, drown Alex in a shipwreck. Tamara knew Alex was going scuba, and she comes after him when she saw Kolo return alone. This is where Tamara reveals her true heroic nature and saves Alex by giving him her oxygen mask and taking him to the surface.

On the beach, the two talk, Tamara truthfully telling Alex of her CIA role. Alex remembers Byrne saying he got a spy inside the base. He realizes it was Tamara. Its implied by now the two fell in love, or Alex had a crush on Tamara, and the two may have kissed.

At night, the two sneak into Drevin's headquarters, where Force Three are alighting. Suddenly a voice rings out on a megaphone saying they have them under armed guard. Force Three spring out weapons, believing its them, but in reality Drevin knows Tamara and Alex are both out there. Drevin appears, spits his anger out at Tamara for being a traitor, and then orders her locked up saying he never wants to see her again while he tortures Alex.

When Magnus Payne reveals himself as the feared terrorist Kaspar (whose face is tattooed with the planet Earth itself) and shoots dead Force Three, betraying them, Payne then locks up Alex in jail with Tamara. Tamara had been shot in the chaos and was severely wounded. She urges Alex to flee on a boat and get help. After potentially sharing a kiss goodbye, Alex does his best to flee, but his accosted by Paul who summons security having felt angry at Alex's perceived betrayal. A sea chase begins with Alex on a surfing board pursued by a speedboat. The CIA come and save Alex, killing the men chasing him.

As the bomb for Ark Angel's destruction is released and Alex tells them Drevin wants to destroy Washington and the Pentagon, the CIA free Tamara and Tamara says she would go up to the hotel and remove the bomb. However, she's too wounded. The CIA ask an incredible thing of Alex - to travel into space, and remove the bomb. Alex prepares for the most dangerous mission of his life and he succeeds, against all odds, killing Kaspar in the space hotel when the terrorist is about to knife him. Alex puts the bomb in the toilet, rather than the lounge, because "it's a fitting end." The hotel just blows up, not even falling to Earth as feared.

Alex escapes and heads back to Earth, landing off Australia. Tamara is never encountered again, presumably she was either jailed for kissing Alex in cover or went back to working with the CIA.