Clara Callen was the mother of main protagonist G. Callen, and his older sister Amy Callen.
Biography[]
Clara Callen was born in Europe as the daughter of OSS agent George Callen and his wife (a Romanian woman). The two had met and married in 1947.
Her father, George Callen, was an OSS Agent and killed several members of the Comescu family for war crimes during World War II. He was then killed by remaining family members in retaliation. Her mother took Clara and left Romania for the US. Clara was then raised there and eventually became a CIA Agent.
Clara went undercover in Romania as a student with Henrietta Lange as her handler. However, a year into her assignment she disappeared only to re-emerge five years later. She contacted Hetty through the proper channels, seeking asylum for herself and her two children: Amy Callen and Grisha Callen.
They agreed to meet at a beach in Prague, Romania before the small family were to be extracted. Unfortunately, Hetty was given orders at the last minute to abort the rescue mission.
While waiting for Hetty, she was assassinated on the beach by a Comescu family assassin, while another man was distracting her son with a small tin soldier. At the time Callen was about five years old and unknowingly suppressed the memory, later recalling part of it during an investigation into his past.
Amy and Grisha were somehow brought to the US, although no one knows how. They were then placed in separate orphanages. Amy tragically drowned in an L.A. river at the age of 11, and in a case of mistaken identity was buried under the name Hannah Lawson.
As an adult, her son Grisha would work for a number of government agencies, including the CIA, before eventually joining NCIS.
He only learned his mother's name in Backstopped at the age of 40, when Hetty finally began telling him what she knew of his family and background. In Deadline, Hetty cashed in a favor in order to get a photograph of Clara Callen which she then gave to Callen.