WISE Agent

A thick chevron mustache and graying brown hair swept up into a pompadour give the agent the look of a seasoned company man. His usual outfit combines gray trousers, a white collared shirt, a striped tie, and a black jacket. For street work he keeps a small camouflage kit: a pale cap marked with a dark W, a white one bearing the WISE emblem, and a false beard for melting into crowds.

Competence and irreverence sit side by side in him. He gathers intelligence, coordinates operations, and backs up teammates in the field without fuss, yet he speaks his mind with a freedom few operatives allow themselves, grumbling about hard missions and needling his superiors over trivial matters. Even Sylvia Sherwood is not exempt; he has scolded his own handler for leaving their office untidy and argued with her in defense of Erik Zacharis's obscure hobby.

Between jobs he lounges around safe houses, monitoring broadcasts and trading informal gossip, and he rarely passes up a chance to rib Loid about balancing espionage with a staged household, often assuming domestic trouble whenever Loid looks glum. Urgency can override his caution, though. He nearly tripped a booby-trapped door while rushing to foil the plot against Minister Brantz, and slow progress in the hunt for Winston Wheeler left him visibly irritated.

The agent enters the story during the Doggy Crisis chapters and resurfaces across WISE's Ostanian operations, from the Campbelldon tennis affair to the Red Circus bus crisis, after which he jokes that Loid turned up for nothing once the hijacking resolved without their strike team lifting a finger. Despite his years he stays fit enough for frontline work and shoots accurately even from moving vehicles.

His largest role comes during the pursuit of the WISE mole Winston Wheeler. Wearing a disguise Twilight prepared, he convincingly impersonates the SSS captain Gascoigne to bait Wheeler into showing himself, then coordinates the takedown with Fiona Frost, whose insistence on pressing forward while injured draws his dry warnings about her stubbornness. He personally hauls the heavyset prisoner out of Shellbury across his own shoulder, straining all the way, and caps the exhausting operation by inviting Loid out for drinks, quipping that fatherhood only seems to matter to Loid when it excuses him from other plans.