WISE

Created once the second East-West war had ended, WISE is the division of Westalis Intelligence pointed squarely at Ostania. Its charter is preventive: stop the incidents that could tip a cold standoff back into shooting, using espionage, sabotage, wiretapping, and whatever else a mission demands. Nearly all of its visible work happens on Ostanian soil, where its agents duel constantly with the State Security Service. Headquarters in Westalis analyzes incoming intelligence and decides responses, and the organization can surge resources quickly, once mobilizing a crowd of agents for an "emergency operation" staged in a rented Ostanian castle to celebrate Anya Forger's school admission, to the director's bafflement at the expense report.

Inside Ostania, commanding officer Sylvia Sherwood handles the field agents and gathers their intelligence for transmission west. The Westalis Embassy in Berlint appears to anchor the eastern network, supplemented by safe houses tucked beneath photobooths and behind ordinary facades, plus affiliated fronts like the Berlint pet shop Kemono Park. Tradecraft is elaborate: agents keep contact with one another to a minimum so a single exposure cannot unravel the network, passing messages through hand signals, Morse code, lipreading, and coded conversation. Animal-themed ciphers carry sensitive material, a cat's meow flagging C Cipher and a frog's croak F Cipher, with occasional confusion against the toad-based T Cipher; the P Cipher announces itself through repeated "po" sounds, and "Code 1399" signals a serious emergency. Facial recognition and hidden passcodes guard safe house doors, while intelligence travels in microfilm, hidden compartments, and even writing done in food sauce.

The work carries constant attrition. A recent SSS spy purge, implied to trace back to the mole Winston Wheeler, swept up many operatives and stretched the survivors thin; because so many of the detained agents were women, Twilight had to recruit a civilian bride for his cover household, which is how Yor Briar entered the picture. The division's defining assignment is Operation Strix, launched after a Westalis diplomat's suspicious death in the East: Twilight must assemble a fake family, place a child inside Eden Academy, and get close to Donovan Desmond, the National Unity Party chairman suspected of endangering the peace.

An unnamed director runs the division from Westalis with a secretary at his side. Sylvia Sherwood, nicknamed the Fullmetal Lady, commands the Ostanian side, over agents Loid Forger, codename Twilight, and Fiona Frost, codename Nightfall. Informants include Jim Hayward, Kebab, and a subway contact, while Jeffrey served as WISE's mole inside the SSS until his exposure. Winston Wheeler, attached to the Communications Division, proved the mirror image, an Ostanian deep-cover operative leaking secrets east until his capture. As a running visual gag, artist Tatsuya Endo hides the division's eastward-facing eye logo somewhere on nearly every agent's outfit.