Winston Wheeler

Pale-skinned and built along the same lean lines as Loid Forger, Wheeler stands a touch taller and carries a bit more muscle than the spy he resembles. He keeps his short blond hair combed back, a few loose strands crossing his forehead, and the manga gives him blue eyes; the anime recolors him with light gray hair and pale green eyes.

While dodging his pursuers he let a beard grow as cover, shaving it away once back on Ostanian soil. In Shellbury he dresses in a black suit and green tie under a tan trench coat, and he carries a gemstone tiepin meant to mark him out to his SSS contacts.

Almost nothing rattles Wheeler. Cornered, outnumbered, or held at gunpoint, he stays measured, trading dry remarks in moments that would break most agents and fighting with patient observation and precise timing. Beneath the calm sits a bleak philosophy: attachment is weakness. He trusts no one, invests nothing in anyone, and insists this detachment is what keeps his judgment clear and makes him strong. Operatives who form bonds strike him as compromised, and Fiona Frost's devotion to Twilight draws both his fascination and his contempt.

That creed ultimately destroys him. Because he writes off emotional resolve as noise, he never anticipates what someone will do for a person they love, and Fiona's fury after Loid falls catches him entirely unprepared.

Wheeler starts out in Division 4 of Ostania's State Security Service before slipping across the border and embedding himself in the communications arm of Westalis Intelligence. From inside he leaks classified material for years and is implied to have driven the spy purge that gutted numerous WISE operations. During this period he once partnered with Twilight on a job without ever learning his face. After WISE confirms a mole and traces the leak to him, he vanishes with a cache of stolen documents, among them a coded map of WISE activity across Ostania, and heads home to hand everything to the SSS.

The flight showcases his skill. He ambushes and defeats wave after wave of pursuing agents, kills one who tries to run him down with a vehicle, and alters his look at a Shellbury motel. Sensing something off at the rendezvous, he shadows the man he believes is SSS captain Gascoigne, in truth a disguised WISE agent, until Fiona Frost reads his subtle eye movements and exposes him. Caught and stripped of the files, he seizes the agent Red 4 as a hostage, leaps into the sewers when the standoff breaks, and jams a thrown knife into the barrel of Fiona's gun on his way down.

Below ground he sees through Loid's Yuri Briar disguise, realizes he has found Twilight, and beats him unconscious in a drawn-out brawl, intending to unmask him as a bonus trophy to hand the SSS. Fiona arrives before he can. After enduring his lecture on the folly of attachment, she overwhelms him with strikes so fast and reckless that both fighters break bones, and her final blow, thrown with a dislocated arm, knocks him out cold. WISE carries the unconscious mole back to Berlint, recovering its compromised intelligence and gaining a bargaining chip in a single stroke. The loss haunts Loid afterward, forcing him to question whether his edge as a spy has dulled.