MacKenzie Roberts is an agent with the CIA.
When we first meet Roberts he is a retired agent living a comfortable life as an American professor of media history at a small college in Ireland. We have learned through a prologue that he had been an agent in very good standing with the Agency for many, many years and happily married to Hannah, his love. Then she is killed in a terrorist attack in Israel and his interest in just about anything came to a shattering end. The Agency, in thanks for so many years of service and never really letting a good agent get away, made an offer.
Roberts wanted to retire. He wanted a simpler life and simpler job and something that would allow him to continue his only remaining passion - golf. Then through the auspices of a small but prestigious think tank, he is given his new life. The think tank made a sizable grant to the Irish college. They offered Roberts a teaching position. He accepted and used his spare time to become well known at many of the golf courses around the southern part of the country.
A couple of uneventful years pass. Roberts is content with his teaching and his golf. He has a few good friends. Life is okay despite still missing his wife.
He really enjoys the teaching job he has, though some of the students make him despair for the future. He cannot truthfully say he likes grading papers but it does beat dodging bullets. Except that in Roberts' case when he is pulled back into action and those pesky bullets show up, not to mention an explosion or two, he knows that should he survive to return home, there will be more papers to grade.