Emma Makepeace is an agent with the Agency.
First, to clarify, that is NOT the CIA. It is, for one thing, British. For another thing, calling it 'the Agency' is simply done because calling it 'the unnamed intelligence department that does the sorts of things that MI5 and MI6 are not allowed to do" is a bit of a mouthful.
That, at least, was what I felt we were being told about it in the first recorded adventure. In the second, a slightly different explanation was provided, namely: "The Agency didn't appear on any government lists. It wasn't in any phone book. Only a handful of very senior officials even knew it existed. The reason for the secrecy was obvious, once you understood that the Agency's work focused on identifying and stopping Russian spies working inside Britain." Since in the period of time we follow Makepeace and the Agency she works for, run by a man named Ripley, "that work had been constant. Tensions between London and Moscow were the worst anyone could remember. Everything felt dangerous-as if the world had become flammable and each nation clutched a lit match."
Makepeace is 28 years old and has been with the group for 3 years. she is still the youngest of the intelligence officers on staff but her amount of experience was impressive and "her star was in the ascendant".
Makepeace is British by birth but she was conceived by Russian parents while they lived in Russia. Her father, whom she never had an opportunity to meet, had been a spy for the British government in the days following the fall of the Soviet Union. When his activities were discovered, his treatment was swift and brutal. There had been time to warn his wife and that woman fled to save herself and her unborn child.
She grew up knowing what her father had been doing and she honored him for it. We are told that she "was born to be a spy. It was in her blood" and she firmly believed that. So does Ripley who personally recruited her for her passion and intelligence and tenacity, as well as her native abilities to speak Russian, Polish, and German. He approached her as she was preparing to leave her service in the British Army where she had worked in an intelligence unit, joining right out of college. He knew she would be a valuable asset and she had proven him right.