Hugo Wolfram is an agent for the Bank.
He is an explosives expert. He enjoys an international reputation for getting the job done. If an oil well is on fire and needs to be capped, he is the man you would hire. If an old building needed to be brought down with exact precision, he is the best you can get. And if what needs destroying also needs a covert touch, he is again the first you think of.
Where the series really gets interesting, and where it finds its rightful place in this compendium, is that fact that many of the assignments Wolfram accepts is for the ultra-secret organization known as The Bank. The official title was the Grain Exchange and Merchants' Trust, an unassuming company housed in an unassuming building in the northeastern part of D.C. It had a modest number of clients and depositors and turned a modest profit. To all, including the bank examiners who came periodically to make sure it was operating legally, it was legitimate albeit boring.
In truth, it was a subsidiary of a larger company the employees in the know referred to as the Company and both the Company and the Bank were a part of the American Intelligence community. Both were involved in obtaining, processing, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence. The Bank's area of expertise was, understandably, the financial world and it concentrated on shenanigans of that nature.
Wolfram's company is called Firebird and it is the company that is called when the job is especially difficult because Wolfram and his people, a select group of highly skilled individuals, each picked specifically for a job, are the best.
Wolfram himself is an impressive looking man; a "long narrow visage with skeptical eyes. The jaw was large, the mouth hard and humorless, the nose hawklike. The head was crowned with a shock of long hair" of a startlingly white color. He is not boastful or arrogant but neither does he ever present any false modesty. He knows he is the best there is at what he does and he sees no reason to brag or deny it.