Marc Portman is a freelance agent.
He is a watchman, to use the parlance he uses. A shadow. A man who is not there and never was.
Some mistake his trade as that of a minder or a bodyguard, protecting his clients from harm by staying close and vigilant. With Portman that is not the case and he would not be interested in taking such an assignment because that is not what he is good at.
Portman's area of expertise is to watch from a distance, monitoring things before they start and while they are ongoing all with the objective of seeing trouble coming. From his vantage point, he tries to predict what will go bad, how to counter it before it does, and how to deal with things once they do go off the rails.
He is very good at what he does. He is seldom without a job because he seldom fails. He has a few associates who know how to get in touch with him when a prospect needs his help and he is able to pick and choose those assignments that interest him.
Portman is quite capable of taking care of himself in combat up close and deadly but is even better at dispatching problems from a distance because that is his specialty. He would much prefer it if the client never knew he was there.
His history is quite sketchy and he likes it that way. He has few close friends and seldom has the inclination to talk about himself with those he professionally meets. His past is his business. It is known he was in the American military for a time, probably Special Forces. It is rumored that he worked for a time in the French Foreign Legion, a fact that he pretty much acknowledges without outright saying it. There is also no doubt that he really dislikes bureaucracy and the office politics that get good men out in the field killed while desk chair experts pretend they have a clue what to do in a crisis.
It is obvious from his abilities and his experiences that he has been doing this for a fair number of years and without a family to tie him to any spot and an actual enjoyment of the challenge, he plans to keep doing it.