Sean Quinlan is an agent with the Section.
The Section is a member of the British Intelligence community, rated as a sister to MI-6 (Secret Intelligence Service) but having a much greater desire for anonymity. For that reason, its headquarters in London is a few miles away and in a rather nondescript building giving nothing away to indicate anything other than boring office work was going on inside.
When we first meed Quinlan, he is described by his boss, reading from a dossier on him, as being "second generation Irish... in his late thirties, maybe a ltitle on the older side for an agent. He went to Exeter University and applied for a bursary from the Royal Marines during his second year. After graduating he entered the Commando Training Centre at Lympstone in Devon. Graduated second in his class. ... [He] rose rapidly in the ranks, showing a natural flare for resolving difficult problems. When he completed training at the tail end of the Bosnian conflict he began co-piloting medi-vac helicopters. He was promoted to Captain after Kosovo and then sent to Northern Ireland for two years followed by a short spell in East Timor."
The info went on to talk of how Quinlan had then flown several missions around the world working at one time or another with both the SBS and the SAS and showing how valuable he was to both. He was invited to be seconded with the SAS which he did for a short time before being noticed by the Section. Since he joined he has put in several very challenging and very productive years but has suffered for each one of them.
In the series we will follow him as he changes quite a bit in some ways and remains the results-oriented, let-me-do-it-my-way kind of operative we meet at the beginning.