Trever Stoner is an agent with the CIA.
Was, anyways. That is the correct tense for when we meet him, living near Venice Beach and drinking far more than he should (Jameson Irish Whiskey, in case you were wondering). We know this when an ex-KGB agent looks him up for a special reason and they spend a time drinking and remembering incidents in Stoner's long and very busy career with the Agency.
Back when he first joined he used the codename "Alan Craft", back when he "was a desk jockey at the CIA in May of '78, just out of college, apprenticing the trade". Soon he would be made part of Section-R and he would make a living making other people dead. He was good at it from the beginning and remained good at it for a lot of years until his department was shut down and Stoner was told his services were no longer needed.
So Stoner is out of the business and drinking too much and pretty much happy he was the former and pretty much not caring he was also the latter. Then people from his past come calling and though he is no longer in the business, it seems nobody bothered to tell the business that and he will keep getting yanked back in for this item or that.
It is said, possibly by the publisher, that Trevor Stoner is an "anti-hero" which carries a connotation that I do not think really fits Stoner because it implies he is a bad guy which he most definitely is not. To me he is more a man who would prefer to not do the sorts of things he did for a living anymore and keeps getting forced to. He is a "reluctant hero" to me because despite not wanting to get involved, when he is pushed into it, he shows in the end he is really a good guy who is capable of doing bad things.
A Russian agent who got close to Stoner said he was "a romantic trying too hard to be a cynic".
Good Line:
- "We were both veterans of life, but neither had any medals to show for all the wars and wounds."
- On being rather harshly criticized, Stoner thinks, "I'll just pretend she hadn't said it, or that I hadn't heard it the way she wanted me to hear it."