Matti Baker is a contract agent for American Intelligence.
If that sounds a bit nonspecific, welcome to the club. Baker is not very forthcoming about the name of the organization she works for but then again it is possible that there is no real name for it. Certainly there is no headquarters and the only person Baker has taken orders from in the many years she has been in the business, a fellow she knows only as Freddy, she has never actually met. Phone calls and emails. And the occasional info packet couriered to wherever she was living at the time.
Baker is, by her own admission, not exactly a contract killer - well at least she is not supposed to kill all the time but it's best to face facts and admit that if Freddy were to get an assignment from one of the alphabet agencies which he would then pass on to his star agent, the safe money would be on a hit in the works.
When we meet Baker for the first time, she is coming off a year of rehab and hiding after an assignment she affectionately calls FUBAR and from her telling of it, the name matches. In that mission that went horribly wrong, she had suffered incredible destruction and should not have survived. But she did and then Freddy spent an amazing amount of money to have her "rebuilt".
As she tells it, "Think bionic women times 10. I was deceptively strong at 5'7. Slender frame, long legs. Strong enough to choke grown men begging for mercy. Let God have mercy on them; that was not my job. The new titanium implants ensured I could use other body parts to do it now, too. Not only did they mend the broken body parts, but they transformed my physical looks, too. I was always a looker, but hell, I must admit, I was damn near model-looking perfect after they were done. New teeth (oh yeah, some of those were gone again after FUBAR), new nose and chin line, 34 full C breasts lifted. Bonus. Hell, yeah. My hair color was now a crisp deep auburn versus dirty blonde, which made my blue eyes pop even more. I have a dark blue rim around my irises, with flakes of yellow and translucent blue in the middle. They are mesmerizing and penetrating. I had worn brown contacts before, so was able to go back to my true color. Thank God for that, those contacts were a pain. IPL on any freckles and my skin was a glistening and flawless Cherokee tan. I was unrecognizable from before, and utterly drop dead gorgeous, if I do say so myself."
That description tells not only what had to be done but also gives a pretty good idea of the way that Baker talks to us throughout the three adventures we have of her.
Some other key facts about Baker that play major parts in her life.
She has a best friend and fellow agent named Bethany, a black woman every bit as dangerous as Baker but with her own skill-set. They often work together but more often work alone and then compare notes later.
She is married to Tom and has been for quite a few years and when she is not on assignment, or in the case of when we first meet her, recovering, she has a sort of normal home-life. If you can consider it normal when she goes away on secret missions for a week or two or longer. And if normal means being the mother of triplets. To me that makes her rather unique.