Lawrence Lander is an agent with Bureau 7.
Bureau 7 is a fairly new private security/intelligence agency founded by a man known as Mr. Skardon. So far we have no idea of any first name of Mr. Skardon and not a whole lot about the man in general. He "remained the proverbial riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma and refused to speak to his people face to face. He subjected Lander to several interviews via a secure video link with only Lander in vision". Since he treated all his people thusly, Lander does not take it personally.
Bureau 7 takes jobs from an assortment of clients but largely from official governmental intelligence departments who would rather pay Mr. Skardon to take care of highly sensitive operations than run the risk of being caught doing it themselves. Since his clientele was international in scope, he insisted that his operatives be initially sourced from different countries.
Lander is only recently become part of the agency. Prior to his recruitment he had been a part of the British Special Air Service with which he saw a lot of action, especially in Iraq. "He had been an easy-going bloke until he entered the world of Special Forces. His SAS colleagues called him 'Happy Lander'" but that all ended with a mission in 2015. It involved a parachute jump to the outskirts of Raqqa where ISIS had recently established control. What none of the group knew was the mission had been compromised and ISIS was waiting for them. The carnage was terrible and not all of his colleagues made it out alive. After that, he was not so "happy".
After some time of coming to grips with how close he had come to buying it, Lander decided that his mental state was compromising "his ability to function properly" and a change in employment was in order. "Then fate took a hand. The day in 2015 that Lander was handing in his kit at his base in Hereford prior to his return to civvy street, coincided with a visit by Mr Skardon to an old friend, the CO of 22 SAS. The old man spoke well of Lander to Skardon, and as one door shut, another one leading to an even murkier world opened."
"Lander wondered if this was progress and it crossed his mind whether he should have done what so many of his ex-colleagues did and enter the conventional world of security, or just use the bottle to bury the memories. Sometimes in the dead of night when the sweats and terror came, he wondered if he had made the right choice."
Lander is 35 years old when we meet him, an age that Mr. Skardon considered "about right for his line of work. Any younger and the flush of youth would land him in trouble. Much older and it would be a struggle physically. Mentally as well, perhaps."
Lander is partnered with Rivka Levine, a very experienced former operative of Mossad and a woman who was as deadly as she was beautiful.