Rebecca Boone Hildebrandt is an agent of the ODNI.
That is, of course, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
She is also, in a manner of speaking, an agent of InterLynk.
InterLynk is a private intelligence company created with the blessing and backing of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). It got its start with "an innovative request from an Army Intelligence three-star" to leverage "top-tier data storage and retrieval technology". That officer, Lt. General Peter McAllen, had taken his amazing understanding of the ins-and-outs of this technology as well as its potential and built a business. To say it was successful would be modest.
The concept was simple. Many hundreds of people, all approved by McAllen, would provide on a near constant basis "snippets" of nominally unclassified data via the Internet. "The cheeky term for an InterLynk submission was infonugget". Many thousands of tidbits coming in daily were provided because the business model helped make it lucrative to the donors.
In very short order, the databases at InterLynk was enormous and eclipsed those of just about every other intelligence organization in the world. That storehouse of knowledge was available to member nations, for a small fee. Those small fees quickly added up to a very large fortune.
Adding to the income of InterLynk were the services of a small but impressive number of field agents that InterLynk brought onboard to handle matters that these member nations "could not or dared not undertake, for any of a host of reasons". These assignments "made the residuals from a data subscription's few page views seem like chump change".
Plus there is the very real and ever-growing level of distrust and envy and fear on the parts of many of the intelligence agencies around the world. The danger to and likely from InterLynk is rea.
Boone Hildebrandt is an agent working for the ODNI but she will be assigned to work with InterLynk because her direct boss, the DNI himself, is very aware of the dangers related to InterLynk. Such a powerful storehouse of knowledge, coupled with those operatives working for the organization, remains a constant lure for all sorts of people; those who want that knowledge for themselves and those who want to eradicate that knowledge.
She is described when we first meet her as having a "lithe, small-statured but athletic frame". In that encounter taking place in the DNI's office where she had helped herself to his liquor cabinet before he arrived, she is dressed in black, for business, wearing "a tasteful ensemble of a short leather jacket mated to a form-fitting, designer-label catsuit highlighting the obvious fitness of her small frame. Rebecca Boone Hildebrandt was nothing if not aesthetically aware."
Also made quite obvious in the initial meeting is her familiarity with the Director, calling him by his first name and showing total ease in his presence. That level of comfort is explained subtly when she points out that sharing a drink with him in his office would not be "the most salacious act" they had performed on the clock, as well as reminding him that she was the reason his office chair did not have arms. My!