Deborah Barnes is an agent with American Intelligence.
I am mentioning no name here for the bureau she works for with the government because we are told there is no name, which shows how top-secret the organization is.
When we first meet her, Barnes is an up-and-coming actress who has recently landed a plum role in a Broadway play using the stage name of Kate Wells, said production being "a dark comedy dealing with the lives of mobsters". She had achieve good press for her performance and since the play dealt with the Mob, it was learned by the FBI that many of the occupation in the New York area had already been to see it and enjoyed it. This is important because apparently that was what attracted the Bureau to contact her and ask for her help. A government agent was in deep undercover work infiltrating one major Family and needed someone with good acting skills to play his 'plus-one' at their get-togethers. She agreed.
Of course things never go perfectly and that is how she would find her career ended rather abruptly; it was either stop being a stage actress or stop breathing with those left alive in that Family got hold of her. And that is when "the director of an anti-terror agency" came to offer her a new job. "My group has no three-initial name. There is no official paperwork acknowledging we even exist."
Barnes hails from Billings, Montana and attended the University of Colorado for a couple of years before heading to NYU. While trying to get parts in off-Broadway productions, she made ends meet as a waitress. Once she started work for the government, however, she realized her new occupation would involve somewhat older professions. As she explained it, "Prostitution was the world's oldest profession, and spying was the world's second oldest profession; therefore, Glenda, or more accurately - Deborah Barnes, was engaged in the world's third oldest profession: a prostitute-spy". It was, she reckoned, unusual but not unheard of.