Svetlana Ivanova is an agent with the KGB.
The year is 1967 when we start to follow her career. In fact she has just finished training a few hours before we initially meet her. She is described as being tired by feeling "more alive than she ever had before". Being a loner all her life, she chose to celebrate her 'graduation' not with drinks with classmates or friend (the latter because she really had none) but by taking an evening job along the Moscow River. That tendency to strive for solitude will help her as she is accepted into the KGB and sent alone on a protracted mission to the States. "You will return to Russia only when we conquer America", her new boss, the Colonel tells her.
Described as having "sharp Russian features, with piercing blue eyes and long blonde hair", Ivanova possessed a "lithe, obviously capable body" but not one that most people would recognize as being a deadly weapon - such would be their mistake. She is the daughter of a hero from the battle of Stalingrad; his death at the end of that lengthy struggle in 1943 while she was still just a baby puts her birth in the second half of 1942, making her around 25 years old when we catch up with her.
Ivanova began her lengthy training when she was just 14. A recruiter for the KGB approached her, mentioned her heroic father and then instructed her to leave with him. Without so much as a goodbye to her aging mother, she did as she was told. The next morning her training began and it would continue without stop for the next several years. Instructions were both physical and mental and there was the constant language lessons such that by the time she reached majority at 18, she was not only a native speaker of English, she sounded American when she wanted.
Her mission in the San Diego would have her operate largely on her own. She would have a handler, naturally, but so for most part she was on her own and she was ready - "anxiety and nervousness had been nonexistent for years. She was the best of the best".