Mark Hardwicke is an agent with British Intelligence.
There probably is a name for the organization that Hardwicke works for but I did not find it. All I learned was that this man, likely in his mid-30s, has been working for the department he is in for quite some time, always under a particularly stern taskmaster he continually refers to as the Old Man. " There is without a doubt a great deal of respect for each other but there is no sign given - or expected - of anything close to friendliness. This Old Man clearly sees the value in someone as capable and enduring as Hardwicke and will use any piece of pressure he can come up with to keep Hardwicke always on the ready-and-willing to accept another mission.
The three adventures we follow Hardwicke on all deal primarily, from his viewpoint and that of the reader, with his trying to pick up and then keep intact the pieces of his relationship with the one love of his life, an American physician now practicing in his native Shenandoah region of Virginia, Dr. Stephen Thorpe. We learn that they had met some years before, courted, and then became a serious item. Both had expected that they would spend the rest of their lives together. Then yet another phone call from the Old Man and yet another trip that Hardwicke just had to take 'one last time'. Unfortunately there seemed to be always be yet another time needed and Hardwicke never had the ability - or, in the opinion of Thorpe, the desire - to refuse and just stay home.
We are on hand when Hardwicke makes yet another attempt to rekindle the chilling but not stone cold embers of their relationship, left chilling when Hardwicke left and stayed away for two years - and nearly a dozen 'last time' missions. We watch as he makes the very painful flight from the UK to the US to call upon Thorpe for help, suffering all the way from broken ribs, numerous abrasions, and a particularly nasty stab wound made, according to Hardwicke, by someone wielding a long screwdriver. After what looked like a permanently frosty reception, the two ever so slowly start to thaw that wall between them - until that inevitable call again from the Old Man with just one more ...