Tom Wilkes is an enlisted man in the Australian Army.
In its highly prestigious Special Air Service (SAS), to be exact. He holds the rank of sergeant in that Regiment. He has been with that military organization for a good number of years and would not be at all interested in any other line of work.
Much of the activity that we are allowed to follow Wilkes on has him working closely with two American intelligence organizations, the CIA and the NSA, in addition, of course, to Australia's own ASIS. Wilkes himself is most definitely not a clandestine operative and has no desire to be one; he is a soldier first and foremost and is extremely proud of it. His involvement comes, though, as does that of the small team of personnel he leads known unofficially as Wilkes' Warriors, because "just about everything the SAS did was black" and the frequency with which the Wilkes group was pulled into covert operations in support of all three spy agencies was enough to make it almost second nature.
Wilkes maintains his impressively toned body through near constant exercise; some of it in traditional gyms but most of it out in the field. Being in the military he is always found with his brown hair cut very short leaving most of it almost bristlely. The word rugged would easily be used to describe his looks, especially when, some time after we meet him, he will gain a "rude scar that ran from his ear, snaked around his cheek and ended under his neck", the reminder of an Indonesian bullet splintering a boulder he was near.
It is fascinating to watch Wilkes operating with the intelligence agents because while he would never want to be one of them, he seems to enjoy the excitement and the thrills that come with the extremely difficult assignments they throw his way. Some in his Warriors group might not like it as well but tp Wo;les. these missions are considerably better than just sitting doing nothing.
Good Lines:
- Concerning Wilkes' attitude towards his own political leanings, "Wilkes's point of view was his own. He was entitled to have it, but not to enforce it. He was an instrument of someone else's will ... the people of Australia".