Charley McKenna is a spymaster with the CIA.
More specifically, when we meet her and through nearly a decade of tumultuous activity, she is the Head of Station in West Berlin for the Agency. This is the 1960s and the Cold War, especially in that city of spies, is both extremely cold and very, very hot.
In the day of good-ole-boy networks and almost constant discrimination against women in the workplace, let alone running the show in such a vital spot as the location of the infamous Wall, McKenna has her work cut out for her herding her stable of male operatives - and some female ones as well - and carrying out the mission of the Station. It is her hard task to decide which missions are worth pursuing and which agents she will place in harm's way. And, as we will see, sometimes she takes to the field herself.
McKenna, who is no longer a young woman but has not yet reached what people back them would call matron status, hails from Texas and even after a good number of years living elsewhere in the world, her accented twang is prevalent in her speech, and proudly so. The independence and self-confidence that Texans are so proud of definitely rules in her: "Charley never lost her composure, no matter what she was facing". This will be very important because she will find a lot of opportunities to test her ability to come up with and implement a Plan B.
These four tales we are given has McKenna calling the shots and sometimes getting into things herself but each has its own main character agent taking the starring role. These agents, unique for each story, are quite good at their jobs but since the opposition is as well and it is the other side's home turf, they will have to try harder and will need help from McKenna.