Alexandra Stewart is an agent with The Company.
That term is often used as a stand-in for the CIA and it almost is in this series. The difference here is that the founder of this highly unusual private intelligence firm, an American with the Russian-sounding name of Golkov, had worked for a good number of years for Langley before coming up with the idea for The Company. When the powers there nixed the idea of what would be an autonomous sub-division, he decided to go it alone. He used as his cover a professorship offered by the prestigious Brown University and it is in the greatly reconfigured basements of its numerous buildings that he and his staff operate.
The sort of work that The Company does is, well, vague as Golkov admits when he tells Stewart after showing her the facilities: ""we discover truth and we protect people with that truth. We report to no one, but we help everyone. I know that might sound a bit vague, but it is the job description. Sometimes it involves discovering plans for dangerous weapons".
Stewart is a freshman at Brown and has only just recently arrived there when we are introduced to her. This very attractive young woman with flaxen hair which hangs straight to just below her shoulders does not consider herself a genius though others might; she admits her success in school comes from her incredible memory. "Alexandra Stewart doesn't just walk down memory lane, she lives on it. Her eidetic memory records and plays back her experiences, DVD style. It's great when she aces a test, but not so great when she topples over a cute guy. Talk about an endless loop of humiliation."
Stewart was born and grew up in the small city of Wenatchee, Washington but moved when her father was offered a position as a professor at Brown. As a perc of his new job, his daughter, 17 years old, was admitted to that institution but after that it was her intellect, coupled with her terrific memory, that got her noticed.