Briggs O'Meara is an agent with the British Secret Service.
Although he had been born in Ireland, more specifically in County Cork, his first memories were that of his life in Soho. Orphaned at an early age when his mother was killed by the Soviet NKVD in anger over something she was involved in, he had no living relatives. The only family he ever knew were the aging Russian émigrés.
Even though his heritage was Irish and his upbringing was in England, the old people who raised him, led by a Russian named Oumi Pavlacek, trained him in the craft of the underground. They taught him to fight, to use codes, to be able to blend in. They taught him to speak and think as a Russian, the better to fight the Communist dictators.
Working with them in their fight against their oppressors so far from home, he learned to kill the enemy. The first death came when Briggs was but a teenager. It was followed by many more over the next few years until the British authorities finally decide to step in and stop the foreign war on their soil.
Fleeing a criminal arrest, Briggs knows he has to leave his 'family'. His natural acting talents and his personal drive took him to the U.S. where he, knowing capture could come at any moment, roams about doing all sort of work and faking all sorts of identities. Eventually his natural talent for acting takes him to Hollywood where success seems quite probably but for the realization that becoming too popular would be deadly. Fifteen years of living on the edge has taken their toll.
It is in Hollywood that he is found when the needs of the British Secret Service demanded.