Rhys Adler is an agent with the CIA.
He was, at least, up to a year before the activites we follow in his first recorded adventure. After that he is pretty much on his own except the new Station Chief in Berlin, a city that American born and raised Adler had grown to love, will not hesitate to hunt him down
and when a problem or two arises, will not delay a moment in asking for his assistance.
Adler's separation from the Agency came because of an unfortunate incident months before which resulted in the death of Karen Astana, a very close friend of Adler and the previous Station Head in that German capital. "Rhys didn't like how it had been handled and he developed doubts about what he was doing and for whom he worked. He left the Agency but couldn't pull himself to leave the city."
Adler has one other major love in his life and that is his motorcycle. In this case it is with an older R75/5 from BMW, old because that company had stopped making them long ago. It is a new tick that bike had just developed that both worried him and excited him, the latter because it "was an opportunity to lose himself in the complexity of automotive engineering" and thus "give his activity meaning, at least for another day".
It is the fact that as finding a minor glitch in his bike's motor was the most interesting thing he had to do and because deep down he did miss the excitement and the rush of his previous employment that Adler will listen to the new Chief, a no-nonsense woman with the severe sounding name of Lucinda A Stirewalt, and agree to come back to work, though this time as a NOC (Non-Official Cover).
Adler hails originally from New Hampshire which was considered by a Southern colleague to be as far North as one could get, at least until Adler was seen looking up the result of the recently run Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte, which the same workmate make 'Rhys' "the northernmost souther boy who ever lived". In keeping with his New English heritage, though, Adler was known to be "notoriously introverted, standoffish, even mulish". When it came to his work, though, he was definitely all business.