Lady Maxine Smillington-Karp

In 1866 Queen Victoria, with the assistance of certain members of the British government, established an elite intelligence service that would deal solely with "threats of a scientific nature." In order to maintain very tight security, the organization was made up of small cells of from 3 to 7 people. Only one person in each cell knew how to report to their superior in a higher ranking cell. Eventually, all information goes to the person at the top, the never seen "M" who controls everything.

"M" is Lady Maxine Smillington-Karp, a well know and respected fixture on the London social scene. To the outside world, she is the very picture of an upper class lady of good breeding. To the three people she sends her reports to (all Cabinet Ministers), she is an unknown. They have no idea who "M" is and if they ever found out, they could count their remaining lifespan in hours.

As of 1896, the now 58 year old Maxine has been in charge of "S Unit" for 27 years. Only she knows that the unit has 322 cells and has access to some pretty exotic technologies, including robotics, high level difference engines, bio-transformation and arcanotech. She also knows that several other countries, including Germany, the United States and the Golden Empire of California have secret organizations similar to hers.

Lady Maxine is willing to do whatever it takes to counter threats to the British Empire, including knowingly sending cells on suicide missions. She also has no problem seriously screwing with another government (or, a couple of times now, her own government) to balance the playing field. She is the reason why the Italian government was rocked by scandals just before they could implement a program to build some of Leonardo da Vinci's devices as described in some now tragically "lost" texts. She is also one of maybe three people who really know what happened to cause the Great Freeze of Atlanta in 1888.

Lady Maxine is 5'2" tall, weighs 101 pounds, has light brown hair and green eyes and is quite good looking. Her husband, Lord Karp, is a very successful businessman and avid stamp collector. This tends to keep him out of Maxine's way, allowing her to do her very secretive job. They have 3 grown children, all of whom would be scandalized if they knew what mum was up to.