Valérie d'Arras, aka Agent SOIE, is a slender, elegant brunette in her late twenties. A daughter of the haute bourgeoisie, standing at 5'6 and 100lb, she looks charming and inoffensive to the untrained eye. Whenever she's not under one of her alias identities, she dresses in chic Gallic style. There's a lot of affected French in her English, and a lot of upscale Parisian in her French, tempered with a touch of the rive gauche intelligentsia.

Within the Agency, Agent Soie is an authority on nuclear and aerospace technology, as well as general physics and chemistry. In her public life, mademoiselle d'Arras is a successful journalist known for her insightful articles in Libération and other prestige papers, mostly on international affairs, with a focus on leftwing political movements and psycho-sociological conflict analysis.

OTHER ALIAS
Coralie Labeux, Belgian art student
Yelena Sedova, Russian Aeroflot stewardess
Dr. Juliette de Contrecoeur, French Canadian academic
Dr. Barbara Arbury, British psychiatrist