Place hiding agents for a bit (7)
I believe the answer is:
segment
'a bit' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'place hiding agents' is the wordplay.
'place' becomes 'set' ('set' can be a synonym of 'place').
'hiding' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'agents' becomes 'gmen' (G-man is an example).
'set' going around 'gmen' is 'SEGMENT'.
'for' is the link.
(Other definitions for segment that I've seen before include "Part, piece" , "Division" , "Gets men with part cut off" , "Part of a circle cut off by a chord" , "One of several parts of a whole" .)