The Operative (A Star Trek novel)

Chapter Seven

Later, in his cabin, Flynn leans back in a chair and thinks about the plans he and Kirk have made.

Kirk knew about the fight, but how much he knows (or guesses) beyond that about Flynn himself, he doesn't know. He just said to Flynn that the men involved had been put in the brig. Then he apologized, albeit stiffly, for his crewmen. Flynn waved it off, hoping Kirk wouldn't want to discuss it further. Thankfully, he hadn't, though he regarded Flynn curiously, as if trying to see beyond his careful façade to the man beneath.

Flynn wasn't about to let that happen.

Flynn's old plan, developed with a few other senior operatives one foggy, chilly San Francisco morning, called for a direct trip to Athena. Deploying his cloaked ship from Enterprise would be risky, but there didn't seem to be a better way to get to the surface. Athenian defenses would undoubtedly detect and automatically scramble a transporter beam. It was unanimous that he should try the direct, though invisible, approach.

But then, the others weren't going, and they didn't much like him, either.

By rights, he should have been the one that resented them. They were much younger than he, after all, and yet outranked him. Where they had progressed in their careers to the level of desk jockeys, obtaining and holding their posts as much by political acumen as skill at their jobs, he was still a field operative.

But to be fair, he was a field operative as much by choice as by fiat. Besides, there was no way that Starfleet, once obtaining an augmented operative, was going to let him waste his unique talents. So he was very well paid and, despite the vagaries of rank that required field officers to be inferior to case officers at headquarters, he in essence was autonomous and answerable to no one save the very highest levels of Starfleet.

When told the plan, Kirk surprised him by immediately offering a better one, one that that had not even been considered Earthside. Kirk was obviously not fond of the plan's specifics, but, to his credit, it did not keep him from proposing it. Kirk's resourcefulness was gratifying. It was more what he expected from the hero he had envisioned. Perhaps he should not too quickly dismiss him as a valuable resource.

Bach's Toccata and Fugue fills the cabin, called up after the meeting from the bowels of the ship's computer to help him think. It has turned the austerity of the small room into a virtue, imbuing it with a cathedral's palpable, charged atmosphere. The organ's majestic voice, the sheer inevitability of Bach's music, suggests purpose, unstoppable impetus, as if the listener's actions are sanctioned by God Himself.

Flynn, alone, where he can drop all pretense of bravura, finds it soothing, reassuring. He is both worried and saddened. The task set him is a daunting one, as are all that Starfleet deems worth risking their augment on. Ocht is, from the information Flynn has seen so far, in the process of efficiently dismantling a large, planet-wide network of spies. Granted, most of them were Athenians, some quite high in Ocht's government, who were surreptitiously on Starfleet's payroll. But there were also some field operatives.

Reluctantly, he turns his attention to the new reports from Athena now displayed on the small notebook in his lap. The reports, passed via Starfleet from what is left of the spy network on the planet, are not encouraging. Ocht, as expected, is being most efficient. Flynn doubts there will be many operatives—if any—left when he arrives. Any that are left will undoubtedly be so far undercover that he will have a chore finding them and convincing them to trust him.

The current screen on his data pad tells of a friend's death, most probably under torture, after her cover was blown. The previous screens told similar stories, and there are more to go.

He thinks back to the last time he saw Sherry, when she was home and he was putting in a stint at headquarters doing desk work while recuperating from wounds even his augmented body could not heal quickly. She is...was...a sweet woman of about thirty years, very competent for all that she most decidedly did not look like a spy. But that was one thing that made her so effective. She was smallish, maybe one and two thirds meters tall and slight of build, almost waifish: small breasts, negligible hips. A very pretty face; he remembers her sensuous lips, her deep brown eyes, her straw-blonde hair, her freckles.