Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [47]
And yet, she was delectable. Undeniably so.
It wasn’t the first time he had had a chance to appreciate her beauty. He and Sela had met twice before-once on Romulus at an advanced training facility and once on a warbird, where she was serving as second officer.
But then, in his work as one of the Empire’s premier spies, Manathas often encountered people he had met before. Senators, ships’ captains, noblewomen, arms merchants-even, on a rare occasion, the bride in a Starfleet wedding celebration in San Francisco.
Not that Crusher would ever have recognized him now. The day he served her and her groom their grotesque dollops of wedding cake, he was wearing a different face-one of perhaps a hundred guises Manathas had assumed over the years. His features had been surgically altered so often even he barely remembered the visage with which he had been born.
But Manathas had recognized the doctor. The moment Sela and the other centurions brought her in, he knew who she was. And in that same moment, he understood the magnitude of the opportunity that had been presented to him.
And of course, to his employers. Both of them.
Ironic, he thought, isn’t it? Decades earlier, he had all but ignored the doctor, his assignment for the praetor compelling him to focus on the captains assembled in her honor. Now, with the praetor’s cloning scheme long since abandoned, those captains weren’t nearly as important as the woman they had feted.
Tal’aura would be displeased when she received news of Crusher’s presence on Kevratas. She had made overtures to the Federation, and the Federation had answered them with duplicity.
Yet she must have known that was a possibility. And with Crusher in her grasp, she would be able to respond to the Federation’s move with one of her own-based on whatever information she could squeeze from the doctor. And Manathas would have done his job, justifying the generous fee he would receive.
As for Eborion-he too would be served. Rather than allow Sela to take credit for Crusher’s capture, Manathas would spirit her out of prison and then off Kevratas altogether. And in the process, he would let the praetor know how badly the half-blood had failed her in the matter of the Federation operative.
So badly, in fact, that Manathas had himself been forced to bring Crusher to Romulus. Sela’s standing with Tal’aura would be crushed. And Eborion would survive as her favorite-thus giving the patrician his money’s worth as well.
Seldom did such complicated affairs work themselves out with such beauty and symmetry. Just thinking about it brought a smile of satisfaction to the spy’s face.
Of course, he still had to facilitate Crusher’s escape. But with the majority of Sela’s troops patrolling the city, there would be only a few centurions left to stop him.
He just needed to move quickly, before his commander had a chance to damage the human with her interrogation techniques. Tal’aura would be a good deal more appreciative if the prisoner still had her wits about her when she arrived on Romulus.
So appreciative, perhaps, that Manathas could make this his last bit of espionage. He was getting older, after all, and age was the enemy of covert agents. He had seen his rivals push themselves too far and eventually falter-with fatal results.
When he quit this life, he wanted to do it with the knowledge that his needs had been provided for. He wanted to know he had accomplished something he could not have accomplished as a child’s tutor, which was what his father advised him to become.
He hadn’t joined the Tal Shiar-the Romulan secret police-like so many individuals with his skills. But then, he had never felt comfortable in a bureaucracy.
Just as well. The Tal Shiar, in its arrogance, had run into a trap laid by the Founders during the Dominion War. As a result, virtually the entire organization had been wiped out.
And so the wheel turns, Manathas thought. And, turning, raises those who are low.
It was a line from Warrior’s Dawn, the best-known work of Dezrai, an ancient Romulan poet. Manathas might