The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [155]
Trip shook his head. “Neither.”
Harris’s scowl pierced the darkness. “Then how can you have ‘good reason’ to believe anything, Commander?”
Trip responded with a wry smile. “I guess you had to have been there, Harris. You see, we discovered a huge gap in our intelligence about the Romulans. Starting with this.” He lowered the hood of his robe, turning his head so that Harris could get a good look at his elegantly pointed ears and gracefully upswept eyebrows.
Harris gasped, though he was clearly trying to contain his astonishment. “My God. The Adigeon surgeons made you look like a Vulcan.”
Trip nodded. “But only because Romulans and Vulcans are ‘kissing cousins,’ so to speak. I know, it surprised hell out of me and Phuong, too. Of course, we’re going to have to keep this under our hats.”
“Of course, Commander. This will have to become one of the bureau’s most closely guarded secrets. If this were to become public knowledge, it would probably shred the Coalition Compact.” Harris paused, sighing, evidently still reeling from what he’d just learned. Then he fixed Trip with a hard gaze, like a pair of searchlights lancing through the gloom. “We are both going to have to work harder than ever to manage the Romulan problem now.”
“We,” Trip thought. As if my staying on this Romulan thing has already been decided.
Trip found it impossible to avoid making an accusation. “You never expected my ‘death’ to be temporary, did you, Harris?”
The spymaster paused, sighed again, then answered with surprising candor. “No, Commander, you’re wrong. I expected your demise to be entirely temporary- unless, of course, you had gotten yourself killed by the Romulans, which you have to admit wasn’t all that unlikely a prospect, especially on one’s first covert assignment. What I didn’t expect was that, of the two of you, Tinh Hoc Phuong would be the one to die.”
To hell with this, Trip thought, and very nearly began walking away. “Thanks for that ringing vote of confidence in my abilities, Harris.”
“You’ve just proven your abilities, Commander- by surviving, just the way you always did when you kept Enterprise up and running out on the galactic frontier. And if you’ve really managed to short-circuit the Romulans’ warp-seven drive the way you say you have, then you’ve accomplished in just a couple of weeks what would probably have taken Phuong’s covert ops at least as many months to pull off. On top of that, the Coalition wouldn’t even have known about the suicide attack against Coridan Prime if not for your warnings, which we received as well. With Phuong dead, the bureau- and Earth- will need your abilities more than ever if we’re to keep the Romulans from pulling ahead of us technologically.”
“I agree,” Trip said. “But I think I ought to start by getting my ears bobbed and heading out to Coridan Prime to see about getting one of their warp-seven ships to Earth. Beat the Romulans to the punch, just in case I turn out to be wrong about Ehrehin.”
Harris shook his head. “We already have a number of disguised covert operatives working on just that, Commander, all of them well versed in the intricacies of Coridanite culture, politics, and technology. To be frank, in spite of all their expertise, I’m not all that hopeful for their chances of success, given the very thorough job the Romulans did when they wrecked Coridan’s shipyards.”
Trip didn’t particularly like the drift of the conversation. “You’re saying you want to send me back to where I just came from- where I damned near died- because I’m the only one who’s already dressed for the part?”
Harris seemed not to notice Trip’s unhappy tone. “There’s no better candidate, now that Phuong is dead. We need you back inside the Romulan sphere of influence, Commander, cultivating more permanent sources of humanoid intel for us there. However successful you might have been in monkey-wrenching Doctor Ehrehin’s warp-seven program- and regardless of the outcome of our Coridan ops- the Romulan Star Empire isn’t going