JohnRoth wrote:JohnRoth wrote:
Charles is a lead character in a couple of anthology stories who seems to be an interstellar purveyor of military technology snake oil, an agent provocateur or something else. His origin, sponsors, goals or whatever are never mentioned. There's been some speculation that he may be an agent of the MAlign, but these stories occurred (IIRC) before we knew about the MAlign.
To add to that, Charles appears in "With One Stone", by Timothy Zahn.ldwechsler wrote:Are we all dealing with the same Charles. I know it is an uncommon name (smirk) but he seems to be either Terekhov' brother in law or a MAlign agent. Dubious that he be both. Actually, almost impossible.
And having a real lot of intelligence agents together does not multiply the brain power; it usually divides it. Keep in mind Zilwicki and Cachat have found out far more about what's happening on Mesa than all the others combined.
You'd think there would be a few agents along the way, but that seems not to be the case.
Since we're talking about secret agents, it never occurred to me that there was any other Charles than the one who sold a fake super-weapon to the Peeps, and then tried to foment an interstellar incident with the Andermani. I doubt Terehkov's brother has that kind of chops.
Terehkov's brother in law has only been seen briefly but he had some mild mannered cover job in the diplomatic service while he was really a spook. It was hinted that he has some serious skills but there's no text to prove it.
Personally, I never considered him for this list because he is little more than a name. There's canon to back up the others. The 'other' Charles is more of a very bold con man. Then again, there is a lot of overlap in the skill sets of a spook and a con man, isn't there? He may not know all the words but he sure can whistle the tune.