Nick Flynn is an agent with the Quartet Directive.
Regarding that interesting name for an organization, we will be told that its existence is an extremely guarded secret. "Back at the beginning of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, veterans of America's OSS (the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner to the CIA); Britain's SOE (the Special Operations Executive); and the anti-Nazi resistance movements of France, Norway, Poland, and other allied countries had seen the need for a covert private force able to act decisively against serious threats to the free world. Even then, it was already clear that the West's official intelligence agencies were both deeply penetrated by Soviet spies and increasingly mired in politics and bureaucratic caution. The Quartet Directorate - usually referred to as Four by those in the know - was their answer. For decades now, Four's operatives had fought the free world's enemies - waging war from the shadows outside the control of risk-averse officials and politicians. As a result, the slightest breach of the secrecy shielding their activities would be catastrophic. Given the odds they faced, they needed to stay completely off the radar of both their foes and their own governments' regular spy services."
Flynn will be chosen to become part of this organization after much of the activity in the first recorded adventure. For that, he is an officer in the U.S. Air Force. It is while in that branch of the Armed Forces that his career would take an interesting turn.
When we meet him, we are told, "After graduating from college with an ROTC scholarship, he'd undergone intensive training to qualify as a Special Tactics Officer in the Air Force Special Operations Command-earning the right to a scarlet beret, similar to the maroon beret worn by the rest of Wizard One-One's crew. But there the similarities ended. Thanks to an ear for languages and a gift for quick study, he'd been quietly recruited into Air Force intelligence operations shortly after completing the STO course. He'd come to Egypt with the squadron as one of its combat rescue officers. But that was just a cover story. His real mission was to gather HUMINT, human intelligence, on the Egyptian and other foreign nationals involved in the exercises-focusing on those who might someday be recruited as potential intelligence sources. Or, conversely, on those who might be open to working with terrorists or other groups hostile to U.S. interests."
That sounded quite interesting and full of promise for clandestine meetings and the like. Unfortunately for Flynn, though, a run-in with some Arab terrorists, including a pair of suicide bombers, in the desert of Egypt, coupled with an incredibly obtuse and self-important CIA operative would see all that blown sky high, literally. Which is how "a kid growing up in mostly snowless Central Texas" would end up in a radar site in northern Alaska and one incredibly exciting adventure.
After that his career will change again but his ability to be drawn into danger will not abate.
Good Lines:
- "Gratitude was an alien concept in the ruling circles of Washington, DC, especially when there was blame to be shifted."