In Heart of Stone, the Charter is a global spy agency that works in the shadows to maintain world peace. Rachel Stone works for the Charter.
Many people have heard rumors about a spy agency called the Charter, but no one knows if it truly exists. The Charter, by and large, remains a myth. Rachel’s MI6 teammate, Bailey, is one of the people who believe in the Charter’s existence, but no one believes his theories.
Bailey is not wrong; the Charter exists. In fact, it is much closer than Bailey knows. Bailey and the rest of the team are unaware that Rachel, who pretends to be a baby agent as well as a hacker, works for the Charter. She is an undercover Charter spy infiltrating MI6.
What is the Charter?
The Charter is an international group of ex-intelligence operatives. It has the most highly trained agents who have no national allegiances or any political leanings. These agents have been working together for 20 years to take care of the problems that their governments never allowed them to deal with.
Their aim is to operate secretly and maintain world peace. The Charter is an important organization, as when governments fail or fall, the Charter is the only agency left to take care of the mess.
It has four teams — Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, and Clubs. Each team is led by a different head, who are known as the Kings. The King of Hearts is Nomad, Rachel’s mentor. Additionally, the Charter spies are given codenames according to their teams; Rachel’s codename is Nine of Hearts.
The Charter’s flaws
The Charter is an agency that expects its spies to rely solely on a powerful AI technology called the Heart, which can even predict the future. It discourages its spies to think on their own and asks them to follow the Heart’s instructions to a tee.
As the Charter spies let a machine do all the thinking for them, they ignore their own instincts. Rachel works with Parker for over a year and fails to recognize him because the Charter depends on the Heart too much.
Keya and Parker are able to mislead the Charter and steal the Heart because the Hearts team ignores Rachel’s instincts. The Heart gives the Charter a lot of power, and without it, the Charter is almost powerless.
Furthermore, the Charter spies are not allowed to have friends or be in relationships. The Kings do not particularly value human feelings. Their only objective is to save as many lives as possible; no other moral code matters to them.
This makes the job difficult for spies like Rachel, who ends up caring about her MI6 team. When the team is in danger, Rachel decides to blow up her cover and save them instead of doing nothing and letting them die. Due to this, Rachel is compromised, and she has to stand down.
Parker kills the Clubs team and the King of Diamonds. These events bring out the flaws in the functioning of the Charter. The agency is able to see that it cannot always rely on the odds generated by a machine, as at the end of the day, it is just a tool.
Also Read: The Heart in Heart of Stone explained
