The Dead Drop by Jennifer Allison Read Free Book Online

few weeks, his mind had traveled the globe—Russia, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan—while his body reclined in a leather easy chair.
    He had been secretly hired by the government as part of its top-secret “remote viewing” program—an attempt to access foreign intelligence through psychic techniques. The official CIA program had been terminated years ago amid public ridicule at the notion of “out-of-body” spying, but the psychic spy had been more recently recruited as part of a newer, top-secret program headed by a CIA intelligence officer named Loomis Trench. Project MINDSCAPE was an effort to continue researching and exploring the possibilities of using psychics to spy on people and places that were formerly inaccessible.
    The room from which the psychic spy worked was spare—almost clinical. It contained little more than his reclining chair, charts, a computer, and notebooks. Loomis, the spy’s supervisor, was a longtime CIA intelligence officer with a penchant for wearing dark suits and bow ties. He took detailed notes of the objects, people, and even documents the psychic spy observed while in his trance state. Sometimes a military doctor came to monitor the psychic spy’s pulse, brainwaves, and other vital statistics, but most often it was just the two men—the psychic spy searching for targets around the world, his CIA observer taking notes and passing the information along to higher-ups in the CIA and military.
    At first, the project was a success: the psychic was amazingly accurate in his remote viewing sessions, and Loomis was excited about such an intriguing and seemingly magical way to gather information.
    Sometimes Loomis scrutinized the psychic very intently, as if trying to see into the man’s brain—trying to learn the secret of psychic knowledge. “Someday we’ll develop a pill or an injection that gives anyone in the military power to do what you do,” he said. He regarded the psychic with a fixed stare—with something close to envy.
    “Perhaps,” said the psychic, feeling annoyed at the comment. “And that will be either a wonderful day or a very frightening day.”
    “So how do you do it?”
    “Do what?”
    “What’s the trick? Why can’t I do what you do?” More than anything, Loomis wished he had psychic powers to know things that others didn’t—to know what others were thinking—particularly what others were thinking about him .
    “For me, it’s like channeling a spirit,” said the psychic. “I make contact with an entity who takes me to the locations we want to view.” The psychic spy did not mention something important—a potential problem. Recently, his spirit guide had been failing to turn up as she always had in the past. He didn’t mention the inexplicable visions that had begun to muddy his field of vision, confusing his ability to search for the targets Loomis gave him. He assumed some form of counterespionage must be the problem. Maybe some other psychic spy from a hostile country or terrorist organization is attempting to thwart my remote viewing sessions, he thought. At any rate, the last thing he wanted to reveal was his greatest fear—that he was losing his precious psychic skills.
    His supervisor held a report in his hand. “According to this report, the targets you viewed last time didn’t check out at all when our men on the ground went to investigate. They were disappointed because your first sessions were so accurate.”
    The psychic spy felt his skin grow cold. His field of vision narrowed: objects around him flattened and blurred slightly as they sometimes did preceding one of his migraine headaches. “Nothing checked out?” His voice shook . I’m wasting their time, he told himself. “If my readings aren’t yielding anything useful,” he said, “then maybe we should go our separate ways. Far be it from me to waste taxpayers’ money.”
    “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no! It’s not a waste at all.” His supervisor peered at him