The Need for Fear by Oisin McGann Read Free Book Online Page B

Monk had gathered as part of her investigation. There were purchases of drugs too: a generic form of sodium thiopental, the stuff films always claimed was a truth serum, and a whole bunch of hallucinogens.
    There were dockets for the loading of cargo onto freighters, reports on border controls across Europe and into Asia, the purchase of diamonds in South Africa, and bank transfer statements. Chi whistled softly. Individually, each piece looked legit, but if this added up to what he thought it did, it was dynamite. Here was what appeared to be documentary evidence of weapons and explosives being smuggled across continents, with enough of a paper trail to prove who funded it.
    Chi rubbed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose. Robert was right; Sharon was on to something, but she hadn’t put all the pieces together yet. She didn’t know what it was all intended for. She didn’t know about the brainwashing, or the plan to start a war. Chi would have loved to take this and run with it, but that would be stealing her work, something he could never do. And besides, to be taken as seriously as it deserved, it needed a major, mainstream news outlet—if it was possible to find one that wasn’t just a mouthpiece for the puppet masters who dominated the globe. This was as big a story as the lies that started the war in Iraq, or the Snowden revelations about the NSA. It was a beautiful, seemingly verifiable , monster of a conspiracy. Chi really needed to meet this woman and pass on what Robert had told him. Goddammit.
    Chi found himself thinking again of the conversation with Harriet Caul. Something wasn’t right about this whole thing. There was an inkling bouncing around inside his head, some little snippet of information logged away in his mental filing system, crying out for attention. Instead of trying to snare it, which he always found was a sure way to lose a stray thought, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything at all.
    Moments later, his eyes snapped open again.
    â€œHoly shit!”
    â€œSir, language , please!” a soft voice uttered from nearby.
    He hunched forward, eyes fixed on the screen, fingers rattling across the keyboard as he started searching. The first article was tricky to find, a news story in Northern Ireland that broke before the advent of the Web. Once he had the right search terms, however, he found much more.
    Back in the early nineties, a member of MI6 working in Northern Ireland had been captured and tortured by the IRA. Chi hadn’t been born yet, but the man’s story became legendary among conspiracy theory types, so he had come across it eventually. Now he rooted it out again, searching for as many details as he could find.
    The spook was rescued by the 14 Intelligence Company, the British Army’s undercover, counter-terrorist guys over there. They managed to save him before the Provos could kill him, but the rescue operation was … messy. What should have been a neat, quick strike turned into a drawn-out fire-fight near the Falls Road, right in the epicenter, in west Belfast. It all got very public. It was really bad timing for the political parties—they were seeing the first glimmers of hope for a peace process to end the Troubles.
    This was a major blow for the British government and they needed someone to take the fall for it. So the agent was sacrificed, crucified in the press. Chi shook his head as he read the last of the articles he’d found, looking at the pictures of a haggard, bearded man holding his hands up to fend off questions from reporters.
    Bloody hell. Bloody hell! Robert wasn’t just a real spy, he was a goddamn famous spy.
    Chi’s phone beeped, announcing the arrival of a text. With his eyes still fixed on the computer screen, he picked up the phone and opened the message. Glancing down, he saw it was a photo, and at first, he didn’t understand what he was looking at. It