Shadow Agenda: An Action Suspense Thriller Read Online Free Page B

Brennan didn’t know anything of the sort. Bobby had been along for Al Basrah and Brennan had known he was close to cracking, and Brennan had said nothing. He didn’t feel guilty, he told himself. Bobby’s decision was Bobby’s decision, not his.
    “Chances are, even if Corcoran hadn’t precipitated what went down, he still would’ve cracked eventually,” McLean murmured. He’d known Joe since Great Mistakes, the affectionate name for their Recruit Training. They’d been best friends for nearly two decades, and he didn’t deserve to be beating himself up. “Besides none of it was your call.”
    “The op was my design, my responsibility,” Brennan whispered back. They’d been over this before, and the timing wasn’t appropriate, he thought.
    “But it was Corcoran’s call, Corcoran’s decision to go off plan. And Bobby’s decision to pull the trigger.”
    Off plan? That was one way to describe it, Brennan thought. “Look, let’s just drop this? Okay? We can talk about it later. You know we will anyway.”
    After the service, McLean waited outside on the broad marble steps that led from the funeral parlor to its parking lot. The attendees slowly filtered out and past him. It was a few more minutes before Brennan appeared, hands in his pockets, staring morosely at his shoes.
    “I had to try and say something to them,” he said softly. “They were very polite.”
    “You want to go get a drink?” McLean said. “Some of Bobby’s friends from his first team are meeting up at the Old Ebbitt Oyster Bar.”
    Really? Brennan thought. They picked a bar full of politicians? He shook his head. “I don’t think so, not today.”
    “Well… I’m going to head over there pretty much right away.”
    “Okay. Look, don’t worry about me, all right? I’m good. I’m fine.”
    He didn’t look fine, McLean thought. Joe looked like he’d just lost a family member. But he left it at that, knowing that, no matter how tough he felt about things inside, the one comrade he didn’t really need to worry about was Joe Brennan. He’d figure things out.
     
     
     
     
    Brennan took the expressway south, his driving autonomic, his mind elsewhere as the traffic zipped by his sedan to the suburbs. His phone rang. He used the hands-free button on his wheel to answer.
    “Brennan.”
    “Agent Brennan? It’s Jonah Tarrant; David Fenton-Wright’s assistant?” He phrased it like a question, unsure if a field agent would be familiar with him. Brennan wasn’t exactly inclined to stop by Langley on a regular basis. “Are you busy?”
    By busy, Brennan knew, he meant on assignment or working on something of national security interest… which also meant that he already knew the answer, as nobody went into the field anymore without Fenton-Wright’s personal approval. The deputy director hadn’t been in his post for long but had been with the agency for nearly twenty years all told, and had a fearsome reputation for keeping control over every detail.
    “No, just driving home,” Brennan said, hoping to cut Tarrant off before the inevitable occurred.
    No such luck. “We need you to head on in,” Tarrant said. “We’ve had some difficult news.” Once again, “we” meant Fenton-Wright. Brennan considered himself a nuts-and-bolts sort of guy, firm in his convictions and his sense of right and wrong. He wasn’t so sure how Fenton-Wright self-assessed.
    “Anything more specific?”
    “Not on this line. Come on in, Joe, and we’ll talk. It’ll just be for an hour or so.”
    That was never good. If they couldn’t talk on an unsecured line that meant it was either an assignment for him or bad news about someone else’s. Either way, it wasn’t the day for it, not after Bobby.
    “Look… I’m ten days back from Sri Lanka,” Brennan replied. “Do we really have to do this today? If it could wait until tomorrow…”
    “It’s about Walter Lang,” Tarrant said.
    He was about thirty miles out. “I’ll be there in a