Free Shadow Agenda: An Action Suspense Thriller by Sam Powers Page B

hair had his sleeves rolled up as he cleaned pint glasses.
    Brennan automatically assessed the room for threats, eyes flitting between the tables and the booths along the back and side walls; he scanned each person in turn quickly, looking for facial hints, small ticks or changes that indicated they were paying too much attention, or any at all. He noted the second exit at the back. He eHe liked the place: quiet, unassuming, private.
    Lang was waiting in the back corner booth, one of three along the rear wall; he was rubbing his hands together slowly under the bare wooden table, hunched forward a little and looking nervous, as ever.
    Flat cap’s eyes followed Brennan has he crossed the room, cutting between a few four-person tables. Brennan slid into the booth opposite his friend, vaguely annoyed that he had taken the seat with his back to a corner and the best view of the room.
    Lang shook his hand. “Thanks for driving in. I know Carolyn’s on vacation right now so I appreciate…”
    “Skip the playbook sentiment, Walter, it’s me,” Brennan said. “I don’t need the caring boss speech.”
    “I know. It’s just…”
    “Get over it. None of this is your fault. Sending you down there was foolhardy to begin with.” He didn’t tell Walter what he really thought: that leaving a senior agent to die for the sole reason of covering up a bad decision was a betrayal in itself, one that he pinned squarely on Walter’s boss, deputy director David Fenton-Wright. “So how did it go?”
    “It’s still going. They want me back in for another go on Monday; I think the chairman sees me as fodder for his next campaign slogan. And that ass Morris asked me the same question in a different form at least nine times over the four hours.”
    “What are they hoping to get out of this?”
    “Ammunition. The GOP dominates the committee. When word got out …”
    “You mean when someone leaked it to the press.”
    “Sure. Anyway, when word got out the Dems went into such a frenzy of denial in the first three days that they might as well have been hanging a sign over the President in neon saying ‘he ordered it’. So they’re going to spend probably a whole week testing the limits of human boredom in closed session, trying to get me to admit it.”
    “Have you…” Brennan was hesitant.
    “What? Named anyone? Of course not.” Even in the relative anonymity of a near-empty pub he was cautious.
    “Who’s the committee chair?”
    “Junior senator out of Tennessee named Addison March. Have you followed what’s going on these days?”
    “Not so much.”
    “He’s the new GOP golden boy. Young, ambitious, on point. Well… young compared to the rest of those skeletons, anyway. He’s charming in public and a piranha in the House. I think he scares the liberal elite to death. Hey... when’s Carolyn coming back, anyway?”
    Brennan said, “That’s up to her. We’ve got plenty of help with the kids; not that we really need it right now. I’m home all day.” He couldn’t hide the bitterness.
    They were dancing around the issue of his suspension, neither man wanting to get to the moment, like a convict who knows he no chance at his parole hearing. It was difficult for both; Lang’s guilt at Brennan paying the price for Colombia was considerable. But he was a good soldier. Even though Lang’s move to management gave him the authority to bring Brennan back in, the chain of command meant that he needed Fenton-Wright’s permission to do so.
    “So,” Brennan said.
    “Yeah. Look…”
    “It’s a ‘no’, right?”
    “Yeah. I’m sorry buddy,” Lang said. “Shot down again. Pretty strongly this time, too.”
    Neither wanted to consider the other possibility: that at the highest level he’d been blacklisted, burned. The agency had an inglorious history of paying former operatives not to work. Their pay never went up beyond prescribed increases, it never went down, and they were never called in again.
    “They’re