Origin - Season One Read Online Free PDF Page A

happened and move on. If I’m being honest, I’ve had enough of this shit anyway. I’m looking forward to putting my feet up.”
    “What about the FBI investigation?” Fairchild asked.
    “I spoke to Nathan Remark at State this morning. Director Gobain has been ordered to shut it down and hand everything over to Treasury. Like I said, we find this guy, take him out of the picture and move on.”
    Fairchild was shaking his head. “Have you even considered where the leak might be? He’s killed two of your operators already. When he finds out he doesn’t have quite as much of our balls in his hand as he thinks, what do you think he’ll do? Roll over and play dead?”
    “I doubt it.”
    “Besides, it doesn’t even matter. He knows he doesn’t need the files now that he has us all in a corner over the break-in. If you ask me, I think getting the files was just a bonus. Or maybe he was going to clean up the rest of your team if you dragged your feet. You’ve got to give it to him, he’s one smart son of a bitch.”
    “I still think we should pursue the option of elimination,” Norton said. “We’ll just have to tread carefully. We can’t afford a risk like this, Dick. Think about it.”
    “What about this Colonel Styles?” Fairchild said. “Have you considered him?”
    “I’ve checked. He’s clean. I’ve called everyone out of the field. I’ll have more for you in a couple of days.”
    Norton stood up with an audible pop from somewhere in his lower back. When he reached the door, Fairchild said, “Norton?”
    “What?”
    “You don’t move on this without my say-so. Is that clear?”
    “Sure.”
    “I mean it. Nothing happens until I say it happens.”
    Norton nodded. “All right. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

Chapter 8
    Federal Reserve Bank
    New York, New York
    Monday 17 July 2006
    0900 EDT
    Jack Fielding didn’t quite shit a brick in the way Mitch Rainey had imagined it, but he came close. By the time he left the Fed and made his way down Liberty Street he was sweating profusely.
    He remembered thinking the man who had taken him down to the vault was unusually tense. He also couldn’t recall the security check having been anywhere near as stringent when he had first opened the account, or on the day he returned to deposit the drive. But none of these things had prepared him for what he found when he opened the safety deposit box. The money was still there, or most of it anyway. The hard drive wasn’t. It had been replaced with two photographs of corpses: one of them little more than a charred skeleton, the other white and bloated. Written on the back of one was a message that meant absolutely nothing to him: Shut down Princip! Last warning .
    In that moment he had felt as if the entire world had begun spinning around him. The voices of the men waiting outside the vault for him to finish had faded to distant echoes and he had found it hard to breathe. And there had been something else. A faint trace in the air of what he thought might have been fresh paint. But it was hard to know if that hadn’t just been his imagination.
    He felt a little better out here in the fresh air, but far from all right. When he reached the intersection of Liberty and Nassau, he almost stepped straight into the path of an oncoming bus. That brought him a little closer to the moment.
    Jack hurried across the street and ducked into the first alley he reached. He pulled out his cell phone, dialed and waited. “Marius, get a message to Bruce Jessops right away. I need to speak to him.”

Chapter 9
    Morisson, Vermont
    Monday 17 July 2006
    1000 EDT
    By the time Jesse got to the offices of the Morisson Herald, it was five past nine. Mrs. Abernathy, a tall, thin woman in her early seventies, who appeared far more frail than she actually was, glared at him as he came through the door. When she was satisfied her silence had produced just the right amount of tension, she said, “Jesse Corbin, have I ever told you