Strangled Silence (27 page)

-
was convinced that they had
scared off the girl, but
and
were not so sure. It was becoming clear that
Sandwith and McMorris were still probing around,
however, and something was going to have to be
done. Sandwith would be given one more chance.
They all doubted that he'd take it. McMorris had
been spreading the word around the veterans that
he would pay for any reliable information on the
events in Sinnostan that had cost him his eye.

'Plus he assaulted two of my men,'
-
growled. 'He didn't get anything out of
them, but it will have given him reason to push
harder now. It was something solid to grab onto. The
bugger's not questioning himself as much as he was;
he's looking outwards instead. He's become too
dangerous. I think the conditioning may be cracking.'

'Highly unlikely,'
snorted.
'The programming was intensive. He tested low on
the suggestive scale, but his response scores were
excellent. McMorris was needy; he was addicted to
sedatives – which Shang missed, of course. Our
errant war correspondent's personality had big,
gaping holes of need. He didn't
want
to resist the
process once it started. You can't go wrong with that
kind of foothold.'

'Well, you did,'
-
retorted.
'Because now he's asking all the wrong questions
. . . and he can pay good money for the answers.
Who knows what worms will come out of the
woodwork when they hear that kind of cash is on
offer? Somebody somewhere will talk.'

'So remove him,' she said firmly. 'He's becoming
connected to too many other strands. Soon it
will be overly complicated to take any direct action
against him. Best to do it now while he's still an
outsider.'

'He'll be seen to,'
assured her. 'We're
getting sidetracked here. We still have a week to
bring all the pieces together for Operation Renewed
Faith. The shipment will be late getting to Sinnostan.
The freighter was waylaid at Rotterdam. Customs
were doing spot searches, but they didn't find the
package. Even if they did, they wouldn't know what
it was without testing it.'

'And God knows how many would die if
someone uncorked that particular genie,'
-
snorted.