Read The Informationist: A Thriller for Free Online Page A

way. The first assignment had been a fluke and had come at a time when she considered herself marred for life, unhirable in the traditional sense and wondering how to pay off amassed student loans in her own lifetime.
    During sophomore year of college, in a period of drink- and drug-induced haze, with the deadline of a research assignment for her comparative-politics class looming, she pulled an all-nighter with a beat-up laptop and four pots of coffee, fabricating a report using Cameroon as her target of study. The sources were fudged, but the information, based on past personal observations, logical conclusions, and in-depth understanding of the demographics, was highly accurate.
    The relief of having completed the assignment segued to dread when instead of a grade she received a request from the professor to discuss the paper. He had, as it turned out, taken the liberty of passing her report to a colleague, who after reading it had asked to meet her.
    The colleague was an economist for the International Monetary Fund working in the IMF’s African Area, and he in turn introduced Munroe to one of his business partners, a man named Julian Reid. Although it was evident to those who read the report that the material had not been pulled from genuine sources, the analyses and conclusions had piqued their curiosity. Over lunch Reid inquired as to the chances of having her prepare a similar report on another country. He and his partners, he explained, were planning to begin a venture in Morocco, and although the country was fairly stable politically and economically, what they didn’t have was someone on the inside with an innate understanding of the place, the customs, the subtleties, and a map, for lack of a better term, of how to navigate the political hierarchy with its graft andjockeying for power. It was such underlying information in her report on Cameroon that had caught the eye of those who’d read it. Could she, he wanted to know, replicate the research in a different scenario?
    That was how it began.
    Morocco was the first assignment; it had taken eight months, and those eight months transformed the direction of her life. The drugs stopped, the drink dried up, the intense focus of the work brought peace, and that one assignment carried her finances into the black. Next was a two-month period in Uruguay on behalf of the IMF. By the time the third project, in Vietnam, had been completed, word had begun to spread. With each assignment her reputation for extracting impossibly accurate information grew, and it was only a matter of time before the law of supply and demand took over. The value of her services increased exponentially, and so did the paychecks. No one questioned how she came by the information or what she had to do to get it; they simply paid.
    Now came the possibility of an assignment far outside the area of her expertise, and for that reason it intrigued her—that, and the fact that she had not returned to the continent of her birth since abruptly departing it nine years ago. Munroe pushed the memories away, joined Kate Breeden in the lobby of the building, and in silence rode the elevator to the thirty-eighth floor, where the doors opened onto a wide reception area.
    The halls were carpeted, the wooden office doors richly paneled, and the atmosphere hushed and reverent. Titan Exploration was a fascinating specimen of the acme of corporate America, and Munroe observed the goings-on with detached curiosity while she followed Burbank’s assistant across expensive rugs and through well-lit hallways.
    With its internal politics and sedate proprieties, the corporate world was as foreign as any of the countries she’d traveled, and it comprised a distinct culture she had yet to internalize. Over the years she’d made several attempts to live as “normal” people did, holding standard jobs and maintaining a permanent residence, each try a more miserable failure than the one before it. The longest stretch of