> In general outline, and to some extent in atmosphere, it rather resembles G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday.”:

“In his efforts to thwart the council, Syme eventually discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was employed just as mysteriously and assigned to defeat the Council. They soon find out they were fighting each other and not real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of their president”

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1695/1695-h/1695-h.htm

Sounds like what the war-on-terror eventually ended-up like in Northern Ireland. Eventually virtually every other terrorist of note ended up working for the security forces.