The Bourne Evolution

by Brian Freeman

  “Did this man want something from you?” the police officer went on. “Did he ask for money? Or do you think he was planning a sexual assault?”

  “I think he was just planning to shoot me.”

  “Did the two of you argue? Was he angry?”

  “No, he wasn’t angry. He never showed any emotion at all. This guy was an assassin. He met me in order to kill me. Period. If I hadn’t had the Taser, I’d be dead.”

  “Ah, yes, the Taser,” the cop murmured with a reprimand in his voice. “I’m glad you came back to that. Are you aware, Ms. Laurent, that a Taser is a prohibited weapon in Canada? Importing and owning one is a crime. If it’s missing as you say, then I suppose I can let it go, but I would strongly advise you not to replace it.”

  Abbey brushed her mahogany bangs out of her eyes with a swipe of her fingers. “Seriously, you’re worried about my Taser? That’s what you’re taking away from all this? A man tried to kill me. Right here. A hit man.”

  “Well, that’s very dramatic, but I’m not sure we can leap to a conclusion like that,” he sneered at her. “I understand that journalists like to think they’re all characters in a Tarantino film, but if this happened as you say, the most likely explanation is that this man is some kind of stalker.”

  “Call him whatever you want. The question is, how are you going to find him?”

  “As much as we’d like to help, Ms. Laurent, I’m afraid we have very little to go on. Frankly, you’re in a better position than we are to identify this man. When you figure out where you crossed paths with him, or if you see him again, then you can let us know.”

  “Don’t you have cameras all over town?” Abbey asked. “I told you what he looked like. I told you when this happened. How hard is it to check the cameras around the bar and try to find him? Maybe he had a car, and you can get a license plate. Maybe he was staying at a local hotel.”

  The police officer gave her a strangely pained look, as if he wished she would just let it go. “In normal circumstances that might be an option, but I’m afraid there were technology issues in the city last night. Most of our surveillance cameras were offline.”

  “Offline,” Abbey said. “Does that happen a lot?”

  “No, it’s quite rare.”

  “Starting when? When did the cameras go offline?”

  “Sometime before ten o’clock. The issue wasn’t resolved until the middle of the night.”

  “Well, that’s pretty damn convenient,” Abbey said. “Ten o’clock is the time when I was at Château Frontenac. I already told you that. And now there’s no way to confirm anything I’m telling you. Look, what happened up there, anyway?”

  “There was an incident, but we’re not releasing details at this time.”

  “Why? What’s with all the secrets? What are you people covering up? I was supposed to meet someone on the boardwalk who didn’t show up, and not long after that, I hear about people getting shot and killed up there. And then somebody pretends to be the person I was supposed to meet and tries to kill me? You don’t seriously expect me to believe that’s a coincidence, do you?”

  “If you have questions about the incident at Château Frontenac, or if you feel you should be interviewed, you’ll need to contact the public information officer, and she can put you in touch with the appropriate government authorities.”

  “The appropriate authorities? You mean the Quebec police aren’t running the investigation?”

  The police officer didn’t answer. He simply combed his mustache.

  “So what am I supposed to do now?” Abbey went on. “Go home? What if this guy is waiting for me?”

  “If you have concerns for your safety, you should certainly call us back,” the officer replied with another condescending smile. Then he took a phone from his belt and gave her a look that said he had better things to do. “Otherwise, if you don’t have any other information to share, I think we’re done here.”

  Abbey scowled. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Please remember my warning about the Taser, Ms. Laurent.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Abbey stalked away in disgust. When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw the policeman watching her, making sure she was actually leaving. His phone was poised in his hand. She kept walking, her shoes crunching on the gravel path. She passed the park’s welcome center, then turned the corner past a stone wall near the outer gate.

  When she knew he couldn’t see her anymore, she crept back to the corner to listen.

  Almost immediately, she heard the policeman on the phone, but it took her a moment to realize it was him, because his voice and tone had changed completely. He didn’t sound like a bored, stuffy street cop anymore, handling a citizen’s complaint with polite disbelief. He spoke like someone in authority who was used to giving orders. In fact, he didn’t sound like a cop at all now.

  He sounded like a spy.

  The appropriate government authorities.

  “I just completed my interview with the Laurent woman,” she heard the man say, switching easily to upscale urban French as he talked. “Oh, yes, they were targeting her, no doubt about that. She described the man who tried to kill her. Stocky, forties, blond hair, gold-rimmed glasses. No, that’s right, it’s definitely not Cain. Tell the Americans. This was their operation and their mess, let them worry about it.”

  Abbey didn’t wait to hear more. She spun off the wall and ran for the gate, to make sure the man didn’t realize she’d been eavesdropping on his call. He’d said the one word that had been in her nightmares for a week.

  Cain.

  * * *

  —

  THE area of the boardwalk near the Château Frontenac was still cordoned off with crime scene tape and guarded by police to keep the public away. Abbey tried to stay inconspicuous as she sat on the steps of the statue of Champlain near the entrance to the funiculaire that took tourists down the cliff to the lower town. She wore sunglasses to cover her face. She sipped coffee from the Starbucks inside the hotel, and she checked her watch often, as if waiting for someone to join her.

  The city police guarding the area were just a diversion. The real investigation was going on beyond the crime scene tape, and the men in charge were definitely not police. They wore suits and had wired headsets connected to radios, and they were all armed. Abbey had been around enough government personnel to know that she was looking at a team of intelligence officers. They were mostly Americans, too. Americans stood out even when they were trying to blend in. In an operation like this, that meant they were probably CIA.

  She had no trouble identifying the agent in charge. He barked orders to everyone else. He was a small, hard-looking man, well into his fifties, with a face that didn’t look like it knew what a smile was. The sun was out today, but he wore a gray raincoat over his suit and a fedora low on his forehead. He was in pain. That was obvious. He used a cane awkwardly, and she could see his features contort into a grimace whenever he took a step. Abbey took her phone and pretended to be typing a text, while in reality, she zoomed in on the man’s face and snapped several pictures.

  She had plenty of contacts in the U.S. and Canadian governments. Someone could tell her who he was.

  Abbey climbed off the steps and wandered toward the police tape. She took a selfie with the Château Frontenac behind her and then picked the youngest, cutest cop and put on her flirtiest smile. “Wow, what’s going on?” she asked him. “I’ve never seen so many cops around here.”

  “It’s nothing to be concerned about, miss,” the officer replied.

  “I hope not, but everybody’s talking about people getting shot and killed! It’s hard to believe. Did you catch the guy who did it?”

  “There’s no danger to the public.”

  “Oh, good. That’s a relief.” Abbey ran her fingers through her loose hair and gave her head a little toss. She k
new she was pretty much irresistible when she did that. “How many people were killed?”

  “We’re not releasing any information. I’d suggest you turn on the evening news, and you’ll probably hear all about it.”

  “Sure, of course. I get that. But is it true they were shot?”

  “I’m sorry, but we’re not—”

  “Yeah, yeah, no information, I know. The thing is, I write stories for The Fort. The online magazine? Do you read it? You really should. We’re always looking for scoops, and I would be a hero to my editor if I could bring him something on this. Seriously, a hero. I mean, they must have told you some of the dirt, right? Is there anything you can give me behind the scenes? Totally anonymous. Believe me, you steer me in the right direction, the drinks are on me this weekend.”

  The young cop looked pained. He glanced both ways to make sure no one else was around. “They haven’t told us anything. They’re keeping it very quiet.”

  “Sure, I understand. You’re cute, by the way. Maybe we could have that drink anyway. Hey, do you know who’s in charge around here? That guy with the limp over there, do you know who he is?”

  “Somebody called him Rollins. That’s all I know.”

  “Rollins. He’s American, right?”

  “They all are.”

  Abbey leaned close enough that she knew the cop could inhale her perfume. “Did anybody say anything about New York? I heard there might be a connection to that congresswoman getting killed in the park.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “What about the name Cain? You hear anyone mention that today?”

  The cop looked uncomfortable, as if he’d made a big mistake saying anything at all. “I’m sorry, miss, you better go. If people see us talking, I could get into trouble. We’re not supposed to talk to reporters.”

  “Sure. I get it. Hey, thanks for the help.”

  Abbey headed away from the boardwalk. Before she’d gone too far into the plaza, she took one last look over her shoulder, and when she did, she froze in place.

  The American agent named Rollins was leaning on his cane and staring directly at her.

  Like he knew exactly who she was.

  SIX

  WE have a situation in New York,” Miles Priest told Bourne. “We need you to go there immediately. This may be our first opportunity to infiltrate Medusa.”

  Jason sat at a table in a windowless modular room with Priest and Scott DeRay. The room was a SCIF—a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility—adjacent to Priest’s top-floor office in the West Coast headquarters of Carillon Technology. They could talk freely there without fear of electronic surveillance.

  “What’s the situation?” Bourne asked.

  His friend Scott pushed a folder across the table. “I assume you’re familiar with Sofia Ortiz.”

  “The freshman congresswoman out of New York? Sure. She’s made quite a name for herself on social media.”

  “Yes, she has,” Scott went on. “Mostly at our expense. She’s been crusading against the data practices at Carillon and other tech companies since she got into office. If she has her way, the feds will turn Big Tech into nothing more than utilities operating at the whims of Congress.”

  “Well, you have what every politician dreams about,” Bourne pointed out. “Personal information on nearly every voter.”

  “Exactly!” Miles Priest snorted. The Carillon CEO got up from his chair and paced between the walls of the SCIF. “This crusade of hers isn’t about privacy or consumer protection. It’s about power, pure and simple. Believe me, the last people you want anywhere near our data are members of Congress.”

  Bourne knew that Priest was intimately familiar with the government world. He was a former director of the FBI who’d retired after thirty years inside the Beltway and switched from the public sector to the private sector. He’d taken the reins at Carillon Technology when social media companies were first beginning to flex their muscles. In the fifteen years since then, he’d built Carillon into the backbone of Silicon Valley, providing database infrastructure for nearly all of the social media giants.

  Priest himself had become the personification of the money and influence of Big Tech. He was an immediately recognizable figure wherever he went, six foot six, with neatly coiffed gray hair and a long, hangdog face. His tenure at Carillon had also made him a billionaire with homes all over the world, from an estate on his own Caribbean island to a remote castle in the Highlands of Scotland.

  “Ortiz has made a lot of noise,” Bourne agreed, “but she’s still just a freshman. How much influence does she really have?”

  “It’s not a question of influence,” Scott said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, we have reason to believe that Ortiz is working with Medusa. Or Medusa has penetrated her office and is feeding her information. That’s why we want you to go to New York. To follow the trail.”

  “A sitting congresswoman? What makes you think that?”

  “Recently, there was a profile of Ortiz in an online magazine called The Fort by a Canadian journalist named Abbey Laurent. Laurent quotes a source inside Ortiz’s circle who says that the congresswoman is ready to expose the worst scandal in the history of Big Tech. Ortiz herself wouldn’t comment, but now she’s scheduled a huge rally in Washington Square Park next week. We think she’s planning to expose the data hack.”

  “She’ll use that as the launching pad for legislation against us,” Priest interjected. “This will be like the Patriot Act after 9/11. When people find out that the entire tech cabal was victimized—that an encyclopedia of data on nearly every American was stolen—they’re going to demand action. It will give Congress the cover they need to put us under their thumb.”

  “We know Medusa was behind the hack,” Scott went on. “We’ve been able to keep it under wraps for almost a year while we tried to figure out what they were planning to do with the data they stole. But since then, nothing. Silence. As far as we can tell, they haven’t tried to use it, haven’t tried to sell it. So we still don’t know their ultimate plan. But now it appears that Sofia Ortiz is planning to make news of the hack public. This is clearly the first shot in the war.”

  Priest sat down again and put both of his long arms on the table, with his hands curled into fists. “The leak about the hack didn’t come from any of us. If Ortiz knows about it, it’s because Medusa gave her the information. They want it out there. Somewhere in Sofia Ortiz’s operation is a trail that leads back to them. That’s why we need you. That’s why we need a spy.”

  “There are a lot of spies out there,” Bourne replied. “Why me?”

  “Bringing you in was my idea,” Scott explained. “Miles convinced the other CEOs that we needed to hire our own operative to take on Medusa. The feds have had no luck getting inside the organization or learning anything about it. So it’s up to us now. We want someone who reports directly to us, with no conflicted loyalties. I said I had the perfect man.”

  Bourne stared at Scott DeRay with a question. “Do they know about . . . ?”

  “Treadstone?” Scott replied. “Yes, they know all about Treadstone.”

  “Don’t look so surprised, Bourne!” Priest interjected with a chuckle. “I was the head of the FBI. You think the CIA can take a piss without me knowing about it? I’ve been in the loop on Treadstone since their first black ops mission.”

  “And yes, I told them why you left,” Scott went on, with a meaningful glance that Bourne didn’t miss. “They know about Nova and what Treadstone did to her. No one blames you for walking away. In fact, as I told Miles, you leaving Treadstone was a gift to us. One of the best intelligence agents in the world was suddenly a man without portfolio. How could we turn that down?”

  Jason heard the unspoken message. Scott knew all about the memory loss that had nearly destroyed Jason a few years earlier, bu
t he’d kept the truth about Bourne’s amnesia from Miles Priest. Scott was protecting him.

  Like Priest, Scott DeRay was former FBI. He’d been on the fast track, buzzed about as a future director and eventual attorney general. But he’d surprised his superiors a few years earlier by quitting the bureau and joining Carillon Technology as their number two executive. Scott was now the protégé and eventual successor to Miles Priest. His FBI colleagues had assumed it was about money, but Bourne knew that Scott’s decision wasn’t financial. He already came from a billionaire family; he’d gone to exclusive private schools and colleges in Europe. No, Scott had decided in his early thirties that the real future of the world was in technology, not government. So he’d moved on.

  They were old friends. Bourne had known Scott throughout his Treadstone days, but their relationship went much further back. They’d spent summers together as teenagers. Scott had showed him pictures from back then, two boys hanging out week after week at the beach, laughing together, arms around each other’s shoulders. Bourne remembered none of it. To him, those events may as well have happened to someone else. He had no recollection of his childhood, but he still had Scott in his life as a reminder.

  Scott was smooth and handsome. Wavy dark hair. A permanent suntan. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he had a politician’s charisma. Everyone who met him remembered him. He had limitless energy, fueled by a metabolism that barely needed more than four hours of sleep on any night. Every day, he’d run in Central Park at five in the morning, pumping through an intense workout. Then, if he wasn’t at his Manhattan desk doing venture capital deals for Carillon, he’d be on a plane or helicopter, hopscotching from Washington to Scotland to Nassau to San Francisco with Miles Priest.

  His friend was going to rule the world someday. Or maybe he already did.