The Bourne Evolution

by Brian Freeman

  Jason switched off the recorder.

  The interview confirmed what Miles Priest and Scott DeRay had expected, that Abbey had a source who knew about the data hack. The question was who and whether that person could help him infiltrate Medusa.

  He needed a name.

  Bourne dug deeper, sifting through folders and notepads on Abbey’s desk. She was prolific and had multiple projects under way, but he didn’t find any research notes that were connected to her profile of Sofia Ortiz. There was nothing to tell him who her source might be. If she had other materials about Ortiz and Big Tech, then she hadn’t left them in the office. He’d have to find her and talk to her himself.

  Jason checked his watch. He’d been inside the offices of The Fort for ten minutes, and he couldn’t stay much longer. But he wanted to see if he could access Abbey’s computer. He found the CPU tower on the floor and switched it on, and the monitor on her desk bloomed to life. The login asked for a password, and he didn’t have time to crack it. However, he was intrigued by the wallpaper photograph she’d chosen for her screen.

  It showed the hills of Red Rock Canyon outside Las Vegas.

  The picture sent a chill up his spine. Las Vegas.

  Bourne knew it might be a coincidence. Millions of people went to Las Vegas as tourists, and Abbey Laurent going there might not mean anything at all. But this was also the city in which Nova had been murdered.

  He logged into the computer as a guest. He couldn’t access Abbey’s files, but he could load a search engine and search the web. He typed in: Abbey Laurent Las Vegas. What came up first in the results took Jason’s breath away.

  THE MURDERER NEXT DOOR:

  Inside the Bland Life of America’s Worst Mass Shooter

  Abbey had done a profile of Charles Hackman.

  She’d done a profile of the man who had killed Nova, along with sixty-six other men, women, and children.

  Bourne felt his breathing accelerate. Another flashback paralyzed him. In his head, he heard the bullets, the screams; he saw the panic as people ran. But they had nowhere to go. They were easy targets for a man in a hotel window.

  And he saw Nova, dead in the middle of the chaos, her body being carried away by a man he knew.

  A Treadstone agent.

  Jason didn’t have time to read further. He glanced at the monitor on the desk in front of him and saw a web camera clipped to the frame. The green light on the webcam glowed. It was active.

  Someone was watching him.

  He grabbed the camera and yanked it out of the computer port and then kicked the power plug from the wall. He didn’t have much time. Seconds. He ran for the office door of The Fort and took the stairs to the first floor two at a time. Rather than use the front door again, he followed a dusty corridor to the rear of the building and found another exit that led out to a side street. He cracked the door and looked out. The neighborhood was empty. He ran across the street, where an iron fence built atop a stone wall led into the rear yard of an upscale residential house. He leaped for the fence, propped his foot on one of the crossbars, and threw himself to the other side. Then he flattened himself against the wet green lawn and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  Headlights shot down Rue d’Auteuil. An SUV stopped outside the building where The Fort had its offices, and three men jumped out. They all wore beige raincoats. One man headed for the side street and the exit where Jason had just left, and another charged toward the front door with the broken window.

  The third man, who was obviously in charge, hung back. He was tall and sleek, with a neat, polished look that Bourne recognized from long experience. It was the look of a killer. The man wore gold-rimmed glasses that he took off and cleaned as he stood outside the building. Then he examined the area around him with the eyes of a hawk, as if he could sense that Jason was still close by. His eyes were so intense that Jason sunk lower into the grass to make sure he couldn’t be seen, even under the shroud of night.

  Almost a full minute went by before the man with the gold-rimmed glasses joined his colleagues inside the empty building. The street was deserted again.

  Bourne pushed himself off the ground and ran.

  EIGHT

  ABBEY used a pair of ceramic chopsticks she’d bought in Hong Kong to scoop lo mein noodles out of a white Chinese take-out container. With her other hand, she bit into an egg roll dipped in spicy mustard. Nervously, as she ate, she got out of the wheely chair near her computer and went to the apartment window, which she’d done dozens of times since getting home. The blinds were closed, but she pushed them aside and peered out at the fire escape and the narrow alley called Rue Saint-Flavien. The streetlight showed nothing but a bicycle chained to a drainpipe. She saw no one in the alley, but that didn’t make her feel less paranoid.

  She paced on the worn carpet of her second-floor studio apartment. The space wasn’t large. She had a mattress on the floor where she slept and a tiny bathroom that consisted of a toilet, shower, and sink. Her dinette table doubled as her desk, where she kept her laptop. Her garbage overflowed with fast-food wrappers, because the only kitchen appliance she ever used was the microwave. Her refrigerator was mostly empty, and so were the light blue walls. She traveled more than she was at home, so she didn’t have much time to shop or decorate. She never liked to be in one place for very long.

  The radio was off, leaving the room quiet. Normally, she played loud jazz, at least until the downstairs neighbors pounded on the ceiling to complain. But tonight she didn’t want to drown out any noises. Footsteps in the hallway. Cars in the alley. If the killer in the gold-rimmed glasses came back, she wanted to hear him before he got to her door.

  She wished she still had her Taser.

  Abbey checked her phone. No messages. No emails. She swore under her breath, because she felt cut off from her sources of information. She’d left four messages for the lawyer in New York who’d fed her the story about the data hack and the suspect in the Ortiz assassination, but he wasn’t calling her back. The Quebec police had nothing to say about the shooting at Château Frontenac. Neither did her contacts in the intelligence agencies. No one was talking to her. She didn’t have any answers.

  She knew who she had to call next, but she didn’t want to do it.

  His name was Michel Marciano. He’d been her on-again, off-again lover for three years, but over the winter, she’d called it quits with him for good. Michel hadn’t been happy about losing her. They’d known each other since college at McGill, where she was a journalism major and he was a law student. They couldn’t have been more opposite in nature. He was the buttoned-down bureaucrat with his eyes on government work, and she was the free spirit planning to go around the world chasing stories. She suspected that each of them saw in the other a little bit of what they were missing in life.

  They’d dated a few times in college, but it hadn’t turned into anything serious. Then they’d reconnected three years ago in Ottawa when she was digging into a bribery scandal on export licenses and he was a mid-level lawyer working in the department of global affairs. Michel hadn’t given her any confidential information—he would never do that—but he’d pointed her to people who could help her, and eventually she’d broken the story wide open. Not long after that, she’d invited him to dinner as a way to say thanks, and that night they slept together for the first time.

  Within a year, he’d asked her to marry him. She’d been tempted. Michel was kind, smart, and successful, and he bought her nice things, took her to nice places, and always knew what kind of wine to order with dinner. Married life with him would have been stable and pleasant, making stable, pleasant friends and raising stable, pleasant children. She would have had a big house overlooking the Ottawa River with a maid, a swimming pool, and not a take-out container to be found in the kitchen.

  Even so, she told him no. That wasn’t the life for her. She liked
her greasy lo mein and her mattress on the floor. That should have been the end of their relationship, but Michel wasn’t the kind of man who gave up easily. He kept pursuing her, and she let herself stay on the hook for two more years. It was convenient to keep him in her life, because she could tell her father that she had a boyfriend, and she could have stable, pleasant sex from time to time. But around Christmastime, she’d decided that the status quo wasn’t right for either of them, and she’d finally told Michel that it was over.

  She knew what would happen if she called him again. He’d want her back.

  But Michel also had contacts throughout the Canadian and American governments, and he could get answers for her. If she waited too long, she knew she would chicken out, so she picked up the phone and dialed. He answered on the first ring, and she could imagine his heart racing as he spotted her name on the caller ID.

  “Abbey,” he said breathlessly. “It’s so lovely to hear from you.”

  “Hello, Michel.”

  “Where are you? Are you in Ottawa?”

  “No. I’m home in Quebec.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  She didn’t answer right away. His voice sounded the same, that cultured private school accent that always said the right thing as if he were reading it out of a book. She could picture him in her head, his neat black hair in a stiff pompadour, his face handsome and mostly expressionless, his silk tie making a tight knot under his chin.

  “I’m—I’m not calling to talk about us, Michel,” she murmured.

  “Well, can’t we do that anyway? I mean it. I’ve missed you.”

  “I know. Part of me misses you, too. But we decided—”

  “You decided,” he interrupted her. “This was you, not me.”

  “Yes. You’re right. It was my call.”

  “My feelings haven’t changed,” Michel went on. “If anything, not seeing you for months has made them stronger. I’ve followed what you’ve been doing. I read your stories from New York, and I can’t tell you how worried I was, thinking of you in the midst of that violence. I was immensely relieved to see that you were safe. I just wish it would make you change your mind about things.”

  “Michel, please, let’s not do this. Not now.”

  She heard him sigh.

  “Fine. All right. What do you want, Abbey?”

  “Information.”

  “About what?”

  “Something’s going on,” she told him. “There was a shooting near Château Frontenac last night. No one in the government will talk about it. The Americans are involved. Have you heard anything?”

  Michel was silent for a little while. “No.”

  “Can you make some inquiries? Can you see what you can find out?”

  “I suppose so, yes,” he replied with obvious reluctance. “Do you know anything more?”

  “It may be related to the assassination in New York.”

  “Abbey, you’re swimming in dangerous waters.”

  “So what else is new?” she replied. “Can you help me, Michel?”

  “I’ll make some calls, but the Americans hold everything close to the vest. I don’t like the idea of you digging into this story. It’s not safe.”

  “I’m fine,” Abbey told him, but she failed to keep the anxiety out of her voice. Michel knew her well enough to know she was hiding something.

  “Abbey?” he said. “Are you all right? What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  But he didn’t believe her. “If you want my help, be straight with me. Are you in trouble?”

  “Actually, a man tried to kill me last night.”

  “Kill you? My God!”

  “I got away. I’m fine for now. But the police won’t do anything. This is all connected to whatever is going on, and that’s why I need answers.”

  “What you need to do is to stop looking into something that could get you killed!” Michel told her sharply.

  “I don’t walk away from stories. That’s not who I am. Besides, it’s too late for that.”

  He sighed again. “All right, let me see what I can find out.”

  “Thank you, Michel. You’ll call me tomorrow?”

  “No. I’m taking the first flight to Quebec in the morning. I’ll meet you for lunch. We’ll talk then.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  “It’s not up for discussion. One o’clock at Les Vingt Chats.”

  She opted not to protest, because she knew he wouldn’t change his mind. “All right. I’ll see you there.”

  “Be careful.”

  Michel hung up the phone. Sitting in silence in her apartment, she felt the weight of his absence. It had felt good to hear his voice, like the comfort of putting on an old, familiar sweater. In truth, she liked the idea of him running to her rescue. She couldn’t help but wonder if lunch would lead to dinner, and dinner would lead to her spending the night in his hotel room.

  Abbey picked up her carton of lo mein.

  Then someone pounded on her apartment door. She dropped the carton on the floor, making a mess of noodles and sauce. A husky voice shouted her name. “Abbey Laurent! Police!”

  She stifled a scream. When she ran back to the window and looked down at the alley, she saw two police vehicles with flashing lights parked beside her building.

  “Ms. Laurent!” the same voice called again impatiently, pounding on her door for a second time.

  Abbey checked the peephole. Through the fish-eye lens, she could see three uniformed police officers outside her door, but they weren’t alone. A man in a dark raincoat and a fedora stood behind them. She opened the door, and when she did, the police officers separated. The other man came forward, assisted by a cane as he limped to her doorway.

  It was the American intelligence officer she’d seen on the boardwalk.

  “Ms. Laurent? My name is Nash Rollins. I’m with the American government. I want to talk to you.”

  Abbey studied the expressionless faces of the police officers who were with him. “If I don’t want to talk, will I be arrested?”

  “Not at all,” Rollins replied. “Actually, I brought the police along to make sure you felt safe. I heard about the attempt on your life, so I wasn’t sure you’d open the door to a stranger.”

  “You’re right.”

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  Abbey hesitated, then waved her hand to usher him inside. The man limped into her apartment and shot a glance around the messy, impersonal studio. He didn’t look like a man who missed much. She didn’t invite him to sit down.

  “What do you want?”

  “First, would you mind closing the door?”

  She eyed the open door and the policemen, and then she shut the door quietly. She also noticed her laptop on the table and went and closed the lid.

  Rollins was a compact man, with a tough, weathered body coiled tightly like a rope. His knuckles were white where he gripped the head of his cane, and his torso bent like a question mark. With his other hand, he removed his hat, revealing unruly gray hair. He had bushy pale eyebrows, with blue eyes that squinted as if he were being assaulted by a frigid wind. The skin on his face was etched with tight, narrow wrinkles.

  “I’ll cut to the chase, Ms. Laurent. I know who you are and what you do, and I know you were supposed to meet a man on the boardwalk last night. I’d like you to tell me if he’s been in touch with you since then.”

  “If you know what I do, then you know I’m a journalist,” Abbey replied. “I’m not in the habit of sharing information with someone from the government. Particularly someone who’s not even from my government.”

  “This man is dangerous, Ms. Laurent. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

  “I don’t know who I’m dealing with right now, Mr. Rollins. You say yo
u’re with the American government, but you haven’t shown me any identification. I assume you’re a spook, so what are you? CIA?”

  Rollins’s hooded eyes assessed her with a grudging respect, but he made no move to produce any identification. He tapped the head of his cane on the floor. “You don’t trust me. Fine. You shouldn’t trust him, either.”

  “No?”

  “No. Let me ask you a question. Are you under the impression that this man didn’t show up for your meeting last night?”

  Abbey frowned. “That’s right.”

  “Wrong,” Rollins snarled. “He was there. He killed four of my agents. He shot me in the leg. He was following you when we intercepted him, Ms. Laurent. Do I need to tell you what would have happened if he’d caught up with you? You’d be dead with a bullet in your throat.”

  The information hit Abbey hard. She paled and sat heavily in one of her chairs. “Is that really true?”

  “It is.”

  “Someone came after me later, but it wasn’t him.”

  “Do you think he operates alone? He doesn’t. He’s part of a very dangerous network. Until we catch him, you’re at serious risk. You may not trust me, but I’m trying to help you, Ms. Laurent. Now, you need to answer my question. Has he been in touch with you since last night?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Well, watch your back. He’s heading your way.”

  Her dark eyes widened. “What?”

  “He escaped from us last night and took refuge in a town a couple hours north of here. But we think he’s on his way back to the city. He may already be here now. I can think of only one reason why he’d take that kind of risk. He’s coming after you. My question is, what do you know that makes you a threat to him?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “I think you’re lying to me.”

  “I really don’t care what you think. I don’t know anything.”

  “Why were you meeting with this man? What did he want?”

  “I have nothing to say about that.”