The Bourne Evolution

by Brian Freeman

“I’m trying to protect you, Ms. Laurent.”

  “No, you’re not. You don’t care what happens to me. You just want him.”

  Rollins shifted on his feet and grimaced with pain. He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and came out with a small white card, which he handed to her. She read it and saw no name, no identification, no agency, just ten numbers. A phone number.

  “If he contacts you, call that number,” Rollins told her. “Day or night.”

  “Why? So you can kill both of us?”

  Rollins sighed. “Please don’t think you can confront this man alone. He’s violent, and he’s unstable. I’ve known him for years. He’s damaged in a way you or I can’t understand. He’s a man with no past.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Rollins ignored her question. He limped to the apartment door and put a hand on the doorknob. Then he turned back. “If you hear from him, call that number, Ms. Laurent.”

  “Wait!” Abbey said. “Who is he? Is he Cain? What’s his real name?”

  “Names don’t matter,” Rollins told her. “He goes by a lot of names. Cain is just one of them. The only thing you need to know is that this man is a killer.”

  * * *

  —

  JASON stood in the darkness at the far end of Rue Saint-Flavien. He sheltered in the nook of a graffiti-strewn doorway, where he was invisible. Police cars with swirling lights blocked the alley on both sides of the apartment building where Abbey Laurent lived, and he heard the chatter of their radios. There was also a dark sedan parked farther away, its lights off. As Bourne watched, the door to the building opened, and a cluster of police officers walked outside. They were followed by a man that he knew well. A man limping from the injury that Jason had given him the previous night.

  Nash Rollins.

  Treadstone was still here. Still hunting him.

  The police got into their cars, and the cars peeled away in both directions. Bourne sank deeper into the doorway as one of the vehicles spun around the corner directly in front of him. That left Nash Rollins and the sedan. Rollins signaled with his hand, and the sedan’s lights turned on, as it roared up to the curb in front of him. The back door opened, and Rollins climbed inside, but as he did, another Treadstone agent got out of the vehicle.

  The sedan made a U-turn and sped away, but the remaining agent stayed by the door to Abbey Laurent’s building. His hands were in his pockets, where he no doubt had easy access to a weapon. Bourne knew the drill. The agent would be there all night.

  Jason pulled up his collar, silently left the doorway, and melted into the darkness. He had a plan.

  Tomorrow he’d fight back.

  Tomorrow he’d take Abbey Laurent.

  NINE

  THE next morning, Jason watched the watchers.

  He spotted a second Treadstone agent arriving to conduct surveillance on Abbey Laurent, replacing the one who’d spent the night there. Jason knew him from a mission they’d done together in Milan. His name was Farnham, and Jason remembered him as cocky and way too sure of himself. He was in his twenties, with brown hair and a baby face that disguised his ruthlessness. He wore a white mock turtleneck and a gray silk suit, looking like an upscale Canadian businessman. He leaned against a parked car half a block away from Abbey’s door and talked on his phone in fluent French, using a loud voice and an easy smile.

  Bourne knew the rule. Sometimes the best cover was to hide in plain sight.

  At nine o’clock, Abbey Laurent emerged into the alley below her apartment. Jason watched her check both directions with a nervous expression. She studied all of the pedestrians coming and going. An old woman walking her dog. Two teenage boys eating chocolate croissants and carrying red backpacks. A man hosing down the sidewalk. Her gaze passed over Farnham without stopping. She shot a quick look at the cloudless sky and then shrugged her purse strap over her shoulder and walked up the hill. Her red hair and cobalt-blue blouse made her easy to spot.

  At the corner, she turned right. As soon as she did, Farnham slipped the phone into his pocket and followed. Two blocks behind him, Bourne followed, too. When he reached the next alley, he could see both of them. Abbey walked without looking back, and Farnham stayed about twenty yards behind her on the opposite sidewalk. Near the next intersection at Côte de la Fabrique, Abbey disappeared into a bakery. She wasn’t inside for long. When she came out, she had a takeaway cup of coffee in her hand, and again she glanced up and down the street.

  This time, however, she zeroed in on a police officer approaching from the opposite direction. She engaged in a brief conversation with the cop, then walked quickly away. Farnham increased his pace to catch her, but he had only gone a few steps when the police officer confronted him on the sidewalk. The cop demanded to know who Farnham was and why he was following a young woman on the street, and while the American agent made loud protestations, Abbey disappeared from view around the next curve.

  Bourne smiled. The woman was smart and resourceful. She’d spotted the tail. By the time Farnham got free of the cop, he had to run to locate her again, but he was too late. Bourne kept Farnham in sight as the Treadstone agent hurried to the next intersection, where several streets came together in a busy jumble of cars and people. There was no sign of Abbey Laurent.

  As Jason watched, Farnham pulled out his phone to call in a report. Less than five minutes later, a blue Mercedes whipped along the busy street and stopped beside him, and the agent climbed into the passenger seat. The car sped off. Bourne waited to see what would happen next. As soon as the car disappeared, he spotted Abbey emerging from her hiding place on a grassy slope above the Côte de la Fabrique, where she’d been watching the whole thing.

  Definitely smart.

  With a toss of her deep red hair, Abbey joined the people on the street. Jason gave her plenty of space, but she walked with more assurance now, as if she were confident that she’d shaken the people pursuing her. Her route took her sharply uphill past the Morrin Centre, and eventually she reached Rue d’Auteuil near Esplanade Park, only a couple of blocks from the offices of The Fort. As he had the previous night, Jason stayed in the park, rather than on the street, and he shadowed Abbey until she reached the building where the magazine was housed. She observed the broken window on the front door, and the sight obviously unnerved her. She turned around, suspicious again, and made a careful review of the area, as if she could feel his eyes. Then she went inside.

  Bourne waited. There was nothing else to do. Waiting was the real art of surveillance. He bought a newspaper; he bought coffee; he found a bench near the Boer War monument, where the trees sheltered him. The morning was cold but bright, and he wore sunglasses. From where he was, he could see the building doors. Whenever Abbey came outside again, he’d spot her.

  Soon he had company on the stakeout. The blue Mercedes returned and pulled into a parking place with a similar vantage on Abbey Laurent’s building. Someone had obviously reported to Treadstone that she’d arrived at The Fort. Two men got out of the Mercedes. One was Farnham; the other was an agent who Bourne didn’t recognize. Farnham took the car keys, and the other agent walked away down the cobblestoned street, leaving Farnham alone to take the first shift. Jason watched the young operative get behind the wheel of the Mercedes. The driver’s window was open, and he could see the occasional cloud of cigarette smoke drift into the air.

  The morning passed slowly.

  A few people came and went from the building, but Abbey stayed inside. Farnham didn’t leave the car, and he smoked his way through half a pack of cigarettes as he sat there. Bourne eyed the street for other surveillance, but he didn’t see anyone else covering the neighborhood. It seemed to be just the two of them.

  Then, around twelve-thirty, a newcomer attracted his attention. A woman panhandler shuffled down the north side of Rue d’Auteuil, cupping her palm at everyone she passed and demanding change. Sh
e wore a multicolored skirt that draped to her ankles and a heavy crocheted black sweater that was too long for her arms. Her thick black hair fell to the middle of her back, with half a dozen red plastic butterflies braided into the strands. She wore round yellow glasses that kept slipping down her nose. Her back was hunched. When she got to the corner, she stopped, accosting every pedestrian who passed her and swearing at those who didn’t give her money.

  “Cochon riche! Est-ce que je suis trop sale pour vous?”

  The panhandler noticed Farnham in the Mercedes, and with a snort of derision, she approached the car. Bourne saw her stuff her left hand inside the open window. The encounter didn’t last long, no more than a few seconds, and then the woman backed away with another curse and disappeared around the corner onto Rue Saint-Louis.

  Maybe it was an innocent exchange. Maybe not.

  Had she passed Farnham a message?

  Jason didn’t have time to think about it, because only a couple of minutes later, Abbey Laurent finally reappeared. She turned right out of the building along Rue Saint-Louis, and her pace was quick, as if she needed to get somewhere. Bourne waited for the Treadstone agent in the Mercedes to take up the chase, but the man made no move to get out of the car.

  Why not?

  There was no way Farnham could have missed her, and yet he was letting her go. Seconds passed. Then a minute. Then two.

  Something was wrong.

  Bourne headed toward the Mercedes. Inside the car, Farnham still hadn’t moved. Bourne listened for the sound of the man talking on the phone, reporting Abbey’s position to another agent, but there was no noise from the interior. Jason came up slowly on the open window. If Farnham saw Bourne, he’d recognize him, but it couldn’t be helped. He reached the door of the sedan and shot a quick glance at the Treadstone agent, and then he froze where he was.

  Farnham’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.

  Jason leaned inside the car window. He pulled aside the flap of Farnham’s suit coat and saw a slit in the man’s white shirt directly over his heart and a bloodstain spreading across the fabric.

  It was a perfect, precise attack, a single killing thrust with a knife through the ribs and into the heart and lungs.

  The panhandler was an assassin.

  And now she was after Abbey Laurent.

  Bourne spun away from the Mercedes and into Rue Saint-Louis, which was jammed with people taking their lunch breaks. Time had passed since he’d seen Abbey leave. Too much time. He’d let her get too far ahead of him. Looking down the sidewalk, he couldn’t pick her out, and he half walked, half ran, shoving his way through the crowd and offering excuses in French.

  Where was she?

  He hurried under the yellow awnings of the quaint stone buildings. Canadian flags snapped over his head. A backup of cars filled the street. He passed doorway after doorway of gift shops, restaurants, and hotels, the volume of people thickening as he neared the tourist heart of the city. Still he couldn’t find Abbey, and by now she could be anywhere. She could already be dying in a doorway on one of the side streets, a knife in her chest.

  Ahead of him, the street ended in the shadows of Château Frontenac. The statue of Champlain rose over the plaza.

  There!

  Just for an instant, he spotted a woman darting between the stopped cars, and he saw a flash of red and blue as she passed out of sight. It was her. Bourne ran again, and two blocks later, the street opened into the wide-open plaza that led to the Dufferin Terrace. The castle-like walls of the hotel loomed over his head. Hundreds of people milled in the square, and Abbey was lost in the crowd.

  He didn’t like it. Crowds were dangerous. People squeezed together, people shouting and laughing, people bumping into each other. One collision was all the killer needed to plunge in the knife. No one would see a thing.

  Bourne pushed people aside, going faster and faster through the plaza. The sun was blinding, and the bodies around him were a blur of motion. Men and women passed back and forth in his line of sight, blocking his view. His senses shot into overdrive, feeding him information faster than his brain could process it. Every time he saw red—a red T-shirt, a red balloon, a red backpack—he froze to see if it was Abbey Laurent. But he couldn’t find her. Then his eyes locked onto a familiar flash of color. Not red. This was a quick, swirling rainbow of fabric. The panhandler. He recognized her multicolored skirt, the butterflies in her hair, her black sweater—a sweater in which she had a bloody knife secured in one of the sleeves. The woman wasn’t shuffling anymore, and her back was no longer hunched. She moved through the crowd with deadly intent. As Bourne watched, she disappeared through glass doors that led into the funicular connecting the upper and lower towns of Quebec City.

  She was following Abbey.

  He used a gap in the crowd to bolt for the green-and-white building with the huge sign overhead: Funiculaire. When he got there, he wrenched open the glass door and shoved past the people in front of him to get down the stairs. Half a dozen people were already waiting for the next car to take them down the sharp slope to the Basse-Ville. He saw the back of Abbey’s head; she was at the front, ready to board as the doors opened. Four people back, eyes focused like a laser on Abbey Laurent, was the panhandler, with her hands invisible inside the long arms of her sweater.

  One couple was ahead of Jason in the ticket queue. An American in a Chicago Cubs jacket hunted for coins to pay the fare for him and his wife. Jason saw one of the funicular cars rising into view, approaching the station. He was running out of time. When the doors opened, Abbey and the others would board, and the funicular car would descend the cliffside. By the time it got to the bottom, she would have a knife wound in her heart, and her lungs would be filling with blood.

  “Non, monsieur, sept, sept,” the ticket clerk told the American. “Seven. It is seven dollars for the two of you.”

  “Seven dollars? That’s outrageous!” The man turned to his wife. “I think we should walk. For seven bucks? Let’s take the stairs.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Chuck, just pay the man, will you? My feet are tired as it is.”

  Grumbling, the man in the Cubs jacket handed over a twenty-dollar Canadian bill.

  While the clerk dug in the drawer for change, the doors of the funicular opened. The people inside disembarked. When the car was empty, Jason saw Abbey Laurent walk through the open doors to the far side and stand in front of the windows. The car was small. People squeezed in behind her. Bourne saw the panhandler nudging toward the front, positioning herself for the kill.

  Finally, the couple in front of him finished paying. Jason threw a five-dollar bill down without waiting for change. He headed for the turnstile that led to the funicular, but the American couple blocked his way.

  “It’s crowded,” the man told his wife, pointing at the car. “Look at how many people are on there. Let’s just wait for the next one.”

  “There’s plenty of room.”

  “But if we’re not at the front, we can’t take pictures.”

  Bourne veered around them, ignoring the couple’s protests. He slammed through the turnstile and threw himself onto the funicular just as the doors closed behind him. No one noticed his arrival. They were all staring at the panorama of the old town spread out below them and the deep blue water of the St. Lawrence River beyond the port. The people stood shoulder to shoulder in the tight warm space, which felt like an oversized phone booth.

  He saw Abbey in front of the glass. The panhandler was immediately behind her. The woman’s black sleeves covered her hands, except for a glimpse of her fingertips. Jason could see that her fingernails were stained with blood.

  The car started down the cliff.

  Two hundred feet below them, pedestrians dotted the streets of the old town, and boats traversed the river. The ride wouldn’t take long. One minute, no more. Jason knew when the attack would come. At
the exact moment when the doors opened at the bottom and the people shoved against each other to get out, there would be one quick thrust of the knife. No one would see it happen. The panhandler would maneuver calmly around her and escape as Abbey stood frozen in place. Abbey wouldn’t even know what had happened; she’d take a few steps and feel only the odd, sharp pain in her back and find herself struggling to breathe. By the time she collapsed, by the time she died, the woman who’d killed her would have vanished into the streets of the Basse-Ville.

  Jason squeezed to the side of the car. He muscled past a woman and her child, using his shoulder to force them away. The mother shot him an angry look and murmured, “Très impoli.” The seconds ticked by as he nudged closer, until his breath was practically on the panhandler’s neck. He kept his eyes locked on her left arm, and the panhandler kept her eyes locked on Abbey Laurent directly in front of her.

  The roofs of the old town grew closer and larger.

  Bourne saw the assassin slowly bring up her arm. Her hand, cloaked by the sleeve of her sweater, was positioned below Abbey’s left shoulder blade, where the knife could slide into her back. As soon as the doors slid open, she would thrust forward and bump hard against Abbey with an apology. “Excusez-moi!”

  The knife would go in and out.

  Jason held his breath. The funicular car shuddered as it bumped into place. He timed his strike, and as the doors began to open, he pinched the panhandler’s elbow bone hard, driving his fingers deep into her pressure points, freezing all sensation. The panhandler screeched in pain, and Bourne heard a metallic clatter as the knife dropped from her limp hand to the floor of the car. Her neck jerked around, her face screwed up in rage, and then her eyes widened as she saw Bourne not even six inches away.

  She knew him.

  The panhandler’s mouth twisted into a snarl. Her body swung all the way around, and her right hand came up with a small pistol. He grabbed her wrist, keeping the gun away, and with the heel of his other hand, he snapped her chin back and drove her head into the steel frame of the funicular car.