Jason’s mind spun as he tried to process the revelations. He heard the words, but he couldn’t understand them. Benoit was an experienced agent. He was playing with his head, using lies to throw him off balance. If Jason lost his concentration for even a moment, he and Abbey would both be dead.
Shoot him!
“I’m not Medusa,” Bourne said. “I never was.”
“You shot Congresswoman Ortiz.”
“They framed me.”
“Nash says the evidence points to you.”
“I’m sure it does,” Jason agreed. “That’s what Medusa wanted. Go ahead, Benoit. Kill me. Do their bidding. But let Abbey go.”
“I can’t do that.”
But still Benoit didn’t pull the trigger. He didn’t fire. The standoff continued, guns pointed at each other, death inevitable. There was no way out for any of them. This would end only one way, with three bodies on the floor.
Benoit is Treadstone!
Nova is dead because of him! Shoot him!
But Jason didn’t pull the trigger, either. He aimed down the barrel at Benoit’s dark face, a face he’d known for years, and he couldn’t do it.
“Jason.”
Abbey called softly to him. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t take his eyes away from Benoit, but he heard her voice, which was measured and unemotional. He no longer heard panic or tears. She was on her knees, about to die, but she didn’t sound afraid.
“Jason, this man doesn’t want to kill us.”
Bourne barely shook his head to tell her she was wrong. He stared at Benoit, and Benoit stared back. Their whole history flashed through his mind. “You don’t know him, Abbey. He’s Treadstone. He’s a killer. He does what he’s told. Just like me.”
“He wants to believe you,” she insisted.
“No, he wants me to put the gun down. That’s all. Then he’ll kill us both, and he gets out of here alive.”
“Jason, if that was his plan, I’d already be dead. He could have killed me the instant I answered the door, but he didn’t. He could have shot me and gone to the shower and shot you. That’s what a cold-blooded assassin would have done. He should have been in and out of this room in thirty seconds. Instead, he waited. He made me go on my knees, and he waited for you to come out here. He knew you’d have a gun. He knew he was giving you the chance to kill him, too. He wants the truth.”
Bourne faltered. He looked for confirmation in Benoit’s face, but the man gave nothing away. “You’re wrong.”
“No, I’m not. Jason, if this was your assignment, if you were here to kill the two of us, what would you have done?”
He hesitated, because it was true. Benoit’s actions made no sense. They were the opposite of everything Treadstone had trained them to do. Delay is your enemy. Delay means failure. Abbey should have been dead on the floor five seconds after Benoit entered the apartment, and Jason should have been dead another ten seconds after that. By now, Benoit should be back on the New York streets, his job done.
Instead, he was still here, with Jason aiming a gun at him. Benoit knew that waiting was the equivalent of signing his own death warrant, but he’d done it anyway.
Why?
“Jason, you’re not the man he thinks you are,” Abbey said. “Prove it to him.”
“How?”
“Put down your gun,” she said.
“That’s insane.”
“It’s not. You have to take a leap of faith. He already took his, Jason. Don’t you see? We’re still alive because he let us live. You have to trust him, too.”
Jason studied the man. “Is that true, Benoit?”
The Treadstone agent didn’t say a word. He was a poker player, not showing his hand, because he couldn’t. That was part of the test.
Slowly, reluctantly, Jason lowered his arm. He knelt, putting his pistol on the floor, and with one tap of his boot, he kicked it away across the carpet. Then he put both of his hands in the air, surrendering. He waited through the next tense, excruciating moment, unsure if the bullets would follow. First Abbey, then him. If this had all been a game, then Benoit would want him to see Abbey die first.
Instead, Benoit removed the gun from Abbey’s head and holstered it under his shoulder. He holstered the other gun, too, behind his back. Abbey sprang off her knees and ran across the room and threw her arms around Bourne.
“Oh, my God!” she murmured. “Oh, Jason.”
He held on to her tightly, enjoying her warmth. She kissed his cheek and then kissed his lips. On the opposite side of the room, a grin creased Benoit’s face.
“Jesus Christ, Bourne, I really thought you were going to make me kill you.”
“I’m damn glad you didn’t, but what are you going to tell Nash?”
Benoit shrugged. “I’ll tell him he’s a stubborn ass, and he nearly lost one of his best agents. Two, actually, since I didn’t figure I’d get out of here alive. We can talk to him together if you’re willing. I can set up a meeting. But it has to be off the grid. I wasn’t lying. Nash literally doesn’t know who to trust, even inside Treadstone.”
“There’s something I need to know first,” Bourne said.
The other agent frowned. “Nova?”
“Yes. You said you didn’t want to believe I’d turned, and neither did Nova. What the hell does that mean? Nova was already out of Treadstone. She was forced out after the operation in London went bad. Why would she still have been in touch with anyone inside the agency?”
Benoit hesitated. “This should come from Nash, not me.”
“I need to know the truth, old friend.”
Benoit ran his hands through his choppy black hair. “All right. You’re right, you do deserve to know the truth. I told Nash that. The fact is, Medusa has been running rings around all of the intelligence agencies. We haven’t been able to get close to them. So Nash decided to run a sting. Off the books, unauthorized. Nova was the sting.”
Bourne shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Nash didn’t trust many people, but he trusted Nova. And me. For what it’s worth, we both said he should bring you in, too, but he was concerned about the damage from your memory loss. He thought it made you vulnerable. So he kept you out of the loop. The operation involved the three of us, that’s all. Nova, Nash, me. Nash didn’t even tell Director Shaw about it. There was no assignment in London that went bad. That was a ruse. We piggybacked on top of an industrial accident and put out the word in the intelligence community that it was a big Treadstone failure. We put the blame squarely on Nova. Not long after that, we pushed her out in a very public way. We wanted everyone to know she was damaged goods. Untouchable.”
“For God’s sake, why?” Bourne asked.
“Because we needed to give her a convincing cover story. We wanted to put an enormously talented agent on the street, bitter and unemployable. Don’t you see? The whole idea was to get Medusa to reach out to her. To recruit her. We’d finally have one of our own people inside their network. That was how Nash planned to destroy them.”
Jason shook his head in disbelief.
Suddenly, he had no idea whether anything Nova had told him was true. She’d lied. She’d concealed her real mission. She’d left him in the dark.
She’d told him she was in love with him.
Was that a lie, too?
“Did Medusa take the bait?” he asked.
“They did. That’s why Nova was in Las Vegas. That’s where they brought her for recruitment. She bought a house near the airport to run the operation undercover, and she thought she was in. She thought they trusted her. But then something changed. She began to get nervous; she began to worry that her cover was blown. That somehow they’d figured out she was a mole. We didn’t know how it happened, or who could have exposed her, but Nash thought you were the prime suspect. You and Nova were involved. Who
knew what information you’d been able to glean about the operation without her knowing it? So I was in town to check you out. For what it’s worth, Nova never wavered. She never had any doubts about you. She was afraid that you were the one who was in danger.”
“Instead, Charles Hackman got to her first,” Jason said.
“Yes. I’m sorry. Nova told Nash that she’d heard some big operation was planned. She heard a reference to the Lucky Nickel. That’s why he was in town. To prevent whatever was going to happen. But we were all too late.”
Bourne said nothing more. Abbey put her warm hands on his face. “Jason? Are you okay?”
“The last eighteen months have been a lie,” he said, trying to process the deception, as well as his own mistakes. “Nothing I believed was true. I blamed Treadstone for killing Nova. I was chasing the wrong enemy.”
“That’s not true,” she reminded him. “You’ve been after Medusa all along. So was Nova. And now you know where to go to get them.”
“Las Vegas,” Jason said.
“We should get out of here,” Benoit interjected. “If we know about this place, it’s likely that Medusa does, too. I’d rather not stay here any longer than we need to.”
“Agreed.”
Jason crossed the room to retrieve his gun. Benoit headed for the apartment door from the opposite direction. In a wild accident of timing, they both passed across the line of sight of the window at the exact same moment.
The glass shattered.
The nighttime air roared in, along with a cloud of razor-sharp fragments.
The sniper’s bullet meant for Bourne went into the base of Benoit’s skull, which exploded with blood. As Jason threw himself down and Abbey screamed, Benoit collapsed. He was dead before his body hit the floor.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE head of Medusa pulled his black roller bag into the men’s room on Concourse C at Dulles International Airport. He was alone inside. Near the entrance, tape had been strung to close off the restroom, and a man in a dark suit with an earpiece watched to make sure no one entered behind him.
This was Washington, D.C. No one questioned things like that.
He stood in front of the urinal with his hands on his hips, and as he did, his phone rang in his pocket. He knew who was calling; very few people had this number. He tapped the earbud in his left ear to take the call.
“Yes?”
“I’m afraid it’s bad news.”
“That’s not the report I expect to get from you, Shirl.”
He was the only man on the planet who called her anything but Miss Shirley without fear of punishment.
“Yes, sir. I apologize.”
“Why did you fail?”
“Treadstone interfered. One of their agents was in the room to confront Bourne. I hoped he would do the work for us and kill them both, but he didn’t. Instead, he crossed my line of fire as I took the shot on Bourne, and I hit him. There was no chance for a follow-up shot. I’m afraid Bourne and the woman are both gone. They’re on the run.”
“That’s extremely unfortunate.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll be looking for tech signatures to see where they go next. However, I don’t believe they have any information that would threaten us.”
“This is Bourne. Don’t be so sure.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve made certain that the evidence in the shooting points to him. Treadstone will still believe he’s working for us.”
“Anything else, Shirl?”
“I’ve pulled Peter Restak out of New York, per your request.”
He could hear in her voice that there was more to the story. “But?”
“Well, it was a close call. Restak torched his apartment, so there was no evidence left behind, but Bourne was there and nearly captured him. Fortunately, Restak was able to get away. He’s safely on the way to Las Vegas now.”
“Maybe I was wrong,” the head of Medusa mused. “Maybe I should have had you eliminate Restak, rather than evacuate him.”
“His skills are valuable in our operations,” Miss Shirley reminded him. “Once we have complete access to the Prescix code, I expect Restak to lead our team in correlating it with the data from the hack. We need him.”
“That being the case, the risk of his capture was unacceptable. You didn’t move fast enough, Shirl.”
“No, sir.”
“Is this going to be a habit with you?”
“No, sir. I kept Restak in town to help me set up the shoot. That was a mistake. I should have sent him away immediately.”
“Don’t be coy with me. You kept him in town to have sex with him. Correct?”
Miss Shirley hesitated on the phone. “Yes, sir.”
“I indulge your appetites, Shirl, but if this is going to interfere with your work, then we have a problem.”
“It won’t be a problem.”
“Are you sure? Are you letting Bourne go free because you want to keep him for yourself? Is that why you missed?”
“No, sir. That had nothing to do with it. Although I confess I wouldn’t mind getting rid of that little bitch he’s running with.”
The head of Medusa shook his head. “Stay focused, Shirl. We’re at a critical juncture, the culmination of years of planning. Prescix is nearly ours. That means we’re ready to take the next step against the tech cabal. You need to lead the operation. That’s our priority.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t disappoint me again.”
“No, sir.”
He ended the call.
When he glanced to his right, he saw that another man had taken up a position at the urinal next to him, as planned. The man was in his sixties, tall and morbidly obese, with a crown of white hair, a large bulbous nose, and several chins. He wore a brown suit that hung loosely on him despite his size. When he spoke, his accented voice sounded like he had a mouthful of oatmeal.
“Miss Shirley?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
The man guffawed. “What an interesting woman! I don’t mind telling you, I’d love to see what that one is like in bed.”
“She’d kill you, Fyodor.”
“Ah, but what a way to go. Besides, I have more stamina than you think.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Fyodor shook his hips and unleashed a stream of urine that roared like Niagara Falls. Russian men were oddly proud of their ability to piss. Fyodor Mikhailov was the number two man in the Russian embassy, and as such, he had the diplomatic clearance to travel all over the world. However, his real role was as the head of Russian interference operations mounted against the United States and Europe.
He was also a disgusting human being, crude and cruel, and the head of Medusa detested him. But for now, Fyodor and the Russians were a means to an end.
“So what is the update, my friend?” Fyodor asked. “Are we finally going to see a return on our sizable investment in your operations?”
“Everything is proceeding according to schedule. Prescix will be ours very soon. The government is doing their part, too. The proposed regulatory framework laid out in the Ortiz legislation plays right into our hands.”
“And the tech cabal?”
“We expect to move on them in days. At that point, we’ll have everything we want. Psycho-profiling, manufactured news, deepfake videos, online bots customized to an individual’s background. Hackman showed us the extent of what was possible. Soon we’ll be able to manipulate and radicalize people en masse. Social debates. Legislation. Elections. Violence.”
Fyodor finished his work at the urinal and zipped himself up. “They’ll be so busy hating each other they won’t even notice as we begin reclaiming our lost territories.”
“Exactly.”
“Chaos is only the beginning, my friend. It’s not enough to wound the beast. That can make him more d
angerous when he recovers. No, we must split him apart, tear him down, and then start rebuilding from the ashes. Civil war. Never forget our goal, my friend. All this violence must lead to civil war. That’s the whole point of the conspiracy.”
“We’re well on our way.”
A broad grin broke across Fyodor’s face. “You do good work. I knew it as soon as we met all those years ago. I will share my positive report in Moscow.”
“Thank you, Fyodor. I’m honored.”
I can’t wait to let Miss Shirley kill you, you old fool, the head of Medusa thought. The only thing that will rise from the ashes is a new world led by us. No countries. No governments. Just technology. The future is not Russia, Fyodor. The future is Medusa.
The two men turned around and went to the row of sinks. Fyodor stood in amusement as the head of Medusa carefully used soap and water on his hands. After he was done, the Russian casually stuck out his own unwashed hand to be shaken. It was a reminder of who was still the boss.
“What about Jason Bourne?” Fyodor asked as they shook hands. “I understand you’ve failed to remove him despite several attempts. Is that a concern?”
“Don’t worry about Bourne,” the head of Medusa replied. “It’s just a matter of time before we take him down. He’s not a threat to our plans.”
PART THREE
TWENTY-SIX
AFTER driving straight through out of New York for twenty-four hours, Jason and Abbey finally took a break at a motel off I-20 near Amarillo, Texas. They’d stopped only for gas and to visit a safe-deposit box at a bank in D.C., where Jason retrieved cash, a driver’s license and passport under a different name, and another gun. By midnight, they were still twelve hours from Las Vegas, and they needed sleep.
He got them a room with two beds, close enough to the stairs that he could hear anyone coming their way. He left the window open, letting in warm, sticky air and the buzz of mosquitoes. Neither of them bothered to undress. They simply stretched out on top of the blankets and tried to clear their minds. But an hour later, in the deep darkness, Jason was still awake, and he could tell from the sound of Abbey’s breathing in the other bed that she was awake, too.
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