Gattor was definitely the one they wanted.
All five of them followed. The three men on the west side of Seventh stayed half a block behind the lawyer, while the two women kept pace on the east side of the street. Jason sprang to his feet and fell in a few steps behind them. Halfway down the block, Gattor veered to the other side of Seventh, and the three men did the same. The lawyer never looked back, not seeing the five thugs in his wake. In a gap between the traffic, Gattor hurried past the Stonewall monument and disappeared down the steps into the Christopher Street subway station.
As soon as the lawyer was out of sight, the five young people who were following him donned black bandanas and masks. Two produced knives from their pockets; two had chains; one had a length of lead pipe. They ran for the subway. Jason held back until the five of them had reached the steps, then ran to catch up. Rainwater poured down the stairs into the station, and a dank smell billowed from the underground. As he entered the station, Jason could see Gattor heading through the turnstile toward the northbound tracks. Four of the five masked attackers took off in the same direction, but the fifth was slow. Jason slid out his gun and came up behind him and cracked the barrel sharply over the thug’s skull. The bald man with the neck tattoos crumpled to the ground, and Jason pocketed his gun again and jumped the turnstile to follow the others.
He approached the bottom of the steps cautiously. Ahead of him, on the northbound platform, Carson Gattor checked the station clocks as he waited for the number 1 train. The tiled walkway was brightly lit, but the tracks between the platforms were dark, divided by rows of green steel I-beams. Jason saw four black-clad aggressors converging on Gattor. The lawyer was preoccupied and didn’t even notice them until they were practically in his face. Then, when he spotted the bandanas and masks, his expression twisted with confusion and fear, and he backed away down the platform. But there was nowhere for him to go.
“Look what we have here!” the Asian man shouted from behind his mask. “A piece-of-shit white nationalist who thinks he can hide behind his nice suit. Hey, Nazi, you want us to show you what we do to fascist pigs?”
Gattor’s eyes widened. He looked over his shoulder at the tracks, but there was no train coming to give him an escape. “What are you talking about? You’re wrong! Jesus, you’re wrong!”
“You think you get a free pass because you’re a lawyer? You defend fascists. You defend Nazis. That makes you one of them.”
“I don’t! I’m not!”
But the Asian thug’s arm shot out, whipping a two-foot length of chain through the air. Gattor didn’t have time to duck. The chain hit him across the side of the head, opening up a huge cut that sprayed blood onto the platform floor. The second of the four thugs moved in immediately, punching the lawyer in the mouth with a fist hardened by a ring of brass knuckles. Gattor screamed, coughing out blood and teeth.
Bourne leaped for the nearest of the four assailants. It was one of the two heavy-set women, and he threw her head against a steel I-beam, where she groaned and collapsed, unconscious. The attackers spotted the new threat behind them, and two of them shifted their focus from Gattor to Bourne. One was the other woman; the other was the man with green streaks like lightning bolts through his messy hair. With a knife outstretched, the skinny man jabbed at Jason, who dodged the assault and used the heel of his fist to rap the man’s head sideways. Dizzied, the man stumbled, and Jason lashed out with his boot to kick the man off the platform onto the train tracks.
With Jason’s back turned, the woman with the Guy Fawkes mask unleashed a rebel scream and leaped at him with a lead pipe held high over her head. Jason twisted as she swung it down, but the blow landed hard on his shoulder, freezing it and shocking his brain with pain. The woman aimed for his head, but he grabbed her and wrestled her to the ground. He slammed her head against the platform floor, but she shook off the impact and fought back with insane passion, using her fingernails like blades on his back. Her head rose off the ground, and he had to rear back as she chomped her teeth and tried to bite his face. He drove his knee into her stomach, making her gasp, and then he punched her head down again, once, twice, three times. Finally, her eyes rolled back, and she lost consciousness.
Jason shoved himself off the woman and stood up, trying to keep his balance. He shook life back into his left arm. Twenty feet away, the Asian man stood over Gattor, who lay motionless on the ground. With the chain in his hand, the assailant lashed the lawyer repeatedly around the head, and there was so much blood now that Gattor’s face was unrecognizable.
“Stop!” Bourne shouted.
The Asian man saw Jason coming toward him. His eyes gleamed with something like amusement. Above his chin beard, his mouth broke into a coffee-brown grin. The chain dropped from his fingers and rattled to the platform floor. In one swift motion, the man dug a pistol out of a holster at his back and pointed the gun at Carson Gattor. His finger jerked, and a bullet burned into the lawyer’s throat.
Medusa!
Bourne already had his own gun back in his hand, and as the Asian swung the pistol around, Jason squatted and squeezed off a single shot that caught the Asian man between the eyes. The man’s body dropped on top of the dead lawyer.
Behind him, Jason heard running footsteps. He turned and saw the thug with the green-streaked hair climbing out of the well of the train tracks and staggering in a zigzag fashion for the platform stairs. Bourne charged after him. Just as the man got to the steps, Jason took him down hard against the concrete. Ignoring the pain in his own shoulder, he grabbed the man and wrenched him onto his back and shoved the barrel of his gun into the man’s forehead.
“Who sent you?”
The man spoke between bloody lips. “Nobody sent me.”
“You’re lying. You’re Medusa.”
“What the hell’s that? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“The Asian. The one with the gun. Who was he? What was his name?”
“His profile said his name was Cho. I never met him before!”
“Profile? What profile?”
“His Prescix profile. We got the alert that some white-power lawyer was in the neighborhood and a few of us got together to rough him up. There weren’t supposed to be guns. We weren’t going to kill him, just beat the shit out of him!”
Jason heard police sirens getting closer outside the station. He didn’t have much time. He dug in the man’s pocket until he found his phone. “Show me.”
The man tapped on the phone with one finger to unlock it, and he selected an app that opened with a black screen and a close-up photograph of a human eye. Inside the iris, a single gold word appeared letter by letter.
PRESCIX
When the intro screen dissolved, Jason saw a local map and a list of users scrolling down the right side of the phone. In the news timeline was a photograph of Carson Gattor, with a flashing message in red below the picture.
Action Alert! Fascist Lawyer in the Village!
“You attacked a stranger because an app told you to?”
“Hey, you bring that white-power shit around here, you pay the price,” the man said.
“Did you know any of the others who were with you?” Jason asked.
“Nah. Just their profiles.”
Bourne shook his head. He still had nothing.
He heard screaming behind him as a train unloaded at the station and the arriving passengers spotted the bodies on the platform. It was time to go. With a quick snap of his gun, he knocked out the man on the steps, and then he climbed over him and took the stairs back to the station, which was a frenzy of panic. He calmly pulled his Islanders jersey over his head and stuffed it into a trash can.
Then he left the station into the rain just as he saw the first of the police cars arriving.
NINETEEN
JASON slid into a seat across from Abbey at the all-night bistro near Gramercy Park. She had a plate of eggs in front of her, but she’d left it untouched. Her face bloomed with relief when s
he saw him.
“Oh, my God! I was so worried!” She looked around the mostly empty restaurant and lowered her voice. “I heard people talking about a shooting at the subway in the Village. Was that you?”
“Let’s not talk about it here.”
He twisted his head to check the street, and a shiver of pain shot up his neck. Abbey noticed the grimace on his face.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, but we need to get out of sight. There’s a safe house a block away we can use. It’s run by the British. Nova knew about it.”
“Okay.”
“Put your hoodie up when we go. I don’t want your face on any street cameras.”
She nodded quietly. Before pulling up the hood, she combed her fingers through her hair in a gesture that was unconsciously sensual. The look she achieved was messy and perfect. Her black bangs dipped over her forehead, and he could see hints of red among the black. Her mouth was serious now, just her lips pressed softly together. Her wide dark eyes stared across the table at him, and he found it hard to look away from her face.
Then she brought the hood gently over her head. “That okay?”
“Yes. Fine.”
The two of them left the restaurant and walked down Twentieth Street in the rain. Neither one of them said a word, but he could feel something strange happening between them. The narrow street was dark, but lights glowed in the apartments overhead. A car passed, kicking up spray without slowing down. When they reached the park, he steered her next to the wrought-iron fence. Trees covered them and held back some of the downpour. Parked cars filled every spot, and he watched for any sign that someone was watching the area. He didn’t think that anyone at Treadstone knew about this safe house, but he couldn’t be sure.
The twenty-story building was at the end of the block.
“Keep your head down when we go inside,” Bourne told her. “Don’t look at the man at the desk.”
He buzzed for entry. When the guard came on the intercom to query him, he used a name that was supposed to give him access to the building, any day, any time. After a tense moment of waiting, the door opened. Jason slipped inside, keeping Abbey behind him, and went over to the man at the desk. He repeated the name and laid out three thousand dollars in cash, which he hoped would buy them anonymity.
“No records,” Jason told him. “We’re not here. Okay?”
The man said nothing, but he took the money and handed over a key. Jason pocketed it and guided Abbey to the elevator. No one else was in the lobby. When the elevator doors opened, he went first, conscious of the camera looking down at them. He kept his head down and turned around, only to see Abbey raising her hands toward her hoodie to slip it down. Immediately, he moved toward her and took hold of both of her hands to stop her. He meant nothing personal by touching her. This was about keeping them safe, nothing else.
But that was a lie.
He bent down close to her. She tilted her chin, meeting his eyes. The message passing between them was unmistakable. Her lips moved and parted, inviting him, and he put his mouth on hers. The kiss started soft and slow, then grew intense. Their fingers were still laced together, and she pressed forward with her body against his. As she did, the hoodie slipped down, but he didn’t notice. They stayed that way, their lips exploring each other, until the elevator doors opened on the fourteenth floor.
He let go of her hands. Abbey backed up, embarrassed, a flush on her face. They got out of the elevator and walked silently to the end of the hall, where the room was. He undid the lock and murmured, “Stay here while I make sure it’s clear.”
Her eyes stared at the floor. “Okay.”
Jason went into the one-bedroom apartment. Nothing had changed, not the paint, the furniture, the curtains. It was the same as it had been when he was here with Nova. He went back to the door and held it open so that Abbey could come inside. He closed the door behind her and did the dead bolt.
“Are we safe here?” she asked softly.
“I think so.”
“Good.”
“Do you want anything? They usually keep the fridge stocked.”
“No, thanks.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch. You can have the bed.”
“Okay.”
“Abbey, listen, I’m sorry.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets. “Don’t be. You got the signal right.”
“It’s better if nothing happens between us.”
“Definitely,” she replied. “Definitely better. Sure.”
“I kill people,” Jason said. “Don’t forget that.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” She went to the window and looked out at the lights of the city. “Did you kill Carson?”
“It wasn’t me. But he’s dead.”
“Medusa?”
Jason nodded. “One of them was definitely Medusa. His job was to make sure Gattor died. The rest, I don’t think so.”
“Then who were they? Why were they after him?”
He sat down at the apartment’s dinette table and pulled out the phone he’d taken from the last of the assailants. Abbey sat down next to him, and she pulled her chair close enough that their legs brushed together. He unlocked the phone using the code he’d seen the man enter, and he opened the app for the Prescix software.
As he scrolled through the man’s news feed, Abbey whistled, seeing the photos and articles about Carson Gattor. “He was a lawyer for white power groups? I never would have guessed that.”
“That’s the thing, I don’t think he was,” Bourne replied. “These articles are all deepfakes. So are the photos. This incident was manipulated. Someone knew where Carson was going, and they put him in the crosshairs for a bunch of anti-fascist thugs who love to go around beating up Nazis. Look at these posts. The software targeted these people, fed them sophisticated misinformation, and sent them after Gattor. And then Medusa included one of their own just to make sure they got the result they wanted. Gattor dead.”
“Software can do all that?” Abbey asked.
“Apparently so. With the right code and the right people pulling the strings.”
“Prescix,” she murmured. “Congresswoman Ortiz talked about Prescix. Are they part of Medusa?”
“I don’t know. Medusa obviously has people who can hack parts of the Prescix system.”
“There was a news station on TV in the cab. A top exec at Prescix was found murdered in Las Vegas today.”
“Whatever Medusa is planning, they’re moving forward,” he said.
“But what do we do now? Carson was our only link to Medusa, and now he’s dead.”
Bourne frowned. “I know. Medusa outplayed us.”
Abbey looked deep in thought, and he found himself unsettled by how attractive she was. Then she took the assailant’s phone out of his hands and reopened the Prescix software. “Hang on a minute, Jason. Don’t be so sure.”
“What do you mean?”
She scrolled to the very end of the thread and then turned the phone around for Jason to see. “Look at this last photo of Carson. The one they posted to make sure the thugs could find him. It was taken at Villiers. Medusa was there.”
He studied the phone and saw that she was right. The photograph showed Carson Gattor in the wine bar, his coat over his arm, his wineglass in his hand. The lawyer looked down at the hidden camera without realizing it was there.
“Let’s go through the photos you took outside the bar,” Jason said. “Maybe we can figure out who was watching Gattor.”
Again they leaned next to each other, both of them conscious of their closeness. Abbey took her phone from her pocket and scrolled slowly through the dozens of photographs she’d taken in a burst as she walked past the wine bar. The first time through they found nothing, but then Bourne reexamined the angle of the photo in the Prescix post. He opened up Abbey’s pictures again.
“The man at that table with his laptop open. See how Carson is looking down? The person who took it was sea
ted. It’s him. He used the laptop to grab the photo and post it to Prescix.”
Abbey enlarged the photograph of the man in the wine bar, who didn’t look older than thirty. It was impossible to tell how tall he was, and the picture she’d taken was in profile, but they could see a long, slim nose, the untrimmed line of his beard creeping down his neck, and his sandy-blond hair pulled into a short ponytail on top of his head. He wore a rust-colored sweater with a collar and zipper.
“He’s Medusa?” Abbey asked.
“I think so.”
“So how do we figure out who he is?”
Bourne stared at the man in the photograph. There was only one way to find him. “I have to talk to an old friend,” Jason said.
*
BEFORE sunrise, Jason sat behind the Hans Christian Andersen statue near the boat pond in Central Park. The rain had stopped overnight, but the ground was still wet. The luxury apartments of Fifth Avenue loomed above the trees. He’d arrived early, but he didn’t have to wait long before he recognized the jogger approaching on the concrete trail. The man wasn’t tall, but he ran with a fast, confident athleticism. He was dressed down, so no one would recognize that he was one of the most powerful men in the country. The man stopped at the Conservatory Water, ran his hands through his wavy dark hair, and rested for a minute with his hands on his knees.
“It’s good that you’re a creature of habit,” Jason called.
Scott DeRay spun around. “Jesus Christ.”
“Sorry to ambush you, Scott, but we need to talk.”
“Of course, yes. Definitely.”
Scott took a plastic bottle from his belt and drank a squirt of Gatorade. He checked to confirm that the two of them were alone and then headed to the bench where Jason was sitting. He sat down next to his childhood friend.
Robert Ludlum's™ The Bourne Evolution (Jason Bourne Book 12) Page 15