Robert Ludlum's™ The Bourne Evolution (Jason Bourne Book 12)

by Brian Freeman

  The fire had done its work. He was free.

  Then one of the kids on the court missed the basketball as it was passed to him, and the ball slammed into the fence with a loud clang. Startled, Restak dropped his vape pen on the sidewalk. He bent down to retrieve it, and as he picked it up, his gaze swept across the street and settled on Bourne.

  Restak’s eyes widened in shock. Instantly, the Medusa hacker shot across Avenue D just as the light changed. Bourne took off, too, but he lost time dodging three cars that bolted through the red light. When he finally made it across the street, Restak already had a head start. The man raced east on Tenth past a series of drab brown apartment towers.

  Jason ran, too. Restak looked back, spotting him, his eyes wild with fear. They ran in tandem for one more block, and Jason slowly closed the gap. Restak was about thirty feet away when the street dead-ended at the FDR, but the man didn’t even break stride as he leaped over the concrete barrier into the middle of the parkway. Horns wailed, and brakes squealed. Restak rolled over the hood of one car, and an SUV in the next lane swerved to avoid him, crashing at high speed into a truck in the left lane. The accident triggered a chain reaction as vehicles banged into each other with screeches of metal, and one car flew onto its side as the driver overcorrected.

  Bourne stopped short at the parkway, unable to cross. The lanes in front of him were littered with crashes. Ahead of him, Restak jumped the barrier into the northbound lanes and then did a running leap to a wrought-iron fence and threw his body into the East River Park. Not slowing down, he took off toward the water.

  Jason ran up a ramp to the pedestrian overpass. When he made it to the park, he didn’t see Restak. He cursed and took off toward the river, but he made it all the way to the wide jogging path by the water and didn’t see the Medusa operative anywhere. He stopped to catch his breath and slapped the railing over the East River in frustration.

  Runners came and went in both directions in the waning light of dusk. Not far away, the Williamsburg Bridge arched across the water. He walked another hundred yards north, looking for someone hiding in the trees, but the Medusa operative had vanished.

  Peter Restak was gone.

  *

  IT was dark by the time Jason and Abbey made it back to the safe house. They stopped at a diner for dinner, but neither one of them said anything to the other. They rode the elevator in silence, too. It was only when they got to the apartment door that Abbey said what was on both of their minds.

  “What now? What do we do?”

  Jason shrugged. “I’m not sure. I don’t have a plan yet.”

  “Can you talk to your friend Scott again?”

  “No, he made it clear that his help was a one-time thing. I’m on my own.”

  “You mean we.”

  “No. I don’t. You need to go back to Canada. I have no more leads, and the only thing you’re going to do by staying with me is put yourself at greater risk. You helped me, Abbey. You helped me a lot. But there’s nothing more for you to do now.”

  She brushed her bangs from her eyes. “Is that what you really want? For me to go?”

  He said the one thing he shouldn’t say. The one thing that made no sense. “It’s not what I want. No. But it’s the way it has to be.”

  Abbey shook her head. “I don’t care. I’m staying.”

  Jason used the key to open the apartment door. He left the lights off. The curtains at the window looking out over Gramercy Park were open, letting in the glow of the city. He realized he was tired. Bone-tired. Days of pain had caught up to him. His body was a mess of bruises. He could feel a throbbing where he’d been shot, and his headache was back. His shoulder felt numb where the woman in the Guy Fawkes mask had struck him with the lead pipe. He wanted to sleep for days, but he knew he couldn’t.

  In another hour, they’d leave the city. They’d drive all night.

  To go where? He didn’t know.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Jason said, hearing the weariness in his own voice. “Keep the lights off. We need to go soon.”

  He went to the bedroom and pushed the door partly closed and stripped off his clothes. In the shower, he scraped off the dirt and then stood under the rainfall showerhead with his eyes closed. The hot water revived him, and some of his muscles relaxed. He felt better when he returned to the bedroom and dressed in fresh clothes. Through the crack of the door, he saw only darkness in the other room.

  “You can shower, too, if you want,” Jason called to Abbey.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Abbey?”

  He still heard only silence from the living room.

  Jason went to the bed and took his gun in his hand. He pointed it straight ahead as he crept to the door. He listened carefully and heard a low disturbance on the other side. Someone crying softly. Breath coming in ragged bursts.

  “Abbey?” he called one more time. “I’m coming out.”

  Bourne slowly opened the door into the semidarkness of the living room, leading with the gun.

  “Jason!” Abbey said, her voice choked with tears.

  He could see her near the front door, bathed in the bright city glow through the window. Her eyes pleaded with him. She was on her knees, her hands laced together on top of her black hair.

  A Treadstone agent stood behind her.

  He held two guns, both with suppressors. One was aimed across the apartment at Bourne. The other was jammed into the back of Abbey’s head.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “BENOIT,” Jason said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Hello, Bourne.”

  “The woman’s not part of this. It’s me you want. Let her walk away, and as soon as she’s free, I’ll lower my weapon. You can take me out. Quick. Clean. I’m a man of my word, you know that.”

  “Jason, no!” Abbey shouted from the floor.

  Benoit’s arms were rock-solid. No flutter or hesitation. His dark eyes were unblinking. “Unfortunately, my orders are for both of you.”

  “So lie to Nash. Tell him Abbey wasn’t here.”

  “I wish that was possible, but I’m a man of my word, too.”

  Bourne nodded. “That’s true.”

  Jason knew this man well. They’d been in the field together many times. They’d saved each other’s lives more than once. He’d met Benoit when the man was still a French agent, and the two of them had gathered intelligence on a terror cell from a stone farmhouse in the rural countryside outside Lyon. The stakeout had been blown by the barking of a stray dog, and Bourne had found himself in the midst of a midnight firefight while Benoit was half a mile away conducting night-vision surveillance. Rushing back in the middle of the assault, Benoit could have chosen to stay out of it, rather than intervene to rescue an operative from a different country. Instead, Benoit saved Bourne and took gunshots in the arm, hip, and leg that nearly killed him.

  That was the first time they’d been together.

  The last time he’d seen Benoit was under very different circumstances.

  Benoit was the agent who’d carried away the body of Nova from the killing ground in Las Vegas. The sixty-seventh victim, never acknowledged.

  Shoot him!

  A lust for revenge screamed in Bourne’s head. All he could see was Nova draped over Benoit’s shoulder, her eyes closed, blood on her face, her long hair swinging as this man took her away. Ever since that moment, he’d wanted the opportunity to come face-to-face with Benoit again, and now here he was.

  If Bourne pulled the trigger, all three of them would die in an eruption of gunfire. Jason wouldn’t miss; neither would Benoit. But Bourne knew that he and Abbey were going to die anyway.

  Another woman in his life had been sentenced to death.

  “Kill me if you want,” Benoit said, reading the look on Jason’s face. “That won’t change anything.”

  “I should kill you. You deserve to die.”

  “We’re all going to hell for the lives we’ve led, Bourne.”

  �
�Maybe so, but not Nova. She was out. She wasn’t a threat to anyone. But Nash and the director couldn’t let her go. So you murdered her.”

  “I didn’t shoot Nova. Charles Hackman did that.”

  “Does it matter? Hackman was Treadstone, wasn’t he? Isn’t that why the word came down to whitewash his past? You couldn’t let the public find out that the worst mass shooter in history was actually one of our own intelligence assets.”

  “Hackman was never Treadstone,” Benoit snapped. “He was Medusa. Like you, Cain! All those people died because you put your lover in the firing line. Nash thinks you ordered the hit yourself. Is that true? Did you want her dead? Were you afraid she suspected who you really were?”

  “You’re a liar! What’s going on, Benoit? Are you taping this? Does Director Shaw want a recording he can play to the congressional oversight committee? You were there. You were in Las Vegas. Am I supposed to believe that’s a coincidence? You just happened to be in the crowd when Nova was shot? Nash just happened to be waiting outside the hotel where the shooter was holed up?”

  Benoit shook his head. “I admire the act, but you’re smarter than that, Bourne. You know exactly why Nash and I were in Las Vegas.”

  “Really? Tell me.”

  “We were watching you.”

  Bourne felt the words like a blow to his chest. “What?”

  “That’s right. Look, we all knew Treadstone was dying. The director was tucked away in some basement office, and our budgets were bleeding away. That meant we had a lot of agents out there who were prime targets for recruitment by Medusa. We didn’t know who to trust and who was a traitor. We still don’t. But let’s just say your psychological history made Nash doubt you. I didn’t want to believe it, and neither did Nova. But Nash didn’t think we could take any chances. That’s why I was there, to watch you, to observe you, to follow you, to see if you’d been turned.”

  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 bri
ng 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.”