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

by Brian Freeman

  A short, thin Asian man got up from behind the desk and approached him. “Cain,” the man said. “Or do you prefer I use the name Jason Bourne? Regardless, you honor us with your presence.”

  “My apologies for arriving unannounced. It couldn’t be helped.”

  “So I’m led to understand. Well, you are always welcome. I am Andrew Yee. I run the casino here.”

  Among other things, Jason thought.

  Yee didn’t look more than thirty years old. He wore a royal-blue suit with a narrow striped tie, and his leather shoes were polished to a bright shine. His black hair was shaved very short on the sides and left long on top, with a gold earring in one ear. He had thick, angled eyebrows above round spectacles, a long face, and a dimpled chin. His expression was respectful but nervous. Yee wasn’t accustomed to freelance killers showing up in his office.

  “May I offer you something?” Yee asked. “Spirits? Food?”

  “No.”

  Yee waved at the leather chair in front of his desk. “Please, sit.”

  Jason did, and Yee returned to the other side of the desk and sat down, too. His desk had little on it except a phone and a twenty-seven-inch iMac Pro. He was a neat, organized man. Yee sat straight up in his chair and adjusted his tiny glasses uncomfortably as he studied Bourne.

  “Friends like you are always welcome, but it is a surprise to see you here. I do have some concerns.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, to be candid with you, Cain is a wanted man. If your presence here were to become known to the authorities, it might provoke scrutiny we would rather avoid. As I’m sure you’re aware, we are … fanatical … about protecting the privacy of everyone associated with this operation. It would have been better had you called first, and we could have arranged a discreet entrance.”

  “In this case, it couldn’t be helped,” Jason replied.

  “Yes, I heard what you told Shay. You say you have urgent information, and I’m anxious to explore this with you. However, you also said a very strange thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “You said your information was above her pay grade. If that’s true, it’s certainly above mine, too.”

  Bourne smiled. “Obviously, that was a test. I wasn’t sure who I was dealing with.”

  “I understand. But then why not reach out to Miss Shirley directly? She does not appreciate interference in her affairs by those of us who are not in the inner circle.”

  Miss Shirley.

  A name. A contact. Someone in the upper echelon of Medusa.

  “It may be time to bring you into that circle, Mr. Yee,” Jason said.

  “You flatter me, but I don’t have the skills that she does. Or you, for that matter. Cain is a legend. I’m no more than a casino executive. A businessman. My role is limited, and I have never complained about that.”

  “Regardless, we have a problem, and I need your help,” Bourne told him, inventing a new story on the fly. “I’d rather not involve Miss Shirley unless we can’t resolve it here.”

  Yee frowned. “What is it?”

  “I was nearly killed in New York. My security has been compromised.”

  “That’s very distressing to hear.”

  “Someone talked. A Treadstone agent knew how to find me.” Bourne gave the man a cold stare. “The leak came from here at the casino.”

  Yee leaned forward in his chair. “Impossible!”

  “It’s true. I’ve gone off the grid in response to the threat. No electronic contact whatsoever. I can’t afford to put Miss Shirley at risk. It’s one thing for me to be in danger, but obviously, we can’t take a chance on exposing her. That’s why I had to approach you directly. I don’t suspect you, Mr. Yee. Your loyalty is beyond question. But others can be influenced all too easily. A dealer, a waitress, a guard hears a conversation and passes it along.”

  The casino manager shook his head fiercely. “That cannot happen. I make every hire personally. They are all monitored. All under constant surveillance. Personal behavior, finances, family. I know every aspect of their lives.”

  “Regardless, you missed something. I interrogated the Treadstone agent before I executed him. He knew about the Three Mountains. The feds are watching this place, Mr. Yee. They must have someone on the inside.”

  “No! I refuse to believe that. No one gets into the private casino who hasn’t been vetted. They would never breathe a word.”

  “It may not necessarily be one of your people. It could be an outsider, deliberately trying to get inside the organization. The way Nova did. You remember what a catastrophe that was.”

  “I had nothing to do with that!” Yee protested. “You know my role! Medusa identifies the recruits. Prescix identifies them. I’m given names and background and told how to proceed. The strategy comes from above. We follow Miss Shirley’s instructions to the letter.”

  “Even so, a mistake was made,” Bourne said. He let violence creep into his voice. “You understand the consequences of that, don’t you?”

  Yee’s eyes widened with fear. “Is that why you’re here? To kill me?”

  “I don’t want to, but I need to know how much of our strategy may have been exposed.”

  “We can’t expose what we don’t know,” Yee replied. “No one in this building is privy to Medusa’s operations. Not even me. The leak had to come from elsewhere.”

  “Are you telling me the suites in the tower aren’t bugged?”

  “Well, of course they are, but the recordings go directly to her. No one else.”

  “You’ve never listened? A little insurance policy, maybe?”

  “Never!”

  Bourne debated how far to push the man. “I’d hoped to avoid taking this step, but Miss Shirley needs to be in the loop. You and I need to talk to her.”

  Yee picked up the phone. “Of course. I’ll call her now. You’ll see, wherever the mistake was made, it wasn’t at the casino.”

  Bourne grabbed the phone out of Yee’s hand and put it back in the cradle. “Not by phone. In person. We need to visit her together.”

  “In person? That violates every protocol. She’ll kill both of us. Even you, Mr. Bourne.”

  “I told you, we need to stay off the grid. Treadstone is monitoring everything. So is the tech cabal. Did you think they wouldn’t fight back? You need to take me to her, and I’ll deal with the repercussions.”

  Yee shook his head. “What you’re asking is out of the question.”

  Bourne came around the desk and towered over the casino manager. “I killed a United States congresswoman, Mr. Yee. Do you think I’d hesitate even for a moment about killing you? My life, your life, is inconsequential. What matters is Medusa.”

  Yee’s head bobbed with fear. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “We need to go. Now.”

  “All right, whatever you want. We can take my limo to Las Vegas.”

  Yee pushed a button under his desk and the double doors to the hallway opened inward. The two guards who had brought Jason to the top floor were still there, their faces like stone. Bourne stayed close to Yee as they returned to the plush corridor, but he was concerned that the man’s nervous demeanor might attract attention. If that happened, if anyone grew worried, calls would be made. The truth about Bourne would be exposed. He’d be dead before they got out the casino doors.

  When they reached the elevator, Jason held out his hand to the guard who’d taken his gun. The man eyed the casino boss, and Yee nodded with an uncomfortable frown. The guard hesitated, obviously concerned by the change in Yee’s behavior, but he reached inside his coat anyway and returned Bourne’s pistol.

  They waited for the elevator.

  It finally came, and when the doors slid open, the elevator car wasn’t empty.

  Peter Restak was inside. The New York hacker with the scraggly beard and man bun had a phone in his hand and his attention was glued to the screen, but when he looked up, his eyes widened with recognition.

  “Bourne!”

>   Then he shouted to the guards: “Kill him, you fools!”

  Next to Jason, Yee’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. Bourne grabbed the casino manager by the shoulder and launched him off his feet toward the guards. One dodged away, but Yee landed hard against the other. The first guard reached under his coat for a gun, and as the pistol came free from its holster, Bourne lashed out with his foot, driving his heel hard into the man’s groin and eliciting a howl of agony. He grabbed the man’s gun hand and slammed it against the wall until the pistol fell to the carpet. With his right fist, he delivered an uppercut to the man’s jaw, groaning as bone landed hard against bone.

  Behind him, the elevator doors began to close.

  If they closed, he was trapped.

  Bourne leaped through the narrow space, and the doors reversed their track. The second guard, who had freed himself from Yee, aimed into the elevator and fired multiple rounds. The mirrored wall at the back of the elevator shattered. Restak threw himself sideways, but not before one of the bullets burrowed into his shoulder. Bourne heard the thunder of footsteps as the heavy guard ran for the elevator and leaped inside. There were three of them now as the elevator headed down.

  The guard bounced off the elevator wall with surprising speed, kicking the gun from Jason’s hand before he could fire. Jason took hold of the man’s wrist, clamped his teeth over the guard’s hand and bit down hard. The man’s fingers unlocked. The gun fell, but with his other fist, the guard landed a blow to Jason’s chin that knocked him into the wall. Dizzied, Jason spotted Restak huddled in the corner of the elevator. The hacker scooped up Jason’s gun and jerked the trigger, unleashing a wild shot that missed Bourne entirely but shattered the guard’s elbow. As the guard writhed, Jason jabbed a fist into the man’s throat and then brought the man’s head down sharply against his knee. The guard collapsed, his body landing heavily on top of Restak.

  Before the hacker could wriggle free and fire again, Bourne wrenched the gun out of the man’s hand and dragged Restak to his feet.

  The elevator kept going down.

  Jason eyed the overhead camera and knew what was waiting for him on the first floor. He stabbed the button for the floor above the hotel atrium and shoved the barrel of the gun into the underside of the hacker’s chin.

  “Who’s Miss Shirley?”

  “Fuck off,” the man gasped.

  “Where do I find her?”

  “She’ll find you, Bourne.”

  The elevator opened on the third floor. Jason had no time to ask more questions. He cracked the steel barrel into Restak’s forehead and let the man sink to the floor. He exited the elevator into a quiet hotel corridor. Already he could hear voices and the pounding of footsteps in the stairwell.

  They were coming for him.

  He ran to the first hotel room door in the corridor, pushed his gun against the lock, and squeezed the trigger. Wood and dust exploded, and he shoved through the door with his shoulder. He found himself in a lavish suite that looked like something out of a European palace.

  “What the hell?” bellowed a voice from the bedroom.

  An eighty-something man with a thick head of snow-white hair appeared in the bedroom doorway. He was stark naked, but he had a revolver in his hand, and Bourne quickly lifted his own gun and aimed at the man’s chest.

  “Drop it now. Do it, or die.”

  The old man knew when he was outgunned. He put the gun down and raised his hands over his head. “Son of a bitch, you’re Jason Bourne.”

  Jason took another look at the man. He recognized the barrel-chested octogenarian who’d spent years in the Defense Department. Retired air force general Philip Kahnke. Medusa had its fingers in high places.

  “Better get some clothes on, General. Half a dozen men will be coming through that door in about ten seconds.”

  Not breaking stride, Bourne marched for the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far wall and shot a bullet through the glass, turning it into popcorn and letting warm, dry air whistle through the cool room.

  He took one glance at the ground two floors below him and jumped.

  THIRTY-TWO

  MILES Priest stared out the window of his cliffside castle in the far western Highlands of Scotland. From here, he could see craggy hills, some still topped with snow, and the jagged seacoast that threw wild surf against the spit of land below the castle ramparts. On the green grounds of the estate, he could see the cemetery surrounding the ruins of a sixteenth-century stone chapel.

  The window was open. He liked the cold air. Nelly Lessard, who didn’t, sat in a musty armchair by the vast old library fireplace. She warmed her hands in front of the flames and tugged on the sleeves of her rust-colored sweater. Scott DeRay sat on the other side of the huge room, underneath an Elizabethan oil painting of a boy in a red velvet robe. On either side of him, bookshelves with leather-bound volumes climbed to the chambered wooden ceiling.

  “I don’t think you have a choice about this, Miles,” Scott told him, flipping the pages in a vintage edition of Fielding’s Tom Jones. “We need to have an emergency meeting of the cabal to discuss strategy.”

  Nelly adjusted a heavy, scratchy blanket over her lap. “I agree with Scott. It’s imperative that we find a way to block the Prescix takeover.”

  Priest didn’t take his gaze away from the Scottish coast. “What do we know about this private equity group that Gabriel talked about?”

  “They’re hiding behind a fog of confidentiality,” Nelly replied, “but that’s not surprising, given the sums involved. Their management team appears to be all experienced players, but they’re hiding some very questionable investors. I think we have to conclude that Medusa is behind the takeover.”

  “Which means if the deal closes, Prescix is in their hands,” Scott added. “Combine that with the data hack, and I don’t see how we stop them. The cabal needs a plan, either to make a competing bid and hope Gabriel is willing to consider it, or to have a strategy for what action we can take if the deal goes through. As much as we hate it, maybe we should get behind the regulatory moves in Congress.”

  Priest came away from the window and poured himself a glass of twenty-eight-year-old Laphroaig whisky. “No, the whole point of the legislation is to tie our hands and hobble us from fighting back. That’s why Medusa had Bourne kill Ortiz, to move the new regulatory framework forward. Meanwhile, they play their little games behind the scenes. If we support it, we play right into their hands.”

  “Then what do you suggest, Miles?” Nelly asked.

  Priest frowned, because he had no solutions. He’d spent his career finding solutions, first in law enforcement, then in technology. In his mind, there was no such thing as an insoluble problem. It only took creativity, courage, and resourcefulness to find an answer. But it seemed as if Medusa had found a way to outmaneuver him at every turn, as if the group could get inside his head and know what he was thinking.

  “What about this Miss Shirley?” he asked. “What do we know about her?”

  Nelly offered a cynical chuckle. “Well, much of her background is a mystery, but what we do know makes her out to be quite the dangerous adversary. As Gabriel told us, she’s Czech. Mid-thirties, we think. She was a swimmer in the Summer Olympics when she was nineteen and likely would have medaled, but she was disqualified for stabbing an opponent’s coach.”

  “Stabbing?” Priest asked.

  “Oh, yes. The coach nearly died. After that, Miss Shirley spent a few years doing Czech porn, dominatrix hardcore, not the kind of thing you want to watch on an empty stomach. Then she vanished. She’s essentially been a ghost since then. We got a few hits on facial recognition from social media sites across Europe. She mostly appears to hang out with extremely rich men who like to be treated roughly.”

  “Well, that sounds like Gabriel.”

  “There’s also an interesting coincidence with regard to some of the locations where we’ve identified her. I’d have to say she’s a wet agent. She’s been in several cities at the
same time as a couple dozen high-profile assassinations.”

  Priest shook his head. “Definitely Medusa.”

  “It seems that way.”

  The CEO of Carillon gave a long sigh. “All right, I agree with you. We need to get the cabal together. Let’s make it in two days. Nelly, go to the island and get everything ready. Issue the invitations, and don’t accept any whining about the short timeline. Scott and I will take the helicopter from Nassau once we’re ready to get underway.”

  Nelly got to her feet and shivered a little as she stepped out of the warming circle of the fire. “I’ll head out immediately. I know you love it here, Miles, but the Caribbean sounds quite a bit better than this drafty old castle.”

  Priest smiled at her. “I’m a drafty old castle myself.”

  “We both are.”

  Nelly left the room, and Priest was alone with Scott. “Do we know anything more about Bourne?” he asked quietly, sipping his whisky.

  “No. We’re not sure where he and the Canadian woman went after New York.”

  “You haven’t talked to him?”

  Scott gave him a quizzical look. “Of course not.”

  Priest took his glass of Laphroaig across the room, and he opened up his phone to show Scott a photograph. It was a picture taken in New York’s Central Park, showing Scott and Jason Bourne together near the boat pond.

  “Anything you want to tell me?” Priest asked.

  Scott didn’t apologize. “He’s my oldest friend, Miles. He came to me for help.”

  “He’s also a liability to the whole tech cabal. What did he want?”

  “Access to facial recognition databases. He wanted to identify someone. I put him in touch with one of our people at Carillon. It was a one-time offer of assistance. For what it’s worth, by the way, Jason says he didn’t murder Ortiz. He claims he’s still chasing Medusa.”

  “He’s manipulating you, Scott. He did it when you hired him, and he’s still doing it now. And candidly, even if it were true, we’re way beyond guilt or innocence now. If Bourne is found alive, it blows back on us, which we can’t afford in the current circumstances. I think you know that.”