isn’t about to walk in blind. They’d start with an advance team to scout the area. They haven’t done that. No, I think your success in stopping them on the island forced a radical change in their plans.”
Bourne frowned. He went over the flowchart he’d mapped out in his head of actions and reactions, moves and countermoves. He’d anticipated every possible plan of attack by Medusa, but he hadn’t considered the possibility that they might do nothing at all.
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“Agreed. I don’t like it, either, but if they move in, we’ll have plenty of warning that they’re coming. In the meantime, I’m glad you’re here. For now, let’s sit and relax until Miles gets back.”
Bourne took another look through the castle windows. Below him, one of the guards patrolled the back of the estate, and somehow, he still expected to see the man crumple to the wet ground with a bullet in his head. He expected an assault team to appear from the trees on all sides, closing on the castle.
But no one did.
He turned away from the windows, but he didn’t sit down.
“Nelly gave us a report from the island,” Scott told him, sitting on the stone hearth, where the warmth of the fire made his tanned skin glow. “That was amazing work, Jason. And honestly, it’s more than the cabal deserved, based on how we treated you. You saved a lot of lives. You also finally convinced Miles that he was wrong about you. He’ll be reaching out to his contacts in Washington to see if we can restore your reputation. It won’t be easy, given the evidence that Medusa mounted against you, but if anyone can get it done, it’s Miles.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You validated my judgment, too,” Scott added. “But of course, I’m not surprised. I know you better than anyone.”
“You know me better than I know myself,” Bourne replied.
“I suppose that’s true. Someone has to remember everything you’ve forgotten. Like all those days we spent at the beach when we were kids. Thunder Mountain? Do you remember that? I guess not. We’d climb the trail up to the top of the hill through the trees and then race each other down the sand dunes on the other side. You always won.”
“It’s all gone,” Bourne said.
“And that summer in Europe? I was at a private college in Switzerland, and you came over and we traveled around together. That was the best summer of my life. Italy. Germany. Turkey. Estonia. Russia. The Czech Republic. We went everywhere.”
“You showed me pictures. It looked like we did it all.”
“We did. Two twenty-year-olds who weren’t afraid of anything. We were going to rule the world.”
“I guess the plan worked out for you,” Bourne said.
Scott shrugged. “It’s a work in progress. You know, that summer was also the time we had our one big fight. We went a couple years without speaking to each other after that. I guess in some regard, I’m glad your memory loss wiped that away. I have a lot of regrets about that time.”
Bourne was surprised. “You never told me about that.”
“Like I said, I was just as happy to have you not remember it.”
“What was the fight about?”
Scott got up from the hearth and refilled his glass from the bottle of Laphroaig. He wasn’t a big man, and the size of the room under the high ceiling made him look even smaller. And yet his personality, his ego, and his charm always filled the space wherever he was. Bourne’s skill was to disappear, whereas Scott’s was to have everyone remember him.
“Oh, it started with an argument about politics,” Scott said. “We’d been simmering about that all summer. You were always the government boy, particularly after 9/11. Me, I became pretty cynical about government after going to school in Europe.”
“You joined the FBI,” Bourne pointed out. “Doesn’t that make you a government boy, too?”
“I thought I could change things from the inside. I was wrong. Some things need to be torn down before we can rebuild them. Back then, I already knew that technology would rule the world, but you had these naive notions about privacy.”
“So was that what split us up? Government versus technology?”
Scott smiled and shook his head. “Oh, no. In the end, we argued over a girl. Isn’t that always how it goes?”
“We both wanted the same girl?”
“Actually, no, you didn’t like her at all. She was younger than me. Sixteen years old, but all grown up, believe me. You