Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Evolution - Brian Freeman Page 0,28

braided into the strands. She wore round yellow glasses that kept slipping down her nose. Her back was hunched. When she got to the corner, she stopped, accosting every pedestrian who passed her and swearing at those who didn’t give her money.

“Cochon riche! Est-ce que je suis trop sale pour vous?”

The panhandler noticed Farnham in the Mercedes, and with a snort of derision, she approached the car. Bourne saw her stuff her left hand inside the open window. The encounter didn’t last long, no more than a few seconds, and then the woman backed away with another curse and disappeared around the corner onto Rue Saint-Louis.

Maybe it was an innocent exchange. Maybe not.

Had she passed Farnham a message?

Jason didn’t have time to think about it, because only a couple of minutes later, Abbey Laurent finally reappeared. She turned right out of the building along Rue Saint-Louis, and her pace was quick, as if she needed to get somewhere. Bourne waited for the Treadstone agent in the Mercedes to take up the chase, but the man made no move to get out of the car.

Why not?

There was no way Farnham could have missed her, and yet he was letting her go. Seconds passed. Then a minute. Then two.

Something was wrong.

Bourne headed toward the Mercedes. Inside the car, Farnham still hadn’t moved. Bourne listened for the sound of the man talking on the phone, reporting Abbey’s position to another agent, but there was no noise from the interior. Jason came up slowly on the open window. If Farnham saw Bourne, he’d recognize him, but it couldn’t be helped. He reached the door of the sedan and shot a quick glance at the Treadstone agent, and then he froze where he was.

Farnham’s eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.

Jason leaned inside the car window. He pulled aside the flap of Farnham’s suit coat and saw a slit in the man’s white shirt directly over his heart and a bloodstain spreading across the fabric.

It was a perfect, precise attack, a single killing thrust with a knife through the ribs and into the heart and lungs.

The panhandler was an assassin.

And now she was after Abbey Laurent.

Bourne spun away from the Mercedes and into Rue Saint-Louis, which was jammed with people taking their lunch breaks. Time had passed since he’d seen Abbey leave. Too much time. He’d let her get too far ahead of him. Looking down the sidewalk, he couldn’t pick her out, and he half walked, half ran, shoving his way through the crowd and offering excuses in French.

Where was she?

He hurried under the yellow awnings of the quaint stone buildings. Canadian flags snapped over his head. A backup of cars filled the street. He passed doorway after doorway of gift shops, restaurants, and hotels, the volume of people thickening as he neared the tourist heart of the city. Still he couldn’t find Abbey, and by now she could be anywhere. She could already be dying in a doorway on one of the side streets, a knife in her chest.

Ahead of him, the street ended in the shadows of Château Frontenac. The statue of Champlain rose over the plaza.

There!

Just for an instant, he spotted a woman darting between the stopped cars, and he saw a flash of red and blue as she passed out of sight. It was her. Bourne ran again, and two blocks later, the street opened into the wide-open plaza that led to the Dufferin Terrace. The castle-like walls of the hotel loomed over his head. Hundreds of people milled in the square, and Abbey was lost in the crowd.

He didn’t like it. Crowds were dangerous. People squeezed together, people shouting and laughing, people bumping into each other. One collision was all the killer needed to plunge in the knife. No one would see a thing.

Bourne pushed people aside, going faster and faster through the plaza. The sun was blinding, and the bodies around him were a blur of motion. Men and women passed back and forth in his line of sight, blocking his view. His senses shot into overdrive, feeding him information faster than his brain could process it. Every time he saw red—a red T-shirt, a red balloon, a red backpack—he froze to see if it was Abbey Laurent. But he couldn’t find her. Then his eyes locked onto a familiar flash of color. Not red. This was a quick, swirling rainbow of fabric. The panhandler. He recognized her multicolored skirt, the butterflies in her hair, her black sweater—a sweater