Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Evolution - Brian Freeman Page 0,46
You’ll need to be sharp tomorrow.”
“What about you?”
“I want to make sure no one followed us from the border. Sometimes the feds will leave an illegal crossing unmonitored but track it electronically. If we’re not alone, we’ll know soon enough. Once I’m sure we’re safe, then I’ll sleep.”
“It’s too cold to sleep,” Abbey complained. “I’m a fricking freezer pop.”
He smiled. “Let me check the back. Maybe there’s a blanket you can use.”
Jason got out of the truck and paused to listen to the woods around them. Then he walked to the rear and opened the tailgate. He found a greasy wool blanket stuffed in a box of oil and tools, and he took the blanket back to the front seat. Abbey said nothing as he draped the blanket over her legs and tucked it in around her shoulders.
“Better?” he asked.
“Thank you.”
“Sorry about the cold, but I need to hear what’s happening outside.”
“I’m okay. You want to share?”
“No, I’m fine,” Jason said.
“Right. Tough guy. I forgot.”
He smiled again. “Get some sleep.”
“First tell me about Medusa. I want to know what we’re going after.”
“We don’t know very much about them,” Jason replied. “That’s part of the problem.”
“Michel said that the intelligence agencies aren’t even sure who started it.”
“That’s true. We’ve never been able to get close to their leadership structure. They’re well funded, which suggests that a foreign government could be involved. But if it’s Russia or China, is it their own operation or just a partnership of convenience for both sides? Nobody knows.”
“What do they want?” Abbey asked.
“So far, the only common denominator is chaos. Anarchy. For several years, Medusa has been trying to stoke social divisions in North America and Europe, and they’ve been very successful. They don’t lean left or right. They fire up people on both sides, no matter what the issue is. Election fraud. Abortion. Climate change. Racism. Immigration. Their whole point is to create an atmosphere of instability and unrest, which can lead to violence. You saw that in New York, but it’s been happening for a while, and it’s getting worse. The riots and protests you see on the news aren’t just organic. They’re not accidents. Medusa is pulling the strings. Most of the time, the people involved don’t even realize they’re being manipulated.”
“But why?”
“That’s hard to say. They haven’t tipped their hand. Maybe anarchy is the end in itself, or maybe they’re trying to undermine the Western democracies in order to pave the way for some kind of takeover. It’s not clear what that would look like, but the point is, we can’t trust anybody in authority. Medusa almost certainly has spies within the U.S. government. That’s why we weren’t sure about Congresswoman Ortiz. We thought she could be part of Medusa.”
“You thought I was part of it, too,” Abbey said softly. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes, that seemed like a possibility.”
“Jason, how did you get involved? Where do you come from?”
Bourne sat in silence as he wondered what to say. He closed his eyes, because darkness had always been his friend. Darkness protected him. He hated questions about his life, because none of those questions had simple answers. Once upon a time, long ago, he’d been a man named David Webb, but that man didn’t exist anymore. David Webb was dead. Forgotten. Now there was only Jason Bourne. And Cain.
“I used to work for a government agency,” he told Abbey. “You wouldn’t know its name, and it’s better you not know it at all. Just knowing the name can put a target on your back. They’re the ones who recruited me, trained me, made me who I am. The man you met, Nash Rollins, he’s part of it.”
“Your own agency is trying to kill you?”
“They think I’m a traitor. They think after I quit them, I joined Medusa.”
“Why did you quit?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Based on the look on your face, it looks like it matters a lot. What happened?”
He shrugged. “I lost someone.”
“Someone special?”
Jason wanted to stay silent. All he could feel was the pain. Nova.
“I worked with one of the agency’s operatives in the UK,” he told her, unable to stop himself. “My code name on missions was Cain. Hers was Nova. We did a lot of operations together. Europe. Asia. In Canada, too. She was the best agent I’d ever met. But we made a mistake.”
“You fell in love,” Abbey murmured. “Didn’t you? I can tell.”
He turned his head and saw that she was staring into his eyes. “Yes. That’s not smart in my business.