Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Evolution - Brian Freeman Page 0,61
cut a negative number in half,” Abbey commented with a smirk.
The young man from Carillon spent a ridiculous amount of time at the counter specifying how the barista should prepare his drink, eliciting eye rolls from the people in line behind him. When he finally got his soy mocha, he went straight to Jason’s table without looking at anyone else in the shop. He’d obviously been prepped for the man he was supposed to meet.
“Scott sent me,” he said as he sat down. He checked out Abbey from behind his green glasses. “Who’s the girl? Scott didn’t say there would be anybody else.”
“She’s with me,” Jason replied.
“We’re inseparable,” Abbey added, smiling.
The tech studied both of them with condescending eyes. His lone typing hand made a frenzied attack on the keyboard, and he was quiet for almost a minute. Then he sat back in the chair. “Abbey Laurent. Canadian journalist for The Fort. Birthday, October 2. Studio apartment in Quebec City, behind on last month’s rent, credit card debt exceeding eight thousand dollars. Savings account balance one thousand two hundred and forty-two dollars, checking account balance eighty-nine dollars. Most common online password is ImAbs1002. Had an unusual result on her Pap smear three years ago, but further testing showed no issues. On the pill. Three full-frontal nude photos sent to a college boyfriend twelve years ago. Very nice.”
The smile disappeared from Abbey’s face. “You piece of shit.”
Jason put a hand on her arm and murmured, “Easy.”
“You both need to understand that I’m not to be messed with,” the young tech snapped. “Got it? As far as your lives go, I am God.”
“We just want to identify someone,” Jason said, “and we can pay for the privilege.”
“Carillon pays me four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, plus options. Keep your money, Mr. Bourne. Yes, I know who you are. I’m here to do a favor for Scott, and that’s all. Now show me the man you want to hack.”
Her face dark with anger, Abbey took out her phone and scrolled to the picture of the Medusa operative in the coffee shop. “This is him. I can text you the picture.”
The tech shook his head. “I already have it. I transferred everything from your phone while I was waiting in line.”
“You little—” Abbey began, then stopped without saying anything more and clamped her lips together.
“Don’t worry, we needed to dump the phone anyway,” Jason said. “We’ll get new burners this afternoon.”
The tech ignored their conversation. “Did Scott explain the timeline? If anyone is monitoring this person’s online records, they’ll know you’ve located him. You won’t have much time to get to him before his identity is erased and rewritten. I’m masking our geographic signature here, but it will also take them about ninety seconds to override that and figure out where you are.”
“Then we better move fast,” Jason said.
The tech used his index finger to push his green glasses up his nose. He typed one-handed again, still drinking his latte and only occasionally looking at the screen. He said nothing as he worked. Almost five minutes passed, which was longer than Jason expected, and he saw a small crinkle of surprise on the tech’s face. Obviously, Medusa kept their records more secure than the Canadian health service did.
Meanwhile, Jason kept an eye on Forty-Second Street through the coffee shop windows. He knew they didn’t have much time before someone crashed the party.
“Interesting,” the tech said finally.
“Did you find him?” Jason asked.
“Yes, but I had to break into archives to recover his deleted records. He went to a lot of trouble to remove himself from the grid.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Peter Restak. That’s an alias. Fingerprints don’t match anyone else on file, so his previous identity is unknown.”
Like me, Bourne thought.
“Restak is a hacker,” the tech went on. “And an impressive one, I have to say. He didn’t leave many breadcrumbs behind. He’s used multiple online personas on different social media platforms, but he rarely uses any of them more than once. He’s a chameleon online, sometimes young, sometimes old, man, woman, trans, whatever. Once he’s inside a fake persona, he establishes relationships with similarly situated real people. He feeds them posts that reinforce their biases, and he recruits them for extremist activities. He was heavily involved in the Ortiz riot. The people he’s interacted with now have multiple arrest records. A couple of them have been killed. It’s like group behavioral modification. Very cool stuff.”