SCOTT DeRay strolled along Rue de Vaugirard next to a wrought-iron fence outside the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was mid-morning under a blue sky, with May weather that was unseasonably warm for Paris. He wore a bespoke gray business suit he’d collected from his Savile Row tailor the previous week in London, and he used a hat and sunglasses to avoid being recognized. The media had featured him in its headlines recently, which meant that his photograph had been seen around the world. He didn’t want to take chances.
Stopping on the sidewalk outside the park, Scott threw a casual glance back the way he’d come, looking for signs that he was being followed. With his intelligence training, he didn’t think that anyone would be able to stay on his tail without him spotting it. It would take a skilled agent to do that. Even so, he had an instinct that he was being watched, and that instinct had dogged him for days.
Ahead of him, he heard a cacophony of voices. A crowd of Chinese tourists emerged through the park’s northwest gate, following a petite raven-haired guide who waved a small flag over her head. The crush of visitors spilled into the street and took up all of the space on the sidewalk, squeezing Scott uncomfortably against the high railing. Just in front of him, a Chinese man in a suit took pictures with an expensive camera while walking backward. Scott shouted a warning as the man came closer, but the elderly Chinese man piled into him anyway and nearly knocked both of them down. As they untangled, Scott strained to keep a polite smile on his face, and the tourist apologized profusely in Chinese.
When the crowd had passed on the way back to their tour bus, Scott checked his surroundings again to confirm that he was alone. Then he walked two more blocks and crossed into a cobblestoned side street. He found a small bistro named Bergeron with red awnings, where two beefy bodyguards with radios stood watch outside. Russian security was always painfully obvious. The café typically didn’t open until dinner, but Scott had arranged for a private breakfast to be served that morning. He nodded at the two bodyguards, allowed himself to be searched, then went inside.
A single table for two had been set in the café’s corner, far from the windows. There, he saw Fyodor Mikhailov waiting for him. The chairs in the café were made of delicate braided metal, and Scott was surprised that they could stand up to the Russian’s massive girth. Fyodor had a napkin stuffed into the collar of his shirt, and he was already halfway through breakfast, with a silver urn of coffee on the table in front of him, along with croissants, a crusty baguette, apricot pastries, macaron cookies in rainbow colors, and a selection of aromatic cheeses.
“Scott, my friend,” Fyodor rumbled. “Sit, sit. Take a load off.”
Scott sat down and wiped his brow. The interior of the café felt extremely warm, and he found himself sweating. “Good morning, Fyodor.”
A waitress in a crisp white blouse and short black skirt appeared next to him with a double espresso. He shook his head when she asked if he wanted anything else. She fluffed the fresh flowers on the table, then disappeared with a flirty smile. She couldn’t be more than twenty years old.
“The shit of getting old is that you still feel young,” Fyodor said, his eyes following the girl back to the kitchen.
“You, Fyodor? You’re not old, you’re timeless.”
The Russian snorted. “If I get any more timeless, I’ll be dead. My doctor says I need to give up vodka, wine, and rich food.”
“How’s that going?”
“I gave up my doctor instead. Try the Epoisses. It smells like an infantryman’s boot after a month at the front, but my God, it’s delicious.”
“Maybe later.”
The Russian bit off half a croissant smeared with a vile-smelling paste and groaned with delight as he chewed. “The newspapers are painting you as the savior of the American tech industry. That made me laugh out loud, I’ll tell you. The only thing better than fucking over your adversary is getting him to thank you for doing it.”
Scott allowed himself a smile. “The U.S. media is even easier to manipulate than Congress. Give them an anonymous source, and they’ll print whatever you want.”
“Miles Priest a traitor to his country. I love that.”
“I figured you would,” Scott said.
“Still, I didn’t like seeing the name Medusa out there so much, my friend. That’s a hell of a risk. You exposed too much of what we’re really doing. My colleagues in Moscow aren’t happy.”
“Tell them not to worry,” Scott replied. “Putting out details about Medusa was part of the plan. The point is to convince most of the Western governments that Medusa is under control. A neutralized threat. We served up Miles as our sacrificial lamb, and we showed enough of our real hand to make them think they have us on the run. So while they waste time with their subpoenas and congressional investigations, we can proceed with our next step.”
“You mean Prescix?”
Scott nodded. He took a lavender-colored macaron cookie from the tray in front of him, but when he ate it, he found it oddly difficult to swallow, as if an apricot pit had begun to swell in his windpipe. “Yes, my first major initiative as CEO of Carillon will be to announce that the Prescix board has agreed to a merger.”
“Assuming your DOJ doesn’t stop it,” Fyodor pointed out.
“The feds? Please. They’re salivating at the idea. I’ve already promised them that we’ll adapt the Prescix code to help with their anti-terrorism investigations. They’ll identify a few white supremacists shouting ‘Sieg Heil’ and look like heroes. For them, the merger can’t come soon enough. That will also take all of their antitrust threats off the table. Meanwhile, we’ll integrate the personal data from the hack and run all of it through the Prescix algorithms. That’s tens of millions of people. We’ll have them believing whatever we want them to believe. Left, right, it doesn’t matter. The next election is going to be utter chaos. It’s everything you want.”
“Oh, we want much more than that,” Fyodor reminded him. “This is only the beginning, my friend.”
Scott sipped his espresso and wrung a hand through the fabric of his collar, which was now damp with his sweat. Yes, you want civil war, you old fool. And I’ll give it to you. People will be at each other’s throats, but not just in New York, Portland, and San Francisco. The streets of Moscow and Beijing will erupt, too. We’ll burn it all down and get ready to rebuild under a new master plan.
The Medusa plan.
“It will take more money,” Scott replied.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’ll have whatever you need. I’ll make sure of it. Of course, I’ll expect some favors of my own. I have a few names of people who may need special attention from the Prescix software. Political rivals. Some diplomats who have been uncooperative. My wife’s brother. That sort of thing.”
Scott chuckled. “I expected as much. Just give me a list.”
“Good, fine, excellent,” Fyodor announced, happily slapping the bistro table and making his coffee spill. “I’ve always liked doing business with you, Scott. Hard to believe it’s been all these years, isn’t it? I remember meeting you that summer in Prague, this cocky college kid with all these ridiculous plans to run the world. And that girl with you, oh my God. Even at sixteen, Miss Shirley was scarier than anyone in the FSB. But I saw something in you. You were different. I knew you’d make one of the best assets I ever recruited.”
“Thank you, Fyodor,” Scott replied.
Although the truth is, I was the one who recruited you.
Fyodor cut into another of the cheeses, and the wafting smell affected Scott with a wave of nausea. He had to hold on to the table to steady himself as the room spun. He felt a strange tingling in his lips, like the pricks of a hundred needles.
“You all right, my friend?” Fyodor asked, chewing loudly. “You’re starting to look sick.”
“I’m fine,” Scott replied.
“I was sorry to hear the news about your Miss Shirley, by the way.”
Scott said nothing at the mention of her name. He missed Shirl, but he hadn’t cried for her. She would have detested any show of weakness like that from him. Even so, it was still hard to imagine his world without her. She’d been a secret ally at his side for almost twenty years.
“I’d always assumed she was indestructible,” Fyodor went on.
“So had I.”
“Bourne killed her?”
“Yes.”
“I would have liked to see that battle,” Fyodor mused. “It must have been one for the ages. How did he do it?”
“He cut off her head,” Scott murmured angrily.
“Just like Perseus and Medusa, eh? How ironic. What about Bourne himself?”
“Treadstone killed him.”
“Are you sure? Bourne has proved to be a slippery adversary in the past.”
Scott rubbed his temples with his fingers. A fierce headache had now taken root behind his eyes. “This time I’m sure. Treadstone tried hard to keep it quiet, but we intercepted an encrypted transmission of a classified report directly to the attorney general. It confirmed his death.”
“Well, RIP Jason Bourne. I do like it when the American government does our work for us.”
Scott nodded in agreement, but he’d begun to feel light-headed. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. The flu? He found it hard to concentrate on their conversation. He needed to get back outside into the fresh air of Paris. “I told you Bourne wouldn’t be a problem, Fyodor.”
“Indeed you did.”
“I’ll let you know when we’re moving ahead on Prescix. And how much more money we need.”
“Do that.” Fyodor reached across the table and wrapped up Scott’s hand in his paw. “Anyway, congratulations, my friend. I appreciate a man who delivers on his promises. There’s bound to be a bonus in it for you. Whatever you want.”
Scott stood up from the chair. As he did, the inside of the café made somersaults in front of his eyes. “I don’t care about anything like that.”
“Ah yes, of course,” Fyodor replied, with a cynical rasp in his voice. “You don’t care about material things, says the man in the five-thousand-dollar Savile Row suit. You’re an idealist. You know what we call idealists in Russia, don’t you?”
“What?”
Fyodor leaned dangerously far back in the little café chair and laughed until his belly shook. “As soon as I find one, I’ll let you know.”
FYODOR was in no hurry to leave the café.
When he was done with the food, he signaled to the lovely little French waitress and ordered a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé to wash it all down. She poured him the first glass, and while she did, his thick fingers explored her ass under the thin fabric of her skirt. She didn’t slap his hand away. Instead, she gave him a grin and a wink that said: Ask me how much.
Ah, Paris. He loved this city.
An hour later, he’d finished the wine and had a buzz that would last him until lunch. He stripped the linen napkin out of his collar and crumpled it on the table. He pushed his huge frame out of the chair and took heavy, unsteady steps toward the café door. Outside, he paid no attention to his bodyguards standing on either side of the bistro entrance. His town car waited for him at the curb. He closed his eyes briefly to savor the sunshine, and then he bent down and yanked open the town car’s rear door.
The car wasn’t empty. Nash Rollins sat in the back seat.
“Fyodor Mikhailov,” Rollins announced in a pleasant voice. “It’s been a long time.”
The Russian whirled around with surprising speed for a big man, but that was when he noticed for the first time that the two bodyguards outside the café were not his own men. They were strangers. Americans. With guns.
Fyodor gave a long, loud sigh of resignation. Life was what it was. You won until you lost, and then you dealt with the consequences. “Nash Rollins. I take it we’re going for a drive, are we?”
“Yes, we are. Come, join me.”
Rollins slid over to the opposite side of the town car and patted the leather seat next to him. Fyodor squeezed his bulk inside, and one of the American agents slammed the door shut behind him. No one outside could see through the smoked windows. The car headed off slowly into the Parisian streets.
“I’m a diplomat, Nash,” Fyodor reminded him. “You’re making a serious mistake by kidnapping me.”
Rollins gave a friendly tap on the Russian’s knee with his cane. “Kidnapping? Don’t be so dramatic, Fyodor. You’re free to go. In fact, we can drop you off at your embassy if you’d like. However, we both know that Moscow doesn’t like the smell of failure. Agents who fail tend not to live very long. And that’s what I’m smelling on your suit, Fyodor. Failure. It’s even stronger than all of that French cheese.”
Fyodor frowned with his many chins. “Explain.”
“We have everything on tape. Your meeting with Scott DeRay. Medusa. Prescix. That waitress you were groping? She’s mine. She could crack that thick neck of yours like a pretzel if she wanted, by the way. See, that civil war you want is officially over before it starts. Tomorrow, the American media will report that the Prescix software is being used as a front for Russian counterintelligence. Trading will be suspended. The company will be shut down and its code taken apart byte by byte to see what little games you and Medusa have been up to. So by all means, go back to Moscow if you want, but we both know the only thing waiting for you is an extra-large hole dug in the taiga forest.”
The Russian spent a moment evaluating what Rollins had said. “I take it you’re offering me an alternative.”
“I am.”
Fyodor was nothing if not practical. “What do you want, and what do I get?”
“What I want is information. You come back to the U.S. and tell us everything you know about the inner workings of Medusa. Names, locations, moles in the government and private industry, targets, plans. All the details about the data hack and how it was done and who was affected. You give us everything we need to take apart the entire Medusa infrastructure person by person. Do that, and we give you a free pass. You get a beachside Florida condominium with an all-new identity and plenty of money to spend on hookers, vodka, and caviar.”
Fyodor stared out the window at Paris, knowing he was unlikely ever to see the city again. He lit a cigarette in the back of the town car and reflected on his options, which didn’t take long, because he didn’t have any. He wasted no time on patriotic sentiment. A living traitor was better than a dead patriot.
“Florida?” he asked. “You want to send me to Florida?”
“Or anywhere else you prefer,” Rollins replied.
The Russian shrugged and blew out a cloud of smoke. “Florida is fine. Humidity and cockroaches don’t bother me. But throw in a lifetime pass to Disney World, okay? I like to ride the teacups.”