Bourne keyed in six digits to undo the combination lock on the heavy metal door of the warehouse. Then he led Abbey and Saira to the upper floor of the building. Halfway down the hallway was a second door, unmarked, also with a combination lock that he disarmed. When they were inside, he went to the single narrow window and stared out at the darkness. Seeing no movement outside, he shut the blackout curtains, then switched on the light, revealing the bare-bones furnishings of a studio apartment.
They’d driven for nearly two hours south of Washington to reach the industrial park near Fredericksburg, Virginia. He’d switched vehicles along the way, trading the Bronco for a stolen Toyota Camry, and he’d parked the sedan in the green field behind the warehouse. The apartment inside the building was a Treadstone safe house, one of dozens located near metropolitan areas around the country, used by agents who needed to stay undercover or who were on the run.
“We can stay here for the night,” Bourne told them. “Are you hungry? There’s no refrigerator, but there should be food in the cabinets. Power bars, that sort of thing. You both should eat something.”
He watched Abbey sit down on one of the two twin beds in the apartment. She’d said very little as they escaped from Washington, and she kept stretching out her arms and staring at the spatters of blood on her sleeves. He understood, and he was worried about her. The deeper she dove into his world, the more her sanity rebelled against the things she’d seen him do—and now the things she’d had to do herself, too.
“When do you think I can go home?” Saira Kohli asked. The scientist, always practical, took Bourne’s advice and found a high-protein snack bar in a cabinet over the apartment’s kitchenette. She unwrapped it and ate it quickly. “Because I can’t run forever.”
“I wish I could answer that, Dr. Kohli,” Bourne said. “These people were targeting you tonight, not Abbey. They were waiting for you, and they came very close to killing you. One of the most dangerous assassins in the world was in that park. If you’d turned south when you were running instead of north, if you’d met him instead of his colleague, odds are you’d both be dead right now. As it is, he’s still out there looking for you.”
“All right. I accept that. I find it impossible to imagine, but I accept it. Given that an ordinary grad student in one of my classes tried to cut my throat tonight, I guess I can’t argue with you.”
“She wasn’t an ordinary grad student,” Bourne said. “I’m sure she was in your class specifically to watch you. They’ve been spying on you for months. Probably since you became part of Varak’s institute.”
“And you think this Pyramid group that Abbey mentioned is behind all of this?”
“Yes.”
“Then we should go to the police. These people are killers. Surely they can be arrested.”
“We have no proof of anything that would implicate the people who are actually part of the Pyramid. We don’t even know who they are, other than Varak, and we have no evidence against him. If anyone’s arrested, it won’t be the ones in charge. Plus, as soon as you put yourself in the spotlight, they’ll ruin you, discredit you, and take away your platform. Then they’ll kill you anyway. That’s what they tried to do to Abbey.”
“All right, all right, but what if the reverse is true? What if the police start looking for us?”
“For the time being, it doesn’t look like you or Abbey have been linked to what happened in the park tonight,” he told her. “There’s nothing to tie you to the violence. Your names haven’t come up. That may not last, but we need to keep it that way as long as we can.”
“So back to my original question. How long do we have to run?”
“Tonight we run,” Bourne said. “Tomorrow we fight back.”
Saira didn’t ask him anything more for the moment. She examined the small, sterile space, studying it like a researcher, as if the drab furniture could tell stories about the spies who’d been here. When she went to the window and began to pull aside the curtain to look outside, Bourne intervened to stop her.
“Better not to let anyone see that we’re here,” he said.
“Do you think we were followed?”
“No. I know we weren’t followed. But the assassin I mentioned—he calls himself Lennon—has moles inside most of the intelligence agencies. I can’t rule out that he has access to the locations of safe houses we use. He might think to surveil the ones near DC on the chance that we’d go there.”
“Ah.” She took careful note of his face, still using her scientist’s curiosity for a phenomenon she didn’t understand. “Who exactly are you, Mr. Bourne? Abbey said she trusted you with her life, and you obviously saved both of our lives tonight. I’m very grateful. But you have me wondering about you. Given your tactical skills, I assume you’re some kind of government operative. Black budget work, that sort of thing?”
“I was.”
“And now?”
“Now let’s just say I have an arm’s-length relationship with the people who trained me. Sometimes our interests overlap, sometimes they don’t. In this case, the overlap is Lennon’s work for the Pyramid.”
Saira left the window and sat down next to Abbey on the bed. “You’ve talked about Darrell Forster and Varak. I assume the institute is somehow connected to all of this, too.”
“The institute appears to be the public face,” Bourne explained. “The Pyramid acts behind the scenes. A handful of powerful people setting the agenda, deciding on the narratives, the lies. With Varak as the leader. The one they call Genesis.”
“Genesis,” Saira mused. “Interesting choice. And what do they want? What’s their goal?”
“To control what people think by controlling what they know.”
Saira pursed her lips in thought. Then she focused on Abbey. “Do you mind if I ask you a question? The things they said about you, were they all lies?”
Abbey looked up, her eyes fierce. “Yes.”
“None of it was true?”
“No.”
Saira got up from the bed, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. “Well, those are my worst fears realized. I’ve been manipulated. Used as a pawn.”
“How did you become involved with the institute?” Bourne asked.
“Through Darrell,” she replied. “He approached me. He was chairing the project for the foundation, and he made the whole thing sound so sensible. So practical. We were coming off several years in which trust in science and facts had disintegrated. Wild misinformation was spreading everywhere. The institute was a way to combat that scourge. To provide resources for journalists and tech companies to make sure they could separate fact from fiction and then provide that information to their readers. Except—”
She hesitated.
“Except what?” Bourne asked.
“I had to make excuses for things that made me very uncomfortable,” Saira went on. “Darrell insisted—and he wasn’t wrong—that there were bad actors on the other side, people who were deliberately stirring up chaos for their own ends. Part of the job of the institute was to expose those people. Hold up their sins to the light. Conflicts of interest, bribes, crimes, anything that showed the world who they really were. I didn’t like it, but Darrell said we were simply exposing their secrets. But now I see they were creating lies, as they did with Abbey. Destroying people simply because they got in their way.”
“It’s more than that,” Abbey said. “It’s worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember the Georgia Senate race last year? The fire?”
“Of course.”
Bourne showed her a screenshot that Sloane Jenks had given them from his video of the riots that night. “Lennon was the one who set the fire. And Louisa—well, you can see in the photograph that Louisa was there, too. The Pyramid was responsible for those deaths.”
Saira’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my God. You’re talking about murder. The murder of children.”
“That’s what persuaded Louisa to try to expose them,” Abbey said. “You said Louisa sought you out at a conference to warn you that the institute was evil. When was this?”
“Last December. In Oslo, at a World Health Organization meeting.”
“That was only a few weeks after the fire,” Abbey pointed out.
Saira shook her head in dismay. “That must have been what she was talking about. She wanted my help. She wanted me to stop it. I tried to find out who she was, but I hit a dead end. I don’t know, maybe on some level, I didn’t even want to know the truth. But then, when I saw that she’d been killed—”
“Louisa came to the U.S. to expose the Pyramid,” Bourne said. “If she was at the scene of the fire, then she was deeply involved in their operations. Obviously, she had access to enough data on them that they needed to eliminate her—erase her whole identity. Since then, they’ve been shutting down every trail that leads back to her. We need to find out what she knew, what information she had. That’s how we fight back.”
“I’m not sure how we do that,” Saira replied.
“You said she worked at the institute in Frankfurt,” Abbey said.
“That’s what she told me. I arranged to visit the institute offices in Frankfurt on a European trip a few weeks later. I asked about her, but they said no one named Louisa worked in the building.”
“You mentioned her by name?” Bourne asked, frowning.
“Yes. I was hoping to talk to her. I didn’t tell them why, of course. I made up some story.” Then Saira’s eyes widened with dismay. “You don’t mean— Oh, God, was it me? Did I accidentally expose her?”
“If she was one of their field operatives, there’s no way you should have had her name,” Bourne acknowledged reluctantly. “You asking about her must have set off red flags. After that, they probably started watching her. They discovered that she was planning to betray them. When she flew to Washington, she was flying into a trap.”
“I killed her.”
“No, you didn’t. The Pyramid did. Varak did.”
Abbey got off the bed and went to her. “Saira, what’s in Frankfurt? What do they do there?”
She shrugged. “My understanding has always been that it’s the institute’s primary research operation. They facilitate fact-based responses to stories trending in the mainstream media or on social media platforms. If something significant happens—for example, some kind of notable weather event or catastrophe—they monitor the reporting and posts about it, and they loop in subject matter experts to counter false or unsubstantiated information.”
“According to our source, Louisa claimed it was much more than that,” Abbey said. “They have teams of hackers building deepfake videos, artificial online identities, anything to swarm and shape the narrative on a story. She called it a bot farm.”
Saira closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe I was a part of this.”
“When you were there, did you see the entire operation?”
“All but the eighth floor,” she replied.
“What was up there?”
“The director said it was sensitive material. Secure access only. I was a board member of the institute, but even I wasn’t allowed in that area. You needed a special elevator pass, special security ID, et cetera. I thought it would look odd for me to push it, so I said that was fine. But I had no idea that any of the things you’re talking about could be going on.”
Bourne began to see a plan take shape in his mind. He did what he always did, build a flow chart of actions and reactions, maneuvers and countermaneuvers. The first step was basic. Transport. Get from Point A to Point B.
“Do you have contacts without any connection to the institute?” he asked Saira. “Someone who could arrange discreet access to a private jet for a trip that’s entirely off the books? I don’t want to use any of my usual sources. There’s too much chance of a leak, given that Lennon’s involved.”
“I think so. Why?”
“Because we need to get to Frankfurt,” Bourne replied. “We need to get into that building.”
At three in the morning, Jason awoke. His instincts had jarred him from sleep. He lay stretched out on the floor in the safe house apartment, but automatically, as his eyes opened, he was alert. When he got to his feet, he saw immediately that the twin bed where Abbey had been sleeping was empty.
She was gone.
Saira Kohli was still in the other bed. Bourne did a quick check through the apartment window—the lights inside were off, giving nothing away—and he saw no indication of any cars or people in the industrial park. He grabbed his gun, then slipped through the apartment door and took the metal steps downstairs.
The back door of the building led to the grassy field where he’d parked the Camry. Beyond the open field was a grove of evergreens. In the starlight, he saw Abbey standing by herself near the trees. She wore a T-shirt and shorts, her legs and feet bare. He came up silently behind her, and when he touched her shoulder, he had to cover her mouth with his hand to keep her from screaming.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked when she’d adjusted to his presence. “It’s not safe. You shouldn’t go off on your own.”
“I know, but you were asleep. I wanted some air.”
“How were you going to get back inside?”
Abbey shrugged. “I watched the combinations when you keyed them into the locks. You trained me well.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “I appreciate that, but I don’t want you taking chances.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
He pulled her close to him and kissed her. She was stiff in his arms. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Actually, he knew what was wrong. He knew what memory was playing over and over in her head. But he needed her to face the line she’d crossed. That was the only way to get past the shock.
“I shot someone, Jason,” she replied. “I pointed a gun at that girl, and I shot her.”
“You didn’t kill her. That was me.”
“Does it matter? If I’d had better aim, it would have been me.”
“She was trying to kill you. Shooting that girl when you did saved both of you. You realized she was a threat, and you did what you needed to do.”
“The blood,” she murmured. “There was so much blood.”
“I know.”
Abbey shook her head. “How do you live with it?”
“Badly,” Jason admitted. “The truth is, I don’t live with it well at all. That’s why I pushed you away after Quebec. That’s why I didn’t want you anywhere near my world. Because it eats away at you from the inside.”
“Well, it’s too late for that. I’m in it now. I can’t go back.”
“Yes, you can,” he insisted. “We’re going to Frankfurt, and we’ll find what you need to get your life back. To prove that what they did to you was a lie. After that, you can just be Abbey Laurent, reporter, all over again. Nothing’s changed.”
Abbey kissed him back, but her face was full of shadows. “That’s sweet, Jason, but don’t lie to me. You know that’s not true. Once I pulled that trigger, I became an entirely different person. I’ll never be who I was. That Abbey is gone for good.”