Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Shadow

When secrets from Bourne''s past come to light, he may be the next thing that''s buried in this latest entry in the legendary It''s been over a decade since Nash Rollins recruited a brilliant, talented, but disaffected young man named David Webb to join Treadstone. Webb became the agent known as Cain--and later took on the identity of Jason Bourne. That violent winter--which included Cain’s first mission for Treadstone--was also a story of betrayal in ways that David never knew. So after the injury that erased Bourne’s whole life, Nash lied about the circumstances of David’s recruitment to Treadstone. He was afraid that learning the truth might drive Bourne out of the agency forever. But now, when Bourne meets a woman who recognizes him as David Webb, the secrets of those days begin to come out--and Bourne is forced to confront the dangerous ghosts of a past he doesn’t even remember.

Auteur

Brian Freeman

Résumé
Jason Bourne must face the violence and betrayal of his forgotten past in this latest gripping entry in Robert Ludlum’s #1 New York Times bestselling series.

Like most spies, Jason Bourne lives in the shadows. But for Bourne, whose entire memory was stripped away by a bullet, those shadows hide dangerous secrets.

When a desperate stranger in Zurich asks for his help, she calls him by the name David Webb, which is the identity he left behind years ago to become Jason Bourne. This woman tells him an incredible story – that her sister disappeared with David’s help after the deaths of four terrorists in the mountains. Now men from this same extremist group are trying to hunt her down.

Bourne remembers none of it, but when the Swiss bistro erupts in violence, he finds himself on the run, chasing the ghosts of his very first Treadstone mission. Operating on pure instinct, Bourne plunges into a maelstrom unlike any he’s ever experienced, hoping to rescue a woman he once loved. He soon discovers that no one in this world of shadows can be trusted – and everything he’s been told about his past is a lie.

Échantillon de lecture
1

The Present

Jason Bourne watched the hot Paris summer get even hotter.

The protest in the Place de la Bastille began to descend from unrest into violence. Soon there would be rocks and bricks thrown. Fights in the square. Cars on fire. It had been happening that way for weeks. The young people, sweat pouring down their faces in the blazing August sun, hurled threats at the police in their riot gear. At least fifty students had stormed the plaza and the Colonne de Juillet, as if it were the year 1789 again and they were launching another French revolution. The rest of the crowd, hundreds strong, spilled into the surrounding streets. They chanted and marched and waved flags bearing the words La Vraie.

True.

As in True France. That was the name of the far-right political party that was threatening to shock the world by winning the next French election.

Bourne sat in an outdoor café on Boulevard Henri IV, directly across from the plaza. The restaurant had been crowded when he arrived, but the other tables were mostly empty now. As the protesters filled the square, the paying customers had scurried away to the nearby Métro station, leaving behind half-eaten cheese plates and cold cups of espresso. Everyone knew what was coming.

He studied the crowd with an analytical eye. Automatically, he looked for the instigators, the hidden hands directing the mayhem. These kinds of protests rarely turned into riots organically. Someone was always there to light the spark with a well-timed knife thrust or a Molotov cocktail. He spotted at least six of them working the crowd, dressed in black robes and wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Bourne could see the wires of radios leading to their ears as they fed instructions back and forth.

Fomenting chaos.

Maybe they were truly part of La Vraie, trying to unleash populist anger that would sweep them into power. Or maybe they were agents of the ruling party, hoping to stir a backlash against the violence spreading around the country.

Or maybe something else was at work.

Truth is what you can make people believe.

Treadstone.

It was Thursday afternoon. Bourne always came to this café on Thursdays. He sat at the same table, ordered steak au poivre, and left an hour later out of the Bastille station to return to his apartment on the north side of the city. He spent the hour watching the street to see if anyone was watching him, but most of all, he kept an eye on the Métro sign above the escalators. If there was a hashtag symbol on the sign in orange chalk, that meant he had a message waiting at a boutique hotel two blocks away off Rue Saint-Antoine.

A message from Abbey Laurent.

But no.

It had been seven months since Abbey had said goodbye to him in Quebec City, and there had been no message since then. Not that he expected one. Abbey had moved on with her life and left the world of Jason Bourne behind her. Their affair was over. And yet he kept coming back to the café.

Every week, as he sat over his fiery pepper steak and a cold bottle of Kronenbourg 1664, Jason thought about sending her a message. He'd set up the communications protocol-the back door-so that it worked in both directions. If he scrawled the hashtag on the Métro sign himself, then someone-a lawyer, but he didn't know who-would collect a note for Abbey at the same Rue Saint-Antoine hotel.

Jason rubbed his fingers over the orange chalk in his pocket. He always had it with him, but he'd never used it. The only thing he could say to Abbey was that he was still in love with her, but that was the worst thing he could tell her. He needed to let her get on with her life, and he needed to do the same thing.

Forget Abbey Laurent!

But he couldn't. That was the terrible irony for Jason. The things he wanted to forget were burned into his memory, and the things he wanted to remember were lost in the mists of his brain.

A few years earlier, he'd been shot in the waters off Marseilles. The injury had robbed him of his identity. His memories of who he was had been erased, and all that was left behind were the skills of a killer. His whole past was lost in shadow. Only a few fragments had begun to come back recently, isolated bits and pieces like snippets from a movie. Missions. Deaths. Places. People. For months, strange things had triggered him. Smells, sounds, and faces brought unexpected recollections. But none of it felt real; it felt as if those things had happened to someone else. He didn't know what to believe.

Bourne smelled smoke drifting his way. In the plaza, he saw an arc of fire as a police car erupted in flames. Paving bricks crashed through windows. From the opposite side of the square, where the police gathered, water cannons blew people off their feet. He heard a series of loud bangs, and tear gas rose like a cloud, blowing toward him and stinging his eyes.

Amid the bedlam, he saw the men in the bone-white Guy Fawkes masks calmly moving among the crowd, seeding pockets of disruption. Wherever they went, blood trailed in their wake.

It was time to go.

But before he could stand up, a voice interrupted him.

"Les enfants, eh?"

He glanced sideways. The table on his left was no longer empty. A man sat there, heavyset, about fifty years old. His age didn't make Bourne let down his guard. He wasn't Treadstone-Cain knew the look-but with a glance, Jason assessed the man's upper-body strength and realized he was formidable. The man made no attempt to hide the pistol that was holstered under his gray-checked sport coat. But he kept his hands on the table, fingers spread wide, an obvious signal that he intended no harm.

The man nodded at the chaos unfolding steps …