Butterfly Effect

By GreenCat3/Chatvert

Yes, this is an AU fanfic. I know, I know. I'm terrible. But this is partially to prove that I can walk the walk (being the manager of the fandom's OFU with no other Bourne fics to my name), and partially because this idea popped into my head and simply wouldn't let go. I also cling firmly to my belief that Chris Cooper plus movie equals better movie. I hope it's not too implausible, and if there's anything I mess up on, canonical detail or not, please drop me a line and (politely) inform me that I'm doing it wrong, 'cause I research like a madwoman and sometimes I might miss things. Thanks!

September 1, 2005
São Paulo, Brazil
7:12 AM UTC / 4:12 AM Local

Alex Conklin was sick of running.

In three years, he'd jumped between at least twenty countries, probably closer to twenty-five. He knew the exact number, though, twenty-three, and it was only because as a diligent and cautious former CIA operative he just remembered things like that. About every two and a half months - not quite clockwork, but close - he'd start to grow too comfortable, settle into a routine, and that was always a danger sign. Within three days after that realization, he was gone. It was easy enough; people stopped asking questions once you dropped a sizable amount of hard currency onto the table before them.

Three years, eight passports, and twenty-three countries. Not a single one of those passports was real, of course, every single one a skilled forgery by a man missing some teeth in a back alley somewhere who was very, very good at his craft. There was one in every city, if you knew where to look, and he did. He'd dyed his hair; he'd worn colored contacts; he'd worn glasses; he'd aged himself up, never forgetting the basics of tradecraft he'd learned back at Langley and the Farm all those years ago. After all, it wouldn't do for a dead man to be stopped at an airport checkpoint. That would raise all sorts of nasty little inconvenient questions.

He hoped his funeral had been nice. It would have been a closed-casket affair, with a body that was not his own, naturally, the same bait-and-switch he'd pulled with faking Bourne's death three years ago to fool Wombosi. Mugged while on business in Paris, the official report would have said. He'd seen it enough, rubber stamped it enough. He'd prefer you didn't see him like this, et cetera. He could see his mother bawling over the casket, begging them to open it so she could see her precious little Alyosha one last time, and his father, stern and stoic and Russian as ever, refusing to cry at the death of his youngest son, little Aleksei. Nastia - Anastasia - would be there, too, his older sister who called herself Annie and would probably be married by now, probably to some high-rolling investment banker.

That was all impossible, of course. All of them, save for the imaginary investment banker, were dead. There would have been nobody at Arlington as they laid his grave marker down, except for maybe a few of his Agency colleagues. Of course, Ward Abbott would be there, as well as Conklin's own erstwhile assistant Danny Zorn. Erstwhile, because due to the patriarchal system of the Agency, Zorn was probably Abbott's gofer now. That is, if he hadn't been working for Abbott all along, damn him.

Stop it, he told himself, but the image of the smug DDO wouldn't leave his head. Angrily, he got up, stumbled over to the bathroom, and splashed some cold water into his face and reoriented himself. If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium. If this is August, it must be São Paulo...

But it wasn't August, his calendar reminded him. It was September. September 1st, as of about four hours ago in this part of the world. He'd come here in late June; his two and a half months were almost up. But where to go from here? Panama? Some island in the Caribbean?

Not like it made a difference, anyway. He was tired of running away, sick of being unable to settle down. It was almost worse than being dead. At least when you were dead, you were dead. Being fake-dead was very limiting. He couldn't keep up a relationship if he had to move every two months, not without telling his girlfriend-of-the-week his entire life story. It wasn't worth it. Being alone was just an unfortunate side-effect.

Three years, eight passports, and twenty-three countries. It was enough to drive a man mad, or at least paranoid to the point of madness. He just wanted it to stop.

Conklin walked back over to his bed and lay down. The least he could do now was try and get back to sleep. It was that cursed hour – too early to go out, almost too late to even bother trying to sleep. Only one of those options would do him any good right now.

Of course, none of this would have been possible if not for a lucky accident. The thing was, now Conklin was wondering just how much of it had been lucky…and just how much of it had been an accident.

December 23, 2002
Zurich, Switzerland
8:44 A.M UTC / 9:44 AM Local

The past twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind of insanity. The unexpected call from Bourne, jumping on a plane to Paris, being ambushed inside the safehouse, and almost being killed by a man he'd helped train had been bad enough. The final indignity had been when he'd come to the realization that Abbott had used Conklin's little jaunt to France to set him up.

When Conklin had regained consciousness after Bourne's attack, he was alone. He stood up as best he could, the taste of defeat bitter. The blood from his nose had smeared, giving him a particularly gruesome appearance. Pathetically, he stumbled out of the flat and down the stairs, nearly tripping over the body of one of the men hired to kill Bourne. He shuddered. Bourne really had turned, and that meant nothing but trouble for the CIA.

He had to get to his car and get away. His cell phone was dead, and Treadstone had been deconstructed in Paris, so he couldn't use that equipment either. Finding a pay phone took priority. Then he could call the Agency (collect, of course – fuck them, at this point) and tell them what had happened.

This entire plan was shot to hell when he noticed the tall, well-dressed man walking up to him. Conklin recognized the man from his Treadstone file, and he was damn sure that Manheim wasn't just coming to say hello.

He'd been set up.

He'd been set up.

The son of a bitch Abbott had set him up! He was even unarmed – Bourne had taken his gun, and he was too beaten to fight. All he could do was watch blearily as the assassin calmly pulled out his gun and aimed it at him.

Shit.

At that point, he wouldn't have minded death. It sure as hell would have beat having to explain his catastrophic failure to a constant string of superiors all the way up to Capitol Hill. But instead of receiving the wonderful early Christmas present of a one-way ticket to nothingness, he could only watch as that same gift was bestowed upon his would-be assassin.

There had been the sound of a gunshot, one short, sharp report, and somewhere in Conklin's brain acknowledged that silenced shots surely weren't that loud. Maybe it was different when the shots were at close range, and aimed at you…

And then, quite suddenly, Manheim had fallen over sideways, blood pooling onto the asphalt from where the bullet had entered – and left – his head.

Conklin stared.

Jason Bourne had emerged from the alleyway, lowering his own gun. For reasons known only to him, he'd decided that his former handler was worth sparing. He hadn't said much, just looked calmly at the incredulous Conklin and said, quite quietly, "You owe me one." A few seconds later, Bourne had disappeared into the Parisian night, leaving the ops manager with a bleeding corpse and thousands of questions.

Conklin's mental autopilot had immediately engaged, and almost before he knew it, he had unclipped Manheim's pager from his belt and keyed in with shaking hands that the target had been terminated. He was literally signing off on his own death warrant, and that fact did not escape him.

Once that was done, he could breathe a very fleeting sigh of relief. That would stop them looking for him, at least for the moment. Now the question was what to do with the rapidly cooling body in front of him. Tradecraft came flooding back into his brain. It was easy enough to dispose of Manheim's corpse – hide it in plain sight. With a little bit of effort, he was able to prop the dead asset up against the wall in a slumped sitting position, the attitude of a bum who'd had too much to drink. It wasn't a great solution, but it was the only one available, short of stuffing the body into a trashcan, which would in the long run be much more suspicious.

With speed born of urgency, he had frisked the corpse for any identification, any orders, anything that could put him on the trail. Aside from a fake passport, a hotel key, a wallet with petty cash, and the pager, there was nothing of importance. Of course, there was some carefully-crafted 'pocket litter', the common detritus of receipts, loose change, and candy wrappers that field agents often lined their pockets with so as not to seem suspicious when searched. Conklin left that, as it was no use to him, and took everything else. As far as the CIA would be concerned, Manheim would have done what he did best – disappearing. He hoped that they wouldn't discover their error until it was too late and he was halfway to nowhere.

Conklin stood once more, and surveyed the area. There was nobody else around. He looked down at Manheim's passport, and hesitated.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, like it or not.

Resolutely, he shoved the passport into his pocket for disposal later. First things first, he needed to get out of the area, and fast. Conklin knew exactly where to go.

Ten minutes later, he was on his way out of Paris in a car rented with Manheim's cash, headed southeast towards Switzerland. If he drove quickly, he could be in Zurich by breakfast.

He had arrived by eight in the morning, local time. After a hasty café breakfast and some coffee to keep him awake (also paid for in cash), he went straight to the bank. He couldn't afford to lose another minute. His bank was not Gemeinschaft, where some of the Treadstone accounts resided, but rather the nearby Geselschaft bank. To his knowledge, the CIA had posted no local agents there as they had at Gemeinschaft, but who knew, in this world?

It had been easy enough to withdraw his funds from the Neski job. Like all good Swiss banking staff, the employees had asked no questions. The real issue was that his moment of death and the final date of withdrawal from his account wouldn't match up. But it was either take the money and run or try and flee penniless, and the first option was much more preferable to the second. It would take them a few years to find his secret account; he'd hidden it well. But they would find it, eventually, of that he had no doubt. All that any suspicious analyst had to do was follow the money, and after several switchbacks and false leads, they would end up at his account. He just had to count on the infamous privacy-hounding of Swiss banks to keep him safe for a little longer after that, but eventually they, too, would likely cave.

Conklin wasn't stupid – he knew they'd find him eventually, if they looked hard enough. But he was going to make it as difficult as possible for them to do so.

Thus came passport number one, and two, and three…

Three years, eight passports, and twenty-three countries later, he was sitting in a secondhand armchair in his rented flat, nursing a scotch and wondering just how long this dance could really last.

Good idea? Bad idea? Oh, who cares, I'm going to keep writing it anyway. I appreciate your input, though. Love to my fantabulous beta-reader, Sealrat. 8D