Chapter 4

Present day

Nicky Parson had seen the Jason Bourne story on the news two days ago in Barcelona, Spain. Since then she had been working her way back to the US. She took a train to France and then took the tunnel to England and then a ferry to Ireland then booked a flight on the Iceland Express that flies between Belfast and Reykjavik, Iceland. Even though thirty thousand people fly out of Iceland every day, it did little to ease her trepidation getting on the plane to New York. It was 2,500 miles to New York and once she was on the plane, she was trapped. Her only hope was that the command structure of the CIA was so shaken that by the time her alias came across someone's desk that she would at least be on the ground. But, Jason was in New York and he was undoubtedly injured and she would be damned if was going to sit safely on the other side of the world while he was blowing the CIA wide open.

Bourne had been many things to her over the last decade. When she thought of the name Jason Bourne she felt such an overwhelming wave of various emotions that she almost felt shattered. They had been friends and enemies in every since of both words. She had loved him and despised him. She had been his willing and unwilling sex partner. They had been cell mates and later he had been her asset and she had been his handler. He had saved her life and he had given her a nervous breakdown when she was certain he was going to but a bullet in her head. He had elevated her career to dizzying heights only to completely and totally destroy it. He had killed Castel her greatest tormentor, but also he had killed the Professor, one of her greatest loves. He was a force of complete and total chaos in her life, but he was also the last remaining constant. Everyone else from Treadstone was dead, hiding, in prison or an asylum.

Iceland was a good place to enter the US from because it was close and it was a stopover for thrifty spenders, so she booked her trip through a travel site and got a package with a rental car and a cheap hotel, even though she would never use them. The clown sitting next to her, really, he worked as a clown, kept hitting on her the whole flight. At least he had a unique new set of pick up lines, she had never been asked to a guy's hotel to 'make balloon animals' before. He also bragged that he was 'a furry', she at first thought he meant his back was hairy until he explained it. She had to focus all of her training to keep from throwing up all over him. She had to channel her inner Reina in order to fawn over him so that they could go through customs together. She knew she had a higher chance of making it through if she didn't look alone and besides this fine example of the masculine mystique would have all eyes and ears on him. Clown or not, this ass had been a used car salesmen at some point and she didn't even know they still made Brute aftershave. She knew the stewardess kept giving her the sympatric 'do you want another seat' look, but she couldn't afford to stand out.

She cleared customs and took a cab to a storage unit she maintained with actual real personal effects as well as clothes, money, weapons, and ID's. She grabbed a drop bag of clothes, toiletries, cash and two pistols. She got a P224 Sig Sauer which had always been a favorite of hers and a Walther P22 which was only a little smaller but weighed a lot less but she had a silencer for it. She grabbed ammo and several styles of holsters for different occasions, why did women always require so many accessories? She looked at her old purse that had her CIA badge and ID in it as well as her real passport, a set of keys, her driver's license and some pictures and debated taking it or not. Strictly speaking it was illegal for a CIA agent to carry a weapon and badge on US soil, but she was pretty sure that she was going to be doing something illegal the whole time she was here anyway. It also had her Grandfathers watch, she had forgotten what she had done with it, and she quickly put it on and wound it relishing in the familiar feeling. She rejoiced that the cabbie had actually waited, she had promised him fifty dollars to wait for her. Now came the hard part, did she try to get to Landy or into the CIA mainframes to see where Bourne was, or did she try to find him on her own? There were places that she could check, dead drops and caches left over from Treadstone. But even if he remembered them, he would not think that she would go to them because he had forgotten them. That held true for anyone he may have known that would have helped him. That is if he was still here. She felt that rested on whether or not he was actually shot. If he was and he took that kind of fall he would need to lay up somewhere. Clueless as to where to go next, she did what she always did in situations like this… she went for a cappuccino. So, she sat enjoying her favorite type of coffee, although it paled in comparison to the Parisian and Italian fare to which she had grown so accustomed, as she brain stormed for ideas. She had come here to search of Bourne, but it was very difficult considering that he was on about a million websites now. She even tried Facebooking out of desperation and quickly became embroiled in the soap opera like antics of her cousins; they were ten years older and still going through the same drama only now with children in tow. She even searched for herself and found that there had been a memorial page set up for her where people came to post nice things about her and she smiled as she looked through them all, the poor souls… Constance Lindbergh had died a fake death and Nicolette Parsons had been forcibly ejected from the ashes. Now that life was all but destroyed too and she was forced to live the hollow lives of a dozen other fake passports from six different countries. She had a wonderful time reading about herself until she got to a post from her evil stepmother, who was almost her age by the way, "that Bitch!" she exclaimed in a very uncharacteristic display of vulgarity. Her real mother and father had raised her from better stock. Some people turned and looked at her and she snapped, "Well she shouldn't speak ill of the dead!" it took a lot of effort to not slam the laptop closed and she went and hailed a cab. She needed a nice five star room, a massage, new clothes, and a wakeup call for tomorrow, she had just figured out one possible way to get a message to Bourne. As she got in the cab she realized that not only was she holding the Walther in her hand inside her coat pocket but she had subconsciously slipped the safety off, she quickly flipped it back on. The cabbie asked her where to, "I have my husband's wallet and I kind of hate him right now, take me shopping…"