Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Revenge

Book 22: Jason Bourne

by Brian Freeman

Genres: General Fiction; Thrillers; Spy Thrillers; Political Thrillers; Terrorism & Assassination Thrillers

Synopsis

The identity of a deadly Chinese spy lies hidden in Jason Bourne’s lost memory in this latest entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

Shadow – the head of Treadstone – has found evidence of massive Chinese espionage activity in the U.S. The spy running the operations is a shadowy American known only by the codename Bai Ze. No one knows who he is, but when Shadow consults the Files – the hacked AI database she stole from the Chinese – she discovers that Jason Bourne encountered Bai Ze during an operation eight years earlier.

The trouble is, Bourne doesn’t remember him.

As Bourne hunts for the elusive spy, he meets a reporter named Laney Reese who shares his strange affliction: eight years ago, Laney lost her entire memory, too. For Bourne, that can’t be a coincidence. He’s convinced that whatever happened to both of them is at the heart of the Chinese espionage operation.

With Laney at his side, Bourne follows a zigzagging trail of clues to a quirky billionaire and his ex-wife, both of whom may have ties to Bai Ze. As he gets closer to his shadowy adversary, Bourne begins to suspect that he’s walking into a trap. But it’s a trap with an almost irresistible bait – the chance to recover his forgotten memories.

Now Bourne must decide how far he’ll go to get his life back.

Release date: January 20, 2026

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 384

Sample

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1

Jason Bourne knew the day might come when he would have to kill Shadow.

Ever since he'd met her in Switzerland more than a decade ago, she'd lied to him, betrayed him, manipulated him, and put his life in jeopardy for her own ends. Now she was the head of Treadstone, and that meant she owned him. He was her personal agent for off-the-books missions, which gave her a power over him that she relished using.

They'd also become lovers the previous summer-something that no one else at Treadstone knew.

None of that changed the risks of their relationship in and out of bed. Shadow was who she was, and she would never change. Someday she would step over a line from which there was no going back, and he'd have to put a bullet in her head. They both knew it. They'd admitted it out loud to each other. That reality hovered in the background whenever they were together.

Bourne kept an eye on her security detail as they walked along the river trail in Anacostia Park in Washington. Wherever the head of Treadstone went, half a dozen agents always kept watch. A man walked a dog fifty yards behind them; two men in suits kept pace ahead of them; an SUV rolled slowly down the nearest lane of Anacostia Drive. Bourne could also feel by instinct the threat of a long gun pointed at him from a construction crew located on the bridge over the river.

Shadow took his hand, her nails scraping along his palm. Part of that was cover. A couple on a romantic stroll attracted less attention for anyone who might be surveilling them. Part of it was also Shadow's acknowledgment that things were different between them since they'd slept together in Greece. But with her, he never knew how much emotion was real and how much was staged to keep him under her thumb.

"I appreciate you flying over from Paris," she said. "You haven't been back to the U.S. in a while. It's been a long time since we were together."

That was true. It was a cold February in Washington, and he hadn't seen Shadow since a meeting in the Tuileries before Christmas. She had a way of disappearing until she wanted him, either on a mission or between her legs.

"Your message sounded urgent," Bourne said. "What's going on?"

She didn't reply quickly, as if she were reluctant to explain the next step. Finally, she said, "I need you to talk to Mo Panov."

Bourne showed no reaction, but he was surprised. He hadn't expected that. He knew Mo well, and their therapist relationship went back a long time, but he hadn't talked to him in almost two years. "Why is that?"

"I'd like him to regress you. I want to see if he can unlock any more of your memories."

Bourne said nothing as they kept walking. Remnants of overnight snow clung to the winter-brown grass, and the cool wind off the river blew through his leather jacket. Next to him, Shadow wore a long wool coat that draped to her ankles, but no hat. Her lush blond hair hung loose, and her pale skin was flushed in the cold, pink against her burgundy lips. She let go of his hand with a shiver and shoved her hands in her pockets. Ahead of them, across the water, he could see the Navy Yard and the white arches of the Capitol Street bridge.

"Regression hasn't been too successful in the past," Bourne pointed out.

"I'm aware of that, but Mo's willing to try again. Are you?"

He thought about the many hours he'd spent in Mo's office.

Treadstone had sent him there after his first memory loss, when he'd been shot on a mission in the Mediterranean and had his entire past wiped out. Mo had tried hypnosis and drugs, but they'd done little to help Jason remember any details. His memories were still there-that was what Mo believed-but they were locked away in a place his brain couldn't find. Whenever he tried to force his mind to go back, all he got was a sharp pain drilling behind his eyes. He couldn't push himself to remember. It didn't work that way. Instead, memories returned to him when he least expected it, in bits and pieces, fragments of a puzzle that would never be completed.

Last year, it had happened again. He'd almost died in an explosion, and once more he'd found himself stripped of identity, his memories gone. But this time, the recent past had come back faster, leaving only the years before he'd been shot as a blank slate. He'd dealt with it himself, rather than turning to Mo for help. His instinct was to avoid the raw vulnerability of being on the couch.

"I'm willing to try, but what's going on?" Bourne asked.

Shadow stopped on the trail and faced him. "Have you kept abreast of our briefings on Chinese espionage activity in the U.S.?"

"I've seen the reports, sure. Volt Typhoon."

"Yes, that's the umbrella code for their operations. The level of infiltration is massive. We believe they're ramping up more and more each year. Spy balloons, drones, public and private data hacks, tech viruses inside critical infrastructure, property acquisitions near sensitive installations, police stations inside U.S. cities to target dissenters. Political blackmail, too. As you well know."

"Adam Hill," Bourne said.

"Exactly."

Bourne saw the man's face in his mind, and it still prompted a wave of fury that tightened his chest. Adam Hill had been the U.S. vice president until his resignation the previous year. He'd also been a Chinese spy, a literal Manchurian candidate steps from the Oval Office. Bourne had managed to take him down, but the mission had come at a devastating personal cost.

A woman he loved, a woman named Johanna, had been killed.

"Hill's gone," Bourne pointed out. "He shot himself the day after Christmas."

Shadow frowned, doubt creasing her beautiful features. "Did he, Jason? Or did you help him along? I didn't ask you before now because I wasn't sure I wanted to know. But I wouldn't have blamed you."

"It wasn't me. Not that I didn't think about it."

"Then it was probably the Chinese themselves. They must have figured Hill knew too much about their domestic operations to leave him alive. Regardless, it doesn't matter. Taking Hill down was a victory, but he was just one big fish. The school of other fish swimming around is even more dangerous. We have to assume there are dozens of moles inside every layer of government, plus utilities, corporations, media, all of our critical industries. That doesn't include the Chinese spies that have poured across the border in the last decade. Hackers. AI experts. Saboteurs. Assassins."

Assassins.

A strange sensation traveled through Bourne's mind, like a sense of déjà vu. He felt himself close to remembering . . . something.

But then it was gone.

"What's their goal?" he asked. "What's the endgame here?"

Shadow started walking along the trail, and Bourne stayed beside her. "I think they're testing us. They're looking for pressure points, weaknesses. The L.A. fires, the New Jersey drones, the Nevada blackouts, a dozen other regional crises. I'm convinced the Chinese played a role in all of them. They want to see how we react when things go wrong, see what it takes to get us off balance. But everything that's happened up to now, that's just laying the groundwork for the real attacks. Imagine things like that happening all at once, on a hundred different fronts with a hundred times the severity, just as the CCP moves on Taiwan. Americans are used to war happening somewhere else, but the Chinese aim to destabilize the homeland whenever the conflict starts. And they don't need tanks, bombs, and infantry to do it."

"I get the risks," Bourne said, "but I'm not sure what this has to do with my memory."

"I'm getting there, Jason. You see, overall control for Volt Typhoon is obviously run out of Beijing, but the actual plans involve boots on the ground right here in the U.S. You can hack remotely, you can gather data from anywhere in the world, but the sophisticated work involves human intelligence. Old-fashioned spy work. You need to conduct long-term surveillance of physical infrastructure. You need to observe behavior, gather data on security procedures and processes. Moles need to be researched, influenced, recruited, run, handled. You need face-to-face meetings and dead drops."

"In other words, they need an American network."

"Exactly. This all has to be organized and managed. That means leadership, someone running the operation, setting priorities, assigning resources, coordinating all the moving parts. At the center of the giant web is a giant spider. A person in charge. Not overseas. Not in China. Someone here in the U.S."

"Do you know who?" Bourne asked.

"I only know a name," Shadow told him. "Bai Ze. Have you heard that before?"

"I haven't."

"Bai Ze is a beast in Chinese mythology," she continued. "A white tiger with horns and the face of a man. Plus eyes on its back so it can see everything. It's supposed to know all the secrets of the ghosts and the gods."

"And you think Bai Ze is the code name for the leader of China's American espionage operations?"

"I do. We flushed a Chinese mole at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Mid-level IT engineer. That's the kind of threat we're talking about, ordinary American hiding in plain sight. This guy's a nobody, family man, married for fourteen years, two kids. Security clearance, no red flags in his background. But he was in a position where he could plant a virus that would corrupt the plant's operating software and take it out of service for weeks. So the Chinese targeted him. They found a weakness. In his case, it was a sister who needed expensive cancer drugs. The family was running out of money. A recruiter used that information to turn the engineer and get him to install the virus. We were lucky. One of his colleagues spotted an anomaly in the code and reported it. We got to the man's devices before he erased them, so we were able to locate the Chinese agent who reached out to him. The recruiter's texts made references to someone named Bai Ze calling the shots on the operation. It was clear Bai Ze was high up, had direct communication with top officials in the CCP. I think only the network leader is likely to have that kind of access."

"The agent you captured, did he know anything more about Bai Ze? Like who he is? Or where he is?"

Shadow shook her head. "No, he was killed before we could interrogate him. So was every other agent in that chain. These guys don't mess around. But we did learn one interesting thing. I'm pretty sure Bai Ze isn't Chinese."

"You think he's American?" Bourne asked.

"That's my guess. For one thing, the myth of Bai Ze involves a white tiger. I don't think that's an accident in terms of code names. Sounds to me like an inside joke by the CCP. But there's more. An agent who was part of the operation in Pennsylvania complained in a text message about taking orders from a guizi. That's racist slang for a foreigner."

Bourne frowned. "But you don't know who Bai Ze might be."

"No."

"Well, whoever he is, he needs access, right? He has to have high-level connections."

"You're right," Shadow agreed. "That's why I've been extra cautious lately-including last year, when you and I went after David Abbott. I don't know who to trust, inside or outside the intelligence community. Other than you."

Bourne didn't bother telling Shadow that trust was a one-way street. She might trust him-although he was sure she was lying about that-but he would never trust her. He never trusted anyone. That was what kept him alive. Even his mentor, David Abbott-the man who had originally brought him into Treadstone-had his own motives. Shadow and Abbott would both sacrifice Bourne in a heartbeat if it led them to their goals.

"Holly Schultz at the CIA was working with Adam Hill," Bourne reminded her. "She claimed it had nothing to do with his Chinese connections, but if she's a double agent, she'd be in a perfect position to develop strategies to cripple U.S. interests."

"Agreed. She's on my suspect list. And not just because Holly and I are adversaries."

"Bai Ze could even be you," Bourne pointed out.

"That's true," she replied. Her cool face had no expression. "I could deny it, but that wouldn't mean anything, would it? Maybe I'm testing you, Jason. Maybe I'm sending you after Bai Ze because I want to see if my cover is deep enough to hold."

He heard an echo of his voice from the previous year. One of these days, I may have to kill you.

And he thought about Shadow's reply. Oh, I know. I fully expect it.

"So you want me to find Bai Ze," Bourne said. "Then what?"

"We squeeze him. We get him to give us a road map of Chinese infiltration, and we begin dismantling Volt Typhoon piece by piece."

"Okay, but if you have no clues about who he is, where do I start? It seems like I'm searching for a needle in a haystack." Then Bourne's eyes narrowed as he understood the motive behind this meeting. "Except you do have a clue, don't you? Somehow this all involves me."

"That's right."

"Based on what? Where did you get your information?"

"The Files," Shadow replied.

Of course.

The Files. Shadow's secret weapon. The Files were an AI software engine developed by the Chinese, which worked in conjunction with massive data hacks obtained from public and private sources. The Files collated trillions of data points, seeing clues and trends in the minutiae that the human mind would never catch. More than a year ago, Bourne had stolen the Files. He thought he'd destroyed the laptop with the master software so that no one could use it again. Instead, Shadow had deceived him in order to grab the Files for herself. Since then, she'd used the AI engine ruthlessly to amass power for Treadstone.

"So what did the Files tell you about Bai Ze?" Bourne asked.

"That's the trouble. I don't understand it."

"What do you mean?"

Shadow examined the Washington park around them, as if she were suddenly worried about surveillance. She leaned in closer, her face inches away. In her heels, they were eye to eye. "Are you familiar with a small town in Wisconsin called Fish Creek? It's in Door County, northeast of Green Bay."

"I've never heard of it."

"You've never been there?"

"Never."

Her deep-red lips pushed into a thin frown. "That's what our records show, too. As far as Treadstone goes, you've never had a mission anywhere near there. Not as David Webb. Not as Jason Bourne. I also talked to Abbott. He wasn't aware of any personal or family connections you had in Wisconsin. You had no reason to go there."