Description

The Auction Protocol
Book 4 of the Evergreen Agency Series
by Camille Dufresne

When the glossy Sotheby’s catalog arrives uninvited at Marta Kovács’ apartment in Lyon, it feels less like an invitation to an art auction and more like a threat. Within its pages lies something familiar—patterns she recognizes from her past work dismantling the Chénelle network, patterns that should have been buried years ago. What Marta doesn’t yet realize is that this is only the beginning of a dangerous new evolution in global coordination infrastructure.

Soon she learns that she is not alone. Seventeen other investigators across Europe and beyond received identical catalogs the same morning, each addressed to their private homes. The message is clear: someone knows where they live, someone is watching, and someone wants them to see what is hidden in plain sight.

Lot 47 catches Marta’s attention—a geometric abstract painting in blue and gold, its design pulsing with a mathematical precision that makes her breath catch. This isn’t mere art. It is encoding. A new language. And the signature embedded within the painting proves the system has evolved beyond anything she’s faced before. What began as hidden messages stitched into textiles has now become algorithmic artworks, distributed globally through high-end auctions, refined to coordinate movements across borders without the need for human intermediaries.

As Marta unravels the new “Auction Protocol,” the investigation takes her to Vienna and Zurich, where she confronts Kovač Modern, a shadowy gallery fronting for this new wave of algorithmic coordination. There, she encounters a system built not just to resist traditional investigation but to seduce investigators themselves—an infrastructure named after her, designed to anticipate her every move, and ready to transform her expertise into complicity.

When Claire Beaumont, a brilliant financial analyst and one of Marta’s former allies, vanishes after getting too close to the truth, Marta knows the stakes are higher than ever. To find Claire, she must walk closer to the line than she ever dared during Chénelle—risking not only her life, but her identity as an investigator. Because the deeper she steps into the protocol, the thinner the line becomes between investigation and transformation.

The Auction Protocol is a taut, sophisticated thriller that blends art, finance, technology, and espionage into a chilling exploration of how beauty and culture can be weaponized as tools of power. Camille Dufresne once again delivers a razor-sharp, psychologically complex narrative that fans of John le Carré, Daniel Silva, and Stieg Larsson will devour.

In this fourth installment of the Evergreen Agency Series, the questions run deeper than ever:

• What happens when the methods designed to stop networks become the very blueprint for their evolution?

• How far can an investigator go before the act of understanding becomes the act of becoming?

• And when the system itself bears your name, are you investigating it—or is it investigating you?

Gripping, cerebral, and impossible to put down, The Auction Protocol will leave readers breathless, questioning not only the hidden codes within its pages, but the hidden codes shaping the world around them.