Robert Ludlum's the Bourne Evolution - Brian Freeman Page 0,41

easy to get to him. He’s smart. If he thinks you’re coming after him, he’s going to be on his guard. He doesn’t know you, but he knows me. I can help you draw him out, Mr. Cain.”

He shook his head in disbelief at this woman’s sheer foolish courage. He hadn’t met someone like her in a long time.

Not since Nova.

He lowered his weapon.

“I’m not Cain,” he told her. “Not anymore. Cain was a long time ago. My name is Jason Bourne.”

PART TWO

FOURTEEN

THE CEOs of thirty-six of the world’s most influential technology companies sat around a handmade beechwood conference table imported from a Baltic coastal village in Sweden. Thirty of the participants were men, six were women, and they ranged in age from twenty-nine to seventy-five. Their countries of origin were dominated by the U.S., but also included representatives from China, South Korea, Switzerland, Germany, and India. The invitation-only group had no name. Outside of this room, it didn’t officially exist. The billionaire members called it simply “the cabal.”

Four times a year, they came here to discuss technology strategy, in a villa owned by Miles Priest on a private island a few miles off the coast of Nassau. Warm ocean breezes blew through the open-air space that looked down on the island’s sand beach, which was now bone-white in the moonlight. Dozens of red-necked Bahama parrots chattered in the palm trees beyond the balcony. Silver platters of coconut-crusted shrimp, fish stew and johnnycakes, conch salad, and guava duff sat in the middle of the table within easy reach, along with carafes of wine, sparkling water, Yellow Bird, and Goombay Smash. There was, ironically, no technology allowed at these meetings. No phones, no laptops, no devices of any kind. The members of the cabal knew better than anyone that people were always listening.

Miles Priest sat in his usual place at the head of the table, his back to the ocean view. Scott DeRay sat on his right, and Nelly Lessard, who coordinated the cabal’s communications and meetings, sat on his left. Most of the others in the group wore comfortable tropical attire—flowered shirts, shorts, sandals—but Priest never wore anything except a business suit at these meetings. He was still a product of the FBI culture in which he’d spent thirty years. Always professional. Always driven by stringent rules and values. Many of the CEOs expected hedonistic pleasures during their stay on the island, and Priest had no trouble indulging their distasteful fetishes, but he refused to allow such weaknesses in his own life.

At most meetings, the executives deferred to him as the leader of the cabal. That was high praise in a group whose other members were equally brilliant, arrogant, and über-rich, but Priest’s éminence grise persona and his six-foot-six stature managed to keep them in line. So did the fact that Nelly Lessard kept secret recordings of each member’s private peccadilloes. A night at a Macau hotel with two seventeen-year-olds? A taste for trafficked Egyptian antiquities? Nelly Lessard knew all about them. If anyone stepped seriously out of line, they were quietly reminded that certain recordings could be sent to their boards of directors or even the criminal authorities in their countries.

However, tonight Miles Priest was on the defensive.

“A debacle!” Hon Xiu-Le announced from the far end of the conference table. The small forty-year-old with straw-like black hair was the Shanghai-based leader of China’s largest social messaging application, representing nearly a billion users. “A debacle, Mr. Priest, there is no other way to describe it! You told us that your operation in New York would help us gain the upper hand against Medusa. We would finally know what they were planning. Instead you played right into their hands.”

Priest’s sagging bloodhound face showed no expression. “I don’t disagree with you, Hon.”

“Congress is screaming!” added Tyler Wall, the youngest member of the cabal and the founder of a medical device company specializing in internal microrobotics for surgical procedures. The irony of his focus on small things was that Wall was built like a carnival strongman, with blond hair down to his waist and a full beard. His odd affectation was that he always wore a flowing white robe and carried a walking stick, like a modern-day Moses. “The legislation from Ortiz should have been dead in the water, but after her murder, the bill is gathering momentum in the House. Rumors are all over D.C. that Big Tech was behind the assassination. You think anyone is going to believe us if we