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 say yes, the killer was our agent, but actually he was a Medusa mole and we had no idea about that when we hired him? How stupid does that make us look?”
Wall looked straight at Scott DeRay as he said this.
“You’re right, I take full responsibility for the recruitment of Jason Bourne,” Scott replied. “Obviously, he was more susceptible to manipulation by Medusa’s psychological methods than I realized. The man is one of my oldest friends, but I misjudged him.”
“A lot of good that does now,” Wall went on. “If our involvement in hiring him comes to light, this is disastrous! Catastrophic!”
“It won’t come out,” Priest interjected sharply.
“That seems optimistic, Mr. Priest,” Hon Xiu-Le announced to sympathetic rumblings from the others at the table. The Chinese entrepreneur adjusted tiny round glasses on his face and folded his small hands together. “If this man is captured, it seems inevitable that the investigation will lead back to Mr. DeRay—and from him to all of us.”
“Bourne will never be captured,” Scott informed them.
“Unless Medusa wants him to be captured,” Wall suggested. “Maybe that’s the plan. Bring him up to Capitol Hill in cuffs and leg irons to point the finger at the cabal, and watch them pass legislation to cripple us by voice vote!”
Priest waited until the unrest settled and the members were quiet. “We are dealing with Bourne.”
“How?” Wall asked, thumping a meaty fist on the table.
“I reached out to Treadstone,” Priest replied with a sideways glance at Scott. “I suggested that we have a shared interest in getting rid of Bourne, particularly given Treadstone’s recent resurrection. Bourne is a threat to them as much as to us. Director Shaw is in complete agreement. They were nearly successful in eliminating him in Canada.”
Hon Xiu-Le scowled. “Nearly?”
“It appears Bourne escaped the net,” Scott announced. “He’s gone underground again.”
More discontent rippled through the cabal.
“He escaped for now,” Priest continued, “but there’s nowhere he can go where we won’t be looking for him. Nelly is coordinating the tech resources among our various members to watch for any footprint he may leave online. He will be found. As soon as we locate him, Treadstone will take action to remove him. Now, I share your disappointment with our failure in New York, but I suggest we all return our focus to the more urgent issue. Namely, Medusa. Ever since the data hack, we’ve been expecting them to move against us in a major way. Any congressional action that arises because of the Ortiz assassination will weaken us, but this is only the first step. We still don’t know their endgame. I would suggest that we remain vigilant for unusual activity within our companies. Fluctuations in stock price or unusual buying or selling activity. Key personnel departures. Theft of intellectual property. Until we know what Medusa is planning, we’re all at risk.”
“Speaking of risk,” Wall interrupted again, “what is being done about Prescix? You promised us a deal, Miles.”
“We’ve faced a setback on that front,” Priest told them, “but we’re not done yet.”
He nodded at Nelly Lessard to give her report. Nelly was sixty years old, with neat gray hair and a grandmotherly voice that masked a tough-as-nails personality. She wasn’t even five feet tall, and she stood up so that the others at the table could see her. Her bones were thin and birdlike. “We extended an invitation to the founder of Prescix, Gabriel Fox, to join the cabal and meet with us here on the island,” she told the group. “He declined. In fact, he declined by hiring a blimp to fly over the Carillon headquarters flashing the word No. Along with a curse directed at Miles. As we all know, Gabriel is a genius but with the erratic personality quirks that geniuses sometimes have.”
“Gabriel is nuts!” Wall said flatly. “But who cares? Prescix software is more powerful than anything we’ve seen in social media in more than a decade. It’s been quadrupling its user base worldwide every month for the past year. We can’t have that much influence out there unchecked and uncoordinated. Prescix needs to be in this room.”
“Agreed,” Priest replied crisply. “As Nelly says, we’d hoped to recruit Gabriel directly, but he refused. In my mind, that’s an unacceptable response. In the absence of Gabriel’s cooperation, we’ve been working to give the company alternative leadership.”
Hon Xiu-Le leaned forward, his eyes suspicious. “How do you plan to do that?”
Scott stood up. Like Priest, he always wore a suit to these meetings. “I’ve been working with the legal team at Carillon to acquire Prescix. We’ve been quietly accumulating a large holding of stock under multiple surrogates. And we’ve made an outreach to the company’s COO, Kevin Drake, to support our bid and get a majority of the board to back the takeover. If that goes forward in the next day or so as we expect, then Gabriel will be out, and as the next CEO, Kevin has promised his enthusiasm for joining our group. Prescix will shortly be one of us, ladies and gentlemen. I guarantee it.”
Scott’s announcement won smiles from the others at the table. In the wake of that news, Priest stood up next to his protégé. “This seems like a good time to break for the evening. We’ll reconvene at breakfast. I’m sure you can all find productive ways to spend your night on the island.”
As the CEOs began to disperse throughout the estate grounds, Priest leaned closer to Scott. “Have you confirmed with Kevin Drake that everything is on track?”
Scott nodded. “Kevin’s in Las Vegas. He’ll be breaking the news to Gabriel tomorrow. We’ll shortly have majority support on the Prescix board. It’s a done deal. Gabriel’s gone.”
“Excellent,” Priest replied. “Nelly, have you arranged some company for Kevin while he’s in Sin City? I understand he’s rather particular.”
Nelly had the smile of a woman who knew men. “Oh, yes. I reached out to a very reliable agency. Kevin should be very pleased.”
“Well done.” Priest’s deeply lined face flushed with relief. “I don’t need to remind the two of you of the stakes here. Prescix isn’t simply another social media site. It’s the most sophisticated tool for behavior modification that I’ve ever seen. If Medusa gets their hands on that code, there’s no limit to what they can do.”
THE nighttime fountains of the Bellagio casino danced to the music of Frank Sinatra doing things his way. Kevin Drake, COO of the Prescix Corporation, got up from the desk where he was working on his MacBook and stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows in his penthouse suite. Thirty stories below him, hundreds of tourists crowded the sidewalk on the Las Vegas Strip to watch the water show. From up here, he also had a panoramic view of the rainbow lights of Paris, Aria, and the Cosmopolitan.
Kevin sipped a shot of Clase Azul Ultra tequila, each little taste just enough to wet his lips. His doughy body was wrapped up in a Versace silk robe that felt as smooth as butter on his skin. Everything else that he needed for the evening had been left for him on the marble bar in a gold-leaf box. Cologne. Body oil. Cocaine. Cialis. He hadn’t always been a fan of Miles Priest and Carillon Technology, but he couldn’t deny that they had impeccable taste in perks, and perks were what made the world go around. Once you had a few hundred million dollars in the bank, life was no longer about money but about finding the best experiences that money could buy.
The chime sounded on the suite door. Hearing the bell shot a twinge of excitement through Kevin’s body. This was another perk. The best kind.
He padded across the plush carpet in his bare feet and opened the door. There she was. He’d expected gorgeous, but the woman in front of him was a vision. Jet-black hair tumbled to her shoulders and made a few wispy bangs across her forehead. She had blue eyes that looked unusually pale against her ebony hair. Her narrow face curved to a sharp V at her chin, and one little freckle on her jaw gave her the smallest imperfection that made everything else even more perfect. She was much taller than he was and even taller in gold stilettos that matched the shimmering gold of her skintight spaghetti strap dress. A black leather purse dangled from her shoulder.
The raven-haired woman grabbed the thousand-dollar shot of tequila from his hand and downed it in a single swallow. Her lips curled into a smile, showing snow-white teeth.
“Are you Kevin?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not an ordinary companion, Kevin. Was that made clear?”
“It was. I—I asked for someone like you.”
“I have rules for my appointments. Are you a man who follows the rules?”
“Definitely.”
“Then let’s be clear on what I require. You will address me at all times as Miss Shirley. Any deviation will result in punishment. Is that understood?”
Kevin blinked. “Yes.”
The woman’s hand flew like a streak of lightning across his face, and her sharp nails drew blood. “Is that understood?”
He staggered back. “Yes . . . Miss Shirley.”
She grabbed his head tightly between her two hands and used her tongue to lick the blood off his cheek. “Better.”
Miss Shirley sauntered past him into the suite as if she owned it. Kevin followed, unable to rip his eyes away from her long legs. Her gold dress barely covered her ass. She put down her purse, went to the tall windows, and admired the stunning view, with one knee bent and her hands on her hips. Then she spun around, used two fingers to peel away the straps on her shoulders, and let the dress fall into a gold swirl at her ankles. Other than her heels, she was naked. Her rose-tipped breasts swelled like pyramids on her torso, and her build was thin.
Kevin reached for the tie on his robe so he could undress himself, but she held up a hand, stopping him.
“Leave your robe on. I’m the prize in this room. Focus on me.”
“I understand . . . Miss Shirley.”
“Impress me, Kevin,” she directed him.
He stared at her, puzzled, trying to understand what she wanted. In the process, he forgot the rules. “I’m sorry?”
“I want to be impressed. Any man I’m with must impress me.”
“What do you want . . . Miss Shirley?”
“Offer me something worthy of me,” she snapped.
“I have champagne. Would you like some champagne . . . Miss Shirley?”
“Champagne is a given. It’s barely even a start, but open it anyway.”
He stumbled to the wet bar and removed a bottle of Krug from the refrigerator. He struggled to peel away the foil with trembling fingers and undo the cage at the top of the bottle. He’d barely touched the cork when it shot out of the bottle and hit the ceiling, and foam bubbled over his hands.
“I trust that’s not the kind of performance I can expect from you later,” Miss Shirley sneered.
Kevin poured two glasses until they were nearly spilling over the crystal rims and brought one over to her. She was inches away, a naked goddess, and he had to adjust his robe to hide the effect she was having on him. She drank the champagne as she had the tequila, with one swallow, and held out the empty glass, which he scurried to refill.
Her gaze traveled around the dimly lit room. To the laptop. To the dining room and chandelier. To the neon of Las Vegas Boulevard.
“Impress me,” she said again. “Aren’t you an important man, Kevin? They told me you’re an important man. Prove it.”
“I’m worth nearly half a billion dollars . . . Miss Shirley.”
She shrugged. “That sum is below average by my standards. Which is also what I see under your robe. If that’s all you can offer me, we can proceed with the thirty seconds it will take me to finish you off, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Wait!” he begged her, his mind working furiously. No other woman had ever aroused him like this one. He couldn’t let her leave. “Wait, I can show you something amazing. This will impress you. See all those tourists down on the street?”
“Yes.”
“I can make them take off their clothes and jump in the fountain.”
Her head cocked with curiosity, and her fingertips played idly across one of her erect nipples. “Are you serious?”
“I swear! I can do it . . . Miss Shirley.”
Kevin grabbed his laptop and a pair of mini binoculars from his briefcase and brought them over to the tall windows. He handed the binoculars to Miss Shirley, who aimed them at the crowd. His hunger for this woman was literally making his mouth water, and he had to clench the laptop hard to stop himself from reaching out to caress her bare skin.
“How does this work?” she asked him.
“I run a company called Prescix,” Kevin explained. “It’s the hottest social media site out there. . . . You must have heard of it. We tell people that the software knows what you want to do before you know it yourself. The algorithm uses thousands of personal factors—where you are, who you’re with, your medical history, your social history, your likes and dislikes—and it calculates what you will want to do next. People call it spooky because it’s so accurate, but they don’t know the half of what it can do. It can also influence behavior, which is what advertisers love. Watch! I highlight the geographic area right here, and then I submit a prompt in the executive-level code: ‘Take off your clothes and jump in the fountain.’ I’ll also define a few characteristics for the command based on the personality traits and resistance levels needed to carry it out.”
With one hand, he tapped on the keys. On the laptop screen, a series of red X’s began populating the mapped area on Las Vegas Boulevard. In a few seconds, more than a hundred users had been identified, and their photos and profiles appeared in a separate column on the right side of the screen.
“See, the X’s mark the Prescix users within the target area,” Kevin explained. “Now, based on the command I selected, the software will use its AI algorithm to assess the likeliest users to respond to that suggestion. It will look at everything, their photo stream, their alcohol purchases, keywords in their posts, arrest records, attitudes toward authority, whatever we know about them. Then it will highlight the users with the greatest probability of success and deliver the prompt to their devices, as well as photos and posts designed to encourage the behavior.”
Blue circles appeared around two dozen red X’s.
“Watch this . . . Miss Shirley.”
There was a long, pregnant pause as she focused on the crowd below. Kevin couldn’t see the people clearly from the top-floor suite, but a few seconds later, he could just make out a body in the glow of the Las Vegas lights, jumping over the stone railing and splashing into the fountains.
Then another person did the same thing.
And another. And another.
He could see Miss Shirley’s eyes glittering. Her smile showed perfect teeth.
“It becomes a self-fulfilling command, too,” Kevin went on. “When one person does it, the resistance level diminishes in the group, and others join in.”
By now, he could see almost thirty people wading in the Bellagio fountains and security running to deal with them.
Miss Shirley put down the binoculars. “Kevin, you succeeded. I am impressed.”
“Thank you . . . Miss Shirley.”
“And you run this company?”
“I’m the number two executive, but the founder is crazy, out of control. I’m in town to squeeze him out. Another company is paying me a fortune to take over the entire operation. As of tomorrow, Prescix will be mine . . . Miss Shirley.”
“Well, you’re a busy man, so let’s not waste time,” she told him, loosening the knot on his robe and pushing it off his shoulders. Kevin stood naked in the middle of the floor, and her fingernails began to scrape across his body. He groaned.
“Go to the bedroom right now,” she directed him.
“Yes . . . Miss Shirley.”
“Do you want to touch me?”
“More than anything . . . Miss Shirley.”
“Do you want me on top of you? Do you want to be inside me?”
“I do, I do . . . Miss Shirley.”
“Then go. Wait for me.”
Kevin practically ran for the bedroom. Miss Shirley followed at a languid pace. He bolted through the doorway and threw himself onto the king-size bed and lay on his back. He squirmed with anticipation. Moments later, Miss Shirley appeared before him, a silhouette in the doorway. Neon from the tall windows blinked on her nude body. She brushed aside her dark hair. Her pale eyes glistened.
“Are you ready for me?”
He spread his arms to beckon her to him. “I can’t wait.”
She took a step into the room. She had her purse over her shoulder again, and her right hand was buried inside the zippered pouch. She posed for him like a model, her mouth smiling wickedly.
“What did you say?”
“I said, I can’t wait.”
“That’s too bad, Kevin.”
“What? Why?”
“You forgot the rules,” she reminded him. “Forgetting the rules means punishment.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry . . . Miss Shirley!”
“It’s too late for that,” she said. “In any case, this punishment doesn’t come from me. It comes from Medusa.”
“What?”
Miss Shirley’s hand emerged from her purse with a gun.
She fired a bullet into Kevin’s throat.