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hightech business district of the city to La Défense than allowing modern construction to spoil Paris’s gorgeous architecture. The gleaming green-glass Île de France Bank building sat midway along the Place de l’Iris,which ran like an aorta through the heart of La Défense. On the top floor, fifteen men sat on either side of a polished marble table. They wore elegant made-to-measure business suits, white shirts, and conservative ties, even the Muslims. It was a requirement of the Domna, as was the gold ring on the forefinger of the right hand. The Domna was probably the only group in existence where the two major Muslim sects, Sunni and Shi’a, peacefully coexisted and even helped each other when the occasion called for it.
    The sixteenth man commanded the head of the table. He had a cruel mouth, a hawk’s beak for a nose, piercing blue eyes, and skin the color of wild honey. By his left elbow and slightly behind him sat the lone woman, notebooks open on her lap. She was younger than the men, or at least seemed so, with her long red hair, porcelain skin, and wide-apart eyes, transparent as seawater. Occasionally, when the man at the head of the table extended his left hand, she passed him a sheet of paper in the crisp, professional manner of a nurse handing a surgeon a scalpel. He called her Skara and she called him Sir.
    When the man at the head of the table read from the printout, everyone in the room listened, except perhaps for Skara, who had memorized the entire contents of her constantly updated notebooks, which she considered far too sensitive to be digitized.
    The seventeen people inhabited a room made of concrete and glass into which had been embedded a network of electronic gear that would foil even the most sophisticated attempts at eavesdropping.
    The directorate heads of the Severus Domna had convened from the four corners of the globe—Shanghai, Tokyo, Berlin, Beijing, Sanaa, London, Washington, DC, New York, Riyadh, Bogotá, Moscow, New Delhi, Lagos, Paris, and Tehran.
    Benjamin El-Arian, the man at the head of the table, finished addressing the men at the table. “Frankly, America has always been a thorn in our side. Until now.” He curled his hand into a fist. “Our goal is within our grasp. We have found another way.”
    For the next ten minutes El-Arian explicated every detail of the newplan. “This will, by design, put a great deal of pressure on myself and the other American members, but I have every confidence that this new plan will gain us far more than what was in place before Jason Bourne derailed it.” He continued with a few more words of summation, then called an adjournment.
    The others filed out, and El-Arian used the intercom to call in Marlon Etana, the Domna’s most powerful and, therefore, influential field agent.
    “I trust you are about to assign someone to terminate Bourne,” Etana said as he approached his leader. “He murdered our people in Tineghir, including Idir Syphax, who was beloved by all of us.”
    El-Arian smiled toothily. “Forget Bourne. Your assignment is Jalal Essai. Since betraying his sacred trust to us, he has caused us considerable inconvenience. I want you to find him and terminate him.”
    “But through Bourne’s interference we lost our chance at Solomon’s gold.”
    El-Arian frowned. “Why do you remind me of something I already know?”
    Etana’s hand curled into a ball. “I want to kill him.”
    “And leave Essai free to do more damage?” He placed a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Trust in these decisions, Marlon. Carry out your assignment. Remember the dominion. The Domna is counting on you.”
    Etana nodded, turned, and, without a backward glance, left the room.
    All was silence in the vast echoless place until Skara rose. “Five minutes,” she said without looking at her watch.
    El-Arian nodded and stepped to the north-facing window. He stared down at the wide road, the foreshortened people. He was a scholar, a professor of