Freedom TM

hasn’t been easy. I … there’s no real jobs anymore. I feel like we’ve let you down.” Fossen started to tear up.
    She hugged him tightly. “Dad, you didn’t let me down.” Shelooked back up at him. “You taught me everything I need to know: self-reliance, self-respect, community. Just don’t be surprised if I actually put it to use.”
    ______________
    Fossen sat in his La-Z-Boy chair with the television off. He listened to the old house settling. To the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer and the refrigerator fan turning on and off as the minutes passed.
    It was late.
    Then he heard the dogs barking and a car coming up the long drive. He didn’t move. He heard footsteps on the back porch, and then the door in the mudroom squeak open and thump closed. Still he sat motionless.
    A creak on the floorboards nearby. Jenna’s voice. “Dad? It’s late. You okay?”
    He just held up a letter on embossed stationery. “You know, it’s been nearly five years. And after all that time, it’s just takes one letter.”
    She stood in the doorway.
    “How did you do it?”
    “I told you.”
    “No. You really didn’t, Jenna.” He looked up at her. “How does a twenty-three-year-old kid get a multibillion-dollar company to drop a lawsuit?”
    “It was the Daemon.”
    “What
is
the Daemon?”
    “It’s a digital monster that eats corporate networks. They’re scared to death of it—because it has no fear.”
    He turned to face the dark television screen again. They sat in silence for several moments.
    “What happens now?”
    “That depends on whether you want to continue running this place as part of their system.”
    Fossen looked up at the framed photograph of his eldest son in dress uniform on a nearby bookshelf. He nodded. “I didn’t realize we had two warriors in the family.”
    He turned around to face her. “What do we do?”
    She smiled. “The first thing we do is stop planting corn.”
    “And plant what?”
    “What people need.”

Chapter 11: // Hunted
    Southhaven was a self-styled “six-star” golf resort catering to business. Pharmaceutical companies marketing blood thinners to cardiovascular surgeons, investment retreats, political fund-raisers—all of them were capable of filling the two hundred and eighty outrageously expensive guest bungalows. In another age it might have been a duke’s estate—a place where the affairs of men might be discussed with sophistication while wives strolled the gardens and the children took riding lessons. Now it was a rental that offered double mileage points.
    With a world-class golf course, four restaurants, and a bar that permitted cigar smoking, Southhaven Golf Resort was the ideal place to get business done in a relaxed atmosphere. The resort was located on Ocean Island—one of several barrier islands off the southern Atlantic coast of Georgia. Gated and patrolled, the private island consisted of the Southhaven resort, its golf course, and a hundred or so sprawling Mediterranean-style beach houses—third or fourth homes to people looking for somewhere to dump capital gains. Most of the homes were unoccupied at any given time.
    A big selling point for Ocean Island was its remoteness. It was buffered by a mile and a half of marshland to the west and north and linked to the mainland by a single causeway. To the east and south lay only the Atlantic Ocean.
    In short, it was perfect for The Major’s purpose. He’d long agograduated from clandestine meetings in run-down safe houses or industrial spaces. He was the establishment now, and he enjoyed its perquisites.
    The Major sat on the arm of a sofa in their Emperor Bungalow, talking on his encrypted cell phone with a broker in Hong Kong. He glanced at his watch. Eleven fifty P.M. “Yes. It should be part of the dark liquidity pool. Right. Two hundred thousand shares.”
    He looked up at the dining room to see half a dozen senior managers of international security and military providers gathered around a table strewn with maps of the Midwestern United States, photographs, and documents. No two of the men had the same accent—South African, Eastern European, Australian, American, British, Spanish. Several were smoking as they pondered the maps. They were debating something, and the British executive motioned for The Major to rejoin the table.
    He knew he wouldn’t have too many more chances to shift his investments. And he wasn’t about to miss the upcoming event.
    The Major nodded