CHAPTER 45

I had another good laugh when a woman asked what I did for a living that enabled me to get away for an entire month. "John owns a company that has something to do with computers. He's explained it to me several times, but I still don't fully understand. I do know that he paid my sister who is his personal secretary as well as office manager almost a quarter of a million dollars last year and all of his senior guys made more than two million. Last year he gave about forty million to charity. He's such a sweetheart."

"Exactly what is it that you do, John," asked one of the husbands at our table.

"I wrote a special firewall program as part of my doctoral thesis and had it patented when my advisor saw its potential. That's our only product, but it's a good one. I have virtually every department of our government as clients as well as most of the major banks and retail outlets. The head of my European branch just signed up for NATO and we enrolled in England, France, and the Netherlands within the last two weeks. I'm already on Version 4.0 and it's patented, too. With all the hacking problems recently I can't hire technicians fast enough. I call them technicians, but almost all have PhD's and they've all been vetted by private investigators because they have access to a lot of secret information. It's rare that I actually have to sell my product."

"Could I buy this for my computer at home?"

"No, it's not practical because it's too expensive. I charge $2,000 per computer the first year and $1,000 every year thereafter although that's food for thought. My goal is to have every country other than those unfriendly to the U.S. I'll get there, too. Right now my biggest stumbling block is getting technicians."

"It sounds complicated."

"It is, but everything that's worthwhile is a bit complicated." He nodded his agreement and the conversation turned to the trip. Everyone was looking forward to going through our first lock later this evening. We had been told that we would go through seventy-one on this trip, but the first should be interesting. After that, who could know?

The trip was idyllic—moderate sunny days exploring small towns and cities, each with a story to tell and each with friendly people eager to share their history with travelers like us. I knew we were nearing the end when we reached Vienna, a beautiful city on the supposedly blue Danube. Well, it might have been blue when Strauss wrote that waltz, but it isn't blue now. It's kind of greenish-brown, but Vienna was still an enchanting city. Truthfully, I could have stayed in one of the coffee shops eating strudel or some of the other delicious pastries all day, but Sara insisted on seeing the city.

We strolled hand in hand through ancient streets, stopping to window shop and even to buy. Sara was especially intrigued by some of the local crafts. She bought silver earrings and bracelets as gifts and some for herself, too. We bought several small paintings—watercolors—that were packed carefully between sheets of corrugated cardboard and taped together for the long trip home. Yes, the days were spent sightseeing, but the nights were spent making love. Okay, so were the mornings and some of the afternoons, too. We were honeymooners. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

We disembarked the ship in Budapest, an incredible city, and boarded a train that would take us to Montenegro. Sergei picked us up at the station and drove us to Budva where we stayed in a beautiful suite hotel right on the beach. The temperature was in the low seventies so it was comfortable by and in the heated pool, but not in the sea.

We met with Tom O'Neill and with Sergei at the building I had leased. They filled me in on the NATO contract and I had the chance to meet with many of my new employees. We offered to take them to dinner and that was where we met Sergei's girlfriend and a woman Tom simply introduced as "the love of my life." Margaret had been arrested and charged with a host of felonies for which she had no defense other than her miserable sadistic personality. She had been charged with wire fraud and income tax evasion as well as money laundering and several RICO charges for secretly removing the money from the United States. I was praying that she'd have a lousy attorney which seemed highly likely since her assets, including her house, had been frozen by the government.

I also knew that once convicted, Tom would file for divorce. Sheldon Mayer already had the paperwork in hand and was just waiting to pounce.

Sergei's partner, Viktorija, appeared to be in her mid to late twenties and, like many European's, spoke excellent English. She had a pleasant personality and a killer body—slender like most European women who ate more goat, lamb, and fish and much less fatty beef than we did in the States. Tom's love, a forty-something woman named Danica, came to dinner with her two daughters, both in their late twenties. She was also slender with a decent body. Her English was sketchy, but her daughters were fluent and it was clear that they all loved Tom.

Speaking slowly, Danica explained that she was a widow and that her husband had died shortly after the Serbo-Croatian War—a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had just driven to Croatia on business. He should have been safe, but his car suffered a blowout and left the road into a field where it struck a mine. I knew that there were thousands if not millions of mines in fallow fields all throughout Croatia because there simply wasn't enough money to remove them.

We ate in a private room at a place called Konoba Portun. It was in an old building on what I'd call an alley, but was probably just a very old street. I had to admit that the food and the service were outstanding—so outstanding that we met there again about a week later on our final night before flying home. I congratulated both Tom and Sergei for the job they were doing. They laughed, telling me that they were just getting started. I returned the laughter, knowing that they were just being honest. Tom, especially, was grateful. He had made more money with me last year than he had in the past twenty as a banker.