CHAPTER 46

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That's exactly how it happened just ten years ago. Yes, tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of my marriage to Sara and twelve years since I met Daisy in the college library. It's also the date that I will take my firm public, selling seventy percent—seven hundred million shares of stock at a projected introductory price of $135 per share. That means Sara and I will earn an awful lot of money, but over the past ten years I've cleared more than twenty billion and I've given almost all of it away to responsible charities large and small.

Sara and I still live in the same house with our four girls. That's right—Sara and I have four beautiful and brilliant daughters—Brianna, nine; Celia, seven; Natalie, four; and Cara, two. Sara brags that they take after me, but I know better. They are the spitting image of their mother. I'd like to believe that they think like me, but so far none of them—thank God—have my perfect memory. Some things were made to be forgotten.

We have made some changes to our property, installing a six-foot high estate fence all around to protect our daughters. We installed it after I tripped and fell almost halfway down the bluff. I was stopped by a small bush whose roots were anchored deeply into the deep loose sand. I managed to walk the rest of the way down to the beach where Sara met me about a quarter mile away in the village parking lot. Other than my dignity, I was completely uninjured.

This experience also showed me how easily the bluff could be eroded and I hesitated to guess how much worse the erosion could be if we had a hurricane or even a common Nor'easter. Sara and I entertained our neighbors on each side of our house one evening and proposed reinforcing the bluff. They were hesitant until Sara mentioned that we'd pay the entire cost. We hired a major engineering firm to develop specifications then solicited quotations. The bottom line was almost ten million dollars, but the value of our houses skyrocketed once the project was completed.

We still drive Toyotas although we do give them to charity every year and buy new ones. I have trusts established for my daughters and, of course, for Sara should anything happen to me. And, speaking of something happening, we also have two dogs—German Shepherds--spayed sisters who are great family pets as well as trained guardians for our family. They walk our girls to the school bus stop every morning and are waiting when they return.

Cara had told me that she planned to settle down in five to ten years. She made it only three years after Sara and I were wed, marrying her civil engineer—Bill Wells—who is now a vice president of his firm, the very same firm we used for our project. Cara worked for me up until two years ago when she announced that she was pregnant. Then Natalie was promoted to office manager.

Natalie dated Sheldon Mayer for several months before both agreed that there was no spark of love between them. Things worked out well for her though. She was in the office just over a year ago when George Martin, the Chief Financial Officer of one of New York's megabanks, entered the office supposedly to review our contract. Surprisingly, he returned several times over the next few weeks even though his business could have easily been handled over the phone. We had just finished coffee and doughnuts when I told her my thoughts. "You do know that he's coming here to see you, Natalie. You need to suggest that he take you to lunch." She laughed, but did follow through on my suggestion the next time he visited the office. That was all the encouragement he needed.

They dated for six months before he popped the question. She's still with me in our new building at the intersection of the Long Island Expressway and Route 110 in nearby Melville, claiming that she'd probably go stir crazy if she had to stay home every day. She'd made it abundantly clear to George long before they were married that she wasn't into the country club scene unless she was with her husband.

You'll no doubt be pleased to learn that Margaret O'Neill spent more than four years in federal prison after accepting a plea bargain for one count of income tax evasion. She was also fined $400,000 which put a serious dent into her assets. She hadn't been in prison even a single week when she was served with divorce papers. She didn't fight. There was no way that she could and six months later Tom was a single man with more than half of their combined assets as part of the settlement, making an even bigger dent in what she had considered her fortune. Such was the price of her detestable treatment of her husband.

Sheldon was at his shark-like best in court for those hearings. Tom wasn't single very long—just long enough to get a license and walk Danica in front of the local magistrate. Sergei followed him only a few months later.

I named Tom as Chief Executive Officer of Tritech-EU and Sergei as Chief Operating Officer just a few months after our honeymoon visit. For tax reasons the EU division of Tritech has remained a separate entity from my U.S. firm as it has branches in South America and Asia and they will continue that way until I decide to take them public, as well. I now had branches in many of the major cities here and virtually every federal, state, and local government agency in the United States was a long-term client as were almost every significant bank, financial institution, and retail outlet in our country. Tritech now had more than ten thousand employees, including Professor Eastman who I paid a million dollars a year for doing virtually nothing. It was my way of thanking him for his help in giving birth to my enterprise.

I had sworn to never sell to countries hostile to the United States. I hadn't done that to date and never will. However, that didn't stop the Russians from trying to steal the program. One of my techs had just left a client in a bank branch about ten kilos outside Gdansk, Poland and was driving back to his hotel only a few kilometers away when his car was rear-ended at a stoplight by an elderly couple. The husband—the driver—apologized until his wife pleaded for assistance in exiting the car. He felt a prick on his neck when he tried to help the old woman from the vehicle. Looking back at the husband he saw a sinister smile just before everything turned black. His briefcase with DVD's containing the firm's sole product was gone when he awoke two hours later in the driver's seat of his rental.

He phoned me immediately and we had a good laugh. I had always demanded that the initial phase of the installation be done in total privacy for security reasons. There was a good reason for that. Literature given to each client clearly stated the unique password for each user, however there was also another secret codeword known only to a handful of installers located in my headquarters. Without that codeword inserted onto what appeared to be a title page, the program would begin a thirty day countdown that would not only delete all of the programs on that computer, but also on every computer on every network in contact with it.