“And I presume you’re Odin?” she mocked. Odin was the god who ruled over the Nordic heavens where honorable combat fatalities ascended after battle.

  I shrugged. “I’m just a simple soldier, Evelyn.”

  “Remember, I’m a cryptologist. I break codes.” She leaned over and kissed me. I checked to make sure the cameras were off, having never been comfortable in a conference room with microphones and cameras, much less a world brimming with them.

  When she pulled away, I said, “I think I could get used to being around you.”

  “You already are,” she replied.

  Before I said anything more sophomoric, I reverted to operational mode.

  “Jake is with Misha in Drewson’s compound. You’re going to be here breaking the Phalanx Code. And I’m going to head to New York City to confront Blanc before this gets out of control.”

  Her email dinged on cue.

  “I like that plan. Misha just sent me the link from the Zebra geniuses. I’m diving in as soon as you leave.”

  On the television above the computer monitors, CNN went to breaking news. Evelyn punched up the volume as we watched President Campbell speak. She was sitting in the Oval Office behind the Resolute desk holding a thin stack of papers. Her blond hair was combed back, falling on her shoulders. She wore a navy-blue suit top with a white blouse and small American flag lapel pin that sat slightly askew from horizontal. She had flint in her eyes and steel in her voice.

  “My purpose today is to make the American people aware our country’s future hangs in the balance, that an existential threat to the United States is imminent, and to tell you what I intend to do about it. We face an unprecedented time of collusion between those developing life-altering technology and lethal military weapons and those that seek to consolidate power to one’s own ends. As I speak, the Phalanx Corporation has unleashed secret squads of assassins around the country and globe. Phalanx owner Aurelius Blanc’s unrivaled artificial intelligence monitors your online activity and identifies deviation from what they consider acceptable norms of behavior or speech. This is more than deplatforming or silencing someone by way of shaming them into submission; rather, you’re threatened, kidnapped, or murdered. The more of a threat you pose to Blanc’s orthodoxy, the higher on the response scale you will be. I have a plan, but let me first add some context.

  “My daughter Blair is only one example, and I will start with her. She faced down a Phalanx assassin squad within the last forty-eight hours and survived. Unfortunately, those in the Project Optimus Grass Valley, California, facility did not survive, nor did young Emily Sedgewick, who had just started her teaching career in Houston. These attacks were planned military raids delivered by a tech conglomerate that has become more powerful than any nation-state in the world.

  “I often enjoy walking across the street to the National Gallery of Art where I often study Thomas Cole’s four paintings of his Voyage of Life, where in the first, a child emerges from a tunnel in a canoe on the river of life, innocent and protected. The second painting is of an adolescent floating peacefully in the river, joyous, aspirant, and hopeful. The third, titled Manhood, is of an adult in that same canoe approaching rapids with stormy skies above and demons below. And the last of the four titled Old Age shows our passenger peacefully floating into the cave from whence he came.

  “The consistent theme in each of Cole’s paintings is the presence of an angel, or spirit, guiding the way. If you will, a spiritual compass that has helped him navigate the sometimes calm and sometimes turbulent waters. Cole’s painting was delivered at a significant cultural shift in our United States history called the Third Great Awakening in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many believe that Cole was as gifted a philosopher as he was an artist. His metaphor was indeed a warning of what was to come without some type of spiritual compass guiding our way. Unchecked technological advancements and wealth are the demons to which we are surrendering our national spiritual moorings.

  “Fellow Americans, we are in Cole’s metaphorical rapids, and we have lost our spiritual compass. Our canoe is smashing against the boulders of hate and division. The darker sides of our nature are winning, and as a result, as a nation and as a people we are unraveling. The greatest example I can give you is that all our government agencies are runaway trains filled with immoral government bureaucrats that carry out their own agendas despite my executive orders and our Congress’ legislation. Weaponization of our government has empowered career civil servants beyond anything that our Constitution granted and has exceeded the checks and balances it established. Our founders ensured the document was written to guard against the establishment of a powerful central government as they knew that the European experiment had gone awry. Yet, entrenched bureaucracies and mega moguls have created a technofascist state that is nullifying your participation in our government.

  “Our nation has always been that shining beacon of light that draws all walks of life to her shores. We were the youthful nation in Cole’s canoe filled with hopes and dreams about what the future could become. And we built a great nation, but now amidst the chaos, tech moguls wish to make you believe that our institutions are outdated, archaic, and no longer useful so that they can fill the very void in your souls that they hope to create. The combination of strengthened federal governments around the world and omnipotent technology companies has led to the Great Global Security State, a technofascism, that is crushing dissent, free speech, religious worship, and so many other freedoms upon which our great nation was founded.

  “There is no one person to blame. Our journey to this sordid moment has included President Bush’s misguided and mislabeled Patriot Act, which laid the foundation for the penetration of our federal government into every single communication each of us has. His wasteful folly in Iraq disaffected an entire generation of men and women here at home and paved the way for greater instability in the Middle East. President Obama was no saint. His Internal Revenue Service was caught red-handed targeting political opponents and his Department of Justice and FBI were weaponized against hardworking Americans beyond even what the wildest conspiracy theories might imagine. You couple just those two examples, and it is no surprise that we are a badly broken nation, shipwrecked on the jagged shores of avarice.

  “These abuses of power have given way to Aurelius Blanc and his nefarious Phalanx Corporation. Blanc has targeted each of the major military industrialized nations, China, Russia, France, Iran, North Korea, and our very own United States. His combination punch of first sowing discontent via his LanxPro social media platforms, and then swooping in with his algorithms to control speech, has proven lethal. Combining the capabilities of those nations with the global security apparatus that each nation has, freedom as we know it is diminishing. The Great Unraveling. The Fourth Turning. Secular Spiritual Stagnation. The rocky shoals of adulthood. Call it what you will.

  “Today, I am labeling Phalanx Corporation a Terrorist Corporation and adding them to the terror watch list, because we have discovered a plan by Phalanx Corporation to violate the Constitution and penetrate every aspect of society. They intend to invade your privacy and control your lives. You. Your children. Your parents. Your spouse. Nothing will be safe from Blanc’s prying eyes. You and the people you love will be held to their standard of accountability and live by their laws; be subject to the punishment they mete out by their own standards and by their own means. If you’re lucky, you will only be humiliated beyond belief if you do not comply. Your federal government is involved, as are the governments of the other nations I mentioned. It is not an alliance as much as it is a hostile takeover by Phalanx Corporation. The nation-state is but a means to their end.

  “On the same night of the raid in Grass Valley, California, that led to the murder of twelve Project Optimus employees, my daughter was targeted for assassination. Thankfully, she was saved by direct action from a team associated with Mitch Drewson and Project Optimus. Unfortunately, her best friend, Emily Sedgewick, was murdered the same day in Houston in a simultaneous action that smacked of a professional military operation. What did those three incidents have in common? They were working on the antidote to Blanc’s LanxPro technology that enables his all-seeing eye and allows him to dispatch sniper drones and Phalanx squads to your front doorstep, or in Emily’s case, through a rear window where she was shot in the back.

  “These brave heroes were finalizing preparations for the deployment of Web 3.0, which empowers individuals to protect against Blanc’s all-seeing eye. Mitch Drewson’s Project Optimus that finalizes Web 3.0 deployment will provide an air gap, to use a technology term, between you and the government, between you and Blanc. Many features of LanxPro and other apps would be disabled because your data will be stored on your own devices and you control when you release your identity or financial information, as opposed to today where your information is stored on Phalanx servers around the globe. User agreements that we all blindly agree to every time we download an app allows for Phalanx to do as it wishes with your information, to include targeting you.

  “The threat we face from Blanc has been developing for some time. In fact, a year ago, I ordered an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the battle at the Eye of Africa and who might have been involved in the conspiratorial efforts in Dakhla where much of this began. As you now know, international and corporate forces conspired to kidnap me and to take over the United States government. While that effort was thwarted, entrenched bureaucracies and the lucrative excesses of global hegemonic corporations have sustained the momentum secretly in governments around the world, including ours.

  “My investigation alone resulted in my firing my National Security Advisor, Koby Bertrand, the head of the National Security Agency, General Roger Harper, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Allison Gray, the head of the Internal Revenue Service, Cletus Wohl, the Secretary of Defense, Angela Blankenship, the Secretary of State, Bryn McHenry, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Julius Rolfing. To a person, they are now employed by Phalanx Corporation earning large salaries to help penetrate our government from the outside. They have been successful.

  “Therefore, I have ordered their immediate arrest by my Secret Service. I am fighting this fire with fire. I am also requesting that Congress fund fortifying the Web 3.0 build-out. I believe this is a nation worth preserving and protecting against the nefarious aims of technofascism. I will not give in to the entrenched bureaucrats and tech billionaires who think the world is their science lab. My duty is to the American people and you alone—”

  The camera jiggled some and two men in black uniforms raced into view of the lens. Gunshots sounded and both men fell. A team of four men in suits, perhaps her Secret Service detail, descended on President Campbell, and it was hard to determine what was happening. They formed a diamond around her and escorted her off camera, presumably to a safe location, but were they protecting her or apprehending her?

  The camera went blank for a moment, then a wide-eyed Anderson Cooper began speaking.

  17

  “WHAT WAS THAT?” EVELYN asked.

  “I think the president may have just played her entire hand. Either Drewson talked to her or she’s just livid that Phalanx went after her daughter. Or both.”

  “I still don’t believe Aurelius has the designs that are being ascribed to him. It’s not in his nature. He’s an ambassador emeritus with the French Ministry of Economic Diplomacy and Foreign Trade, for Christ’s sake. He’s one of the top three wealthiest men in the world. Why would he do this?”

  “He also built a global tech company that overtook Facebook, Amazon, and Google. His LanxPro app has billions of downloads, and the only thing that rivals it is Elon Musk’s X app. He didn’t get all that by playing Mr. Nice Guy.”

  “Just because Blanc is a tough and shrewd businessman doesn’t make him an evil tyrant,” Evelyn said.

  “So, you’re in the camp of the guy who had you kidnapped? The guy who apparently just breached the White House during the president’s speech?”

  “I’m in nobody’s camp.” She held up a finger. “Check that. I’m in your camp.” She pointed the slender finger in my chest. “Can’t you see what I’ve led you to? I’m no longer close to Aurelius, but I do know his character. And if he’s got any part of your grandfather in him, can you believe that he is this sinister mastermind?”

  I didn’t want to believe that, but it was the only logical answer. Plus, Coop turned out to be a different man than I had known. I was still processing the fact that he fathered a child in France and was a rare interloper in Blanc’s life, not to mention Colette and what she must have endured as a single mother in Normandy.

  “People change. You saved his life thirty years ago and he may want to protect you if that’s what you’re driving at, but I’m certain he’s trying to kill me. And it all may be related to his hatred of Coop, but then how do you explain the Phalanx Squads doing all these surgical hits?”

  “I can’t explain it right now, which is why I will work from here to decipher the Phalanx Code. You go to New York and confront him. I’m happy to go with you, by the way. It’s just that all the tools of my trade are right here,” she said. Evelyn waved her hand around her office, the servers inside the immersion cooling tanks. Air conditioners were blowing chilled air on the monitors, keyboards, and towers.

  “While I know you can hold your own, I’d prefer you provide me vector from afar instead of mixing it up with your friend. He might kidnap you again.”

  “I wouldn’t call him a friend, Garrett. He might have been a friend at one time. I’m not sure what he is to me now. But I for certain know what he is to you.”

  “Where is his place in New York City?”

  “Where all the wealthy people are,” she said. She clicked a few keys and pulled up a satellite image of Manhattan, New York City, zeroing in on East Eighty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue. “He’s got the entire top floor of this building here on Museum Mile. He has gardens and such surrounding the living quarters, and I imagine it’s not all aesthetics as I’m sure he has quite a few guards roaming the rooftop.”

  She was manipulating the image of a twenty-story-tall building that towered over Fifth Avenue and Central Park. The Metropolitan Museum was to the south and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir was directly west with a shallow line of trees separating Central Park from Fifth Avenue.

  We spent a few more minutes studying the building when Evelyn said, “I’ll download all this imagery for you and give you an iPad to use. My pilot will fly you to an airfield we use in New York called Stewart International Airport. You may know of it.”

  “I do. In my day, it was called Stewart-Anderson Air Force Base. Now there’s a National Guard base there and I guess it does some private and commercial traffic.”

  “It does. I can have my driver pick you up and you can stay in our family place on the Upper West Side. It will give you an opportunity to contact Aurelius perhaps on neutral ground in Central Park.”

  “Your plane. Your car. Your pilot. Your driver. What am I missing here?”

  “Nothing, General. My family has wealth. We’re not rich. We’re wealthy. We’ve built that over the years. We have a presence in all the right places to be able to influence the matters that are important to us. The displays at New York museums carry many of my family’s interpretations and work. We have twelve homes around the world, two jets, a helicopter, and a yacht. I don’t talk about it much unless I’m forced to, which seems to be the case here.”

  “I was making maybe a couple hundred grand a year as a general and feeling pretty good about that,” I said.

  “Woefully underpaid and underappreciated. Stick with me and you’ll see improvements in both.”

  “Is that a job offer?”

  “I’m only interested in you filling one position on my team, Garrett,” she said. “While I know it makes you quite uncomfortable, this can all be part of your world.”

  “Seems it already is,” I said. “Of all the things I expected when I came to find you, a marriage proposal wasn’t on my pre-combat checklist.”

  She chuckled lightly. “I’m unaccustomed to being the aggressor in amorous pursuits, but you’ll find that if you’re my general, you will win any wars you choose to pursue.”

  After one more rendezvous upstairs and a good meal of grilled lamb prepared by the staff, she put me in the armored Benz with Philippe, and I was off to the airfield. I had repacked my rucksack and refreshed my battery supplies, and while the president’s speech was gloomy, I oddly felt a glimmer of happiness perhaps for the first time since I could remember. With Brad and Reagan secure in Wyoming, and a budding relationship with Evelyn, I felt an unfamiliar peace. Images of Melissa, Brad, Reagan, and me danced in my mind. Brad’s baseball games and band rehearsals. Reagan’s soccer games. Movie night with Melissa holding my hand in the theater, her head on my shoulder. That kind of happiness. That kind of hope. That kind of erasure of guilt.

  True, I had just learned that a madman was my grandfather’s son by a French survivor of the battle of Sainte-Mère-Église in World War Two. But my charges were together and safely secured in a compound in Colorado where they could support one another. Challenges we confront in life always seem more solvable when partnered with the right person or team. My Dagger team days convinced me that the trust established amongst a tight inner circle was more powerful than a Hellfire missile or Abrams tank. Collectively, we focused on mission accomplishment and the sense of teamwork and camaraderie was a force multiplier.

  As I left French airspace with the fluttering ascendent hope that a new teammate had made herself available to me in every respect: emotionally, physically, and intellectually, I began reading the dossier on Aurelius Blanc in preparation for meeting him.