In the near decades ahead, democracies worldwide struggle to maintain their existences, challenged by entities such as mega corporations, oligarchs, dictators, and despots. Yan Calder Lince, a billionaire candidate to become the first trillionaire, establishes what he calls a virtual nation. Named the Interdependent Order of Polites, it is a democracy declared by its citizens, not the territories they occupy. The goal is to reduce growing poverty by rebuilding the world's declining middle classes through employee-owned businesses. Conall Wayland, a hostile corporate takeover hotshot, flagrantly chooses Lince and his followers as his new target. He plots against the IOP on it's first location on the small Cuban island, the Isle of Pines. From St. Petersburg, Russia, Yuri Petrokov, a novice member of a worldwide crime syndicate, stumbles into the murder mission of a wealthy businessman. The mark of the deadly contract is not to be specified until he arrives on the isle in a stolen, miniature Russian submarine. Both Lince and Wayland are potential prey. Will either of them be the one to die? If so, how and why?