Disappearance (24 page)

It suddenly felt as if her request had been judged an invasion of privacy and found herself forced to return his appraising gaze again, afraid he could uncover her true motives.

"Who's the work for?"  he asked.

"That's privileged, Dad. I can't say."

"It may be a competitor.”

"It's strictly civilian; nothing in defense, I checked."

"What's the topic?"

"Diode pumped lasers,"
she  recited  from  the  Dunn & Bradstreet review of her father's company.   There had not been much there since PhotonTek was a privately held company.  Most of the analysis was pure speculation, but she was thankful for the brief outline and proper description of his products.

"Why me?"

"I mentioned you were in the business and Eckert thought it may give us an edge.”

"What will give you an edge?"

"The fact that I'm your daughter and that you are the best in the business.  Besides, all I'm really looking for is to understand the technology enough to be able to anticipate advantages and drawbacks before I recommend my client a course of action.  If there was any conflict of interest, I would not have agreed to approach you.”

It was one final argument that seemed to mollify him.  He sighed and poured himself another drink.  Lisa felt shaken but she had survived the opening round.

"You can join me tomorrow," he said. "I leave at seven.”

He gulped down his drink, picked up his belongings, and crept out of the living room without giving his wife as much as a glance.

-------

The plant was a low, two-storey complex, isolated by a tall fence that featured an intimidating mass of barbed wire.

They slowly approached the lone, steel gate, and stopped in front of a small white hut beside it.   A security guard approached them, dressed in an official looking outfit displaying his company's name on his shoulder, ornate with some meaningless gold tailored  insignia.     Greeting  them wearily  he  pressed  a  hidden  button  to  raise  the  brightly painted red and white barrier.  Glass pulled a plastic card from his shirt pocket and slid its magnetic stripe through a magnetic slot decoder which authorized them through and recorded their arrival time.

He parked the Lincoln Town Car in the a parking slot reserved for PhotonTek's chairman and CEO and briskly led his daughter through glass doors to a neatly-kept lobby occupied by a formally-dressed receptionist, busy directing calls, and a tense security guard, both seated behind a low, wood paneled counter, facing  the  entrance.  Lisa handed in her driver's license and was given a visitor's badge.

They took the elevator down three floors and stepped out into a long and rather stuffy corridor. They walked through a web of corridors flanked by neon lit offices and laboratories buzzing with activity and entered her father's reception room at the far end of one of the corridors.  Doris stood up when she saw them enter. Introductions were short and blunt, after which Glass ordered them coffee and instructed his secretary to summon a  few  of  his  aides for  a  short  meeting. They entered his office and he shut the door.

Doris came in almost immediately.  "It's Langone," she said.

Glass shot her an annoyed look.  "I'll take it in the conference room." 

He slipped through a side door sliding it behind him, leaving Lisa standing in the middle of his office.   She hesitantly looked around for a few seconds then circled his desk and sat in his chair.

She gazed around the room leaning back in the leather chair trying to appear at ease, noticing how unimpressive the office looked.  Several photographs with PhotonTek products hung at intervals on the wood paneled walls.  A rectangular oak conference table with seven brown leather chairs stood perpendicular to the chairma
n’
s heavy oak office desk.   A wide, two-drawer oak cabinet stood by the wall behind her and on it stood a rather outdated computer collecting dust.

There was too much brown, she thought.  The chairs, the tables, the walls, the carpet, even the lone flower pot which stood dry and empty in the middle of the conference table, was brown.  There were no windows and the neon lights blinded her senses.  It felt as if she was being smothered by this brown, airless room.

She turned her attention to her father's desk, absent-mindedly flipping through his Rolodex.  She noticed the picture of her mother, younger and happy, and felt tears well up in her eyes.

His schedule notebook lay open in front of her.  She quickly studied it, noticing he was scheduled to be in China Lake in two days, in Washington DC in a week, and in Paris in three weeks.   She continued thoroughly perusing the desk, trying to memorize anything she thought may be significant.   There were rolled up faxes, various letter correspondences, opened envelopes, business cards, jotted memos and phone numbers, trade magazines, copied newspaper articles, and economic reports, all spread around on the desk in a disorganized fashion.

She flipped through the Rolodex to L and found Edgar Langone's phone number under 'Barons Investment', just as Doris came in with a tray of coffee and crackers.  She eyed Lisa suspiciously and put the tray on the conference table. Lisa stood up, trying not to look nervous, and went around the desk.

"Thank you," she said politely, hoping to strike up some conversation.  She guessed Doris to be in her forties, short and rather plump with short red hair and sad brown eyes.  She was well dressed and presented but she was unimpressive with a rather harsh, unfriendly look about her.

"How's working for my father?"  Lisa asked, nonchalantly pouring herself some coffee.

A look of fear crossed the secretary's face. "Oh, OK I guess. I've only been here ten months.”

That long!  Lisa thought, wondering how anybody can put up with her father for even one day.  The conference room door slid open and her father stepped back in.  He went over to the table, poured himself some coffee and walked around to his chair.

Lisa held her breath.   She had left the Rolodex rolled to Langone's number but her father did not seem to notice.

"Are the people ready?" he addressed his secretary.

"As soon as you say the word Mr. Glass," she replied.

"OK then, give me ten minutes with my daughter and call them in.”

She quietly left the room and shut the door behind.

He spent the next ten minutes telling her about his company, its existing product lines, his short and long term goals, his business philosophy, the company's  achievements,  his personal successes, and how no one else could measure up. She watched him as he spoke, for the first time in nearly two years, realizing how far apart they had drifted.  He was in a world all his own with no room for family or friends.  It was just him, a lonely old man trying to hang on to a reality that, Lisa knew, brought him little reward.  He did not appear frightening anymore but rather pathetic, like a little child trying to impress her with his toys.  He seemed relatively balanced and lively when he spoke of his company but she could not remember him truly enjoying a moment of his life.

It was a shame, she thought. He could have enjoyed a rather comfortable life without selling
his  soul  to  the  enterprise. They were well-off to begin with, and could have had enough money to lead any type of life just off the family assets.

But it was not a money issue with her father.  She understood it now.  She had met people like him in Manhattan's society circles.  People who had enough money to buy Fifth Avenue yet would stop at nothing to gain more and more, sometimes risking their entire fortune to control more than what they already had.  It was a power issue for her father who belonged to a breed of people who would never be satisfied if they thought there was an opportunity to gain more power.  Money was just means for achieving great power.  It meant nothing if it could not buy more of it.

He concluded by revealing to her that he planned to have each of his department managers personally acquaint her with the different product lines, systems and sub-systems, competing companies and their products, and the overall market, so that by day’s end she would have an excellent industry perspective and an understanding of the technology and its applications; more material than she would ever need to advise her client.

His aides filed in quietly and took their positions around the conference table.   Glass remained behind his desk and Lisa stood next to him.  He introduced her and had the three men and two women introduce themselves to her.   He then explained what he wanted them to do for his daughter and they quickly filed out without uttering a word.  Lisa accompanied Robert Chang, head of
the iode lasers department, to begin a long and laborious day learning about her father's business.

CHAPTER 25

That evening she met Mikki in his room at the Inn.

"We'll have to break into his office," she concluded when she was done describing her visit to her father's plant.

"And how do you propose to do that, Sherlock?" Mikki asked dubiously. "From the sound of it, the place must be something resembling a fortress.”

"I'll have to find an excuse to go back in there when he's not around.  He has a trip scheduled the day after tomorrow.  I'll call Doris as soon as he leaves and tell her to arrange a few more briefings for me.  Once I'm in, I'll find an excuse to visit his office again.”

"Won't he become suspicious once he finds out?  I bet he is already wondering about this sudden interest.”

"He may, but I strongly doubt he can guess my real intentions. Anyway, I'll simply say I thought I needed some additional information."  She paused, considering what she had said.  "I'll say I didn’t want to bother him with such detail so I asked Doris to arrange it.”

"You thought  it  all  through  already,  didn't  you?"  Mikki mused.

"It's all I thought of, the entire day.  I couldn't recite a word any of those people said to me.”

They were silent for a while, when Lisa suddenly said: "I keep wondering about his scheduled trip to Paris.  He hasn't left the States since we came back from Israel.”

"How would you know?" Mikki asked, suddenly interested. "My mother would have told me about an overseas trip, if he had taken one.”

"Why would he bother telling her about any of his business trips?"

"He never does, at least not anymore, but she has a way of knowing.”

"Why would she be interested?"

"Old habit, I guess. She always made a point of knowing where
he was off to.  When they were younger she would sometimes join him.”

Mikki mulled the information over for a while.  There was nothing
peculiar  about a  businessman of the  caliber  of  Paul Glass, going to Paris.   He could think of a thousand appropriate reasons:  a  trade  show,  meeting  clients, coordinating global operations.  Why would such a trip have anything to do with Karen?

Yet something was nagging at his conscience.  There was something else, something they had not considered until this very moment.  The motive!  What motive would a father have to take such drastic measures as kidnapping his own daughter?

"I  just  had  a  thought,"  he  said,  still  trying  to  piece  his reasoning together.

Lisa looked up expectantly.

"Assuming we are on the right track, we've never actually considered why your father would have done such a thing.”

He paused for a moment and continued carefully.   "I can think of only one reason that would make him take such action…" He paused again and let her fill in the blank.

"His company," she said and bowed her head in anguish. “It was always The Company!"

Mikki nodded and continued excitedly. "Somewhere down the line he sacrificed his daughter for his company!"  

Lisa kept tensely focused, resembling a condemned person about to be handed a sentence. 

"We may be able to find the end of a string if we track the company's past to a certain trouble spot," Mikki suggested.

Excited at his own insight, he got up and began pacing the room.

Lisa lay back on the bed and closed her eyes.  Now that they had considered it, she knew it made sense.  She was certain it had been lurking somewhere in the back of her mind all along.  It was the family curse she had refused to confront; the reason she and her sister were denied a normal life.  She hated the company.  She hated living in its shadow and she despised the thought that once again it proved to be the source of her pain.