by Niv Kaplan
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 chairman’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 A wide, two-drawer oak cabinet stood by the wall behind her and on it stood a rather outdated computer collecting dust.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.
After a while she sat up. Mikki was standing by the window.
"There was a certain stretch, back when I was a sophomore at UCLA, when mother was worried to death we were going to lose everything," she recalled.
Mikki turned from the window to look at her.
"She whined and rambled about the company but I paid little attention to such matters at the time. After a while it went away but the reason I recall it was that she warned me time and again that I may have to give up the Mustang convertible she had given me. I, of course, wouldn't hear of it, and fortunately then, I got to keep my car, but if I was to guess right off the top of my head, I would wager that at that time my father's company was in as much trouble as any that I can recall.”
"What year was that?"
"1982.”
"That would make it about two years before Karen came to Israel.”
Lisa nodded looking perplexed. Something was amiss.
"Could we find out what happened to the company back then and how he managed to recover?" Mikki insisted, sounding noticeably less certain.
"That's a considerable time difference, Mikki," Lisa remarked, "we may be climbing up the wrong tree.”
"Things may have evolved. Who knows, I still say the most logical motive has to do with the company.”
Lisa eyed him sympathetically. "I wouldn't dismiss it offhand but there certainly could have been other motives.”
"Such as?" Mikki asked, sounding hurt.
"Who knows what goes on inside a madman's head?" Lisa said. "He could have done it just to hurt my mother or he could belong to a secret cult or..." She stopped, realizing that she had begun recounting the numerous phantasms that have plagued her mind since she learned he may have been involved. There were none of them pretty and she did not wish to share them with anyone.
Mikki was still unconvinced. "Your father may be evil but he is no madman. He seems an extremely calculating person who I personally cannot fathom going to such extremes for pure revenge or to please some secret cult.”
"Why don't we take it one step at a time instead of trying to solve the whole thing at once," Lisa said, annoyed at his conviction. "I may be able to come up with something once I get inside his office.”
"The point I'm trying to make, Lisa, is that if you go back there with some direction, you will have a better idea of what to look for. Going in blind may be a waste of time. We need to try and search for some reasonable path to follow. I still believe the key is in the company; possibly that trouble period of 82.”
-------
Doris waited for her by the gate and escorted her to the visitor parking slots. It was a sunny morning charged with gusty Santa Ana winds that chased them into the sheltered PhotonTek lobby. Lisa gave up her driver's license again for a visitor’s badge and followed Doris to the elevator. They descended two floors and stepped out to meet George W. Perry, PhotonTek's Vice President for Manufacturing and Production, as was distinctly inscribed in gold on a silky white business card. Doris excused herself and Lisa followed the distinguished executive down the corridor to his office.
After settling into a comfortable leather chair in front of his large desk with the morning coffee aroma filling the room, they began to chat. The initial polite small talk elaborated on general business issues with Lisa providing insight on the intricate world of speculative finance and Perry filling her in on high tech enterprise.
Eventually they turned to the business at hand and Lisa read off a list of questions she had prepared in advance. Perry was polite and helpful and he quickly and rather easily provided answers.
Then she asked him for a tour of the production floor and he tactfully refused. It made her curious. She realized he was the only top management person not introduced to her the first time around and she wondered whether he was purposely overlooked.
"I regret to say that at this time the production facility is off limits to all visitors. I would need direct permission from your father and I cannot presume that I would get it. He’s been adamant from the start of this project that no one be allowed in.”
"Can you tell me anything about this project and how it impacts the company? So far I've been shown only bits and pieces and I can't quite get a grasp on how it all fits together.”
Perry chuckled and sat back. "Impact on the company you say? This project is the company! We've dropped most of our other lines. Everything else is supporting cast. If it wasn't for this project, we all would have been unemployed years ago.”
Lisa was suddenly very alert. Mikki may have been right.
"I can't say much, Lisa," Perry went on. "I can only tell you that it's a very large defense contract on the verge of completion with the potential to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to the company.”
"How long have you been at it?"
"Oh, let's see... " he began, clearing his throat and rolling his eyes to the ceiling, obviously having answered this question a few times before. "Development started about five years ago, we've had some successful tests with our proto-types, and we should be starting production any time now.”
"Why did you drop your other lines?" Lisa asked, having gotten her timeframe question answered, but wanting to conceal her true objective and learn whatever else she could.
"The simple answer would be that they were losing money. The reason they were losing money had to do with royalty payments that were sucking out the profits we were making. We had to shut down all lines that owed these royalties.”
"Will you owe royalties on the products developed for this new project?"
"Not necessarily but even if we did, these royalties had been included in our cost, something that was not done in previous projects.”
"How many more years are left on the patents?" Lisa asked, having encountered a similar issue on one of Eckert's assignments.
“About ten years but the royalties on these new laser types are considerably lower than on those we owed in other projects.”
The phone on his desk rang. He picked it up instantly, listened for a few seconds and slammed down the receiver, anxiously springing off his chair.
"I'm needed on the production floor," he said irritably. "Why don't I have my secretary walk you to Doris's office." He pressed the intercom and called her in. Lisa took a last sip from her coffee and got up. She shook his hand, thanked him warmly and followed his secretary out the door.
-------
Doris was not at her desk and Lisa asked to be shown to the restrooms. Eve, Perry's silver haired, grandmotherly secretary, went to look for her while Lisa relieved herself. When she was done neither secretary were there to escort her back to the office so she casually found the way back herself.
She found the door to her father's office locked so she quickly rounded Doris's desk and began inspecting her drawers. The top left drawer produced an itinerary of her father's planned Washington DC trip and under it the itinerary for his Paris trip. Lisa scrambled for a pen and a piece of paper and jotted down dates, airlines, flight numbers and hotel reservations.
The two left bottom drawers were filled with neatly folded expense reports and various accounting material. The top right drawer was filled with standard office supplies. The next drawer housed a stack of letterhead, memo and writing pads. She found
the set of spare keys in the bottom drawer. They were kept in a clear plastic box and to Lisa's relief, they were marked. She took the key marked "Glass" and rushed to his door.
She quickly unlocked the door, slipped in, and locked herself in. Pulse racing and short of breath, she flicked on the lights, rushed to his desk and began a thorough search of his drawers. To her dismay, all but the two top drawers were locked. The top left drawer was essentially empty with some memo pads, fax paper and PhotonTek letterhead. The top right drawer held miscellaneous notepads scribbled with her father's handwriting. She began flipping through them but found the random gibberish too confusing to mean anything.
She sighed and sat back in his chair her eyes casually surveying the top of the huge desk when she suddenly felt her blood turn to ice. Leaping out of the chair she snatched her mother's photo and inspected it closely. Attached to the gold frame, squarely encompassing the photo was a thin gold bracelet that would have normally been difficult to distinguish from the gold background but for a certain angle, which reflected light. As she examined the bracelet, she felt a sense of mounting fear and anticipation engulf her body. She shuddered. The photo wavered in her hands. There was hardly a doubt. It belonged to Karen. She had given it to her for her high school graduation. Karen had several gold bracelets and so did her mother, but Lisa was certain this was one she had taken with her to Israel. Before she could fully comprehend what she was seeing, she heard footsteps and voices in the outer office. She put down the photo and rushed to the door intending to kill the lights.
She was too late. She stopped short and held her breath. The door handle was pushed down and jerked a few times. She felt her heart in her mouth.
"She was here just a few minutes ago," she heard a voice say as the door handle was eased free.
"Well, she's neither here nor there," the other was saying in a strained voice, from just the other side of the two-inch thick wooden door. "Shall we call security?"