Nine-ah, Neen-ah, have you seen her?
He leafed slowly through his treasure trove of mental images of Nina, and the effect was soothing. Gradually, his clenched hands relaxed.
He began the last hour of the flight by reading two of the four printouts of articles about Teknologik that he had retrieved from the Post computer the previous afternoon.
In the second, he came upon a piece of information that stunned him. Thirty-nine percent of Teknologik’s stock, the largest single block, was owned by Nellor et Fils, a Swiss holding company with extensive and diverse interests in drug research, medical research, medical publishing, general publishing, and the film and broadcasting industries.
Nellor et Fils was the principal vehicle by which Horton Nellor and his son, Andrew, invested the family fortune, which was thought to be in excess of four billion dollars. Nellor was not Swiss, of course, but American. He had taken his base of operations offshore a long time ago. And more than twenty years ago, Horton Nellor had founded the Los Angeles Post. He still owned it.
For a while, Joe fingered his astonishment as though he were a whittler with an intriguingly shaped piece of driftwood, trying to decide how best to carve it. As in raw wood, something waited here to be discovered by the craftsman’s hand; his knives were his mind and his journalistic instinct.
Horton Nellor’s investments were widespread, so it might mean nothing whatsoever that he owned pieces of both Teknologik and the Post. Probably pure coincidence.
He owned the Post outright and was not an absentee publisher concerned only about profit; through his son, he exerted control over the editorial philosophy and the reportorial policies of the newspaper. He might not be so intimately involved, however, with Teknologik, Inc. His stake in that corporation was large but not in itself a controlling interest, so perhaps he was not engaged in the day-to-day operations, treating it only as a stock investment.
In that case, he was not necessarily personally aware of the top-secret research Rose Tucker and her associates had undertaken. And he was not necessarily carrying any degree of responsibility for the destruction of Flight 353.
Joe recalled his encounter the previous afternoon with Dan Shavers, the business-page columnist at the Post. Shavers pungently characterized the Teknologik executives: infamous self-aggrandizers, think of themselves as some kind of business royalty, but they are no better than us. They, too, answer to He Who Must Be Obeyed.
He Who Must Be Obeyed. Horton Nellor. Reviewing the rest of the brief conversation, Joe realized that Shavers had assumed that Joe knew of Nellor’s interest in Teknologik. And the columnist seemed to have been implying that Nellor asserted his will at Teknologik no less than he did at the Post.
Joe also flashed back to something Lisa Peccatone had said in the kitchen at the Delmann house when the relationship between Rose Tucker and Teknologik was mentioned: You and me and Rosie all connected. Small world, huh?
At the time, he had thought she was referring to the fact that Flight 353 had become a spring point in the arcs of all their lives. Maybe what she really meant was that all of them worked for the same man.
Joe had never met Horton Nellor, who had become something of a recluse over the years. He’d seen photographs, of course. The billionaire, now in his late sixties, was silver-haired and round-faced, with pleasing if somewhat blurred features. He looked like a muffin on which, with icing, a baker had painted a grandfather face.
He did not appear to be a killer. He was known as a generous philanthropist. His reputation was not that of a man who would hire assassins or condone murder in the maintenance or expansion of his empire.
Human beings, however, were different from apples and oranges: The flavor of the peel did not reliably predict the taste of the pulp.
The fact remained that Joe and Michelle had worked for the same man as those who now wanted to kill Rose Tucker and who — in some as yet incomprehensible manner — had evidently destroyed Nationwide 353. The money that had long supported his family was the same money that had financed their murders.
His response to this revelation was so complexly tangled that he could not quickly unknot it, so dark that he could not easily see the entire shape of it.
Greasy fingers of nausea seined his guts.
Although he stared out the window for perhaps half an hour, he was not aware of the desert surrendering to the suburbs or the suburbs to the city. He was surprised when he realized that they were descending toward LAX.
On the ground, as they taxied to the assigned gate and as the telescoping mobile corridor was linked like an umbilical between the 737 and the terminal, Joe checked his wristwatch, considered the distance to Westwood, and calculated that he would be at least half an hour early for his meeting with Demi. Perfect. He wanted enough time to scope the meeting place from across the street and a block away before committing himself to it.
Demi should be reliable. She was Rose’s friend. He had gotten her number from the message that Rose had left for him at the Post. But he wasn’t in the mood to trust anyone.
After all, even if Rose Tucker’s motives had been pure, even if she had kept Nina with her to prevent Teknologik from killing or kidnapping the girl, she had nevertheless withheld Joe’s daughter from him for a year. Worse, she had allowed him to go on thinking that Nina — like Michelle and Chrissie — was dead. For reasons that he could not yet know, perhaps Rose would never want to return his little girl to him.
Trust no one.
As he got up from his seat and started forward toward the exit, he noticed a man in white slacks, white shirt, and white Panama hat rise from a seat farther forward in the cabin and glance back at him. The guy was about fifty, stockily built, with a thick mane of white hair that made him look like an aging rock star, especially under that hat.
This was no stranger.
For an instant, Joe thought that perhaps the man was, in fact, a lowercase celebrity — a musician in a famous band or a character actor from television. Then he was certain that he had seen him not on screen or stage but elsewhere, recently, and in significant circumstances.
Mr. Panama looked away from him after a fraction of a second of eye contact, stepped into the aisle, and moved forward. Like Joe, he was not burdened by any carry-on luggage, as though he had been on a day trip.
Eight or ten passengers were between the day-tripper and Joe. He was afraid he would lose track of his quarry before he figured out where he had previously seen him. He couldn’t push along the narrow aisle past the intervening passengers without causing a commotion, however, and he preferred not to let Mr. Panama know that he had been spotted.
When Joe tried to use the distinctive hat as a prod to memory, he came up blank, but when he pictured the man without the hat and focused on the flowing white hair, he thought of the blue-robed cult members with the shaven heads. The connection eluded him, seemed absurd.
Then he thought of the bonfire around which the cultists had been standing last night on the beach, where he had disposed of the McDonald’s bag that contained the Kleenex damp with Charlie Delmann’s blood. And the lithe dancers in bathing suits around another bonfire. A third fire and the gathering of surfers inside the totemic ring of their upended boards. And still another fire, around which sat a dozen enthralled listeners as a stocky man with a broad charismatic face and a mane of white hair narrated a ghost story in a reverberant voice.