CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER
On board were Nash, Thura, Hiroko, Masuyo, Victoria Steers, and three personal attendants along with four pilots. There was also a flight attendant on board to cater to their needs.
Steers had immediately gone to her private cabin in the rear of the plane. Masuyo sat up front near the flight attendant. The three personal attendants shared a divan, where they could watch a large-screen TV.
Nash and Thura sat in the middle section close to Hiroko. The elderly woman looked nervously around the cabin, and Nash could understand her anxiety, what with Hiroko having once barely survived a horrific plane crash.
Masuyo made a series of demands to the flight attendant while they were still climbing out of Hong Kong. When the woman rose to respond, Nash stopped her and said, “Stay in your seat until we’ve finished the climb-out.”
He called out to Masuyo, “Ma’am, we all need to stay seated until it’s safe.”
Masuyo turned in her seat and gave him a glare, but did not dispute his instruction.
Two hours later, after meals and drinks had been consumed, everyone settled in for the rest of the long flight over the Pacific, and then on to Nash’s hometown.
An hour later Thura was snoring lightly and Hiroko also was dozing. Nash looked up at Masuyo and she seemed to be asleep as well. The flight attendant was doing some paperwork in her seat and facing away from Nash.
He rose, went toward the back of the plane, past the sleeping personal attendants on the divan, and tapped lightly on the door to Steers’s cabin.
“Yes?” she said through the door.
“It’s Dillon. Just checking to make sure you’re okay.”
She opened the door, dressed in a long robe. He saw her bare feet poking out from under it.
“Come in,” she said in a monotone.
She shut the door behind him and he looked around the luxurious cabin, which resembled a high-end hotel room, with a club chair and a cabinet with a TV inside, and a private bath with walk-in shower.
She sat on the bed, her legs in a lotus position.
Nash perched on the chair opposite her. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“You mean after I made a spectacle of myself the other night?”
“You said things that you were obviously feeling. Why keep them in?”
She glanced up at him. “Foremost, because I am not supposed to have feelings. Do you not know? I am made of steel. I am supposed to be in control, at all times.”
“No one can do that, not even you.”
She looked away from him. “I am fine. Going to America will rejuvenate me.”
“And your mother?”
“What of her?”
“I told you about the messages in the park,” said Nash.
“And I told you that I already knew.”
“So you also know about the young man who retrieves the messages she leaves in the ice cream container?”
“My mother was away for a long time. What would be more natural than for her to evaluate how the business she created and ran for decades is doing? And whether I am a good steward of what she had built?”
“Is that what she’s doing?”
“The man in question works for a third party with which I do business. My mother has been seeking information about our dealings with this party. She has, I assume, been doing the same with other parties as well.”
“Why not just ask you?”
She shrugged. “It is not her way.”
“Is the business not doing well?”
“I do not think that is any of your concern,” she said sternly. “You are a bodyguard, not a businessperson.”
“Well, I have dealt with wealthy people all over the world. You pick up stuff.”
She folded her arms and said, “Such as?”
Nash knew he was treading a fine line here. He was a businessman, a highly successful one, but he was also masquerading as a bodyguard, a pretense he desperately needed to keep up.
“Such as cash flow is king. Customers are fickle, the competition ruthless. And everybody wants to knock off the king. Or in your case, the queen. You don’t have just the cops watching your every move, but a host of politicians dreaming about using you as their next campaign slogan.
You know, ‘I brought down Victoria Steers. Vote for me.’”
She looked at him with fresh respect. “And how do you feel being involved in an enterprise that you wanted no part of?”
“I’m in it now regardless of what I want.”
“And you know if I go down those around me go down as well?”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do. I will do everything in my power to ensure that you and Thura suffer no consequences.”
“And why would you do that?”
“You are not criminals. You were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the right place at the right time for me. You should not suffer over that.”
“That does not sound like something a sociopath would do, if you don’t mind my saying so,” noted Nash.
“Even evil people have moments of good.”
“I appreciate you offering that. It speaks well of you.”
“And you will no longer worry about my mother and her little trips to the park?”
“I can’t promise you that.”
“But I have told you—”
“Yes, you have told me,” he said. “But can I make a frank observation?”
She sighed. “Go ahead.”
“Your mother is smart, cagey, ruthless, sees the whole chessboard, correct? I mean, it’s how she’s wired.”
“I don’t see where—”
“Correct or not?”
“Yes, correct,” she exclaimed, looking tired.
“Then can I ask a question?”
“Would it matter what I said?”
“It would. I work for you.”
“Go ahead and ask your question,” she said resignedly.
“Then why would such a woman be so blatantly obvious about what she is doing? So obvious to use a clumsy maneuver like notes in an ice cream container picked up by someone who I could easily spot? Does that strike you as something Masuyo Steers would do? Because it could easily have been the police watching her. Why not just pick up the phone and call the person about your business with them instead of playing these stupid spy games?”
Steers blinked rapidly three times and then she looked far more engaged. “And what is your answer to this, Dillon-san?”
“Remember what you said about your ruse in using what I thought was my gun to ‘kill’ Lynn Ryder.”
“What of it?”
“You said a magician’s tricks of the trade were sleight of hand and psychological manipulation.”
Steers’s lips parted. “You. . .mean. . .?”
“Maybe your mother made us look to the right with this ‘ice cream in the park’ subterfuge, when what she was actually doing was occurring on the left.”