Girl of Vengeance

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  “Why are you sad?” Jane asked.

  That just caused Andrea to sob more. Finally, she managed to compose a meaningful sound, a single word that rang out in the room with far more weight than he would have guessed possible.

  “Why?”

  After she said the word, she pushed back against the Prince’s chest, forcing him to release her. Fiercely, she wiped her face with the sleeve of the George Mason University sweatshirt they had bought—what … two days ago? Dylan couldn’t keep track any more.

  “Andrea … my daughter.” As he said the word daughter, Prince George-Phillips eyebrows seemed to do a solo dance, rising high up on his forehead. Hard to imagine, Dylan thought, that a man with no poker face at all could survive as the Chief of Intelligence of a large country.

  George-Phillip continued. “Are you asking why I’m your father? Or why you never knew about it?”

  “All of it,” Andrea demanded. “I want to know everything. I want to know why I was dumped off in another country and never knew either of my parents. I want to know why … why…”

  She paused, trying to compose her face, then said, “I want to know why I was left to believe I wasn’t worth loving.”

  George-Phillip looked somber. Dylan was usually a pretty good judge of people. There was no question in his mind that the Prince was sincere. Men didn’t get that close to crying unless they were devastated.

  “I’m so very sorry, Andrea. It breaks my heart that you didn’t grow up feeling loved.”

  “You already broke mine,” she responded.

  George-Phillip sagged. “Indeed. And Carrie’s, I suppose.”

  “My mother would never have been…” She whispered, “…beaten and raped if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with Carrie. It was your fault.”

  “That happened first nine months before Julia was born,” he replied in a sad voice.

  Andrea closed her eyes. “They met in Spain. When she was eighteen. You’re telling me he forced her then?”

  George-Phillip sighed and said, “I’m deeply sorry to be telling you this, Andrea. It happened when she was sixteen. And her father died a few weeks later.”

  “I don’t … why did she marry him?”

  “She was forced, Andrea. By her priest and her mother. Those days, things were different, especially in Spain.”

  Andrea shook her head forcefully. “No. Abuelita? Not possible. She would never force her daughter to marry a rapist.” She hissed the next word. “Never.”

  Dylan hoped Andrea wouldn’t piss off Prince George-Phillip to the point where they were forced to leave. He didn’t know what kind of legal limbo they were in—would they be arrested the moment they left the Embassy? For that matter, the police probably didn’t know where they were.

  He didn’t think George-Phillip would do that. But neither of them really knew him, did they? And he was the head of the British intelligence agency. You didn’t get to that kind of high-level position without the ability to make some cold-hearted decisions.

  Prince George-Phillip remained patient. He said, “I know there is much you don’t know, Andrea, and much that you have every right to be angry about. I’d like to tell you as much as possible, if you’ll let me.”

  With a quick, firm nod, she said, “Yes. Fine. And I am hungry. Wrestling with your guards is a lot of work.”

  “Come, then. Both of you. Jane, go wash your hands, and you may join us in the sunroom.”

  Prince George-Phillip showed them where they could clean up—the water-closet, he called it—and a few minutes later Andrea, George-Phillip, Dylan and Jane were sitting at a cozy table in a room dominated by large windows on three sides. Surrounding the sunroom was grass, leading off to the trees and the row of houses on the other side of the fence.

  With a wry smile, George-Phillip said, “We’ll have to do an audit of security here,” he said. “If you’d been an assassin I would have been done for.”

  Dylan thought the Prince was right, of course. Even though Dylan had distracted the Marines, a sixteen-year-old should never have made it into the building.

  A woman wearing a knee-length double-breasted tunic poured tea for all of them. There was no sugar in sight, unfortunately.

  “Summer sausage rolls, Your Highness, with mini sandwiches and custard kisses.”

  Jane’s face lit up at the last and she reached for the pastry.

  George-Phillip blocked her hand with his. “Have a sandwich or two first, Jane.”

  The little girl pouted, but obeyed. Andrea watched with misty eyes, and Dylan—whose childhood had been a mess of alcoholics and abuse—understood exactly why. It’s what he had always wanted too—a simple, domestic existence, with parents who cared.

  Andrea said nothing—simply watching, her eyes moving back and forth between the father and daughter.

  “You should know,” George-Phillip said conversationally, “I’ve come to the conclusion that my career is interfering with me spending time with Jane, here. Regardless of what happens with the current scandal, I intend to resign my position as Chief. I’ve no right to ask this, Andrea—but I’d like you to consider coming to London with me. When you have the opportunity. I’d like for us to get to know each other.”

  Andrea didn’t reply. An awkward silence fell over the table, and Dylan leaned forward. He cleared his throat, covering it with his closed fist—should he have used his napkin? Then he spoke. “Do I call you … Highness? Or sir? Or…”

  “In public, Highness or Your Grace is generally my title, but here, please call me George-Phillip. Do I have it correct that I have you to thank for my daughter still being alive?”

  Dylan gave a wry smile. Not in a million years was he going to call a royal prince by his first name. “Sir, Andrea did that all on her own. She’s just about the most courageous person I’ve ever met.”

  Prince George-Phillip gave his daughter a warm look. “Would that you hadn’t had to deal with those situations. But I’m proud and amazed at how you handled them.”

  “I was just trying to survive,” Andrea said, shifting in her seat. Dylan tried to parse out George-Phillip’s sentence, but it still didn’t make sense. Would that … what?

  Without preamble, George-Phillip said, “I think you should both stay here for the time being. You’ve been on the run and in hiding, and this is the safest place for you. Not to mention that until things are sorted out with the American investigation, both of you are wanted by the police here.”

  Dylan met Andrea’s eyes. She was impassive. He nodded to her, as imperceptible of a motion that he could make.

  She nodded back, then her eyes cut back to George-Phillip. She pursed her lips for a moment then spoke. “Yes, we’ll stay. I have a thousand questions for you.”

  “I’ll tell you everything I know,” George-Phillip said in a soothing tone. “You can ask anything. Within the bounds of the confidentiality required by my position, I’m an open book to you, daughter.”

  “You say that my—the person I thought was my father—” she whispered the next words, her eyes darting to Jane, “raped my mother. And that she was forced to marry him?”

  George-Phillip nodded. “She was seventeen when they actually married. Your eldest sister Julia was born a few months later.”

  “When did you meet my mother?”

  “In the winter of 1984. We met in February, at a dinner party here in Washington. I was new in the city, and so was she. Richard Thompson was traveling much of that spring, back and forth to Central Asia. Your mother and I fell in love.”

  In the back of Dylan’s mind, the worst ran through his head. Why the hell didn’t you protect her, then? He didn’t say the words out loud. It wasn’t his place. But he hoped Andrea would ask.

  “And so Carrie was conceived,” Andrea said.

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened after that?”

  “I didn’t know about Carrie for many years after that. I … in May of that year … I’d just returned from a trip to L
ondon. She broke it off with me … with no explanation. I didn’t see her again for twelve years.”

  Andrea gave him a pained look. “Did she tell you later?”

  “Yes, when we encountered each other in China. We were both a little older and wiser then. But Adelina … it was tragic. He’d destroyed her spirit. The bright, courageous woman I’d known had become a mouse in public, never contradicting anything her husband said. She told me that the reason … the reason…”

  George-Phillip’s face twisted in pain.

  “Da?” Jane said. “What hurts?”

  George-Phillip placed his left hand on Jane’s shoulder. And his right hand on his chest. “My heart hurts, Jane. My heart.”

  Jesus, Dylan thought.

  George-Phillip said, “Jane, I think it’s time for you to go see Adriana.”

  Jane’s eyes watered. “I want to be with my new sister.”

  “I promise you can later. Right now, we need to have some adult talk.”

  She climbed down from her seat, as always looking precarious—as if she might any instant go flying in one direction while the chair went in the other—then walked around to his chair the long way around the table, passing Andrea and Dylan along the way. She stood on her tiptoes and gave the sitting George-Phillip a kiss.

  “Play with me later?” she asked.

  He nodded and said, “Yes, of course.”

  “Will you play with me too, sister?” she asked Andrea.

  Andrea might be distrustful of George-Phillip, but it was clear she held no reservations about her six-year-old half sister. Her eyes went glassy, and she nodded and said, “Yes, I’d love that.”

  A few minutes later, after the little girl had left the room, George-Phillip continued. “While I was out of town, out of the country, Adelina had realized she was pregnant. And she believed that Richard would kill her, or Julia, or possibly her brother Luis, if he found out she was pregnant. She believed he was a complete sociopath. I don’t know if that’s the case or not, but she provoked him into attacking her. So that she could convincingly make him believe that Carrie was his.”

  Andrea winced. Seemingly without volition, she reached out and grabbed Dylan’s hand.

  “I tried to persuade her to leave him. I did. I’d have gladly given up my career and taken her hand in marriage. I wanted that more than anything else in the world.”

  “But you didn’t,” Andrea said.

  George-Phillip gave her a sad smile. “I didn’t. When we met again in Beijing … many years had passed. Your mother and I … resumed our affair. But with very strict rules that she set. You see, a great deal had happened in the years we didn’t see each other. Richard began to suspect that Carrie wasn’t his child, because she was so incredibly tall. He took her to a lab and had them both tested. And when he found the results, he beat Adelina almost to death.”

  Andrea winced. She didn’t say anything, just listened. She hadn’t touched the food.

  “Later, she told me what those years were like. Your family moved a lot—based in San Francisco, then Belgium for three years, then China. Your father had the perfect deep cover—he was Central Intelligence Agency, but as far as the world was concerned, he was a diplomat. That gave him license to operate anywhere. As the years went by, he kept her off balance. Randomly he would terrorize her—keeping her anxious and confused. That just got worse as the years went by.”

  Andrea gritted her teeth. “She was crazy,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” George-Phillip asked.

  “You describe a victim who was terrorized by Richard Thompson, but what I remember is that she was crazy. She’d break down at the slightest provocation. She was completely unpredictable—the same behavior that one day resulted in a mild scolding would, the next day, provoke screaming rage. She cut us to pieces with her words.”

  Dylan sighed. He knew what that was like—his father had been a complete bastard and a drunk. For the first time, he felt real sympathy for his mother-in-law. Adelina Thompson had been the terror of all of her daughters. He’d never imagined she’d undergone that sort of trauma.

  George-Phillip’s eyes watered at Andrea’s words.

  George-Phillip. May 4.

  She cut us to pieces with her words.

  Oh, Adelina, why didn’t you leave him when I asked? When I begged?

  He tried to imagine the Adelina he’d known being abusive. He couldn’t. She had been kind and honest and terrified. She’d been anxious often. She’d told him how she’d struggled to separate her daughters from the emotional devastation of their father.

  He remembered sitting with Adelina in the Maryland suburbs of Washington at an anonymous restaurant, sometime in April 1984.

  It’s not Julia’s fault that he’s her father, Adelina had said. She deserves all of me, but sometimes I flinch back.

  George-Phillip had sighed, slightly squeezing his hands at his temples. Please leave him, Adelina. I’m begging you. You deserve so much better.

  Adelina had smiled, a wide, false smile that didn’t hide her glassy eyes. Do you know what he sent me the other day, George-Phillip? He’s in Pakistan or some place, but he stopped in Spain long enough to take a picture of my brother. It was a threat.

  George-Phillip had shuddered. A few weeks later she broke it off with him.

  He shook his head, coming back to the present. Right now, Adelina wasn’t his problem. Convincing his daughter—his daughter!—that she could trust him—that was the task at hand. He looked Andrea in the eyes and said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that it had gotten so bad.”

  Andrea shook her head, her mouth turning up on one side, her expression of skepticism breaking his heart. “Of course you didn’t know,” she said. “You weren’t there.”

  He was shaken, and covered it by taking a drink of his tea, giving him a few seconds to compose himself. Finally, he said, “Of course, you are correct. I wasn’t there. And regardless of the reasons—which there were many—there’s no real excuse.”

  Andrea looked at the floor. Then she said, “But you came to Spain. The first time I went there with Carrie.”

  George-Phillip smiled. “I did. And other times. I was at your concert two years ago. You have a beautiful singing voice.”

  Andrea blushed. “You were there?”

  “Of course. I couldn’t make it often, you see, without revealing something. But when there were opportunities to not be observed—I tried to take them.”

  Every summer in Calella, on Friday nights in the old town, there was a series of live performances. When he’d learned that she would be performing in one, he had discreetly traveled to Spain. He remembered standing in the back of the crowd that milled around the square, and Andrea’s nervousness when she walked out on the stage. She’d hesitated at first and looked at a woman he now realized must be her Abuelita, or grandmother. Then she smiled, a beautiful smile, and began singing a cappella.

  He didn’t understand the words—George-Phillip spoke fluent French, but no Spanish—but her expression, her vocal intonation made it clear she’d inherited her mother’s gift for music. His eyes began to mist again.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m afraid I haven’t a firm grip on my emotions today. I’m wondering—have you heard from her? Do you have any idea where she might be? Your mother?”

  Dylan and Andrea looked at each other before speaking, a look that was heavy with meaning.

  Dylan leaned forward and said, “Sir … I spoke with her very briefly. On April 30th. It was right before the shooting started.”

  George-Phillip sighed. “That was the last time I spoke with her as well.”

  Dylan tilted his head to the right, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you guys weren’t talking.”

  “We weren’t,” George-Phillip said. “But I was tracking the family as closely as possible when I got word Andrea was going back to the United States. There are some people with powerful secrets who want them kept. I think they thought that if it came o
ut in public that Richard had raped his wife, his whole career might come under fire. Which would risk exposing Wakhan.”

  Dylan flinched. “Wakhan? In Badakhshan Province?”

  “You’re familiar with it?”

  Dylan grimaced. “I served in Badakhshan Province during my time in Afghanistan. We didn’t get out to the Wakhan Corridor though. Too remote—not even the Taliban is interested in that place. What is it they’re trying to keep secret? And what does Richard Thompson have to do with it?”

  George-Phillip sighed. Then he said, “What I’m about to tell you is highly classified. But The Guardian actually broke the story today, so that secrecy is of dubious value. In 1983, a group of Afghan militia dropped nerve gas on a village in Wakhan, killing everyone in the village. Two CIA officers and a Saudi intelligence officer procured the nerve gas from Russian stocks. Richard Thompson was one of them.”

  “Holy shit,” Dylan said. Then he flushed, an uncomfortable red running down his cheeks and neck. “Excuse me, uh, Highness … uh … sir.”

  George-Phillip chuckled. “Really, man, I served in the Royal Marines. I’ve heard salty language once or twice. In any event, I was already on high alert after Andrea’s kidnapping.” He turned and looked at his daughter, musing for just a moment on how incredibly courageous she’d been. “You really are something,” he said. “Any man would be proud to call you his daughter, you know.”

  She just looked down at the table. She didn’t trust him yet, of course. That would take time. He just hoped he would get the time.

  “In any event,” he said, “we were monitoring the communications of certain people who were known to associate with Tariq Koury.”

  “Hairy Chest,” Andrea said.

  George-Phillip raised his eyebrows.

  She responded, “That’s what I mentally called him. The entire flight over he sat next to me, with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down. It was disgusting.”