Girl of Vengeance

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  “Perhaps, then, you can settle a friendly wager for us,” Easton said. He stank of whiskey. “Richard here maintains that it was the advances of John Hawkins on ship building that allowed for English settlement of the Americas. But I have the correct answer—that it was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. What do you say?”

  Easton was a boor. But he was the Ambassador. “Both answers are equally true, Ambassador—the defeat of the Armada would not have taken place had it not been for the improvement in ship building.”

  “Spoken like a true diplomat, Your Highness,” Thompson said. His eyes were cold and his voice low. “You used a lot of words and avoided the question entirely. Bravo.”

  Thompson was decidedly unfriendly. Did he suspect George-Phillip’s affair with his wife? Or was it something else entirely? Had he somehow guessed George-Phillip’s involvement in the investigation of the massacre at Wakhan? Whatever it was, even Easton noticed, his face sobering as he heard Thompson’s tone.

  The three men engaged in small talk, maddening small talk, as George-Phillip kept his eyes everywhere except on Richard Thompson’s wife, who moved from group to group like a good hostess: entertaining, friendly but not too friendly, a smile always on her face.

  Finally, George-Phillip managed to offer his excuses and step away from the two Ambassadors. Unable to face any more meaningless conversations, he stepped into the hallway, needing to have a few moments of solitude. His eyes scanned the hallway looking for the water closet.

  He was almost at the end of the hallway when he heard her voice behind him.

  “George-Phillip.”

  He froze, his spine rigid. He couldn’t show his face. He couldn’t. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Adelina.”

  He heard her footsteps, heels clicking on the marble floor, as she approached. He slowly turned around.

  “I … I…” her voice trailed off.

  “You miss me?” he asked. “You’re sorry for breaking it off with no explanation? You’re sorry you broke my heart? What is it?”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  His shoulders sagged. “What am I to say?”

  “Just … tell me you’re well.”

  George-Phillip felt his eyebrows twitch, and he narrowed one eye, trying to hold in the wave of emotion that flooded him. He looked up at the ceiling, unable to control his grief. “I must go, Adelina. Please … just…”

  “I didn’t have any choice.” The pain in her voice was palpable.

  George-Phillip gritted his teeth with an anger he didn’t know he contained. “You didn’t have a choice? I would have protected you, Adelina. I would have protected your daughter.”

  He turned and nearly staggered down the hall. She ran after him, calling his name. There. A door labeled Men. He pushed it open, stepped inside, and leaned against the wall.

  Carrie. May 5.

  Looking back, Carrie vaguely remembered the night George-Phillip referred to. She’d only attended two or three diplomatic functions in her eleventh year. But she had been a poised eleven-year-old, and her mother had given her permission to accompany Julia for the first hour of the reception. She must have missed him by minutes.

  Did she remember seeing George-Phillip? She couldn’t recall. The room had mostly been filled with adults, almost all of them shorter than she’d been, and she had stayed close to the wall at the side of the room, Julia at her side, until their mother sent her away. They’d been in Beijing for months by that time, but that was the first time she’d been accompanied by armed guards.

  “I remember the reception you’re talking about,” she said. “The twins were born a month or two before that, and Mom had been—especially difficult. It’s not that she doesn’t love the twins—but I don’t think she’d planned on them. I don’t think she’d planned on any children really.”

  George-Phillip nodded. “No. But she still looked on all of you as gifts from God.”

  “She didn’t act like it,” Andrea said. Her tone was bitter.

  “No. But I don’t think you realize how much it cost her.”

  “How could I?” she riposted. “I don’t know her. She never talked to me. She sent me away.”

  George-Phillip closed his eyes. “Of course you don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me,” Andrea said. “She couldn’t. So you have to.”

  He nodded and began speaking again. “I didn’t see her again for several weeks. The diplomatic community is small, of course, but not so small that you see people routinely unless they are friends. And Richard Thompson and I were never friends.”

  “I can imagine,” Carrie said.

  His lips turned up in a wry smile. “Anyway. It was … four or so weeks later, at the end of May, and the United States Embassy was holding a service for Memorial Day.” He paused a moment. “That’s not a holiday we have in the United Kingdom, but our Remembrance Day in November is similar. In any event, it’s fairly common for allied Embassies to attend such functions, especially in a country like China where the diplomatic community is so isolated. So I made arrangements to represent the United Kingdom.”

  He leaned back, his face thoughtful, and said, “I knew, of course, that your mother would likely be at the ceremony. And I knew I needed to stay away. But I couldn’t. As soon as I arrived, I ran into Richard and Adelina. It was a bad day for her. I’d never seen her so lost, her eyes searching everywhere, her hands twitching.”

  Carrie spoke in a soft, urgent voice. “It was awful. I remember that day. Julia had somehow gotten spots of bleach on her dress, and Mother screamed at her. It was garbled and confusing and … frightening, really. Then when our father came into the apartment, she went suddenly silent. Whispering at Julia in an urgent tone to change her dress, to get into something more appropriate, to hurry.”

  George-Phillip shook his head. “She was terrified,” he murmured.

  “I think so,” Carrie said. “But we experienced it as crazy.”

  Carrie could almost feel the pain and regret radiating from George-Phillip as he closed his eyes, not responding to her words. After all, pain and regret were the emotions she was most familiar with. It was easy to recognize a kindred spirit in pain. She continued. “Anyway, she calmed down a little once Julia was dressed and we were on our way. But … you know what I remember?”

  Oh Christ, she thought. She started to shake a little.

  “What is it?” George-Phillip asked.

  “He kept leaning over in the car. As he was driving. And he’d whisper. I thought it was romantic whispers, you know? She kept … shivering, and jerking away from him. She had goose bumps on the back of her neck. All I could think of was how angry I was because she’d treated Julia like dirt and here she was…” Carrie closed her eyes. She remembered what she’d thought. The words had come unbidden to her mind, I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.

  “You couldn’t have known,” George-Phillip said. “You were a child.”

  She sighed. “I know. But I still wish I’d understood. I wish I could take back how much we all hated her. She didn’t deserve it. Tell me what else happened.”

  George-Phillip nodded. His eyes were a thousand miles away. “I ended up seated next to your family—Adelina in between me and Richard. You were on the other side of him.”

  Carrie thought back, trying to remember if she’d known George-Phillip then. She vaguely remembered a man sitting next to her mother, but it was maddening really, to know her father had been right there and she hadn’t realized. Of course the adults hadn’t deigned to actually introduce the children to anyone. The ceremony had gone on forever—she remembered feeling tired and frustrated, and whispering to Julia, “Will this never end?” Of course she would never have said those words to her mother or father—damn it! She kept doing that. Richard Thompson wasn’t her father and she didn’t have a clue what to call him. She missed George-Phillip’s next few words, but brought herself back to the present as quickly as she co
uld.

  “…I could tell something was very seriously wrong. But I couldn’t do anything. So we sat there for the first forty-five minutes of what seemed like an excruciatingly long ceremony. Finally, Richard was called up to speak.”

  Carrie nodded. She remembered that. It had been blisteringly hot. By the time Richard went up to speak, her dress was sticking to her back, and even with the broad floppy hat she wore, her skin was starting to feel distinctly hot.

  “While he was up there—it was no more than twenty minutes—I was able to talk with her very briefly. Even though I’d only just found out about you, Carrie, I still loved her. And I was worried. Deeply worried.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t sound like herself. The woman I fell in love with was—vivacious. Energetic. Even in the midst of her awful marriage, she was still inherently an optimistic, cheerful and spiritual person. But when I talked with her at the Embassy, and again that Memorial Day, it was clear she was profoundly damaged. Her voice and inflection were slower. Tired. Sad.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I hated seeing her like that. She was such a kind and caring soul, to see her abused in such a way as to break her spirit … I wanted to kill Richard Thompson.”

  Carrie closed her eyes. It was too much. Too much to imagine the kind of life her mother had. Carrie had undergone the most excruciating pain she could imagine in the last nine months with the loss of her husband. But at least Carrie still had her sisters. She still had Ray’s memory. She had his best friend.

  But Adelina Thompson had lost everything. And not for nine months. Not for nine years. She’d been forced to marry Richard Thompson thirty-three years ago.

  Carrie felt a tear run down her cheek. She whispered, “I’ve hated her all my life. I’ve always believed my father was the sane one. I’ve always believed she was hateful, but it wasn’t that at all. She was tortured.”

  Andrea stood up and began pacing.

  Memories kept washing over Carrie. Julia shouting, “I want Daddy!” Her mother collapsing on the sidewalk in Calella, and their terror until the ambulance came. Her mother breaking down after Maria Clawson had begun writing about the family, week after week, posting vicious blogs about Julia and both of her parents, derailing her father’s posting to Russia. She remembered her mother lying on the couch, her face red and puffy, on Valentine’s of 1990. Carrie stifled a sob. She’d thrown a tantrum because her mother wouldn’t take her to the church Valentine’s party.

  She knew about the harm her mother had done. The freak outs and the pain and the screaming and the horrible things she’d said. But she also remembered her mother rushing to her defense when Ray’s mom had gone off into crazy town after the accident. She remembered finding herself back at the condo after Ray’s death, unable to understand how she’d even gotten there, and her mother lying down beside her and holding her as she cried for what seemed like days.

  “If I never do anything else in my life,” she said, “I’ll make it up to her. I will.” She looked up at Andrea. Andrea nodded in agreement.

  Andrea. May 5.

  “What happens with us?” Andrea asked. As she asked the question, she waved her hand in the general direction of George-Phillip.

  “What do you mean?” Carrie responded.

  George-Phillip leaned forward in his seat and said, “Perhaps I could…”

  Carrie nodded in response. Andrea waited to hear what he would say.

  “Obviously I’ve been … no father to you at all. Either one of you. And I know there’s nothing I can do to go back and change that. All the same though … I would like to get to know you both. I would like to … try … somehow … to make amends to you both. It is my intention to retire from my position once the current unpleasantness is over. Perhaps you’ll consider coming to London?”

  Carrie slowly nodded. “It’s possible. I have work commitments, of course, so timing might be challenging.”

  Andrea shrugged, not knowing how to answer. “I don’t know. I’d have to speak with my grandmother about it.” Her response was automatic, but a stab of concern and worry hit her. She didn’t know where her relationship with Abuelita stood. Her grandmother had lied to her. And not about something small. “I don’t know what to think anymore,” she continued. “No one—not my mother, my grandmother, not you—no one has ever told me the truth. About who I was, or why I wasn’t wanted. Why should I believe you now? And what does all this have to do with why someone tried to kill me?”

  George-Phillip nodded. “That’s a very good question.”

  Irritated, Andrea said, “Don’t patronize me.”

  He shook his head in response. “I don’t mean to. It doesn’t all make sense.”

  “Tell us what you know. Or what you guess.”

  “All right. First, I believe your kidnapping was originally planned by Leslie Collins, the Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. Not an official operation, you understand. But on his own.”

  “Why?” Andrea asked.

  “I think he believed that your presence in the country, and specifically the blood tests, would lead to questions which would ultimately reveal what happened in Wakhan.”

  “That makes no sense it all.”

  “It does if you know—as he does—that I was responsible for the original investigation conducted by the British government. You see, Collins and Richard Thompson, along with the current Saudi intelligence minister, were the three prime movers in delivering chemical weapons to the Afghan militia. The three of them have been trading favors and boosting each other’s careers ever since. But their cooperation depended on secrecy.”

  Carrie sat forward. “And you’ve known about it? All this time? Wait … since when?”

  “1984.”

  Carrie slumped back in her seat. “Why did … if you knew he was responsible for it, why didn’t you report it then?”

  “I did. My official report directly addressed that, and recommended that the issue be brought up with the United Nations Security Council. I was overruled.”

  “I don’t understand why.”

  “Carrie, it was the Cold War. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, and their occupation was brutal. At the time, the United States and the United Kingdom used Wakhan as a tremendous propaganda tool against the Soviets.”

  Andrea didn’t get it. “Okay … so after I escaped the kidnapping … that brought media attention to the family. It seems like it would make it more likely all of it would come out.”

  “Exactly,” George-Phillip said. “Once you escaped, it threw a huge wrench in the works. We intercepted some phone calls last Friday. As far as I can tell, Collins decided the only move left to make was to completely discredit Thompson. He had an agent planted in your Diplomatic Security Service, who placed the drugs and money in the condo and launched the attack against you. As you may know, someone fired shots at my home at nearly the exact same time. At me, rather.”

  Andrea sat back, shocked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Right. Now the question is, what is their next move? Thompson’s role in Wakhan is public now, thanks to The Guardian. But whoever planted the story adjusted just enough of the truth to also tarnish me. The way The Guardian reports it, I was part of the cover-up. I believe Collins was likely responsible for that as well. Again, because it attacks the credibility of anyone who can go after him.”

  Carrie said, “I don’t see how he could possibly have done all this in just a few days.”

  George-Phillip responded, “It isn’t possible. I suspect he began planning it and putting it together the moment your father was raised as a replacement for Secretary of Defense.”

  “But that was only three weeks ago.”

  “No, Carrie, it was many months ago. The President knew the former Secretary was very ill. Your father was approached about the job in December of 2013.”

  “Six months ago.” Carrie’s face was grim as she said the words.

  Andrea said, “Then who tried to kill our
mother? Someone chased her to the border and shot at her there. Collins? Why?”

  George-Phillip leaned his head in his hands. “I’m not sure. The news media is speculating there’s some kind of drug war connection. Perhaps Collins thought he could reinforce that narrative? The shooter was captured, by the way.”

  Carrie said, “Right. Nick Larsden. Bear and Anthony were discussing that earlier, they want to go out to Washington to see if they can question him.”

  “Bear and Anthony?”

  “Bear Wyden—he’s with Diplomatic Security. And Anthony Walker is a reporter with The Washington Post.” As Carrie said the words, her face flushed a little. Just a tiny bit. But enough it caught Andrea’s attention. George-Phillip did not appear to notice, and Andrea thought it best to not say anything.

  “I know Walker,” George-Phillip said. “He interviewed me a couple of years ago. I rather liked him.”

  Andrea said, “Okay, so this Collins guy tried to have me and my mother killed. And you. He wants to burn the house down before anyone gets wind he was involved in this massacre. So how do we get ahead of him?”

  George-Phillip’s brow furrowed. “I think we need to prove, publicly, that he was involved.”

  “Won’t that look like it’s just defensive?” Andrea asked. “That you or … Richard Thompson … are trying to muddy the waters?”

  “It might,” George-Phillip said. “But the report I wrote was unequivocal, and the evidence implicating Collins was fairly clear.”

  “That report needs to be publicized.”

  “I’m afraid it’s highly classified. I would need to consult with the Prime Minister before releasing it.”

  “Can you do that?” Carrie asked.

  “Yes,” George-Phillip responded. “But first, I believe dinner should be ready. Why don’t we gather your sister and brother-in-law, and we’ll dine.”

  Andrea nodded. She was famished and needed to rest a little. She still didn’t understand all of what was happening. But tendrils of trust were beginning to grow. George-Phillip seemed sincere. And the truth was, she wanted to believe him. She was tired of being hurt. She was tired of carrying around the knowledge that her supposed father never wanted her.