Girl of Vengeance

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  Andrea said, “Do you think it’s possible it was the Prince? That’s what the man said.”

  George-Phillip? No. Adelina shook her head. “No, I don’t think it’s possible he’s changed that much.”

  “Well, he came from somewhere,” Andrea interjected. “And there can’t be that many people who have access to the royal residence at the Embassy.”

  Adelina sighed. “The man who shot at us at the border worked for Oz. I’m afraid he won’t rest until I’m dead.”

  “I don’t understand,” Andrea said. Her eyes were watering, and she spoke at a whisper. For just a moment, the standoffish, armored young woman looked like the little girl she’d once been, and it felt like a stab through Adelina’s heart. “I don’t understand any of this. I wish none of it had ever happened.”

  Marky Lovecchio. May 7.

  Making it over the border had been a breeze. Marky had shown his driver’s license to the Canadian border guards and they’d passed him into the country. Simple as that. They hadn’t even searched his Challenger, almost a disappointment since he’d stashed his guns. There was no point in taking unnecessary chances, and he knew a guy in Vancouver who got him a pistol. It wasn’t ideal—a .32 calibre popgun. But it ought to be enough to do the job.

  He was disappointed he hadn’t been able to stick around in Seattle. That stripper had been a live one, and he’d wanted to stick around with her in the hotel room for another day or two. But no such luck. He wasn’t fucking with Oz.

  The hospital didn’t look much like private hospitals in the United States, or at least not like the ones Marky had been to. This was more like a VA or Army hospital—everything worked, everything necessary was there, but it wasn’t lushly appointed with expensive carpets and artwork. Marky was grateful the morning had been chilly. It was May, and wearing a jacket would have raised questions if it were hot. As it was, he was easily able to conceal his weapon underneath his jacket.

  He wandered down the second floor wing, his sneakers occasionally squeaking against the institutional floor. He’d passed the cancer ward and pediatrics. Ahead, a crowded nurses’ station. His target was in room 201, which would be down the hallway to the left if he was right.

  There. The nurses’ station was at the intersection of two hallways. To the left and right, patients’ rooms. Ahead, more hallway, and probably more rooms.

  Marky had been through this before. All you had to do was look like you knew where you were going, look like you knew what you were doing. Nobody questioned you if you were confident and bold. He turned left. At the end of the hall were two security guards. One was sitting in a chair, his telephone out, sending a text message. The other was across the hall from him, leaning against a door frame. A nurse was walking toward him, and behind her a teenage girl with black and turquoise hair. She was hot, and he leered at her as she passed him going in the opposite direction. But he didn’t have time to screw around. He looked back toward the guards. Neither of them had stirred, the one at the door lazily looking in his direction.

  That was going to be a fatal mistake. Marky wasn’t lazy, and he was prepared for these two. He should be able to take down the first before the guy sitting down texting even knew what was happening. He passed another room, the smell of ammonia and an underlying earthy smell wafting out of the room. Some old person dying maybe?

  Marky casually slid a hand into the back of his waistband as he got to within twenty feet of the inert guards. The standing one started to move, but he was too late. Marky squeezed the pistol, firing a .32 calibre bullet straight into the guard’s eye.

  Sarah. May 7.

  As Andrea left the room, almost in tears, her mother started to stand.

  “Let her go,” Sarah said. “I think it’s going to take some time. Everything she thought she knew has changed.”

  Her mother sighed, then sank back into her seat. Jessica was beginning to stir.

  “You know I would have done anything to keep her. Except risk her life. Richard would have killed her. He told me that, and I believed him.”

  Sarah shrugged. The words made her feel—bleak. Empty inside. “I’ve spent the last two weeks taking in a lot of things, Mother. I learned about how you and Dad met … what he did to you. I learned two of my sisters had a different father. I learned a lot. But … that just makes things harder, you know? What used to make sense doesn’t.”

  Her mother nodded, her face lined. Adelina looked sad. Old.

  Sarah reached over and took her mother’s hand. Then she said, “I know this, Mother. All of us are your daughters. It might not be easy … but that will never change.”

  Her mother’s eyes misted over. Sarah didn’t know what might have happened next, because she froze at the sudden loud pop just outside their room, loud enough her ears instantly started ringing. A second one, then a third. Gunshots. It couldn’t be anything else. Sarah fought her suddenly rising panic.

  Jessica jerked up in the bed. Sarah grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the bed as if she were a rag doll, even as her mother came to her aid. They dumped the now screaming Jessica on the floor.

  The doorknob turned. Sarah didn’t stop to think. She dove over the bed, grabbing for the door, and leaned against it.

  “Sarah!” her mother screamed.

  The door pushed inward, pushing Sarah back. She let out a howl, her boots scrambling for purchase as she tried to close the door. She tried to force it closed, but couldn’t. Then suddenly the pressure let off the door and she flew forward, losing her footing. Her vision went black when her head connected with the heavy wood panel, then she was thrown back, the door bursting inward.

  Sarah landed half on her left leg, the one she’d injured the year before, and immediately collapsed, the muscles in that leg not strong enough for sustained work.

  A man wearing jeans and a Black Sabbath T-shirt and a black jacket filled the doorway and raised his pistol, aiming at her mother.

  Adelina. May 7.

  “What…” Jessica asked in a half scream as she tried to get to her feet.

  Adelina pushed her daughter down. “Stay down!” she screamed.

  The room had filled with smoke and noise, Sarah howling with what sounded like rage, and Adelina turned back toward the door just as it burst open, throwing Sarah back against the bed with a loud thump.

  Terror filled Adelina at that moment, terror that she wouldn’t be able to protect her daughters, that she wouldn’t be able to see them grow up and get married and have the lives they all deserved. Terror that she wouldn’t be able to make amends to her daughters, that she wouldn’t live long enough to beg for their forgiveness.

  The man in the doorway was large and muscular. A black leather jacket over a T-shirt and blue jeans. Smoke clouded the room from the gunshots he’d already fired, but that was nothing to the gaping black hole of the pistol he lifted up and aimed directly at Adelina.

  Everything seemed to slow down to a sickening slowness. Jessica started to move again and Adelina held her left hand out as if to signal stay.

  Then two arms and two legs were suddenly wrapped around the killer from behind, one hand grabbing at his gun. A flash of black and turquoise and arms and legs moving everywhere and Adelina realized that Andrea had jumped on the killer’s back. Her daughter let out a feral shriek and screamed, “Leave them alone!”

  Andrea had one hand on the guy’s gun arm and another wrapped around his face. The pistol was aimed slightly toward the ceiling, and it went off, once, twice, then Sarah ran headfirst at the man, hitting him in the gut with her head. He let out a scream as one of Andrea’s fingers sank into his left eye, blood bursting out and down his face. Then Sarah stood in front of him and grabbing at his gun hand with her two hands, she kicked him hard, in the knee.

  He collapsed with a scream as Adelina’s daughters swarmed over him. Andrea took his gun away then tied his wrists behind his back.

  Only then did Andrea, still on her hands and knees, look up and call out. “
Mother! Are you okay? Is Jessica?”

  Adelina collapsed into her seat.

  Richard. May 7.

  The first thing Richard Thompson saw when he entered the Senate Central Hearing Facility for the second day in a row was that even more people packed the room today than had the day before. Industrious Senate aids had added more rows of chairs, all the way to the back doors. Along each wall on the left and right side of the room were television crews, and additional cameras were crowded on the floor area between the dais and the witness table.

  It was officially a media circus. The morning papers had been clear enough. The New York Times—always reliably liberal—had called for a public trial of both Thompson and Leslie Collins. The conservative Washington Times, on the other hand, had landed squarely behind both Thompson and Collins, labeling them as heroes for taking the war to the Soviet Union. CNN and Fox News talked of nothing else, with pundits on both sides of the aisle calling each other traitors, liberals and a host of other names. The news coverage was ubiquitous, with reporters digging into everything they could find about his history, his family’s history.

  The networks were digging up archive footage of his Senate hearings in 2000, his diplomatic mission to Iraq just before the invasion in 2003, and even footage of the February 23rd Coup. Left wing commentators openly speculated that Thompson and the CIA had been behind the right-wing paramilitary units that had taken over the Spanish capital. His entire career was being sifted with a fine-toothed comb, right alongside Julia’s. He’d also seen coverage of her career—Morbid Obesity’s first appearance on television, their first album going platinum, Julia speaking to reporters from Hollywood to Moscow. The reporters took the accusations in the IRS investigation as fact, and clearly someone on the grand jury was leaking information to the press.

  None of the reporters had any real facts to speak of.

  But they didn’t need any, did they? Richard knew that well enough from the debacle of his nomination as Ambassador to Russia.

  Consequently, it was with considerable trepidation that Richard now entered the hearing room and walked, head high, between the massive crowd. Toward the front of the hearing room were the officials, journalists and lobbyists who could afford to hire line-sitters to wait in the hours before the hearing. In the middle and back of the room were the members of the public who’d been lucky enough to get close to the front of the line. They were probably a mix of activists and others who were affiliated with left-wing organizations. But sprinkled in the crowd were at least a dozen men and women in military uniforms. Perhaps people who had served in Afghanistan? Who knew why these people were all here.

  He was halfway up the aisle when two men stood up. Both of them were dressed in ridiculous looking baggy sweatshirts and pants and had unkempt hair. They held up a banner between them. It read “Justice for Afghan Blood.”

  Next to them a young woman stood up. If she’d bothered showering she might have been attractive, but as it was her hair looked a little greasy, her face pockmarked with pimples and scars from old pimples. She shouted, “Justice!” then reached into her purse and swung her left hand back, as if she were a baseball pitcher, and threw something across the room directly at Richard.

  He jerked back and away from the projectile even as someone in the audience screamed, and his eyes tracked on the object. A balloon. A water balloon. It splashed down into the crowd to Richard’s right, and dark red liquid exploded across half a dozen people, who began shouting and yelling.

  Capitol police rushed into the now roiling crowd and hustled the activists away, even as others assisted those who had been splashed.

  With blood. Real blood. Richard could smell it. Half a dozen drops had hit him, a few in the face and his hands and probably a few more on his suit. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face and hands then turned back toward the front of the hearing room, where the witness table faced the gathered Senators.

  The smell was awful. He had almost reached the front of the room when his eyes locked on Maria Clawson’s.

  That whore.

  Richard was certain that somewhere along the way she had probably been involved with Chuck Rainsley. Nothing else could explain her long standing hostility to him. He’d felt glee when Julia had funded the lawsuit that wiped out Clawson’s career. But now, the witch was back. She was making a comeback of her career on the back of Richard’s disgrace.

  Disgrace.

  That was the word his father, Cyrus Thompson, had once used. Richard shuddered and continued his walk down the gauntlet toward his waiting execution.

  He grunted as he reached the front row. Three seats from the aisle on the left side, studiously ignoring Richard, was Leslie Collins. Deputy Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. His former friend. Richard thought it was laughable that Collins would show up here in person to watch Richard crash and burn. Two seats down from Collins was a thirty-year-old Saudi in a dark suit and wearing the traditional white keffiyeh. He recognized the man, Prince Roshan’s eldest son Ahmed.

  Ahmed had the courage to nod at Richard. More courage than that snake Collins showed. Richard turned toward the front of the room. The Senators were all seated, waiting for him, fangs drawn and dripping with his blood.

  Richard might be losing, but he would take some of them down with him.

  That was something else Cyrus Thompson had taught him. Even as the old bastard was dying, he’d held on to his grudges, his hatreds, his contempt, including his hate and contempt for his own son.

  Richard took a seat at the table and looked at his watch. If they started on time, the hearing would begin in three minutes. In the meantime, he sat up, his back straight, pride in every line of his body.

  Disgrace.

  Yes, that’s what his father had said. Disgrace.

  The word had been his response to the death of Cyrus Thompson IV—Richard’s elder brother.

  It was the summer after Richard’s freshman year at Harvard. Cyrus, two years ahead of him, was entering his final year. Something had always been different about Cyrus. He was thinner than Richard, smaller. Where Richard played rugby and lacrosse and joined the rowing team when they were at Exeter, his older brother had been bookish and introspective.

  One night just a few weeks before Cyrus’s death, they’d sat on the roof of Kirkland House, four blocks south of Harvard Yard.

  “You know Father hates me,” Cyrus had said.

  Richard had remained silent, just looking up at the stars.

  “It’s true,” Cyrus had said. “I’m a joke. He wanted someone to take over his businesses and his life. Instead he got me. I’m scrawny and read books and what I really want is to be a professor. Right here. But even this … Father selected Kirkland House. The jock house, as if I would ever fit in here. It was his, so it had to be ours.”

  Richard sighed and took a drink from his hip flask. He had a warm glow growing in his stomach.

  “I just give him what he wants,” Richard said. “It’s easier.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You want the same things he does.”

  Richard shook his head. “No. I’m going away. Far away. Screw him. I’ll be on the other side of the world, and Father can find someone else to take over his metal shavings or whatever the hell it is he makes.”

  Cyrus sat up, startled. “Where are you going?”

  Richard said, “Can I tell you a secret? A real secret—you can’t say anything to anybody.”

  “Of course.”

  Richard looked over his shoulder, even though he knew no one else was up on the roof. He whispered, “Last month I met a recruiter for the CIA.”

  “What?”

  Richard nodded. “They won’t do anything until I graduate, of course. But he said they’re looking for people with language talents and who can move around with rich people. Diplomats. Whatever.”

  Cyrus was dumbfounded. “But … but … what if you end up in some place like Vietnam?”

  Richard sh
rugged. “Better with the CIA than as a draftee. Speaking of which … how are your grades?”

  Cyrus had been placed on academic probation during the first semester. One more failed class and he’d be booted out of Harvard—and would lose his draft deferment. There were always ways around such things, of course, but Richard and Cyrus both knew that their bastard of a father wouldn’t use them. He’d sooner send his older son off to be killed in some jungle than he would recognize that he wasn’t a clone of his father.

  Cyrus sighed at the question. Then he whispered, “I’m failing.”

  “Why?” Richard said. “You’re just as smart as I am. Smarter.”

  Cyrus shrugged and looked away. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just hard to care.”

  Three weeks later final grades had been published and it became official. Cyrus was kicked out. His draft lottery number had already been called, and only the student deferment kept him out of the Army.

  They’d returned home to San Francisco, and both brothers had been called into their father’s office—the same room that once became Richard’s office after the old bastard died. Father had hugged Richard and smiled at him, complimenting his grades and his lacrosse trophy.

  Then he turned to his elder son. “I’m ashamed of you, Cyrus. You’re … a disgrace to your family.”

  “Father … what should I do?”

  Cyrus Thompson III just stuck his nose in the air and looked away from his son. “I suppose you’ll have to go to war. Maybe it will finally turn you into a man. Get out of my sight. You disgust me.”

  Cyrus fled. Richard stood there without responding. His father turned toward him and said, “Your brother isn’t capable of leading a squad of mice out of a paper bag. You’ll take over the business when I retire.”

  Richard shrugged. “Don’t count on it, Father. I may have other plans.”

  His father’s face had turned red, and he shouted, “You’ll make plans I approve of and none other!” he’d thundered.