Girl of Lies (Rachel's Peril)

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  Well, that was clear enough, Bear thought. “Can you be, um… a little more specific, Senator?”

  “All right. First of all—you know Thompson’s not really State Department, right? He’s CIA, through and through.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “We held closed hearings in 2001 when he became ambassador to Russia. His CIA assignments were the reason for the closed hearings.”

  “I see. I understand you were responsible for the delay in that appointment?”

  Rainsley grimaced. “I tried to stop it entirely. We held the nomination up for two years, and it cost me a lot of political capital.”

  “Tell me why.”

  Rainsley leaned across the desk. He held up one finger. “First… early 80s, when Thompson was in Afghanistan, he got up to some very shady stuff. Criminal stuff. And then he did everything he could to prevent any oversight or control from Congress.”

  “He was officially assigned to Pakistan, I believe.”

  Rainsley sneered. “So was half the Central Intelligence Agency. The Russians were in Afghanistan, and we had a lot of operatives in there. Secret little wars. Crazy stuff.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “All right. Second…

  and this you can’t quote me on. But Thompson had a cruel streak. Power games in his personal and professional life.”

  “What sort of… power games?”

  Rainsley looked disgusted. “Let’s just say I feel sorry for Adelina Thompson.”

  “You know her.” It wasn’t a question.

  Rainsley gave a vague answer. “We’ve met a few times. She’s a lot younger than Richard Thompson.”

  “They’ve been married since… 1981?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought it was unusual. His assignment to Spain was only a few months.”

  Rainsley leaned close. “The agency ordered him to marry her to prevent an international incident.”

  That didn’t make any sense. Unless… “Was she raped?”

  The Senator shrugged. “I don’t know all the details. But they married them off and got him the hell out of there.”

  Bear sighed. “Sir, this is all interesting, but it doesn’t really tell me anything. Did you know… there’s a photograph of you with Thompson? And his wife?”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “The picture also has some interesting people in it. Prince Roshan from Saudi Arabia. Leslie Collins. Prince George-Phillip.”

  Senator Rainsley nodded. “That’s right.”

  “All three of them ended up very high in their intelligence establishments.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “That I’ve got unanswered questions. That none of this makes sense.”

  Rainsley smiled. “That’s all I’m going to say for now.”

  “Senator, one last question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Who is Carrie and Andrea Thompson’s real father?”

  Rainsley raised his eyebrows. Then he said, “That’s not a question for me to answer. Have a good afternoon, Mr. Wyden.”

  2. Carrie. April 30. Noon

  The Army Sergeant who led Carrie down the hallway wore dress blues like Ray had worn to their wedding. He’d been in the Army a lot longer than Ray had, though. Three strips on top, three on the bottom, a dozen diagonal yellow hash marks on his sleeve and dozens upon dozens of ribbons. She recognized the Combat Infantryman’s badge. Of all Ray’s decorations, that one had been the most important to him.

  “In here, ma’am,” the Sergeant said.

  The door opened into a small anteroom. A woman in her forties sat behind a desk. Two younger sergeants sat in chairs across from the woman. One read on a Kindle, while the other played a handheld video game. She wondered what they were doing. At a second desk, an Army Colonel sat. He stood up as Carrie entered the room and said, “Miss Thompson-Sherman? I’m Colonel Billingsgate, your father’s aide-de-camp. He’ll be available in just a few moments, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” Carrie said.

  The secretary, still behind her desk, said, “Can I get you a drink? Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Please feel free to have a seat.”

  Carrie sat down. She was uncomfortable. Beyond uncomfortable. Her father was a lifelong diplomat, and while his appointment as the new Secretary of Defense might make sense in some political sense she didn’t know about, what she did know was that her experience with the Army as an institution was not good. Not good at all. Ray had been practically persecuted, called back up by the military on a pretext because of a crime someone else had committed. He’d been put on trial, dragged through the mud, and then murdered.

  She’d just as soon not spend a day here, in the Pentagon, where her husband’s death had effectively been engineered.

  So while she waited, she played solitaire on her phone and tried to calm her nerves. Carrie was protective of her daughter—obsessively so. And leaving her in the hands of the nanny, even for a few hours, was excruciating. She’d had to do that several times in the last couple of days.

  The main door to the office opened. She looked up. Her father stood in the doorway, a politician’s smile on his face. Something was wrong. Her father had always been distant. He’d always been… baffling. A little cold. But his recent behavior had been almost bizarre. She didn’t understand it, and it seemed to have started right around the time they figured out that Rachel was sick.

  “Carrie, darling. Please, come in.”

  Her father put his hand on her arm as he led her into the office.

  “Have a seat. Lunch will be served in just a moment.”

  She walked to the indicated seat, a small table not far from the desk. White tablecloth and lunch settings. Was he kidding? She’d asked to meet her father for lunch. Instead, she was getting the Secretary of Defense.

  A steward—an Army sergeant—in a white uniform entered the room and filled the water glasses at the table.

  “Something to drink, ma’am?”

  “Thanks, just water, please.”

  “And you, Mr. Secretary?”

  “I’ll have a vodka-tonic, please. Light.”

  The steward disappeared.

  “How are Andrea and baby Rachel?”

  Carrie winced a little. Something was really wrong here. She’d never been close to her father—but of all of his daughters, she’d been the closest. But right now she didn’t feel close at all. His question seemed as superficial as possible. How are Andrea and baby Rachel?

  She blinked at her father and said, “Andrea is terrified. She was kidnapped at the airport, and neither one of her parents could be bothered to be there for her.”

  “Carrie, surely you’re aware that my confirmation hearings begin next week.”

  She leaned forward and said, “Father. What in God’s name is wrong with you? How could you treat her like this?”

  “You don’t understand how—”

  Her father’s mouth closed suddenly when the side door to the office opened. The steward returned, with two enlisted men behind him. One carried a tray with two covered dishes, and the other brought drinks. Quickly, lunch and drinks were arrayed on the table in front of them. Carrie sat uncomfortably as the soldiers bustled around arranging the table.

  Lunch was roast lamb.

  As the stewards left, her father coughed into his napkin. “Carrie… there are things you don’t understand.”

  “Right,” she said. “I don’t understand how you can be so cold to your own daughter.”

  He closed his eyes, visibly trying to contain his patience.

  “Please relay to your sister my love, and let her know that the moment my confirmation hearings are complete, I’ll be available.”

  God, she missed Ray. The grief that ran through her at that thought was overpowering, almost as if she’d been run over. “Do you know what she thinks?”

  Her father leaned forward, spreading his na
pkin across his lap. Then, with careful motions, he cut a piece of lamb and speared it on his fork, bringing it to his mouth. Only after he’d chewed and swallowed did he say, “What does she think?”

  Carrie felt a tightening in her chest, knowing that once she said it, she wouldn’t be able to recall the words. Knowing—believing—for the first time, that Andrea’s suspicion might be true. Believing that everything she’d ever been told by her own father was a lie.

  “Andrea believes that she and I are sisters. But that you aren’t our father.”

  He raised his eyebrows then wiped his napkin across his lips. “She does?”

  Carrie nodded once.

  He sighed. His face looked closed off. No emotion. No… nothing. He looked like someone about to walk into court, not her father.

  Carrie pressed forward. “Is that why she’s spent most of her life in Spain?”

  “You’ll have to discuss that with your mother,” he said. His tone of voice was irritated, clipped.

  “Why did Andrea get sent off and not me?”

  “Again, you’ll have to speak to your mother about that.”

  She shook her head. “Is it true?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t answer. Something in her was cut adrift. She’d lost her husband already. Now she had to lose her father too?

  Her voice ragged, Carrie asked, “Who… who is my father, then?”

  Her father—no, Richard Thompson—closed his eyes. Then he shrugged, as if to say it was of little importance to him. His tone of voice was disgusted when he spoke. “Unfortunately, your birth father is Senator Chuck Rainsley.”

  1. Carrie. April 30

  UNFORTUNATELY, YOUR birth father is Senator Chuck Rainsley.

  The sentence rolled around in her head, a wildfire destroying everything in its path, a flood of sludge and lies clogging her ears and thoughts. Thirty years of memories. She thought of holidays in San Francisco, of birthdays, of her father’s isolation in his work, of the gifts he gave her over the years. All of them lies.

  Senator Chuck Rainsley.

  She thought about what she knew about the man—the man Richard Thompson claimed was her actual father. Nothing really. Senator from Texas. She was under the impression he was married. He’d been the primary opposition on the Senate Foreign Relations committee to her father’s nomination as Ambassador to Russia. She vaguely remembered the news, hearings, and Rainsley banging his fist on a table on television. She remembered Julia’s suicidal depression, and learning years later that her parents blamed Julia for the stalled nomination.

  Rage gripped her. Was it true? Had Rainsley blocked the nomination out of spite? Had he somehow used Julia to hit back at her… not her father.

  “I don’t even know what to call you,” she said.

  “I’m still your father, Carrie.”

  “A father is the person who gave you life. Or it’s the person who gave you love. Or both. But you gave neither.”

  He winced under the onslaught of words. “Carrie, darling, that’s not true.”

  She slowly stood up. “But it is. You may have showered me with gifts and cash… but…” She shook her head. “What kind of man are you? What kind of woman is…”

  “I did the best I could. I didn’t even know until…”

  “You didn’t know until when?”

  “You were five.”

  “How did you find out?”

  He gave a grim smile. “Your blood type is A positive. Your mother’s is O positive. Therefore, your biological father can’t be type B. I am. Simple really.”

  He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his hand across the bridge of his nose. “Your mother and I had a lot of trouble. A lot. But I was never unfaithful. Unfortunately, your mother was. But even so, I forgave her. She was young, and I’d spent so much of our married life away. Virtually all of it. She was a young mother alone with her daughter while I was off on assignments. I forgave her.”

  He nodded at her as he spoke, his expression grave. “Truly that would have been the end of it. And you can’t tell me I treated you any differently than your sisters. I’m not the warmest parent in the world. But I’ve done my best.”

  Carrie stared back. “You found out in, what… 1990? And you still had Alexandra that year.”

  “I told you I forgave her.”

  “What about Andrea?” she hissed.

  “What about her?”

  “What about her? How can you ask that, Dad? I was twelve when she was born! And we have the same father? How did that happen? How did the twins and Alexandra… I don’t get it.”

  “I began to suspect while she was still pregnant with Andrea. And blood tests at birth confirmed it. Rainsley was briefly in China in 1996 on a political junket. I presume that’s what happened.”

  Carrie shook her head. Trying to figure out the timeline. Julia was a freshman in high school in 1996. The year she’d struggled with an abusive, much older boyfriend. The year her mother had done nothing to help her. Carrie remembered when Julia had confronted her mother about it, years later. Winter of 2002? 2003?

  “That was the year Julia…” she whispered. But she froze. Julia had accused her mother of having an affair with someone named George Lansing. Not Senator Rainsley. Why did she say that? It didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. She almost interrupted and asked her fath—

  She didn’t know how to think of him.

  Thompson leaned forward and said, “Carrie… I’m sorry. But… there’s something seriously wrong with your mother psychologically. She loves you in her own way. But I don’t believe she can help herself.”

  “I don’t see how you stayed married to her,” Carrie said. “She betrayed you. Twice.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “We don’t touch each other. Ever. But… you don’t blame someone who has cancer, do you? She’s sick. So I do what I can to take care of her.” He leaned his forehead on his hand. “In truth, it’s why I was so opposed to your marriage, and Alexandra’s. It’s not that I didn’t like Ray—he was a man to be proud of. But I’ve spent my life married to someone who was mentally ill. I was worried about the trauma from the war—”

  “Stop.”

  Carrie said the word before she consciously thought about it.

  “I’m just trying to explain—”

  “Just stop,” she said. “Don’t you dare compare Ray to… all of… that.”

  She couldn’t say the words. Not out loud. She couldn’t bear to have his name mentioned in the same breath as her mother. All her mother’s lies, and spitefulness and infidelity.

  Rage swept over her when she realized she was starting to cry. She stood up. “I have to go.”

  “Darling…”

  “Stay away from me.”

  “Carrie, it’s not my…”

  “You lied to me. You lied to all of us. You’ve lied to me for thirty years.”

  She reached in her purse for a tissue and blew her nose, loud. “Seriously. I have to go. I’ve got a daughter to take care of.”

  She backed away from the table, and her father stood, taking a step around the table, closer to her. Involuntarily, she stepped away from him. His eyes narrowed, and he said, “Look, you need to calm down a little, Carrie.”

  “You’ve just told me you aren’t actually my father, and you want me to calm down?”

  “It appears to me that you came here expecting that answer.”

  “And what am I supposed to do with this information?”

  “Nothing, Carrie. You keep raising your daughter. You keep doing what you’ve always done. Nothing changes.”

  She sighed. “Everything’s changing. Dad… what happened with Andrea?”

  “I told you. Your mother knows the answer to that.”

  “You didn’t send me away. Why did you send her?”

  He shook his head, muttered, “Jesus,” and turned away from her. His back to her, he said, “Can you imagine what it’s like knowing you’ve been betrayed? Lied to? The only
thing I ever asked of Adelina was loyalty. So when I knew at birth that Andrea belonged to another man I just…” His head bowed toward the floor.

  Bile flooded Carrie’s throat.

  “What about me?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You were five before I knew. We’d already… bonded.”

  Carrie swayed. They’d already bonded? In other words, if he’d known, he would have turned her away too? Sent her off to live in a foreign country with the in-laws he never saw? Abandoned her like he’d done to her sister.

  “I hate you,” she whispered. “I’ve spent my life cleaning up your and mother’s messes. Loving your daughters because you couldn’t. As far as I’m concerned you and mother can both go to hell.”

  She turned to march away from him.

  He grabbed her arm. “Carrie.”

  “Don’t touch me.” She jerked her arm away from him.

  She backed away and he stared at her, his face red with chagrin. “Carrie, please don’t react this way. I’m your father.”

  She shook her head. “No. No, you’re not.”

  Back out of the office, and through the anteroom, and then into the wide, confusing hallway of the Pentagon. She made it about fifty feet before one of the young soldiers from her father’s office caught up with her.

  “Mrs. Thompson-Sherman, let me escort you, please.”

  “Just Sherman, please,” she replied. She’d use a name she could still be proud of.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the soldier said, neither understanding nor caring.

  As she walked, she thought back over a million interactions with her father. He’d always been free with cash. No problem paying for college. Buying her a car. Giving her a ridiculous trust fund, with an allowance in the tens of thousands a year while she was still in college.

  But he didn’t touch. He didn’t embrace his children, or kiss them. Especially her and Andrea. He was a father only in name, preferring the isolation of his office, the intrigue of diplomacy, the draw of politics and power. Family life evaded her father as if it were an ancient foreign language with no Rosetta stone, the complicated rituals of a mystery religion to the uninitiated.