The National Security Advisor asked, “What do you have to say about that, Max?”
Max Levin was unruffled. Prior to his tenure at CIA, he’d been a Marine Corps General, then head of the National Security Agency. He’d seen his share of crises. “First I’ve heard of it. What’s this guy’s name?”
Bear answered, “Mitch Filner.”
Leslie Collins shook his head and scoffed. “We fired Filner ten years ago. He raped some girl in Singapore.”
Olin, the National Security advisor, closed his eyes and muttered, “Dear God.” He appeared to count to twenty. Bear watched as he did it. Finally, Olin said, “All right. For now, State keeps the investigation. The rest of you, turn over whatever they need. We don’t need any political liabilities. Is this going to be a liability?”
As he asked the question, he looked at each of the men in the room. His meaning was clear. It was an order. Make this problem go away, before it became a problem for the President.
3. Leslie Collins. April 30
Leslie Collins sat in the back of the Lincoln Town Car. He looked at his watch. He was going to be late for dinner. Again.
He shook his head. Then he picked up his secured phone.
“Yeah, Danny?
It’s Collins. I need a status.”
Danny McMillan wasn’t just an employee. He was a trusted friend, who had served his time in some nasty places—some of them, side by side with Collins.
“Yeah. Here’s what I have. First thing—Carrie and Andrea Thompson called Senator Rainsley’s office. They have an appointment tomorrow evening.”
“Shit,” Collins said. “All right, what else? What are their plans tonight?”
“As I understand it, some of them are going out, but Andrea Thompson is planning to stay in. Our guy on the security team thinks she’s burnt out.”
“All right. What about the mother?”
“No sign yet. No cell phone signal, no credit cards.”
“And the oldest sister?”
“She’s on a charter flight to San Francisco right now with her husband and a reporter.”
Collins was silent for a moment. “A reporter? Does he have a name?”
“Uh… Anthony Walker. He’s an entertainment reporter with the Post, apparently.”
Collins closed his eyes and set the phone down on the seat beside him. He counted to ten, and then counted to ten again for good measure. Then he picked up his phone. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What, sir?”
“Anthony Walker isn’t a fucking entertainment reporter, he won a fucking Pulitzer for his international affairs coverage. Walker did a whole feature on Wakhan three years ago when the UN dug up the bodies.”
Now it was Danny’s turn to be silent at the other end of the line. Finally he came back and said, “What do we do?”
“Take it down. I want everyone who can possibly blow the lid on this thing to be completely discredited. Or dead. How long will it take to execute?”
“Most of it, twenty-four hours or less. GP might take a bit longer, and he’s the wildcard.”
“All right, pull the trigger. All of them. We don’t know who knows what, and I don’t see how we’re going to contain this thing.”
“Done, sir.”
Collins hung up the phone. Then he dialed his wife.
“Dear, I’m going to be a few minutes late, traffic coming from the White House.”
1. Carrie. April 30. 5:17 pm
“OKAY,” LEAH SIMPSON said. “We’ll have the car brought around at six.”
“Thank you,” Carrie said. She rocked Rachel in her arms unconsciously as she spoke.
Leah paused as she started to walk away and said, “Listen. I promise we’ll take good care of you and Rachel and your sisters, all right? My job is to make sure you’re safe.”
Carrie gave a half smile. She hadn’t felt safe since the day a jeep plowed into her car, killing her husband and upending her life. But saying that sort of thing makes people uncomfortable, so she merely answered, “Thanks.”
As if she sensed Carrie’s skepticism, Leah touched her arm for just a moment, then stepped away.
Sarah walked into the room, her boots thumping on the floor. She looked strangely subdued in a plain black dress and combat boots. “I’m ready whenever you guys are. I swear to God if I don’t get out of this house I’m going to explode.”
Carrie touched her sister’s shoulder. “Pretty soon you won’t be so stir crazy, you’ll be off to college.”
Sarah snorted. “Yeah, I guess. I just never imagined I’d be home schooling my senior year in high school.”
“This year wasn’t what any of us expected.”
Sarah looked stricken. “Sorry, Carrie, that’s not what I meant.”
Carrie pulled her sister close. “It’s okay. You get to grieve for what you lost too, Sarah. Don’t think I don’t know how hard it’s been for you this year.”
“Sorry. I’m gonna listen to some music, just let me know when you guys are ready?”
“Sure,” Carrie responded as Sarah broke away. “The car’s coming around at six.”
Sarah wandered out of the kitchen. Carrie stood and walked Rachel, now fully asleep, back to her crib. Very carefully, so as to not disturb the baby, she laid her on the bed and tucked her in. She stayed momentarily, looking down at her daughter. When Rachel slept, it was with abandon you didn’t see in adults. Her arms were splayed out, hands clenched in tiny fists as she breathed in and out.
Sometimes it was breathtaking when Carrie realized how much her daughter looked like Ray. In her smile, and the tiny dimples that formed in the corner of her mouth. She leaned close, closed her eyes and smelled Rachel.
Eyes closed, she felt a rare sense of inner peace. Everything was shifting underneath her. Andrea (and possibly all of them) was in danger, her father wasn’t who she thought he was; everything in her life was in question. But she knew that somewhere, Ray was thinking about her. She knew her daughter was right here with her, and that she would do anything to protect Rachel. Anything at all.
In the end, that was what mattered. This baby, sleeping right here.
Gently, she kissed Rachel on the forehead and stepped out of the room.
As she walked back down the hallway, she heard Dylan’s voice. He sounded tense, aggravated.
“Do we have to discuss this now? Look, I just want to relax, okay? You go out with Carrie.”
Alexandra answered him, sounding sad. “Dylan, I don’t understand what’s wrong.”
Carrie paused, not wanting to eavesdrop, but saddened by Dylan’s tone of voice when he responded. “I’m just exhausted, Alex. I miss Ray and I’m tired and sick and just… please. Go without me tonight, okay? I’ll be fine.”
Carrie sighed and kept walking. The tension between Alexandra and Dylan was too much to bear. It reminded her so much of the awful pain and stress she and Ray had been through a year before. She wanted to help, but didn’t know how. And, as she walked down the hall and into the living room, she knew there was nothing she could do. Dylan needed to work through this on his own. They—Dylan and Alexandra—needed to work through this together. She could be there for them—to answer questions, to help when they needed it, to listen—but she couldn’t make them work it out.
2. Bear. April 30. 5:25 pm
Bear Wyden sat, frustrated, staring at the piles of paper on his desk. Despite the masses of information they’d collected into two days, despite the physical evidence, the background files, he still had far more questions than answers.
Why had Tariq Kouri and his still unidentified confederate kidnapped Andrea Thompson? Motives that made sense were in limited supply. Were they somehow involved in human trafficking? Sex slavery? If so, there were far more likely targets than the daughter of the Secretary of Defense. Bear was ready to rule out coincidence or unrelated motives. Andrea Thompson was kidnapped because of who she was, or who her father was.
Which raised the second question.
&nb
sp; Who was her father? Richard Thompson claimed he was. But he looked nothing like two of his daughters, both of whom towered over him. He also didn’t act like it. Fathers—even Cabinet level fathers—rushed to the hospital to protect their sixteen-year-old daughters. The fact that Thompson hadn’t was the first clue he had an unusual relationship with his daughter. But it went downhill from there. He’d had little contact with her in the three days since she’d arrived in the United States. He’d taken no time away from work. He hadn’t spent evenings with her. Something was just wrong there. Everything he saw indicated to Bear that Richard Thompson bore no paternal feelings at all toward Andrea Thompson.
Bear thought through the limited facts he knew:
Richard Thompson had spent his career in the CIA, with the State Department as cover.
Tariq Kouri—the Saudi national who had kidnapped Andrea—had worked as a contractor for the CIA and the Pentagon. Richard Thompson knew him.
Mitch Filner—who had turned up dead—had worked for CIA, until he was fired after a rape accusation in Singapore.
Bear leafed through Thompson’s file, returning again to the photograph from thirty years before. His eyes fell on a Leslie Collins in his early thirties. Collins was now the Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency. Why was he at the meeting at the White House yesterday? What did the CIA have to do with investigating the kidnapping of an American girl?
Collins and Thompson had been in the CIA together, but there was little information publicly available about Leslie Collins. He’d maintained an almost invisible public profile until he reached his current position. Bear knew that if he started inquiring about Collins, it would be an immediate dead end.
What about the others who were present that night? Roshan al-Saud was the head of the Saudi Arabian intelligence agency. Wyden had access to his State Department file. He opened the file on his computer.
A grandson of King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, Prince Roshan was one of several hundred potential third generation claimants to the throne of Saudi Arabia. He had served his career alternately as a diplomat and a spy, with periods in the embassies to the United States, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and Pakistan, among others.
Bear narrowed his eyes as he scanned through the file.
Roshan was in Pakistan in the early 80s. Bear checked the dates. Roshan was in Pakistan at the same time as Richard Thompson.
A quick Google search established that Leslie Collins was also in Pakistan at the same time, and also established that the other party attendees—Chuck Rainsley and George-Phillip Windsor—were not.
Was there something between the three of them? Had Tariq Kouri also worked for the Saudi intelligence agency? What about Mitch Filner? How did he fit in? Bear checked through the files, but there was little or no information about Filner. They obviously needed to correct that.
What else did he know?
The other kidnapper: they knew nothing about him at all. No identification. His fingerprints and DNA had turned up no matches in any database. A dead John Doe, driving a stolen vehicle. No one of similar appearance had been reported missing in the last forty-eight hours. He was a mystery, and a deep one, and that screamed intelligence agency as well. People left behind footprints. They carried identification, they had fingerprints on file, and they were reported missing when they went missing. Whoever this guy was, he either worked for an intelligence agency or he’d never had any brush with the authorities at all. It didn’t add up.
And then there was the British connection, in the form of Charles Frazier, a British tourist who just happened to have been shot directly across the street from the Thompson sisters last night. Frazier had been in the United States for less than twenty-four hours on a tourist visa and was now being treated at George Washington University Hospital for his gunshot wound.
Was Frazier actually an intelligence agent? And if so, what was his connection to all of this? Why would the British be interested in the Thompson sisters?
None of it made any sense. Something connected all of this, but he didn’t know what it was. And that missing piece of information was the vital piece.
Bear sighed and began to review the file again. The answer was out there somewhere.
The phone on his desk rang.
“Bear Wyden,” he said.
“Sir? I’m calling from the classified documents desk. You’ve received a secure fax from the San Francisco police department.”
Bear sat up. That would be the police report. Which contained… who knew what? It was time to find out.
3. Adelina. April 30th. 3 pm Pacific Time
Sister Kiara sat down in the chair facing Adelina. At a right angle to them both, completing the triangle, was Jessica, whose heavy eyelids and posture spoke of her exhaustion. Jessica had slumped deep into the cushions of a couch and looked as if she was having difficulty staying awake.
Tired she may be. But she still looked so much healthier than she had ten days before, when she’d come home in the morning after staying out all night, puking all over the kitchen. Adelina had packed her in the car without hesitation and driven here.
“So,” Kiara said. “First, thanks for sitting down with us. The reason I wanted to have all three of us talk—you two are headed home in a few hours. I wanted to talk over plans for the next few weeks, and also see if there are some things we could talk about. Is that okay with both of you?”
Adelina nodded and looked to her daughter. Jessica’s eyes went to her mother, then back to Kiara. She nodded, her expression dull.
“Okay, then. First of all, I understand Jessica’s going back to school starting next week so she can graduate with her class?”
“That’s right,” Adelina said. She looked over at Jessica. “It’s really up to you. You’ll have a lot of catching up to do—but I thought you’d be happiest not being set back a year.”
Jessica nodded. “I’d like that, if it’s possible.”
Adelina swallowed, hard, struggling to contain her emotions. Jessica’s voice sounded incredibly sad.
Kiara said, “I think that’s a really good idea. But I’d like to talk about a couple of things. First, I’ve made arrangements for you to meet with a psychiatrist, Jessica. Doctor Ralph Foreman. He’s a specialist in addiction and grief counseling. For now, I think twice a week would be a good idea, and he’s made the space available. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” Adelina said. But in her head, she thought, Grief counseling?
“Jessica? You’re eighteen years old, so it’s your decision.”
Jessica nodded.
“I’m going to recommend that the two of you go into therapy together for at least some of those sessions.”
Adelina took a deep breath. She’d had so many secrets, for so long. But maybe it was time to let some of them go.
“Yes. I think that’s a good idea,” Adelina said.
“Finally, Jessica. I think it would be a good idea, now, while we’re in a safe space, for you to talk with your mother. About Chrys and Marion.”
Jessica’s eyes widened, and Adelina felt her heart thump. Who were Chris and Marion? She watched carefully as Jessica said, “Do you think…”
Her voice trailed off. Then she looked at her mother and said, “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d hate me.”
Adelina’s voice was broken as she said, “I’d never hate you.”
“Mom, I’m a lesbian. And I fell in love. And she died.”
For just a second Adelina felt shock. Her daughter was gay? Reflexively, she fell back for an instant to her upbringing, and she wanted to correct her daughter and tell her that no, she was not a lesbian, and no, she had not been in love with a woman.
But then she thought about how alone Jessica must have been. Alone.
She pictured her daughter. All alone, her twin injured in the accident. Everyone she could lean on was gone. Her mother gone.
“You… fell in love? And she died?” Adelina’s eyes watered, and
her breath began to move in and out quickly. “Oh, God, and you had no one to turn to. Baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”
Jessica was shaking now, her eyes wide, her face twisted in fear. “Mama, you’re not mad?”
Adelina reached out and took her daughter’s hands. “Come here,” she said. Then she sobbed. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been the mother you needed. Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”
Jessica collapsed into her arms, and Adelina pulled her close. “Baby, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She thought about all the times she’d failed her children. But she wasn’t failing this time. She wasn’t losing this daughter. She pulled Jessica tighter and whispered, “I’m here, baby girl.”
In halting steps—a few words at a time, and punctuated by many tears—Jessica began to tell her mother the story of how she fell in alive with, and lost, Chrysanthemum Allen. They cried together, and finally Jessica fell asleep in her mother’s arms, as Adelina slowly brushed her daughter’s hair.
Adelina whispered, “I wish we could stay here longer.”
“I know,” Kiara said. “But she has you. And you’re a good mother.”
Adelina closed her eyes, trying to hold back a sob. “I wish that was true. I’d give anything for it to be true.”
Crank. April 30. 2:45 PM Pacific.
THE RICHMOND DISTRICT of San Francisco was blanketed with fog when Crank pulled the rental car to a stop in front of the house on Cabrillo Street. After the morning flight, it had taken nearly ninety minutes for them to get their car arranged, and then drive into the city.
As he parallel parked the car, the three of them stopped talking. Julia leaned forward, resting her hand on the dashboard and looking up at the house. It looked the same as always. Four stories, light blue brick with white ornamentation, it was one of the most striking houses on the block.
“I don’t know why,” Julia said, “but I’m actually nervous about this.”
Girl of Lies (Rachel's Peril) Page 24
