Girl of Rage

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  “There was probably an earthquake in Mumbai last night too. That doesn’t mean it’s linked to Richard Thompson.”

  “No … but this is different. How often are there attacks on multiple people at high levels of intelligence agencies of different countries on the same day?”

  “Richard Thompson isn’t—”

  “He’s CIA. Not State Department.”

  “Bullshit. Where do you get that?”

  “From his own files. When Julia and Crank Wilson busted into his office last night they had me along for the ride. There’s more here than meets the eye, Barlow.”

  Barlow gave Anthony a cool look. Then he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  “Fine, Anthony. You’re off the entertainment desk. I want you in charge of the team for this story.”

  Anthony tried to fight back a grin. And failed. He was going to be back in his element. As he stood up, Linda Halloran stirred in her seat.

  “Jackson,” said Linda. “Anthony’s got live assignments on the entertainment desk. He needs to finish those.”

  Barlow dismissed her with a casual hand wave. “This is priority, Linda. Anthony—your show. What do you have?”

  Anthony felt remarkably little tension in his stomach. This was a chance to get his life back. He was going for it. He walked around the conference table, picked up a dry erase marker, and wrote in large bold letters:

  Same-day assassination attempt

  Wakhan massacre?

  R. Thompson - sexual assault of his wife 1991?

  The others in the room stirred as he wrote the second and third line. To Anthony’s right, Jackson Barlow frowned.

  Links between GP and R. Thompson?

  R. Thompson - CIA career

  Missing: Adelina Thompson, Dylan Paris, Andrea Thompson, Jessica Thompson

  He stood back and looked at the white board.

  “What am I missing?” he asked.

  “What the hell is that about Wakhan? And sexual assault?” Barlow’s voice was harsh as he asked the question.

  Anthony said, “What we found in Thompson’s office was … serious. First, Adelina Thompson was only sixteen when she conceived her first daughter. Richard Thompson married her when she was seventeen and already pregnant.”

  “Holy shit,” someone muttered.

  “Second—we found a report of a paternity test, determining that Carrie Sherman was not Thompson’s daughter. The very next day, after the report was written, we have a police report. Adelina Thompson was assaulted and raped in February 1990. She refused to press charges, but according to the San Francisco Police, her husband was the prime suspect.”

  Silence had fallen across the room. “Finally—and this is the most confusing part for me—Thompson had a file with information about the Wakhan massacre in his office. Nothing classified there, everyone knows the massacre took place. What I want to know is this: did he know about it when it took place? Richard Thompson was assigned to the US Embassy in Pakistan in 1983.”

  “Motherfucker,” Jackson said.

  “I’ll look into the Pakistan stuff,” said Bill Leiby. “And the links with Prince George-Phillip. That’s really interesting. Did you know he was involved with the SIS investigation into Wakhan?”

  Anthony’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

  Leiby nodded. “My timing may be off—it was, I don’t know—’84 maybe? The results never made the light of day, but I remember George-Phillip asking questions one day—”

  Leiby’s eyes widened and met Anthony’s.

  “What?” Anthony said.

  “Understand, he was a kid then. Twenty-one maybe? I was on the diplomatic beat at the time. And there was some fuss—the British Embassy made a formal complaint to the paper.”

  “About?”

  “Our society page columnist wrote something about George-Phillip and Adelina Thompson being seen having a private lunch together.”

  Barlow nodded. “Yeah, that happened. Maria Clawson wrote the story, I think.”

  Anthony frowned in distaste. Maria Clawson was a gossip blogger, specializing in destroying people’s lives. “Clawson worked for the Post?”

  “Until the late 90s,” Barlow said.

  Anthony shook his head. “Jesus. Before my time. So—George-Phillip and Adelina Thompson had lunch in the 1980s. Anything more?”

  Barlow shrugged. “No idea.”

  “We’ll find out,” Leiby said.

  “All right. We need to find out what the British concluded in their investigation of Wakhan. And I think we need to do our own investigation again.”

  Linda Halloran said, “What about the political implications? Does anyone know if the President will keep backing Thompson’s nomination?”

  Barlow shook his head. “I’ll be stunned if he does. And that’s going to get ugly.”

  Anthony responded, “Everyone else will be covering the political angle. Does it hurt the President? How will this affect polling numbers? They’ll all miss the real story.”

  Barlow pointed a finger at Anthony. “You better get the real story for us.”

  Anthony nodded. “I’m on it.”

  Julia. May 2. 2 pm.

  The phone rang four times. Five. Six. Then it cut over to voicemail.

  “You’ve reached the personal line of Richard Thompson. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a clear message and a phone number.”

  Julia clicked disconnect. She’d left messages already. Several of them, in fact. Her father wasn’t answering his phone.

  Of course, he was the Secretary of Defense. Plus, he’d gotten news that morning that the Justice Department was investigating him under charges that were clearly ridiculous.

  But he still needed to answer his damn phone.

  She put her cell down and looked around the suite they’d checked into in Arlington. She needed to do something. She needed something to fix, something concrete to put her hands on. Carrie was back at the safe house, but neither she nor Julia knew the address. Her lawyer was meeting with the Internal Revenue Service, and there was absolutely nothing Julia could do to help that situation. She’d spent an hour on the phone with employees, both reassuring them and making sure their immediate needs were taken care of. But she felt a pit in her stomach. Payroll was in a few days, and the corporate accounts had been frozen, along with her and Crank’s savings and investment accounts. Their cash account had a lot of money in it, but not enough to cover payroll for any length of time.

  Julia stood and paced. In the next room, behind a closed door, she could hear Crank practicing. He had the volume low, which was good. He’d been working on several new songs, and she’d been pushing. Pushing, because in some ways, the most recent songs he’d written seemed like rote. Morbid Obesity had been together more than a dozen years, and had released 8 albums. They’d done so many tours that the hotel rooms and suites across the globe had long since merged together into a hazy mess. But the music had always been cutting edge, emotional, deeply connected to who they were as people. Lately, though, it felt like they were following a formula.

  She stood for just a second, tilting her head and listening to the tones of the guitar through the closed door. Hard to hear, but whatever Crank was working on, it had an odd, catchy, syncopated beat.

  She reached for her phone again. Maybe Carrie had gotten clearance to meet.

  It rang before she could touch it. She froze. The word “Dad” appeared across the front of her phone.

  Answer. Decline. The two choices felt like the choice between good and evil, and she didn’t know which was which.

  She stared at it. Her tongue felt like copper. She picked the phone up, tapped on the “answer” button and spoke without a pause for thought or breath, her words as much of a surprise to her as they would be to her father.

  “Where’s my mother?”

  Stunned silence at the other end. Then he said, in a perfectly calm, placating voice, “I don’t know, Julia. I don’t know where she
is.”

  A cold rage wrapped around her heart. “Why did the IRS close my offices this morning? What the hell is happening to our family, Father?”

  “Julia, I am returning your call. I did not expect to be spoken to this way.”

  “I didn’t expect to find out that—that…” She couldn’t say the words.

  “Find out what?”

  “I read the police report.”

  “What police report? I have no idea what you are talking about.” His voice sounded damnably reasonable.

  “Let me refresh your memory, Father.” Her voice was cutting and sarcastic and bore thirty years of lies and hurt. “The day after you found out Carrie wasn’t your daughter, Mom was beaten half to death and raped. Does that ring a bell?”

  “Julia, where did you—”

  “In your office, Father. You don’t even deny it?”

  His response was unexpected, both harsh and insistent. “In my office? When?”

  “Yesterday. Right before two thugs broke into the house, tried to kill us, then set off a bomb.”

  Silence. After a few seconds, he said, “There’s a great deal more to this than you realize, Julia. You mustn’t jump to conclusions.”

  The bedroom door opened, and Crank appeared in the doorway. “Hey,” he said. “You won’t believe this song—” He froze and stopped talking when he saw her expression.

  “What else can I do, Father? Apparently neither of my parents can be bothered to tell me the truth about anything. What else am I supposed to do other than come to my own conclusions?”

  “I’ve never lied to you, Julia.”

  “What?” she shouted. “You’ve never lied to me? What about the affairs in China? What about my sister not being my sister? What about you raping my mother? What about the fact that she was a child when she got pregnant with me? You’ve never lied to me?”

  As she cried out the words, she saw it. Julia had been—eight years old? She had run downstairs that day, holding hands with Carrie. They had been giggling, free. It must have been a Saturday, and they both had Valentine’s candy from school. They’d been playing and laughing, but she remembered wondering why Mary, the nanny, looked so distressed.

  That morning, she and Carrie had run into the family room and jumped on the couch together, then Carrie said, “Why Mommy cry? Mommy? Why Mommy sad?”

  Her face had been bruised, and she’d lay curled on the couch, eyes red with tears, reading a book. Her arm was in a sling.

  “I’m not sad,” their mother had said. Then she tried to smile. “I’m just a little sick.”

  “Sick make you purple?” Carrie said. Then she giggled and ran to their mother and wrapped her arms around her, and Adelina winced. Carrie said, “Kiss make Mommy better,” and leaned up and kissed her.

  Valentine’s, Julia thought. She hadn’t thought about that day in years. But she’d seen the police report last night. Her mother hadn’t been sick. She’d been beaten and raped.

  I’m not sad. I’m just a little sick.

  Just a little sick. That was a couple days after Valentine’s, a couple days after the police report indicated she’d had cracked ribs.

  A surge of rage swept over Julia. In a low voice she whispered into the phone, “You’ve never done anything but lie to me.”

  Then she put the phone down. Bright sunlight poured into the hotel room, but she felt dead inside.

  “Babe?” Crank said in a low voice.

  Julia turned to her husband. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak. There were no words. Nothing. She thought of all the times she’d been at war with her mother. The cruel things her mother had said. The constant warfare.

  Why? Why had her mother been so hateful? Was it all fear of her father? Why had she had the affair? Her mother had been sixteen when she became pregnant with Julia.

  And fifteen years later, Julia got pregnant, and aborted the child. A child who would have been Andrea’s age now.

  A child she’d never be able to hold or kiss or love.

  She knew it wasn’t logical. She knew it didn’t make any sense at all. But suddenly tears were running down her face, and Julia let out a low growl. Crank instantly moved to her, putting his arms around her.

  “It’s okay, babe,” he whispered.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not. It’ll never be okay.” Then a wave of agony hit. Not physical pain, but spiritual agony, remorse and grief and loss for the thing she’d always wanted but never had. “I have to call Carrie,” she whispered.

  He broke away from her and she dialed Carrie’s number.

  “Where are you?” she asked as soon as Carrie answered. “Did you get the address?”

  Carrie gave her an address. “Call me when you’re less than five minutes away. I’m not supposed to tell anyone where we are, but I’m going to wait to tell them until you’re actually driving up.”

  “Perfect,” Julia said. “I’ll call. We need to talk.”

  Julia turned to her husband. He had a concerned expression on his face, his eyes wide, eyebrows raised. “Let’s go?” she asked.

  Five minutes later they were in a rental car. Crank drove while Julia fidgeted with her phone.

  “Talk to me,” he said.

  “I keep thinking about Belgium. I remember being so alone. I don’t … I mean, I get it that she must have been afraid of him. She must have been crazy sometimes. But why didn’t she just leave him?”

  She closed her eyes, not expecting an answer from Crank. Julia didn’t remember the flight to Belgium, but she did remember being angry they had to leave San Francisco and her friends.

  The last day in San Francisco.

  Her mother had been in rare form that day, trying to herd three children, get the house packed and arrange everything by herself. For several weeks Mother’s patience had been short, as she became alternately inconsolable and angry.

  Where had her father been? Julia had a vague memory that he’d met them in Brussels—for most of the three years before leaving for Belgium, he’d only been home for brief visits.

  Julia clearly remembered the meltdown right before they left for the airport. The cab had been waiting at the front steps for several minutes as Adelina corralled three children and half a dozen bags. Julia had already seen the signs, the stress lines appearing around her mother’s eyes, the thinning lips stretching across her mouth.

  They had been standing on the front steps as her mother panicked, searching around.

  “Julia, watch your sisters, I left one of my bags.” She ducked in the front door.

  Julia took six-year-old Carrie’s hand in her left, and Alexandra’s in her right. Alexandra immediately began to pull away, and Carrie shouted, “Stop, you’re holding my hand too tight!”

  Carrie had reached over and pinched Julia’s arm. Julia spun toward her sister, and Alexandra’s hand got loose, sending the toddler spilling down the steps.

  Carrie screamed and Julia felt her heart in her throat. Alexandra had been—maybe fourteen months? She hadn’t been walking long, and when she fell it was like watching a limp doll just fall end over end.

  Her tiny face instantly turned bright red and she began to scream. The cab driver got out of the car and shouted, “Is she okay?” just as their mother came back outside.

  Adelina had let out a cry and rushed to Alexandra, yanking her out of Julia’s arms. “I can’t trust you alone for five seconds!”

  Julia remembered feeling—injured? Hurt? Her mother’s words dug deep.

  “Is okay, Mommy,” Carrie said. “She not broken.”

  Adelina had sniffed. “No, she’s not broken.”

  “I want to go see Daddy,” Julia had said.

  Her mother had looked at her with weary, incredibly sad eyes, and said, “Well, you’re going to get your wish, Julia. Go get in the car.”

  The bitterness made her choke. Thinking back now, Julia found herself questioning everything she’d ever believed about her mother and father.

  She sa
id to Crank in a broken, strained voice, “Everything I’ve ever believed is upside down.”

  Crank nodded, but didn’t say anything. He reached over with his right hand and intertwined his fingers with hers.

  “Things were good in San Francisco. I remember that. Mostly. Not always—I remember my mom being sick and hurt after Valentine’s the year Alexandra was born. When he beat her up and … and…”

  Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t say the words.

  “It’s okay,” Crank said.

  Julia forced the words out. “When he raped her. I remember it, but I didn’t know what it meant. I just knew she was sick, and I was mad because she couldn’t do anything for a few days and we were stuck with the nanny. And then she got so sad when we went to Belgium.” Julia moaned a little. “Oh, God, she was so sad. And I was mad at her. Because we were going to see Daddy, and I didn’t know why she was sad.”

  Crank turned the car onto the highway. “No way you could have known what was going on with her.”

  “True,” she said, “but still. I keep thinking about those three years in Belgium. Barry looked after Carrie and me sometimes. Alexandra had a governess. I barely remember seeing Dad. They were already sleeping in separate rooms. I guess they always did and I just didn’t think anything of it.”

  “You were so lonely,” Crank murmured.

  “I was,” Julia said. “But I never realized—what must it have been like for her? Did they hate each other? Dad—I don’t get … I don’t get any of it. I mean—do you know how many years of therapy I’ve gone through, thanks to her?”

  It was a rhetorical question of course—he’d been right there with her through it all. He knew all about her therapists.

  She closed her eyes. She remembered the day she’d confronted her mother right before leaving for Germany. Julia had spit out bitter words. Why wouldn’t you help me? Why weren’t you there when I needed you?

  Even then, during that confrontation, her mother had hidden her father’s secrets. And during the drive to the airport the next day, her father had calmly and smoothly lied to Julia. He’d lied to her about when and how he’d met her mother. He’d lied to her about his posting after that. He’d lied to her about being in therapy. He’d lied about everything.