Girl of Vengeance (12 page)

“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.

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 could.

“…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.

“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
T
he 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.”