Girl of Vengeance

  It was her younger brother, Luis.

  She was stunned, really, that Richard had allowed her to make this drive. But he’d been distracted, preparing for the upcoming NATO summit, and for a moment the leash loosened. She took immediate advantage.

  On the dashboard, she had taped the map, which Corporal Lewis had painstakingly highlighted in red. Beside it, directions were handwritten and also taped to the dashboard. Lewis and Bear had been fanatically protective of Adelina and her daughters, as if they sensed something was seriously wrong in her family but didn’t quite know what it was.

  Julia had slipped on a headset and put a cassette in her Sony Walkman. It had been one of her Christmas gifts, and she listened to it constantly. She never wanted to do her piano practice, but there was no question she loved music. Although Adelina had doubts about some of the “music” Julia listened to. Right now it sounded like the croaking of frogs was leaking out of her headphones.

  “Julia,” she said. “Turn that down.”

  Instead of turning it down, she turned it up. It did sound like frogs croaking, with a haunting violin in the background.

  “Julia,” she said again.

  No answer.

  “Julia!” she said sharply.

  Julia glared at her, then said, “Leave me alone,” and whipped her face away from Adelina, her brown hair flying everywhere. She curled up, leaning against the window and staring out.

  Andrea. May 5.

  Why had Abuelita never told her?

  The phone George-Phillip had indicated was visible through the doorway. It was an oddity, an antique, a rotary phone with an ivory handle and gold inlay. It was highly polished, and she was almost afraid to touch it. The phone sat on a fine looking table with a marble top and mahogany legs. Two luxurious high-backed chairs upholstered in sapphire brocade flanked the table.

  She’d never used a rotary phone before, but she understood the principal of the thing. She sank into one of the chairs, much more comfortable than it looked, and awkwardly picked the handset up out of the cradle. She reached out and began dialing.

  011 … The first number took forever, the dial cranked around all the way, then circling back, odd clicking sounds coming from the headset as the dial turned. It was difficult to imagine how people could have used these things regularly without wanting to smash their head into the phone. As she watched it turn, she felt her anxiety increase, her stomach tensing.

  34 … The country code for Spain. She’d known how to make a direct dial international call since she was ten years old. She wasn’t sure that was knowledge any ten-year-old needed.

  937 … She continued dialing the nine digits of her grandmother’s phone number. And as she did so her jaw hardened, her hand squeezing the grip of the phone hard enough her knuckles were white.

  As she finished dialing, she heard silence for a moment, then a series of clicks and hisses. She didn’t use landlines generally, and certainly not antique phones. But a moment later the phone at the other end began ringing, a shrill burst of two tones, pause, two tones, pause.

  “Diga.” Speak. It was Abuelita’s voice.

  Andrea couldn’t breathe for a moment. She sniffed, horrified at herself, then said, “Abuelita, it’s Andrea.”

  “¡Gracias a Dios! Thank God you called, I’ve been so worried about you!” Her grandmother paused for a moment—as Andrea knew she would—then launched into a tirade. “Why have you not called me? It’s been a week, and all I see is headlines that you’ve been attacked and kidnapped and running for your life. Have you lost your mind? Andrea, I want you on a plane home today! Today, do you hear me?”

  Andrea heard the phone thump, and then her grandmother shouted, “Luis! Luis! Come here now! Andrea is on the phone, tell her she must come home now.”

  Luis was there? It was Monday morning; he should be working in Barcelona.

  “Luis!” her grandmother screamed.

  “¡Abuelita!” Andrea shouted into the phone. Unconsciously she stood up and began pacing, forgetting that the phone was wired to the wall. The pretty gold telephone base fell off the table, stretched out the cord and tugged Andrea toward the floor. Awkwardly, she fell to her knees and grabbed at the base with her free hand, trying to keep it from landing on the cradle and hanging up the phone. Her grandmother was still shouting in the background, so Andrea had an opportunity to right the phone and get it back on the table, then sit on the edge of the chair again.

  A moment later, a harried sounding Luis came on the line. “¡Muñequita! I’m so glad you’re okay, we were terrified.”

  “Thank you, tío,” she replied. “I need to speak with Abuelita.”

  “What? You don’t even ask how your poor uncle is doing?”

  “I’ll ask in a minute,” Andrea said, her voice cold. “I have other questions to ask right now.”

  “I don’t like the sound of your voice, Muñequita. Tell me what is going on. Madre has a weak heart.”

  “I must speak with her, Luis.”

  “Fine. Fine! And if your poor old grandmother has a heart attack, you will feel guilty the rest of your life. Yes? Is that what you want?”

  “Luis, I’m begging you.” Her voice was ragged as she said the last words.

  He didn’t say anything else. A moment later, her grandmother came back on the line.

  “Andrea, it’s time for this nonsense to end. I didn’t raise you to be disobedient, I expect you to—”

  Andrea interrupted. “Why did you never tell me my mother was raped? And that my father is not Richard Thompson?”

  Her grandmother said, “Is your mother telling those lies again? I am so disappointed in her. She was not raped. Her father, he let that man touch her—”

  “Stop!” Andrea whispered. Hot tears ran down her face, a sudden pang of disappointment gouging a hole in her heart. “Did you force her to marry him? Did you?”

  “Of course not. I would never do such a thing. She threw herself after that man.”

  “You lie,” Andrea cried out. The tears were running freely now. “He raped her, Abuelita. He did.”

  “It’s not true! Your mother lies to you! You know you cannot trust her.”

  “She didn’t tell me,” Andrea whispered. “She didn’t. My father did. My real father. And the police report. He did it again. After they were married. More than once.”

  Her grandmother gasped. “Where do you get these crazy ideas? Your real father? I don’t know what—”

  “Did you know he was coming? When he showed up at Miguel’s wedding? And on the beach? At my concert?”

  Abuelita didn’t answer. On the other end of the line, her breathing was hoarse. “Andrea…” she finally whispered.

  “Why?” Andrea said.

  “She was lying.” Her grandmother repeated the words again, and again, as if saying the words repeatedly just might make them true. As if saying those words was a talisman that would protect her from what she’d done to her own daughter. “She was lying.”

  “No, Grandmother,” Andrea said. “She wasn’t. And that changed everything. It ruined her life, and it twisted all of her daughters’ lives.”

  “No,” her grandmother whispered. Andrea heard the phone thump against the table a continent away. She waited, thinking Luis would pick it up. She waited, but no one ever picked up the line. After five minutes, the knife-edge tone of the off-hook signal sliced through the silence into her chest, cutting her loose from the only family she’d ever trusted.

  Adelina. July 5, 1994.

  It was nearing midnight when Adelina drove the last few blocks to her mother’s flat in Calella. Even though she hadn’t been here for more than a decade, the blocks surrounding the flat were familiar. She had few good memories here.

  Adelina had come to live with her mother after her father, Juan Ramos, had been murdered, most likely by her now husband. She’d spent those weeks in terrible pain and grief, occasionally walking or sitting for hours along the beach. She could still taste the bittern
ess of her tears in those months. It took her years to reach any internal peace about her mother’s role in her marriage. If she had any at all. Whatever peace she once had was shredded by driving down these streets.

  All three girls were asleep. Julia was still curled up against the window, her tape long since ended. Carrie was halfway sprawled across the back seat, and Alexandra was asleep in her car seat, pacifier in her mouth. Adelina brought the car to a stop half a block from her mother’s flat, and with tired eyes she stared up at the windows, which were undoubtedly open this time of year to let a breeze through. The windows were dark—everyone had gone to sleep, she supposed, even though they knew when Adelina would be arriving.

  That was a bitter thought. She hadn’t seen her mother or brother in a dozen years. The least they could do was stay up past dinner time. But then she saw a shadow pass in front of the window, and a flickering light. They were home and awake after all, but the lights on this side of the flat weren’t on.

  She still didn’t want to go up. What would she say? She was regretting having made this trip. The conversation with her mother two days ago was difficult, to say the least. They had little in common, little to say to each other. Adelina asked about Miguel and Luis, and her mother asked about Richard, which merely put a sour taste in Adelina’s mouth. But she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get out from under Richard for an entire week, and the girls did deserve to know their grandmother.

  She didn’t know if their grandmother deserved to know them.

  She sighed and pulled the car to a stop in the tiny parking lot behind the apartment building. She didn’t know which spot was her mother’s. She would find out soon enough—she pulled into the only empty spot then turned off the car. Despite the late hour, loud music poured into the streets from a bar nearby, and she could hear people talking and laughing. It was July in a resort town on the Mediterranean—the night sounds would continue until two or three in the morning. Even so, she could hear the crash of the surf against the beach, and the sound instantly took her back to Ocean Beach, where she often walked in the mornings during her too brief time in San Francisco.

  Julia stirred in her seat. Adelina leaned in and touched her on the shoulder. “Julia, wake up, we’re here. Carrie, you too.”

  Both girls grumbled, but she got them moving. Alexandra began to whine as Adelina woke her to get her out of her seat, but settled in Adelina's arms as she walked out of the parking lot and around to the sidewalk and the front of the building. A man stumbled toward them, partially shadowed from the streetlamp, and Adelina instinctively gathered her daughters around her. And that’s when it hit her.

  Adelina had been sixteen when Richard raped her. Now her daughter was almost that age.

  Without volition, her heart suddenly began racing, her pulse pumping loudly in her ears, a sharp pain in her chest, terror closing her throat and mind. She staggered, clutching at her chest, and Julia cried out, “Momma?”

  Unbidden tears began to run down Adelina’s face as her chest tightened in even more pain. “Madre de dios,” she whispered, not realizing she’d fallen to her knees with Alexandra still calmed in her arms. “Help me.”

  “Momma!” the girls screeched, terrified. Momma!

  ***

  Dreams.

  Adelina was floating, and it was peaceful. She was sitting on the edge of North Beach, the sun shining down on her like the love of God.

  But she knew Richard was coming home soon. The sky was getting darker, heavy with dark clouds. She felt a raindrop, thick like oil, one, then another, the fat drops crashing against the ocean, drumming, pounding, crashing, aching, like hammers against a metal roof, and she was in the flower shop again, but not with her father. Richard was there and she was just a girl bound for the National Youth Orchestra and he took it all away.

  She screamed.

  ***

  “She’s waking up.”

  Her eyes slid open, vision blurred. She looked up. Her mother was sitting there next to Luis. Luis was a big strapping sixteen-year-old with a huge grin.

  “Hey, big sister,” he said. Adelina’s eyes were getting heavy again.

  Adelina’s eyes bored into her mother’s. “Why did you make me marry my rapist?” she demanded, her voice heavy.

  “I didn’t make you marry anyone, Adelina. What are you talking about? How dare you?”

  “Get out. You’ve made my life a living hell!” Adelina screamed. “Get out!”

  She screamed long after they were gone, until her throat was raw, and the cool medication ran through her veins and took her back into a deep sleep.

  ***

  “Mr. Ambassador, we recommend against taking her now. Your wife has been through a terrible shock and needs medication and treatment.”

  “She’ll get treated in a hospital with American doctors. She wouldn’t have had these problems in the first place if she hadn’t come to Spain. None of them are coming back to this place. Ever.”

  Leslie Collins. May 5.

  Monday morning was never pleasant for Leslie Collins, but after the longest week of his career, this Monday was the worst he could imagine. As always, he’d gotten out of bed at 4 am, beginning his day drinking coffee as he reviewed the intelligence summaries of the day. It was more of the same. Violence spreading in the Ukraine as nationalist and pro-Russian forces came into conflict. The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag had somehow gotten wind of the fact that the US had sent specialists from FBI and CIA to advise the Ukrainian government on how to stop the rebellion in Kiev. Leslie made a note to have someone follow up and find out the source of the leak. Iraq had just finished its bloodiest month in a year, with more than 750 Iraqis killed in April, most of them civilians. As always, Leslie bristled at the implication that the Agency should be doing more there. If Congress and the President would give him the resources, he could do something. As it was, the President had crippled the Agency.

  At least he wasn’t heading up the NSA. Edward Snowden’s revelations of NSA spying had diverted a lot of attention from CIA in recent months, and while technically they were all on the same side, Leslie wasn’t above a little interagency competition. Collins had come to believe that his career was going to mirror that of his predecessor George H. W. Bush, who had moved from the Director of Central Intelligence to Vice President and finally to President. He had the ability. He had the ambition. One day he would be at the helm, and he would destroy al-Qaeda and ensure his country’s safety.

  Review of his official files completed, he turned to his less official reports. And he froze.

  Adelina Thompson had been shot at crossing the border into Canada? And she had asked for political asylum? Asylum was the craziest thing he’d ever heard, first of all, but he’d been very clear with Danny McMillan that there was to be no more violence directed at the Thompsons. He had more than enough paper trails established to ensure that Thompson was destroyed, and more violence would only serve to raise suspicions. What he needed right now was for the independent prosecutor and the grand jury to indict Richard Thompson. Smear his name until nothing he said was believable, before he went public about Wakhan and somehow tried to blame Collins for it.

  Christ, he thought. If his role in Wakhan—or Andrea Thompson’s kidnapping, for that matter—ever came to light, he could forget about his ambitions. Was Danny trying to sabotage him? Danny had to know he was replaceable—after all, he’d taken care of Mitch Filner, who had once served as Collins’ chief confidential aide.

  He picked up the phone and started dialing, never mind that it was 4:30 in the morning.

  The phone rang—once, twice, three times. Then a groggy voice answered. “Hello.”

  “McMillan. It’s Collins.”

  At the other end of the line, was a muttered curse and fumbling. Then the sluggish voice said, “Do you know what time it is?”

  “I don’t care what time it is. What the hell happened on the border yesterday?”

  “The border with where?”

/>   “With Canada, you idiot. Why did you send someone to attack Adelina Thompson? I thought I made it clear I didn’t want any more violence.”

  Silence for just a second, then McMillan said, “Collins, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I didn’t send anybody after her. We’ve been watching, and that’s it. I didn’t even have a bead on her. She turned up?”

  “She turned up at the border crossing with a former soldier in pursuit, then demanded political asylum. Which she’s not likely to get; it’s Canada, after all. But I guarantee you it’s going to make a lot of news.”

  “I don’t know what that’s about, Collins.”

  Leslie thought furiously. If McMillan’s people hadn’t shot at Thompson’s wife, then who did? And why? It didn’t make any sense.

  Richard Thompson. May 5.

  I understand, Richard. I really do. But the political liability at this point is massive. And we can’t have the Secretary of Defense wrapped up in a scandal on the eve of his confirmation hearing.

  Richard Thompson gritted his teeth in rage as he sat in the back of the car and rode back toward the base at Fort Myers. As always, traffic in and out of Washington was snarled. At least he didn’t have far to go, Fort Myers was right across the river. He presumed that he would have some days to clear his personal property out of the house there. The bigger sting was the President just dropping him. As if he had no confidence that Richard would survive this storm.

  Survive he would. But first he had to make it through the next few days. And those would be difficult enough.

  The last week had consisted of nothing but wave after wave of shocks. First, the news that Adelina’s daughter, Andrea, was coming to the United States, after he’d expressly ordered Adelina to keep her away. It was bad enough that Carrie’s height continually reminded him that Senator Chuck Rainsley had been with Adelina—Senator Chuck Rainsley, of all people—but to have a second daughter by him. It made Richard queasy to think of it.