Girl of Vengeance (16 page)

She’d told herself that she was over George-Phillip. That she didn’t love him anymore. Maybe even that she’d never loved him at all.

But one sight of him in the mirror swept those lies away.

“Mother?” Carrie had asked again.

“What?” she had responded.

“Oh, never mind!” Carrie said, her eyes watering. Julia shook her head slowly. Adelina didn’t need to translate the look of contempt that her oldest daughter gave her.

“Go,” Adelina said. “Just go.”

The two girls walked away, and Adelina promised herself she’d stay away from him, she wouldn’t put herself into harm’s way, that she wouldn’t put her
heart
at risk again. Her resolve lasted less than twenty-minutes when she saw him walk to the back hallway.

A month later she saw him again, and this time, she did something she knew was wrong.

“I miss you,” she had said.

He had closed his eyes. Then whispered, “You broke my heart, Adelina.”

“I broke my own,” she had replied, her voice toneless.

Two weeks later, she told the nanny that she was going out, found a pay phone and called the British Embassy.

“I need to see you,” she had said.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he had responded, his voice redolent with pain.

“I’m begging you,” she whispered. “There are things you do not know.”

And so it had started again. Now—seventeen years later—she sometimes had to ask herself—did she regret it? Any of it? What if she’d never met Richard Thompson? What if she’d never been raped, and gone on to audition for the National Symphony, what if her father had lived?

The problem was, all of those dreams meant that her daughters would never have lived. And as she looked at Jessica—sick, weak, in danger—she knew she’d never make that trade. They were worth
anything.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knocking on the doorframe of the hospital room. Her eyes shifted to the door.

A tall man in a well fitted but off-the-rack suit stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Thompson?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Wolfram Schmidt. I’m a Special Agent with the Internal Revenue Service, and I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“I’m sorry, you’re who? From where?” Adelina’s response wasn’t particularly useful, but it stalled for a moment while she collected herself.

“My name is Wolfram Schmidt. I’m a Special Agent with the Internal Revenue Service.”

Adelina’s heart was thumping. She stared at Schmidt. She was stunned he was even here. After all, she was outside the borders of the United States. He had no jurisdiction.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Schmidt?”

Schmidt took the question as an invitation. He stepped into the room, and she stood, unsteadily, before he could say anything.

“Let’s step outside,” she said. “I don’t want to wake my daughter.”

He assented, and she stepped outside the room directly behind him. Once outside, he stepped across the hall. Adelina followed, staying a little more than arm’s length from him.

“Mrs. Thompson … first of all, I’m aware from the headlines that you’ve applied for asylum in Canada. I want to be clear that I’ve got no power here. I can’t arrest you, or force you to come back. I can’t make you do anything. You could call the police if I’m bothering you.”

She studied him. His little speech was obviously a ploy to mollify her, to gain her trust. The problem was it worked, at least a little.

“I’m not quite ready to call the police. What exactly
is
it you’re here for?”

“Well, I’m hoping you’ll cooperate voluntarily. As you may know, the Justice Department has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate your husband’s activities. Among others, the FBI and Internal Revenue Service are part of that investigation—I’m the lead for the IRS side of the investigation.”

“You’re also investigating my daughters.”

Schmidt nodded, slowly. “One of them. Specifically Julia Wilson and her husband.”

“Tell me why?”

Schmidt said, “First, you’re aware that the President first raised the possibility of your husband—”

Adelina interrupted. “Please don’t call him that.”

Schmidt’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared slightly. He was surprised, Adelina thought. “All right,” he continued. “The President first contacted Ambassador Thompson in December to discuss the possibility of him becoming Secretary of Defense. It was already clear that his predecessor’s health was failing.”

Adelina nodded, encouraging him to continue.

He said, “The initial background checks cleared, of course, though there were some curious gaps in his resume. Those fairly quickly came to light, however, when we learned that Ambassador Thompson had been affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency for many years. Effectively, he was on loan to the State Department.”

What? The CIA?
Adelina was stunned. She shook her head, slowly. “I—how is that possible?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I know virtually nothing of him beyond the little he chose to reveal over the years. We are not close.”

“You managed to have six children with him.”

“Not with my consent,” she said in a flat tone.

Schmidt was taken aback—his eyes widening, his nostrils flaring slightly. “I see. You understand that’s immaterial to this investigation.”

She shrugged. “The investigation is your problem, not mine.”

“It might become yours, of course.” He frowned. “After all, your name is on the tax returns.”

“My name, but you certainly won’t find my signature. I’ve never signed a tax return in my life. Mister Schmidt—tell me what I can do to help. I promise you, Richard is no friend of mine, nor is he a husband. Now that I’m finally safe from him, I’ll be filing for divorce as soon as humanly possible. I’ll gladly testify against him if that’s what you need. But I can tell you, without question, that Julia had nothing to do with his schemes.”

“Mrs. Thompson—your husband has half a dozen accounts in the Caymans, and there may be more elsewhere that we haven’t uncovered yet. He has unreported assets in those accounts in excess of ten million dollars.”

“I’m not surprised,” she responded. “He’s a snake and a liar.”

“Were you aware of the accounts?”

“No,” she replied.

Schmidt leaned forward and looked her closely in the eye. “Mrs. Thompson—please answer this carefully. Last Friday night, just before armed gunmen attacked your daughter’s condominium in Bethesda, you placed a call to the condominium. That call lasted for less than 30 seconds and it was moments before the first shots were fired. Tell me why you placed that call.”

Adelina felt her heart thump. Of course they would have pulled the phone records by now. Did her phone show an incoming call? Perhaps it might, perhaps it might not. She’d been stunned to learn, four years before, that George-Phillip had moved from Britain’s Ambassador to the United Nations post and taken over the Secret Intelligence Service. Had he been an intelligence agent all along?

Like Richard?

She swallowed and said, “I can’t answer that just yet.”

Schmidt raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”

“I cannot.”

“Mrs. Thompson, it appears from the sequence of phone calls that you had some advance warning of the attack, and you were trying to warn your daughter. Is that the case?”

She shook her head. She hadn’t planned on contacting George-Phillip. But now there was no choice.

“Mrs. Thompson. You understand how this looks?”

“Ask me again tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Not all secrets are mine to reveal, Mr. Schmidt.”

“Do you plead the Fifth Amendment, Mrs. Thompson?”

“We’re outside the borders of the United States, Mr. Schmidt. You have no jurisdiction here. I promise I’ll tell you when I can.”

“Why did you apply for asylum?” he asked.

She smiled bitterly. “Because my
husband
sent armed assassins to kill me. As you may know, he is a high government official. I have nothing I can do to protect myself other than run.”

Schmidt sighed. He reached in his pocket and took out a business card. “I have business this afternoon in Bellingham. The man who shot at you is in jail there, and I’ll be questioning him this afternoon. In the meantime, if there is anything you can think of—please call me.”

“I will. Thank you, Mister Schmidt.”

He turned and walked away. Adelina’s shoulders sagged. She needed to call George-Phillip now. She had no choice. Time to talk to the nurses and find out where she could make that call. But, as she turned away, she heard the words, “Momma?”

Adelina ran back to Jessica’s room. George-Phillip and the IRS could wait.

Sarah grinned. The sky was slowly turning from black to rose, highlighting the trees in silhouette as they continued down Interstate 76. She was exhausted and ready to stop. She could feel the vibration of the bike in her bones.

There
. The first exit in Ohio. They’d driven for five hours, stopping only for gas and coffee, their goal to place as much distance between them and Washington, DC as possible. As they approached the exit, she nudged the bike over into the next lane, slowing down to fifty miles per hour. They’d carefully stayed between five and ten miles over the speed limit and avoided high traffic areas, not wanting to be flattened by a long haul trucker. But for the last two hours, they’d mostly had the highway to themselves.

Sarah did not relish the idea of dying in a motorcycle accident. But even as she drove up the exit ramp, slowing to a stop, she exulted a little. Eddie wouldn’t be happy she’d stolen his bike, but he’d understand. And she was finally
free.
For more than ten months she’d been confined to the hospital and then the condo. A cripple. She’d nearly lost her leg to her injuries and the later infection, which kept her in a wheelchair for months, then on crutches for more months. But she’d been completely on her feet since early March, and worked out every day, performing the exercises her physical therapist had assigned, then doubling up on that.

Carrie would have a conniption, of course. She drove a gigantic armored SUV, the biggest and heaviest vehicle she could find, ever since the accident. Sarah understood it, of course. Fear could make you act out in strange ways. For Sarah, that had meant pursuing an obnoxious, in your face recovery. For Carrie, it meant ordering her life into such a tight structure that nothing could impede the walls of the little prison she was constructing for herself.

Sarah wouldn’t accept any walls, not Carrie’s, not her mother’s, not even her own.

Andrea, hunched over behind her on the bike, pointed to their right. A sign that had clearly been erected sometime in the 1970s read
Pamela’s Diner
. The light in the letter E had burned out. Behind the diner, a Motel 6. They would accept cash for sure. She goosed the bike forward, trailing her toes on the concrete until their speed picked up enough to balance them. She was almost too short to manage the bike, but Eddie had taught her how to drive it a week before Andrea came to the United States.

Bet he regrets that now
, she thought, her internal voice a little smug.

When she cut the engine, silence instantly fell over them. It was jarring, the silence seeming louder than the 1340cc engine that powered the bike, a 2003 Sportster with metallic blue and chrome trim. Andrea climbed off behind her, stretching her impossibly long frame as Sarah slipped off the motorcycle. Both of them took off their helmets.

“We made good progress,” Andrea said.

“Yeah. Long way to go, though.” Sarah’s response felt stiff. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

Andrea nodded and turned toward the diner. Sarah followed, her thoughts suddenly circling around the fact that she didn’t know what she had to say to Andrea. They’d talked a little bit about boyfriends a few days before—before killers had attacked the condominium and Andrea went on the run. Before they knew that an English prince was Andrea’s father (something Sarah thought was a gigantic laugh). But really she didn’t know her sister. Andrea had effectively stopped living with them when Sarah was in the second grade, and her visits home had become infrequent. She knew Jessica and Andrea had once been close. But now? She didn’t think anyone was close to Andrea.

Could she blame Andrea for having strong armor? Sarah couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like to believe that your parents didn’t want you. She knew Julia and Carrie had uncovered a lot of things about their mother recently … that she’d lied about her age, and that she’d been effectively raped and kidnapped from her home. But even so,
both
of their parents had a lot to answer for when it came to Andrea.

Sarah paused to stretch again before they entered the restaurant. Her muscles felt compressed, and her legs still hadn’t stopped vibrating. Worse, her left leg—the one that had been badly injured and broken in the accident—
ached
like it hadn’t in a very long time. Of course, she had more hardware in her leg than a Home Depot, with all those pins and screws rattling around on the bike it was no wonder she hurt.