Girl of Vengeance (30 page)

He jerked back and away from the projectile even as someone in the audience screamed, and his eyes tracked on the object. A balloon. A
water balloon.
It splashed down into the crowd to Richard’s right, and dark red liquid exploded across half a dozen people, who began shouting and yelling.

Capitol police rushed into the now roiling crowd and hustled the activists away, even as others assisted those who had been splashed.

With blood. Real blood. Richard could smell it. Half a dozen drops had hit him, a few in the face and his hands and probably a few more on his suit. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face and hands then turned back toward the front of the hearing room, where the witness table faced the gathered Senators.

The smell was awful. He had almost reached the front of the room when his eyes locked on Maria Clawson’s.

That whore.

Richard was certain that somewhere along the way she had probably been involved with Chuck Rainsley. Nothing else could explain her long standing hostility to him. He’d felt glee when Julia had funded the lawsuit that wiped out Clawson’s career. But now, the witch was back. She was making a comeback of her career on the back of Richard’s disgrace.

Disgrace.

That was the word his father, Cyrus Thompson, had once used. Richard shuddered and continued his walk down the gauntlet toward his waiting execution.

He grunted as he reached the front row. Three seats from the aisle on the left side, studiously ignoring Richard, was Leslie Collins. Deputy Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. His former
friend.
Richard thought it was laughable that Collins would show up here in person to watch Richard crash and burn. Two seats down from Collins was a thirty-year-old Saudi in a dark suit and wearing the traditional white
k
e
ff
i
y
e
h.
He recognized the man, Prince Roshan’s eldest son Ahmed.

Ahmed had the courage to nod at Richard. More courage than that snake Collins showed. Richard turned toward the front of the room. The Senators were all seated, waiting for him, fangs drawn and dripping with his blood.

Richard might be losing, but he would take some of them down with him.

That was something else Cyrus Thompson had taught him. Even as the old bastard was dying, he’d held on to his grudges, his hatreds, his contempt, including his hate and contempt for his own son.

Richard took a seat at the table and looked at his watch. If they started on time, the hearing would begin in three minutes. In the meantime, he sat up, his back straight, pride in every line of his body.

Disgrace.

Yes, that’s what his father had said.
Disgrace.

The word had been his response to the death of Cyrus Thompson IV—Richard’s elder brother.

It was the summer after Richard’s freshman year at Harvard. Cyrus, two years ahead of him, was entering his final year. Something had always been different about Cyrus. He was thinner than Richard, smaller. Where Richard played rugby and lacrosse and joined the rowing team when they were at Exeter, his older brother had been bookish and introspective.

One night just a few weeks before Cyrus’s death, they’d sat on the roof of Kirkland House, four blocks south of Harvard Yard.

“You know Father hates me,” Cyrus had said.

Richard had remained silent, just looking up at the stars.

“It’s true,” Cyrus had said. “I’m a joke. He wanted someone to take over his businesses and his life. Instead he got me. I’m scrawny and read books and what I really want is to be a professor. Right here. But even this … Father selected Kirkland House. The
jock
house, as if I would ever fit in here. It was his, so it had to be ours.”

Richard sighed and took a drink from his hip flask. He had a warm glow growing in his stomach.

“I just give him what he wants,” Richard said. “It’s easier.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You want the same things he does.”

Richard shook his head. “No. I’m going away. Far away. Screw him. I’ll be on the other side of the world, and Father can find someone else to take over his metal shavings or whatever the hell it is he makes.”

Cyrus sat up, startled. “Where are you going?”

Richard said, “Can I tell you a secret? A real secret—you can’t say anything to anybody.”

“Of course.”

Richard looked over his shoulder, even though he knew no one else was up on the roof. He whispered, “Last month I met a recruiter for the CIA.”

“
What?”

Richard nodded. “They won’t do anything until I graduate, of course. But he said they’re looking for people with language talents and who can move around with rich people. Diplomats. Whatever.”

Cyrus was dumbfounded. “But … but … what if you end up in some place like Vietnam?”

Richard shrugged. “Better with the CIA than as a draftee. Speaking of which … how are your grades?”

Cyrus had been placed on academic probation during the first semester. One more failed class and he’d be booted out of Harvard—and would lose his draft deferment. There were always ways around such things, of course, but Richard and Cyrus both knew that their bastard of a father wouldn’t use them. He’d sooner send his older son off to be killed in some jungle than he would recognize that he wasn’t a clone of his father.

Cyrus sighed at the question. Then he whispered, “I’m failing.”

“
Why?”
Richard said. “You’re just as smart as I am. Smarter.”

Cyrus shrugged and looked away. “I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just hard to care.”

Three weeks later final grades had been published and it became official. Cyrus was kicked out. His draft lottery number had already been called, and only the student deferment kept him out of the Army.

They’d returned home to San Francisco, and both brothers had been called into their father’s office—the same room that once became Richard’s office after the old bastard died. Father had hugged Richard and smiled at him, complimenting his grades and his lacrosse trophy.

Then he turned to his elder son. “I’m ashamed of you, Cyrus. You’re … a disgrace to your family.”

“Father … what should I do?”

Cyrus Thompson III just stuck his nose in the air and looked away from his son. “I suppose you’ll have to go to war. Maybe it will finally turn you into a man. Get out of my sight. You disgust me.”

Cyrus fled. Richard stood there without responding. His father turned toward him and said, “Your brother isn’t capable of leading a squad of mice out of a paper bag. You’ll take over the business when I retire.”

Richard shrugged. “Don’t count on it, Father. I may have other plans.”

His father’s face had turned red, and he shouted, “You’ll make plans I approve of and none other!” he’d thundered.

The next morning, Richard had found his brother, swinging from the rafter in the attic.

Days later, at the funeral, his father had repeated himself, but in a new and more hideous way. “His death was just as much a disgrace as his life.”

Richard retained that word.
Disgrace.
He remembered it, kept it, used it, felt it. For the next decade he ignored his father’s entreaties to return to San Francisco, instead embarking on his career with the Foreign Service and his much more secretive career with the Central Intelligence Agency.

They spoke, regularly, on Christmas and Easter. But Richard didn’t return to San Francisco. He didn’t witness the slow deterioration of his family’s four-story Victorian in San Francisco. He didn’t witness the slow deterioration of his father. It wasn’t until 1983, more than ten years after the death of his brother, that he returned to the city he’d once called
home.

It was during a short leave from Spain. He’d been under intense pressure from his superiors—both because of the failed coup, which
would
have put in place a sympathetic government, as well as his involvement with the underage daughter of a deposed Marquis. The Agency’s position was clear—don’t make waves. Don’t do anything that could call attention to the Agency. Marry the girl and shut her family up.

He did. And when he arrived in San Francisco, it was in preparation for sending his new wife home. He found his father bedridden. His health wrecked by syphilis, which had gone untreated and undetected until it was too late. Partially paralyzed and blind, the old man’s internal organs were failing and he likely only had a few weeks to live.

Married, are you?
His father had raged.
To some Spanish slut?

Richard had responded with disdain.
She’s the daughter of Spanish nobility, if you care, Father. I don’t. What I do care about is that she comes to live here when I go back overseas. I can’t cart a pregnant seventeen
-
year
-
old around the globe.

His father had replied with venom. “I’ll allow no such thing. In fact, if you don’t dump the girl I’ll disinherit you. You ungrateful little bastard. You’re just as much a disgrace to this family as your brother was!”

Richard had responded with rage. But not the kind of rage Adelina would later evoke in him. No, it was a cold rage, a rage that resulted in a response that was worthy of his father. After a few phone calls, and the passing of a considerable amount of money, Cyrus Thompson III, the former shipping and manufacturing magnate, was declared incompetent and his affairs placed in the hands of his loving son.

No Last Will and Testament ever appeared to disinherit Richard Thompson. When he returned to Spain it was with a clear conscience and conviction that his father would be dead within a few weeks.

A terrible shame.

A few months later Richard installed his new young wife and daughter in the four-story house where his mother and brother had died. His mother’s bedroom he turned over to Adelina. Perhaps the ghosts in there would haunt the superstitious bitch. He had the attic converted to a bedroom, which later became Julia’s, and much later Sarah’s.

Now, as he folded his hands in front of him and waited for the hearing to begin, Richard thanked whatever fates were out there that he’d made peace with Julia. He’d invested way too much time and energy over the years into ensuring her loyalty, and now it was paying off. That morning, before the hearing began, they’d discussed strategy. Finally, at one point, she looked dead across the table at him.

“Dad … I want you to level with me. I know it was the Cold War and bad stuff happened. I know people had to do things that look ugly in today’s light. Did you do it? Did you give them the chemical weapons?”

Richard quickly calculated the correct response. Then concluded that he needed to tie Julia ever closer to him. The rest of his daughters would take their mother’s side, he was sure of it. But his Julia had been too badly damaged by Adelina to
ever
take her side.

He had nodded. “I did. It was horrible. But also necessary.”

She had closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her cheeks going a bit pale.

“Julia … you know better than anyone about foreign policy. You know how these things work. I didn’t want to do it, and I certainly didn’t know they would use it on innocent villagers. We actually provided the militia with satellite photos of the Russian training camp, as well as an advisor who was a Soviet defector. Vasily Karatygin—he’d converted to Islam and went over to the side of the mujahideen. But they didn’t use it on the military … it was on civilians. I’d have done anything to prevent it.”

She gave him a knowing look. “But since it did happen, you had to blame it on the Soviets.
Realpolitik.
”

He grimaced. “Sadly, yes.”

She had taken the bait. So now he had at least one ally. Julia had promised to turn her attorneys loose on defeating the IRS—she’d met with them the previous day. And she promised to go after Maria Clawson. Richard, meanwhile, would take on Leslie Collins and the Senate Armed Services Committee.

His attention was jerked back to the front of the room when Senator Chuck Rainsley banged his gavel on the table.

“Mister Thompson, have you heard a single word I’ve said? I asked you a question.” Rainsley’s face was red.

Richard sighed. Then he did something that he thought might win over some of the media and the public, who looked at Rainsley as a giant blowhard.

“I’m sorry, Senator, I really hadn’t noticed you were talking. What was that?”

A long moment of silence in the room was punctuated only by the clicking of digital cameras. First a titter in the back of the room, then a guffaw, and then a loud laugh from the audience.

Rainsley was infuriated. “Perhaps you’ll hear better if you are declared in contempt of Congress.”

Richard stared at Rainsley, knowing that at this point, the only thing that mattered was the court of public opinion and the grand jury. This Senate committee had no significant bite.

“I will repeat my question, Mister Thompson. You claim that CIA Deputy Director Collins was responsible for the massacre, and that you reported it. Do you have evidence? Copies of this report? Did you tell anyone, for example, during his confirmation hearings?”

“The information was classified. Of course I didn’t keep copies of the report—keeping classified information is a felony.”

Rainsley leaned forward, his face beginning to turn red. “Mister Thompson, isn’t it true that you were one of the agents of the Central Intelligence Agency who aided and abetted the coup organizers in Spain in 1983?”

His face cold, Richard replied, “I cannot discuss classified information in an open hearing, Senator.”

“Then tell me this!” Rainsley thundered. “You met your then sixteen-year-old wife in Spain during that coup. Why is it that she is now requesting political asylum in an allied country?”

Richard felt his face flush red.
That. Fucking. Whore.

“This way,” the aide said. He was clearly more than a servant or doorman. In his fifties, the man had the face of a pug and a thick Irish accent. “My name is Oswald O’Leary, I’m the Prince’s chief aide. He’s in his office upstairs.”

Anthony followed the man up a set of marble stairs. “His chief aide? What does that job entail, if I might ask?”