Girl of Vengeance (6 page)

“Your friend has a real storm on his brow,” George-Phillip observed.

Andrea shrugged. “He served in Afghanistan. And Ray Sherman was his best friend.”

George-Phillip’s face softened. “Carrie’s husband.”

“Yes,” Andrea replied.

“I want to reach out to her.” As he said the words, his eyebrows moved furiously. Andrea tried to interpret their dance, but she couldn’t.

“Why?” she asked.

George-Phillip blinked. “What do you mean, why? She’s my daughter, just as you are.”

Andrea sat up, studying him. Then she said, “Don’t do us any favors.”

“I truly wish I hadn’t hurt you so terribly.” He sighed as he said the words.

“El camino al infierno esta empedrado de buenas intenciones,”
Andrea muttered.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

George-Phillip raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just … this is all a shock. I just wish I could trust it.”

George-Phillip sighed. “I do too. It will take some time, but I promise you, I will prove it to you, and to your sister Carrie.”

“So what’s next?” she asked.

“I have a meeting with your President this morning, and several other meetings in the afternoon with the Ambassador and others. This evening I would like to have you and Dylan for dinner. And—I’d also like to invite your sisters. Carrie, at least, and the others if they wish to come.”

“I think Alexandra will come,” Andrea said. “Dylan’s wife.”

“Yes. I’ll have an invitation sent. Is she likely to be at the condo?”

“I have no idea. Last time I was there, someone was trying to kill us.”

“Indeed. I’ll find out where they are. Is there anything you need in the meantime?”

“I need to call my uncle and grandmother in Spain.”

“Of course. Feel free to use the phone in the parlor, just through that door.”

He stood, and so did she. She felt awkward. She didn’t even know what to call him. “Um … um … Your Highness?”

George-Phillip’s eyebrows twitched uncontrollably. It was almost funny. His words were sobering, however. “I’d be grateful if one day you would consider calling me
F
ather
. But in the meantime, George-Phillip will do. Please, no titles. Not between us.”

Andrea swallowed. Then she said, “George-Phillip, then … I … I know I must seem ungrateful or … I don’t know.” She wanted to stomp her foot in frustration. Andrea didn’t get tongue-tied. She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, because she felt a sudden welling in them. Then she said, “I’ve always wanted a father who loved me. Who cared about me. And I never understood why
he
didn’t. I never understood why they sent me away. So forgive me if you seem to be too good to be true.” Then she held her breath and blinked her eyes, willing herself
not
to cry.

He looked at her with a loving expression and said, “Take as long as you need, Andrea. I understand that I’ll have to earn your trust.”

Then he was gone. She considered storming outside where Dylan was. Yelling. Throwing something. She didn’t know what to think, how to react, how to behave. She didn’t know what to believe. There was no doubt what he said was true. He
was
her father.

But the rest of it. Could she possibly believe him that her mother had told him to stay away? That she’d
begged
him to stay away. That he’d wanted to reach out to her, that he’d wanted to meet her all along, that somehow he’d watched her and paid attention and showed up at the festival when she sang.

Why had Abuelita never told her?

“All right,” Bear Wyden said. “You’re cleared to go, but I want you to check in with me when you cross into France and again into Spain. You understand? I know Washington says the threat to you guys is over, but I just want to be sure.”

“Thank you, Bear,” Adelina said. “You can’t know how much this means to me.”

“I got a pretty good idea,” he muttered, tugging at the straps on top of the Fiat Tempra station wagon, a vehicle that Adelina hated. The suitcases were just as secure as they’d been for the last fifteen tries.

“Girls, get in the car, please,” she said. “Julia!” she called. Julia was clear across the garage, sitting on the hood of a highly polished classic Fiat. Normally she would have been horrified to see one of her daughters behaving that way, but Adelina had a special place in her heart for Corporal Barry Lewis, the strapping young Marine who had been assigned as Julia’s guard. Twelve-year-old Julia had a massive crush on her bodyguard—whenever he was around, her face would flush red and she would stammer and stutter. Lewis took it all in good humor and spent a lot of time with her even when he was off duty. In some ways he’d become a surrogate father for Julia. A father she needed, given the emotional absence of her real father.

“Julia! Come!”

“Go on, princess,” Lewis said. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

Julia blushed bright red at the word
Princess
.
Then she jumped off the hood of the car and ran across the garage. Carrie was already buckling in. Adelina winced a little as she lifted almost-four-year-old Alexandra into her car seat and began buckling the straps. She’d infuriated Richard again, this time by not remembering the correct military rank of the Danish military attaché. He only rarely used physical violence with her anymore, preferring to keep her in continuous low-grade terror.

Whatever his current state, he’d agreed to her driving to Spain with their daughters for a week-long visit with her family. It would be the first time she’d been home since her wedding.

Adelina got into the driver’s seat. Julia was buckling in next to her, and her lower lip was pouting out. As Adelina started the car and put it into gear, she said, “What’s wrong, Julia?”

A moment later she was driving out of the Embassy compound and onto the streets of Brussels, Belgium. Of the cities she’d lived in so far, Brussels was probably her least favorite after Washington. In San Francisco, she’d mostly felt a sense of freedom—at least until the night Richard almost killed her (
the night Alexandra was conceived, whispered her unconscious—she shoved the thought down).
Washington had mostly been terror. Belgium was unstable. One day he was incredibly kind, the next cruel and erratic. She lived in a constant state of tension and fear, and the panic attacks continued to grow worse all the time.

As she drove into the traffic, she considered turning around. What if she had a panic attack on the road?

She looked over at Julia again. Tears were running down the girl’s face, smearing her mascara.
Her mascara?
When did she start wearing makeup? She thanked God Lewis was an honorable man and looked at Julia as a daughter, because the girl had no sense at all when it came to him.

“Why the tears, Julia?”

“I don’t want to go to stupid Spain. I want to stay with Daddy.”

Bitterness swept over Adelina again, but she swallowed it. “We’ll be back in a week, dear. Your father has important meetings this week”—
with prostitutes and his secretary, undoubtedly
—“he won’t be around to look after you.”

Julia shook her head and looked out the window. She muttered something under her breath.

“What did you say?” Adelina asked.

“I said, that’s nothing new. No one looks after me except Corporal Lewis.” Her tone was sullen.

Adelina looked in the rearview mirror. Carrie was already wrapped up in a book.
Steel Beach
by John Varley. She didn’t understand Carrie or the strange things she read. Science fiction mostly, but also a fair amount of romance. The girl was smart beyond her age and had abandoned young-adult books by the time she was nine.

She looked so much like George-Phillip sometimes it broke Adelina’s heart. It broke her heart that she would never see him again, and it broke her heart that he didn’t know his daughter. She often wished she’d acceded to his demands—that she’d run away, that she’d given in.

But when she thought that way, her mind always returned to Richard’s threats. The most recent had been crude. She’d walked into her bedroom and found a photograph on her pillow. Black and white, it depicted a young man—fifteen or sixteen years old, with a crude crosshair drawn over his face in black Sharpie.

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.

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—”