Girl of Lies (34 page)

The office door was closed and locked. Unlike the rest of the doors in the house, this one had a relatively new doorknob, modern, with a metal plate.

Julia let out another curse. Then she said, “Wait… stay here.” Then she ran downstairs.

“I don’t get it,” Anthony said.

“I don’t either,” Crank replied. “But—she’s onto something.”

Two minutes later, Julia was back. And she was holding a small axe.

“I’ll handle that,” Crank said. “If we’re doing breaking and entering, let me handle the breaking part.”

She snorted. “All right. Have fun.”

Anthony said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Julia shook her head. “If you don’t think so, go on without us.”

Three minutes later, Crank had the door open. Mangled, broken to shreds. But open.

The office was much as Crank remembered it from his one visit in here. Ten years ago? More? A large bookshelf extended from the ceiling to the floor, an entire wall covered in books. The wall with the door was covered mostly in photographs and plaques. Pictures of Richard Thompson with various Presidents: Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George Bush. A photo showed a much younger Thompson in military fatigues, his arm around another man, both of them standing in a desert.

On the desk, a single family portrait with all of the daughters. No pictures anywhere else in the office of Adelina, but each of the daughters had a portrait somewhere on the wall.

Except Andrea.

“That stings,” Crank muttered.

Anthony was looking at one of the photos, the one of Thompson in the desert. He said, “That’s Vasily Katatygin.”

“Who?” Julia asked.

Anthony shook his head. “Highest ranking Soviet defector to the Afghan rebels. He was a Spetsnaz Major—that’s the Russian Special Forces, like our Green Berets. He ended up joining Ahmad Massoud’s militia.”

“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” Crank said.

“I’m sure it doesn’t matter,” Anthony said. “That was thirty years ago.”

“My dad was never posted to Afghanistan,” Julia said.

“Well, nobody officially was back then,” Anthony said.

Julia wandered around the office, a frown on her face. She began to open desk drawers.

“What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Crank slid open another drawer. Files. He pulled one out randomly. It was labelled Wakhan/Badackshan. Idly, he flipped it open, then his eyes widened. He dropped the file. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“What is it?” Julia asked.

She reached for the file, but Crank put his hand on it. “You don’t want to look at that.”

“The fuck I don’t,” she replied, grabbing the file away from him. She laid it open on the desk and gasped.

The first thing in the file was the photo Crank had seen. A dozen or more bodies, most of them children. Bloated, blackened. Crank winced and looked away.

Anthony moved forward and picked up the file. “Holy fuck, that’s Wakhan. Why does your father have this?”

“Wait. What?” Crank said as Anthony flipped through the file.

Anthony said, “Back in December 1983. A group of rebels got their hands on nerve gas and used it on a village they felt was collaborating too closely with the Soviets. As a matter of fact it was Ahmad Massoud’s militia, or at least they were implicated.”

Julia’s eyes darted to the picture on the wall. “Was that guy involved? Karatygin?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” Anthony replied.

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t tell us where Julia’s mom is,” Crank said. “Let’s keep looking.”

He pulled another file out of the drawer. Credit card bills. Another file contained what appeared to be a copy of Richard Thompson’s personnel file. Crank dumped those on the desk and kept looking.

“Huh,” Anthony said, as Crank continued to rummage through the drawer.

“What is it?” Julia asked.

“Look at this,” he said. “I think your dad may not have been State Department at all. I’m starting to think CIA.”

“What? Dad? No way.”

Anthony said, “You never know. Take a look at this.” He laid the file on the table in front of her and pointed at something in it.

Crank had frozen, looking at another file. He didn’t say anything as he looked at it. His heart was beating heavily.

The file was a police report. February 13, 1990. From the San Francisco Police Department.

The photos made it all too clear what had happened. Someone had beaten Adelina Thompson nearly to death. Swollen face, bloody lip.
Jesus Christ
, he thought, when he saw the sentence,
Victim refuses rape examination.

Crank looked up at his wife. She was having a lively debate with Anthony about the likelihood of her father being in the Central Intelligence Agency. Laughing a little.

Then she saw Crank’s face.

“What is it?”

He shook his head.
Shit.
She reached out and grabbed the file. Then her eyes widened, and she gasped, covering her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

A lab report fell from the file. Julia picked it up with shaking hands. Her eyes scanned it, then she handed it to Crank.

It was from the DNA Diagnostic Center
.
The first paragraph read:

Dear Mr. Thompson. Thank you for your recent examination at the DNA Diagnostic Center. At your request, we have examined the samples provided, and can rule within 99.9% probability that the individuals tested are not related.

The lab report was dated February 12, 1990.

“That
son of a bitch,”
Julia whispered. Her eyes scanned the file. The photographs of her mother. Beaten and raped. “It says… it says in here that she refused to press charges. The police referred her to the battered women’s shelter.”

“Fuck,” Crank muttered.

“That’s not it,” she said. “Alexandra was born November 9.” Julia began to breathe heavily. Hyperventilating. “She was born exactly nine months after this police report, Crank. Oh, my God. Oh my
God,
and do you know how badly I’ve treated my mother?” Julia’s voice sounded desperate as her eyes swiveled to Crank.

“There’s no way you could have known,” he whispered.

“She’s my
mother
,” Julia cried. “Look what he did to her! Is it any wonder she couldn’t be there for me? Can you even imagine what she went through?”

She stood up, her fists clenched. Then she cried out. “We have to find my mother, Crank. We
have
to!”

Crank looked up at the sound of brakes out front. His eyes darted to the window. A car had parked out front, and two men got out. Both of them had short, closely cropped hair and muscular builds. Both wore open suit coats.

“Trouble,” Crank muttered.

A
S WAS HIS HABIT, George-Phillip stopped in to check on Jane when he arrived home a few minutes after 10 pm.

Jane, of course, was fast asleep in her bedroom, her tiny hand curled up, touching her lips, her knees drawn up to her chest under the blanket. She breathed in and out quietly, her raven hair spread out evenly around her head in a fan.

George-Phillip was troubled. He didn’t like coming home after Jane’s bedtime, regardless of the reasons.

Unfortunately, today at least he had good reasons to be so late. The news from the United States had been increasingly grim as the day went on. George-Phillip spent the day on the phone, his number one focus the shooting of Charlie Frazier. The good news was that Frazier was going to recover—the gunshot wound was serious, but not critical. He would be out of the hospital in a few days.

But not on his way home, most likely.

George-Phillip hadn’t received any official enquiries yet about Charlie’s status, but he knew it was coming. At some point, the United States government would formally ask the British government if Charlie was an intelligence agent, if only because of the circumstances of the shooting. When that moment came, the British ambassador wouldn’t have to lie, because he wouldn’t know.

George-Phillip had been called to speak with the Prime Minister, who wanted an explanation of why a British citizen—and employee of the Secret Intelligence Service—had been shot in Washington, DC. That discussion had been unpleasant, but George-Phillip made it absolutely clear. Charlie Frazier’s employment was and must remain a secret. He was fairly certain the American government would jerk them around for a few days, asking a lot of questions and delaying Charlie’s departure. But in the end they would let it go. As friendly nations, the United States and the United Kingdom maintained a polite fiction that they didn’t spy on each other. But everyone in the intelligence community recognized that for what it was—fiction.

In practice, in the years since the September 11 attacks on the United States, intelligence budgets for both the United States and the United Kingdom had ballooned, with each government employing tens of thousands of intelligence employees, military, civilian and private contractors, often in overlapping roles. The United States was clearly worse: George-Phillip had read a report indicating that the US had more than 800,000 individuals with secret clearances, most of them employees of private companies. Undoubtedly some of those were employed spying on the United Kingdom. And, George-Phillip thought, no doubt some of them were using their access to secret funding and information to further their own personal aims rather than their government’s.

George-Phillip shook his head. Even here, in the doorway to his daughter’s room, he couldn’t clear his head of work. He straightened himself, stretched a little, then walked out of the room, gently closing the door behind him. He walked down the hall to his office and mixed himself a whisky and soda.

For a minute or possibly two, he looked out at the square. The trees and shrubbery at the corner were overgrown, obscuring the center of the square with its garden and tennis court.

He sat down at the desk with his drink and began to scan through the evening’s accumulated emails.

Five minutes later he sat up, alarm bells ringing in his head. Now
that
was interesting. A report indicated that Vasily Karatygin had turned up in Kabul. The former Spetsnaz major had defected from the Soviet Union in the early 80s and later became a deputy leader in Ahmad Massoud’s militia in Afghanistan. It was unclear where his loyalty lay now, if any—but it was clear that he ran a huge opium smuggling operation centered in Badakhshan Province.

Karatygin had been on George-Phillip’s radar for thirty years because of his involvement in the massacre at Wakhan. He wasn’t one to show up in the Afghan capitol for any reason. It was too dangerous, too many competing interests, not to mention the fact that the Americans had a price on his head.

Was it connected?

George-Phillip had to assume it was. Someone—possibly Leslie Collins, possibly Prince Roshan, possibly even Richard Thompson—was making an aggressive move. But who? And why? Why now?

The phone rang. It was O’Leary.

“George-Phillip here.”

“Sir, news.”

“Go.”

“It looks like our player is Leslie Collins. Surveillance picked him up giving orders. He’s going after all of the Thompsons, anyone who can even potentially give information on Wakhan.”

George-Phillip muttered a curse. “All right. Even Richard Thompson?”

“As far as we can tell, yes, sir. And—you, sir. I’ve already mobilized an extra protective detail, they’ll be on their way shortly.”

“I don’t need a protective detail, O’Leary, we’ve been through this.”

“Beggin’ your parson, sir, but you do, and they’re on the way whether you like it or not.”

“Fine. O’Leary, you know what to do? Start making arrangements.”

“Yes, sir.”

George-Phillip hung up the phone and looked out at the square. Adelina Thompson and her daughters were likely in a great deal of danger. They were the wild card, and in some ways that was his fault. He shook his head, and reached for the phone again.

He didn’t hear the gunshot in Belgrade Square before the bullets hit the glass.

Dylan Paris leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Carrie, Sarah and Alex had all left the condo about forty minutes before.

It was the first time he’d had any peace in days. He felt as if he might pass out any second, but for the moment he wanted to just rest his mind. Sarah’s words the day before had been weighing on him. His best friend weighed on him.

Ray would have said something like,
Man up, Studmaster, and tell her. Ask her for help.
He would have. But asking for help, that was the hardest thing in the world. The thing was, he was stuck. He remembered the moment he’d decided to do it. It wasn’t that night in the dorms. It wasn’t even at the funeral. It was before Ray had even died. He’d been at the hotel with the rest of the Thompson clan. Alex’s dad was there, and he had a gin and tonic, and Dylan couldn’t keep his eyes off that drink.

He wanted one so badly right now he could taste it.

You’re turning into your dad, Dylan.

Fucking asshole.

But it was true.

“Dylan? Can you come here a second?”