Girl of Lies (15 page)

As he approached, Bear’s first impression of the man was shock at how very tall he was. At six feet, Bear wasn’t short. But the Secretary of State towered over him in his dark blue suit and red tie. His face was gaunt; hollow cheeks below sunken eyes and jowls suggestive of decades of sleep deprivation. Even though the Secretary was a Democrat, Bear had considerable respect for the man who, prior to his career in the Senate and now the State department, had once commanded naval riverboats in the Mekong Delta.

“James Perry,” the Secretary said in a bold voice as he approached. He held out a hand toward Bear.

“Bear Wyden, sir,” Bear replied. Perry had a confident handshake. Dry and firm, but he didn’t engage in a squeezing contest like many less confident men.

Perry nodded toward Cantwell. It wasn’t friendly. “Mr. Cantwell.”

Cantwell swallowed. “Mr. Secretary.”

“Please have a seat, both of you.”

Bear took a seat to Cantwell’s left on the couch. Secretary Perry sat on a similarly appointed red chair, oriented perpendicularly to the couch.

“I’ll get to the point, gentlemen. I had an… unfortunate phone call from the Secretary of Defense this afternoon.”

Cantwell literally squirmed in his seat and began speaking in a hurry. “Sir, my sincere apologies. I’m afraid our investigator may have gotten a little bit ahead of himself this afternoon—”

Secretary Perry narrowed his eyes at Cantwell’s torrent of words, then held up a hand and cut him off. “Mr. Cantwell, that won’t be necessary.”

“Sir, if I could clarify.”

Perry leaned forward in his seat, just slightly. “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

Holy shit.
Bear was stunned by the exchange. If anything was clear, it was that Perry did not like Cantwell at all. Of course, now that he thought about it, it didn’t surprise him that much. Cantwell was brought in after the wholesale and somewhat random firing of top DSS personnel by Secretary Clinton as a result of the deaths in Benghazi. Bear didn’t like him either.

Perry turned his attention to Bear. “Perhaps you could explain the direction of your investigation at this point.”

Bear coughed a little then said, “Sir, I was asked to take charge of the investigation late last night. Joyce Brown is coordinating the team and I’m lead investigator.”

Perry nodded. “Go on.”

Bear described his trip to the hospital the previous night and his discussions with the Thompson daughters, and his visit today with Richard Thompson.

“At this point sir, we’re still trying to establish the identity of our second kidnapper. I’m particularly concerned because we’ve run DNA and fingerprints and not established his identity. Nothing. But based on Andrea Thompson’s description, he had a clear Midwestern United States accent. Corn husker. There should be some record of this guy. So I went over to the Pentagon to interview the father.”

Perry leaned a little, resting his gangly right arm on the arm of his chair, rangy fingers covering his chin.

“I may have been a little aggressive in my questioning, sir.”

The Secretary’s fingers shifted to cover his mouth. Bear coughed, then continued. “Anyway, sir. I’ll be blunt. I’m concerned. Secretary Thompson… did not react like a concerned father. He didn’t meet his daughter at the hospital. He didn’t pick her up. He didn’t stay home with her today. He’s spent all of ten minutes with his sixteen-year-old daughter on the day when she was kidnapped by at least one known mercenary. Something is seriously wrong there, sir.”

Perry nodded. Then he said, “You’re aware Acting Secretary Thompson has been nominated by the President of the United States.”

Bear froze a little at the words. Cantwell, the little weasel, chimed in. “Sir, Mr. Wyden’s opinions are not the official opinions of this investigation. In fact, I’m questioning—”

“That will be enough, Mr. Cantwell. You may go.”

“Excuse me, sir?”
 
Cantwell looked stunned.

“You heard me, sir. But please, let me clarify. I don’t wish to hear another word out of you, and I would strongly urge you to start polishing your resume, because your time in this department just became limited. If there is anything I learned about leadership in Vietnam, it’s that leaders don’t throw their subordinates into the line of fire.”

Bear sat up in his seat. All the blood had run out of Cantwell’s face, leaving him looking like a pasty-faced reflection of his already pale face.

Cantwell stood, tugging on his jacket and his dignity. “Sir, I hope you will reconsider, I’m merely looking out for the interests of the Department and Diplomatic Security.”

“You may go,” Perry said.

Cantwell left in a hurry. Bear held his breath.

Perry looked closely at Bear. “Mr. Wyden… Bear. May I call you Bear?”

Letting a breath loose again, he replied, “Yes sir.”

“Bear. I’m aware of your suspicions and concerns about Secretary Thompson.”

Bear blinked. “You
are?”

Perry stood and walked to his desk. Then he picked up an inch-thick brown envelope. He laid it on the table.

The envelope was labeled, TOP SECRET-COMPARTMENTALIZED. Below that, in bold letters, PERSONNEL FILE/CLASSIFIED. Handwritten below that,
R. Thompson. FN 542-1342.

“You’ll need to sign for this. Sign along the flap and tear it off. This is a numbered copy. And it will answer some of your questions. Once you’ve read it, I want you to go see Senator Rainsley.”

If a lightning bolt had struck Secretary Perry in his office, Bear wouldn’t have been more surprised. “Excuse me, sir?”

Perry handed the file over. “Read it. Go see Senator Rainsley. Get your investigation underway, Bear. And don’t cross paths with Richard Thompson again. If you need answers from him, call my secretary and come see me. Am I clear? There are things you don’t know.”

Bear held up the file. “Are the answers in here?”

Perry raised his eyebrows. Then he said, “No. But maybe it’s a step in the right direction.”

“When I was doing background research on the story, I came across the series of blog posts by Maria Clawson.”

When Anthony said the words, Julia immediately interrupted. “I’m familiar with them. That was before she was sued for libel.”

Anthony nodded. “I’m aware of that. And again, I don’t want you to throw me out. But given the stuff she published about you… there had to have been some fallout. From what I understand, that was the reason Senator Rainsley put a hold on your father’s appointment as Ambassador to Russia.”

Julia grasped the edge of her desk, forcing herself to not stand up and march out of the room. This was all ancient history. But she knew the moment the President announced her father’s nomination that it would come up. It was inevitable. He’d been nominated as head of the largest department of the United States government, in charge of trillions of dollars of assets, hundreds of thousands of people and responsibility for defense of the United States. The Senate, and the media, would be all over it.

Senator Rainsley was still in office, and he was the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which meant he would be in the lead with questioning and objections to her father’s nomination. For the second time in her father’s career, he’d be faced off with Senator Rainsley, and she couldn’t help having the sinking feeling that her own past would have some bearing on what happened next.

She needed an ally, quickly. Regardless of what happened with her father’s nomination, she didn’t need an old scandal dragging her through the mud. Plenty of bad stuff had been written in the press about her and Crank before, but that, at least, hadn’t come up in years. She didn’t need it to start.

“Yes,” she finally said. “It
was
Senator Rainsley who put the nomination on hold. He never stated a reason why.”

“But Maria Clawson spread it far and wide that it had something to do with you.”

“Not exactly,” Julia replied. “I wasn’t even eighteen at the time. She never printed my name.”

His response made her stomach twist. “She did publish a photograph.”

Her response came out in a hiss. “She did. A photograph that would probably land her in jail for child pornography if she ran it today.”

Anthony nodded. “That must have been tough for you.”

“Tough isn’t the word, Mr. Walker. I went through some very difficult times in high school. Not the party girl Maria Clawson implied, but someone who was ill-used by a much older boy. Clawson’s blog ruined my life. I know you’ve heard all about online bullying these days. We didn’t have Facebook back then, but having a national gossip columnist attack you day after day when you’re still a teenager… I ended up attempting suicide.”

Anthony winced. A hint of both anger and empathy in his voice, he said, “Are you fucking serious?”

“I was a teenager. I wasn’t equipped to deal with that back then.”

He nodded. Then he said, “You know, I talked with Sylvia Drake. She told me you funded her lawsuit.”

Julia nodded. And then she smiled. Because she remembered Sylvia Drake.

Sylvia was a 19-year-old nursing student when she was raped on campus following a football game at the University of Alabama. The suspect? A 21-year-old football player. When Sylvia went on record with her accusation, the vultures descended. Radio commentators and sports newscasters publicly speculated she was aiming for a big financial settlement from Alabama. Bloggers and newscasters alike lambasted her, but an old enemy of Julia’s led the charge: Maria Clawson, whose society blog was still the terror of Washington, DC.

Julia took the opportunity to settle an old score. She discreetly donated a quarter of a million dollars to fund Sylvia Drake’s lawsuit against Maria Clawson. The result? Clawson went down in personal bankruptcy and shut down the longest running gossip blog on the Internet. Julia counted that as a victory well worth winning.

“Yes,” she told Anthony now. “I funded it. I’d do it again, too. Maria Clawson is a snake who makes her living off destroying other people’s lives.”

“Was,” Anthony replied. “She mostly makes her living fending off lawsuits now.”

Julia raised her eyebrows and shrugged. She knew she shouldn’t be so smug about it, even as her lips curled up in a satisfied half-smile. Her youngest sister Andrea wouldn’t have hesitated to lecture her about the need to keep forgiveness in her heart.

It was a lot easier to forgive someone when they no longer represented a threat.

Her phone, laying face down on the desk, rang, vibrating on the desk. She reached forward and flipped it over. A photograph of one of her sisters in the New York City Clerk’s office in the arms of a tall Army sergeant in dress blues appeared on the screen of her phone, underneath the name “Carrie.”

She picked up the phone. “I have to take this, sorry.”

Anthony sat back, a little annoyed. She didn’t care. She unlocked the phone and said, “Hello? Carrie?” As she spoke the words, she stood and walked to the window, looking outside and keeping her back to Anthony.

“Julia?
 
Hey, you! It’s not just me… I’ve got Alexandra and Sarah and Andrea here too.”

Julia closed her eyes. She badly wanted to be in Washington with her sisters. She’d left a message that morning on Jessica’s cell phone, and on her mother’s, inviting them to fly east with her. If Jessica flew east with her, it would be the first time the six of them were in the same room since the summer of 2013. All of them were present for Carrie and Alexandra’s weddings, but there’d been little opportunity to talk. And technically all of them were in the same city in August after the accident, but Sarah had been hospitalized and Carrie utterly devastated by the loss of her husband.

Julia badly wanted to bring her sisters together. If nothing else, so they could wrap their arms around Carrie and Andrea and love them.

“Julia, listen, when are you planning to fly to DC. Still tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow afternoon was the plan. Though if necessary we can leave in the morning.” As she said the words, she studied Anthony’s pale reflection in the window. He shifted uncomfortably at the words they might be leaving early. Interesting, she thought. He badly wanted a story with some meat here. She was considering giving it to him, in a way that would keep a grip on the inevitable release of her own secrets and also protect her sisters.

“Well…”

Julia frowned at the long pause.

Finally, Carrie spoke again. “We’re worried about Jessica. And Mom. Neither of them have answered their phones in days.”

“Well, of course they have,” Julia said impatiently. “I just spoke with Mother on… oh. Friday.”

She’d spoken with her mother right before lunch. They spoke
every
Friday. It hadn’t always been the case. From 2002 until 2005, she’d barely spoken at all with her mother. Holidays and birthdays, and not always even then. But all that time, the thought kept percolating in her head. A statement really, made by Crank’s brother Sean after the first time he met her mother.
She loves you,
Sean had said a few days later, when Sean, Carrie, Crank and Julia were in Washington, DC. Followed by the completely inexplicable statement,
She has secrets.

Carrie hadn’t been willing to accept his answer and demanded clarification.

“Come on, Sean,” Carrie needled. “There has to be something behind what you said. Some evidence? Anything?”

He sat up. “They never touched each other. Or even looked at each other.”

“Who?” Carrie replied.

“Your parents.”

And of course, when Julia thought it through later, Sean was exactly right.
She
couldn’t remember her parents touching. At least only on the rarest of occasions, when she was very young. She had few memories of her early childhood, but some of the earliest were of eating meals with both of her parents when Carrie was still a baby. But even then, they’d never been affectionate with each other.

In any event, Sean’s comment had worn on her mind, an ongoing nagging worry.

Finally, in 2005, she’d called her mother and invited herself to San Francisco for a week. A week she and her mother spent together. Talking. In a few cases,
screaming
at each other.