Deeper into the room, the Tiffany lamps with their cheerfully colored shades lit framed portraits of women. Some in evening gowns, others in military uniforms.
“Yes, I’m sure Thor would enjoy a treat,” Linda agreed to buy herself a moment longer to inspect the curious collection and the woman in the midst of it.
The woman made a show of lifting the lid and selecting just the right dog biscuit, then handing it off to Thor. He took it delicately from her fingers, rather than the sharp snap of Clive’s bacon, before lying down to happily grind it into the room-filling, white Persian rug.
“Would his handler like some tea?”
She could only nod. Linda’s head was spinning. She’d abandoned her basements-first plan after escaping Clive’s chocolate shop. That had sent her tramping all through the upper floors of the Residence, feeling like a voyeuristic intruder.
Still uncomfortable approaching Clive’s shop, she and Thor had investigated the East Wing from the top story First Lady’s offices down to FDR’s bomb shelter below the northeast lawn. A small plaque had informed her that it was rated to withstand a five-hundred-pound bomb—early WWII had been a kinder, gentler era in some strange ways.
Deep in the lowest basement of the East Wing, she’d turned away from the tunnel leading to the Treasury Building and instead followed the one that ran from the FDR shelter below the East Wing into the lowest level of the Residence, and beyond that, connected to the West Wing.
Deep under the lawn between the East Wing and the Residence, she passed The Truman Shelter. It had been built with nuclear weapons in mind and was significantly more substantial, if little more welcoming than FDR’s concrete cube. It was set up as a complete safe room, but it too stood with its door open and no guard in attendance. Another part of the White House’s buried history that none of the public would ever see.
Once more beneath the Residence itself, she and Thor had investigated air conditioning and heating machine spaces. She’d fed him a snack from her bag and let him rest for a while outside the elevator machine space.
She’d carefully avoided Clive’s shop, though she could still feel his smile against her palm. It seemed to belong there. She wanted to go back. Taste another piece of his magnificent chocolate and perhaps see if his smile tasted as good as it felt.
Whoa! Where had that idea come from?
She hadn’t been in a relationship since RAF Lieutenant James. Her team had been stationed with the British attack helo pilots at Kabul for six months, and she’d spent three of them happily in his arms whenever they were both on base. He’d been like the first of Clive’s chocolates: not deep, but definitely nice enough while it lasted. There had never been a second-chocolate-level relationship for her. Something inside her was broken that didn’t allow for any of those. Her emotions were broken, just like her mother’s—a sour taste indeed.
Once more on the move, she’d rounded a corner past Electrical Switching Control in the lowest subbasement of the Residence and—stepped into a Victorian tea room complete with a silver-haired matron dispensing dog treats.
“Please, Miss Hamlin. You have walked a long way. Take a seat.”
“You know who I am.” A pointless statement. Somehow the woman also knew she’d walked miles today exploring the President’s House. Probably knew Linda’s tour was barely half done even though the day was almost over.
“I’m Miss Watson,” she didn’t bother wasting breath to confirm her knowledge of Linda’s name. She poured tea from a white porcelain teapot covered in sweet pea flowers. On a small table between the two chairs, she placed a matching plate with unadorned shortbread biscuits.
Linda could feel Clive’s pained expression two stories above. He’d have dipped, sprayed, or sprinkled them with something. Certainly he’d add elegant little designs on the tops like the ones she’d spotted on the chocolates in a small cabinet he’d shown her.
“You have an…interesting office, Miss Watson.” A Victorian sitting room in the lowest subbasement of the White House made that an understatement. A pair of hinged bookcases had been swung back against the walls of the elegant room. Linda saw that if they were closed, the sitting room would disappear and only the dingy but dangerous little office would remain.
“Thank you, my dear.” Miss Watson sat in a chair across from her and picked up her knitting.
Linda focused on the picture above the woman’s head. It was of a dark-haired beauty in a golden, quasi-Egyptian metal bikini. “Is that…”
“Mata Hari. Margaretha Geertruida MacLeod. Falsely accused, tried, and executed by the French for being a double agent—15 October 1917.” Miss Watson didn’t look down at her knitting, instead watched Linda intently. “They needed a sacrifice to their flagging morale, so they shot Mata Hari for being a former wanton during a time of constricting morals as much as anything else.”
Inspecting other photos that hung about the room, Linda decided that some questions were best not asked aloud. But Miss Watson began answering them anyway.
“Marthe Cnockaert, WWI—specialist in explosives.” Miss Watson indicated another image with a flick of the end of her knitting needles. “Sarah Emma Edmonds was an American Civil War master of disguise: male, female, black, white. Manuela Sáenz, 1800s—a fascinating and dangerous woman who destroyed a leader in Peru and was instrumental in creating Simón Bolivar in Venezuela. Nancy Wake, WWII. One of the most highly decorated servicewomen of the war, she topped the Gestapo’s most wanted lists.”
Who was Miss Watson that she had a room decorated with portraits of female spies?
Linda decided that her best option was to keep quiet and sip her tea. Thor, done with his biscuit, looked at her longingly until she gathered him into her lap. He sighed happily and flopped backward with his head in the crook of one of her arms and appeared to fall instantly asleep. He acted as if they’d been together a lifetime rather than twenty-four hours.
The clicking of the knitting needles stopped abruptly and Linda became aware of Miss Watson inspecting her closely.
“What drives you, Miss Hamlin?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. Dogs, I suppose.”
“That answer is too easy, Miss Hamlin. Do you not find it so?”
“I can’t say that I ever thought much about it.”
“Oh, that’s unlikely.”
Linda blinked.
“Come, my dear. You are sitting in a library built upon histories of the exploits of the world’s greatest spies, male or female. Some worked for intelligence gathering, others in undercover roles to take down hated regimes. Some of them hated our nation, yet they too adorn these walls. Runway model Anna Chapman—2001-2010 in London and New York for the Russians,” she indicated a striking redhead posed in black leather pants and a lacy bustier while holding a chromed MP-443 Grach pistol as if she knew how to wield it. “Ethel Rosenberg and Ruth Greenglass—Manhattan Project for the Soviet Union. Wild Rose Greenhow—a noted spymaster for the Confederacy versus Elizabeth Van Lew who served a similar role for the Union. A woman of such caliber as yourself has most assuredly thought long and deeply.”
Miss Watson finally pointed a knitting needle at the center of Linda’s own chest like an attack.
“I’m not a spy.”
“If you were, you wouldn’t be here—though your picture might be. But your illustrious career leaves little reason to suspect your loyalties. My question is rather what are you, my dear?” The pointing needle turned once more to the mundane task of turning linear yarn into a three dimensional object.
The contrast of the inquiry couched as a mild threat made Linda inspect her tea. Her cup was only half empty, but she tested herself to see if she felt woozy or drugged. The room didn’t spin. She felt no more inclined to speak than normal. She closed her eyes and felt no different. She—
Miss Watson snickered quietly.
Linda opened her eyes.
The needles had again stopped clicking and Miss Watson was using an embroidered kerchief to d
ab at the corners of her eyes.
“What?”
“Watching your imagination is lovely, my dear,” she barely managed over her quiet laughter.
“My—” Miss Watson had observed her thoughts. If not a mind reader, then she was certainly well trained in observing human expression. As well trained perhaps as Linda herself was at reading the signals of a dog’s feelings. And that kind of training implied…
She scanned around the room once, twisting to make sure she didn’t miss any of the pictures tucked on shelves or hanging over the mantelpiece.
“Where is your photo?”
Miss Watson’s laugh brightened even more, leaving her unable to speak at all.
“Oh, that will teach an old woman,” she fanned herself with her handkerchief once she had mostly recovered her composure. “After all these years, you would think that I knew better than to make assumptions. You are the first to ever unmask me.” Then she unclipped a gold locket from about her neck, flicked open the cover, and gazed at it a moment before handing it across.
Linda looked down at the two tiny images within. One was of a young and beautiful woman. Though it was black-and-white, it was easy to imagine her brilliant blue eyes looking straight out of the picture from the cargo bay of a Vietnam era UH-1 Huey helo. The other was a closeup. In that one, she looked severely Russian: her blonde hair pulled sleekly back, sitting in the lap of a terribly handsome Soviet-era general with two stars on his golden shoulder boards.
“The first was shortly after my return from my third undercover mission to confirm the number of prisoners at the Hanoi Hilton and other camps, gathering intelligence used during negotiations at the Paris Peace Talks. Sergei, on the other hand,” she sighed softly and a smile lit her features. “Poor Sergei had no secrets from me. Not once did he suspect any of my secrets.”
Linda closed the locket and handed it back.
“You are more than you appear to be, Miss Watson.”
“The best of us always are, my dear. We always are,” she placed the locket once more around her neck and returned to her knitting.
Chapter Four
It took Linda two full days to complete her White House tour and another to walk the outer grounds. Jim, Malcolm’s handler, had been right. Every single moment was humbling.
Each night—while Thor snoozed on her feet in their temporary billet near the James J. Rowley Training Center—she had studied the book of maps until it was embedded clearly in her mind alongside other locations she’d had to scout over the years. It was an uncomfortable feeling to have the White House overlaid in her mind with sections of Kabul and Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan, as well as Mosul, Iraq, where the Rangers had served as “advisors” during the bloody battles clearing out ISIL.
She’d learned a lot these last few days. The Emergency Response Team dogs worked from vans parked around the perimeter of the fence line and from strategic emplacements inside the fence, allowing them to spring into action at a moment’s notice. The floppy-eared sniffer dogs were afforded no such luxuries.
After the half-hour ride in on the Metro, they stopped off first at the USSS offices six blocks from the White House. There they transformed from a woman and her dog into a fully kitted out Secret Service team. Leash was traded for USSS harness that proudly announced Police K-9 on the Kevlar vest that wrapped down over the dog’s vital organs (though it had taken them some time to find one small enough for Thor). For herself it included a six-pound Dragon Skin vest—the best armor in the business no matter what the Army politicians said about the twenty-two-pound “lightweight” IOTV or the thirty-plus-pound full version. Adding basic weapons to that, she was ready for duty—a day on the fences.
It was what she was coming to learn was a typical DC day in January: low thirties rising too slowly to low forties, clear blue skies with a high hint of cirrus clouds heralding incoming weather from the Atlantic.
Thor tugged ahead as they were walking to the fence line.
“Going to be on our feet all day, there’s no need to hurry.”
But he wasn’t listening. Not at all. Instead…
Normally, he wandered about just like any other dog, checking out lampposts and fire hydrants for messages on the dog-pee telegram network. Only when she told him seek did he forget about that and go hunting explosive smells.
But what if he’d found one of those smells on his own?
He still moved ahead in the slight zigzag that so disconcerted oncoming pedestrians intent on their to-go coffee and reaching work on time. But she knew he was weaving to make sure that he wasn’t straying from the strongest centerline of whatever scent he’d found.
Linda risked a quick glance around but spotted no other Secret Service agents on the move. This was really happening and she had no backup. What if she caught up with Thor’s quarry before they reached the fence line? She rested a hand on her Taser, but using a device that delivered several thousand volts into someone wired up with explosives wasn’t her first choice. The secret to dealing with a bomber was to tackle the individual, controlling both of their hands from the first instant, in case they were clutching a dead man switch or reaching for a trigger.
She felt a decade of combat training slip over her like a favorite jacket. The blast of adrenaline made her hyperaware of her surroundings. She began assessing and recording every possible relevant detail from crisscrossing pedestrians to the models of cars moving along the road. Her mind cleared of everything except the moment: possible attackers, assets, terrain, safe hides, minimum threat to innocents.
Thor picked up the pace, weaving less and less as he homed in on his quarry.
He knew nothing of the dangers involved. His sole mission was to locate the explosives and then receive a doggie treat for his vigilance.
Linda eased him back.
Thor proved just how strong his legs were in his drive to move ahead, but she kept him at bay.
They crossed 15th Avenue just north of the Treasury Building. No rental vehicles pulled to the curb where they shouldn’t be. Everyone’s car windows rolled up against the cold morning rather than lowered to allow firing a weapon. Once across the traffic, Thor followed the scent into the pedestrian-only area of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Lafayette Square.
As pedestrians peeled off with each turning, her field of possible targets narrowed.
She was down to eleven. Two blondes with cell phones out and chatting together while barely watching where they were going (unlikely). Three couples, one holding hands and two holding coffee cups (unlikely). Three solos: black wool coat to his knees, gray suit, and brunette with a stylish jacket.
Clive emerged from the underground entrance at the Metro Center station. Though he’d ducked underground less than twenty minutes ago in Friendship Heights at the northwest corner of DC, it was always a surprise. Today, he’d descended in darkness and emerged in the light. Sunrise happened so much faster in the winter here, especially when compared to San Francisco.
Though it felt as cold as a San Francisco fog.
A pleased shiver rippled over him. It made him experience a touch of homesickness even if there was no longer any reason to return. But even that sad reminder enriched the flavor of the breaking dawn.
He disgorged onto the street with the other Washingtonians, bursting forth from the escalator like a hundred fronds of a chocolate lacework, dispersing into ever-tapering clumps but joined by others until their overlapping paths created an invisible lacework upon which the city was laid.
Interconnections.
He still hadn’t resolved his dessert for the State Dinner, but he liked the word “interconnections.”
He had consulted with Chef Klaus about it. As Clive had feared, no neat answers to the dessert had been forthcoming, but for his troubles, a chocolate course had been added to the front of the menu. That alone had required most of a day. He’d started with an old Jacques Torres recipe that his mentor had cooked for Julia Child’s show as a young man: carameli
zed bananas in a milk chocolate soup with a baked meringue topping. It was good, reliable, but it was a dessert soup and Klaus wanted something for the first course. He didn’t have much luck adapting it, so he finally abandoned the idea and went looking elsewhere for a first-course chocolate solution.
As the White House’s head chef, Klaus was insisting on a European menu, which made the various Mexican chocolate mole soups unwelcome candidates. After a long afternoon of experimentation, Clive had finally recalled a white chocolate-pomegranate baba ghanoush that he hadn’t made since school. A little testing, and now with a much more experienced palate, he had created a very pleasing dip by the end of the day. It was Middle European rather than strictly European but, with the substitution of individual miniature French baguettes rather than pita for the base, Chef Klaus had agreed that it was acceptable—high praise for him.
Another day since he’d met Linda had been filled with processing chocolate. The concher had finished a batch of Forastero nibs and had needed a thorough cleaning before he could start on the rare shipment of Criollo that had come in from Venezuela. That country was in such disarray that he rarely got his hands on any and he missed the flexibility that the rich flavor provided.
Then, he’d made a batch of chocolate-dipped lemon-coconut macaroons. The First Family was always partial to their sweets after returning from a trip and he tried to keep them pleasantly surprised.
He wasn’t sure quite what had happened to the last day since meeting Linda with Thor. Perhaps daydreaming about the brunette whose dog had led her into his shop for such a brief instant. And the incredible way she had softened as he fed her chocolate. Softened…then hardened faster than an overchilled ganache. Gone so quickly that she almost hadn’t been there.
Off the Leash Page 5
