Flower of Destiny
a White House Protection Force romance story
M. L. Buchman
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About This Book
Sergeant Nadia Bhatti and her Secret Service yellow Labrador Toni are always looking for trouble—it’s their job. But they never expected to find it during a morning exercise run.
Director Herman Finegold of the National Herbarium seeks two things: an eastern wood-pewee bird sighting, and anything else to distract him from the terror of presenting a Memorial Day public lecture.
But when the dangers turn very real, can a historic flower save the day?
1
“I’m on a quest.”
Nadia Bhatti spun to face the voice. She would have leapt out of her skin if she hadn’t been trained not to. When she stopped running, she’d been alone with her dog…or thought she was. Six a.m. Just past dawn in Washington, DC’s National Arboretum was a splendidly quiet place to be. Typically
She made a quick sweep to make sure it wasn’t a setup. Him, her, and Toni her yellow Labrador retriever.
By a trick of dawn light and tree shadow, the stranger had been hidden barely two meters from where she’d stopped. Something she absolutely shouldn’t have missed.
No obvious weapons.
Hands in clear sight, both holding a book. For a moment she feared that she was about to be proselytized, then saw that it was a Sibley’s birding guide. The last thing of importance was a set of binoculars hanging across his chest where she’d normally wear an FN P90 submachine gun. Part of the standard dress for a Secret Service officer.
He stood five-seven, one-sixty, deep brown hair and eyes, a neat-trimmed beard and mustache. Lightly olive skin: Arabic or Jewish, probably the latter. Good-looking without being especially handsome. Her training had her automatically noting the ten other common features that a sketch artist might ask if they had to profile him later. Overall face shape, nose, attachment of earlobes, eyebrows, and so on. His clothes were neat tan khakis, worn sneakers, and a t-shirt that proclaimed, “Come to the dark side, we have cookies.”
“I spoke because I didn’t want to startle you.”
“Thanks.”
“You didn’t startle at all.”
“I was trained not to.” Then Nadia cursed. She tried not to let civilians know she was “other” except when she was on duty. She knew how to behave in her Secret Service gear, with she and Toni in their Kevlar vests, scouting whatever event venue needed to be checked for bombs. Dressed as herself, she never knew how to behave.
She eased back off full alert and continued with the reason she’d stopped…while keeping an eye on the interloper. Who actually still hadn’t moved, making her the interloper on his morning bird watch.
It was already over ninety degrees—fast headed for another May record breaker. She ran a hand over Toni’s flanks to make sure she wasn’t overheating. Nadia had to keep a careful eye on her because, being a lab, she’d never complain until she collapsed with heatstroke.
Unlike her mother who’d been complaining on the phone this morning, “DC and I are having hot flashes. I can feel its pain.” Then Mum had launched into far too much detail. “I’m going to die of heatstroke from within before I have a grandchild.”
She had three from Nadia’s sister, but Nadia had long since learned not to draw comparisons. Amara had made marrying well, baby making, and pleasing Mum into an embarrassing trifecta. Amara had always been the perfect daughter, making anything Nadia did automatically not good enough—such as joining the Secret Service rather than their family’s top-rated food truck business. Of course, Amara’s equally perfect husband, Avi, had turned out to be a chef with an MBA. He’d renamed them from Mumbai Delicacies to Food Truck India. “You must hit ’em between the eyes!” His favorite marketing statement.
He’d led them from two trucks to ten and was gearing up to take on Baltimore and Charlotte. It was a real pity she liked him, because it made it harder for Nadia to be angry at her sister for once again showing her up.
“Trained not to be startled,” the stranger seemed to be tasting the words. “That’s an interesting thing to practice. I mostly practice how to avoid people. I’m trying something new, my new quest: identifying bird sounds. Hear that?” He twisted left and pointed.
All she heard was a clutter of birdsong.
“Pee-a’wee! Bright and sharp. There! Again!” He seemed quite excited. Handing her his book, he swept up his binoculars and searched a nearby dogwood.
She checked him again. Had he intentionally filled one of her hands in preparation for an attack? If so, Nadia could find no evidence of that.
The book still had a price tag on the cover. She opened it to a bookmark, and the binding crinkled.
“New to birding?” Why was she extending the conversation? Because her mother would have said it was only polite to do so.
Toni had laid down on the damp grass, but her head was still perky—not overtaxed at all. Though they needed to get moving before their muscles froze up. It was another kilometer back to the car and then a long day awaited them. Memorial Day was coming soon and that was a major event in the nation’s capital, or rather a lot of major events. It meant the Secret Service would be at nearly the same level of duty as an inauguration. All of which required an immense amount of preparational work—her and Toni’s specialty.
“I started this morning,” the man continued staring through his binoculars at a tree less than five meters away where absolutely nothing moved. “It’s tricky because this Chinese dogwood, Cornus kousa, has bloomed and it gives the bird many places to hide. But it definitely favors this tree.”
It was indeed in full flower, sheets of white seemed to drape over the thick underlying green leaves.
“I’m Herman, by the way,” he didn’t turn from his inspection as he spoke. “Herman Finegold. It’s spelled F-i-n-e, not F-e-i-n as you might expect, coming from the German. It was probably changed when the family came over in the 1800s. We landed in DC in 1870, escaping the Franco-German wars, and… I’m talking too much, aren’t I. Sorry, I do that when I’m nervous. I’m shutting up now.” He lowered the binoculars and hesitantly reached out to take his book.
Nadia passed it over. And wondered what to do with all his words or whether it was best to simply run away, as she’d been doing in the first place.
“You’re very pretty,” he didn’t look up from flipping through his book, but instead hurried on as if he’d spoken only about the bird. He flipped some more pages, then turned the book and held it out for her to look at. “See? That’s the eastern wood-pewee, Contopus virens, very easily mistaken for the western wood-pewee, C. sordidulus, except their call is quite different. Tsee-tsee-tsee-peeer in descending scale. For the western that is. It’s their call, not the eastern’s which is—”
She saw it! A small bird, that she’d have said was a slender swallow with a grayish chest, perched on the dogwood close behind Herman Finegold, spelled F-i-n-e, and released a loud Pee-a’wee, proving its species. Herman leapt in surprise and the bird fluttered away before he could turn. She caught the book before it could plop down onto the dewed grass, then handed it back to him.
“I missed it, didn’t I?” He sounded so dejected that she didn’t have the heart to laugh.
Then he laughed at himself and she liked him for it.
“That bird has been doing this to me all morning. I didn’t think it was personal, but now you’ve proven the point. I think
that’s enough of that.” He snapped the rubber cap on his binoculars.
2
And more than enough of sounding like an idiot.
Thankfully, she’d missed his mumbled compliment. Though she really was remarkably striking. She had the breathtaking skin, dark eyes, and long ponytail of pitch-black hair that Indian women made look so effortless. Even without noting the athlete’s body in sleek runner’s clothes, she was enough to make him completely tongue-tied.
Clearly.
Talk about the wrong thing to say. Thing? Things! He was worse than a babbling brook once he got started. Was it any wonder that he did his best work alone in a basement? Maybe he could just tell the Arboretum director that he’d died, then he’d never have to emerge again.
“Why did you start bird watching this morning?” Even her voice was pleasantly melodic, the only hint her heritage had left on an otherwise local accent.
He uncapped and recapped the lens to keep his hands busy. “I have to give a speech for work. I don’t give speeches. Actually, it’s worse than that. I have to give an entertaining hour-long lecture and I don’t give lectures.”
“Instead you mostly practice avoiding people.”
She had been listening, which was a bad sign. He actually wasn’t much used to that either. “Most people I speak with are botanical archivists like myself.” Not beautiful women trained to not be startled.
He looked at her, down at her dog, then back up at her. No leash. Not only didn’t they startle, the dog must be exceptionally well trained. It didn’t take a genius, especially not in Washington, DC to understand what she was.
“You’re Secret Service.” Then he swallowed hard. “Was that okay to say aloud?” He looked around quickly, but all he could see was a pair of joggers just now coming into view from the dwarf conifer collection. Then he realized that she’d already been watching them. Even her dog’s head was tracking them.
The silence between the three of them was unnatural until after the joggers passed. Was she about to do some crazy karate thing and throw him to the ground for speaking it aloud? They might be the same five-seven, but he had little doubt that she would make his demise appear both effortless and graceful.
“That’s fine,” her attention returned to him. “It’s not a secret that we’re Secret Service. Toni, that’s with an I not a Y as she’s a she not a he, and I, Nadia, also with an I not a Y because that’s how Mum spelled it, are in the Uniformed Division. We dress much like any other policeperson when on duty. Except our vests say Secret Service,” she tapped the center of her chest which presently said Nike.
“Oh,” he couldn’t think up what else to say.
“Are you lecturing on birding?”
“No. I…” Herman sighed. He knew when he was hopelessly outclassed. “I’m just used to working with others like myself. Academics. Nerds. The Director of the National Arboretum wants me as Director of the Herbarium to give a talk to our major donors. I thought that trying birding might get me more used to… I don’t know what I was thinking. Trying something new?” Like talking to a beautiful woman without sounding so much like…himself.
She smiled at him for a long moment, then held out her hand.
He shook it, surprised by both the strength of her hand and the calluses borne of using it.
“From one painful introvert to another, I wish you the best of luck.” Then she snapped her fingers.
Toni sprang to her feet and they both ran off to the south and were soon out of sight around the curve toward the Asian garden collection.
He barely noticed when the eastern wood-pewee chirped at him from the kousa.
3
Nadia almost skipped her run the next day.
Captain Baxter was already turning up the heat on the dog teams even though Memorial Day was still a week away. For him, it wasn’t just enough to check out an arena, hall, street, or whatever event area shortly before the crowds arrived. They had to be pre-checked until every dog and handler knew each twist and turn, and could find the exits blindfolded. She was surprised he didn’t make them do it with both feet tied together. Or perhaps that was only in advanced site prep.
But she knew herself well enough to know that she shouldn’t skip her morning routine. Running had always been her escape, her break from reality. She’d discovered track and field in high school. The more she trained, the less time she had to spend in the family business. Besides, she hated cooking.
Mum would always fuss and fuss, never satisfied.
Yet, the way the family told stories, it always sounded as if her sister Amara had served her first three-course dinner while still in the womb.
Nadia had learned not only that training for races gave her an excuse to keep away. But if she won more, it led to higher-level competitions which stretched out the season. She’d eventually run right through All-state and Georgetown University Division I. She’d been scouted for the Olympics, but instead had run her way into the Secret Service. Within two years she’d had a dog, and certainly hadn’t looked back to the food trucks she’d left behind—as much as possible—at fourteen.
With all of the pressure at work, their morning run was really the only time she and Toni had to themselves. So, they ran.
When she came up around the dwarf pine garden this time, she spotted Herman by his silhouette against the white-flowered dogwood. To his credit, he wasn’t following her with his binoculars. In fact, as soon as he spotted her, he squatted down out of sight behind an azalea.
She eased to a walk and tapped a finger against the small of her back to make sure that her slimline Glock 48 was easily accessible.
He stood back up as she arrived.
“Hi,” he held out a half-empty water bottle. She didn’t take it. At his feet was a flexible dog bowl, filled with water. In his other hand he held a couple of dog biscuits.
It wasn’t needed, but Nadia signaled Toni to stay close by her side rather than go to the water bowl.
Herman slowly lowered the water bottle. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know you,” Nadia said it carefully, and kept her hand casually behind her back as if stretching, and less than two inches from her sidearm.
“But—”
“People attack Secret Service dogs.”
“They do?” If he was an actor, he was a particularly good one. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to do something nice for you.”
“Why? Because I’m ‘very pretty’?”
“You heard that, didn’t you? I was kind of hoping that you hadn’t. Not that it’s not true, it is. You’re breathtaking. But I didn’t mean for that to… Oh crap!”
“Why, Herman?”
“Because you were nice to me and I wanted to do something nice for you. Does that sound hopelessly lame?”
Nadia considered. It didn’t. She held out her hand. He handed her the water and the dog biscuits.
The biscuits were Blue Wilderness Buffalo, about the most expensive and best brand around.
“Do you have a dog?”
“No. I bought them for Toni.”
She sniffed the water.
“I just opened it.”
She sniffed the biscuit, but didn’t detect anything off. When she held them out to Toni, she looked at Nadia as if she was crazy. Toni had been trained to detect hundreds of different explosives from simple fertilizer-diesel combinations to highly elusive Semtex. Right, if they were poison, Toni might have no more idea than she would.
“Gute Hund.” Good Dog. And she handed over the treats, hoping that she wasn’t making some awful mistake.
Toni crunched them happily. Then she looked up at Nadia, and Nadia pointed toward the bowl. Toni gladly drained it.
“Ihr Hund spricht Deutsch?”
“What?”
“Your dog speaks German?”
“Yes, but I don’t. Except dog commands. I speak those. Except I should have understood that. Spricht! To Speak, is her command to bark.”
Toni stopped in mid-l
ap of the water and barked sharply.
“Gute Hund,” she reassured Toni who’d been surprised at the command and was looking around for why she’d been asked to speak. She eyed Herman suspiciously.
Rather than risk speaking again herself, Nadia took a sip from the water bottle. Before she caught herself, she had drunk back half of what was left. When she tried to hand it back, he signaled for her to finish it.
“Uh, thanks.”
Toni lay on the ground and, apparently detecting no threats, lay her head on her paws and went to sleep in that one-second on-off mode that she seemed to have.
Nadia returned the empty bottle after Herman retrieved the foldable silicone bowl. He slipped both into a small cloth bag.
“Sorry—” they both said at the same time.
“For what—” they stumbled over each other again.
Nadia held up her hands palm out and waited.
“I’m, uh, sorry that I didn’t think about how careful you have to be to keep Toni safe. What were you going to say?”
Nadia couldn’t help smiling, “I was going to say much the same. It felt weird not trusting your kindness. I’m sorry about that.”
“I completely understand…now that I’m using more than two of my brain cells at a time.”
“More than two? That’s better than I’m doing this morning.”
And it was his turn to smile at her.
“How’s the presentation fear level going?”
“Oh, right on track. I’ve graphed it before, though for lesser events. I’m aiming for full-blown panic in just seven days—late Sunday night. By Monday morning when I start speaking, I’ll be over that and into deeply resigned. The talk itself will be something of a blur, even though I love the topic. I’m told that I’m actually an ‘okay’ presenter, but I never seem that way to myself. ‘Okay’ is better than ‘awful’, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll be so relieved by the end of the talk that I won’t mind the kibitzing afterward. Then Monday evening, I’ll feel an exhilarating false confidence that will last until the next time I’m asked to speak.”
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