Dilya's Christmas Challenge

  Dilya’s Christmas Challenge

  a White House Protection Force story

  M. L. Buchman

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  1

  Miss Watson had considered painting a giant spider web on her door. If it wouldn’t draw undue attention, she well might have. Room 043-Mechanical in the White House Residence’s lowest subbasement had nothing mechanical in it, at least nothing that a building engineer would ever care about. Good cover because the best cover was a bland one.

  Her small desk had once belonged to Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Harry Dexter White, who had run the Silvermaster spy ring for the Soviet Union for years. Her walls were packed with every biography or interview transcript from a spy going back to the early days of the American colonies. The rubbish about The Craft that consumed so much of the CIA’s libraries—written by analysts and others even less informed—were not to be found within her four walls. She also kept a number of the more gruesome tools of the trade on display to remind her of just what horrors the human psyche was capable.

  But even at her age, a woman wasn’t supposed to feel like Moriarty—Sherlock Holmes’ greatest opponent—curled “motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.”

  She rarely left her office anymore, instead listening only to the information that flowed into her domain rather than gathering it. She allowed only a few bits, a very precious few, to flow back out. Maybe she’d paint the spider web in blacklight or some other ink that wouldn’t show. But she’d know was there.

  It always surprised her when a thread was activated that she hadn’t anticipated. When the computer beeped she dropped a stitch in her knitting in surprise—a nice bit of double-sided colorwork scarf recalling a long ago sunset along the shore of the Black Sea.

  Assumptions are dangerous, she reminded herself.

  She forced herself to pick up the stitch and count to make sure that everything was put to rights before she answered.

  “Hello, my dear.” Her screen lit to reveal one of her favorite people. Major Emily Beale (retired—at least according to most official records) had a mind that worked so differently from her own. For that reason if no other, Emily would have been very useful to her. But as a force of nature in her own right, the immensely skilled and well-connected woman brought far more assets than most could muster.

  However, she should have known a call was coming. It wasn’t unusual for Emily to call from her Montana ranch, but it was strange that she herself had no inkling of what the topic might be.

  “Hello, Miss Watson. How are you today?”

  “Oh, I’m good my dear. Very good. Thank you for asking. Is there something amiss that I’m unaware of?”

  “Not likely.”

  Miss Watson couldn’t quite resist smiling at the compliment. “I don’t know that you’ve ever made a social call before.”

  Emily’s grimace communicated a great deal. It wasn’t social, which was disappointing. But she saw in how Emily’s eyes shifted to the side, beyond the breadth of the screen she’d be using, that Emily wished it had been. She was such a sweet woman.

  “Emily, dear child…” Miss Watson merely said it to herself, but saw Emily react much more strongly than expected.

  A laugh?

  A hysterical one?

  Major Emily Beale was not the sort given to hysterics.

  “Tell me the reason you called, then we can talk about why you should have called earlier.”

  Emily nodded, “I’m worried about Dilya. She keeps placing herself at risk. I don’t want her to create a situation that’s over her head when she’s too young to know what she’s doing.”

  “That child was never young. Such potential.” She regretted the last as soon as she said it aloud. She could see the sudden wariness in Emily’s eyes—so protective of the teen, despite the girl being adopted not by her but by one of her teammates. That protectiveness was one of Emily’s great strengths. Her own instincts were far more honed to self-preservation.

  Dilya, as a seventeen-year-old war orphan, was much the same. She’d been afforded the best training imaginable: her deep involvement with the fighting elements of the Night Stalkers 5th Battalion D Company, who had rescued her originally. Her placement in the White House as a nanny and then the dog minder for the First Dog had placed her in the way of exceptional information. Her skills at passing through a room unremarked were truly exceptional. It definitely reminded Miss Watson of her own, long ago youth.

  And most importantly, Dilya possessed the sharp mind to go with it.

  That girl’s mind… Yet Emily had a point.

  “The girl is so independent. Perhaps too much so.” How different would her own past be if she had learned to rely upon others? Even occasionally?

  “Too much?” And there was Emily’s limitation. Her definition of success was the survival of her team and the destruction of her target. She was terribly linear. Independence was a lesson that Emily only thought she had learned. She had been embedded in teams her entire life.

  “Yes. She knows a great deal more about depending solely on her own judgment than even you, my dear child. Despite your deservedly decorated career. And don’t we both know about some of the decorations you can never admit to.”

  Emily’s bland expression would be a sufficient denial—to anyone who hadn’t spent a lifetime surviving by studying human body language. She almost considered pointing out how easy she was to read for a professional, but decided that there were some things Emily would be happier never knowing.

  Dilya’s strength was in her covert gathering of knowledge. But oh, the price that was paid for such a gift. Miss Watson both envied and pitied the girl.

  “Dilya has carefully positioned herself to know more than everyone around her,” Miss Watson continued, more to herself than Emily. “I even hold a hope that someday she—”

  Not yet. She didn’t dare think that far ahead. Hope often hurt as much as it helped.

  “Well, never mind that now. I believe that you’ve raised a valid question and I shall give it some thought. It is Christmas soon. Perhaps I shall give her a Christmas gift.”

  Emily looked relieved to hand off the problem. Miss Watson found that trust to be the nicest compliment of all, it actually warmed her old heart.

  “Now, my dear. Let’s talk about what’s troubling you.”

  Through the rest of the conversation, Miss Watson wondered at how curiously innocent Emily was. She was one of the finest warriors Miss Watson had ever met, yet she was curiously unaware of what it meant to be a woman.

  One thing Miss Watson envied her was motherhood. She herself had launched a hundred women on their careers in espionage, giving birth to their nascent dreams of adventure, danger, and intrigue. But she’d only given her own heart once—and the price that the Cold War had exacted upon her for that single mistake had been a chilly one indeed.

  “No woman as beautiful as you with two lovely children and such an exceptional husband can doubt that she is in the prime of her life,” she assured Emily.

  There was so much she herself had lost.

  Lieutenant General Sergei Kulakov of Soviet Union’s KGB First Directorate had unwittingly taught the United States more about the Soviet intelligence operations than any other man. As his mistress, she had siphoned away his secrets until it destroyed his life. Like a Stalinesque purge, he and his family were era
sed from history by the Soviet regime—from re-doctored photos to a “training accident” that had leveled his Black Sea dacha with a firebomb. To this day she didn’t know where the leak had come that destroyed her best source and the love of her life in a single, vicious stroke. Whereas Emily…

  “And I must compliment you on the fine job you did helping your husband transition to retired life. You are much better with people than you think you are. You picture yourself so austere and remote, yet people are drawn to you anyway.” The pain swelled in her chest until she feared it really would kill her. As they had never been drawn to her. Except for that one time. There had never been a man for her like Sergei. “I remember such a time of reflection shortly before I died.”

  “You…died?”

  “Oh yes, dear. Any number of times,” Miss Watson shook off the memories. She was the reason they had bombed the dacha, to kill Sergei’s mistress. Some instinct had sent her racing away across the Black Sea in a tiny open boat that stormy December night. That instinct had saved her life, if not her heart. She nudged her tiny Christmas tree on the desk, so bright and cheery—it didn’t fully mask that old memory, but it helped. It was impossible to look at it without smiling.

  “It is an easy way to cover your tracks in an on-going CIA operation. But I’m referring to when I let the CIA itself believe I had died.” Because she desperately needed to stop thinking about her cherished Sergei.

  “How did they take it?”

  “Oh, it was a lovely funeral. I have a star up on their wall, which is quite an honor in my business.”

  “And they still don’t know about you surviving?”

  Not a chance. She’d die for real before she’d work for the cretins now in charge. The CIA was no longer about national security or even trade security. It was all about political gain, which she had no stomach for.

  “There comes a time in a woman’s life where one must move closer to the heart. We aren’t men, after all. You’ll want to think about that, child. You are a woman grown. You’ve fought for the right, and done the duties that a man does. For great achievers like us, struggling within a society not ready for us, we must now come to terms with being…ourselves.”

  “How did you do it?”

  She’d been babbling. Now, having professed her evolved state, she certainly couldn’t admit to lacking such. Instead she offered her best enigmatic smile.

  “Oh, I became your weapon,” Emily had thankfully jumped topics. Perhaps her thoughts were more creative than Miss Watson had previously given her credit for. “All those additional black-in-black ops. The toughest missions—”

  “—Came to you because of your supreme confidence and exceptional abilities.” Oh how she wished she could take credit for Emily’s achievements, they were so very impressive. “Don’t try to make me the wizard behind the curtain of your career, Emily. You are tactically an exceptional woman. It is the bigger picture that slips by you. Dilya is beginning to see her own bigger picture, which is why you worry about her—we fear what we don’t understand.”

  Yes. Dilya. She was the important one, because she had the potential to be so much more.

  “But—”

  “Oh, my dear child. In the later years, you are still yourself. But the challenges are new. You must learn who you, yourself are. Rediscover or, if that fails, discover for the first time, the amazing woman you are.”

  “That’s your advice?”

  “The voice of experience.” And perhaps she’d try to follow it someday.

  “What did you—”

  “Oh no, my dear. It would be cheating to tell,” though she might, if she knew. She had grown to like Emily more than any woman in her past. “Besides, Dilya is far more my daughter than you are—at least in how she thinks. You must discover your own woman.”

  “Why doesn’t that feel helpful?”

  “Because you’re still thinking as if you live in a man’s world, challenging the status quo.” And if she didn’t help Dilya see that soon, the girl would walk the same horrid path she had. By seventeen, she’d already been recruited and embedded in the depths of the Vietnam War. JFK, such a pretty man, had asked what she could do for her country and she’d joined the CIA. For forty years she’d done the horrific and the unthinkable.

  “Miss Watson, are you—”

  “It is time I sent for Dilya.” She needed to shift the girl’s path—immediately. She could only hope she wasn’t too late to turn Dilya from the fateful missteps she had made in her own long-ago youth.

  “Miss Watson?” Emily sympathy was sweet but misguided.

  “Go see your family, dear.” She cut the connection and listened.

  Not to the noises of the dishwashers flushing water through the pipes that ran along her ceiling. Not the low hum from the massive air conditioning units across the hall. None of her alarms were lit. In fact, at the moment even the laundry and the sub-basement usher’s office were unpeopled.

  Normally she liked it when she was the only person on this level. At the moment, it left her feeling cold and…old.

  2

  Dilya had never been called by Miss Watson before. It was a strange experience.

  She was in the curator’s library on the White House Residence’s ground floor. It lay down the hall from the kitchen, between the Secret Service room and the library. When the call came, she’d been poking through the records and trying to find out just how much trouble she was in for letting First Dog Zackie break the small antique table in the hallway outside the First Lady’s secretary’s office. Especially because she’d supposedly been over in the Residence that morning and not eavesdropping on the second floor of the East Wing.

  She’d hoped it was a reproduction and not a 1789 Thomas Sheraton original, but the photo she’d just found in the curator’s library wasn’t encouraging. It was late at night, so the curator and his assistant had gone home hours ago, not realizing that Dilya had breezed in one door to wave hello and not breezed out the other on her way to the Chocolate Shop as usual. It was one of the advantages of creating predictable patterns, it made other people have assumptions.

  Then the assistant curator’s phone range.

  She’d frozen in place for the three rings, then it stopped.

  She knew that voicemail took over at four rings, so she didn’t think anything of it…until the senior curator’s phone rang three times.

  On the third round of ping-pong between the two phones, she gingerly answered one.

  There was nothing but silence…and the sound of dishwashers draining through overhead pipes.

  All she said was, “Yes, ma’am.” before hanging up the phone. The White House was quiet tonight, but she avoided the stairs by the kitchen. Instead, she slipped out the curator office’s back door and down the two flights of steps—perhaps the least used in the entire White House. She circled twice around the elevator machinery space and ducked into the lone bathroom at the east end of the lowest subbasement.

  Five minutes later, she stepped out. She’d long since observed that most people grew impatient after two minutes. Even most of the Secret Service agents would start looking around by three minutes. By five, almost everyone was bored out of their skull. They’d start moving about, making noise. When she stepped back into the hall, there were only the noises she’d cataloged in her thoughts as “typical” of this level.

  Nothing changed as she found her way to Room 043-Mechanical and slipped in through the narrow opening before shutting the door behind her.

  “Took your time, girl,” Miss Watson sounded almost stern.

  “You’ve never called me before. I decided that I’d better be cautious.”

  Miss Watson harrumphed thoughtfully. She was never the sort of woman who would grunt, but it seemed to carry meaning—but nothing that Dilya could interpret.

  “Have a seat, child.”

  Dilya used to welcome that diminutive—most people discounted and thus ignored children—but at seventeen, she was finding it less
than charming. Especially from someone close to her. But one didn’t lightly correct Miss Watson.

  She slipped onto the chair and idly wished Zackie was here so that she could scratch his head. He loved her without question or judgment and there were times she needed that. Even her parents would ask about school or boys…as if setting a trap without meaning to.

  “What’s that?” Dilya bit her tongue, but the little Christmas tree on Miss Watson’s desk was very peculiar. Tiny rectangular boxes of red-and-green wire had been stacked up to make a foot-high cone. Miniature blinking lights had been woven through them.

  “It’s a lobster pot Christmas tree. And, yes girl, sometimes it is best to just ask the question.”

  It was one of the first things that Miss Watson had ever told her that didn’t ring true—there was a strain in her voice as she’d said it. Dilya would have to keep an ear out for why. She also made a note to herself to look up more information about lobster pots. She’d seen lobsters arrive in the kitchen for White House state dinners and knew they’d never fit in these. The entire tree wasn’t much bigger than a lobster.

  “A gift from a friend.”

  She’d never thought about Miss Watson having friends, but she supposed everyone did. Of course, everything Miss Watson ever said contained a double or even a triple meaning. Friend. Did she herself have them? It was hard to tell. Her world was defined by the adults of the military and the White House, and by the President’s and Vice President’s newborns who she was a nanny for. Super busy when they were here. Time to observe things when they weren’t. Though lately she’d come to appreciate that people observed the baby in a room, but not the person carrying her.

  High school had garnered her no friends. The stigma of working personally for the First Family had marked her as an outsider from the beginning, even in the most elite school of Washington, DC. It had also taken her too long to understand that there was such a thing as competitive sports. Her life in war zones had taught her that only victory mattered—only survival. Her intensity didn’t go over well in harmless games. She’d learned to temper that instinct, but not soon enough. She’d scared her classmates and they didn’t forget that easily.