Damien's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  “This is where Meg Ryan had her fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally.”

  “Haven’t seen that one,” and Cornelia couldn’t think of a single thing more irrelevant to the moment than a fake orgasm—there’d certainly been no need for that last night. The peaks had slammed through her so hard that she could still feel them.

  The more she’d traveled on the way to Katz’s, the stranger the experience had become.

  Flying a helicopter for the first time had been fun and General Arnson’s easy kindness had been a pleasant surprise. Starting her first ever visit to New York City by landing at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport had been a surreal element out of the movies; though the chilly wind off the East River made clear that it wasn’t some glamour moment.

  Somehow, in all of the years, she hadn’t been a part of Zachary Thomas’ trips here.

  Now, after a taxi ride that had made DC drivers seem rational, she was staring at a neighborhood that made little sense. The street’s four lanes were split by a median populated by struggling trees. A few construction barricades were decorated with brilliant graffiti. And several Salvation Army Santas with little steel donation buckets were ringing handbells.

  “I bet only one of these is legit. The rest are just scammers,” but Damien tucked a dollar or two into each the bucket of each Santa they passed.

  The four corners of the intersection they were dropped at had a gentile old six-story brick apartment building, a new twenty-story glass one, a park that there wasn’t a chance she was going to enter without an armed guard, and a shabby-looking one-story wreck with big signs declaring it to be their destination. The neon sign spelled “Katz’s Delicatessen,” but only because it was broad daylight; at night it would have spelled “Kat…’s D…e…n” because most of the bulbs were burned out. There was a painted sign, that really needed repainting, and—

  “Are you serious about this? We flew all this way to come here?”

  “Best Jewish deli there is. Boston? Feh. Tel Aviv? They’ve got no idea. Katz’s is the place. Can you believe that they ship salamis all over the world to overseas service men and women?” He took her hand and she let him lead her across the street.

  It was the first time they’d touched since he’d caressed her behind while he’d still lay in her bed looking like a very smug demigod and she had stood stupidly over him, helpless at his merest caress. It had taken a brute-force will to leave his side. She’d had pretty lovers before, and not so pretty ones. But something about this Marine Corps captain could spoil her for life. So handsome and fit and sure of himself…that she wanted to jump him here and now.

  He held the door for her and the warm air that washed over her brushed away all of her doubts and worries, at least about the meeting place. The air was so thick with smoked meats, chicken soup, and pickles that it was practically a meal unto itself.

  Someone handed them each a ticket.

  “Don’t lose that.”

  Cornelia looked down at it, “Why? Are they raffling off a salami?”

  “No, but they put your order on it. Fifty-dollar fee if you lose it.”

  She handed it to Damien. It was one too many things for her to deal with.

  “What?”

  “My phone is on my dresser and my tablet is on my desk at work. I’m losing too many things today.” Like control of her life.

  “Okay. Do you see him anywhere?”

  “I don’t even know what he looks like. Do you?”

  “No. As soon as I saw his job, I rushed back to you. Besides this place is a zoo.”

  “Some help you are.” But it was a zoo. Saturday afternoon the place was packed; it was actually a good place for an anonymous meeting, if they could ever find each other. A long deli counter ran down the entire length of the sidewall. The main area was jammed with dozens of beige-and-battered Formica tables with equally unworthy wooden chairs. Above the deli hung hundreds of different-sized salamis. The non-deli walls were covered floor-to-ceiling with signed photographs. Some of them were bright and new, others appeared to date from the ’20s and ’30s. There was so much gee-gaw that she couldn’t even focus on the crowds of people lined up at the counter and sniffing around for an open table, their hands filled with platters of massive sandwiches.

  “We’ll let him find us. He clearly remembers you. Food and sit.”

  So they got food. She remembered the President’s request and ordered a pastrami to go and a corned beef for here. When she saw the size of the sandwiches, she wondered if she could even finish a half. Probably not even that with the way her stomach was knotted.

  Soon they were settled at a table with a vanilla New York egg cream, that Damien insisted was the best drink on earth, and a black-and-white cookie, oddly enough called a Black and White, that was nearly as big as her face.

  “He should find us here,” Damien waved upward with half of his Reuben sandwich.

  She had to lean back to read the circular sign over their heads. “Where Harry met Sally…hope you had what she had! Enjoy!” with an arrow pointing directly to the top of her head.

  “Nobody ever gets this table. It’s a famous table. Usually people wait in line for it.”

  “For a table?”

  “Sure. It’s a superstar among furniture, the Meryl Streep of tables,” he spoke around a mouthful of sandwich. “We’ll watch the movie. You’ll like it. Then you’ll be glad that you’re having what she had.”

  Cornelia waited until he was about to swallow. “Does that having include you?”

  Damien coughed, choked, sputtered, then choked some more.

  Cornelia took her first bite. It was good. Really good. She was half tempted to say so when she looked up and recognized a face in the crowd.

  “Oh shit!”

  “Good, isn’t it? I told you it would be.” Several sips of egg cream had managed to ease Damien’s throat enough that an ambulance was no longer a desperate necessity. He’d have to remember to watch out for her sense of humor in the future.

  Then he looked up at Cornelia’s face. It had gone white as the DC snow.

  He started to turn.

  “No, don’t!”

  He faced back toward her, set down his sandwich, and eased his hand inside his jacket and around the butt of the M1911 pistol.

  “Don’t do that either, unless you want to get us shot.”

  So much for being subtle about traveling armed.

  “I’m guessing that is President Javad Madani.”

  “The President of Iran?” Damien was suddenly very glad he wasn’t eating because his mouth had gone dry way past the ability of an egg cream to fix.

  “He’s going to order. Shadowed by two guards. A fourth man is headed our way.”

  Damien managed to turn enough to see the backs of three men approaching the sandwich counter. He recognized the walk of the two who were a step behind—military, well-trained military. Their suits weren’t all that different from the Secret Service dudes. And they were watching the crowd, not studying the menu posted on the wall behind the counter.

  “Ms. Day?” a man asked from close beside Damien’s other elbow—some bodyguard he was turning out to be. The new arrival was in his early thirties and dressed in business casual. The accent was British-English, but with more dynamics—exactly as would be typical of a Farsi speaker.

  “Mr. Pejman,” Cornelia didn’t ask.

  “I am pleased that you were able to arrive. Our—my time, it is very limited. I am just enroute between the UN and the airport. There is a flight that…uh, I must be on in two hours.”

  “Perhaps we should dispense with pretense and you should signal the rest of your party to join us.” And the nervous Cornelia of this morning was gone in that instant. Now she was the smoothly cool woman who had so captivated his attention on her first visit to the Situation Room. Knowing some of what lay beneath only made her all the more dramatic and amazing.

  At Pejman’s signal, one of the guards did come to the table. He snappe
d out something in Farsi.

  “Your bodyguard,” Pejman translated, “may wait for us elsewhere.”

  “Actually,” Damien had briefly considered hiding his knowledge, but then thought better of it. “This ‘asshole’ has no intention of ‘getting lost.’ He is very comfortable where he is.” He took a bite of his sandwich and winked at Cornelia.

  He could see by her sigh of relief that Farsi wasn’t in her repertoire. It was almost a shock, discovering something she couldn’t do.

  “Without trust, there is no purpose,” Cornelia began gathering her plate and the President’s wrapped to-go sandwich. “Come, Damien.”

  “I agree,” a man said as he came up from the side of the table opposite Pejman.

  Damien spun back the other way, reaching for his holster in surprise. Thankfully he managed to stop his hand before it arrived, the other guard already had his hand beneath his jacket and was watching him closely.

  Beside the tall guard stood a small, dapper man with a graying beard and a neat suit. No tie, open collar. He looked like any of the myriad of other businessmen enjoying a casual lunch, except for the two guards probably less than a second from killing Damien.

  He recognized President Javad Madani from his very rare Sit Room video calls.

  Damien very slowly eased his hand back to the table and the two guards relaxed only minimally.

  “Yes,” President Madani continued, observing the action. “Trust can be very difficult.”

  “Then perhaps,” Cornelia remained in complete control, “you will send your guards off to get their own lunches while you join me with yours.”

  He studied her for a long moment, then told the guards to find some food and choose a table nearby but not too close. “And your guard?”

  “He is…” and he could see that Cornelia did not know how to approach this. Marine, librarian, Situation Room intelligence officer: none of those would go well.

  “I am a top advisor to Ms. Day.”

  “He’s my most trusted advisor.” Her smile and President Madani’s nod of acceptance said that they’d cleared that hurdle.

  “May Mr. Pejman join us as well?”

  “As soon as you have your own lunches,” again that perfect blend of courtesy and edge. I am the one in control, but I can be kind. It was a hell of a sexy message.

  One of the guards delivered two plates and two drinks to the table and then retreated once more after giving Damien a foul look.

  The other two men sat. Damien didn’t like Pejman sitting next to Cornelia, but Damien had the seat across from her and the President had taken the one beside him, so whatever danger the man represented, Damien would be hard pressed to intervene quickly.

  He was glad this was New York. A quick glance about the neighboring tables indicated that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had been noticed. If something did happen, it was a city of fearless people, many armed with mace and Tasers. But the only people watching them were the two guards now carrying there own meals to an open spot three tables away where the sign above them said that Bill Clinton had eaten a whole pastrami sandwich, two hot dogs, fries, diet ginger ale, and a decaf coffee.

  “Mr. Pejman,” Cornelia turned to him. “I don’t recall meeting you in Italy.”

  “My apologies, we did not. At least not directly. However, I observed that you were never far from your Vice President and I suggested that you might be an appropriate person with which to make contact. I was unaware of your promotion prior to my call. My congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  Damien almost laughed at the dryness of Cornelia’s tone. Without it, she wouldn’t be here and he wondered how much she was regretting her quick transition to power.

  “Before I forget,” Cornelia picked up without missing a beat. “Our President has asked me to request a message be passed on to your father-in-law.”

  Damien didn’t miss Pejman’s furtive glance across the table. Neither did Cornelia.

  She turned to the President of Iran. “Mr. Pejman is married to your daughter.”

  “He makes her happy. And he will be a powerful man someday, if he remains smart.”

  Pejman tried to sit up straighter than he already was.

  “Then my message must be for you: ‘What can be done to help with this gulf between us?’ I assume this means more than it appears to.”

  Damien had missed that. He had thought it was merely an overly formal phrasing that might be used between Presidents of sparring powers. He’d never have thought to repeat it word-for-word with exactly President Matthews’ intonations.

  President Madani truly smiled for the first time. “I was skeptical of my son-in-law’s suggestion of meeting with a woman, Ms. Day. But I see now that you are strong and intelligent like my daughter. Forgive me, but our culture creates expectations that are difficult to surmount.”

  Damien would have asked for the hidden meaning of the phrase, now that he understood there was one, but Cornelia didn’t. She knew something. No, she knew no more than he did. Therefore she had concluded…what? That President Matthews was confirming a past relationship and letting Madani know that Cornelia had the American President’s stamp of approval; no other information was relevant.

  “However,” Madani’s mood lightened, “digestion does not go well with such topics. Tell me, Ms. Day, are you married?” And he picked up his own sandwich.

  Cornelia maintained the conversation as well as she could. Small talk was not one of her strengths, especially not with everything else that was occupying her thoughts. The gulf between us? Perhaps the Gulf… The Persian Gulf? But that wasn’t between them.

  Her role was also rather mystifying. She had thought she’d had some grasp of what her duties as White House Chief of Staff were. Those duties didn’t have anything to do with a brigadier general acting as her personal pilot, currently cooling his heels at a Manhattan heliport, while she ate a corned beef sandwich with a foreign head of state—an aggressively non-allied one.

  They also didn’t involve having her ankles wrapped around Damien’s under the table while doing so. She hadn’t even been aware of it until this moment. She certainly was not going to think about him or what they had done last night; not while they sat in a New York Jewish deli discussing Javad Madani’s grandchildren.

  “When in the course of human events…” Madani’s tone didn’t change.

  That wasn’t what alerted her to the sudden shift in the conversation. It was Damien’s ankles twitching against hers.

  “…it becomes necessary for people of good will to come together over good food.”

  He’d opened with the first line of the Declaration of Independence, mostly. He’d paused. Waiting for…? Her answer!

  “We the people…” she finally countered with the Constitution, but not of the United States, “…of global good will, must indeed come together.”

  “However carefully,” President Madani countered.

  “However carefully,” she nodded to include that they were having a secret meeting in the middle of a busy deli.

  “This time the storm enters from the Bay, not the Gulf.”

  Cornelia could hear the capitalized words in his soft speech. She struggled for the meaning. The Gulf between us. What if that was the Gulf of Mexico?

  The storm.

  Not Hurricane Katrina.

  A different kind of storm. One involving Iran and the United States.

  The storm of…an attack! There must have been plans for an attack on the United States to which Iran’s president was not only privy, but perhaps essential in preventing.

  And the Bay? New York didn’t have a bay. But Washington, DC most certainly did: the Chesapeake.

  Did this whole conversation have to occur in code? She hoped not. But clearly the first part must be, unless it was a test of some sort. Or a precaution.

  She glanced over at the two guards still watching them carefully from their table.

  Damien followed her gaze then no
dded. “You have well-trained men, Mr. President. Their attention to duty doesn’t waver with time or a good meal,” he waved genially to their own empty plates.

  He was clearly saying it for her benefit. Madani has brought his most trusted men, Damien was telling her, but not trusted enough to tell them who he was meeting with. If the guards knew that she and Damien were from the White House, she suspected that they would either be more relaxed or far more suspicious rather than merely watchful.

  President Madani had asked for this meeting.

  President Matthews had said, What can be done to help with this gulf between us?

  Was President Madani seeking or offering help?

  “I am here,” she was still struggling to connect the pieces. “Rather than…my superior, as normal channels are not…always careful enough.”

  The President remained silent, not correcting her. Not until she made a mistake? If she did, then what? Ballistic missiles raining down from space? Iran was one of the select nations that could launch them. No. Or they wouldn’t be here.

  “Does this…friendly conversation have one side or two?” She had better not be in the middle of a quid pro quo conversation with the twelfth most powerful nation in the world. And she’d wager that they held their cards even closer than North Korea and that in reality they were a few notches higher than twelfth. Perhaps no one was willing to deliver the bad news to the American allies of Canada or South Korea.

  “No conversation,” Madani corrected, “in our modern global economy can risk having only one side.”

  She was going to strangle President Matthews for putting her into this situation. Perhaps not her best idea, as that would result in a charge of treason and a life’s sentence. Maybe she’d…throw away his pastrami sandwich. You go, girl! That’ll show him.

  Cornelia took a careful breath.

  As if knowing her utter loss of how to continue, Madani spoke once more. “But for now, let us speak only of how I may be a friend to you.”

  “Bless you!”

  He nodded his head at her vast relief. “We have learned, by methods I believe inappropriate for a woman to know, that there is an attack coming. It is neither chemical nor biological. I am informed that it is also not explosive or electronic. Rather, it is cultural.”