Damien's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  “Might have. And they might have been in alliterative verse as well,” he admitted. “There he is,” he spotted the Beowulf cover. “So I’m not the only arcane one in the building.”

  “And I’m sure those poems helped you be even more popular with the teenage girls attracted to Boy Scouts in uniform.”

  “Not particularly,” he grimaced. Nothing quite cut to the core like a teenage girl’s laugh of amused dismissal.

  “I’d choose Anne of Green Gables or Secret Garden for the historical,” she pointed to both of them, then tipped her head as she gazed up at the tree either thinking or reading titles. “For the modern day, I think I’d have to say Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane.”

  “I…don’t know that one.”

  “It’s about language, especially geographic language, and how it works.”

  He thumped a hand over his heart. He’d fallen for a woman who thought linguistics was worth reading about for the sake of itself.

  “I’ll get it for you for Christmas.”

  That one stopped him cold. Granted it was only four days away, but it was the very first time either of them had spoken of any plans further away than the next meal. It was going to be their first Christmas together.

  “What?” Cornelia was inspecting him with those dark eyes he could get so completely lost in. Could get? That ship already left the harbor, Damien.

  “Christmas. Together.”

  She shrugged, “I’ll probably have to work.”

  “Doesn’t matter. As long as I get to spend it with you.”

  She did that head-tip thing that he’d so come to enjoy. “You are a romantic.”

  “You’re only just now figuring that out?”

  “I’ll bet you want a tree.”

  “Already have one at my apartment.”

  She turned from the huge pine to eye him carefully, “Does it already have a wrapped present under it, just in case you could ‘wrangle’ me there?”

  “It might,” he shouldn’t have admitted even that. What if she was irritated? Or put off? Or—

  She stepped into his arms and kissed him right there in the Library of Congress.

  Life simply didn’t get any better.

  “What am I going to do with you? No, wait. Don’t answer that. That was the wrong question to ask a romantic so close before Christmas.”

  “It was,” he admitted. He knew exactly what he hoped to do with her, both in short- and long-term scenarios.

  Cornelia definitely wasn’t ready for this. She had fallen in love with a romantic who was already thinking of marriage. “That gift under your tree had better not be a goddamn ring,” she whispered to him.

  “Not an idiot. I’m not going to propose in our first month together,” Then that I’m-about-to-be-really-charming smile of his broke out. “I’m going to wait until at least New Years.”

  She fisted him lightly in the gut.

  He spotted it in time, so her fist merely bounced off his hard abs.

  “Where are the tubas you wanted to show me?” Because she certainly needed a distraction from whatever else was going on here.

  “A tuba Christmas is something you hear, not see.”

  “You’re talking about actual tubas doing what, playing Christmas carols?”

  “Exactly. But they don’t start for a bit. Let’s take the ten-cent tour.”

  She had never once planned a date as thoroughly as Damien planned every little outing. He was slippery and she was going to have to watch him like a hawk over the years to come.

  Years to come. Right. Because they’d be working together in the White House together. Though she knew that wasn’t what she’d meant. They had just been discussing wedding rings.

  Well, Cornelia, how far astray can a man lead you in a library?

  She waved for him to begin the tour.

  And he did. Either he’d studied for their date on the off chance that she’d agree to it, or he knew the building as well as any guide. Classic paintings of justice, corruption, balance, and bad legislation.

  From the Visitor’s Gallery on the second floor, she could look down on the Main Reading Room exactly as it had appeared in a hundred movies: three great circles of reading desks around an inner circle of the librarian’s desk. What the movies never seemed to capture was the magnificent dome above.

  “The eight muses in marble,” Damien pointed them out high on the dome’s structure where the great arches came together. “Art, Science, Religion—all women.”

  “As they should be,” she teased him.

  “But the paired bronzes below them, each pair representing the muse above them, are all men: Michelangelo and Beethoven for art, Christopher Columbus and Robert Fulton for Commerce, and so on. See? It’s proof that men are good at getting things done.”

  “Sure, after the women think them up.”

  “Behind every successful man is a good woman.”

  “Because he needs one,” but Cornelia couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder. So who stood behind her? Who stood behind a successful woman, especially if she had missed something crucial and Javad Madani’s warning was real? Who would stand beside her and help her be strong if hundreds or even thousands died because of something she had missed?

  “Don’t worry, babe,” Damien slipped a hand around her waist. “I’ve got your back.”

  Would he if he knew what he’d signed up for? That almost made her laugh. But it would be a sad, morose sound, so she kept it inside. If anyone knew what they’d signed up for on this one, it would be the Situation Room librarian.

  “Oh, there’s something else you have to see,” and Damien was tugging on her hand as he led her deeper into the building.

  In an exhibition hall, a dozen documents were set out in formidable glass cases.

  “This is the first map on which the word ‘America’ appears, 1507. This is our birth certificate in a way, fifteen years after Columbus.” The new continents were long, thin things ranging north and south with a gap between the continents at the Isthmus of Panama, a gap that would take over four hundred more years to create. But there, just below the drawing of a parrot was the word “America”.

  Right next to it was...

  “The rough draft of the Declaration of Independence. How cool is that?”

  Cornelia would have to admit, it was pretty cool.

  “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary…” she read aloud and felt a chill run up her spine.

  “Okay, a little creepy under the circumstances, but look at what Franklin and Adams did to it. Talk about tough editors.” The four-page manuscript had dozens of cross-outs and corrections, all done in flowing pen-and-ink script. No tracked changes on a computer document with annotations asking additional questions to accept or reject. These were strong, definitive edits that had lasted over two centuries.

  Damien was like a boy in a candy store with a twenty-dollar bill. There was too much to show her, too many options. The next room was a circle in a square. It was a high, square room with all of the architectural ornamentation displayed elsewhere in the building, but set upon the intricate blue-and-white marble floor stood a circle of tall, glassed-in bookcases. At this hour they were the room’s sole occupants; everyone else who arrived this late in the evening was here for the Christmas concert.

  “Jefferson’s personal library,” Damien declared proudly as if he’d installed it himself. “He sold it to the country after the British burned the first library along with the White House and the Capitol back in 1814. He kept the books in a circle because he wanted to be at the center of knowledge.”

  Cornelia slowly turned to study the thousands of volumes arrayed there.

  “And they weren’t organized by author or size like most prior libraries. He broke them into forty-four chapters of knowledge grouped under three major headings: Memory, Reason, and Imagination. I would give anything to have been able to sit with him for even an hour and talk about just his classification system.”
>
  Damien’s passion was overwhelming.

  “Why don’t you work here?”

  “At the LOC? Too quiet. That’s the Marine in me. Once I got hooked on intel and current affairs, I just couldn’t turn back. Maybe some day, after they kick me out for slovenly behavior or some crime against protocol like hitting on the White House Chief of Staff, I’ll come here. Over a hundred-and-sixty million items in the collection; it’s the largest library in the world. Did you know that they have every tweet from Twitter filed right down this hallway?”

  “The center of knowledge…”

  “Absolutely,” he tugged her arm until they were in the exact center of the rosette on the floor. “Can’t you just feel it.”

  “When in the course of human events…”

  “Wait, what?” Damien turned to her.

  “We shall cut out their heart with their own words. That’s what Pejman said their source said.”

  Cornelia tried not to be sick in the middle of Thomas Jefferson’s library. She clutched onto his shoulder for support.

  “Damien. We’re standing in the center of knowledge as far as the United States of America is concerned. We’re in a building bursting at the seams with our own words. And we’re not a hundred feet from the first draft of the Declaration of Independence.”

  Damien’s vision blurred with the shock. He’d heard the phrase before, but never given it any credence—until this moment.

  Then his vision, literally, went red. Someone was setting out to destroy the Library of Congress. They were going to destroy a library. This one! Grander than the ancient Library of Alexandria.

  “When? When do you think it will happen?” Cornelia’s brain was still working.

  All he cared about at the moment was murdering somebody with his bare hands.

  He dragged himself back from the edge, forcing his own thoughts into motion.

  “Before our Christian holiday season is over. Maybe we have some time?”

  Damien looked at the beautiful collection around him. A part of him wanted to own every one of these books so that he too could someday sit at the center of knowledge as Jefferson had. No, he wanted to rush the collection out of the building right now so that they’d be safe.

  And then he knew.

  “No, we don’t have time.”

  “Why not?”

  “The last line of Bettani’s report.” He was going to have to kiss her for putting that last line up on the screen—if he lived that long.

  “Shab-e Yalda. Celebrates triumph of Mithra—Sun God—over darkness.”

  She offered him her first-ever laugh in his presence, but it was a harsh and bitter sound that echoed strangely from the glassed-in circle of bookcases. “I guess you’re not the only one with an arcane sense of humor.”

  “Tonight. It’s the solstice. This is Mithra’s battle of the light of Islam extremists over the darkness of the United States of America.”

  Cornelia yanked out her phone, studied the contacts list for a moment, then hit dial.

  Damien did the same. He had the NSA on speed dial.

  “This is Damien Feinman. We’ve been chasing the wrong keywords on this warning from Iran. Check for chatter on Shab-e Yalda.” Unlike Bettani, he had to spell it for them.

  He’d have to remember to tell Bettani that too if he ever saw her again.

  “Ms. Day. How nice of you to call at eight o’clock on a Friday night,” General Arnson’s tone was friendly, but dry as week-old toast.

  What was it with self-confident men and their need to tease women? She didn’t have time to puzzle at it right now and it was probably a simple reality that was pointless to file away for future consideration.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m not sure who to call, but I think we have trouble.”

  “You solved President Madani’s puzzle?” She suddenly had his full attention.

  “We think so. The Library of Congress, tonight, and I didn’t know who better to call.”

  “It just so happens that you called exactly the right person, my daughter and future son-in-law are here for dinner.” Then he shouted in the background, “Sienna. Target is Library of Congress, tonight. Get to the White House and roust the President. Roy, wake up those lazy dogs you work with at the Secret Service.”

  “Damien is already in contact with the NSA, not your daughter the National Security Advisor, but rather the National Security Agency,” Cornelia wasn’t sure why she felt the sudden need to explain the obvious. Perhaps because it was the only way to make sense of what was happening at the moment.

  It was her first inkling that she was afraid. She forced her voice to remain steady.

  “They’re checking for chatter on a new set of keywords.”

  Even as she said it she saw Damien close his eyes and tip his head back in frustration. “Check for frequency versus prior years. It is an annual holiday,” he groaned into his phone.

  “It looks like we have a confirmation on tonight, but he’s still checking.”

  “Well done, Ms. Day. I’ll come meet you in the Sit Room.”

  She had to look around to remember where she was—within the circle of Jefferson’s knowledge. “I’m not there.”

  “Where are you?”

  Her throat was too dry to answer.

  “Shit! You’re on site, aren’t you? Goddamn it! Get out of there.”

  Coming from far down the hall she heart the first blat of a tuba. Warming up. Not music yet.

  Some itch told her that it was too late. That it might be too late to safely evacuate the musicians and the public even now gathering in the Great Hall. Too late to save the library and all of its treasures.

  Damien grabbed her arm. His expression said it all.

  “Chatter confirms tonight,” she told Arnson then hung up the phone.

  “How bad?”

  Damien didn’t shrink under the fear, instead he seemed to grow taller. “Several hundred percent increase in messaging and social media interchanges regarding Shab-e Yalda, but only in the immediate area: DC and Alexandria, Virginia. The rest of the nation is no more active on the subject than usual. They’ve got four targets of interest and are pushing those out to the proper authorities. You?”

  “Sienna, her father, and the Secret Service are all in motion. Sienna will be notifying the President.”

  “Which means—” Damien was interrupted by another deep blat of scales, “—that it may be up to us to solve it.”

  She grabbed his hand and rushed out of the circle of Jefferson’s knowledge, down the exhibition hallway and slammed to a halt against the upper story balustrade that looked down on the Great Hall.

  While they had wandered, the area had been transformed. The three white-marble arches at the east end of the Great Hall were now blocked by scores of tubas. A line of forward-facing sousaphones were along the back. In front of them stood dozens more players, clutching standard, bell-upward tubas to their chests. And in front of them another row was seated.

  “There are the Marines,” Damien pointed.

  In the center section, the Marine Corps Band was dressed in brilliantly red, ornate jackets. The men wore dark blue slacks and the women floor-length skirts. Typical.

  “Shouldn’t they be wearing white hats?” Cornelia was searching for anything that might be out of place.

  “Marines never where their covers, our word for the white hats, indoors unless they’re on duty status and wearing a side-arm in which case they want their hands free.”

  An array of civilian tuba players filled out the spread to either side. They were easy to separate. There were two sections in formal black and white attire—those would be the musicians from the symphony and the opera. Then there was a much less formal and larger group, who appeared to be wearing a variety of high school colors. A wide array of musicians, but nothing stood out.

  The audience was a much more difficult problem. They were packed in around the base of the tree, ranging up the marble
stairs, and now filtering along the mezzanine’s balcony rails until they were close enough that she lowered her voice to Damien so as not to be overheard.

  “Can we evacuate them?”

  He shook his head. “Even if we tried, we’d be sure to create a panic that would get several people injured or killed. And we don’t know when.”

  “Beginning or end of the concert would be my best guess.”

  “Beginning, that’s when I’d do it.” Damien’s flat statement made Cornelia glad she hadn’t been in the military. He’d clearly been trained to consider such matters for best tactics.

  “Is there a bomber?”

  “Yes and no. To actually damage the building or the collection, it would be more than a man could wear. It would have to be much bigger to do more than kill people. But I’d wager that he’s here to make sure it goes off.”

  “Where then?”

  “Well, the Christmas tree is hollow. It’s built around a steel core. What you’re seeing is branches stuck onto the framework.”

  “Magic.”

  He nodded in chagrin. “Yes, that’s how they get it in here. But I was here when they were setting it up—I do that every year—and I saw nothing unusual. It doesn’t have a door in it. They build it from the bottom up and cap it from one of those lifts. They have to take it apart the same way.”

  Several tubists nodded at each other and then began to run scales together. The deep notes were liquid and flowed upward. Soon the entire orchestra was warming up with scales and exercises. The hall rang with the basso cacophony.

  Still Cornelia couldn’t see any break in the pattern…unless the break wasn’t here.

  “Where would their tuba cases be?” They shouted at each other in unison.

  Damien pointed. Across the hall, down the stairs, and out a side corridor. “Meeting rooms!” His shout barely reached her though their shoulders were touching due to the press of the growing crowd on either side.

  She didn’t need his shove to get moving. They raced around the mezzanine. Thankfully the crowds were glued to the balustrade to look down on the concert.

  Getting down the stairs was a different matter. A dozen feet wide with a brass handrail up the middle, it was a solid mass of people heading toward them.