The globe now burst to life in her mouth, “Oh my God!”
Colby just offered a thumbs up.
Chef Klaus joined them. This time Reggie selected a small sundae glass from the shelf above his station. He poured in a ladleful of the soup so carefully that it didn’t splash the sides. He then floated another of his orange-mint-lemon balls in the middle, topping it with the tiniest amounts of pepper, sour cream, and chives.
The chef inspected it carefully, perhaps for visual effect, then tasted it, showing absolutely no reaction.
Ivy wanted to beat up on him for not loving her brother’s beautiful soup.
He took another spoonful, of just soup this time, and waited for a full thirty seconds after tasting it again. Then he set the glass down, nodded, and walked away.
“Wait! What about—” but Chef Klaus had moved on.
“That’s high praise from Klaus, Ivy.” Reggie actually smiled. “High praise indeed.”
“Because he didn’t say anything awful?” Ivy was still outraged.
“Yep.”
“Well, ignore him. That was really something special, buddy,” Colby slapped Reggie on the shoulder.
Which once again drew Reggie’s attention back to them. Somewhere in the tasting, she’d let go of Colby’s arm, but that didn’t change what her brother had seen. He looked back and forth between them. Maybe Colby was right and they should have run when they’d had the chance. Did the energy between them sizzle so brightly that it glowed like some force field? If so, she should feel much more impervious than she did. Instead she wanted to stare at her feet like a bad little girl.
“How did this happen?”
“How did what happen?” And there was the Colby she knew. His subtle tease, forcing Reggie to actually state what he meant.
“You two. I should beat the shit out of you, Colby. That’s my little sister.”
“Hello, standing right here. I’m not in the third person.”
Reggie ignored her and glared at Colby and looked as if he actually might try to tackle him right here in the kitchen. “Together. How?”
Ivy and Colby glanced at each other. And again there was that hint of a smile that told her Colby was about to zing his best friend.
Even better to zing in stereo.
They turned to Reggie in unison, then, as if they’d planned it and practiced it, they both shrugged and said, “No idea.”
“He didn’t look very happy.” Even by the end of the breakfast he’d served the three of them, Reggie had still been grumpy. Maybe because Ivy had kept poking at him throughout the hurried meal of cheese and mushroom omelets with a blueberry marmalade scone and hot chocolate.
Colby had focused instead on enjoying a White House breakfast as fast as he could. He knew that, with Reggie, it was best to just let him stew on things a while. Despite being his sister, Ivy had never learned that lesson.
“I can’t see why it matters to him,” Ivy grumbled as they retrieved Rex. He scarfed his egg-and-cheese doggie omelet off the paper plate in two gulps. “It’s my personal life, not his.”
“When it comes to protective older brothers and their little sisters, it’s very personal.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be.”
“It would help if I wasn’t his best friend.”
“Why? He already likes you. Better than me sleeping with some stranger.”
“It doesn’t work that way between guys. Besides, I’d rather you didn’t do that.”
“Sleep with strangers? Why?”
“Becoming rather partial to sleeping with you myself, Saint Ives.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“Missed sleeping with you last night.”
“We were working side-by-side all night. Straight through. And we—” she unleashed a tonsil-deep yawn “—have to get back to it.”
“Sure, but I liked the sleeping together part.” And he had—even if it was now most of two nights he hadn’t slept. Holding Ivy was a real treat. If he’d ever dated a snuggler before, he didn’t recall it. Sleeping with Ivy made a man feel as if he was somehow more than a man. Ivy gave a hundred percent of her attention to sleeping beside him just like she did everything else.
“I’m done in. We’ve got to get some shuteye. I’m unsafe to fly at this point.”
“I’ll keep you out of any cockpits.”
Rex had stopped without Colby noticing. Colby hit the end of the leash and still Rex didn’t move, forcing Colby to a halt. His dog was staring down the long Central Hall. They’d progressed most of the way from the midpoint where the Secret Service Ready Room was, back to the Palm Room to return to the West Wing.
Behind them, trotting along by herself as if she hadn’t a care, Zackie came silently toward them over the red carpet.
Ivy laid her head on his shoulder, not even bothering to turn, simply falling asleep because they’d stopped moving.
Zackie traded nose sniffs with Rex, turned around, and trotted back the way she’d come.
Normally Colby would shrug it off. The dog was Dilya’s problem, or the First Family’s. But the little Sheltie was moving with purpose just as she had at the conference center in Florida, after the training Colby had given to Zackie and Dilya. Then the Sheltie sidetracked to sniff a potted plant before cutting over to the other side of the hall.
Colby caught the barest glimpse of dark hair peeking around the corner, then a whispered command echoed down the odd acoustics of the long hallway. Zackie snapped to and continued on her way back to Dilya.
It was too early to play games, but she probably hadn’t sent Zackie to them just as a game—nothing was ever that simple with Dilya. Besides, he liked the kid. The kid who might never have been a kid according to the stories he’d heard about her war orphan past. Despite his exhaustion, he was intrigued.
He unclipped Rex’s leash and gave him the hand sign to move ahead fast.
“Geh Herum! Links!” Go around! Left! He added the whispered command as a last minute thought.
Rex swung left into the first corridor at a fast trot.
Colby began his countdown. Seven.
Zackie disappeared around the far corner where Dilya waited.
Six. Five.
Colby made a point of turning the near somnambulant Ivy toward the exit, but kept his head turned just enough to see down the Central Hall in his peripheral vision. “Wake up, Ives. You don’t want to miss this.”
Four. Three.
The top of Dilya’s head peeped around the corner once more, with Zackie’s nose down by her knees.
He had to pinch Ivy to get her attention.
Two. One.
Ivy startled and turned just as Rex caught up with his target.
With a loud “EEP!” Dilya stumbled out into the middle of the hall. Zackie launched forward as well. Then Rex, emerging from where he’d circled around and run down the back corridor, stepped on Dilya’s foot and leaned into her. She tumbled to the carpet and Rex proceeded to sit on her before looking happily down the hall toward him. He completely ignored Dilya’s protesting laughter and Zackie running excited circles around the pair offering bright yips that echoed painfully down the hall.
He and Ivy strolled back, but he didn’t give Rex the heel command. It was another new behavior, pinning Dilya in place. Apparently you could teach an old dog new tricks.
“Good morning, Dilya.”
She managed a gasped, “Morning,” as she shoved ineffectively at the dog who probably weighed as much as she did.
Rex apparently decided it was a back scratch and began wagging his big tail, beating her about the head and shoulders with it.
“What trouble are you up to?”
“Brea-thing.” Her gasp had devolved to a wheeze as she gave up and crossed her arms over her face protectively.
Colby slapped his thigh and Rex trotted over, eliciting a final “Oof!” as he pushed off. He gave Rex a couple of well-earned treats.
Dilya sat up rubbing her belly. “That was
…so cool. I never saw him…coming. If Zackie hadn’t turned…at the last…second, Rex might have…run me…over.” She spoke quickly despite her breathlessness.
“No. I didn’t give him an attack command. So he just tries to corner the prey, not disable it.”
“That’s good I guess.”
“Why were you stalking us?”
That finally woke Ivy up the rest of the way.
Apparently this wasn’t some amusing dog test. Dilya had wanted their attention for a reason—even if she’d earned more of it than she’d counted on.
“I was told to find you. Quietly.”
“How’s that working for you?” Colby offered her a hand up.
Dilya shrugged uncomfortably as Ivy glanced up and down the long central hall. No one around, even though they could still hear the controlled mayhem coming from the kitchen at the far end of the corridor. Rex’s run and Dilya’s half-choked giggles hadn’t attracted anyone else’s attention.
“Now that you found us,” Ivy turned back to the girl, “care to tell us who told you to do so?”
Dilya shook her head as she attempted to get control of her hair that Rex’s tail had completely tangled. “It’s better if I show you. She’s not the sort of person who is easy to describe. She keeps…changing.”
Colby waved for Dilya to lead the way.
Ivy couldn’t think of who she meant. First Lady Anne Darlington-Thomas was a very steady person—at least on television or when aboard HMX-1. She seemed the unchanging type, actually, very consistently herself. But Dilya didn’t lead them up the main stairs. Instead she cut through the Curator’s Office. Ivy barely had time to take in the space—four desks and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Ever since the Kennedys’ declaration of the White House as a museum, the office of the curator had become the repository of all historical items and in charge of all displays—from the portraits of the Presidents on the wall of the Oval Office to the furniture in the Lincoln Bedroom.
In moments, they were out the other side of the empty office and into the back corridor. From there, the staircase narrowed and led downward. She had no time to see anything of that level, as Dilya led them down once more.
Ivy noticed that Colby had signaled Rex ahead of them and he suddenly veered into a doorway. All she could smell was cleaning products. The steady thrum of massive air conditioning units seemed to echo along the white walls and bounce off the concrete floor like it had been slapped away. But Rex had picked some thread out of the Residence’s lowest reaches.
Dilya stopped at the door Rex had entered.
The German shepherd was sitting in front of an old woman. She sat behind a battered steel desk in a tiny room surrounded by dusty bookshelves. Lit only by a down-focused desk lamp, she should look like an evil spider lurking in the shadows. Instead she looked to be a dotty librarian who had absentmindedly wandered in off the street and never been heard from again.
The walls of books were much more tightly packed than the pleasantly jumbled shelves of the curator’s office. Here they crammed into any available space in apparent disarray. The few titles she could make out in the dim light reflected off the desktop were even more of a misfit than the woman in the basement: The Military Cipher of Commandant Bazeries, Caesar Cypher Quick Reference, and Polygraphiae. Other titles often included: Code, Crypto, Analysis, Enigma… She was in a spy library in the White House basement.
Strange objects hung on the walls above the cases, some even dangling from the overhead pipes that gurgled with rushing water every now and then. Wrong sound for flushing toilets. Maybe they were below the dishwashing room—she didn’t know anything about this part of the White House.
A number of the wall “decorations” were strange, clandestine-looking weapons that she was amazed had made it in through security. Actually, it was a surprise that the woman had been let in through security. Mother Hubbard and her knitting belonged in fairy tales, not a clandestine library on…being clandestine. Except for her eyes—which seemed to miss nothing.
The room shifted Ivy over into Marine Corps officer defensive mode. Something about it sent a chill up her spine. She stepped away from Colby so that they’d have two angles of fire if necessary.
“Oh, no need for that, my dear,” the woman said in a surprisingly pleasant voice for an alien impossibility lurking in the dark of the Residence’s lowest basement. The small desk lamp illuminated almost nothing other than a multicolored sock she was knitting and her bright-blue eyes.
Colby’s arms were crossed casually over his chest, his hand nowhere near his sidearm.
“I expect you’d like a dog biscuit,” the old woman addressed Rex. Then she looked up at Colby. “If you would be so kind as to call him off, Mr. Thompson. I’m not likely to explode, but there are many smells in this room he won’t like.”
Colby glanced down at Dilya, who held up her hands in denial.
“I didn’t say a thing. Miss Watson knows everything.”
Colby tapped his thigh and gave Rex a treat when he returned to his master’s thigh.
Too trusting! Ivy kept her position in one corner and did her best to ignore the prosthetic arm that dangled just over her head.
Miss Watson rose, proving that she was actually quite tall for a dotard granny. Then she and Dilya approached one of the bookcases and pushed on the middle. The cases swung back to either side, revealing a long and cheerfully lit parlor, complete with armchairs, little side tables, and a snug fireplace crackling away beneath a solid marble mantel. The walls were covered with photographs of women, mostly in military uniforms—though not all US military.
Ivy glanced up the moment before she stepped forward to inspect the room more closely. The brighter lamplight from the cozy sitting room illuminated the prosthetic arm above her head. A glint of steel and she was focusing on it differently—not stainless like an armature, rather gunmetal gray. There was a rifle embedded in the structure of the arm, with a barrel that ended flush with the palm. A deadly handshake.
Someone had written across the arm, in neat strokes of violet nail polish, Mission accomplished! All my love, Binky.
Ivy checked quickly, but the strange Miss Watson appeared to have both hands as she lifted a pair of dog biscuits out of a Snoopy cookie jar and offered a big one to Rex and a smaller to Zackie. Apparently she wasn’t Binky herself.
“It’s a pity you’ve already eaten as I just made a lovely quinoa and salmon breakfast torte, but I’ll fix you some tea. I’m sure your nerves are far too jangled from the last few days’ experiences for coffee.”
They were soon settled in chairs clothed in delicate sepia-toned fabric of world maps. With a set of colored pushpins, they’d make fine diagrams for mission planning or mapping out global geopolitical dynamics.
The tea was served in delicate porcelain cups adorned with sweet peas. Dilya, perhaps as part of some innocent-teen-girl disguise that she’d long since blown, was sitting cross-legged on the floor between the two dogs, a hand resting on each as they settled in for a nap. All three of them appeared to trust Miss Watson, which was interesting in itself.
“I expect that you are tired enough that we should postpone any pleasant chit-chat until some later opportunity. You must both come back when you have leisure time and perhaps some more recent shuteye.”
“So, why are we here?” Ivy didn’t like this. She appeared even more grandmother-kindly in the parlor than she had at her desk, but knew far too much. After a long hesitation and a tiny confirming nod from Colby, they settled into the luxurious wingback chairs close by the gas fireplace. Ivy did her best not to imagine that colored pushpins weren’t poking into her own back as her life changed more every minute.
“Terribly difficult to have logs delivered here, so I’ve had to accept a gas artifice,” Miss Watson seemed to be pursuing pointless chit chat despite her prior comment.
Ivy resisted the mild hypnosis the jumping flames offered. It was easy to forget first impressions in this cozy space. Perhaps she’d
have a space like this in her and Colby’s house…though without the rifle prosthesis. And— Without Colby! She really must be tired to think such things.
“On December 4th, 2011,” Miss Watson continued her very pleasant tone, “control was lost of a Lockheed RQ-170 stealth drone named the Sentinel—a flying wing model—while it was patrolling over Iranian airspace. Our government has, naturally, insisted that it was over Afghanistan when it malfunctioned and crashed. The Iranians have insisted that they interrupted its control-and-guidance system deep within their own borders and landed the drone themselves. It took them three years to reverse engineer and copy the aircraft.”
Not so much with the chit chat apparently—unless this was Miss Watson’s idea of charming conversation. Besides, Ivy knew about that drone. There were some who argued that they had simply done a nice job of plastic work for the published photographs but didn’t yet have a working model.
Though it seemed an odd tale for Mother Hubbard to be telling. Or was she Mother Goose? Ivy wasn’t sure. She had grown up on science fiction and dreams of space—which hadn’t helped her fit in with little girls at all. They played with dolls and she built intricate scale models of the LEM lunar lander and the Serenity spaceship from the Firefly TV show.
No. Models that Colby had helped her build. Did he remember that? She hadn’t. Not really. She looked over to see if Colby remembered, but he showed no signs of it. Not that she’d said anything aloud. The flickering fire, hot tea, and lack of sleep were ganging up on her.
“The Iranian’s copy is fully functional, in case you are interested. Not as refined perhaps, but still, very effective.”
So much for the plastic theory.
“Seven days after its initial loss, the President of the United States requested its return. He was very polite, though he was careful to admit no wrongdoing or to apologize. Iran offered to return it free of charge. Actually an Iranian toy manufacturer offered to return twelve of them—in 1/80th scale rubber toys.” She waved a negligent hand toward one corner of her dingy inner office visible through the swung-aside bookcases. Dangling from one of the pipes was a hot pink model of a flying wing drone about a foot across. “You have an interest in drone control systems, Ms. Hanson.”
In the Weeds Page 16