Off the Leash

by M. L. Buchman

Linda yanked Thor away before he could even sniff it. MWDs often carried ten or even twenty thousand dollar bounties on their heads in war zones—fifty times the average per capita yearly income in Afghanistan. She’d never heard of anyone poisoning a Secret Service dog, but Thor was not going to be the first.

  She reached for her taser, even as it sank in that the voice was familiar. A clump of silver hair spilled out of the tattered hood of the woman’s knit sweater and caught the streetlight. Bright blue eyes watched her intently.

  “Miss Watson.” Dressed like a bag lady, complete with a couple of badly scuffed plastic bags and wearing enough layers that she looked quite fat. Earlier she’d looked, well, it was hard to remember. Matronly? Without the voice, Linda never would have recognized her.

  “You were expecting Greta Garbo?”

  “Was she one of your spies?” Linda let loose her hold on Thor and Miss Watson once again offered the biscuit, which he happily took.

  “She was before my time. The stories are very conflicted about her, just as everything else was.”

  “But…”

  Miss Watson smiled. “Yes, she was deeply involved in very private ways—she did more than many in the fight against Hitler. Shall I repeat my question?”

  “Please don’t.” She picked up some of the biscuit that Thor had broken off and dropped into her lap, holding it out for him to take once more.

  “In that case, I will inquire as to the progress of your thinking about our would-be bomber.”

  “Is nothing secret in the White House?” Then Linda remembered who she was talking to and sighed. “My current, private theory is that he wasn’t a bomber. The X-ray of the briefcase showed no signs of a trigger mechanism or timer. It did create the opportunity to pat down both of the diplomats and if they were hiding something like a trigger, it was well done.”

  “So, you have two men who carried four kilograms of explosive through an area well known to be patrolled by explosives detection dogs.” Somehow Miss Watson knew about that observation as well, even if it hadn’t shed any more light on the Secret Service’s thinking—though Secretary of State Mallinson had poured forth a lecture that was equal parts conspiracy, xenophobia, and accusations of the Service’s incompetence.

  “Yes,” Linda rubbed Thor’s nose and received a freezing cold sneeze in her face as a reward. She sighed and wiped it away. “And yesterday I was able to trace them using the traffic and surveillance camera feeds backward from where I picked up their trail. They didn’t ride the Metro, instead merely passing it. They had indeed walked directly past the Secret Service Headquarters building. We spotted them emerging from a cab. We managed to trace them backward through two more cab rides—all three were short, within the city limits. Prior to that, their trail disappears as if the film had been snipped.”

  “And your thoughts.” Miss Watson didn’t make it a question.

  “My thoughts?” Linda’s thoughts were that if she could undo one thing in her life—any one thing—it wouldn’t be her parents, it would be hurting Clive. But if ever she’d killed off something good so thoroughly that it could never recover, that was it. “I don’t have any thoughts.”

  Miss Watson didn’t even bother to scoff as she had during their first meeting in her basement office. Instead, she held her hands out for Thor to sniff to prove they were empty of any second biscuit. He sighed and laid his head on Linda’s chest to go to sleep.

  “My thoughts are… Someone just wants to mess with our heads. Tomorrow, next week, at some point, they’re going to actually do something and this event was merely to lay down a false trail. But whether it is to Japan, China, or freaking Tajikistan, I have no idea.”

  “Oh dear,” Miss Watson said as daintily as a British mum about to serve tea and confronted by poorly cut cucumber sandwiches.

  It was only then that Linda wondered if she’d actually been cleared to tell that information. The fact that Miss Watson somehow had an office in the subbasement of the White House—a clandestine one of long standing—said volumes about what she could do. But Linda had no spycraft of her own to estimate whether Miss Watson was good, bad, indifferent, crazy, or some sort of quadruple agent.

  “I had rather feared that. However, I suspect that it will be far sooner than a week from now.”

  Linda swiveled to look at her more closely. “What do you know that I don’t?”

  Miss Watson’s smile was rich with innuendo and an unlikely humor considering the situation.

  “Ha. Ha. Ha. I meant about this situation.”

  “I know about a certain chef who has just arrived at the White House at an unprecedented hour by his standards. As to the other…” She reached out and squeezed Linda’s hand with a very surprising strength, enough to dispel the frail, old woman persona. But she didn’t speak.

  Linda couldn’t think about Clive being in the building shining right in front of her. Too close. Too real. So she set it aside.

  But what did Miss Watson know? Far sooner than a week from now.

  The pieces weren’t connecting yet: a block of C-4 without being a bomb, a Japanese diplomat without being a Japanese diplomat, a flight for two to China as the first leg of a trip that would end who knew where.

  Then she got it.

  “It’s not just related to the upcoming talks. It’s about the upcoming meetings between Vietnam, Japan, and…” But even as she was saying it, she knew it was about something more.

  It wouldn’t be enough to merely disrupt the meetings—they’d just be held at a later date in another location.

  However, if she wanted to permanently disrupt or damage the talks, or use them to showcase that no one was out of reach of whoever the true aggressor was, how would she go about it?

  The meetings themselves? That wasn’t very exciting. Horribly damaging, but missing that newsworthy hook. She worked with enough embedded war reporters to know they were always after the hottest hook. “What’s the bin Laden-moment here?” always came out of their mouths at one time or another. Modern warfare was rarely about bin Laden-moments. It was about slow and steady attrition: one leader here, two weapon suppliers over there, a dozen fighters, an armored vehicle.

  But if she was setting up a scenario specifically designed to create a bin Laden-media moment, she wouldn’t do it during any dull meetings.

  That left…the reception in the Residence and the State Dinner itself.

  She swallowed hard. Both would require attacks inside the White House.

  The State Dinner. Unless bipartisan slaughter was on the menu, it would be a hard situation to control. Would all of the potential targets even be at the same table?

  That left the predinner reception on the Second Floor of the Residence.

  “It’s got to be—” Linda turned, but once again she and Thor were sitting alone in the center of Lafayette Square. She looked down at Thor.

  “Between Miss Watson and Dilya, I really wish they’d stop doing that.”

  He offered a sleepy woof of commiseration.

  Clive had chased Linda. But by the time he’d dressed and raced out the door, she’d had too much of a head start and he didn’t know where to begin looking for her.

  He stood on the corner, slowly chilling down until he felt the ice form inside him as well as his freezing breath outside.

  Everything had made such perfect sense just minutes before—a clarity of vision so clear that it felt prescient. He’d never believed in such things, though his mother had teased him about it often enough.

  How did you know I was going to say that, Clive? Are you clairvoyant?

  No. She’d simply said the same thing before when he’d done something equally stupid. He never forgot a word she said, even if he was slow to actually follow the advice. Which was too bad in retrospect—he’d eventually learned that most of Mom’s advice had been good. He could use some of it now, but she’d died last spring. Her weak heart had made her so frail that the progression from cold to flu to pneumonia had been terrifyingl
y fast…and final. She’d died lying in a hospital bed clutching the cherry blossom scarf he’d knit for her, but she would never have a chance to wear. He’d buried it with her.

  A passing thought that he wished she’d lived long enough to meet Linda just drove the knife in deeper.

  And now as he stood in the freezing cold of the Washington, DC, night, he could feel the scars freshly opened.

  No such thing as love.

  She was wrong. He and his mother had had it—he still missed her as if she’d died yesterday. Maybe his father hadn’t cared. He’d been at sea when she died and done no more than cashed the check for his share of her meager estate when he returned. He’d never even bothered to contact Clive. But that didn’t negate that there was such a thing as love.

  At a loss for what else to do, he’d entered the Metro and headed to work.

  Now he stood in his kitchen and couldn’t make sense of anything here either. The ingredients for a new dessert were still out on a prep table—the one that would be all about his heart. And his alone. He couldn’t even see how the pieces fit together anymore.

  He sat and put his head on the table.

  What had he done wrong?

  Fallen in love?

  It was real. He could feel it like an agony in his chest, all curdled and sour, so he knew it was real.

  But Linda didn’t have a heart. He could see that now. Though he’d met few women like that, he knew men like that—his father for one.

  And Clive thought he’d been so wise, so lucky. Able to recognize the woman who so rarely emerged from the soldier.

  Now Clive understood that there was a reason she was a soldier.

  Tonight he’d seen the other half of her. The part that made the soldier look kind and gentle. The woman who didn’t merely deny love, but denied its existence. That believed it so deeply that she could say what she’d said.

  She’d given him her body, but that was all. As if there weren’t plenty of women willing to do that.

  He raised his head enough to glare at the ingredients: Lindt dark couverture, apricot, ginger… His heart meant nothing to her. She’d just been using him for sex. Never in his life had he treated a woman that way. Even when it had just been purely physical, they’d both known that beforehand.

  Not Linda. Her smile, her actions, her every breath had promised so much more. He’d seen the wonder on her face as she’d touched him. There was so much—

  But there wasn’t. Linda had made that perfectly clear.

  He stood up and stowed the chocolate supplies back in his pantry. Then he began the long slow process of making the biscuit dough for the center of the dessert: reception nibbles for fifty, dessert for two hundred and forty.

  Chapter Ten

  Mallinson had been in the Situation Room when she stuck her head in. He was quietly reviewing classified material for a change. They had a surprisingly pleasant discussion about her experiences overseas. He was an intelligent and insightful man, as long as she didn’t mention the current situation.

  So, at a loss for where else to go, Linda had once again crammed Special Agent Harvey Lieber into Captain Baxter’s office, with Thor at her feet.

  “What do you know that I don’t?”

  Lieber leaned back against a file cabinet with his arms crossed over his chest. “What are you talking about, Hamlin?”

  “How did you know that the attack would be at tomorrow night’s reception in the Residence?”

  Both men flinched and looked at her aghast.

  “You didn’t know?”

  They exchanged a quick glance, briefly suspicious of the other, before understanding that they were both in the dark. They hadn’t known. But…

  “Then why, the last time we met, did you ask if I could pass in a high-society environment if it wasn’t to place me in that reception?”

  Again that careful exchange of glances.

  Linda considered the satisfaction of knocking their heads together versus her career having a future. She could feel that her nerves were frayed. She’d slept little the last two nights. The first night and a half because of Clive’s splendid attentions and the last half because—she couldn’t think about that.

  “We have a source,” Baxter began, then compressed his lips together.

  “A very reliable one,” Lieber acknowledged with equal reluctance.

  “Let me guess, a woman in the basement.”

  “No.” Again the dual blank look. “What woman? Which basement?”

  Miss Watson. Subbasement Two, Mechanical Room 043. Librarian? Spy? Or something else entirely? Linda had no way to know Miss Watson’s role, but something told her to keep that to herself. She held her silence until they got back on track.

  Baxter finally rose to his feet, shoving Lieber aside, which almost pushed him into her lap because there was so little space. It was a good thing for Thor’s sake that he was small enough to fit under her chair. Baxter unlocked the file cabinet, opened the top drawer, and then used a thumb print to open a safe mounted inside the drawer. He pulled out a slim folder with that same scary yellow-and-red fly sheet of an “Eyes Only” file. He handed it to her.

  She opened it while the men reshuffled to their former positions.

  Secure message.

  From: WHPF

  To: Captain Baxter

  Cc: Senior Special Agent Lieber

  Recommend immediate placement of Sergeant Hamlin

  and dog Thor on internal White House patrol.

  Level White protection.

  It was dated the same day she’d passed the course at James J. Rowley Training Center.

  “Who’s WHPF?”

  Lieber merely growled that it was Baxter’s problem.

  “We don’t know. Something set up by the prior administration. We’ve learned that their advice is always good—and I mean always. But we have no idea who they are. They simply came online one day with a note from President Peter Matthews and Lieber’s predecessor Frank Adams that said they had both personally certified the WHPF.”

  “Frank wouldn’t tell me shit about who they were,” and Agent Lieber’s voice made it clear just how happy he wasn’t about that. Then he held up his hands in resignation to the inevitable. “It stands for White House Protection Force and they’ve proven that they’re good at it. Damned if I know where they get their information.”

  Linda could take a good guess. But maybe not. She remembered her two talks with Miss Watson. The matron was definitely in the loop, a piece of it, but last night in Lafayette Square she’d been reaching for answers as hard as Linda had. The simple memo in her hand spoke of a deep knowledge, or perhaps a broader reach than seemed likely from Mechanical Room 043.

  “And Level White protection?”

  Again the snarl from Lieber.

  Baxter, on the other hand, actually smiled at his friend’s upset expression. “It means that while you work for me, you’ve also been assigned undercover to the PPD.”

  Linda could feel the blood drain out of her face. The Presidential Protection Detail? Nobody got on that. It was the gold star times a thousand. Granted only after years of exceptional service.

  “Wait! Undercover? Who else knows?”

  Baxter, clearly enjoying his comrade’s foul mood at having an undercover agent watching his own team, pointed a finger at the two of them. “Us and whoever the hell is behind the WHPF.”

  Linda couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think.

  “We need a way to slip her in. Can’t just put her there as an agent,” Baxter pointed out.

  Lieber looked her up and down with all the joy of inspecting a rotting piece of meat. “She and her dog as special guests for their fine work in Lafayette Square. Give Chief of Staff Cornelia Day a heads up. She’ll alert the President and VP and get Hamlin on the guest list. Leak it to the press—they’ll like a story about that. Do not reveal her true role.”

  “Of course not,” Baxter shot back. She could hear the Duh! that Baxter didn’t give voice to. She w
as starting to see the tight relationship between these two men. Their brotherly snarls back and forth would never be shown in public. But that they showed it in front of her made her wonder just what she’d suddenly stepped in the middle of.

  Then she focused on what they’d just said. A special guest of the First Family? But she’d never met any of them.

  “By the way, Hamlin,” Lieber practically sneered at her. “Reception is tomorrow night. Can’t wear your uniform if you’re going undercover. You’d better go out and buy a dress.”

  Chapter Eleven

  By late afternoon, Linda was out of options. She could have slipped into the subbasement to ask Miss Watson, but she didn’t want to risk intruding on Clive, even if his chocolate shop was two stories above her hidden office. That was too close and she just couldn’t deal with it today.

  There were no female agents on shift for her to ask, not that she really could now that she was spying on them.

  In desperation, she finally had the White House operator track down Dilya for her. Unable to offer any explanations, she’d simply told the girl that she needed help buying a dress.

  “Five minutes at the North Portico,” Dilya sounded thrilled.

  “Too soon. I have to take Thor back to the kennel at the Secret Service building first. Then I can—”

  “No. No. No. You’ve gotta bring Thor, trust me. Make sure he wears his K-9 harness and stuff.”

  “And I suppose I should—” but the line had gone dead. Since she didn’t have another jacket, and it was still cold out, she shrugged on her USSS one. Not exactly subtle, with the six-inch letters across the back, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. She considered leaving her weapons behind, but that felt wrong as well.

  Dilya was there ahead of her.

  “I can’t take Thor into a department store.”

  “Sure you can. Service dog and like that.” Dilya led the way down the driveway and toward the security gate.

  “Maybe I should get dark glasses and a white cane too.”