Zachary's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  On the bed, an explosion had happened with only a small corner of a large knapsack protruding. She didn’t travel with a fleet of suitcases and cosmetic bags and who knew what all women traveled with. By what was showing from the confused pile, she might have been heading out for the back country just as likely as visiting DC. He had the distinct impression that with Anne Darlington a man simply got what he saw without any games.

  And once out of her parka, there was a great deal to like about what he saw. He’d watched her for a long moment before he’d knocked at the open Music Room door where she’d sat so still and at peace. She was neither some sleek urbanite like Cornelia nor a solid girl. Her cobalt turtleneck clung tightly to a balance of strength and femininity that he rather liked and he’d never quite seen so wonderfully melded before. When she’d spun to her feet in the Music Room and faced him, he’d been hard pressed not to do more than glance at her fine figure. Again neither sleek nor voluptuous, merely designed to rivet a man’s attention if he had a single ounce of taste.

  She gathered her parka and, turning, caught him staring at places he shouldn’t be.

  Mind out of the gutter, Zack. Daniel’s sister. Yet he’d been the one to flirt with her, prickly general’s stars indeed.

  They picked up Harvey at the elevator—ex-football running back turned head of the Vice Presidential Protection Detail.

  Impressively, Anne didn’t flinch away. She must have become used to the tight security with her brother’s escort.

  As he and Harvey had ridden up to the third floor earlier, he’d warned Harvey that they might be going to the concert at the US Botanic Garden. It was perhaps the shortest notice he’d ever given to his security detail and he felt bad about that. But Zack wanted to surprise Anne Darlington. Wanted to see if he could erase that sadness. It didn’t fit her well, like a bad choice in clothes. He still wasn’t sure of the impulse that made him think he was the Santa who could wave his hand and suddenly she’d be cheerful once more, but he was here nonetheless.

  He sighed. Actually, he knew where some of the impulse came, but getting on the wrong side of the White House Chief of Staff would not be a good idea.

  “Harvey, please tell Chief of Staff Darlington that his sister has stepped out for a few hours.” Which wouldn’t begin to cover it if Daniel decided something inappropriate was going on, which there wasn’t. He was merely taking a beautiful lady to somewhere warm, and a public concert.

  And he decided to stop thinking about that either way before he was turning in circles worse than a helicopter with a shot-up tail rotor.

  When the elevator reached the main lobby they picked up two more guards. Their dark suits and coats looked like dark blots on the explosion of cheer that had struck the Residence earlier in the day. Paper snowflakes the size of toboggans dangled from the ceiling. Trees almost invisible beneath storms of multi-colored ball ornaments cropped up around every corner. Any vertical feature, whether a column or archway, positively dripped with cheer. It was a very different White House than the years of Katherine Matthews or when a lonely President had lived here by himself.

  They picked up another two agents plus a pair of SUVs when they reached their own vehicle. His traveling doctor and the serviceman carrying the Vice President’s nuclear football—a non-descript leather satchel that contained forty pounds of the most effective communication equipment ever designed—rode in the trailing vehicle. Day or night, he was never supposed to be more than a few hundred feet from the football. One of his only two official duties: break a tie vote in the Senate and blow up the world if the President was out of commission and the US was attacked.

  They climbed into their own SUV and the vehicle’s heavy doors were slammed and locked. They would pick up the last of the escort at the outer gate.

  “How many agents follow you around?” Anne’s whisper barely reached him despite her sitting next to him in the back seat and the exceptional sound insulation provided by so many layers of armor.

  “I’m afraid that’s a state secret, Ms. Darlington. Strictly need-to-know.”

  “And I don’t need to know. Don’t even think I’d want to.”

  Her voice had become so small that he began to worry. A Secret Service escort was a daunting envelope to enter and he’d had five years practice, six if he included the run-up to the first election. “Truth be told, I don’t know either. Unlike some protectees, I don’t try to tell the Secret Service how to do their job.”

  “You were right though,” her voice abruptly returned to normal as they headed out of the White House grounds and picked up a four-motorcycle escort.

  “I was?”

  “Shockingly, yes,” and that initial teasing tone that had so captivated him at their first meeting finally returned.

  “I’ll alert the media. It’s a first. Better yet, tell the President for me, would you? He’ll be thrilled. What was I right about?”

  “Getting out and about.”

  “I’m glad.” Yes, he told himself, being kind to a beautiful woman did work out sometimes.

  “So, these men and women all follow you wherever you choose to go?”

  “They do.”

  “Excellent!” Anne slapped her gloved hands together. “We have a team now. North Pole here we come.”

  “That’s a little farther than I planned for this evening.”

  “Spoilsport!” She may have stuck her tongue out at him, it was hard to tell with the little bit of streetlight that filtered through the tinted windows. “Could you at least have them turn up the heat so that it doesn’t feel as if we’re going there?”

  That he could do.

  # # #

  Anne had assumed they were headed to some stuffy Washington museum or gallery that she’d already visited too many times on prior visits. She’d promised herself to present a happy face because it was a huge relief just to be out, under any circumstances, and away from her own whirling thoughts.

  And it was deeply kind of Zachary Thomas. Rather daunted by the man escorting her, she’d gone right through panic and decided that her only chance at sanity now lay in the land of the ridiculous. The Darlington Polar Expedition had suddenly become the most rational part of her evening. A stuffy museum would get her back to reality soon enough.

  But the first of the Smithsonian museums, then a second and a third were passed by. The National Gallery disappeared astern as well while their craft continued racing up the National Mall toward the Capitol Building. She’d thought a vehicle transporting the Vice President would be more…luxurious. Other than the surprisingly heavy doors—that she’d tried to close herself and was ultimately glad for the Secret Service agent’s aid—the interior was no fancier than the Suburban they used on the farm to fetch important guests from the airport. However, the company now was stratospheric in comparison and her head was still spinning.

  “Why are we going there?” She pointed up and ahead. “Lady Freedom has her butt facing me and I find that rather rude of her.”

  The Vice President ducked down and to the side to peer upward at the top of the Capitol dome. “How did I never notice that?”

  “I thought men always paid attention to women’s butts.”

  “Not when they’re twenty stories up and made of bronze. Now, when they’re as nice as y—” He bit off the words, but it was too late.

  Harvey, the Secret Service agent in the front passenger seat, had a sudden coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

  She didn’t bother holding back and let her laugh loose. At least for a moment. It was cute that the Vice President had just been caught ogling her behind. It was even cuter that he was embarrassed. And then it struck her that he wasn’t embarrassed because he’d been flirting; he had an obvious talent for that—one she appreciated and enjoyed returning. No, he was embarrassed because he had actually meant what he’d been about to say.


  Anne started to ask the next question, but became very self-conscious of the two agents sitting in the front of the vehicle. Keeping her thoughts to herself earned her a couple of worried looks from Zack Thoma—No!—from the Vice President. Which thankfully was all he had time for before the agents announced their arrival.

  She read the sign: United States Botanic Garden Conservatory. Large dark letters on a typical DC sandstone block building.

  “Are you kidding me?” she turned back to the Vice President as the agent opened his door and he climbed out to the sidewalk. “It’s night. The temperature is sub-Arctic. And you’re taking me to tromp through a bunch of gardens coated in ice?” Even though she still sat on the far end of the back seat from his open door, the cold wrapped around her legs.

  “The more fragile gardens are indoors,” he had to lean down to continue speaking to her still in the car as she wasn’t moving. “Trust me, they’ll be warm enough for you to be removing your parka.”

  “So that you can ogle me some more?”

  “I’ll admit that is an advantage to the situation from my point of view. One that I assure you I hadn’t thought of until this moment.” His words sounded sincere, but she could see the hint of a smile exposed by the shining interior dome light that made her suspicious.

  “Well at least you’re owning up to it,” and she didn’t particularly mind that he wanted to; which was the interesting aspect of it for her. Usually men who stared irritated the crap out of her.

  “Now can we move along?” He extended a hand, palm up, back into the car. “The Secret Service gets very nervous when I stand still out of doors, especially as this is an unscheduled visit.”

  If the Secret Service became nervous about having the Vice President exposed, then they were concerned about his safety…as in someone shooting him. She grabbed his hand and scooted out of the car. She was all set to drag him to the Conservatory’s open doors. But she couldn’t.

  When she reached the sidewalk, she could finally see what the Suburban’s roof had hidden. To her right loomed the massive dome of the Capitol Building with Lady Freedom’s gowned backside on clear display. Directly in front of her, the Conservatory’s massive front wall ended after a single story. Above it soared a myriad array of glass and steel greenhouses. There were angled ones, round ones, and in the front and center a gigantic tower of glass that rose a half dozen stories. Inside the glass were masses of foliage lit brightly from within like a science-fiction-in-space forest, all tucked safely beneath mighty glass domes that looked very Old World.

  “If milady is quite done being a gaper…” Zack trailed off but the nudge was sufficient to get her moving. A circle of agents formed up close behind them and they hustled in.

  “How do you learn to live with…” she waved a hand toward the dark night now safely on the other side of the closed doors, “…that?” Daniel’s guard had always been fewer and looser on the rare occasions when they’d gone out on the town together. The size and tightness of the Vice Presidential Protection Detail emphasized the imminent threat that always surrounded him.

  “You don’t. At least I haven’t. But we never talk about it either: the President, Daniel, or I. Odd, but there it is. Now, before us we have an adventure that requires neither sled dogs nor polar-worthy parkas,” he waved toward a cloak room. “Shall we proceed?”

  Anne sniffed the air tentatively. It was warm and didn’t bite at the inside of her nose. It was also moist and rich with intriguing scents. The air hung thick with fresh soil, the clean scent of chlorophyll hard at work making oxygen, and foreign scents of strange plants.

  While the building’s facade had been nearly fortress-like, the interior was impossibly lush from the very first step. There were potted begonias dangling from the ceiling, thick with blooms despite the season. Massive variegated Algerian ivies of green-and-white reached up wrought iron lattices mounted on the walls, granite pathways led between planters thick with exotics where every step was a new adventure.

  Anne had always thought she had a grip on at least the flora of the world around her. The Conservatory had been custom-designed to shatter that illusion. She knew food crops but these plants served no real purpose beyond being joyously cheerful. She would have felt sorry for them trapped in their Conservatory cage but that would lead to a dark place on her own account, so she focused on the plants instead.

  Yellow iris and yellow azaleas she could pin down. The scarlet rosemallow and the African tulip tree she only needed a quick peek at the name placards. The flowers made of bright orange vertical petals with sprays of white cups springing out of them like tiny water fountains mystified her. Lollipop flower—Pachystachys lutea. Nope. Not even a clue. But it was a jungle flower and she’d never been to the jungle—at least not until now.

  The jungle grew inside the primary greenhouse dome and massive trees climbed upward to fill the space. Nor were there simply unfamiliar trees. Their branches also supported other growing and flowering plants, dripping orchids, perky epiphytes, and hundreds of butterflies—they were like Christmas painted by an inspired elf with a palette of a thousand colors.

  As promised, the heat and moisture were lush here and she felt warm for the first time since arriving in DC. There was a pleasant crowded closeness that was lacking in the American wilderness. The only close comparison she had was on a research trip she’d done into the Louisiana swamp and that had a dense, brooding feeling. Combined with a brutal heat and humidity, the swamp was her least favorite place ever.

  The other thing that had happened without her noticing was that her hand had remained looped through the Vice President’s arm the entire time. A time that had passed in a surprisingly comfortable silence.

  She looked up at him, “You’re a very pleasant man to be around, Mr. Vice President.”

  “And you’ve become a very quiet woman.”

  “Sorry, but I do like plants. Each has managed to find a niche and adapt to it. Every one has its own story and I find that fascinating. That the gardeners have managed to make them all coexist under glass in Washington DC is one of the closest things to a miracle it has ever been my good fortune to see.”

  “I thought you were trying to get away from the farm,” his voice was a tease.

  “That’s different,” and she could feel her shoulders tightening up in self-defense as if she was about to be battered by a foul winter storm. “Can we have a subject change?”

  “How do you feel about model trains?”

  “About what?”

  He pointed down as a small train wove beneath the leaves of a massive poinsettia before trundling across a wooden bridge and ducking into a tree trunk.

  “What’s a train doing here?”

  “Did you also miss the buildings?”

  Anne followed his finger as he pointed. DC was on display here, but hidden. Intricate copies of dozens of landmarks worked in wood were tucked here and there among the foliage, tiny windows brightly lit from within. A reproduction of the Capitol Building stood not five feet away and she hadn’t even noticed it among the incredible foliage.

  “It’s no more than knee-high to a rose bush.”

  The building’s great mass had been reduced down, but it was intricate and elegant in dark wood rather than its true white stone. She leaned in and squinted at the tiny Statue of Freedom. “At least this time her butt isn’t facing us.” A different train trundled by—the engine blue rather than red this time and a long line of boxcars—looping around the Capitol before heading back the way it had come.

  Then she glanced over at the Vice President. He was watching her. Not her body, but her face. And he was doing so with a look of surprise.

  “What?”

  “You really didn’t notice all this? It’s the best part of their yearly display. I try to never miss it.”

  “Played with trains a lot when you were a child?”

&nb
sp; He faked an innocent look that didn’t work at all. “Might have,” then his face sobered. “The big layout in the basement was the only thing that Dad and I really did together growing up. Mostly me. He was deployed or here in DC most of the time.”

  “Why didn’t you move here?”

  “Mom’s life is in the Springs. Her parents and friends are there. She’s deeply involved with the Olympic Training Center as well—silver medal in freestyle swimming and a gold in team relay. It was hard on her when I followed in Dad’s footsteps instead of hers, but I can only see that in retrospect. She encouraged me every step of the way. She was a good mom in a distracted sort of way; her life was at the OTC, not at home.”

  Anne hugged his arm briefly to her side in comfort. It felt so natural to be walking with him this way. Like the trains and model buildings, the Secret Service agents had blended into the background for her though they were only a few steps away. It helped that the agents were looking everywhere except at them. Once noticed, they were thoroughly daunting in the dark suits with their radio earpieces. That kept the other people milling down the walkways at bay as well. So it felt as if their conversation was truly private. She looked again.

  “Why are there so few people here?”

  “You mean other than it’s a cold winter’s night?”

  “Yes, other than that.”

  “The Conservatory stays open this late only twice a week and only for the holiday concerts. Tonight it’s The Congressional Hearings.”

  “Are they as boring as that sounds?”

  Before the Vice President could answer a clear voice sounded in the distance. It was a single, high soprano note, that sounded sad and alone as it echoed down through the various habitats of the Conservatory. The opening phrase of Silent Night was incongruously wrong as it reached the warm jungle greenhouse.