The Night Stalkers White House - Books 4-6

Chapter 2-3

“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?”

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.

Almost without thinking, she followed the sound with Zachary close beside her. Zachary. Some part of her had let go of “Mr. Vice President” and she’d have to be careful that it didn’t escape out into the world. That would be too disrespectful. But internally she decided that she liked Zachary Thomas very much.

Silent Night led them down corridors thick with red, green, and white poinsettias, then through a passageway beneath an arch of massively blooming purple bougainvillea. The soprano was joined by a larger group of voices as Good King Wenceslas accompanied them past a miniature Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, and a gorgeous model of the Conservatory complete with tiny plants and bonsai trees visible through the miniature greenhouse roofs. And now that she was looking for them in their tour, the constant hum of trains was everywhere as they clattered around tree trunks and ducked out of sight under banana leaves bigger than the length of whole trains.

Zachary Thomas playing with trains in the basement. It was easy to imagine him so, despite his lofty office. Even easier to imagine him with a child or two to join him.

They reached the main Garden Court where they’d first entered, looking almost sparse now after touring through the jungle’s lush growth. A small stage had been backed against the main entrance. The aisles had sprouted folding chairs in every nook and cranny. There were perhaps a hundred of them, mostly filled.

On the small stage a dozen men and women crowded close together. Three of the women wore sparkling red gowns, the other three an elegant green. The men, typically, had it easy and all wore very sharp-looking black tuxedos. At first she thought they were a choir, but spotted no violin or percussion though she could hear them clearly. Acapella. One of the men was beat-boxing a drum kit with his voice and a woman trilled like a fine set of strings to accompany the other voices. The effect was magical.

Zachary guided her to a pair of seats at the very back, close by an exit. The Secret Service agents arranged themselves in doorways and stood against the back wall, only Harvey remaining close by—clearly ready to throw himself in front of the Vice President in case there was mad caroler in the crowd.

She could see the effects of the Vice President’s presence propagate slowly forward through the crowd. One head turned, then another. In moments the back half of the audience was glancing their direction, barely watching the concert.

“Zachar—Mr. Vice President?” she asked him softly. All of the attention was unnerving her.

“It’s okay, Anne.”

She’d almost used his name. A heat rose to her cheeks that was partly from the crowd’s attention but partly from her own presumption.

“They’ll get used to it in a moment.”

She didn’t like being looked at so much. But after a few whispered comments between companions, most turned away. Some waved. The Vice President waved back pleasantly, but quickly returned his attention to the concert. More than one of them snapped a photograph.

A photo of the Vice President.

No, of the Vice President and…

“We have to go,” she whispered fiercely and started to rise.

“Why?” he kept her in place by wrapping his other hand over where hers was still tucked inside his elbow.

“They’re taking pictures.”

“They always do,” the Vice President remained perfectly calm, keeping his voice soft enough to not disturb anyone on the other side of the two-seat buffer that the Secret Service was maintaining to all sides.

“They’re taking pictures of us. Don’t you get that?”

“My dear Ms. Darlington, they’ve been doing that since the moment we stepped into the Conservatory.”

“They have? But the media…” How had she not noticed that? Was she so oblivious?

“You mean the social media—ten times faster I assure you, though curiously it is generally kinder. I am single. I have been known to escort beautiful women before, though none quite as startling as you. It will give them something to talk about.”

“The only thing startling about me is how out of my depth I am.”

On the farm she’d have noticed someone pulling out a camera. Visitors to the farm always wanted a photo with one of the Darlingtons, but it was done with a Southern politeness and they almost always asked first. Here there must have been a thousand surreptitious snaps with camera phones. It would be all over DC already. Picked up by the national media by tomorrow and…

“I’m so not ready for this.”

Zack felt contrite, but not very. This sort of attention was mild compared to when he took someone to a restaurant or other public venue. He considered leaving as Anne had suggested, but he didn’t want to. He was enjoying the music; the group was very good, though their current early Baroque Christmas ballad was less to his taste. And he was very much enjoying her company. She had used his name rather than his title with an easy familiarity that few women achieved and never on a first date; well, almost had.

Date?

Yes. It felt like a first date. And a good one if he was any judge. Her hand still remained lightly trapped between his own and his elbow. He liked that as well.

She wasn’t one of the typical DC women he was used to—who were very focused, very goal-oriented. Over the last five years he’d briefly dated a State Department senior analyst, a Judicial Branch mediator, and a serving Air Force captain from the Pentagon’s Southeast Asia division. Everyone was driven by a force that the Coloradan in him found exhausting. There was never a down moment. There was never only one thing on the table. And all of that was backed by the directness of a DC insider that left room for little else.

When Anne had concentrated on the plants, she’d looked at nothing else. She had no agenda, hidden or otherwise. Her questions when they spoke weren’t about politics. In his world, he had to watch every word he said because it could be used by his date later to make a cutting point or to feed the media. Instead of speaking with infinite caution, he’d told Anne Darlington about the train set.

He’d never told anyone about that, not even childhood friends who would have gone nuts if they’d seen the elaborate setup in the Thomas’ basement. It had been his and his father’s alone. Zack had spent endless hours building miniature landscapes, shaping two-percent grades, and forming tunnels through tiny mountains. They’d used the smallest train gauge—the tiny Z, where a seventy-foot engine was reduced to a mere four inches long—allowing for the maximum complexity in the space they had—a twenty-story building scaled to just under a foot high in the Z-gauge world. Whenever General Thomas had come home, Zack had barely been able to contain himself until after that first night’s dinner when just the two of them would go down and inspect the results of Zack’s efforts.

His father might spend half an hour inspecting all the changes if he’d been away for a long time. He’d run trains over any new sections and they’d both check for performance and realism. The general’s highest form of praise would be when he rolled up his sleeves and say, “Looks as if we’re ready to start the next section.”

Zack came to the Conservatory each year not for the concerts, or even the models of DC landmarks, but instead for the trains. They were mostly the bigger O-gauge, whose eighteen-inch long engines always felt clunky to him, but still they were very well done. It made him both nostalgic and a bit sad; which were the two emotions he most associated with Christmas.

His father was presently stationed at the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida but was often in DC. Their few dinners together were awkward, quiet, and now very infrequent. That his own son might someday be the next Commander-in-Chief had raised another wall of formality, as if there hadn’t already been enough since the day Zachary Thomas had entered the academy and become a very junior officer who saluted every time his father appeared.

Yet he’d told Anne Darlington about the trains. She was smart, beautiful, and funny—the last something he definitely wasn’t used to. She also offered a genuine warmth that made her stand out even more from his prior experiences.

The Congressional Hearings’ rendition of I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus had him looking over at Anne. She was singing along silently, again simply in the moment. He almost leaned down to...but they were in public and he had no wish to embarrass her further. Never before had he needed to think about keeping any physicality carefully out of sight behind closed doors. Anne made him think again.

All he’d expected was a pleasant evening spent cheering her up. Instead, he was on a first date and wondering like an overeager teen if he might get a kiss at the end of the evening. The group broke into a racy rendition of All I Want for Christmas Is You.

She happened to glance up at him and immediately started laughing. Her merry tone loud enough to make several of the nearer concert goers turn to look.