A Proposal for Christmas: State Secrets / The Five Days Of Christmas

“Dammit, Goddard, keep your sparkling wit to yourself. Can’t you see that we’ve got the makings of a scandal here that would make Watergate seem insignificant?”

“A scandal?”

“Yes! How would it look if the new president’s cousin turned out to be a traitor? Isn’t it bad enough that her brother sold out? She could be cut from the same cloth!”

David sighed. “That’s unlikely, Walt. It says here that she’s written a book about Scandinavian meatballs. Good God, maybe she’s spying for the Swedes!”

“Stow it.”

“Or the Danes. You’ve got to watch those Danes, crafty little devils, one and all.”

“Goddard!”

“She wrote Fun With Tacos, too, I see,” David pressed on dryly. “Do you think she’s working for the Mexicans? Holy guacamole, Batman—do you suppose they’re planning to rush up here and take back Texas?”

Walt was leaning into the desk, his meaty hands braced against the edge, his cigar stub bobbing up and down in outrage. “I’m glad you think this situation is funny, Goddard, but it just so happens that the next president of the United States doesn’t agree with you! This little lady happens to have a bona fide, card-carrying traitor for a brother!”

David flipped through the rest of the dossier, not so hastily this time. His headache was worse. “Craig Llewellyn,” he muttered.

“You remember him, don’t you, Goddard?” Walt gibed, going to stand at the barred window of his dingy little office.

Remember? David remembered, all right—how could he help it? Craig Llewellyn’s defection had never made the national news, by some miracle, but every federal agent in the country knew the sordid story. “Being Llewellyn’s sister doesn’t make the lady a security risk, Walt,” he pointed out quietly.

“Maybe not. If she wasn’t related to our next president, I wouldn’t be worried. If she hadn’t just spent two months in Iran, I wouldn’t be worried. As it is, I’m damned worried.”

“You’d think the opposition would have caught on to this before the election...” David speculated, thinking of the outgoing president and the no-holds-barred campaign he had conducted.

“They didn’t,” Walt broke in. “I’ll expect your first report early next week.”

“Right.” David stood up and stretched. Every muscle in his long frame ached with residual cold. “Is this operation covert, by the way, or do I just knock on Ms. Llewellyn’s door and flash my identification?”

Clearly, Walt Zigman had a headache, too. “That was a stupid question, Goddard. You’ve been on White House Detail too damned long. Spent too much time walking the first lady’s dog. Of course it’s covert!”

David shrugged, feeling weary. Maybe Walt was right; maybe he was getting soft. Instead of thinking about this case on every level, a part of him was anticipating a day at Chris’s place. The kids would be watching the Macy’s parade on TV. The smell of roasting turkey would be everywhere....

He reached for the dossier. “Can I take this?”

Walt waved impatiently. “Yeah, yeah, that’s your copy.”

David tucked the file under one arm. He supposed it was the forthcoming holiday that was distracting him, stirring up bittersweet memories and half-formed hopes, making him feel far older than his thirty-four years. He tried to imagine Marleen, his ex-wife, roasting turkey or settling a band of freckle-faced rug rats in front of the tube to watch a Thanksgiving parade and couldn’t. “You having dinner here, Walt?” he asked, his hand on the doorknob. “Tomorrow, I mean?”

Zigman grinned around his cigar stub. “Nope. Going to New York to see my daughter. Happy Thanksgiving, Goddard.”

David laughed, though he had a bereft feeling inside. He thought of Marleen studying chimpanzees in Borneo and wondered if she remembered that she’d once wanted to raise an entirely different kind of monkey. “I’ll call you on Monday.”

“Right.”

David stepped out into the wide, familiar hallway, with its lighted paintings and expensively shabby carpeting. In front of the Oval Office, two agents guarded the heavy double doors. He nodded and they nodded back, their faces solemn.

Downstairs, David left the White House by a side door, then strode through the snow-dusted parking lot to his car. At one of the high wrought-iron gates, he showed his ID, even though he was going out, not in, even though he knew the young Marines on duty, knew their wives and their kids and their collar sizes.

Again he felt lonely. Even quietly desperate. As the White House gate clanked shut behind him, he turned up the car radio in a belated effort to cover the sound.

* * *

Holly Llewellyn placed the elegantly scripted invitation in the center of the kitchen mantelpiece. Hands tucked into the pockets of her cozy blue jogging jacket, she stood back to admire it.

“Imagine,” said her friend and secretary, Elaine Bateman, from her chair at the cluttered trestle table. “Being invited to the White House! An Inaugural Ball! Good heavens, Holly, what are you going to wear?”

Holly’s bright, aquamarine eyes danced with mischief and she withdrew her hands from her pockets to push her chin-length blond hair atop her head. “Nothing,” she crooned, striking a cheesecake pose.

“That ought to cause a sensation!”

Holly made a face and went back to the printer set up on the end of the trestle table. She began printing out the pages of “Ka-bobs for a Crowd,” the initial chapter of her new book. “I meant that I’m not going,” she pointed out. “After all, Toby is in school and I’ve got my classes to teach and this book to finish. These recipes all have to be tested and retested, you know. And there’s my newspaper column—”

“Excuses!” Elaine cried, ignoring the finished manuscript, Soups are Super, that she was supposed to be indexing. “Good Lord, Holly, how many times does a person’s cousin get elected president? I can’t believe you’d miss a chance like this! Besides, you’ve got until January.”

The rhythmic whining of the printer was giving Holly a headache; she closed her eyes and ran her hands down the sides of her trim-fitting jeans. “I’m not going,” she repeated sharply.

Elaine sighed in a way that made Holly regret her tone of voice. “Okay, Holl. No problem. Listen, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving—do you mind if I take this home and work on it there? I’ve got a turkey to stuff and ceramic pilgrims to set out in strategic places.”

Holly laughed, able to look at her friend now. “Go,” she said. “And leave the manuscript here. It will keep until Monday.”

Elaine beamed triumphantly, gathering the stack of blue-penciled pages into a neat pile. “You were always a soft touch for ceramic pilgrims,” she grinned. “Are you sure you don’t want me to work Friday?”

“Positive.”

Elaine looked worried now, her wide green eyes watchful. “You and Toby have somewhere to go for Thanksgiving, don’t you? I mean, you’re not going to sit here and brood or anything, are you?”

Holly felt a tender sort of exasperation. “We’re spending the day with Skyler’s parents, worrywart. Hie thyself home, before that husband of yours tries to stuff the gobbler on his own. Remember last year? He cut himself on the giblets.”

Elaine laughed. “Roy means well,” she said, taking her coat from the antique wall rack beside the back door. Shrugging into it, she tossed her glossy brown hair back over her shoulders. “How was he to know that a partially frozen turkey neck can be lethal?”

“How indeed?” Holly chuckled, wondering why she felt so sad. Skyler’s parents were nice people; she and Toby would both have a good time at their house.

“Happy, happy,” Elaine sang, opening the door to leave and letting in a rush of frigid November air. “See you Monday.”

“Monday,” Holly confirmed, smiling hard. But when her friend was gone, she sat down on the long bench beside the trestle table and sighed.

Just then Toby scrambled in from the other direction, still wearing his jacket, earmuffs and mittens. His “Moon Boots” made puddles on the redbrick floor, and he was waving a multi-colored construction-paper turkey in one hand. “Look what we made, Mom! Look what we made!”

From somewhere in the depths of her, Holly summoned up another smile. “Wow!” she crowed. She didn’t bother to correct the little boy, to remind him that she was his aunt and not his mother. She never did that anymore.

The seven-year-old was trying to peel off his winter garb without crumpling his purple, green, pink and black turkey. The cold glowed in his plump cheeks and his china-blue eyes sparkled.

After ruffling his irresistible corn-silk hair with one hand, Holly aided him by taking the bedraggled, paste-crusted turkey while he wrestled out of his jacket.

“I’ve never seen a turkey quite like this,” she remarked.