The disappearance cipher, p.1
The Disappearance Cipher, page 1
THE DISAPPEARANCE CIPHER
A DILYA’S SECRET DOG FORCE NOVEL
M. L. BUCHMAN
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ABOUT THIS TITLE
When one of the nation’s top spies disappears, how can Dilya find her? Or should she?
Dilya Stevenson, nanny and dog sitter to the First Family, always trusts herself, her dog, and her mentor—first, second, and third. Everyone else stands outside that circle.
But when her retired-spymaster mentor disappears, Dilya and the First Dog can’t find her alone. To save her mentor’s future, she must reconnect with her own past.
Originally published as a five-story series: “The Race Begins,” “The Library Trail,” “The Catalog Message,” “The Railway Code,” and “The Two-Dog Solution.”
PART ONE
THE RACE BEGINS
1
Dilya tried to breathe but her mouthful of dog fur made it hard.
She didn’t care one bit and squeezed Zackie harder. The Sheltie, which looked like a knee-high, brown-and-white collie, wiggled in her arms, pressing into the hug. Tears wasn’t something she did, a couple times close but…no. Not since her parents had been gunned down in front of her, leaving her to survive in the high Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan as a child. Not even the day she’d found her new family.
“I’m going to miss you so much.”
Zackie made a happy noise in reply as if Dilya wasn’t about to rip out the dog’s heart by leaving. She’d been the official dog sitter for the First Family since they’d been the Second Family and brought a fresh-weaned puppy to DC.
Now she was leaving, and the truth was that Zackie wasn’t hers. The dog belonged to the President’s wife.
“Why are you going to miss her?”
Dilya startled and did her best to wipe her eyes on Zackie’s long fur. Air Force One was such a pain—there was no way to be alone on this plane. She’d come down to the lower cargo deck to walk Zackie as she often did on flights. This wasn’t a long flight, DC to the Tennessee family farm, but Zackie was a Sheltie and didn’t have a calm mode unless commanded to.
Then everything had caught up with her until she’d collapsed on the bottom step of the stairs and hauled Zackie into her lap. She should have moved out of the line of sight from the main deck. But now that she’d been caught, she couldn’t ignore First Lady Anne Darlington-Thomas.
Her catching breath might be masked by the engine’s roar, unbuffered by sound insulation at this level.
“I’m sorry,” she kept her voice under tight control as she looked up and opened her eyes wider so that the water of her near-tears was spread out across her eyeballs rather than squeezed out to trickle down. “I quit.”
The soft smile on Anne’s face fractured than disappeared. She nudged Dilya to the side and then sat on the step beside her. It wasn’t proper, but there was no use telling the First Lady that. She’d grown up on a Tennessee farm. Being from one of the leading farm families of the South had never stopped her from mucking out her horse’s stall.
“Well, it’s about time.”
Dilya had already known how this conversation would go—and this wasn’t it.
“Oh, we’ll miss you and never find a nanny like you.”
“Mirabella tries.” Dilya knew her dry tone could soak up the Potomac River but couldn’t quite mask the sarcasm.
“Yes, she is good,” the First Lady matched her tone for tone. “We needed her when you started college.”
“But not as good as me?”
“Three quarters at the most. Trust me. That’s the best anyone could ever be.” Anne’s humor crashed Dilya’s mood even further. She’d never been more than okay as a nanny despite her best efforts; there were too many enticing distractions. Conscientious? Sure. Even thought she had it down. Until she saw Mirabella playing with the White House toddlers; little-kid-awesome must be in her DNA.
“I’m sorry.”
Anne bumped her own shoulder against Dilya’s in a friendly fashion. She still wasn’t used to being two inches taller than the First Lady. That was simply…wrong.
“Wait! What did you mean it’s about time?”
“I wondered when you’d get back to that. Dilya, you were rescued by the Night Stalkers in Afghanistan when you were, perhaps, eleven?”
She shrugged. Dilya had never corrected anyone about their guesses of her age. She’d always pretended ignorance, as if a kid didn’t know their own age. She remembered how confidently the First and Second Kids both had known when they were free year ol’. When she’d been a war orphan recently rescued by the Night Stalkers, she’d found it an advantage to appear younger than her actual nine—young enough to be easily ignored and forgotten. But her rescuers hadn’t, they’d adopted her instead and become her second set of parents.
Now it was better for people to think her older. Normal girls didn’t graduate top ten at Georgetown University in three years with double majors before they were twenty. School had been the easy part. Living in—and paying attention to—everything around her at the White House, had taught her more than most of her poli-sci or international affairs professors knew themselves.
That had left her plenty of time to pursue Miss Watson’s extracurricular coursework. Her assignments had been far more challenging than anything a university could put together. Of course, what chance did a mere professor have when compared to one of America’s foremost spymasters.
“You came to the White House seven years ago at fourteen—” not yet twelve “—as nanny to the First Lady and soon after as my dog sitter when I married the Vice President.”
Dilya nodded, the rest of that was accurate enough.
“You grew up taking care of our families. It’s time for you to go out and find your own life.”
“I will miss them.” Her glance up and forward included the First and Second families’ children currently napping in the President’s private cabin.
“But they’re only four and you can’t be a nanny the rest of your life,” Anne agreed.
“I wish I could be different. Somehow—”
“Not you,” Anne cut her off. “Mirabella could. She may be with us for years, but not you. I do have one question though.”
Dilya held Zackie tightly in her lap. There were two likely questions and she hated the answer to both. Can I have my dog back and—
“Why now?”
And Dilya felt the abyss open again.
This morning.
A bare room that hadn’t been bare in all her years at the White House.
Mechanical Room 043 in the White House Residence’s lowest subbasement had become the most reliable touchstone of her life, perhaps even more than her adoptive parents.
There lay the hidden secret at the core of the government. Beyond the non-descript steel door lay the most complete library of actual spy craft anywhere. An elegant sitting room hidden behind one of the tightly packed bookcases. And the master spy who had sat at its center, protecting the government that thought her long dead.
She hid her face once again in Zackie’s fur.
This morning she and Zackie had followed one of the many circuitous routes she’d developed to reach the Residence’s deepest level unobserved—only to find it bare. The steel door, that only ever unlocked the moment before her hand touched the handle, had stood ajar.
Inside…no desk. No shelves of books. The bookcases that had hidden the sitting room behind were swung wide. No brocade armchairs. No portrait wall displaying the greatest female spies of history. No sweet pea decorated tea set or Snoopy doghouse biscuit jar with treats for Zackie.
Dilya wondered if she’d hallucinated all her time here, or was hallucinating now when it appeared to be a barren wasteland. She’d doubted until she saw Zackie cock her head plaintively at where the Snoopy jar had rested on a small rosewood table. The echo of her whisper of Miss Watson’s never-spoken aloud name yet another proof this was real. The familiar rush of dishwasher water through the overhead pipes confirmed that at least something here hadn’t changed.
Swept clean.
She’d checked every corner, the top edges of the door and bookcases, the back edge of every shelf she could remove. Rubbed her hands raw across every surface seeking a coded message of some kind. In Dune, the Lady Jessica had found a secret message encoded by bumps on a plant leaf. No plants. She’d even scrounged up a blacklight to no avail. Inside the door frame, outside. Nothing.
Zackie, when given the command to seek, hadn’t managed more than two steps past the door of the room before losing the scent.
At a loss, they’d had to race upstairs by the most direct route and had barely caught the helo from the South Lawn to Andrews, committing the major sin—at least in the standing Marine Corps guardsman’s eyes—of boarding after the President.
Miss Watson was gone.
And to the best of her knowledge, no one at the White House knew she’d ever been there. Someone must, but she had no idea who. Actually, she knew four people who knew her. They’d met her through Dilya, but maybe they knew things about Miss Watson that she didn’t.
You need to exceed me, child—Miss Watson was the only one still allowed to call her that. Think in teams, not individuals. It is my one great failing, don’t let it be yours.
Were her old high school friends a team? No. But they’d been friends. A close-knit group of misfits, all exceptional in their own way. Lost one by one as they attended different colleges. In touch but nothing like they’d been.
Task One. Get away from the known. If someone had taken out Miss Watson, they’d watch every known path for repercussions and aftershocks.
She looked at Anne, her eyes now dry. The fear ran too deep for tears to flow against the pressure. The engines dropped in tone, the nose pitched down, and she could hear the pilot announcing the start of the descent.
“I’m sorry. It just has to be now.”
Anne’s look said that she’d have been better off making up a lie that they could both laugh off as obvious, but there wasn’t one in her. After studying her for a long minute—Dilya knew better than to turn away and prove she had secrets not even the First Lady could be trusted to know—Anne reached out to scritch Zackie’s ears.
The Sheltie lolled her head backward over Dilya’s arm and sighed happily.
And here came the second intolerable question.
“Have you seen the girls with Zackie’s litter?”
And again Anne was never quite what she expected.
They were impossible to miss and, despite the inner churning of her current turmoil threatening to drown out Air Force One’s engines, it was equally impossible not to smile.
The First and Second Ladies had given birth only weeks apart, their girls were now four. And the former First Lady’s daughter was a terribly sophisticated seven. Whenever they were at the White House, all three girls melted into puddles of goo that were inseparable from the little fluffballs. At three months, the Sheltie puppies were not so little anymore.
“We’re going to give a puppy to each one,” Anne continued.
“And the fourth?” It would be a lot of work to train a puppy to Zackie’s level. Over the last seven years she’d had plenty of help from the Secret Service dog handlers and every military war dog handler Dilya could pin down. But it would be wonderful if she could have one of Zackie’s brood for—
“I think that I’ll keep it for myself. It would be a shame to separate them.”
Dilya nodded, keeping her face as passive as she’d done those first days when the Night Stalkers were trying to figure out what to do with the war orphan they’d rescued.
Anne scratched Zackie’s ears again. “She has ended up being far more your dog than mine or the President’s. You two take care of each other.”
Dilya could only gawk as Anne leaned forward to kiss Zackie on top of the snout and then herself on the temple.
Long gone before she could recover, Anne left behind only the light scent of her lovely honey-scented perfume.
2
The plane landed in Tri-Cities Airport, northeast Tennessee. A regional airport barely big enough to deserve the name, but it could handle the big jet and lay less than twenty miles from the Darlington family farm.
She faded from the exodus by laying low and deplaning along with the baggage handlers into the hot summer afternoon—her stomach still too scrunched to take advantage of lunch on the hour-long hop from DC. Anne’s smile and her hand pressed against the window of the Marine One helicopter were the only signs that anyone had missed her from the typical entourage headed to the farm.
After moving far enough away from Air Force One for her phone to drop the plane’s wireless network and hook up to a local cell tower, she placed the call she hadn’t dared try on-board where everything was monitored. A random cell call? Not so much.
Still, she pulled up a VPN and chose an end-to-end encrypted app as a precaution.
Major Emily Beale, supposedly retired, answered on the second ring. “Dilya! How are you?” She sounded pleased. Dilya had never gotten used to the idea that such an amazing person could be one of her friends. The first female Special Operations helicopter pilot for the 160th Night Stalkers—so good they couldn’t keep her out. And that was before she’d been awarded numerous medals, fought wildfires, or now worked for Miss Watson. Dilya also liked it that Miss Watson called Emily my child as well.
“I’m okay.”
“I see. What’s going on?” One of the problems with Emily was that Dilya had never been able to hide anything from her—ever. On the other hand, being the ultimate female warrior, Emily always plunged straight into the business at hand without wasting time, which was a relief. There was a brief rattle of keys, “And where are you?”
Dilya ignored the second question, she’d long since disabled all location services on this device. She didn’t know if even Emily could break through to find out where she actually was, not that it mattered—yet.
“Have you spoken with our friend lately?”
“Hmmm… That narrows it down not in the slightest.” Which was true. But not.
“Our friend,” Dilya prompted. My parents were Emily’s friends but she would have called them that. Your friend might include the former President turned Secretary of State because they’d grown up as neighbors, or perhaps Michael Gibson since he’d retired from commanding Delta Force. Our friend, combined with the fact that she hadn’t said a name outright, would be Secret Service Agent Frank Adams or…
“Oh. No, I haven’t. Not for several weeks.”
Dilya had seen Miss Watson four days ago. She wished there was a wall to lean against for support and her stomach convinced her that skipping lunch had been the right choice. She scanned around to make sure that no one but Zackie lurked nearby. They were alone on the tarmac, at the edge of the security perimeter that now encircled the 747.
Emily waited.
“The room is empty,” Dilya kept it simple.
“Empty?” Not in doubt but as if the word was blown out of her.
“Nothing. I checked every surface.” She hoped Emily could keep following her meaning.
“Hold please,” her tone now almost mechanical. But she didn’t mute her phone.
Dilya could hear it thunk down on the desk, followed by the harsh rattle of computer keys. Then a brief squeal followed by a ringing that indicated a military-grade encrypted phone. More key rattle.
It was three full minutes before Emily came back on. “I’m going to send Michael to you. He—”
“No. He leaves too big a wake.”
Emily laughed. “You don’t know Michael then.”
Your friend, Colonel Michael Gibson, had been Delta Force’s most skilled warrior, might still be even though he’d retired. But if someone had removed Miss Watson, they would be expecting such a player to surface and be watching for him.
Emily and Michael had been the first step along the action-team chain from Miss Watson.
They’d know little or nothing about the intelligence gathering arm, which was Dilya’s specialty, mostly—partly anyway. Dilya didn’t know what she was anymore.
Or the political arm.
Or… Dilya wondered how much else she didn’t know about.
She kept her silence, letting Emily figure it out.
There was a long pause before Emily admitted defeat with a soft sigh.
“What are you thinking?” She’d have figured out why not to send Michael almost immediately, spending the rest of the silence cranking through successively less useful alternatives exactly as Dilya had.
Maybe not exactly.
One thing that Michael and her adoptive mom had taught her, never come at a problem head-on. Emily was a Spec Ops warrior. She and Dad had gone through West Point then flown together. They couldn’t help that. Delta Force had trained Michael to come at problems sideways.
Kee had grown up on the streets of East LA and was now a top sniper for the Hostage Rescue Team—Mom could do anything. Except she didn’t know about Miss Watson. It was beyond weird to think that she, Dilya, could do something neither Emily nor Kee could.
“I need to get moving.”
“Be—” Emily caught herself before saying careful. She knew Dilya would be better at that than even she herself would in this type of situation. After all, Dilya had been trained by both the Night Stalkers warriors and a top spymaster. “—in touch.”
