She walked on, watching her virtual self on GPS map close in on the destination dot, the coordinate numbers ticking closer to her target, while being careful to occasionally look at the ground and not to trip over any graves. Soon, as closely as the app could pinpoint it, it appeared that she was nearly on top of the destination. Again, she detected Eric’s cleverness in the choice. If she crouched, she was safely hidden from view; on one side, an aboveground tomb blocked her from view of the church, and on the other, dense shrubbery shielded her from the foot traffic on the sidewalk. But the satellite map of the cemetery lacked detail, so it didn’t help her orient herself as to which direction she should be facing, and she couldn’t know how faithfully Eric had hewed to the coordinate when he hid his drop item anyway. Since Cady entered, the sun had slipped below the horizon, and the sky was almost dark. She wouldn’t have much more time to find anything at all.
She knelt down and scanned the immediate area for anything interesting or unusual that might have caught Eric’s eye. Straight ahead, she saw a headstone richly decorated, the arc at the top engraved with the image of a radiant willow tree sheltering an urn beneath its graceful branches. Cady read the text in the center:
in memory of
mr. samuel w.
son of col. josiah & mrs.
rebecca mower; of saffrey
n.h. who was drowned in
charles river near this
place, may 31, 1829
at 23 years.
She held back the uncut grass that lay flush with the stone to read the ominous final line:
young friends prepare for sudden death.
She imagined her brother reading this in the last months of his life. This Samuel wasn’t much older than Eric had been. Had he meant to drown himself? Is that what Eric had thought? She hated that he might have been drawn to it.
The screech of a rusty hinge made Cady jump. She peeked around the edge of the tomb to see a groundskeeper locking the gate with a clang. She wasn’t protected from his sight line, so she crawled around to the far corner of the tomb and flattened herself. With her stomach against the cold, hard ground, Cady waited to catch glimpses of the groundskeeper between the tombstones as he walked back to the red side door of the church.
She tried to take deep, intentional breaths, to slow her rabbit heart. “What do you want me to do, Eric?” Her breath made a tiny ghost of his name appear and disappear in the cold air. “Freeze? Get arrested? What do you want me to see?”
The ground was hard and uneven, the grass cold; twigs poked at her, and she felt squeamish thinking of the bugs that might enjoy a cemetery. She was miserable. But Eric had always loved nature. Cady was the history buff, not him. She turned her cheek so she was facing the bushes instead of the tombstones. Then she saw it.
She slowly pushed herself up from the ground and sat back on her heels. Cady reached to touch one of leaves on the bush. Autumn had tinged the bush, but she couldn’t mistake the familiar spade-shaped leaves with serrated edges. Even without its characteristic flowers, Cady knew this plant well. There was a time when three huge pots of them had greeted her daily from her own front porch, without a bloom in sight.
These were hydrangeas.
Cady ran her hands over the mulch below the bush to sweep away the top layer of wood chips. In the soil underneath, she felt something inorganic and soft, like a thin strip of fabric. She tried to pick it up, but it wouldn’t budge; she could get her finger under it but couldn’t pull it out. She dug her fingernails into the dirt and unearthed the top loop of a Harvard University lanyard, just like the one Cady kept her dorm room keys on. She excavated around it with a stick to loosen it from the hardened ground and pulled it out gently like a fishing line, gently so it wouldn’t break, until she freed it from the dirt with its catch intact.
A four-inch black metal canister was attached to the lanyard’s end.
She thumbed the flashlight icon on her phone and propped it against a tombstone. Under the light, she unscrewed the top of the canister, and a flash drive dropped into the palm of her hand, but that wasn’t all. She stuck her finger inside and pulled out a tightly scrolled piece of paper. Her heart thundered in her chest as she unrolled and unfolded it. Cady recognized the handwriting instantly.
I am a research assistant of Professor Mikaela Prokop, her only assistant on her work on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense Project A-147 regarding detection of nuclear substance via electromagnetic wave particles. I have recently come to suspect the preliminary results of this research have been illegally delivered to a Russian operative instead of the D.o.D. agent for whom it was intended. I fear that I have unwittingly participated in this act of academic espionage by facilitating dead drops per Professor Prokop’s instruction. As soon as my suspicions arose, I suspended my obedience to Prof. Prokop and, at my own initiative, I supplied false data at a separate location today to serve as a decoy and buy time. Only this thumb drive contains the real data results of the third trial.
At the time of writing this, I have not been able to determine for certain if a crime has taken place, so this letter has contingencies: I will give Prof. Prokop an opportunity to allay my concerns. If she succeeds, then I will release these coordinates to her to deliver, and you, dear reader, are the appropriate D.o.D. recipient. If that is the case, please disregard the data on the drive you picked up outside the T station, it is inaccurate. These are the real data. I apologize for the decoy, I believed it was a necessary step to secure our nation’s intellectual property. Better safe than sorry.
If Prof. Prokop fails to provide credible proof that she has not been using me to deliver this data to a Russian agent the last two times, then you are likely a member of the F.B.I. Prof. Prokop does not have the coordinates for this location, although she may be continuing her illicit cooperation with Russia via other methods. It was her rule that I alone would choose the drop locations and text them via burner phone to the recipient, she said she was less likely to be targeted by foreign agents that way. I did not realize until recently that this was a measure to protect her plausible deniability in her ongoing contact with foreign agents, and to the lay the foundation for framing me should she get caught. I included the thumb drive with the real results of the third trial as evidence of the legitimacy of my accusation. I assure you I was ignorant of this act of treason until now, my only mistake was trusting my mentor. I have been deceived and manipulated, and by the time you read this, I will have quit my position as her research assistant and cut off all contact with her. I am prepared to cooperate fully in any investigation. My email is [email protected], my cell is 555-539-7116, I live in leverett House D-11. Please advise how best to proceed.
At your service,
Eric Archer
54
All night, in the hotel bed beside her snoring mother, Cady had laid awake thinking about Eric’s letter; by morning she practically had it memorized. As much as its premise seemed out of a paranoid fantasy, it struck her as highly plausible. The logic laid out in that letter was pure Eric, down to the decoy trick like the one he had devised for their childhood nemesis, Jeremy. And if true, it cast everything in a new light—Eric’s close, secretive relationship with Prokop, their tumultuous parting—it wasn’t indicative of a sexual affair, it was evidence of her plot to sell her research. As Nikos said, Prokop’s work was government-funded and restricted for the express purpose of blocking a foreigner from exploiting access to the United States’ valuable intellectual property. But what if the agent of espionage was the lead researcher herself? Cady imagined Prokop’s communications within the university system were fairly closely monitored. It made sense that she would need someone with a lower profile to help her carry out any illegal sharing of information. That someone was her brother.
Unfortunately, the contents of the flash drive weren’t any help in fleshing out the whole story. Cady had sneaked into the bathroom a
fter her mother fell asleep to upload the files onto her laptop, but they were password-protected. Without Eric alive to explain the situation, all the flash drive proved was that he had access to privileged data, not that it was illegally shared at Prokop’s orders.
The main question keeping her up that night was what it meant that the canister was still there for her to find. If Prokop had been able to prove her innocence, Eric was going to release the coordinates to the proven legitimate contact to be retrieved. Since it remained there a year later, presumably that proof never came and Eric never gave the coordinates to anyone. However, no FBI agent had picked it up either. Cady wondered if he changed his mind about Prokop’s guilt or got cold feet about accusing a professor he had admired and cared for of such a serious crime. Or did he fear he himself would face repercussions for his involvement? As it was with his mental illness and paranoia, Eric already had developed a deep distrust of “the surveillance state,” among which the FBI would rank enemy number one, or at least number three, behind their parents.
Or had he reported Prokop to some authority, but no one believed him? He was a diagnosed schizophrenic at the time. He was prescribed medication for it, which he had a known history of not taking. By the time he cut ties with Prokop, he had had several documented psychotic episodes and one involuntary institutionalization. Maybe Eric had anticipated his credibility challenge, and that stopped him from proceeding. Cady had viewed Prokop’s continued involvement with Eric, despite his worsening mental illness, first with gratitude and more recently with confusion, but now she saw it with new clarity. Choosing a paranoid schizophrenic to carry out an actual espionage plot was genius. Eric’s perceived disability was her insurance that her secret would be safe. But also, as Bilhah had taught Cady, there was an advantage to being underestimated. Eric may have suffered from mental illness, but he was nobody’s fool.
“He was vulnerable. People like her are predators.” That was what Lee Jennings had said. And she was the exact person Cady needed to talk to if she was going to find more evidence to corroborate Eric’s claims. Cady and Lee had gotten off on the wrong foot, to put it mildly, but she bet that Lee’s personal vendetta against Mikaela Prokop would be more than enough motivation for her to cooperate with Cady. Lee could be sitting on critical evidence without even realizing it. Lee had pictures.
The next morning, her mother was loath to let Cady out of her sight. She didn’t even want to let her out of the hotel room; they ordered breakfast in. But when Cady’s mom was in the shower, Cady called the university’s ROTC department. She pretended to be interested in joining and asked if she could sit in on a class, and the ROTC coordinator promptly gave her the time and location of the next physical training class that afternoon at one o’clock. For the next two hours Cady anxiously bopped her knee and struggled to appear normal in front of her mother. By noon, unable to stand it any longer, Cady left for “choir rehearsal.”
Soldiers Field stadium looked like a concrete colosseum. The enormous structure’s tiered levels served as both stairs and seating; its design and purpose were Spartan. Tucked in the shadow of one of the stadium’s ground-level arches, Cady watched the Naval ROTC cadets do push-ups in a row, the uniformed bodies rising and falling like keys on a player piano. She could see why the coordinator had been so accommodating—they were hard up for members. Cady counted only nine cadets with two instructors pacing in front of them, and against the massive expanse of green and the empty stands, the group appeared even tinier. Despite the distance and the plain athletic uniform of navy shorts and a gray tee, it was easy to spot which one was Lee—she was the only woman. Although Lee’s size was diminutive, she kept up with the boys, her speed and rhythm matching theirs. She appeared the picture of discipline, her body rigid, her short black hair pulled into a low ponytail and her face down.
Soon the calisthenics gave way to stretching, and the students lined up at attention. The instructors barked their final orders before dismissal, which the cadets marked with a salute. Cady walked over to the bench on the sidelines where the ROTC members were gathering their things. She had never seen Lee look so relaxed and affable as she was when talking to the other cadets.
“Hey, Jennings,” Cady called, parroting the nickname she had heard the instructor use. Lee turned, her hair was tamped down with sweat at her temples, her face pink with exertion, but when she recognized Cady’s face, it turned a deeper red. She started to walk in another direction, but Cady jogged in front of her path. “Wait, please,” she said. “I want to talk about Prokop.”
They huddled beneath an archway with the inscription: dedicated to the joy of manly contest—by the class of 1879—june 29 1904. They weren’t men, but Cady felt the battle spirit was appropriate.
“What do you want?”
“I need you to give me all the photos you took of Mikaela Prokop and my brother.”
“Why, so you can get me in trouble? Sue me for invasion of privacy? Remember, I don’t have any money.”
“No, I want to help you. You wanted to bring a sexual harassment case against Professor Prokop, but you didn’t have enough evidence. I want to finish the job.”
Lee crossed her arms. “Why do you care all of a sudden?”
“I found a notebook of Eric’s and a letter he wrote, and it put a different spin on things.” Cady was careful not reveal too much. “You took me by surprise the other day at the Gato Rojo, but now I think you’re right. Prokop hurt you and Eric. She should be held responsible. But you have too much on the line, your scholarship, the Bauer—”
“The Bauer is being awarded tonight, by tomorrow none of that matters. I’ll come forward with the pictures when I feel comfortable.”
“It won’t get any easier. The Bauer being awarded makes it worse. If you lose, any complaint will look like sour grapes. If you win, you risk your own trophy by confessing to stalking a former rival.” Cady thought of Robert’s deal-breaking recommendation letter. “You know the obstacles women face in graduate science programs, you said so yourself, it’s a man’s world. What research lab is gonna take the girl who cried gender discrimination against a female professor? I’m not saying it’s right; it’s bullshit. But you’re going to need those letters of recommendation from the faculty at this school.”
Lee’s posture softened, Cady could see her argument was working. She kept going:
“Let me do it. Give me the pictures, and I’ll say they were sent to me anonymously. I have nothing to lose, and who’s going to blame a grieving sister? If no one stands up to Prokop now, she’ll continue to get away with it. And …” Cady stopped when all of a sudden Lee’s face crumpled and tears began to slip down her cheeks. “Lee, are you okay?”
Lee shook her head, biting her lip. “I don’t know how she got away with it, I was sure someone else must’ve seen her.”
“What do you mean? Seen her do what?” Cady put a hand on Lee’s shoulder to try to calm the crying girl. “Please, talk to me, I’m on your side.”
Lee looked up to meet her gaze, and new tears did little to obscure the clear, cold certainty in her eyes. “Eric wasn’t alone the night he died. Prokop was with him.”
55
“I was watching him, and Prokop was there in his room. I was taking photos of them right before it happened. You can see her at the window.”
Cady felt a surge of vertigo, she reached to touch the cold concrete wall for balance. As Lee continued, she thought she might be sick.
“I’m not saying she played a role in his death. I missed the moment he actually jumped or she—whatever—it happened so fast. But it definitely looked like they were fighting beforehand.”
Cady’s heart thundered in her chest as her mind put the pieces together. Eric knew Prokop was sharing or selling her research to Russia. He had already defied her by making the decoy drop and hiding that flash drive. He had quit working for her. He was about to out her to the authorities. The
re was no other conclusion: “She killed him.”
Lee’s face was bright red. “No, I mean, I don’t know. Why would she do that? She liked him. And I didn’t see—”
“Did you tell the police?”
Lee’s mouth was open but she didn’t speak.
Cady repeated the question. “You saw someone possibly be pushed out of a building, what did you do next?”
“I left.”
“You left?” Cady’s shout echoed in the concrete tunnel.
“I freaked out, okay? I was traumatized, I was probably in shock. All I wanted was to catch Prokop in a compromising position. She had been spending way less time with Eric in the weeks prior, I sensed their relationship was ending, I was desperate. My friend lived in a room in the opposite tower of Leverett with a view of Eric’s room, I told her to be on the lookout. She texted me a woman was there, and I raced over. I was hoping to get shot of them kissing or something, that was the kind of scandal I was expecting.”
“So you did nothing.”
“I heard the sirens a minute later, and I assumed Prokop was the one who called them. That made more sense to me than that she had actually pushed him. I read all the reporting of the incident, and I was confused that there was no mention of her. I didn’t think I was the only one.”
“But that didn’t make you do anything. You knew he wasn’t alone, you have photos, and you’ve never told the police. Not the next day, not ever?”
“I wasn’t sure what I had photos of, I wasn’t sure what happened. You think accusing a professor of harassment is risky, how about murder? If I was wrong, forget the Bauer, forget my degree, I could be in a criminal investigation. I was in way over my head.”
Cady had not known the meaning of fury before that moment. “That was my brother. You had information about his death, you didn’t have the right to bide your time till it became advantageous to you.”
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