The Dead Drop

by Jennifer Allison

  SIGNING OFF FOR NOW--I’ll write more tomorrow!

  5

  The Spy Museum

  I just realized you’re dressed very nineteen-eighties.” Caitlin stood behind Gilda on the long, steep escalator descending into the Dupont Circle Metro Station.

  Gilda didn’t respond; she focused on quelling a feeling of vertigo as she looked down into the underground station. She was also intrigued by a Walt Whitman poem engraved into the granite wall encircling the escalator:

  I sit by the restless all the dark night—some are so young;

  Some suffer so much—I recall the experience sweet and sad. . . .

  Gilda wasn’t quite sure what the words meant, but she liked the haunting, poignant sound of the words—the eerie feeling of reading a poem while being lowered into the ground. She pulled out her reporter’s notebook and jotted a note to capture the feeling:

  So many buildings and monuments in this city are engraved with poetic messages that make you think about the suffering of people in times past. It reminds me of walking through a graveyard: it’s beautiful and interesting but also lonely and a little spooky, too.

  “Earth to Gilda,” said Caitlin. “You look very eighties!”

  “Oh, thanks.” Gilda decided to interpret this as a compliment even if it wasn’t intended as such. She had read somewhere that you should dress for the job you want rather than the job you have, and after much deliberation between her Nancy Reagan-style red power suit and her Avengers-style spy jumpsuit with boots, she had settled on the power suit combined with a red pair of cat’s-eye sunglasses for her first day on the job at the Spy Museum. “I believe in dressing for success,” she added.

  “The Spy Museum might have a pretty casual office environment, especially in the summer,” Caitlin continued. “My supervisor at the NCJA walks around in flip-flops half the time.”

  “Sounds like he aspires to go sit on the beach.”

  “I respect him for being so honest about himself.”

  “At the Spy Museum, it’s all about showing that you can ‘live your cover’.” “LIVE your cover identity” was a guideline Gilda had read in her Spy Savvy handbook. It wasn’t enough to simply look whatever role you were playing as a spy; you had to fully experience it in your everyday life. “Right now, my ‘cover identity’ is that I’m an experienced young professional who knows how to use a copy machine.”

  Caitlin laughed. “I’m sure they don’t expect you to know everything before you even get there, Gilda.”

  After Gilda and Caitlin boarded the Metro, Gilda took out her reporter’s notebook to quickly scribble a letter to Wendy:

  Dear Wendy:

  Here I am on the underground train on my way to work! The people on the train right now during morning rush hour look a lot different from how they did yesterday in the middle of the afternoon. For one thing, there are a lot more glum-looking, white-haired men wearing ties who sit behind newspapers with their shoulders slumped. Here I am, all ready to eavesdrop on incriminating conversations, and it’s as if everyone’s still half asleep.

  “This is my stop,” Caitlin announced as the train reached the Judiciary Square station. “You know where you’re going, right, Gilda? You get off at the Gallery Place stop, then just walk down F Street to the Spy Museum.”

  “Got it.” Gilda felt another flutter of nerves. “I’ll see you after work.”

  “Make sure you have that gourmet dinner waiting for me when I get home.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Gilda, playing along, “I’ll have the toast all buttered.”

  “And don’t burn it this time,” Caitlin joked. “I mean it.”

  “I promise I’ll get it right this time.” Witnessing this banter, people regarded Gilda and Caitlin with curiosity. A man slipped into Caitlin’s seat as she got up to leave.

  “Good luck!” Caitlin disappeared through the train doors.

  “Nice sunglasses,” said the man who had just sat down next to Gilda.

  “Oh—thanks.” Gilda prepared herself for the possibility that some weirdo had just seated himself next to her—something she had frequently experienced on Detroit city buses.

  “They make you look more interesting than the average government employee.”

  Gilda couldn’t help feeling flattered to hear this even as she felt wary of attention from a strange man. She glanced in his direction and saw that there was something almost handsome about his middle-aged, suntanned face and mirthful blue eyes. It was a likable face. She also wondered if she should conceal the true details of her identity just in case this man was actually a charming serial killer who might decide to follow her to the Spy Museum. “I’m actually starting a job on Capitol Hill today,” she fibbed.

  “Capitol Hill! Now that is impressive. What kind of job?”

  “The House, the Senate—you name it.”

  “Sounds demanding, but I can tell it won’t be any problem for you.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.” Gilda was now enjoying the fantasy that her job involved passing important legislation.

  “And where is such an impressive young lady as yourself from? You don’t look local.”

  “California. San Francisco, to be specific.”

  “A wonderful city! Well, we’re approaching my stop here, Ms.—”

  “Stunn.” It was the surname of a fictional character Gilda had once created for a story, and it was the first alias that came to mind at the moment. “Penelope Stunn.”

  “What a charming name!” He extended a hand, and Gilda shook it. “I’m Jake Clarke.”

  Jake Clarke sounds like a fake name, Gilda thought. On the other hand, there was something maddeningly familiar about the name; she felt she had heard it somewhere before.

  As Jake Clarke stood up to move toward the door of the train, Gilda realized that they were actually at the Gallery Place Metro—her stop as well. She hurriedly ran to the door and managed to jump off the train just before the sliding doors shut and the train pulled away.

  In the quiet hours before the Spy Museum opened, security guards wearing white shirts and bow ties joked with one another as tourists began to gather in a line outside the door.

  A guard let Gilda into the Spy Museum lobby, and Gilda was delighted to discover that her new work environment was both stylish and mysterious. Ominous quotations about espionage were projected onto the walls, and video screens featuring clips from famous spy cases were suspended all around. Flashing neon lights framed the doorway leading into the museum exhibits.

  “You the new intern?” the museum guard asked.

  “Yes—I’m Gilda Joyce.”

  “Just go up those stairs, honey, and look for a lady named April Shepherd. She takes care of our interns and does all those educational programs for the kids. If she’s not in her office, go down to the Ultra Room or the Garbo Room, and you’ll find her.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Gilda was intrigued with the sound of the “Ultra Room” and “Garbo Room” and eager to explore her new surroundings.

  “Just look for a crazy lady with curly red hair,” added a man with dreadlocks who sat at the information desk grinning.

  “You’re so bad, Keith.”

  “Oh, right; I keep forgetting. Nobody here is crazy.”

  “Nobody except you.”

  As Gilda ascended the stairs, she passed an enormous, greenish statue of a bearded man that was bound with heavy ropes and suspended from the ceiling. Something about the violent, humiliating manner in which the statue was being hoisted made Gilda think of a lynching. She read a placard explaining that the statue was a replica of a famous statue of a man named Feliks Dzerzhinsky, “the father of the KGB.”

  RUSSIANS TOPPLED THE STATUE WHEN THE SOVIET UNION FELL, the sign explained.

  Gilda knew that the KGB stood for the spy agency of the Soviet Union during the Cold War—an arm of the Soviet government that had also spied extensively on the Russian people and crushed free speech. Anyone who publicly voiced opinions contr
ary to those of the government was quietly sent to a Soviet prison.

  At the top of the steps, Gilda turned down a hallway, her high heels clicking over a floor that looked as if it were made of tiny lights embedded within tin foil and glass.

  “Sweetie, if you can do poo-poo in the potty today, you can have a treat!” A woman who wore her curly, strawberry-blond hair tied back with a colorful printed scarf walked quickly toward Gilda, speaking into her BlackBerry. Gilda immediately knew that this must be April Shepherd, her supervisor. “Okay—bye-bye, honey!”

  “Sounds like you know how to motivate your staff,” Gilda blurted as April approached.

  April regarded Gilda with a surprised, frozen smile, clearly not sure who Gilda was.

  “I’m Gilda Joyce.” Gilda extended her hand.

  “Oh! Gilda!” April’s eyes moved to the red cat’s-eye sunglasses perched on top of Gilda’s head as she shook Gilda’s hand. “You caught me talking to my toddler. He’s turning three next month, and I’m trying to get him potty trained for preschool. I’ve tried every kind of reward—M&M’s, television shows, toys, you name it.”

  “My friend Wendy told her two-year-old brother that if he didn’t start pooping in the toilet, all the poop was going to come back as a big monster sometime when he least expected it.” Gilda suddenly realized that in her attempt to make a friendly impression on her new boss, she had managed to say the word poop at least twice in one sentence.

  April considered the story about Wendy with bemused horror. “I guess fear can be a good motivator for some kids, but it doesn’t work for my little Gabriel. Did that work for your friend’s little brother?”

  “He actually got kind of curious to meet the poop monster.”

  “Well, then!” April seemed eager to change the subject. “Let’s get you settled!”

  April took Gilda to the human resources department, where Gilda was thrilled to receive her very own key card allowing her access to elevators and other parts of the museum building that were off-limits to ordinary tourists. She had noticed people walking down the street and riding the Metro displaying photo IDs worn as if they were special badges of honor—symbols placing them in an elite inner circle of people with special access to secret information. I’m a real employee in Washington, D.C., Gilda thought, hanging the key card around her neck. I have special access to the Spy Museum.

  “Now I’ll take you further behind the scenes—to all the staff offices.” April led Gilda through aqua-colored hallways decorated with black-and-white photos, past offices where employees tapped away at their computers, past a break room where museum guards and other employees sipped coffee near an open box of doughnuts. The offices were ordinary enough, but Gilda sensed a unique buzz of excitement and anticipation in the air that reminded her of being backstage in a theater before showtime. This is the perfect place for me to work, Gilda thought.

  “Now I’ll introduce you to some of your colleagues.”

  Gilda followed April into a crowded room divided into cubicles. Gilda had the impression of multiple projects and a creative overload just barely under control: everywhere she looked, books, papers, and random personal objects burst from files and careened in tall stacks. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves encased behind glass doors lined the walls.

  Sitting in one of the cubicles, a bespectacled young man wearing a black T-shirt advertising an obscure rock band scribbled notes as he talked on the phone. Two women sat on the carpeted floor, hurriedly stuffing papers into folders.

  “How’s that paper-stuffing going?” April asked the women.

  “Good.” They looked up at Gilda, subtly eyeing her business suit from head to toe, their hands still moving from papers to folders.

  “We like to keep our employees sitting on the floor as much as possible,” said April.

  “She isn’t kidding,” said one of the women, who wore sweatpants and sneakers. She was strikingly tan.

  “This is Gilda—our new intern,” said April, placing a hand on Gilda’s shoulder. “She’s from Michigan. Gilda, this is Janet, who does just about everything, and Marla, our events coordinator, who’s doing me a huge favor by stuffing envelopes to meet an educational-program deadline.”

  Marla had a young, sporty look, and Janet looked completely opposite: her plump face was smooth and unlined, but her dowdy blond hairstyle, frumpy cardigan, and reading glasses suspended from a chain gave her an almost matronly demeanor. Janet has what I like to call a “young elderly” look where she could be either twenty-nine or forty-five, Gilda thought.

  “Aren’t you glad you came all this way just to sit on the floor and stick things in folders?” Marla joked.

  “It beats sitting home and watching the weeds grow,” Gilda replied, secretly feeling a little worried that she would in fact spend the summer stuffing envelopes.

  “Based on the bio you submitted, I’m sure you don’t spend much time sitting around.” April turned to Janet and Marla. “Did the two of you see Gilda’s bio?” She picked up a piece of paper that was lying on top of a stack of books and waved it in front of their faces.

  NEW SUMMER INTERN!

  Fifteen-year-old Gilda Joyce joins us this week all the way from the Detroit area. Gilda impressed us with the diversity and uniqueness of her academic and extracurricular interests, which include: “solving mysteries, writing novels, ghost hunting, people-watching (spying, of course!), flea-market and garage-sale shopping, street fashion, and cooking for comfort.”

  Be sure to stop by and say hello to Gilda!

  “Oh, yeah. It was cute,” said Marla. Janet made no response and merely continued stuffing envelopes.

  Gilda wasn’t too concerned about the less-than-enthusiastic response from Janet and Marla because she was suddenly very interested in the phone conversation the man wearing the black T-shirt was having. “The artifacts might be of interest,” he said, “although we do already have a lipstick gun in the museum, as you know.”

  Gilda’s ears perked up at the mention of the Spy Museum’s “lipstick gun.” On the museum’s website, she had read about the small silver handgun disguised as a tube of lipstick that could fire a single bullet. Along with objects including an umbrella that shot poison pellets, the lipstick gun was one of the Spy Museum’s more whimsical, if deadly, examples of Cold War secret weaponry.

  Gilda felt a familiar ticklish sensation in her left ear. She wished she could somehow tap into the man’s phone conversation so she could hear what the person at the other end of the line was saying.

  “I’m sorry.” Gilda realized that April was staring at her and waiting for her to respond to a question. “What were you saying?”

  “Uh-oh. Usually it takes the interns at least a couple weeks to get attention-deficit disorder.”

  “At which point we move them over to the marketing department,” Marla joked.

  “Can you keep your staff members under control, April?” The man in the black T-shirt hung up the phone, stood up, and stretched. He was strikingly tall and thin. “Some of us have work to do.” He reached across a cluttered desk to shake Gilda’s hand. “Hi—I’m Matthew Morrow.”

  “Sorry,” said April, “I forgot to introduce you.”

  “Saving the best for last, huh?” Matthew joked.

  Janet burst into laughter and then reddened.

  There was something odd about that little outburst, Gilda thought.

  “Matthew is our resident historian,” said April. “He’s written a book about espionage and he taught at Harvard for a couple years.”

  I always assumed that real historians probably look really old and dust-covered, as if they’ve been sitting around in an attic forever, Gilda thought. But this guy looks like a totally normal person in his twenties.

  “Who were you talking to just now on the phone?” April asked.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “There aren’t any secrets around here, Matthew.”

  “That’s right,” said Marla from her spo
t on the floor. “She has ways of finding out things.”

  “Well, if you must know, I was speaking with a former KGB officer who defected to the U.S. during the Cold War.”

  “Interesting!” April turned to Gilda to explain. “‘Defecting’ means he was a spy who switched sides from the Soviet Union to America during the Cold War.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to tell me about defecting and switching sides,” said Gilda. “For example, this year there were these two groups of girls at school who hated each other. This one girl was in the more popular group, but then she defected over to the other group and told them all this secret stuff about the first group. Then the two groups kept glaring at each other across the lunchroom and planting false rumors and stuff, although they never actually got into an all-out fight. It was just like the Cold War.”

  Matthew regarded Gilda with a deadpan expression. “I see I’m not the only historian on staff anymore.”

  “I actually think she summed up the Cold War pretty well,” said April. “Just throw in the threat of nuclear war and it was basically the high school lunchroom.”

  “Anyway,” Matthew continued, “the man’s name is Boris Volkov, and he said he recently discovered a couple objects in his attic that we might want to see for our collections.”

  “Was one of them a lipstick gun?” Gilda felt her cheeks turn pink as both Matthew and April stared at her.

  “Impressive eavesdropping,” said Matthew.

  “No kidding,” April laughed. “She’s perfect for this place.”

  Gilda realized she really wanted to go with Matthew to visit this ex-KGB agent and see whatever it was he had “discovered in his attic.” She sensed, though, that people wouldn’t like it if she simply asked if she could go. After all, she had only just arrived at the museum, and it was her first day of work.