The Dead Drop

by Jennifer Allison

  “What are you clowns doing in this organization?!” His voice rose and several people turned to look in his direction.

  “Sir,” said Gilda, “we are attempting to run a Spy Museum here.”

  Marla waved to Jasper and shot him a warning glance from across the room: We’ve got a meltdown over here!

  “So, Mr. Treck, I suggest you take your daffodil-colored bow tie, and—”

  “Loomis! Good to see you!” Jasper Clarke approached and clapped a friendly hand on Loomis’s shoulder, interrupting the standoff between him and Gilda.

  Loomis offered a wan smile that was more of a grimace. “We have a problem here, Jasper,” he said.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Look, I know we never saw eye-to-eye at the agency, and I know you and a bunch of your cronies in this room did everything in your power to shut down the remote viewing program. But keeping my name off a list of invites is really beneath you.”

  Gilda felt her investigative radar blast into “high alert” mode: she had read about “remote viewing”—a technique used by psychics to perceive objects and people from great distances. She had also read that the CIA and military had conducted experiments with the technique. How strange that this grumpy man—Loomis Trench—was actually involved with a remote viewing program for the CIA—and that Jasper Clarke had some connection to the program as well! It was all Gilda could do to resist grabbing both Jasper and Loomis and arm-wrestling them into telling her more details immediately.

  At the moment, Jasper looked as if he wished he could find a container large enough to seal and store Loomis Trench until the lecture had ended.

  “Gilda,” said Jasper, “I think it will be okay if Mr. Trench takes his seat without a ticket today. After all, he is a member of the intelligence community.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Gilda, giving Jasper a wink. “I’ll put him on the ‘special list.’”

  “Miss, was that a sarcastic comment?” Loomis demanded.

  “Loomis, here’s a perfect seat for you,” said Jasper, steering Loomis away before Gilda could respond.

  With his meaty hands gripping the podium and high forehead beaded with perspiration, Boris Volkov stood at the front of the room, before a packed audience. He spoke in a booming voice, illustrating his tale of Cold War intrigue with photographs and film clips projected onto a large movie screen behind him. His talk was punctuated by bursts of laughter from the audience as he joked about his ill-fated meetings with “lovely ladies,” his attempts to know the ways of the CIA by watching popular American spy movies and television shows, and the “vodka truth serum” he preferred using to ferret out potential double agents. “In many ways, we in the KGB were living in fantasy land—each doing our jobs the way we always had while the nation was going down the drain,” he said. “There is a lesson in that for any country.

  “But of course, the Americans had their own fantasies, too. I always found it funny how, in the movies, they viewed us in the KGB as ruthless and efficient. Most hilarious was their fear that we were psychics—that we had the ability to read and control minds. Because the Americans were certain we must be researching this. Believing the KGB had special ‘mind tools,’ the CIA started Project Stargate to study psychic espionage. Of course, as you know, that project unfortunately became a joke in the media and never had much success that could aid operations in any practical way.”

  “Excuse me!”

  All eyes turned to the back of the room, where Loomis Trench stood up, his hand raised. “Pardon the interruption, but I must take issue with something you just said, Mr. Volkov.”

  “We’ll take questions at the end of the presentation, please,” said Jasper Clarke, eyeing Loomis warily and speaking from the sidelines of the room.

  “It’s just a quick comment,” Loomis insisted.

  People in the audience whispered. Gilda saw a couple of them roll their eyes in exasperation when they saw the speaker. I bet some of them are his coworkers, she thought.

  “You have no basis for saying that the Americans achieved nothing worthwhile in psychic research,” said Loomis. “I realize there are people here who have done everything in their power to shut down that research, and, of course, you’re all so smugly contemptuous of something you know absolutely nothing about—something you couldn’t begin to understand.” Loomis trembled with barely controlled rage. “And Boris, I have to question what you really know of the Russian intelligence system anyway since you’ve had no ties with it for years—”

  “Your comments remind me of an argument I had with my wife last night,” Boris joked, cutting off Loomis’s tirade and effectively diffusing the tension in the room. “She says to me, ‘it is so hilarious that you ever worked in a field called “intelligence”’ !” Having successfully redirected everyone’s attention back to his presentation, Boris proceeded to show a segment from a KGB training film that generated many chuckles.

  Gilda kept an eye on Loomis. He sulked and fidgeted for a minute, then quietly slipped from his chair and exited the room.

  There’s something fishy about that man, Loomis Trench, Gilda thought.

  28

  Shaking a Tail

  After Boris’s Spy Museum lecture, Gilda sat in a Starbucks near the Spy Museum and reflected on the strange events of the day. The café was across the street from the FBI building, and men wearing white shirts with ties and rumpled, pleated pants sat at little tables all around Gilda, their federal ID badges dangling from their necks. Some listened to headphones while studying stacks of papers and sipping lattes. Most of them looked perturbed and overworked, their careworn faces gray with exhaustion. With her high ponytail, catsuit, and high-heeled boots, Gilda was a striking contrast. She sat at a small table by the window, scribbling in her reporter’s notebook:

  BIZARRE OUTBURST DURING BORIS VOLKOV’S SPY MUSEUM PRESENTATION:

  Something about that weird guy, Loomis Trench, just isn’t right. What kind of CIA employee makes a public scene and draws that much attention to himself?

  Even more interesting: clearly, the CIA was conducting psychic research that was apparently shut down. I’m not too impressed with Mr. Loomis Trench, but I am VERY curious about his role in that CIA espionage research program “Project Stargate”!

  SPY MUSEUM HAUNTING & DEAD-DROP INVESTIGATION UPDATE:

  ACTIVE CLUES:

  1. “THE LAST MEETING”: Those words have turned up twice now—first on the audio surveillance tapes and then on the photograph I took.

  2. “ANNA”: It appears twice in the dead-drop message I decoded. Suddenly, it also appears on the wall of the Spy Museum.

  ONGOING QUESTION: IS THERE A CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SPY MUSEUM GHOST AND THE DEAD DROP IN OAK HILL CEMETERY?

  Gilda paused and gazed out the window. She suddenly wished she had her binoculars with her because she spied Jasper Clarke and Boris Volkov crossing the street together, deep in conversation. Boris gestured exuberantly as he spoke. She wished she could hear what they were talking about.

  Gilda’s attention was distracted by a group of tourists walking into the café to order Frappuccinos. “Can we go to the Spy Museum now, Dad?” The girl wore a T-shirt that announced: I’D RATHER BE FISHING.

  “Honey, we’ll do that tomorrow. It’s getting late and we need to get back to the hotel to meet your mom.”

  “But all we did around here was that Lincoln stuff!”

  Gilda’s ears perked up at this comment. What “Lincoln stuff” is around here? She pulled out her Washington, D.C., travel guide from her purse, looked up “Lincoln” in the index, and was amazed to discover that both Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was shot, and Petersen House, the house across the street from the theatre, where Lincoln actually died, were just footsteps away from the Spy Museum.

  I can’t believe I never noticed this until now, Gilda thought.

  Hoping to find some clue to explain her dreams about Abraham Lincoln’s ghost, Gilda jumped up from her table and headed down 1
0th Street toward Ford’s Theatre and Petersen House. The street simmered in the late afternoon sun: everyone walked slowly and silently, as if any speech or extra movement would make things hotter.

  It’s funny, Gilda thought, that the place where Abraham Lincoln was shot is now surrounded by the Hard Rock Café and the Lincoln Bar & Grill. She saw a crowd of tourists heading into Petersen House for a tour, so she followed them inside.

  PETERSEN HOUSE

  On the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a play at Ford’s Theatre—the theatre across the street from this house. Theatregoers carried the president into Petersen House, where he died the next day. This home has been preserved to look just as it was at the time of the president’s death.

  Gilda felt claustrophobic in the dimly lit house as she followed slow-moving tourists into a sitting room where black-and-white pictures hung on the walls, then back to a bedroom filled with antique toiletr y bottles, books, and mirrors. The short, narrow bed seemed too small for Lincoln’s tall stature. Gilda was ready for any signs of Lincoln’s ghost, but she had to admit she felt nothing out of the ordinary. If anything, the room had a sense of peace—the somber sense of a place where something ended.

  Maybe there are too many people around for me to make contact with a spirit, Gilda speculated.

  She left Petersen House and crossed the street to Ford’s Theatre. A tour guide pointed her toward the basement of the theatre, now a museum filled with an assortment of eerie objects: the clothes Lincoln wore on the evening he was assassinated, bottles of embalming fluid used to prepare Lincoln for burial, the drumsticks that played “Hail to the Chief” shortly before his death, and a dark hood worn by Mary Surratt—the only woman in the group of four people who were executed for conspiring to assassinate the president.

  Gilda made her way upstairs into the auditorium of the theatre. Now I’m close to the very spot where Lincoln was killed, she thought, sitting in one of the chairs facing the stage.

  Gilda looked up at the gold drapes, antique lace, and old American flags decorating the presidential box where Lincoln sat on the night he was killed. She closed her eyes and concentrated. President Lincoln—are you here? Do you have a message for me?

  Gilda imagined the theatre packed with people watching a play: A handsome man walks straight through the front door of the theatre, up the stairs. He hands a calling card to a presidential messenger, then enters the presidential box. He waits because he knows a very funny line in the play is coming. Now everyone is laughing. The president is laughing. The man’s finger is on the trigger of his gun. . . .

  The sound of an explosion startled Gilda. She whirled around and realized it was just a toddler playing with an electronic battleship toy. His parents reprimanded him and struggled to wrench the ship from his grasp. Other tourists in the theatre shot reproachful glances in the family’s direction.

  Then Gilda felt as if her heart had stopped. Just a few feet away, in the back row of the theatre, was the man with the reddish beard—the very same man who had stared at her with such unnerving interest in the Metro station.

  Gilda now felt sure of one thing: he’s following me.

  Don’t panic, Gilda thought, wishing there was a trapdoor in the floor beneath her feet. Trust your gut.

  She slowly donned her cat’s-eye sunglasses, picked up her purse, stood up, and walked swiftly up the theatre aisle toward the door.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Gilda saw the man get up from his seat as she passed by. Her heart pounded.

  As she exited the theatre and walked into the furnace-blast of heat on the city sidewalk, she longed to glance back to see if the man was behind her.

  Never look behind, the Moscow Rules advised.

  Instead, she walked faster and faster, wanting to run. I need to lose him, she thought. I can’t let him follow me home. Who knows how long he’s been trailing me? He may already know where I live. He clearly knows the neighborhood where I work; how else would he know to find me at Ford’s Theatre of all places?

  Gilda ducked into an art gallery and pretended to look at colorful paintings of plump women holding equally plump cats while subtly monitoring the sidewalk. A moment later, the bearded man appeared on the sidewalk across the street. He wore a loose-fitting shirt with a Hawaiian print, shorts, and flip-flops. He looks like a tourist, but I’m guessing that’s just a disguise, Gilda thought.

  The man glanced up and down the street, clearly looking for someone. Finally he stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away.

  Gilda whipped out her reporter’s notebook and furiously scribbled some notes:

  Who is this man who’s following me, and what, exactly, does he know about me?

  The man was nowhere in sight, but Gilda was still scared to go back outside. What if he was waiting for her around the corner?

  Get a grip! Gilda told herself.

  You wanted to be a spy, so stop loitering in this art shop filled with second-rate paintings of rotund women, and start using the tradecraft you’ve been teaching all week to your recruits! Stop feeling scared and sorry for yourself, and start acting like a real spy!

  Gilda realized that this was exactly the sort of situation that called for something the CIA called a “quick-change” disguise, just in case the man actually was watching for her around the corner or in one of the galleries or restaurants that lined the street.

  She opened her handbag and felt grateful to discover that she still had a wig and a couple of the fake noses she had confiscated following a game of wigball. Unfortunately, it happened to be a wig upon which The Comedian had sneezed, but she didn’t have the luxury of feeling squeamish about a few boogers. Gilda stuffed her ponytail into the wig. The young, fashionable gallery owner who had been quietly watching Gilda from her desk in the corner now stood up from her chair and looked alarmed.

  “I have a date,” Gilda explained, stuffing wisps of her hair into the wig. She opened her compact mirror and did her best to quickly apply the false nose with bits of spirit gum, smoothing the edges with powder. It was a large, bulbous nose that would have been unattractive on a man’s face in the best of circumstances. Gilda peered into her compact mirror and decided that the nose and wig made her virtually unrecognizable.

  “That must be some date,” said the woman in the corner.

  “You know how it is,” said Gilda. “It’s so hard to just be yourself.”

  “You’ll definitely make an impression.”

  Wishing she had an oversized jacket to cover her black catsuit, Gilda tied the scarf around her neck in hopes of disguising her outfit and made her way into the heat of the late afternoon. She walked slowly to the Metro station, watching for the man and surreptitiously adjusting her false nose when perspiration caused it to slip.

  Sitting on the train, she pretended to read a copy of the Washington Post that someone had left on the seat. She peeked over the paper from time to time, half expecting to see a man with a suspicious-looking red beard boarding the train at every stop.

  29

  The Last Meeting

  Gilda dreamed she walked through a maze of very small tombstones. The sun was bright and hot, and Gilda wished for a hat or some spot of shade—somewhere to hide. He’ll find me here, she worried.

  Gilda turned a corner and saw that at the end of the path, a woman waited for her: it was the same pale woman—the dead woman whose face had peered out of video screens. But this time the woman was alive.

  “Who are you?” Gilda asked. “What do you want?”

  “You’re getting closer,” the woman said. “But you must hurry.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  A pink bubble emerged from the woman’s mouth. It grew larger, until it popped.

  Gilda awoke suddenly, feeling uneasy.

  PSYCHIC DREAM—NOTES:

  I just had a weird dream about that same spooky woman. But this time there was something different on her mouth—a bubble. GUM??? Is it a
clue? Also odd: why were the tombstones surrounding me so small?

  “I haf something to tiell you.”

  Gilda was surprised to see Agent Moscow at the Spy Museum so early in the morning, before the other campers and counselors had arrived. Gilda herself had left home much earlier than usual in an effort to throw the stalker she now thought of as “Redbeard” off-track, just in case he was planning to trail her to work.

  “Is something wrong?” Gilda noticed that Agent Moscow looked tired. She wore no makeup and her blond hair wasn’t styled as meticulously as usual.

  Agent Moscow handed Gilda a book. She had marked a page with a poem by the poet Anna Akhmatova: “Song of the Last Meeting.”

  “I tink it may be a clue,” she said. “Eet’s strange. I was just seeting in my bed in de middle of de night, and I see dis book on my shelf. Eet’s a book of Russian poems—a book I never looked at before. So I get out of bed, and open dees book—and what do you know: I open right to dis poem and the page is folded down even dough I never read it.”

  Agent Moscow handed Gilda the book, and Gilda saw that it featured both the original Russian poems and English translations by a man named Pete Biebow. As Gilda read “Song of the Last Meeting,” she sensed something significant about the poem’s lonely, ominous mood. The link with the clues “Anna” and “The Last Meeting” seems important, she thought.

  My chest grew helplessly cold,

  But my feet were light and deft,

  I pulled a glove on my right hand—

  The one that was meant for my left.

  It seemed the steps were many,

  But I knew—there were only three!

  Amid maples, autumn’s whisper

  Pled softly: “Die with me!

  My fate so fickle and evil—

  Has coldly betrayed me anew.”

  I answered, “My dearest, my darling,