The Dead Drop (10 page)

I need sleep,
Roger told himself, allowing himself to close his eyes for just a moment.

His thoughts were interrupted by a crackling, static sound. The image of Edith Cavell’s face dissolved into grainy pixels and the narrator’s voice fell silent.
Great,
he thought.
All I need is for something to go wrong with the show software
. He checked all the connections and hidden cords in the exhibit but could find nothing wrong.

The normal exhibit film had completely stopped. Roger stared at the mirror, first seeing his own reflection, then watching something that resembled a plume of smoke moving inside the glass. The plume of smoke grew darker and larger until it resembled a human head. . . . Was it a woman’s face?
Whatever that is, it isn’t a film image,
Roger thought. It was something more real and present—something that seemed to
watch
him. There was also an aroma—a sweet floral perfume that also smelled old, reminding him of a box of dried flowers or aging bottles of vanilla extract and bags of stale marshmallows in the back of his kitchen cabinet at home.

Roger often worked alone in the museum, so it was unusual for him to have the feeling he suddenly had—the immediate, childish knowledge that above all, he didn’t want to be alone. He actually felt scared.

Leaving a rolling cart of tools behind, he hurried toward the staff offices, wanting to forget what he had just seen.

12

The Promotion

Sitting at her desk in the Spy Museum, Gilda logged into her computer and typed the words “OAK HILL” into a search engine just to see what she might find.

To her delight, a site for Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C., appeared. She clicked on the site, then grew even more excited when she realized that Oak Hill Cemetery was in the same neighborhood as Boris’s house in Georgetown.

Gilda heard the sounds of museum security guards, information-desk attendants, and retail clerks arriving for work, pouring coffee, and slamming the refrigerator door shut as they put away lunches.

“You have a good night? Feels like you just left, huh.”

“There’s Mr. History. Oooo! You look sweaty! You run all the way to work today?”

Matthew Morrow made some comment Gilda couldn’t quite hear.

“Only ten miles? You slackin’ off, boy!”

Gilda heard voices approaching and turned to see Matthew and Jasper Clarke standing in the doorway and speaking in hushed, concerned tones.

A moment later, Janet trudged past Jasper and Matthew into the office. “Oh.” She regarded Gilda with thinly disguised disappointment. “You’re here early.”

I bet she was hoping I’d be late so I’d get in trouble with April again,
Gilda thought.
I can tell she’s the competitive type.
“I couldn’t sleep thinking about these cipher wheels that need to be finished,” Gilda fibbed.

“Now we’ve got a lot more than cipher wheels to give us insomnia,” said Janet, moving closer to Gilda’s desk and speaking in a low voice. “April’s freaking out because one of her Spy Camp counselors canceled at the last minute with a family emergency. Roger’s freaking out because his colicky baby is keeping him up all night. When I passed him in the hallway just now, he told me he was heading home ‘either to rest my eyes or be killed by my wife,’ which sounded kind of disturbing. He looked like he had just seen a ghost.”

“What kind of ghost?”

“Um, I think that’s just a figure of speech.” Janet opened her large purse and unloaded a can of Slim-Fast and a paperback titled
Love’s Fever
into her desk drawer.

“Whatever you do,” Janet added, “don’t have any problems today.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

April abruptly burst into the room with a colorful flurry of silk scarves, tote bags, and morning stress, pushing between Matthew and Jasper and breaking up their conversation in the process.

“Excuse you,” said Matthew.

“Sorry, but I have an emergency.” April tossed a tote bag onto her chair impatiently.

“Is everything okay? Is Gabriel sick again?”

“Gabriel’s fine; it’s our Spy Camp that’s in trouble.”

“We already heard about it,” said Janet, clearly enjoying being the first to know.

“Heard what?” Jasper and Matthew looked perplexed.

“April is short one counselor,” Janet announced. “I heard you talking on your cell phone in the hallway,” she explained, noticing April’s slightly annoyed stare.

“I already knew about it, too,” Gilda added.

Janet rolled her eyes. “Gilda only knows because I told her.”

“The first session of Spy Camp starts tomorrow, doesn’t it?” Jasper leaned in the doorway casually, but he looked concerned.

“That’s right; it starts tomorrow.”

“So who are you going to call for a substitute counselor?”

“I’ve been calling everyone I can think of, and so far, everyone is working, out of town, or just avoiding my phone calls.”

“I’m sure nobody in this city would avoid your phone calls, April.”

April fixed Matthew with a broad, false-looking grin. “That sounded like the helpful comment of a volunteer. Yes! You, Matthew, are going to be my new camp counselor.”

“Um—I don’t think so.”

“He can’t,” said Jasper. “We just accelerated his deadline on a couple of publishing projects, and he needs to be available to answer calls from the press.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Matthew, turning to Jasper. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”

“I’m not sure I’m doing you a favor; it would probably be more fun to do Spy Camp.”

“What do you mean, ‘probably’?” April slumped in her chair. “It would
definitely
be more fun.”

Gilda cleared her throat loudly.
Why wasn’t April jumping at the chance to make her a camp counselor? She was sitting right there!

“I think you might have one volunteer.” Matthew tilted his head in Gilda’s direction.

“I’d love to,” said Gilda, standing up. “I’m great with kids.”

“You
are
a kid,” said Janet.

I definitely do not like Janet,
Gilda thought.

“Yeah, she’s a little young,” said April. “I mean, I appreciate that you’re offering to help, Gilda, but you’d only be a few years older than some of the kids.”

“So give me some of the younger ones and I’ll whip ’em into shape. By the time they leave this place they’ll be running circles around the CIA.”

Jasper Clarke made a move to leave. “Well, it looks like you have this under control, April.”

“Very funny.”

“I have a meeting with our advisory board to discuss some museum development plans. I’m afraid I’ll have to leave the four of you to figure this out.” Jasper paused. “For what it’s worth, I think you should give Gilda the job. She’s a natural spy, so they’ll never guess that she’s only fifteen.”

Make that fourteen going on fifteen,
Gilda thought, a little guiltily.

The room fell quiet for a moment after Jasper left.

“I guess I
could
give her a smaller group,” April suggested, “maybe some of the younger kids.”

Janet looked skeptical. “Won’t the younger kids be more difficult for her to control?”

“They might be more likely to respect her,” said Matthew.

“I think we’re forgetting the art of disguise,” said Gilda wondering why nobody in the room was addressing her directly.

Everyone stared at her with surprise, as if she had just belched loudly.

“Aren’t we in the Spy Museum? It shouldn’t be hard to look a few years older than my real age with makeup and wigs.”

“While we’re at it, we could make you look like a little old man.”

Janet and April wrinkled their noses as if trying to imagine Gilda disguised as an old man.

“Well!” April stood up and brushed invisible lint from her pants. “The bottom line is that there are a few busloads of kids showing up to attend this camp, so we’d better hustle. Gilda, I hope you’re done cutting out those cipher wheels because you have some camp-counselor training to accomplish today.”

“Awesome! And don’t worry; I won’t disappoint you.”

13

The Dead-Drop Message

Instead of going directly into her apartment building after work, Gilda decided to investigate Oak Hill Cemetery to see if she could find any more clues to explain the strange dream about President Lincoln. She made her way down Wisconsin Avenue, past the rumbling of idling delivery trucks parked outside businesses, past the high wall of the Russian Embassy with its security gates and wary guards, and past Guy Mason Park, where toddlers played in the sand as bored nannies watched. As she neared Georgetown, the air filled with the smoky aroma of Rockland’s Barbeque and an assortment of Thai and Italian restaurants where people sat at little tables along the sidewalks, fanning themselves in the heat.

Gilda turned onto R Street where the atmosphere was sullen with humidity and a heavy silence. Again, the street gave her the ominous feeling of being watched by quiet, empty houses—houses that
knew
things. Sweat trickled into her eyes and between her shoulder blades, staining the back of her yellow sundress.

Gilda froze: she suddenly spied Boris Volkov heading up the walkway toward his house, his black jacket slung over one shoulder, his arm gently resting on the back of a well-dressed, middle-aged woman whose hair was dyed a very unnatural shade of red and styled in a stiff, hair-sprayed do.
That must be Boris’s wife,
Gilda thought. She had an impulse to run up to the couple and say hello—to ask Boris’s wife why she had wanted those KGB artifacts out of the house. Instead, Gilda hid behind a tree just as Boris turned to glance behind him.

Boris, you’re breaking the “Moscow Rules” of spy tradecraft,
Gilda thought.
Never look behind; it makes you look paranoid.

More than anything, Gilda wanted to spy on Boris. She wished she had had the foresight and technical skills to set up some kind of surveillance bug inside Boris’s house when she and Matthew had visited him.

Realizing it would be too dangerous to actually peek into the windows of Boris’s house, Gilda decided she had better continue to Oak Hill Cemetery.

Gilda passed through the walled entrance to the cemetery and found herself gazing down over a terraced hillside and what looked like a little village of graves: cherubs, marble angels perched upon pedestals, tall obelisks. Under the trees, the play of light and shadow upon gray and white stones was eerily beautiful.

Gilda had printed a cemetery map from the Internet—a maze of swirling lines demarcating intertwined walkways dotted with numbers indicating the graves of notable people from the Civil War era including Lincoln’s war secretary, a bunch of Union generals, and several women who had been “hanged as confederate spies.” Then Gilda found what she was looking for on the map: at a distant edge of the cemetery was the grave where Lincoln’s son had been buried.