The Dead Drop (28 page)

Svetlana’s Story: A Film

The setting: a small, sparsely furnished apartment with only a bed, a few chairs, a carpeted floor. A young woman whose elfin face has small, sharp features stands by the window, peering into a mirror.

“My name is Svetlana,” she says. She opens a tiny perfume bottle and the room fills with the scent of roses and vanilla.

She closes her eyes and applies bright violet eye shadow, then outlines the rims of her eyes with a thin liquid line. Her dark, chalky makeup resembles that of a little girl dressing up for a pretend game.

Svetlana looks at her reflection and tries to smile, revealing one crooked tooth. The tooth is one of the most memorable and noticeable details of her face, but it is a detail she rarely shows.

“I am lucky,” Svetlana says as she gets dressed. She wears a jacket with big shoulder pads and a voluminous skirt with a fitted waist, cinched with a vinyl belt. She puts on a pair of bright plastic earrings, then pulls on high-heeled red boots with pointy toes and a fox-fur hat.

“Most of my friends dress very nineteen-seventies even though it is nineteen-eighty-eight. I am more in fashion—because my boyfriend can get clothes from overseas.

“My boyfriend is a KGB officer. He has promised me marriage and a better life. He is also my spymaster.

“See? He gave me this beautiful red star brooch. And you see? It hides a tiny, secret camera.” The layers of Svetlana’s 1980s clothing conceal the thin cord that connects the camera shutter to a handheld control in the pocket of her full skirt.

Svetlana looks in the mirror, smiles, and squeezes the button in her pocket. The center of the brooch quickly opens to reveal a tiny camera lens, and she snaps her own picture.

Svetlana gasps. For a split second, another image flashes in the mirror—a black-and-white photograph of a dead woman with a gunshot wound on her head and a star brooch around her neck.

“My KGB boyfriend says he knows a man who’s posing as a translator of Russian poetry—a man he suspects of being American spy. My boyfriend thinks I can do the job of entrapping this American spy much more easily than he can, so he gives me this job.”

“‘You go and meet him,’ my boyfriend tells me. ‘Say you are Moscow University student studying poetry. You go to café, flirt, make him like you. Make him tell you secrets—especially names of others who talk to him. See? A present for you. Spy jewelry.’ My boyfriend pins the star brooch to my scarf.

“I don’t mind spying for my boyfriend. I’m excited to do something different from waiting in line for cabbage or hanging wet laundry to dry in my apartment.
I am lucky,
I tell myself. With my boyfriend’s help, I have my own apartment—my own television and refrigerator.

“But deep down, I don’t believe the things I tell myself. I am not happy.

“I go and meet the American spy at a café, and we talk about poetry, especially poems of Anna Akhmatova, whose work he has translated. ‘You look a little like Akhmatova,’ the American tells me. I cannot help it; I truly like this man—the American spy I am supposed to trap. For the first time in ages, I show my crooked tooth when I smile.

“In fact, I like this man so much, I tell him who I really am—girlfriend of a KGB officer. I even remove my brooch and show him the hidden camera.

“The American spy is very pleased. ‘You can help me,’ he says. ‘You can work for CIA.’ He gives me fake CIA documents to photograph. These I take back to my boyfriend to throw him off-track—to make him think I am spying on the American. Meanwhile, the American tells me to visit my boyfriend’s office and photograph documents from KGB files—lists of people, sketches of plans. Now I spy on my boyfriend and the KGB instead of the American.

“Some days I bring bread and sausage for my boyfriend’s lunch, and while he eats, I take secret photographs of everything I see. I give these to the American man, who is very happy with me.

“My biggest secret: I fall in love with the American. I also have something more dangerous—hope that my life will finally change. ‘I will help you leave soon,’ the American tells me, ‘but not yet.’ He gives me an emergency signal to use, just in case we are discovered. ‘If something goes wrong, leave this book of poetry in the window of the café—our usual meeting place,’ he says. ‘When I see the book I will know not to meet you, and then you will escape with me that night.’

“One evening, my boyfriend suspects my betrayal. He says nothing, but I see him watch me. Instead of going home to his wife, he stays at my apartment. He is a man trained to find secrets, and I believe that he can see through me.

“At the end, I will learn that he only knew my secret because of a man very far away—a man in Washington, D.C., who is a traitor against his own country.

“‘I have a gift for you,’ my boyfriend tells me. It looks like a gold tube of lipstick. ‘See? It’s a gun. Single shot.’ He points this lipstick pistol at my head. ‘Made special for you,’ he says.

“‘I don’t understand,’ I tell him.

“‘Time for your first wet job.’

“‘You want me to kill the American?’

“‘He is dangerous and useless.’ I sense my boyfriend is testing me. Will I kill the American to save myself? Will I be killed no matter what I do?

“‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I’m not a murderer.’

“‘Then find the best use for this.’ And in his eyes I see a wolf who watches me with amusement before he kills. He wants me to suffer. He places this gun in my hand, and all I can think is how cold and heavy it feels.

“I remember the emergency signal: I have to leave the book of Anna Akhmatova’s poems in the café window. If I can give the signal in time, I might escape. There might be time before my boyfriend’s KGB colleagues get to the American—before they get to both of us.

“I walk quickly, but behind me, a black sedan approaches like a crocodile drifting through murky water. ‘Get inside,’ a KGB officer says, rolling down his window.

“I try to point the lipstick pistol at him, but he knocks it from my grip before I can shoot. He pushes me into the car.

“In the upstairs window of our apartment, I see my boyfriend closing the curtains. I know he will go home to his wife now—or maybe to a restaurant to drink vodka with another girlfriend. For him the show is over.

“They drive me to a secluded spot near the Moscow River, but before I take my last breath, I want to know something.

“‘How did he know?’ I ask these men. ‘Did he have me followed? ’ I didn’t want to learn that the American was someone my boyfriend hired to set me up. I want to know that the happiness I had in those last meetings was real.

“‘The name of the man who betrayed you will mean nothing to you,’ says the first man.

“‘And what does it matter now?’ says the second.

“Then they laugh as if this is the best joke they ever heard.

“‘There is no harm in telling me who did this,’ I say. But I also think how strange it is that I want to know the truth before I die—even when I will not be able to tell a single person.
Where will this truth go after I am dead?
I wonder.
What happens to a truth only a dead woman knows?

“The first man tells me to get out of the car. He points the lipstick gun at me and I think how silly the gun looks with its tip painted red to resemble lipstick.
Foolish
, I think.
All of this is foolish
.

“‘You want to know who betrayed you? It was a CIA mole—a man you have never seen in your life. His name is Loomis Trench. They call him
‘the poet.’

“And in my very last moment, I see something clearly—that this truth matters, and that I will somehow tell this truth after my life has ended.”

 

Gilda awoke to find herself staring at the movie screen. As if emerging from a trance, she felt completely disoriented and couldn’t account for the past few minutes.

That was so weird,
she thought.
Was I awake or asleep just now? Was there really a movie playing in this theater, or was that all in my head?

Gilda rummaged through her bag and pulled out her notebook to write an investigation note:

At the discovery of groundbreaking evidence of a new psychic contact, Gilda usually felt elated, but Svetlana’s story left her feeling sad. The brightly colored posters of spy movies surrounding her in the theater now looked somber and lonely, darkened by shadows.

Gilda nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of her cell phone ringing. She read a text message from Balthazar:

Gilda immediately knew what he meant: he expected Loomis to make a last dead drop the next day.

38

Breakfast of Spies

On the morning after the Midnight Spy Slumber Party, the counselors looked bleary-eyed as they sipped their coffee. In contrast, their young recruits seemed energized by a night of spy games, pranks, and very little sleep. A few kids still wore the remnants of spy disguises from the previous evening’s activities—games including leaving practice “dead drops” around the Spy Museum. Despite their silly and unkempt appearance (The Comedian, for example, seemed oblivious to the fake mustache stuck to his cheek, and Baby Boy wore Spider-Man pajamas with feet), Gilda noticed that the kids in her group seemed ever so slightly older and more experienced after their week at Spy Camp.

Feeling suddenly sentimental about saying good-bye to her team, Gilda stuck her arm up in the air like a playground supervisor to get the attention of her recruits. “Team Crypt! Last meeting over here!” She smiled as her recruits dutifully gathered around her.

“As you know, this is our last meeting together,” she said. “When you first came here, you knew nothing; you were like mere toddlers who didn’t know the difference between a Hal loween costume and a real disguise.”

“That’s going a little far,” said Stargirl.

“You didn’t know the most basic life skills of a spy—how to take secret pictures or make your own lie detector or how to conduct surveillance on a building.”

“I actually knew a lot of stuff about spying,” countered The Misanthrope.

“You didn’t know the difference between the CIA and the FBI, the KGB and the NBA. You thought the proper use of a wig was for playing indoor baseball.”

“Wigball
rules
,” said The Comedian.

“But now you leave here as true spies. And you also leave with the knowledge that you contributed to something important.”

“What’s that, Case Officer Zelda?”

Gilda gathered her recruits into a huddle. “This is top secret,” she whispered, “but there’s something important I want you all to know: you are the only team here who helped investigate not only a haunting in the museum, but also a current investigation of a real CIA mole.”

“Really? Who is it?”

“Shh! Just know that when you finally hear about this story on the news, you’ll know that you were right here in the middle of the action. And a special congratulations goes to Agent Moscow: if it hadn’t been for her knowledge of a foreign language, we might not have been able to crack this case at all.”

Team Crypt clapped for Agent Moscow, whose face turned pink.

“Now—let’s do our Team Crypt chant one last time.”

“We don’t have a Team Crypt chant,” said Stargirl.

“Then it’s high time we made one up:

“Wait! I almost forgot something important, Team Crypt,” said Gilda, regrouping her team as they began to walk away. “You won’t have me around as your case officer to guide you anymore.”