The Dead Drop (22 page)

“One night I hear a woman crying in the attic above our bedroom. I
know
something is up there. So I go up to the attic, and something tells me I must look through old boxes. And what do I find? Buried in a corner, an old box Boris brought from his very last trip to Moscow. And when I see what is in it, I wake him up, shaking him. ‘I want these things out of the house,’ I tell him. And he looks at me and says, ‘Oh, I thought I had lost those! That gun is worth a lot of money. I’ll find a collector and sell it!’ And I say, ‘No. I want these things out of our house
now.
Either you call the Spy Museum first thing in the morning and donate them, or I will put them in the Dump ster!’ So!” Jacqueline made a swiping gesture, as if washing her hands of something dirty. “Once they are out of my house, everything is quiet. And now I sleep like a baby, too.”

“Did your husband ever tell you anything else about the artifacts—who used them—or anything else about them?”

“I didn’t want to know anything,” said Jacqueline. “I only know my husband take them from a senior officer in Moscow—his boss. . . . It was a man he hated.”

“Gilda!” Gilda realized Marla was waving her back to the ticket collection table because a line of people had entered the room. Janet scowled in Gilda’s direction, having jumped in to help Marla.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Volkov,” said Gilda. “I’d better get back to work. But thanks so much for your help.”

“Of course. I hope that this ghost will leave you alone.”

“I’m working on it.” Gilda jumped up and hurried back toward the ticket table.

“Gilda,” said Marla, swiftly gathering tickets from a group of guests, “can you please help this gentleman?”

“I can’t imagine why I’m not on this list!” A man wearing a yellow bow tie, a dark suit, and square rimless glasses stood at the table, looking very displeased.

“Um, do you have a ticket for the event, sir?” Gilda asked.

“No, I do
not
have a ticket for the event. I am a longstanding member of the intelligence community, and my name should be on that list of special guests!”

He’s one of those people who goes around getting annoyed about dumb things all the time,
Gilda thought, half hoping that his name wouldn’t be on the list. “And your name is?”

He pursed his lips at the question, irritated that Gilda even needed to ask.

“Loomis,” he hissed. “Loomis Trench.”

“Good cover identity.” She realized her impulsive little joke was likely to annoy him further, but she couldn’t resist.

“It’s my real name.”

“That’s what they all say. Well, Mr. Wrench—”

“Trench!”

“Mr. Trench, I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t see your name here. If you’ll just fork over a few dollars, we’ll be happy to let you in on the secrets of a former Russian spy.”

The man grew pale. He seemed to tremble, as if he were too angry for words.

Uh-oh,
Gilda thought. She could tell he was gearing up to create a scene.

“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:

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 10th 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.

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.