The Dead Drop (18 page)

“Okay,” she said, leaning forward and lowering her voice so that none of the other counselors would overhear her, “see if you can tell whether I’m lying or telling the truth.”

Team Crypt leaned toward Gilda eagerly.

“One: I love peanut butter, banana, and chocolate sandwiches.”

“Gross!” said Baby Boy.

“Two: I’m a psychic investigator.”

The Misanthrope snorted with derision.

“Three: I hate wearing wigs.”

“She can’t be a psychic investigator,” said James Bond.

“Why not?” said Stargirl.

“Eet’s possible,” countered Agent Moscow.

“Because—if she was like a psychic investigator, she wouldn’t be here doing Spy Camp; she’d be on television or something.”

“She
might
be a psychic investigator outside of her camp-counselor work,” said Stargirl.

“What’s a psychic investigator?” Baby Boy asked.

“I think it’s someone who investigates hauntings and stuff like that.”

“Oh, I believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t.”

Gilda listened as her team members argued among themselves, half wishing she could take back the information she had told them.
I really let the cat out of the bag now,
she thought.

“The lie she told is about eating the peanut butter, banana, and chocolate sandwiches, because that sounds way too yucky!” Baby Boy announced.

“Listen, team,” said Gilda, glancing at the time on her cell phone, “we’re running out of time and we need to begin our next project, so I’ll go ahead and tell you. The first two statements are true, and the last statement is a lie. I actually
love
wearing wigs, and I own several.”

“See?” Stargirl poked James Bond. “I was right!”

The Comedian stared at Gilda, bug-eyed. “That means you’re a
real
psychic investigator.”

“Yup,” said Gilda, “and I’ve solved several cases.”

“You mean, you talk to ghosts and stuff?”

“Not only do I make contact with ghosts,” Gilda whispered, now enjoying her team’s rapt attention, “I have reason to believe there’s a ghost right here in the Spy Museum.”
A true professional would have kept that a secret,
Gilda thought. But it was too late to take back the truth now: for better or worse, she was letting her team in on a big part of her investigation. “You know that face that appeared on the video monitors when you were practicing your surveillance?”

Gilda’s recruits nodded silently. She had their complete attention.

“I’m pretty sure we were actually seeing a ghost.”

Team Crypt stared, wide-eyed, as if they were sitting around a campfire listening to a spooky story.

“Yes,” said Agent Moscow, quietly and with great certainty. “Eet
was
a ghost.”

22

Dream of the Psychic Spy

The psychic spy reclined in his chair in the secret office where he worked. There, across the room, was Loomis Trench, his supervisor. As always, Loomis wore his yellow bow tie and neatly pressed dark suit. As always, Loomis frowned and took detailed notes, recording everything the psychic spy said during his trance.

The spy’s current target was a remote industrial facility in an unfriendly foreign country. Entering a trance state, he projected his mind to a distant location and began to search for evidence of covert weapons development.

The psychic spy felt his body moving through a misty realm where there was no sky and no earth. Then, as he approached the industrial building—his target—he looked for his spirit guide. Once again, the girl failed to appear. Why had she abandoned him? Without her, his readings had become unpredictable, unreliable.

Loomis had brought the psychic spy to the CIA to prove that a professional psychic could contribute something of genuine value to intelligence gathering, but recently, the psychic spy’s readings had become inexplicably faulty. Increasingly, his remote viewing sessions were disregarded by skeptical higher-ups in the agency. Nevertheless, Loomis showed no signs of giving up the project. He continued his dogged persuit of one target after another.

I’m in the wrong place,
the psychic spy realized. Instead of viewing the industrial site Loomis had told him to target, he found himself in a spare, dingy apartment where damp laundry hung to dry across the living room. He felt his stomach drop with surprise when, tacked to the wall, he saw a calendar displaying the date: 1988.
I’m viewing the past,
he thought.
And I seem to be in a foreign country. Is it Russia? Why am I seeing this?

It was a woman’s apartment—a woman who looked very familiar. She stared into a mirror, first applying bright violet eyeshadow, then carefully affixing a star-shaped brooch to the colorful scarf around her neck. The psychic spy knew that there was something very special about the brooch: it allowed the woman to take secret photographs. He knew something else:
she’s going to die.
Suddenly he made the connection:
It’s her,
he thought, now recognizing the face. Several of his remote viewing sessions had been interrupted by this same woman’s dead, bloodstained face! But why? He had no idea who she was.

“Who are you?” the psychic spy asked the woman.

As usual, she would not answer him. She picked up a slim red book: he saw that it was a book of poems by the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.

From a distance, the psychic spy heard his supervisor speaking to him. “Here,” said Loomis, his voice sounding hollow and muffled, as if he were speaking underwater. “Wear this.” Loomis roughly put a blindfold over the psychic spy’s eyes.

Panicked, the spy awoke to find himself in his bedroom. He was in a small Washington, D.C., hotel in a building that used to be a Victorian mansion. Moonlight streamed into the window, illuminating the purple and dark green hues of the painted walls and carpeting. His bed was surrounded by an antique birdcage and an assortment of paintings and small sculptures. Amid the clutter of shapes in his room, it took a few minutes for the psychic spy to perceive the girl’s shadowy silhouette:
his spirit guide sat in a chair in the corner.

Seeing the girl, he felt a surge of happiness and relief. “You came back,” he whispered.

The psychic spy had aged, but his spirit guide was eternally eleven years old. She called herself “Lavender”; she was freckle-nosed and petite with long, chestnut braids that hung past her delicate shoulders. But something about her had changed: perhaps she looked more serious than usual.

“Where have you been?” he asked. “Why haven’t you been helping me?”

“I’ve been helping you,” she snapped. She was very real, yet he could see through her body to the pattern of a purple velvet cushion propped behind her. “
You
haven’t been listening and paying attention.”

“Look, the work I’m doing right now is more important than anything I’ve done before. I’m trying to view foreign targets for the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s important for the country, for the whole field of psychic research, and yes—for my career. I need your help: I keep seeing a woman I don’t even recognize. If that isn’t bad enough, a couple times when I was getting close to reading the access code for some top-secret files, the image of a teenage girl wearing cat’s-eye sunglasses turned up for absolutely no reason!”

“The people you’re seeing are trying to help you, but you aren’t really paying attention,” the girl retorted.

“Is that all you can tell me?” It was unusual for the psychic to feel frustrated with his spirit guide. Ever since her death when they were both children, he had trusted their connection—kept faith in the knowledge she gave him through dreams and visions. Now, for the first time, he felt impatient with the limitations of his knowledge—annoyed with these cryptic appearances from unwelcome phantoms.

“The government is entrusting me with highly classified information,” he insisted. “Think how many foreign governments would love to know about the weapons systems, access codes, and undercover agents I’ve targeted in various countries. I want to do a good job, and I need your help.”

“I guess you won’t be able to see the truth until you’re ready,” said the girl. She vanished, leaving only a glimmer of moonlight on the velvet chair.

23

Cracking the Code

The atmosphere in the city was languid and sleepy as Gilda exited the Union Station Metro stop and headed toward the Library of Congress, where she planned to meet Caitlin. The warm, musky scent of black-eyed Susans and marigolds permeated the air, and idling tour buses parked along the streets filled the air with a low, rumbling sound. Gilda walked through a quiet park where trees were labeled with little plaques to identify their species. Here and there, office workers wearing high-heeled pumps sat on benches talking on cell phones or munching on sandwiches.

She turned down First Street and walked past the Supreme Court, pausing for a moment to read the façade proclaiming EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW, absorb the solemn aura that surrounded the building’s gleaming white marble.

Gilda felt immediately happy when she entered the cathedral-like Great Hall of the Library of Congress. Gilda loved libraries of all kinds, and this was quite simply the most spectacular library she had ever visited. She was surrounded by high ceilings, marble arches, pillars, marble mosaics, and murals. Everywhere she looked, sculptures and paintings portrayed images of freedom and knowledge. Gilda had paused to view a series of paintings depicting the long journey of progress from cavemen scribbling on cave walls through the development of the written word and printed books when she heard Caitlin’s breathless voice calling her name.

“Gilda! Oh, good, you’re here!” Caitlin rushed toward her, the casual flip-flops she wore with her black pantsuit slapping against the floor. “My friend Joe is a reference librarian in the reading room here, and he says you can come in and do your research today as a special favor to me. Like I told you, you’d normally have to be at least eighteen years old to do research here, so you’re getting special access.”

“That’s great!” Now that she was in the Library of Congress, Gilda was itching to begin her research.

“Follow me,” said Caitlin. “I’m in a rush because my lovely employer has given me some extra stories to proofread plus a story to write for the newsletter before the end of the day, so I have to get over to a Judiciary Committee meeting and then back to the office to write it. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Joe.”

Caitlin led Gilda into the main reading room of the library. Gilda looked up at the domed ceiling soaring overhead. Statues representing religion, history, art, philosophy, law, and science gazed down at her like the faces of angels.

“What are you researching?” Joe was a young man with glasses and a goatee.

“Um—do you have any books about President Lincoln—like collections of letters he wrote to people and things like that?”

“Not only do we have books on Lincoln, we have books on Lincoln in hundreds of languages. We have tunnels between the Capitol Building and the library with conveyor belts that shoot books back and forth all day long. So yes—I think I can dredge up at least a couple books on Abraham Lincoln for you.”

“You came here to research Abraham Lincoln?” Caitlin asked. “I thought you needed to come here to do some research on an espionage case or something.”

“It’s actually related to espionage research; it’s just kind of complicated.”

“Whatever it is, Joe can help you. Right, Joe?”

“That’s what I’m here for—to help the public.”

“Joe’s not like me; he never complains about his job.”

“That’s right. I only complain about people who never return favors.”

“Good thing we don’t know anyone like that.”

“So when are you going to make me that gourmet meal you promised me
last
time I did you a favor?”

“Omigod, Joe. This month has been so totally crazed with work.”