The Dead Drop (23 page)

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:

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.

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.

“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.

Gilda’s left ear tickled. The poem made her picture a woman walking into a wintry evening, feeling alone and betrayed. It seemed to tell a sad story about the end of a love affair.
This poem must mean something to the Spy Museum ghost,
Gilda thought.
It must be an attempt to communicate—maybe with Agent Moscow since she speaks Russian.

“Agent Moscow, what do you know about this poet Anna Akhmatova?”

“Not much. I mean, I never heard she was spy or anyting like dat.”

Gilda thought for a moment. “We have some time before the other kids show up. Why don’t we go to my office to look up some information on the computer?”

As she and Agent Moscow walked down the hallway, Gilda heard Janet and Matthew Morrow talking; they were already in the office. She listened for a moment, curious to hear what they were talking about. “So—” said Janet, “got any plans for the weekend?”

Gilda hid just outside the office door and gestured to Agent Moscow to do the same.

“Huh?” Matthew grunted.

“The weekend. Any plans?”

“Not really. How about you?”

“I have an extra ticket for the Shakespeare Theater. I mean, if you’d like to go with me.”

Omigod,
Gilda thought.
Janet just asked Matthew Morrow to go out with her!

“Oh!” Matthew seemed to realize that he was being asked out on a date. “Hmm. Let me see. I might be busy doing a really long run. . . . Can I get back to you on that?”

Gilda whipped out her notebook.

“What are you doing?” Agent Moscow whispered.

“It’s important to take notes when spying,” Gilda replied. “Make sure you always have something to write with.”

Janet’s overture had apparently ended all communication between her and Matthew, so Gilda and Agent Moscow breezed into the office to look up information on Gilda’s computer. As the two girls skimmed the contents of several historical websites, Gilda took notes:

“It seems like this poem ‘Song of the Last Meeting’ is a clue of some kind,” said Gilda, “but I don’t think we’re dealing with the ghost of Anna Akhmatova. It must mean something else.”

“Excuse me.” Matthew spun around in his swivel chair. “Did I actually hear you say the words ‘dealing with the ghost of Anna Akhmatova’?!”

“Agent Moscow,” said Gilda, “this is Matthew Morrow, the Spy Museum historian. Matthew, I didn’t realize you were eavesdropping on our conversation.”

“In the Spy Museum, everyone eavesdrops,” Janet interjected. “And by the way, Roger also thinks the museum is haunted.” Janet declared this news headline with obvious pride at her insider knowledge, completely unaware that it was Gilda who had put that idea in Roger’s head in the first place. “But April thinks that’s silly,” she continued. “She says Roger is just sleep-deprived and that it’s a prank some of the kids are playing.”

“Sounds like April might be right for once,” said Matthew.

“Janet,” said Gilda, “is there any history of a haunting in the Spy Museum?”

“Not that I know of.” Janet reached into her desk drawer and retrieved a can of Slim-Fast. “But I do believe in ghosts. This city is full of them.” She glanced in Matthew’s direction, as if he might be a ghost himself.

“What do
you
think, Matthew?” Gilda asked.

“I think I have a lot of
real
work to do.” His telephone rang. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m getting a lot of calls from the press today. Since nobody inside the CIA will tell them anything, they call the Spy Museum historian with their questions.”