The Dead Drop (9 page)

Lincoln pointed to a gun sitting on the writer’s desk—the lipstick gun the museum had acquired. The gun, in turn, seemed to point toward an object hanging on the wall. The shadowy man in the top hat extended a long arm, pointing in the same direction.

There, displayed on the wall next to the antique desk was the Jefferson cipher wheel—a wooden cylinder covered with small, carved letters.

Gilda watched as the letters rearranged themselves into a single word:

“What does it mean?” Gilda turned back to Lincoln’s ghost, thinking he might be able to explain the significance of the word. But when she turned around, she found herself staring into the barrel of a gun—the lipstick gun. The face behind the gun was featureless—a dark shadow.

10

The Message in the Cipher

Gilda awoke with a feeling of panic and sorrow, as if she had just learned that a friend had been fatally wounded. Her skin felt clammy. She grabbed the notebook she kept next to her bed so she could record her dream before it slipped back into her unconscious mind. She wrote the first word that popped into her mind—a word with a cryptic meaning:

Gilda sat back in her chair and rested her chin on her knee. Had the dream merely been her brain processing little pieces of information—a collage of images and thoughts from the past few days? Or did the dream contain a genuine message?

Gilda pulled her
Master Psychic’s Handbook
from a side pocket in her suitcase. The book, written by Gilda’s idol—famed psychic Balthazar Frobenius—was battered from years of being carried in Gilda’s backpack, stuffed in the back of her school locker, wedged into suitcases, and basically accompanying Gilda just about everywhere. Even though she had read the book more times than she could count, she always found a new nugget of wisdom when she searched the book for insight into a problem. She turned to a chapter on dreams and read:

Gilda thought for a moment, then turned back to her psychic-dream report:

Gilda suddenly had a sinking feeling as she recalled the final image of her dream.

Wanting to call Wendy, Gilda picked up her cell phone and hesitated. She knew Wendy would be grumpy if she were wakened in the middle of the night.

But I owe Wendy a phone call,
Gilda reasoned. And isn’t that what best friends are for—someone to call at 3:00 A.M. if you’re scared and really need to talk? Gilda decided to go ahead and dial Wendy’s number.

Far away, in a neat bedroom in Ferndale, Michigan, Wendy Choy cursed and lurched out of bed at the sound of her cell phone, which was at the bottom of her backpack. She found the phone just in time to pick up Gilda’s call.

“Lo,” she said in a hoarse voice, peering at the clock on her bedside table.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, I was just sitting here hoping someone would call.”

“I was afraid I’d wake you up.”

“Seriously, Gilda. I have to get up in the morning for math camp.”

“How’s that going, by the way? My brother’s in that same program this summer, you know.”

“I know. And it’s good. I don’t know. Why don’t you ever call me at a normal hour to have a conversation? I’ve been wondering how you’re doing in D.C., and I don’t hear anything, and then you wake me up in the middle of the night.”

“I’ve written you a bunch of letters; I just haven’t mailed them yet.”

“I have e-mail and a cell phone, Gilda. Why not just send a text message like a normal person?”

“With text messages there’s nothing for posterity. Years from now when we’re old and the technology is outdated, all those letters I write you will still be sitting there in your attic. See, if I only send you text messages—”

“Gilda, what do you want?”

“Something weird just happened.”

“Every time you go somewhere something weird happens.”

“Wendy, I don’t even have to go anywhere and weird things happen.”

“So what happened this time?”

Gilda told Wendy about the dream and how it seemed to contain a message of some kind. “And at the end, there was a gun pointing at me.”

“Oh.” Wendy grew quiet for a moment. She was well acquainted with ominous nightmares; during a trip to England, she had experienced some very disturbing dreams that made her feel certain that her life was in danger. She suddenly felt more sympathetic toward Gilda. “It was probably just an anxiety dream. You know; you’re on your own in the big city and everything.”

“But everything else about the dream seemed so significant.”

“Or maybe the gun was just there because you were dreaming about President Lincoln. You know, he got assassinated, so that’s not far-fetched.”

“But it felt like he had something to
tell
me. Why me?”

“You’re a psychic investigator, aren’t you? Maybe Lincoln’s ghost just wants to get to know you.”

“I guess. . . .” Gilda’s voice trailed off. She caught her breath because a light suddenly flashed in her room. She put the telephone down and watched as it happened again—and then again—a repetitive series of flashes:
on, off, on, off.

“Gilda? Are you there?”

“Something’s going on here, Wendy,” Gilda whispered.

“What’s happening?”

“I need to check this out. I’ll call you later.”

“But—”

Gilda hung up the phone and realized that the light was coming from outside her window. She opened the blinds and looked across the courtyard into rows of apartments that were dark—except for one fifth-floor window where lights were flashing:
on, off, on, off.
Gilda watched for a minute, transfixed.
What was going on in that apartment?

Gilda remembered how the mousy woman had stared through that same apartment window. Her face had been plain. Maybe she wore glasses. There was nothing striking about her at all, but the simple fact of seeing her staring with such intensity through the window had filled Gilda with trepidation.

Now feeling even more bewildered and intrigued than when she had first awoken from the dream about Abraham Lincoln, Gilda pulled a book entitled
Haunted Government: The Famous Ghosts of Washington, D.C.
from her suitcase and turned to a passage about Lincoln’s ghost.

11

The Museum Ghost

Surrounded by an assortment of antique toiletries including “Southern Rose” hair oil, “Dri-Dew” deodorant, perfume bottles, and a silver hairbrush and mirror, the Spy Museum’s manager of exhibit production stared at the lipstick pistol and secret-camera brooch he had just installed in the Sisterhood of Spies room. His name was Roger Selak, and although he resembled a young college student dressed in a baseball cap and blue jeans, he was actually a new father who had been up for exactly half the night pacing through his apartment with a colicky newborn. The other half of the night had been spent dozing on the couch and having whispered arguments with his wife about the possible cause of their baby’s sleeplessness and which of the two of them was more tired than the other. Roger assumed it was sleep deprivation that caused him to feel light-headed and dizzy as he considered the lipstick gun and spy-camera brooch in their case—objects he had originally intended to place among secret weapons of the Cold War. On the other hand, maybe the problem was the sneaky, vintage femininity of the exhibit, which was designed to resemble a dressing room of a Southern belle who was also a spy. The display contained dolls with hollow china heads, tiny Bibles containing secret handwritten notes, and a fake beard and mustache—the various tools of female spies who smuggled communications behind enemy lines during the Civil War.

Behind Roger, a film about female spies was projected from an ornate three-way mirror. Black-and-white photographs of women’s faces emerged from the mirror, growing larger, then fading as the soft-voiced narrator told of the lives and deaths of spies including Mata Hari, Harriet Tubman, Sarah Edmonds, and Edith Cavell, the last of whom was executed by a firing squad.