The Dead Drop by Jennifer Allison

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.
    I need sleep, Roger told himself, allowing himself to close his eyes for just a moment.
    His thoughts were interrupted by a crackling, static sound. The image of Edith Cavell’s face dissolved into grainy pixels and the narrator’s voice fell silent. Great, he thought. All I need is for something to go wrong with the show software . He checked all the connections and hidden cords in the exhibit but could find nothing wrong.
    The normal exhibit film had completely stopped. Roger stared at the mirror, first seeing his own reflection, then watching something that resembled a plume of smoke moving inside the glass. The plume of smoke grew darker and larger until it resembled a human head. . . . Was it a woman’s face? Whatever that is, it isn’t a film image, Roger thought. It was something more real and present—something that seemed to watch him. There was also an aroma—a sweet floral perfume that also smelled old, reminding him of a box of dried flowers or aging bottles of vanilla extract and bags of stale marshmallows in the back of his kitchen cabinet at home.
    Roger often worked alone in the museum, so it was unusual for him to have the feeling he suddenly had—the immediate, childish knowledge that above all, he didn’t want to be alone. He actually felt scared.
    Leaving a rolling cart of tools behind, he hurried toward the staff offices, wanting to forget what he had just seen.

12

    The Promotion
    Sitting at her desk in the Spy Museum, Gilda logged into her computer and typed the words “OAK HILL” into a search engine just to see what she might find.
    To her delight, a site for Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C., appeared. She clicked on the site, then grew even more excited when she realized that Oak Hill Cemetery was in the same neighborhood as Boris’s house in Georgetown.
    Surrounded by a quiet Georgetown neighborhood on R Street, Oak Hill Cemetery is a historic and atmospheric destination in Washington, D.C. You will find many graves from the Civil War era, including a family mausoleum where President Lincoln’s son Willie was buried during Lincoln’s presidency—until the president himself was assassinated, after which time both bodies were laid to rest in Springfield, Illinois. During his term in office, the president was known to spend hours sitting by his son’s tomb in Oak Hill Cemetery.
    IMPORTANT DISCOVERY!
    There’s a link between the word “Oakhill” and President Lincoln! If Lincoln’s young son used to be buried there, that