The Dead Drop (5 page)

Fifteen-year-old Gilda Joyce joins us this week all the way from the Detroit area. Gilda impressed us with the diversity and uniqueness of her academic and extracurricular interests, which include: “solving mysteries, writing novels, ghost hunting, people-watching (spying, of course!), flea-market and garage-sale shopping, street fashion, and cooking for comfort.”

Be sure to stop by and say hello to Gilda!

Dear Wendy:

I just finished my first day of work. Picture this: I’m sitting in my apartment in Washington, D.C., wearing my red power suit. Pretty mature, huh? Now picture this: I just put on a wig and also practiced applying a fake mustache from my disguise kit. (I don’t want you to worry that I’ve become too serious and sophisticated now that I’m working in the nation’s capital.)

I know you’ll be relieved to hear that I’m totally in my element at the Spy Museum!

Today I watched a Spy Museum movie about the good and bad reasons people become spies. Good reasons: patriotism and a passion for intrigue. Bad reasons: greed and egotism. The movie also talked about the risks of getting caught spying on a foreign government--little things like deportation, jail, and death.

“Do YOU have what it takes to be a spy?” the movie asked.

My answer: a resounding YES. However, it’s also true that I’m not a “perfect” spy.

 

 

My strengths as a spy:

I’m naturally curious and even nosy.

I pay attention to details.

I don’t mind being an outsider (well, half the time I don’t mind).

I’m a “people person.” (Please stop sniggering.)

People underestimate me: they assume I’m not a threat, and this gives me more time to investigate them.

I’m used to keeping secrets from my family. (Best friends are another story altogether.)

I’m courageous. (Hey, I didn’t say I don’t get scared.)

Psychic abilities!

 

 

My weaknesses as a spy (keep snide comments to yourself, please):

Spies are supposed to “blend in with the scenery,” and my penchant for fashion makes me stand out in a crowd.

My need to tell my best friend (that’s you, in case you’ve forgotten) everything could become a liability.

I have little interest in technology and no experience with surveillance equipment.

Lack of decoding expertise. (By the way, when I toured the Spy Museum, I learned how the Nazis used a code-making machine called ENIGMA during World War II: it resembles a sinister-looking typewriter. Anyway, a bunch of mathematicians managed to decipher this very complex machine-made code during the war. Let’s hear it for the math kids! Maybe you can ask if you can learn some decoding techniques at math camp, okay? That might be more useful than all of these pointless long-division problems you keep doing--or maybe it’s calculus, but whatever.)

Since you aren’t here to explore this place with me, I’m sending you another installment of my Washington, D.C., virtual travel service! Aren’t you excited?

The Lipstick Gun (the “Kiss of Death”): This was created by the KGB (the intelligence agency for the Soviet Union during the Cold War in case you’re clueless). There’s something spooky about looking into what you think is a lipstick and instead seeing a little hole from which a bullet might fire.

“Sisterhood of Spies” Exhibit: Listen, there’s A LOT they don’t teach us in school. Who knew that there were so many female spies throughout history--women who went around hiding secret notes in their bonnets, sausage curls, petticoats, and china dolls?

 

 

The Jefferson wheel cipher: Who knew that Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of our nation, also invented a way to encode and decode messages? (And why is it that presidents don’t invent things anymore? I guess they’re way too busy to carve things out of wood.) The wheel cipher Jefferson made looks like a little wooden rolling pin, but it’s actually made of twenty-six round wooden pieces, each engraved with letters of the alphabet and threaded onto an iron spindle. When you turn the wheels, you can scramble and unscramble words in lots of different ways. Great for passing secret notes during math class!

 

 

Rectal tool concealment kit: This is exactly what the name says. It’s basically a container concealing a bunch of tools--lock picks, drills to be stored “where the sun don’t shine,” as my Grandma Joyce would put it. It was for very serious spies who were in imminent danger of being captured--kind of an emergency escape kit. I don’t see why you’re laughing. I’m sure the people who had to use it didn’t find the idea of spies going around with tools concealed in their butts the least bit funny.

 

 

MOLES, SIGNAL SITES, AND “DEAD DROPS”: No, a “mole” isn’t a nearly blind furry animal that burrows underground, and it isn’t a beauty mark on your skin. In the spy world (or “intelligence community,” as they like to call it in this town), a “mole” is a person who has access to important secrets--probably someone working for the military, the CIA, or the FBI. But this person is also secretly working for an enemy organization, and informing them of classified information, often in exchange for money. Because it’s too risky for moles (and other spies, for that matter) to meet their contacts in person, they use code names and “dead drops” to communicate with their foreign contacts without being seen associating with them in person.

 

 

DEAD DROPS: It’s usually too dangerous for spy handlers (like CIA officers working overseas) to meet directly with their “assets”--the people who are willing to give them secret information. After all, if spotted together, they might be arrested or even killed. Instead, they use “dead drops”--agreed-upon locations where they will drop off messages and packages of information for each other to pick up without meeting in person. They use “concealment devices” to hide the information they drop off: an empty soda can or a twig can be left out in the open while hiding classified information. Spies usually have “signal sites”--maybe a chalk mark on a mailbox or sign--to alert one another that a communication “drop” has been made.

 

 

SPY CITY: Even though the Cold War is officially over, the Russians and Americans (among others) are apparently spying on each other as much as ever. Kind of makes you wonder what’s going on right outside the Spy Museum!