Алма Катсу - Red Widow

She rubs her face. She should have used the past couple weeks to search for a place to live. She was supposed to have two months of home leave, the term for annual leave you aren’t able to burn while you’re stationed overseas. Leave that piles up while you’re busy being invaluable to the nation’s security. Some people come back with six months of paid vacation. Lyndsey offered to forfeit hers if they would let her go right back to work. She wasn’t trying to be a hero; it would take her mind off her troubles. But they insisted she take the time.

Trust me, the OHESS doctor had said during the customary checkup on her return. She never liked dealing with the Occupational Heath, Environmental and Safety Services office, it seemed intrusive for your doctor to work for your employer. Everybody needs to de-stress after an overseas tour. You need to get used to being in the States again. He had been instructed to say that, she was pretty sure. They needed time to decide what to do with her.

Lyndsey wanders through the apartment in the oversized T-shirt she wears for sleeping, turning on lights as she goes. Because of the Ambien, she rules out another drink. Something hot? Herbal tea, cocoa? But there’s next to nothing in the place, only one-cup bags of ground coffee brought daily by the housekeeper, because she has been avoiding the grocery store. She really should go shopping.

She can hardly believe her luck. She hasn’t been fired; she knew as soon as she heard Eric Newman’s name. He was her first boss at the CIA. Their paths have crossed innumerable times since then, which is to be expected since they work the same target. He’d been made Chief of Russia Division a few years ago, a powerful position. Whatever’s happened, the reason for the call, has something to do with Russia. But CIA has lots of Russia hands, many of them with more years on target than her. It’s a little odd that he would ask for her by name. She wonders what he might know about her time in Lebanon—and her return.

She sits on the couch, tucking her cold, bare feet beneath her. She tries to remember how she left things with Eric the last time she’d seen him. She’d always thought him a good guy, a boss who wanted to do the right thing for his people, but there had been grumbles. Weren’t there always grumbles about the boss? Show me one manager who is loved by everyone.

Eric Newman asked for her by name.

She finds the remote and turns on the television, flipping quickly to CNN. The news is all reheated from earlier, not a clue as to what could be behind Eric’s request. Wrangling over financial reforms in Congress, another round of peace talks in the Middle East, and baseball’s team owners about to meet in Florida. The reality is that whatever is behind the SOC’s call, it hasn’t hit the news. It’s something bad that the rest of the world doesn’t know about yet.

But, in four hours, she’ll find out.

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

CIA has not changed in the five years Lyndsey has been gone.

The next morning, the headquarters building makes no attempt to charm, only to impress. White walls like a glacial field. Wide terrazzo floors. The main hallway hung with oil paintings of former Directors, their solemn faces (knowing, judgmental) staring down on the passing streams of employees. While it has felt stifling at times, Lyndsey also finds something reassuring about the sameness, a promise that despite the rolling crises, where the job is meeting one impossible challenge after another, this place will endure because it must.

She sees as soon as she steps through the door to Russia Division that not much has changed here, either, a fairy kingdom that went into hibernation the moment she left, awaiting her return. The same drab colors, the dated furniture. The same binders of case studies and training materials collecting dust, that no one has looked at since they were first shelved. And the window dressing to remind visitors where you are: a row of matryoshka, Russian nesting dolls, line up on the receptionist’s desk. A Soviet-era flag that’s seen better days hanging on a wall, greeting visitors as they enter the vault. Welcome to the Evil Empire. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

As she waits for the office manager to fetch Eric Newman, she looks over the rows of cubicles. At this hour, the room is only half-full, but most heads remain hunched over computers. Only a few swivel in her direction and she doesn’t recognize any of them. The old hands, the people who would know her, have worked their way into the corners, out of sight.

Eric Newman emerges from his office, his right hand outstretched. He shakes hers like a politician who needs her vote. He hasn’t changed much, either, since the last time she saw him. They like guys like Eric at Langley, tall and lean and reasonably good looking. Works out every morning in the gym in the Agency’s basement, dresses well but not too expensively, charges around with a seemingly endless supply of energy. He’s always calm and competent and in control.

“Good to see you, Lyndsey. Thanks for coming in. How—” He almost asks about Lebanon but catches himself. It would be a perfectly normal thing to ask someone who’s just returned—unless that person has been recalled pending evaluation.

Lyndsey pretends not to notice. Instead, he asks, “How long have you been back?”

“Two weeks.”

“That’s barely time to unpack. I’m sorry to have to cut your home leave short.”

He leads her down the hall to his office. It’s nicer than she remembers. They’re treating him well. Large by headquarters’ standards, with enough room for a couch and armchair to one side, a conference table and six swivel chairs to the other. A cluster of three tall windows looks out on the trees, the scene so idyllic and peaceful that it resembles a college campus. His desk sits toward the back of the room, facing out like a captain’s bridge. Unlike many managers at Langley, Eric doesn’t decorate his office with mementos, no “me wall” of awards and commendations doing their best to impress you. Uncluttered and focused, Eric’s office projects that he’s stronger than that.

Lyndsey’s mind flits back to when she and Eric first met. He was a branch chief then, two rungs down the ladder from where he is now, with his circle of responsibility commensurately smaller. He was her first boss in the clandestine service when she finished the trainee program and wrapped up her assignment in the Directorate of Science and Technology, building on the paper she’d worked on at the University of Pennsylvania, the one that got all the attention, brought the job offer in the first place. Eric had been interested in her work in the DST, even the paper she’d written, though she’d been out of school for years at that point and college seemed like another life. He undoubtedly had something to do with the decision to send her to Moscow for her first overseas assignment. It was rare to get such a plum assignment right off the bat. “Don’t make us regret sending you,” he’d said with a chuckle as he toasted her at the going-away party.

Then she brought in Yaromir Popov as a major asset and her future seemed assured, all their trust in her validated.

Now she is on administrative leave pending adjudication. What a difference a couple of years can make.

Eric takes the armchair with the easy command of a king on his throne, but his face is troubled. “I’ll cut right to the chase: I called you in because we have a crisis on our hands. In the past couple weeks, we lost two of our assets in Moscow. They disappeared. Vanished.”

When two of your recruited spies disappear in such a short a time, you have to assume the worst. Discovery by Russian internal security, arrest. Prison, or worse. She can’t remember this happening since she’s been at the Agency. Sure, assets stopped performing and took themselves out of the game, or you stopped expecting anything from them. But they’d never lost one to the enemy, not in her time.