Алма Катсу - Red Widow

That’s right, the compartment. You don’t know who has been read in and who hasn’t. She shouldn’t have said anything. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

Theresa Warner turns back to the monitor. Next to her computer is one and only one family photo, a picture of a young boy with dark hair and the biggest eyes Lyndsey has ever seen. No pictures of a husband anywhere.

That’s because Theresa’s husband had been killed in an Agency operation gone wrong. The pieces come back to Lyndsey now. Theresa Warner is The Widow. They had made a big deal when they put her husband’s star up on the Wall of Honor, splashed around a photo of Theresa from the ceremony. Skeptics snarked it was because she looked like Jackie Kennedy and would remind people of the tragic romance of dying for your country. Lyndsey heard about the incident shortly after she arrived in Lebanon and she never heard any details of what had happened. Close hold, no need-to-know. Like everyone else, she only heard that Richard Warner had died.

Richard Warner had been a branch chief in Russia Division when she first came on board. Not that she’d ever worked with him. She only knew him in passing. He and Eric had both been branch chiefs then—though he surpassed Eric at some point.

It is kind of strange to find Theresa still working at Langley. How awful it must be, to spend your days in a place where everything reminds you of your lost spouse. Most people would’ve quit. Of course, everyone’s circumstances are different. Perhaps Theresa can’t afford to leave, or doesn’t want to look for a new job. There is the son, obviously. Perhaps she stays out of loyalty, or the possibility of avenging her husband’s death.

Suddenly Eric is walking toward her. He looks like he’s on his way to something important, a stand-up over a late-breaking crisis, a meeting with the Director on the seventh floor. He is rushed but puts on a good face.

“Good, you two have met. I was coming to introduce you. Don’t you know each other already? Didn’t you work together in the early days?”

“No,” Lyndsey says.

“Well, if you need anything, I’m sure Theresa would be happy to help you get settled.” Then he heads off to fight his next battle.

Theresa narrows her eyes, studying Lyndsey. “Weren’t you at Moscow Station recently?”

Lyndsey thinks she knows where Theresa is going with this but she wasn’t there when Theresa’s husband died. Lyndsey opens her mouth to say how sorry she was to hear about Richard, but Theresa cuts her off. “I’d love to catch up, but I don’t have time to talk right now. I have a report to finish. Maybe later?” And with that, she turns her back on Lyndsey and goes back to her keyboard, keys clacking away.

Dismissed. Lyndsey pokes around the empty desk for a few minutes and then heads to Maggie’s station. The office manager looks up as she approaches.

“Is there another empty desk I could use? I feel like I’m—imposing on her space.”

“Oh, don’t mind her. She can be a little chilly.” Maggie drops her voice and leans forward, a curl dropping onto her forehead. “You know who she is, right?”

Lyndsey nods.

Maggie glances over her shoulder to see if someone might be listening but there’s no one around. “They call her the Red Widow around here. Because of, you know.” She gestures to her mouth. Theresa’s fire-engine-red lipstick. Not something a widow would wear, is the implication. “Then there’s the sports car. It’s a Jaguar, that really famous model. Bright red. It was Richard’s. She drives it once in a while, when the weather is really nice. Parks it in Richard’s old spot. So everyone will remember him, I guess.”

“That’s very—loyal of her.” Lyndsey struggles for words.

Maggie shrugs and turns back to the monitor, to whatever she was doing before Lyndsey came up. “I’m afraid we’re full up, no other desks at the moment. But don’t worry, it’ll just be a day or two. I’m working on getting you a private office. You won’t have to put up with her for very long.”

Lyndsey walks back to her desk, sobered. She would’ve liked to reconnect with Theresa, but this is not the woman she knew. She has been upended by loss and changed irrevocably. No longer a person harboring the usual hopes and beset by normal tribulations. She has been transformed by tragedy into The Widow.

Lyndsey has just returned from the vending machine in the hall—vending machine coffee has to be better than the tree pitch in the office’s coffeemaker—when Maggie stops by her desk.

“There’s someone in the conference room to see you. From CI.”

Counterintelligence. It’s not the worst news: if it had to do with Lebanon, they’d have sent someone from the Office of Security. The men in Security are humorless, unsmiling and unblinking. After the events of the past month, the accusations and threats, she’s had enough of Security to last her a good long while, thank you.

There is something unexciting about the man she finds in the small conference room. Counterintelligence are the people who look for in-house spies. In many ways, it’s a small world unto itself, chasing leads that rarely pan out. A dull job for dull, suspicious people. As opposed to the Clandestine Service, her service. The glamourous work, the stuff of legends.

“Raymond Murphy,” the man says as he rises to shake her hand. His dishwater-colored eyes give her a once-over. She studies his face in return. Wary. Something he’s trying to hide, that he doesn’t want me to see. He’s the kind of man who mows the lawn every Saturday morning whether it needs it or not, shines his shoes every Sunday, always buys the same brand of cereal. “I’ve been assigned to work with you on the task force.”

It makes sense that Eric would get someone from CI to assist on this. They have access to information that she wouldn’t, from financial disclosure statements to background checks. And computer logs. Still, she can’t help but feel slightly uncomfortable, as though he’s looking over her shoulder, too. All Agency people feel that way about them, she figures. They’re like internal affairs in a police department.

“I’ve been told that you’re just back from overseas, getting your feet on the ground,” he continues. How much has he been told about her specific situation, she wonders, before admonishing herself to STOP THINKING ABOUT THE THING that hangs over her head like the Sword of Damocles. Her lapse of judgment. Her relationship with a foreign national, an agent of another intelligence service to boot. Davis Ranford, a British citizen… and a member of a rival service. The rules are there for a reason, Chief of Station Beirut had said when he sent her back to D.C.

Rules that others have broken and gone unpunished, but who does the breaking is as important as which rule was broken.

Murphy gives no indication that he’s aware of the debate raging in her head. He swivels his chair lazily. “I thought maybe we could start with some background, get you set up. Have you ever been involved in an investigation like this before?” He leans back, but she senses he’s not as relaxed as he’d like her to think. “This is probably an insider threat. We like to say Counterintelligence is like an iceberg. The part we can see is probably less than ten percent of what’s really going on. You usually don’t have a clue until something like this happens.”

He means a double agent. Someone on your team selling secrets to the enemy. It’s not entirely a surprise to Lyndsey. The Agency teaches its employees about treason. They sit in classes devoted to the case histories of famous traitors: Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, Ana Montes. They are made to learn the particulars of their treachery. They are taught the warning signs—unexplained wealth, sudden and unaccountable foreign travel, spurts of sudden chumminess alternating with prickly distance—so they’ll know when to be suspicious if they see these signs in a coworker. So you’ll be able to tell when the person sitting beside you might be selling secrets to foreign masters.