Алма Катсу - Red Widow

Lyndsey won’t be forty for some time, but her reckoning has come earlier. There are times when she wants to hide, too, to go back to the way things were. To pretend that things haven’t changed.

Theresa pushes a pair of narrow gold bangles over her bird-boned wrists. “I had a son to take care of. Brian was only five at the time. He was watching me to make sense of his world. That’s when I realized I didn’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for myself or being mad at Richard for putting duty before his obligation to his family. So, after two months, I asked Eric if I could come back. He said I could if that’s what I wanted. I found a woman to take care of Brian after school, and here I am. It hasn’t been easy. But the counselor said the return to normalcy would be good for Brian. And for me.”

“You’ve come a long way,” Lyndsey says, trying to sound cheerful.

“There are still days when it feels like yesterday.”

“I remember Richard. I had just started in the office. I couldn’t get on his team because everyone wanted to work for him.”

“He had a great reputation. They thought he’d be running this place one day.” Theresa turns the paper cup of coffee in her hands as she turns her thoughts. “Richard and I met here. It was still common, then, to meet our future spouses at the office. He was nine years older than me. I had a schoolgirl crush on the boss.” She buries her face in her hands in mock embarrassment.

Plenty of women in the office had crushes on Richard, Lyndsey remembers. At first glance, you wouldn’t think he was the kind of guy women fell for. He was on the slight side. He wasn’t what you call handsome; he had a craggy face, lines etched into it too early. He could be stern. But he was fair, and he always wanted to see the right thing done. He was one of those rare managers who were loved and respected by everyone who worked for them.

Theresa tosses her head. “I found our attraction rather thrilling, but as things started getting serious between us, Richard insisted I transfer to Eric’s branch. ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it by the rules,’ he said.” Lyndsey is impressed; there are plenty of supervisors who openly dated subordinates, thinking no one would dare to challenge them.

She couldn’t think of Richard without thinking of Eric, too. Everyone knew they had come up in the system together, their careers mirror images. Yet they had been opposites in many ways. Eric was good looking in the conventional sense, like a prep school boy, with a thick head of hair and square jaw. He was the appeaser, the one who knew how to cajole and negotiate. Who knew how to tell a joke to ease the tension and could make everyone who worked for him feel good.

In some ways, Eric seems the more natural choice for a woman like Theresa. She had been the “it” girl in the office at the time. Still, she chose Richard. Perhaps she had been drawn to his intellect: he was easily the smartest man Lyndsey had met at the Agency at that point. If you were asked to predict who would be running things in a decade’s time, everyone would’ve said Richard. Eric would be the deputy, the one who smoothed feathers Richard had ruffled.

Theresa’s eyes glow. “He was just so different from the men my age. Do you know what we did on our first date? We hiked up Old Rag in Shenandoah National Park. Another man probably would’ve booked a table at L’Auberge Chez François, but there we were in the Virginia countryside on a fall day, getting to know each other during the hours it took to climb up and back. It was glorious, and typical Richard.”

The good times are seductive, Lyndsey thinks. You believe they’re going to last forever.

Theresa picks up her debris, packing crumpled napkins into the empty cup. “More than anything, I wish Brian could’ve known what his father had been like here, at the Agency. He had a brilliant mind for our line of work. He made amazing deductions, saw possibilities that no one else did. He engineered these really smart exploits that led to great coups, and ultimately provided for the security of the nation. But Brian will never know—unless he gets a security clearance of his own one day, but I am dead set against that.”

“Really?” Lyndsey is surprised. Most parents who work at CIA or other intelligence agencies usually hope their children will follow them into the business—or, at least, they wouldn’t be vehemently against it.

Theresa turns away but not before Lyndsey sees her press her mouth into a firm line. “Not after what I’ve been through.”

They walk back to the office without speaking much. Lyndsey’s not sure what to say. Their conversation in the cafeteria seems to have ended on an awkward note. At one point, Theresa apologizes for dominating the conversation, though Lyndsey is happy not to dodge questions about herself. She’s not ready to open up yet.

But a few steps before the door to the office, Theresa finally breaks the silence. “Strange, isn’t it, what happened yesterday?” She can only be talking about Popov. A flash cable had gone around, announcing his death. “Had you heard of him?”

“Heard of him, yes.” While word of the investigation will come out sooner or later, for now Lyndsey is sure she should play it cool. To honor the compartment that protects the knowledge that Popov was a double agent.

“He must’ve been one of ours: the Division wouldn’t go on alert like that for just any Russian official.”

True enough. Still, Lyndsey is careful not to confirm or deny.

“You said you were conducting an investigation. It’s got to be about this death, isn’t it?”

Now Lyndsey feels doubly wrong for letting it slip out yesterday. “I’m not free to say.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean to pry.” Theresa smiles apologetically. “Still… you’re getting settled in. It’s all got to be disorienting, topsy-turvy. Let me know if I can do anything to help.” And they slip back into the office, parting silently, Lyndsey feeling slightly better about her return. The prodigal daughter.

Back in her tiny office, Lyndsey closes the door. It’s time to put aside interruptions and get started with this investigation.

There had been an email earlier from Raymond Murphy. He’d started looking into Moscow Station for bad apples and hinted that he’d found a possible suspect. It wouldn’t be the Station Chief Hank Bremer, Lyndsey could anticipate that much. She hadn’t worked with him—Hank had come in as she’d been leaving—but he had a reputation for being rule-bound and old-school, and it is hard to picture a guy like that selling out to the enemy.

Raymond had only hinted at the cards in his hand, but it sounds like one of the case officers. Someone who was known to be having money problems and had been caught fudging about the situation in paperwork. Raymond wants to poke around a bit more before sharing a name with her, so that’s all she has for now. Enough to know that Moscow Station couldn’t be ruled out at this point.

It’s time to get started on the tasks Raymond outlined. The first step is to get the access records for Popov, Nesterov, and Kulakov. The information that an asset provides to the Agency might be widely reported, but those reports wouldn’t reveal the true identity of the source. To get on the access list, you would’ve had to prove a need to know the asset’s true identity—usually in order to validate the truthfulness or usefulness of the information. That access list would include policymakers, which means there’s a chance, albeit a slim one, that a U.S. diplomatic or military attaché could’ve accidentally let slip a true name during a negotiation or meeting. There are other ways the Russians might’ve found out, too, but it’s highly unlikely they would’ve found three assets on their own. And for Popov, a consummate professional, to trip himself up? It seems almost impossible. The most likely reason, far more likely than any other, is that someone on the access lists told the Russians.