by Alma Katsu
With that, the spell is broken. The sounds of the mall courtyard return, yelps and laughter of excited children. Lyndsey blinks, the story Theresa just told her evaporating like perfume on the air. Did Theresa really just share all that with her, here, in a crowded mall? Maybe she can only tell that story outside of Langley. As an act of defiance. Outside the Agency’s domain, beyond their reach.
Brian runs up to them, a flush to his pale face. He has a few breathy words for his mother—“monkey bars for my little monkey” Theresa says as she ruffles his hair affectionately—before turning once again to Lyndsey with wide, curious eyes. Trying to make sense of her, her importance to his mother.
Something has happened just now: Theresa shared her burden with Lyndsey. Lyndsey now knows the complicated tale of loyalty and betrayal that has left a woman alone to care for a fatherless child. She suddenly feels close to Theresa and is sorry that this didn’t happen earlier. Why didn’t they become friends at the start? she wonders. Too dissimilar, probably: Theresa was already married, a young wife, whereas Lyndsey was just out of college and still green. Theresa was also the wife of a branch chief, in an entirely different social world. But circumstances have thrown them together now. Lyndsey realizes with a start, as Theresa gathers her shopping bags, that this is the most intimate conversation she’s had with a woman in the last five years. Overseas stations are notoriously light on female officers. And one tends to let old friends and even family slip away during covert overseas assignments.
Theresa Warner, The Widow, is the closest thing she has to a friend.
“That’s great, slugger,” Theresa says to her son as she places a hand to his back, gently steering him away from the play space and into the throng of shoppers. “But now it’s time for lunch. Where do you want to go? Do you want to get a hamburger? And a chocolate shake? And maybe if you’re very good”—her eyes flit to Lyndsey, holding her gaze for a second—“Miss Lyndsey will agree to join us. And she can become your new friend, too, like she’s mommy’s friend. What do you say?”
ELEVEN
In the middle of a quiet afternoon, Lyndsey slogs through the stack of last year’s reports, looking for clues. She’s been unsettled all day, restless and prickly. She feels the pressure of Eric’s warning—the Director has asked for an update every day—but also, it feels as though something is about to happen, as though there’s a storm in the distance. It’s the waiting: waiting for the missing assets to turn up, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She promises herself another coffee if she can keep at the reports until the top of the hour.
But then Maggie Kimball knocks on the door. She shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Eric wants you in the conference room for a teleconference with Moscow Station.”
Why would Moscow Station request a teleconference at this hour? It’s late in the evening, Moscow time. As Lyndsey weaves through the desks, she notices—or is she imagining it?—tense faces and rounded shoulders, twitchy and ready to bolt. At CIA, people are like gazelles at the watering hole, exquisitely attuned to the slightest change in the air. They know that something is up.
Eric is the only one in the room and he nods slightly at Lyndsey to close the door. On a monitor, two men sit hunched and scowling at a table, braced for contention. She recognizes Hank Bremer, bald and overweight, his unhandsome face flushed bright pink like he’s just run up flights of stairs, though the monitor might be to blame. Next to him is a man she doesn’t recognize, Hank’s opposite physically, with thick, dark hair and a trace of a Mediterranean complexion.
Eric addresses the screen as she takes a seat. “This is Lyndsey Duncan. She’s helping with the Genghis investigation. I want her to sit in.” To her, he says, “You know Hank, I believe. That’s Tom Cassidy.”
It’s all Lyndsey can do not to lash out at Cassidy. She hasn’t brought up to Eric what she learned from Masha, not yet. She wants to work it out in her head first, make sure she’s not overlooking something. Yaromir Popov didn’t trust Moscow Station and it cost him his life.
Eric swivels to face the monitor. “Tell us what happened, Hank.”
Bremer’s hands are clasped in front of his face, hiding his mouth. He has news he doesn’t want to share. “Kulakov’s body was found today.”
One of the missing assets, the scientist. The news is not unexpected but still it takes Lyndsey’s breath away.
“It was all over the newspapers and television. They wanted us to hear about it.” Is Bremer mad because he’s embarrassed that one of his assets was killed under his nose? There seem to be only two types of Chiefs of Station: ones who keep their thoughts to themselves, or emotional types who lash out at the slightest provocation. Reese Munroe, Chief of Station during Lyndsey’s time, had been the former, for which she was grateful. She never liked working for the volatile ones. No one did. “His body was found in a strange place, not near his home or his work. They’re claiming it was a mugging, of course. The body was in bad shape when it was found. Broken bones, face a bloody mess.”
Not a mugging, in other words. Extreme damage implies it was not impersonal. “Could it have been something else?” Lyndsey asks. A hate crime. There is no shortage of these in Moscow. Kulakov was Jewish.
“We’ve seen the police report. They’re trying to insinuate that he was gay. They said his profile was found on a gay website that’s seen trouble recently. Members lured out by homophobes and beaten up.”
“Was he gay?” Eric asks. His tone is clipped; he isn’t in the mood to beat around the bush. He wants answers, not speculation.
“No.” Cassidy jumps in. “He was married. Had children.”
“Married men have been known to have secret lives—”
“He was my asset. I knew the man. I say no,” Cassidy snaps.
So, Cassidy was Kulakov’s handler, too. Can this much bad luck be coincidental? Though to give up two of your own cases to the Russians would be the height of stupidity, to say the least. She tries to read his body English, but it’s hard under the circumstances. He could be defensive. Or merely unhappy.
“Have any of the other victims from the website been killed?” Eric asks.
Bremer sucks in his cheeks as he thinks. “Not that I recall.”
“It’s a smoke screen. They killed him,” Cassidy snaps. He means the FSB. “Maybe they figured out he was working for us. The timing is—suspicious.” He looks sideways at his boss, a sheepish expression flitting by in the blink of an eye but she catches it, knowing where to look. “We were waiting for him to pass missile plans to us. The INF—it was going to be the main focus of the negotiations this summer.”
“Oh?” Eric says. His voice is sharp with surprise.
“Yeah,” Cassidy says. “He was finally going to pay off, after all the waiting . . . He told me last time we got together. He said he could get his hands on the plans. I was waiting for him to deliver.”
Bremer leans toward the camera, his pink face glowing in the low light. “I think those assholes found out what he was up to and had him killed. Made it splashy, too, as a warning.”
They are all quiet for a moment, turning over individual thoughts. The loss of those plans is a huge blow—the importance of the INF flaring up as both the U.S. and Russia hurl accusations of cheating on safeguards—and Kulakov’s death suddenly takes on greater meaning. Finally, Eric clears his throat. “See what else you can find out, but until we find proof otherwise, we have to assume the state is behind this. We don’t know how they found out about him, but they killed him.”
Popov and Kulakov killed, Nesterov missing. The grim truth settles over the four of them. The evidence seems undeniable: Moscow is rolling up CIA’s assets.
Eric clears his throat. The corners of his mouth twitch. What he’s about to say next pains him. “Hank, I want you to stand down all operations for the time being.” It’s the same advice Lyndsey gave him, only now he’s ready to act on it.
Bremer’s pink face goes red, like his shirt collar has suddenly gone too tight. “You can’t do that. We have things in the works—”
“It doesn’t matter, Hank. You know that. Shut it down, all of it. Tell your people”—the assets, Eric means, their Russian spies—“to lie low until we get things under control. We can’t afford to lose anyone else right now.”
Bremer is clearly upset, but he knows not to say anything more. Instead, he strikes the table with a closed fist.
“I know you don’t like it, Hank, but we have to think of our people.” Eric’s tone is more conciliatory but it’s too late. Station Chiefs don’t like to have their authority questioned in front of subordinates. He should’ve helped Hank come to this conclusion himself. “We’ll figure out what’s going on and stop it.”
“It’s not coming from here,” Bremer booms. “Whoever’s talking to the FSB, it’s not someone in the Station. I know my people.” He points a finger at the camera in accusation. “CI has been sniffing around lately—is that your doing? Trying to place the blame on us?”
“They’re just doing their job,” Eric says, pushing back from the table.
The finger jabs emphatically. “If there’s a mole, it’s in Langley. It’s one of your people, Eric.”
“We’ll see,” Eric says through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, we’ll see all right.” Big talk from Bremer; Lyndsey wonders if he knows something he’s not telling.
“You’d warned me that we’d have to do this to protect our remaining assets . . . Happy?” Eric says to Lyndsey after the video connection is shut down.
“That you’re shutting down the Station? It’s the right thing. And there’s something you should know: I heard from Popov’s widow.” It means admitting the backdoor channel, but Lyndsey tells Eric about the exchange with Masha.
“So, the problem is at Moscow Station,” Eric says slowly. Floored, maybe, by the news.
“I can get CI to look into Cassidy—”
“No,” Eric says. Too quickly. Lyndsey raises an eyebrow. “Let them conduct their own investigation. Let’s see if they can corroborate what Masha told you. We shouldn’t take anything at face value . . .”
Does he think there’s a chance Masha might be lying to them?
Lyndsey’s instincts tell her that’s not the case, but Eric is the boss. And he’s more experienced than she is. Lyndsey trusts Masha because she trusted her husband, but she’s never met Masha. It’s hard, but Lyndsey forces herself to see it from Eric’s perspective. They have to remain objective. She says nothing, nods, and heads out the door.
As Lyndsey heads back to her tiny office, she sees a small group gathered around a cubicle, low murmuring passed back and forth as they console someone. A young woman at the center of the group dabs her eyes with a tissue. As Lyndsey approaches, the gathered melt away. Given Lyndsey’s chumminess with Eric, they probably lump her in with management and don’t want to be seen gabbing, shirking their jobs. The teary-eyed woman looks up as Lyndsey approaches.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but were you working on Lighthouse?” Lyndsey is careful to use Kulakov’s cover name. “I’m working on the investigation—you probably heard about it. You can talk to me.”
The nameplate reads jan westerling. The woman nods as she reaches for her eyeglasses on the desk. “I’m the reports officer. I’ve been on Lighthouse’s case for a couple years.”
Exactly the person Lyndsey needs to speak to: the reports officer acts as the liaison between Langley and Moscow Station. Lyndsey rests her shoulder against a pillar, blocking the desk off from view to the rest of the office. She needs to ask a few questions and it would be better if they had even a shred of privacy. “This has got to be tough.” You’re not supposed to let yourself get too close to an asset, but you do if you’re human. Even someone like this reports officer to whom Kulakov is little more than a name in a report. Who didn’t have the kind of relationship Lyndsey had with Yaromir Popov.
The young woman nods. Still shaky, she taps a couple keys and then turns the monitor toward Lyndsey. What she sees on the screen is a punch to the gut. The image is of a man’s face, but you’ll get nothing about him from this picture. His age, his likely ethnic background, nothing. His entire face is distorted by swelling. The eyes are crusted shut with dried blood and the mouth is an open pit of glistening black, all his teeth gone. It could be a hate crime: the victim has been obliterated.
Shock washes over Lyndsey as reality hits her. This is what they’re dealing with.
“That’s from the police report,” Westerling says, her voice thickening.
Lyndsey takes a deep breath before leaning over the keyboard to page through the rest of the images. There’s one of the body on asphalt, arms and legs twisted unnaturally, like he fell from a distance. He wears a shirt and tie and a beige trench coat, the kind of clothes he’d have worn to work. “Did the report say when he was last seen?”
“He didn’t return from work one evening, about three weeks ago.”
“And who reported him missing?”
“His wife.”
Lyndsey peers at the photos more closely, looking for signs of decomposition. “Does the police report say anything about the time of death, or the state of the body?”
“They’re waiting on an autopsy for time of death, but they estimate that he’s been dead about a week.”
Which means whoever abducted him kept him alive for two weeks. Although you could make a case for torture from the state of his face, it didn’t seem likely that a bunch of homophobes would kidnap a man and hold him for two weeks if they meant to kill him.
It did sound like an interrogation, however. “Could you forward that report to me?” Lyndsey asks, getting ready to head back to her office.
As Westerling reaches for the mouse, tears spill down her cheeks. “It’s different now, you know, from when I started. They’re playing rougher in Moscow.” Tell me about it, Lyndsey wants to say, but she doesn’t want to shut the young woman down, so she nods. “It’s like the FSB feels they can take the gloves off. I can’t believe they did this to—this asset. He was a nice guy. A scientist. Harmless.” A few more tears. “He didn’t sign up for this. This should never have happened. We can’t take care of them . . . Something’s wrong.” She wipes at her tears, shaking her head. “Forget what I just said, I’m upset. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Westerling meant every word and Lyndsey knows it. She’s just afraid Lyndsey will tell Eric. Lyndsey puts a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. I know what you mean.”
The first thing Lyndsey does is forward the Russian police report to Raymond Murphy, sure that word hasn’t traveled as fast to him down in Counterintel and wanting to keep him aware of the development. Then she sends it to a woman she worked with early in her career, Ruth Mallory, someone who has followed Russian internal security services for decades. She only wants Mallory’s take on the killing; she won’t be given the background on the case, won’t betray any compartments.
Lyndsey looks up to find Maggie, the office manager, standing in the doorway to her office. She has a quizzical expression on his face, like she’s just heard bad news. She steps inside and closes the door.
“I’ve noticed you’re spending a lot of time with Theresa Warner.” There’s a warning in Maggie’s tone, if you’ve ears to hear. “That’s not a good idea.”
This is not what Lyndsey expected, not at all. “What are you talking about?”
“There are things you don’t know.” How Lyndsey hates those words: they are used too often in the intelligence business. There’s always someone happy to remind you that there’s a deeper secret you’re not privy to. After ten years, Lyndsey has learned that sometimes there’s a secret, and sometimes there isn’t.
Maggie tilts her head, weighing her words. “Theresa Warner .
. . has a reputation. She’s rubbed some people the wrong way.”
Lyndsey parses this silently. Some people means senior managers. Rubbed them the wrong way means she’s made enemies. Committed unforgiveable offenses.
Lyndsey feels a slow burn ignite in her chest. “The woman’s husband died in a CIA operation. Of course she’s angry and upset—”
“She’s let her anger cloud her judgment. She’s alienated people, people who have tried to help her. I’m only telling you what I’ve heard.” Maggie takes a deep breath. “Be careful aligning yourself with Theresa. She’s burned too many bridges.”
How many times has Lyndsey heard these exact words whispered about a coworker? Someone could say the same thing about her. CIA can be a difficult place to work, politicized in unspoken ways. Failure isn’t viewed well, no matter whose fault it is. Some people probably distanced themselves from Theresa after Richard’s death, afraid that the taint would stick to them, too. It was a lesson she learned as a child, when some of her friends withdrew after her father’s death. They were afraid, her mother had explained. The death of a parent is scary and they’re transferring that fear to you. Her mother had always been good at seeing what was going on inside a person’s mind, and she’d taught her daughter to be the same way. It was the reason she’d decided to major in psychology. Lyndsey didn’t hold it against her young friends, but that’s when she learned not to depend on them too much. She’s surprised that she’s grown so close to Theresa. Maybe it’s because they’re so alike. Two loners.
Lyndsey looks at the office manager, reading her expression and body language. She’s sincere. She’s only trying to help. She doesn’t appear to be anyone’s cat’s-paw. Maybe there’s something to what Maggie is saying, something that bears looking into. “Okay—thanks for the warning.” For now, there’s nothing else to say.
TWELVE
Time drags in Lyndsey’s minuscule office. With no window, she judges time by the sounds outside her door. Lyndsey is about to head downstairs for another coffee, her third of the day—and stifles the urge to text Theresa to see if she wants to join her—when an email appears in her inbox.