Red Widow

by Alma Katsu

  “I’m under investigation.”

  Silence. Theresa leans back in the plastic chair. “Wow. No offense, but you seem like the last person who’d break the rules.”

  “Am I that much of a goody-two-shoes?”

  “It can’t be too bad if they’re letting you keep your badge.”

  A half smirk. “It’s only because of Eric. For the investigation.”

  Theresa’s eyebrows shoot up. She seems to start to say something, then hesitates. “You don’t have to tell me what happened if you don’t want to . . .”

  Say it fast, like pulling off a bandage. “I dated a foreign intelligence officer while in Beirut.” Theresa is working hard to suppress whatever thoughts she’s having. Lyndsey can’t tell if she’s being judged at this moment.

  “He’s a Brit,” she adds, knowing that will make a difference.

  “Did you get any good intel from him? If you got any reportable information out of it, all would’ve been forgiven,” Theresa cracks. She’s trying to lighten the situation but it’s not entirely untrue.

  “It wasn’t like that. We didn’t talk about work.” That is never true, not in this line of work. Now Lyndsey doesn’t want to say anything more, doesn’t want to relive it all over again. The wound doesn’t smart as sharply as it did this morning. Finally telling someone about it has loosened its power over her.

  Except now Theresa knows something bad about her. Something she could hold over Lyndsey’s head if she chose to. She has given The Widow leverage.

  But a true friend wouldn’t do that, would she?

  “So, he was just a fling, this guy?” Theresa asks. “That’s too bad . . . It’s good, you know, being with someone in the business. They understand what you’re going through.”

  Lyndsey’s heard this said before. But she’s not sure this isn’t just a way for Agency folks to excuse themselves. My wife doesn’t understand me. Then hop into bed with a coworker.

  “It would be a shame to lose this guy if you really like him. It’s hard to find the right one. It would be too bad if you had to let him slip away.” Theresa takes a long draw on her coffee. “There’s another way to look at this, of course. Without a man in your life, you’re free to do what you want. Ask for an assignment in Paris, or Timbuktu, any place that takes your fancy. Take that plum assignment, volunteer to be the Director’s executive assistant. You can do the long hours now.”

  Lyndsey chuckles. “You’re not going to tell me I need a husband?”

  “God, no.” Theresa turns somber. They are treading on sensitive ground. “Marriage is a big deal. A commitment. I truly believe that. It’s a test of who you are as a person. You have to be sure that you’re ready.”

  For a while, they sit in silence. The most important thing in Theresa’s life, it seems, was her marriage. Now that Richard is gone, what does that mean for Theresa? What is she if she’s not Richard Warner’s wife?

  Lyndsey puts down her cup. “Thanks for being my talk therapy. I liked Davis—this man—a lot.” Referring to him in the past tense rankles, but Davis Ranford is part of her past now. She can’t see any way to get back together with him, not as long as she’s still working.

  “The only advice I have is to do what feels right,” Theresa says. “If that’s fighting to keep this man, then fight. Or if you know in your heart that it was a mistake, let him go. Only you know the answer to that.”

  Lyndsey walks out to the parking lot with Theresa. The women say their goodbyes and Theresa heads off to where she’s parked her Volvo as Lyndsey sits behind the wheel of her rental. She’s been unable to stop thinking about Davis since the conversation in the cafeteria. Was it a mistake to let him go, is this what’s been troubling her? There’s nothing she’d like to do more, at that moment, than lean against his long, rangy frame and feel his arm slip around her shoulder, drawing her close. To feel him nuzzle her hair and remind her that life is too short for regrets.

  Taking a deep breath, she turns the key in the ignition and drives away.

  FOURTEEN

  The mornings begin to fall into a steady rhythm. Powering up her computer and spinning the dial on the combination lock to her safe. Shutting the door to mute the sounds of life outside, the murmur of voices and thump of footsteps approaching and receding. To put herself into the necessary mind-set to hunt a traitor.

  She needs to be sure about Kulakov, that the official cause of death isn’t plausible. So, she calls Ruth Mallory, one of the old Russia hands. One of the few who has worked the target since the Soviet days, but Lyndsey hears she is about to retire. “Did you get that report I sent you?” Lyndsey asks as soon as Mallory answers the phone.

  “Sure did. Those were some pictures.”

  “Whose handiwork, if you had to guess?”

  “Oh, it’s FSB, no doubt about it. Maybe the politsiya were involved, too. They’ve been known to go overboard if the FSB lets them in on the fun.”

  “I’m disappointed they didn’t do a better job covering their tracks.”

  “They have no reason to hide. It’s better, for intimidation purposes, for everyone to know what they’re capable of.”

  When Lyndsey asks Mallory—who knows everyone who’s walked through the doors of Russia Division for the last forty years—what she knows about Kate Franklin, Mallory gives a brusque laugh. “It’s a fool’s game, trying to guess. I’ve been through that once, you know. Aldrich Ames. I was a junior officer. It’s a miserable ordeal to go through. Absolutely miserable. They turn the office inside out, question everyone. They investigate you to within an inch of your life. It destroys morale. Here, your whole identity is built around trustworthiness. You’re given access to secrets because they trust you, and—not for anything you did, poof, it’s all taken away from you. That’s when you see things for how they really are: they don’t trust us, not really.”

  Lyndsey feels a flutter of recognition. Being pushed out of Beirut Station, sent home.

  “Then you find out that one of you was a traitor, that it wasn’t a wild-goose chase like you hoped, and it’s worse. Infinitely worse. You remember all the conversations you had with him. You remember all the sketchy things about him, how no one really liked him, how it was so obvious that something wasn’t right and yet they let him continue . . . Why is that? Have you ever wondered? You want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but why is it that they’re always so slow to move on the bad eggs and so quick when it comes to the innocent? I’ve never really understood that . . . It seems a kind of cowardice, to me. And a disappointment to those who trusted the system.”

  While everything Mallory has just said is true, it doesn’t help the situation at hand. As Lyndsey’s about to say goodbye, however, Mallory adds, “If I remember correctly, there may have been something a few years back involving Franklin . . . I can’t remember the details. But you might talk to Reese Munroe. I think he was her supervisor at the time.”

  Reese was Lyndsey’s boss in Moscow. While some time has passed since they’d last been in touch, she’d like the opportunity to speak to him again. “Where is Reese now?”

  “In Belarus. He must’ve made someone very angry to get sent there,” Mallory says with a laugh.

  Lyndsey makes a mental note to send Reese an email.

  * * *

  —

  She turns her attention to the files Raymond Murphy sent yesterday. They arrived late, just as she was packing up. He pulled the access logs for all three compartments, Lighthouse, Skipjack, and Genghis. If anyone tried to access these electronic files, which reside behind a firewall, it would be noted in these logs. Raymond has already warned her that no one looks through the logs for anomalies in real time; they’re only there for backup, to check after an event has taken place. The files are nothing but rows and rows of numbers and punctuation marks and fragments of words that mean something to a computer but nothing to her. You’re l
ooking for patterns and nothing more, which is why Raymond punted this task over to Lyndsey. I don’t have time to go through the logs, he’d written in his email. And I’ve set up a time for you to interview Kate Franklin this afternoon.

  They really should have a programmer do this but there aren’t enough programmers to go around, and besides, most programmers would consider this beneath their dignity, which means she would wait for days, if not weeks, for one of them to get around to it.

  She pores over the lines until her eyes sting. Eventually she identifies the code that means an attempt was made to access a file, but access was denied. Then she figures out which string of numbers is the computer ID. Most of the time she sees a computer’s ID only once, meaning that a hit on a restricted file was probably a mistake, a typo. But repeated hits from the same computer ID: that’s someone consciously trying to access restricted files.

  Before long, she has a short list of IDs.

  She sends the list to Raymond, asking him to pinpoint the computers with these IDs. He writes back that this will only give her the location of the computer, which doesn’t necessarily equate to a person. Someone could deliberately use another person’s computer, waiting until the unwitting person has stepped away without locking their computer: it’s a known way to try to hide your identity. It’s why most of the computers are set to lock automatically after a short while.

  That’s why it’s so hard to catch these guys, he types as an afterthought.

  The logs Raymond sent cover the last three months. After all her sifting, she found only a handful of suspicious activity, which surprises her but would probably make Security happy. She’s afraid the chances of the mole being one of the numbers are pretty slim. Three months may be too recent. The mole may have gone after information months ago, but the Russians only decided to act now. Perhaps she should ask Raymond to pull the logs from a year ago . . .

  And then it hits her: the number of attempts to access the files, even from authorized users, is small. That means no one is reading the reports—electronically. But what about paper copies? Officers are discouraged from keeping paper copies for various reasons. It’s less secure, and then there’s the problem of storing and disposing of them. She knows, however, that it’s still done. Everyone prints copies of important reports, the ones they refer to frequently. Could the mole be getting paper copies?

  Jan Westerling is the reports officer for Lighthouse. Lyndsey remembers talking to the woman the day Kulakov’s body was found, how upset she was. Her impression of Westerling is that she is inexperienced but earnest and not especially careless.

  Lyndsey wanders over to Westerling’s desk. One of many gray cubicles, it takes Lyndsey a minute to remember where it sits, but at last she finds it. There are the discarded walking shoes under the desk, a stainless steel water bottle. Thumbtacked to the fabric panel is a picture of Westerling in hiking clothes, a down vest, and sunglasses, her straight black hair pulled back in a ponytail, her head bowed next to another woman of about the same age.

  The cubicle is empty. The reports officer is probably away at a meeting. Without appearing too obvious, Lyndsey glances around. The computer monitor is locked, just as it should be, but there are papers in the open. A two-drawer safe sits at a right angle to the desk, and it’s clearly open, the drawers pulled out to keep it from automatically locking. People leave their safes open though they’re not supposed to, like leaving your car running while you go to the ATM. It’s convenient. You don’t believe anything is going to happen. You open them in the morning and leave them open all day, never expecting that someone would go through them when you’re not there.

  She looks around. The vault is a big, open cavern made up of cubicles with partitions five feet tall. You can see into Westerling’s area from at least three other cubicles, though it would be a partial view and that’s if the neighbors happen to look up from the computer. Lyndsey could reach down and rifle through the reports in the safe, and while she might be noticed, she doubts anyone would call her on it.

  She has what she needs for Lighthouse. To follow up on Skipjack, she needs to ask Maggie where she can find Kyle Kincaid, the reports officer. As it turns out, he’s in another part of the building, sitting with a team that follows cyber targets. As they make the short walk, Maggie asks how Lyndsey is settling in.

  “Oh, fine,” Lyndsey says, wary about saying too much about the investigation, not sure what Eric has told Maggie. Some managers treat their office managers like secretaries, but others include them in just about everything.

  “Eric’s glad you’re here. I don’t know that there was anyone else he could turn to.”

  It’s nice of Maggie to say, but could it be true? Lyndsey knows there are plenty of other former officers from Russia Division who could also handle the investigation—some more experienced. Then there’s Beirut hanging over her head. She wonders if Maggie knows anything about that. If anything, it’s Lyndsey who is indebted to Eric: this could go a long way toward making the problem go away.

  Kyle Kincaid is found in another vast, open, dimly lit office. The men in the cubicles around him are all younger, and he holds court with a stream of chatter about a paintball outing this past weekend. From his buzz haircut to his erect posture and beefy build, Kyle Kincaid comes across as former military, most likely leaving the service as a junior officer to join the Agency. He wears a white shirt with the sleeves rolled haphazardly to his elbows, and an ugly tie, the kind picked by a man who hasn’t had to buy many. A battered canvas briefcase sits by his feet.

  “Kyle?” She interrupts his chatter to introduce herself and tell him why she’s sought him out. “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

  They walk down the hall to a conference room. He slides into a chair. He doesn’t bother to try to hide his skepticism. It’s not that he doesn’t believe what she told him, but he clearly doesn’t like that she is going to be judging how he has done his job, if he might’ve done something that got his asset apprehended. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened,” she says even though she knows it won’t set his mind at ease.

  “How did the Russians find out about Nesterov?” Kincaid asks.

  “That’s what we hope to find out. I need you to answer a few questions.”

  He smirks. “You sound like a cop. Do I need a lawyer?”

  She should’ve brought Raymond Murphy with her, then at least they could play good cop, bad cop. “I’m not with CI. I’m sure they’ll talk to you soon enough. I’m trying to figure out if someone got access to Nesterov’s files who shouldn’t have. Have you noticed anything off lately? People asking questions who weren’t read into the access, asking to see his reports?”

  “No . . . But there’s a lot of interest in Skipjack’s reports now. He’s been turning in some good information, though that wasn’t always the case. The number of people who know his true identity, though—that’s small. Most people don’t care who the source is as long as the information is good. Once they’re satisfied that he’s not lying, they don’t think about it again.”

  “And there’s nothing out of the ordinary you can remember?”

  “Nothing.” He frowns like a petulant schoolboy. “Why would a mole turn in Skipjack? That’s the part I don’t get. Moscow wouldn’t care about small potatoes like him. I think Station was ready to write him off. He was lucky to get reassigned to that cyber unit. Things were about to turn around for him.”

  Lyndsey’s ears prick up. He’s touched on something that’s been nagging her: how did the mole decide to hand over these three assets? They’re lopsided: Lighthouse and Skipjack hadn’t been big producers, as Kincaid said. But Genghis, Popov, was a crown jewel. Genghis alone would be more than the Russians could hope for.

  For another thing, they are as diverse as can be, from three different programs: science, military, and a highly placed security asset. You’d think that the mole would h
ave access to one program only. The mole is either showing off his ability to break through firewalls or . . . there’s another reason at play here, one that Lyndsey hasn’t thought of yet.

  On her way out, Lyndsey gives Kincaid’s desk a once-over. He sits with his back to three other officers, their four cubicles forming a square with a shared table in the middle. It seems a lively place, the four men talking among themselves constantly. She notices Kincaid’s safe, too: the drawers are open, manila folders peeking out, tempting anyone to pluck them up. But most likely, at least one of these four guys would be around at any given time. It would be hard to get to those files without being seen.

  Unless the mole sits nearby. Or Kincaid is stupider than he seems. There’s a path through all these bits and pieces that leads to an answer, but at the moment she can’t see it.

  * * *

  —

  That afternoon comes an appointment Lyndsey hasn’t been looking forward to: the interview with Kate Franklin. Lyndsey told Raymond Murphy she wanted to talk to her alone, rather than participate in CI’s questioning. Beirut is still fresh in her mind: her own interrogation by the Chief of Station, hammered with questions even though they were uninterested in her answers, their minds already made up. The shame and regret and fear. It’s too raw for her to sit on the other side of the table, to watch someone else go through the same ordeal.

  She feels for this woman across the table, made to confess her failings in front of strangers. Franklin sits at the table, shoulders hunched, eyes downcast. An ugly patch of psoriasis has broken out on her face. Her hair is barely combed, her clothes don’t seem to sit right on her body, as though she’s misaligned buttons or put on things a size too small. Everything about her posture and demeanor says she has given up already. She probably wishes the floor would open up beneath her, that she could hand in her badge and kiss her pension goodbye if only they would let her walk out the door. They’ve threatened her with jail time, though, rattling her into submission. Lyndsey’s stomach clenches to look at her.