by Alma Katsu
Second—and more immediate—Kate Franklin’s suicide. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it, not for a minute. To feel guilty for her part in it, for she certainly was a factor. The woman killed herself shortly after their interview. Lyndsey studied psychology and so she knows there had to be other factors, that their conversation alone didn’t drive Franklin to do it. Still, she can’t shake the guilt.
Was Kate Franklin the mole? Lyndsey is ninety-nine percent certain that she wasn’t.
Will Raymond Murphy agree with her? She is almost as certain that he will not. That he will use the suicide to declare Franklin’s guilt and to pack up his investigation.
Which would be disastrous. It would enable the real mole to continue, and what’s more, the mole would know that CIA is on the alert and so would be more careful than ever.
Lyndsey can’t let that happen. She might not be able to convince Murphy to keep his investigation open, but she vows not to let him make Franklin the scapegoat.
Even if the evidence takes her someplace she doesn’t want to go.
* * *
—
Lyndsey stops at Jan Westerling’s desk. The young woman doesn’t notice her at first; she’s too busy taking off the walking shoes she wore in from the parking lot and slipping on high heels, black pumps with four-inch stilettos. Her head jerks up when she sees she has a visitor.
“How are you doing, Jan? Feeling better?”
“I’m fine,” she responds curtly. Westerling is defensive about crying in the office. She doesn’t want Lyndsey or anyone else thinking less of her for it. They can smell weakness in the air here.
“That’s tough for anyone to go through,” Lyndsey hurries to say, thinking of the ugly photos of Kulakov’s broken body filling Westerling’s screen. It was hard enough reading Popov’s toxicology report; she’s grateful there were no autopsy pictures. “I have a question for you, but it’s one that needs to stay between us”—Westerling nods quickly—“Has anyone shown an unusual interest in Kulakov? I’m not talking about recently. This would be before his death.”
The young analyst’s brow furrows. It might be that she doesn’t understand the question, but Lyndsey thinks she’s reluctant to give out names. Her natural instinct would be to protect a coworker by assuming she misunderstood the coworker’s actions.
Lyndsey studies Westerling’s face, looking for clues that the young woman is suppressing a suspicion. And she is. There’s something there—she’s just not ready to talk about it. Yet. Doesn’t want to betray someone she sees as a friend—not to Lyndsey, who is still an unknown quantity. An outsider.
Westerling shakes her head. “No. Nothing comes to mind.”
“That’s fine, but if you think of anything, no matter how trivial, come see me, okay?” She has to trust that duty will prevail and Westerling will break the traditional veil of silence.
Westerling nods quickly, and Lyndsey takes her cue to leave.
* * *
—
Lyndsey waits until after the morning team meetings to approach Kyle Kincaid. His face drops slightly when he sees her: this man will never be good at poker.
As a matter of fact, a change has come over Kincaid since the last time Lyndsey saw him. Something is going on, but she can’t put her finger on what it might be. He’s more guarded than the first time, but isn’t that perfectly natural? Now that he knows what she’s interested in?
Kincaid follows her out of the office, Lyndsey leading him to the vending machines at the end of the corridor where they won’t be overheard. He rattles coins in his pocket as he looks over the assortment of snacks behind the Plexiglas. “I thought we were done. You forget something?” He sounds like a man who expects bad news.
Lyndsey folds her arms over her chest. “I forgot to ask who may have approached you about Skipjack. Anyone with an unexpected interest in cyber?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” He nods in agreement. Raymond Murphy will be happy to hear the mandatory CI training is having an effect. “It’s cockamamie if you ask me . . . What are the chances that someone inside is responsible for his disappearance?”
She doesn’t mention Lighthouse or Genghis. If he’s unaware of the other cases, so much the better. “You think there’s another reason?”
Kincaid shrugs. “He was an unhappy man. I think it’s more likely that it’s something we don’t know about. Like he owed the wrong people money, or his wife was getting on his case.”
We tend to assume other people’s problems are like our own, she learned from the two behavioral researchers she worked with at Penn. In which case, there may be more to Kyle Kincaid than meets the eye. Still, he might be right about Skipjack.
He rattles the coins again, like they are burning a hole in his pockets. “Skipjack had just turned in some really good information, and a report was getting a lot of attention from new people, offices that hadn’t bothered with his earlier reports . . . So, it’s hard to say for sure whether there was someone bad in there. But there was one in particular . . .” Jiggles coins. He’s stalling. “It struck me as odd, that she would be interested. She doesn’t work in cyber.”
“She?”
Kincaid casts a glance over his shoulder before continuing. “Her name is Evelyn Wang. In Russia Division. You know who I’m talking about?”
Lyndsey nods, but she’s not sure if she knows the woman. Easy enough to find out.
“She gave me some story how she thought Skipjack might have something to do with a problem she was working on. She asked a million questions about him.”
“And did you tell her?”
He swallows. He knows he is caught. “Yeah, I thought where’s the harm? She has a blue badge hanging around her neck the same as me . . .” By the way he feigns and stammers, he knows he did wrong. “I didn’t think about it at the time, but a couple weeks later I was taking that mandatory training course, the one where they talk about spies caught here, and they were talking about Aldrich Ames and it hit me, it was just like that. Just like that.” Now the bravado has gone out of him. Skipjack is gone and he could be responsible.
“Did you tell anyone about your suspicions at the time?”
“No. Because at the time, it didn’t seem . . . It didn’t make sense. There was nothing going on.” His face turns red.
“You can’t tell anyone about this, got that?” Lyndsey says. “This is an ongoing investigation. Not a word.”
He nods. Funny thing is, Lyndsey thinks she sees a flash of resentment pass over his face—then triumph.
* * *
—
There’s an IM flashing on her screen when she returns to her office. It’s Theresa: Coffee? Lyndsey would like to, maybe probe discreetly about Theresa’s use of that bulletin board tool, but there’s one meeting she’s been putting off that she can stall no longer. Sorry, maybe later? she types, then hits Send.
She has to see Genghis’s reports officer.
The reports officer for Genghis hasn’t changed since Lyndsey was Popov’s handler. Lyndsey has known Evert Northrop for most of her career, ever since she came to Russia Division as a trainee. Northrop is past retirement age, with a reputation for being a martinet. They had a prickly long-distance relationship when Lyndsey was in Moscow and she’s been avoiding him since she’s been back, though she feels guilty about it. Northrop stays in his corner of the office, she has noticed, not talking much to anyone or participating in team meetings, a fussy old man making pots of tea with the electric kettle he doesn’t let anyone else use.
He’s still tucked off in a corner, forcing you to wend through a maze of safes and file cabinets if you want to see him. The light dims, giving you the sensation of descending into a library’s long-forgotten stacks. There are old Soviet-era propaganda posters on the walls, probably salvaged from the trash thirty years ago, and bits of Russian kitsch: a pink ba
bushka draped decoratively over a side table, and on a nearby shelf, a set of matryoshka dolls painted to resemble Russian ballerinas. The overall impression is a cross between a crazed Muscovite diva’s parlor and Soviet party headquarters. He’s carved out his own little corner, made a place for himself among the more predatory types, the Hank Bremers and Richard Warners and even the Eric Newmans of Russia Division.
His expression is unreadable as she approaches, though he seems to grip the report in his hands a little tighter. Seeing her would remind him of Yaromir Popov. She isn’t the only one who lost Yaromir Popov. Lyndsey kicks herself for not coming to see him earlier.
Northrop avoids looking at her as he pours tea into his cup. “Hello, Lyndsey. I’d heard you were back.”
As the reports officer for Genghis, Northrop would know about the investigation so he knows why she has come to see him. Still, there are niceties to observe. “How are you?”
“They’re still waiting for me to retire. They want to replace us with younger models. You’d do well to remember that. You may be one of the younger models now, but it’ll be your turn one day.” His eyes are sharp as needles.
His desk is piled with stacks of reports, a wild hedge of white paper and manila file folders. Paper overflows from his two-drawer safe. Some officers never learn to trust a computer or claim they can’t absorb what they read on a screen. They rail against passwords on the computer and using a PIN to cross a threshold into the vault, and grumble about the mandatory training they’re asked to take. They stick to the old ways—and yet they complain about being eased out the door.
Will she become a dinosaur, too, one day? She doubts she’ll last that long.
Lyndsey asks him the same questions she asked Westerling and Kincaid. “It’s not like it was during your day, Lyndsey. Popov stopped producing after you’d gone. He gave us only tidbits. It might be that he got circumspect . . . After the episode with Richard Warner, things were very bad over there. You had left for Lebanon. The FSB made it impossible for Moscow Station. Morozov, the big man, that shit, made life hell. He was probably being spiteful—you know, because we had him pinned to Moscow after the affair in Kiev. He was always sending his goons to harass our officers, sending people over to rifle through apartments and leave little messages so we’d know they’d been there. Move things around, unplug refrigerators, take a shit on a bed. One officer came home to find his cat had been poisoned.”
The Russians’ love of poisons apparently extended to house pets. Was it the same one they’d used on Popov? And Morozov—the name roused old memories. He had just been elevated to chief of the counterintelligence department in the FSB when Lyndsey was in Moscow, a cagey old man who, like Northrop, had hung on since the Yeltsin era. He was rumored to have orchestrated the hit on the Chief of Station in Kiev many years back, before Lyndsey’s time, and it earned him a place on CIA’s most-wanted list. General Morozov—the rank was honorary, everyone working for Russian security services technically were members of the Russian army—was like a ghost, never seen but whispered about, not too loudly lest he be summoned by the mere mention of his name.
“Maybe he was lying low. Trying to avoid a dragnet . . .”
Northrop does a sly one-shouldered shrug. “Or it could be that he loathed Tom Cassidy. That was pretty clear.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I guess you haven’t met Cassidy yet. He’s one of those guys who only respects the people above him on the chain. Assets are commodities to be used up and discarded.” Northrop puts down his cup and saucer with a rattle of china. “He’s not an easy man to like.”
Yaromir Popov would’ve despised him, Lyndsey guesses. “If Popov hadn’t been providing information, does that mean no one came looking to get on the access list?”
“No, no one.”
Then how did the mole learn about Popov? This doesn’t fit the pattern for Skipjack and Lighthouse—if it can even be called a pattern. It’s thin as tissue paper, and uncertainty starts to gnaw on Lyndsey again.
The time for directness has come. “Evert, I need you to be frank with me, but you have to promise me you’ll be discreet.”
Northrop smirks. “No one talks to me anymore, Lyndsey. Anything you tell me is not going anywhere.”
He’s a little hungry for gossip, though. She can tell by the way the corners of his mouth turn up, the slight twitch of his lips. She’ll have to trust him, even though he’s an old hand and likely to have certain alliances to the old guard. To Richard Warner.
“Did Theresa Warner ever ask you about Popov?”
Surprise registers on his face for only a second, but it’s genuine. His gaze flicks in the direction of Theresa’s desk. He can guess why she’s asked.
“Theresa? No. Never.”
“What about Evelyn Wang?”
He purses his lips. “Evelyn’s a friendly girl . . . and a pleasure to talk to. But about Genghis?” He shakes his head.
Which leaves one suspect.
TWENTY
Lyndsey is back at her desk, mulling over her conversation with Northrop, when she notices the chat window on her monitor is flashing. Raymond Murphy sent a message while she was away: You’ve got access to Pennantrace. Pennantrace is the cover term for Olga Boykova, the asset Richard Warner was trying to save when he was killed.
There’s more to the message. Physical records have been destroyed.
Irritation flares in her brain. It does seem suspicious, even though accidents have been known to happen to archived documents. But for a case this controversial, under such scrutiny?
It appears all is not lost, however. Murphy has one piece of advice: Suggest you speak to Edward Sheridan, the reports officer at the time. He’s on a detail to National Defense University.
* * *
—
The drive to Fort McNair isn’t pleasant but the campus makes up for it. It is hard to believe something this open and green could exist within the boundaries of Washington, D.C. Lyndsey is early for her appointment, so she takes a lap of the campus for the view. A few soldiers jog by in gray athletic uniforms, while a young officer appears to be showing his family around the monuments on the green. How tempting it must be to take one of these details out of the building, if you’re with the Agency. To get out of the cross fire, where there’s no target on your back.
She finds Sheridan outside the library, where he suggested they meet. He’s an older gentleman with thinning brown hair and glasses, with the bland look of a man who is already retired in his mind. He shakes her hand. “I thought maybe we could take a walk. It’s such a lovely day.”
They have the sidewalk to themselves as they stroll the promenade. She keeps pace with Sheridan’s unhurried meander. “I’m not sure I can answer your questions about Russia. I’ve tried to put that episode behind me,” Sheridan says. Of course: it didn’t end well and there are unhappy memories. That’s probably why he ended up here, to finish out his career quietly.
She didn’t drive all the way out here to fold easily. “With the records lost, anything you can remember would be of help . . .”
Sheridan sighs, thinking for the span of a few strides. “I remember that Boykova was a complete surprise. We couldn’t believe it when we got the first drops. It was solid gold. Putin’s talking points for upcoming negotiations. Background papers. Decision memos. It was like having keys to Putin’s inner sanctum. We knew exactly what Russian leadership was thinking.”
His joy is still apparent, even after all this time. Lyndsey remains silent, waiting for him to continue.
“Naturally, we thought that the asset must be very, very senior. It had to be someone close to Putin, perhaps an oligarch who had grown rich from Putin’s patronage but had developed a conscience and could no longer stand by while the country was being plundered. Or a top aide who knew all of Putin’s appointments and made sure the right papers were
read in advance.” Sheridan turns and gives Lyndsey a sheepish smile. Nearly apologetic. “But Olga Boykova was none of those things. Olga Boykova was a housekeeper.”
Lyndsey can scarcely believe what she’s hearing as Sheridan lays it out. It sounds like a strange, political version of Cinderella. Boykova started at Novo-Ogaryovo, Putin’s official residence just outside of Moscow proper, polishing the floors and working her way up in the household staff. Soon, she was assigned to the small team in the office wing. She had risen quickly despite her youth and lack of seniority—the older members, with a great sense of entitlement, guarded their standing jealously—because she had proven herself an exceptionally hard worker. In a society where initiative and competency were viewed with suspicion, it seemed President Putin appreciated having one person who could find a book when it had been misplaced or turn down sheets exactly the way he liked.
She had been working in Putin’s household for five years when she decided to spy for America.
“It’s not uncommon for foreign intelligence services to recruit household staff as paid informants, but these assets tended to provide little more than tactical information,” Sheridan says. “They could tell you if a principal was drinking more heavily than normal, or who in the inner circle might be open to approach, but often lacked the know-how to go after really good stuff.”
Sheridan walks slowly, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. Olga Boykova, he says, appeared to have no such reservations. Richard’s reports documented her deep, irrevocable disappointment in the Russian president. She saw how the elites lived while knowing, intimately, the hopelessness that the average Russian faced. It was no longer the wild, frontier days of her childhood, the time after Gorbachev and later Yeltsin when the Soviet system imploded, the economy tanked, and lawlessness threatened to destroy Russia. Order had been restored, but the badness had only gone underground, disguised itself with fancy new clothes. Now oligarchs siphoned off Russia’s money and hid it in overseas bank accounts, Russia’s wealth unaccountably gone like a once-healthy man suddenly drained of blood.