by Alma Katsu
But now it was her turn to take advantage of someone’s inexperience. Well, let this be a lesson to you, she thought as she walked to Jan Westerling’s desk. Trust no one. I’m not your friend. I’m no one’s friend.
Westerling knew who Theresa was, of course. It didn’t matter that they’d never spoken to each other before; the reports officer would be flattered that The Widow had sought her out. It was easy to get Westerling to talk about herself. Graduated from the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts last May, passable Russian language skills, living with two roommates in an apartment in Tysons Corner, homesick for her family in Chicago. Still a bit dazed that she’d gotten a job at CIA and not fully aware of what it meant, the tremendous burden that it placed on her slender shoulders.
She proved it by giving Theresa everything she needed, without question.
Theresa started by giving something to Westerling. Something harmless, but it was recognition from someone more senior. Theresa pulled something from the back of her mind, a conference on changing Russian policy that the young woman probably hadn’t heard of or, being so junior, been invited to. “You should talk to Eric about getting to go,” she said, leaning against a pillar, casual and chummy. “Usually, they send Rodney to this sort of thing but he’s getting ready to retire. They really should send someone else. New blood. One of the up-and-comers. I could bring it up to Eric, if you’d like.” The look of gratitude that spread over Westerling’s face was almost painful to see.
She left it at that. It was enough for the first touch. She’d nurture this budding relationship along and start asking questions about Lighthouse and before long the name would leak out. It was easy to forget among colleagues, people you knew had the same security clearance as you, that there was still need-to-know. Where was the harm?
After this, she had a few false starts. From what she could find out about a couple of the code names on her list, the assets were no longer active and it was impossible to ask questions about their identity without drawing suspicion. In one case she looked into, the reports officer seemed so security conscious that Theresa withdrew before she made the woman suspicious. Theresa started to worry that she’d need to take bigger risks than she felt comfortable with—not that any of this was comfortable, not by a stretch. By the end of the day, she’d crossed all but one case—in addition to Lighthouse—off her list.
That last case was code-named Skipjack. From all the online chatter, it had been easy to figure out that Skipjack was in the military and that he had something to do with cybersecurity. The topic was so hot that the members of this sub-forum were careless, discussing cases with far too much familiarity. Kyle Kincaid, the reports officer for Skipjack, was especially complacent. My source is in the new Russian army cybersecurity unit and I’ll believe what he tells me over your amateurish speculation any day, he wrote in one post, striking back at someone who’d disagreed with his assessment of a situation. That caused some grumbling, a few people trying to remind him that a little skepticism was healthy when it came to assets who could lead you by the nose if you weren’t careful, but he blew that off, too. He would learn the hard way, Theresa decided. Pride goes before a fall.
Kincaid proved to be easier than Westerling to crack. Former military and perhaps insecure in this new environment, he was only too happy to talk about his case. Everyone had heard of The Widow, after all, and Kincaid was eager to get in with the Russia experts. It made doing counterintelligence easy when people were eager to show off.
“Oh yeah, Skipjack is an officer in the Russian army. He’s been in this new cyber unit since its inception. Anything he says, you can take to the bank,” Kincaid said, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on his safe like he was relaxing in his living room.
“It must be great to have such a trusted source. Eric must think a lot of you to give you such an important asset.” Theresa could feel him soak up the compliments like a sponge. Kincaid was likely lonely, perhaps having alienated himself from his teammates with his bragging and aggression. The man hadn’t the first clue that he was being worked, that here at Langley you were always being worked. It’s not like the military here. It’s not one big happy family. You have to control your own worst tendencies. She told herself she was doing him a favor and one day he’d be grateful—when it was over and CIA had learned what she’d done, when she was someplace safe with Richard and Brian.
It took some wheedling, and a half hour in the cafeteria over coffee, smiling until her cheeks hurt, but she had Skipjack’s true name by the end of their first chat. Gennady Nesterov, twenty-three years in the Russian army. Kincaid gave her every detail about him: he approached the U.S. after he’d grown disillusioned, sickened that his country had been taken over by greedy oligarchs. When he saw what the army was doing with his unit, making it into a powerful tool that would be used to further the oligarchs’ interests, not those of the Russian people, he made up his mind about what he would do.
Skipjack had potential. Under the right conditions, he could be a gold mine. The cyber target was getting more important every day and Skipjack was in a position to give them a lot. She got the sense from Kincaid that up until now, Skipjack had been stalling on them, maybe ultimately ambivalent about betraying his country. That wasn’t uncommon. Assets wanted money and a sympathetic ear but often got cold feet when it came to handing over the goods.
She had resolved that she would only give Russia unproductive assets, ones that wouldn’t do much damage if they were lost, and so she didn’t know what to do about Skipjack. Without him, she only had one name and a minnow at that: not enough to convince the Russians to work with her.
It was a gamble but . . . Maybe she could warn Skipjack before the Russians came to arrest him. They’d be happy to get the names and it would take time to evaluate them, but by then they’d have already released Richard. There would be damage, but she would try to minimize that.
Two potential names to give to the Russians. She turned both cases over in her mind, trying to be sure she wasn’t overlooking anything, missing an important thread that could lead back to her. Thinking, too, of the consequences for others. For the two reports officers, Westerling and Kincaid, there would be fallout. She felt bad for Westerling, not so much for Kincaid—she had the feeling he’d been hitting on her. It would look bad for Westerling but she’d survive. She’d get a second chance. The assets, Lighthouse and Skipjack, would get it worse. They would bear the brunt. But they would only go to prison. This wasn’t the bad old days of the Soviet Union. Spies weren’t executed or sent to hard labor camps, left to freeze and starve in a Siberian gulag.
In any case, she wouldn’t let it keep her up at night. This was part of the deal when you decided to spy for the enemy. If you didn’t realize the danger, you were a fool. And whatever happened to them was nothing compared with what her husband had suffered. That made her feel better—or at least less bad—about what she had made up her mind to do.
TWENTY-THREE
A good summer day in Washington was like nowhere else in the world. The skies were the clearest blue, the air the perfect balance of cool and warm. Washington’s infamous heat and humidity was nowhere to be seen.
It’s a beautiful day. That’s how I’ll remember it, always, the day I sold out to the Russians.
For two weeks, she faithfully kept an eye out for the signal that would tell her the Russians were ready to meet. That happened yesterday. A chalk mark on the lamppost meant they met the next day at the prearranged time and place. She almost couldn’t believe they had made a decision to proceed so quickly. It was so quick, almost irresponsible. It pleased and frightened her in nearly equal measure.
But it also peeved her, because it was a weekday morning. She had to call in sick to make the meet, even though she resented it. Being a parent, she’d used up too many sick days and vacation days as it was, but someone had to stay home when Brian got a cold or he had to
go to the pediatrician. In a way, it was easier since Brian was with the sitter she’d found for the summer. And she was completely confident by now that the Agency wasn’t watching her. Taking a sick day wouldn’t be a trigger.
She noticed as she dressed for the meeting that she couldn’t feel her fingers. It was as though she was having an out-of-body experience, or a stroke. Her mind floated like a helium balloon as she applied her lipstick—Chanel’s Rouge Rebelle—and combed her hair. She’d have thought this would be easier since she’d met with the Russians once, the ice broken, but there was something different about this time. Edgier. Scarier. Like she was about to jump off a bridge.
They were to meet at the National Building Museum, a long brick building in the middle of bustling Gallery Place, with all its shops and restaurants and tourist attractions. Not that she was familiar with any of it. She’d been to the building museum once to see the Smithsonian’s annual crafts show. Otherwise, she never spent time there; downtown D.C. was a swamp of traffic, too much road construction with too little parking. Suburbia was for mothers like her; D.C. was for hipsters and tourists, and never the twain shall meet.
Theresa thought the museum an odd place for a meeting until she stepped inside and saw that it was perfect: a big, open area, which made it easy to surveil, and multiple entrances and exits for an easy escape if needed. There were several exhibits going on, which provided a bustling crowd for cover. The exhibit in the main hall was a huge collection of paper models of famous buildings. The Reichstag, the Alhambra, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Empire State Building and the Flatiron, the Old North Church. Glass boxes filled with large, cumbersome paper skyscrapers and monuments made a maze of the space, ideal for avoiding detection. The people ambling about were mostly affluent-looking retirees, in the city for a day of sightseeing. A pair of young mothers sat at a table outside the tiny coffee shop, strollers at their sides, their children running between the tables, their laughter echoing off the vaulted ceiling. It all looked normal. Nothing set off her sixth sense for trouble.
After a few minutes, a man slipped into the exhibit area with a stack of files under his arm. There was a green folder on top, the signal they’d arranged. She followed him for a minute to satisfy herself that he was the one. Perhaps it was guilty knowledge, but Theresa thought he looked like a bad guy, possibly more so than anyone she’d ever met during her time at the Agency, and she’d met her share of dubious characters. He was in his mid-thirties and moved with the ease of an athlete. Better dressed than the average FSB or SVR agent, who tended to look like policemen in cheap suits. Beneath the polished veneer, however, there were rough bits. He had a scar next to his left eye, running back to the temple, as though someone had hit him there very hard, maybe even tried to kill him. There was a hint of desperation in the eyes and tight jaw. A striver, her friends might say. A bruiser who had muscled his way up the ladder and was trying to put it behind him now.
She stopped in front of a model of Westminster Abbey. It looked so flimsy, walls of paper, but still recognizable. She had been there with Richard early in their married life, a business trip, a week of meetings with MI6, but they took the weekend to play tourist. It had happened shortly after they’d wed, when she assumed they had a lifetime to travel the world together.
She’d thought it lost forever, but maybe this rough character was going to give her life back to her.
She sensed someone standing next to her and looked up to see his face reflected dimly in the glass. It was like seeing a ghost.
“I hear Metro will stop running at midnight.” It was the phrase she had been told to expect. Silly and contrived, but they all were.
She turned to face him. There was not a shred of humanity there. A soulless monster walking around in a human suit. Something inside her—fear—spiked.
“Theresa Warner?”
She couldn’t answer. She returned his steely-eyed stare. He nodded toward a bench in an alcove, away from the rest of the visitors.
He sat comfortably, as though he did this sort of thing every day. Maybe he did. He put the folders on the bench next to him, obviously glad to be rid of this subterfuge.
She found her voice. “What’s your name? You know my name, it’s only right that I know yours.”
“I am Dmitri Tarasenko. I am with the Counterintelligence Division in the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.” He gave her a smile that he probably imagined was charming. “I do not mind telling you that we were surprised to hear from you.”
“I was surprised to be contacting you.” But that was life, one surprise after another. We’re all capable of things we never thought we could do.
“It’s been two years. Why did you wait this long?”
The truth was galling but there was no other explanation. “I just found out that my husband is still alive.”
He chuckled at that. “So, they kept it from you? That wasn’t very nice of them, was it?”
“Never mind that—I know now, and I want to do something about it. But first, I want proof that he’s still alive.”
He reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a photograph.
It was Richard. Seeing his face knocked her for a loop, made her dizzy. He was thinner than the last time she’d seen him, and seemed to have aged twenty years, but it was him, no question. His head was tilted to one side fatalistically, almost like he was shrugging. One corner of his mouth kinked up as though he was trying to smile but had forgotten how. Had they told him the picture was for her? Smile—this is for your wife. She felt a sharp stabbing desire to hold him. She wasn’t going to cry in front of the Russian.
“That picture was taken right before I left. You see he’s in good condition. He hasn’t been harmed.”
She nodded, pressing the photo to her heart. He held out his hand for it but she was damned if she was going to give it back. She shoved it hurriedly in her purse. What was he going to do—wrestle it away from her in front of all these people?
The look on his face was threatening and grew darker by the second. Case officers are the same the world over: manipulators. He’s trying to get inside my head. Wait it out. “This is not a good way to start our relationship, Mrs. Warner. You know how this works. You need to listen to me. To trust me.” He relented after a moment, the thundercloud passing. “I’m thinking of your safety. What if someone were to find that on you? What about your son? He doesn’t go through your purse?”
How dare you bring my son into this. “No, he doesn’t,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m careful. No one will see it. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Let me be clear, Mrs. Warner, on where you stand. It may not be possible to get your husband released. There are important men who oppose it. We do not like spies in Russia. When your husband was caught, there were people who wanted him put to death. He is lucky to be alive.”
At least part of that was a lie. Russia understood the need for spies: it was a country of spies, had made a cult out of spying. The population had been groomed to spy on one another, the tradecraft absorbed through osmosis from birth. The leader of the country was an unapologetic former KGB agent. The FSB may have been angry for what her husband had managed to accomplish at their expense, but on some level, they had to admire him, too.
Or perhaps she was over-romanticizing the situation because she believed in her husband so much. Believed the myth of Richard Warner that had only gotten richer with time.
He smiled again, all teeth, like the wolf in a bedtime story. Tell me a story. “But you are in luck. The Rezidentura at the embassy happened to contact my boss. General Evgeni Morozov. He is the head of counterintelligence, a very powerful man in the FSB. General Morozov is the one who saved your husband, you know. When he had been captured. Talked the Hard Man out of killing him. The general told him it would be worth it one day, and the Hard Man listened.” The Hard Man was Putin. Richard’
s asset had done something to Putin; it had been personal. The asset had died a terrible, torturous death, she’d been told. She once had imagined the same for Richard.
The Russian turned on the bench so that he blocked out the rest of the gallery. He was all she could see, all teeth and steely eye and hideous scar. “You see, Mrs. Warner, General Morozov is sympathetic to your plight. He does not think your Agency should have kept this secret from you. The FSB would not have done this to one of its officers. The FSB takes care of its own.” They are the good guys. Right. “He wants to help you, but you must give him something to appease the Hard Man. To show that he was not wrong when he saved your husband’s life.”
She knew what they wanted: for her to stay at CIA and keep spying for them. But she knew she could never do it, couldn’t face Eric Newman every day, wait to be discovered. Wait for the day they ripped Brian from her side. It would drive her mad.
She shook her head.
His smile sent a chill through her. “Ah, still you don’t understand your position, Mrs. Warner. You do not set the terms. That is up to General Morozov to decide. You are asking us to bring a dead man back to life. So, you must ask yourself: what is the price of a miracle?”
The high, overhead lights seemed to flicker, fade in and out. It was all in her head. Panic. What have I gotten myself into?
It was too late to change her mind. They had her. If she got cold feet now, they could give her name to CIA. A hint, that’s all it would take.
There was no going back.
She breathed heavily, in and out, in and out, trying to remain conscious. Do not faint here. Do not cause a scene.
What have I done?
He leaned back, observing her distress with no more concern than he would have for a dying moth. “I have given you a present, word of your husband—now it’s your turn. You have something for me, no?”