Red Widow

by Alma Katsu

  The Widow may be too hardened, too bitter, to agree to cooperate. Lyndsey senses that she isn’t.

  But there’s only one way to find out. Only one way to save Theresa Warner.

  She takes a deep breath. “I know, Theresa. I know what you’ve been up to with the Russians.”

  The Widow tries to fake surprise and indignation. Her eyebrows shoot up, her mouth drops open in a perfect red O. But it only lasts a fraction of a second. “That’s insane. How can you accuse me of such a thing? My husband—”

  “You can play it that way if you like, Theresa, but it won’t do you any good. I’m trying to help you. I know—we know, the FBI is involved now—the Russians are coming for you in a few days. We know that you’re planning to run.” Theresa takes a breath to speak, then stops. She presses her lips together. She wants to speak but she’s stopping herself. “I know everything—most everything,” Lyndsey corrects. “I know why you’re doing this. Eric lied to you and hid things from you. You made a deal with the Russians for Richard. It’s not too late, though. Think about what will happen if you go through with this. CIA knows, FBI knows. They’re not going to let you leave with the Russians. They have a dragnet set up and they’ll catch you. And then what happens? You’ll be disgraced. You’ll lose everything: your house, your bank accounts, your family, your friends. Your son. Everything.”

  In the passenger seat, Theresa turns away from her. Her chin drops, and she closes her eyes. Doesn’t want to see the truth.

  “There’s no turning back now. If you warn the Russians that we know, the FBI will still track you down and arrest you. We’ve got enough to do that, but we want your Russian handlers, too. I’m giving you a chance to help yourself,” Lyndsey continues. “Think about Brian. What will happen to him? Who will take care of him? The disgrace will ruin his life, haunt him forever. And Richard—”

  Theresa laughs bitterly. “If I’m arrested, at least Richard’s story will come out. They’ll be forced to do something.”

  “Is that what you were hoping for all along? To help Richard? You’re not a traitor.”

  Another rueful chuckle, then a sigh. The resistance crumbles like a sand castle under the tide. “Of course not. The plan was to get him out of prison and for the three of us to find a quiet place to start a new life.” She brushes at the corners of her eyes. “I wasn’t asking so much. A normal life. That’s what other people get.”

  For a moment, it’s not clear what Theresa will do next. The air between them is charged, electric. Anything is possible, even violence. Lyndsey is pretty sure she could physically stop Theresa from harming her—or herself. She seems so fragile at this moment.

  “Were you out to get me all along?” Theresa asks. She is sad in that moment. Her mouth is grim. “Our friendship—was it an act, from the beginning?”

  “I could ask the same of you.”

  Theresa looks wounded. She stares out the windshield, something ticking in the back of her mind. “You might as well let me go. The damage is done. They have Nesterov . . . and you know what they did to Kulakov. There’s no taking it back. But Richard would be freed. Doesn’t he deserve that?”

  This woman is not about to accept the fact that she’s lost. Sweat trickles down the back of Lyndsey’s neck. “It’s over, Theresa. I’m saying help me fix this, and I’ll help you.”

  Theresa stares at her hands. “You don’t understand. I’ve done things . . . things you can’t help me with.”

  “You mean Kyle Kincaid?”

  A curt nod.

  “You’re right—I can’t make any promises there. You better pray he doesn’t die.”

  “He wanted to blackmail me.” That laugh again, brittle. “They’re wolves on the seventh floor, you know. They’ll never forgive me. They’ll never let me go.”

  There is a flicker in Theresa’s eyes: she wants to trust me. “I’m asking you, Theresa, as your friend: don’t do this. Trust me. We’ll find a way.”

  The seconds stretch long. There is no choice, not really. Theresa is taking a long time, Lyndsey knows, because it means admitting she will never see Richard again. It means giving up on him. She has to choose between her husband and her son.

  Finally, she asks in a whisper, “What do you need me to do?”

  “Let’s go somewhere else to talk. I don’t feel safe—even in the parking lot.” She turns the key in the ignition, puts the transmission in reverse.

  And then, Theresa does a strange thing. She lowers the window, then grabs Lyndsey’s untouched coffee and throws it out. The cup hits the car parked next to it, coating the driver’s door in a wash of brown liquid.

  “What was that about?” Lyndsey asks as she pulls away.

  “Don’t doubt that I was ever your friend,” is all Theresa will say.

  * * *

  —

  They drive into McLean, to a tiny coffee shop in a quiet shopping center. It is the middle of a weekday and Lyndsey is certain that they won’t be seen together by anyone from work. They sit in the back of a small, bright shop. It’s just the two of them and a middle-aged waitress in jeans.

  As they settle at a table, Lyndsey thinks she sees a crack in Theresa’s flawless façade. She looks tired, like she’s been running for months.

  “I’d like you to clear up a few things for me,” Lyndsey says. They both have their hands wrapped around thick ceramic mugs. “You had nothing to do with Yaromir Popov’s death, did you?”

  Theresa’s head jerks up like a spooked horse. “No. I didn’t even know he was one of ours until the incident on the plane.”

  Her expression and body language support that she’s telling the truth. Taking into account the data trail and what Evert Northrop said, Lyndsey is inclined to believe her.

  “Nesterov and Kulakov—you gave the FSB those names.”

  Theresa drops her chin. She can’t look at Lyndsey. “Yes.” Unsaid between them is that Kulakov’s death is on her head. Nesterov is still missing, and she’ll be responsible for whatever happens to this man, too. “But those were the only two.”

  Lyndsey knows what Raymond Murphy would ask: how do I know you’re not lying? Prove it. All that will come soon enough, the interrogation, interviews, Theresa showing them every step she took, every file she touched.

  It’s time for Lyndsey to share her real concern with Theresa and it’s impossible to predict how she’ll react. “I have a suspicion—with no way to prove it, at least not yet—that Eric is involved in this.”

  For a moment, this seems to amuse Theresa. But if it’s true, she’s afraid to trust it. Theresa smiles sadly. “As much as I’d like to believe that, Eric had nothing to do with this. I—I let my anger get the best of me. I did it to myself.”

  Lyndsey lets Theresa’s remorse play out before she lays out all the facts. Theresa is an experienced reports officer—she has a stellar reputation, as a matter of fact—and Lyndsey could use her perspective. If she’ll tell the truth.

  Theresa listens as Lyndsey tells her about the poison, Simon, and—without going into too much detail—the strange digital fingerprints left all over Popov’s files. “It appears that Eric has something to do with Popov’s death, I agree with you on that. But all the things I’ve done . . . He has nothing to do with it. I went to Eric when I found out Richard was still alive. He was as surprised as I was by the news . . . I begged Eric to help me, but he refused. He told me to make my peace with it, that the seventh floor would never reopen the case . . .” Theresa shakes her head.

  Lyndsey goes cold, like being plunged in an ice bath. “Eric told you he didn’t know about Richard? You’re sure of it?” She doesn’t know. She’s never seen the transcript . . . the damning transcript in the Razorbill file . . .

  Lyndsey has to stop herself from grabbing Theresa by the shoulders and shaking her. “He lied to you, Theresa—”

  “I don’t follow you.
Lied about what?”

  “Eric knew Richard was alive. He knew and never told you. He was the one who proposed it to the seventh floor. That you not be told . . .”

  Theresa draws back, her face curdling like she’s bitten a poisoned apple. “What are you talking about? How do you know?”

  Lyndsey can barely keep her eyes on Theresa’s face as she recounts the transcript for her. Sadness, hurt, anger pass over Theresa’s face in quick succession. Solidifying into anger, blind fury.

  “So he did it to save himself. He insisted the seventh floor had already made up its mind. He swore they’d squash me like a bug if I tried to go to my congressman or the press. I had Brian to think about . . . He—he told me to trust him, that he would take care of me. It’s been an act, all this time. That he was Richard’s friend, that he cared for me . . . An act.”

  She stops, silent. The two women exchange a knowing look. They’re in this together now. They will both succeed—or both fail. Together.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Tarasenko finds himself back in the city he hates most.

  He takes an Uber from National airport to his hotel. Settled into the back seat of the Honda Accord (very clean by Russian standards, and the driver even offered him a bottle of water), he watches the cityscape roll by. George Washington Parkway, past exits for the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery, and now plunged into woods as dark and lonely as any Russian folktale. And he’s heard just as many stories about the parks of Washington as he has about the woods outside Moscow. Who knows what goes on in these woods at night? Murders, drug deals, assaults . . . It is not what it pretends to be—to the world, to itself.

  The main reason he doesn’t like D.C. is that it tries too hard to be liked. So many pretty monuments, too many trendy shops. Too many expensive, fancy cars on the roads. It’s all too neat, too clean for his tastes. The capital of a great power should be like a heavyweight prizefighter, in his opinion. Washington lacks the spine of steel that a true superpower needs to let other countries know that it’s not fucking around. It should inspire fear. Washington, D.C., lost its spine a few presidents back and it’s only gotten worse with time. Now it’s overrun with lobbyists and lawyers telling the government what to do, corporations backing politicians like it’s a horse race. They may be in it for the money in Moscow, too, but no one forgets who is in charge. It’s not a crazy land grab, everyone out to get what they can. Under the Hard Man, there is harmony. He keeps everyone in line.

  In the Uber, he keeps an eye out for an FBI tail but he’s pretty sure he’s clean. He’s traveling under a new identity and it looks like they haven’t picked up on it yet. More proof that Washington isn’t the superpower it once was. There was a time when the FBI would be on them from the second they got off the plane. In Beijing, you have to worry about facial recognition everywhere you go. Again, a superpower that doesn’t fuck around. Younger Russian intelligence officers prefer to be posted to Singapore and Hong Kong and mainland China for the challenge. The technology in these places keeps you on your toes. Keeps you from getting complacent. It’s no fun when your adversary doesn’t give a fuck.

  As he drinks that evening in the hotel bar, he is overcome with an ill-advised recklessness, a child whose parents have gone out for the first time without getting a babysitter. Should he stick a fork in an electrical outlet, leap from the roof of the garage into the bushes, play pranks on the neighbors? He orders up a rental car—no Uber for what he’s about to do—and drives out to northern Virginia, to the neighborhood where Kanareyka lives. He loops through the dark streets for over an hour just in case there is a tail following him, then parks within easy view of the gray-and-white house, lights a cigarette, and watches.

  The Rezidentura has been circumspect about bugging the house of a CIA officer. For most assets, it would be a given, the price of doing business. They would sneak in under the guise of an electrician or other serviceman and place recording devices in the house. But the housekeeper doesn’t let anyone in when Kanareyka is away, and they know better than to try this with Kanareyka herself. The Rezidentura has to make do with men watching her house from fake service vans, risky in a neighborhood of former spies who think nothing of knocking on your window and demanding to see identification or, worse yet, calling the police.

  Kanareyka’s Volvo is in the driveway. At one point, he sees Kanareyka through an upstairs window, her angular face in profile, arms crossed over her chest, looking down as though she is talking to someone who is very short. It has to be Kanareyka’s son, the one mentioned in the reports. There is a blue glow cast on Kanareyka’s cheek from a television or computer monitor. Is her son begging for a few more minutes to play his video games, like boys in Russia? Like boys everywhere. They talk for a few more minutes and then the light clicks off and the room goes black.

  Everything looks normal, and that is good. Again, in this neighborhood of spies, you don’t want to raise suspicions that the family is about to leave. On the other hand, everything looks too normal, and that makes him nervous. Could Kanareyka be trying to trick them? Maybe she is not planning to flee after all. Maybe she’s going to defy them. He studies the quiet house—no signs of packing, no trash piled on the curb waiting for pickup, nothing out of place—and puffs on his cigarette. What does this utterly placid house tell him about Kanareyka’s state of mind? He needs to know more. After all, he’s the one walking into that house in a day’s time. It’s not too much to want assurances, to know he’s not heading into a trap. He needs to look inside.

  Dropping the cigarette butt out the car window, he zips up the front of his dark jacket to cover the light-colored shirt beneath it, which glows like it’s radioactive in the dark. Like the seasoned case officer that he is, Tarasenko walks casually down the street, like he lives there, a homeowner taking in the night air. He doesn’t cross onto her property until he gets to a spot behind a huge tree, hidden completely in shadow. If anyone had been watching, it would’ve looked like he simply disappeared, but no, he is making his way behind the garage to the back of the house, where he can get close to the windows. For a big man, he is surprisingly quiet on his feet. He sidles around the shrubs and close to the window without snapping twigs or rustling old, forgotten leaves.

  He finds one where the blinds are not all the way down, and he can use the gap of a few inches to peer in. The room is dark, but he can see through into the next room, where a light is on. It is very still. No television, no radio or stereo. It doesn’t appear that anyone is on the lower level.

  He figures out a way to get to the second story. He pulls himself onto the roof over the enclosed patio and then crawls on his belly to the gable that looks over the backyard. There’s a faint glow from one of the windows so he heads toward that. It’s tricky, because the roof here is steep and the ledge under the window is narrow, mere inches. There is nothing to stop him if he should fall. It’s only about fifteen feet to the ground; he wouldn’t injure himself but there’s no way he wouldn’t be heard.

  He makes his way cautiously, gripping the trim under the bank of windows to steady himself, then peers around the sill. Theresa left the curtain partly open, perhaps because she is a fan of moonlight, or because a row of tall trees gives her privacy from the neighbors. Tarasenko holds his breath and inches forward, until his face is close to the glass. Carefully, he peers through the gap in the curtains. Kanareyka wouldn’t like it if she found out he’d been spying on her but really, what can spies expect if not surveillance?

  There is Kanareyka, her pale skin luminous in the low light. She reminds Tarasenko of a ballerina: elegant and graceful, but also cold and aloof. Not his kind of woman. The room she is in is spare, nearly empty. It’s not a room anyone has been living in, it’s too sad. She is sorting clothing in a cardboard box. Some pieces she drops in a careless pile by her feet, others she puts in a second, smaller box. She moves slowly, deliberating. These are a man’s clothes, Tarasenko figures out
. Must be her husband’s. She’s packing clothing for him.

  She pauses at one piece, a rather worn and rumpled plaid shirt. It is very American, like something you’d see on a lumberjack in an old drawing. As a case officer, Tarasenko has been schooled in American folklore and history. The stories Americans tell themselves about their country, bedtime stories meant to comfort frightened children. She buries her face in the shirt. He watches for a moment, mesmerized. There is something special about it, her husband’s favorite perhaps, and she hasn’t seen it for years. She wallows in it. He thinks he sees her shoulders heave; is she crying? She has never cried in front of him, though she has had plenty of reason to, and it occurs to him that he had come to assume she did not cry. That something inside her had hardened over the years, because of these bad circumstances. But perhaps she is not completely ruined, yet. Perhaps there is still a vulnerable part deep inside.

  They have not told Richard Warner what has happened or what is coming. After hundreds of days in captivity, Richard Warner has given up nothing, not one scrap of information to make it go easier on him, though no one at Langley would blame him if he had. There is no way a man like this will approve of what his wife has done. Morozov had wanted to tell him, because Tarasenko’s boss is a sick fuck. He had come to resent Warner—just as he resents being trapped inside Russia’s borders, CIA as patient as a remorseless mother-in-law—and thought it would be fun to torture him, letting him see that they had gotten forbidden knowledge at his expense. Morozov left it up to Tarasenko, however, and Tarasenko did not see the advantage in tipping his hand. He hated to admit it—he liked to think his operations were airtight—but anything could still happen. Kanareyka could get cold feet, she might be discovered, the Hard Man could catch wind of their plans and put a stop to it. The prospect of the latter, especially, made him nervous, turned his guts to ice water. It was his ass on the line, not Morozov’s, and he had only the wily old general’s word that he would protect him.