by Alma Katsu
He nodded to indicate he was finished and fell back against the pillows, sweat on his brow. “Pancreatic cancer. Was stage three when . . . they found it. Nothing worked. Only a matter of time, they said.” Why was he telling her this? she wondered. He sounded sorry for himself, but he must have come to terms with his imminent death by now. She knew, instinctively, that he was telling her for a reason: so she would feel sorry for him. So she would excuse him for what he was about to say.
He dropped a hand onto Theresa’s forearm. “I was in Richard’s office . . . when it happened. I was Eric’s deputy.”
“I know, Jack.” She didn’t want to cut him off, but she couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t accept one more person’s tribute to her dead husband. Couldn’t hear I’m sorry one more time. “We all loved Richard. We all regret what happened. But whatever it is you want to get off your chest . . . please, don’t. You don’t owe Richard anything. Let it go.”
But he kept shaking his head, his skull frail and weightless like a dried seedpod, trembling on the end of its stem. He set his bloodless lips stubbornly. “No. I do owe Richard. I know what happened. To your husband. It’s time you know.”
He pulled at her arm, trying to draw her closer. This time, she didn’t resist.
“Richard is not. Dead. Richard. Was captured and held.”
* * *
—
Somehow, Theresa made it to her car. She stumbled out of Jack’s room, past the nurses’ station. Down a dizzying maze of corridors. The walls were spinning so she felt her way, inch by inch. Staggered across the parking lot to her Volvo wagon, where she sat behind the wheel, shaking from head to toe. Blood thrummed in her ears. She couldn’t breathe. White spots flashed before her eyes. She was afraid she was going to pass out.
It couldn’t be true, what Jack told her. And yet she knew in her heart that it was.
Her husband was still alive.
CIA lied to her.
Everything she had gone through these past two years, her suffering, Brian’s suffering . . .
Never mind that, what about Richard’s suffering? What has he gone through, locked away in a Russian prison?
Was he still alive? Jack didn’t know. He only knew that Richard hadn’t been killed in the operation.
Richard is alive. She had to believe that. The Russians wouldn’t kill him, not if there was a chance of getting anything out of him—or getting something in exchange for him. She knew that much about the Russians.
She gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, wishing she could wrench it off the pillar, throw it through the window. She wanted to destroy something, to shatter glass, kick, scream. The betrayal hurt like a dagger plunged in her heart. Why had they lied to her? Was there more that Jack hadn’t told her, because he didn’t know?
There had to be.
The treachery was breathtaking.
We got a report a month later that the FSB had an American spy in prison, Jack had told her. But the Clandestine Service didn’t want to pursue it. They wanted to pretend the whole thing. Never happened. Because it made them look bad. How could they admit. To Congress. That the Chief of Russia Division. Authorized a rogue operation? It made them look weak. Out of touch.
Jack had sworn that Eric didn’t know, that the seventh floor had decided to keep the secret from him since they blamed him—and Richard—for the whole fiasco in the first place. Brought trouble down on themselves, was how Jack had put it. Left us to clean up the mess.
No, Eric had to have believed Richard was gone, like everyone else. The way he’d made her life easier in a hundred little ways, it had to have been out of guilt and regret. Did she need time off to chaperone Brian’s class on a field trip? No problem. She wanted to leave early to take Brian to see the doctor? She didn’t even need to ask. He had looked after them—looked after her.
She choked back a sob and dropped her head until it rested on the steering wheel. How could the Agency betray her like this—betray Richard? This was a wake-up call, a hard slap to the face. Work was a twisty place, halls of funhouse mirrors that reflected back only a distorted, partial view and hid a multitude of sins. Nothing was as it seemed. She winced to recall other, far more minor incidents of casual betrayal. Colleagues who had bettered themselves in their boss’s eye at her expense, petty comments made for no reason other than to assuage the speaker’s ego. It was easy to forget that there were bigger betrayals hiding beneath a civilized veneer. It was time she learned that lesson in earnest.
She twisted the key in the ignition, even though she could barely see the road through her white-hot anger. She would drive to Langley now to talk to Eric. To see what could be done, to find out if Richard was still alive.
Theresa was halfway to Virginia before she realized Jack Clemens’s deathbed confession would do her little good. Sure, he had told her the truth—a precious thing among spooks—but it would give her no leverage over the seventh floor. The men who ran CIA were masters of manipulation. That was how things worked at Langley. The deck was stacked. Running at things headfirst didn’t work: you had to come at them sideways. That was why Theresa had never gone into management or reached for more responsibility. She’d always found it too distasteful and—if truth be told—had been afraid she would be eaten alive.
She looked at the speedometer. Seventy-one. Trees streaked by in a blur on both sides. With a startled gasp, she lifted her foot from the pedal: getting a ticket—hell, getting killed in a fiery crash—would not help her or Brian. She had to calm down.
She eased onto Chain Bridge Road, brightening at the thought of heading home to Brian. Langley could wait. She needed to see her son. Time to think. To plan.
She would step up to the challenge. She would outmaneuver the seventh floor, with or without Eric Newman’s help—because, let’s face it, to take on the seventh floor would take an extraordinary level of courage. Courage Eric Newman might not possess.
But she would do it. She would beat them at their own game. She would prove herself worthy of being Richard Warner’s wife.
She couldn’t let her husband down.
EIGHTEEN
Another weekday morning at Langley. Men and women streamed across the parking lots—past the towering parabolic antennas, the Blackbird spy plane made into a monument—to converge on a set of doors placed into a wall so discreetly that they could be secret doors, known only to the initiated.
It was a cold morning. In raincoats and windbreakers, they moved with mindless determination, like ants following the scent of sugar, minds already on the coming day, chores left undone from the day before, a confrontation anticipated with a boss or coworker. Or they were brooding over what they’d just left behind, an argument at the breakfast table, the last thing a child said before running for the school bus. Not one of them was thinking about what it meant to cross the threshold of the most secretive building in America.
Theresa Warner wended through the parking lot in a black raincoat, sturdy walking shoes on her feet, a pair of sensible heels in her tote. The day was no different from every day before it, and yet this morning felt different. She felt as though she was in disguise. That she was only pretending to be the woman she was yesterday.
Jack Clemens had changed everything.
Last night, she managed to drive home and act normally in front of her son. They ate dinner together and afterward, she helped him with his homework. Watched him brush his teeth and climb into bed. Kissed him on his head and fingered the familiar silky, dark brown hair while suppressing the urge to share this new secret with him. Brian, your father is alive!
But that would be unfair until she knew, really knew that she could get Richard back. Then she sat on the sofa and planned how she would enlist Eric Newman, get his help in taking on the men who ran the most powerful agency in the U.S. government.
Now she crossed the threshold into the building, going over
her plan. Repeated the steps to herself as she waved her badge over the scanner and punched in her PIN. She avoided the guard’s gaze and the gaze of other people because if anyone looked into her eyes, really looked, they would be able to tell something was wrong. So instead, she followed the coagulating stream of people as they headed for the elevators. Stood as unobtrusively as possible in the crowd until the doors opened at her floor.
It would do no good to approach Eric first thing. Mornings were for meetings with the next level of management. Managing up was very important for bosses so it would be better to wait until the busyness of the morning played itself out. There was usually a lull around eleven a.m. when it might be possible to catch him, but Eric sometimes used the opportunity to slip down to the gym. Better to wait until after lunch, around two thirty, when things got sleepy. He’d be the most approachable. And she would be able to get him alone.
Though Theresa wasn’t sure how she would manage to get through her day. Every minute was agony. She kept looking for Eric, afraid that he might disappear, take off suddenly for a doctor’s visit or be called to some interminable meeting. She didn’t think she could wait another twenty-four hours to confront him.
At 2:20, Theresa peeked through the maze of partitions toward Eric’s office. She could just see him behind his desk, settled so low in his chair that he looked like he’d fallen asleep. She rose and wove quickly through the cubicles, eyes down on the carpet. She kept her mind blank; if she thought too much about what she was about to do, she was going to chicken out.
She leaned in the open doorway. “Say, Eric, do you have a minute?”
He looked up. For a second—just a second—she thought she saw a pained look on his face, but no, that was the face he always gave her. She just never noticed before that his warmth was offset with just a hint of pity. “Of course, Theresa. For you, anytime.”
She closed the door softly behind her and took the chair opposite his desk, clasping her hands in her lap to hide the shaking. She cleared her mind, so the conversation she practiced over and over last night would come naturally to the fore.
“I saw Jack Clemens yesterday.”
Eric crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair, a picture of unease. “Yeah, I visited him on Tuesday. Looks terrible, doesn’t he? Won’t be long now. It’s a shame—”
She closed her eyes. Her patience had been used up. “He told me Richard is alive. Alive.”
Eric froze. A dozen emotions seemed to pass over his face at once. Finally, he took a deep breath. “I wish that were true, Theresa, but we both know it isn’t.”
“He said there was a report that said Richard had been captured alive. They didn’t share it with you. You were never told.” As he listened, frozen as a statue in a Minnesota winter, Theresa recounted what Jack had told her. The report from Moscow Station, the seventh floor’s decision to keep it from him as well as her.
He gripped the armrest of his chair like a man in shock. “Ever since that day, I’ve been persona non grata on the seventh floor. They didn’t fire me, or remove me from this position, but I know that I’ll never go any higher. No one in the DO approved the op, but I gave Richard authorization. I only gave him what he wanted, a chance to save his asset.”
Jack had revealed this much, between gasps for air: that Eric, knowing the top men in the DO would never agree to take the risk, didn’t ask for permission. That he did the whole thing on the sly. And that, to keep it secret, no CIA resources—aside from Richard—were used. No tech ops officers, no additional case officers. Only a handful of freelancers to help smuggle Boykova out of the country. They used untried mercenaries to watch her husband’s back.
It was a fiasco from the start, Jack had told her, his papery voice thickened with remorse. With no CIA eyes on the scene, it was a full week before Eric and Jack found out what happened. Rumors began trickling in from shaky CIA assets in Moscow: something big had gone down. Assets in Russia got nervous, made them start asking for more money or new lives in another country. Or, for the most dedicated, poison pills in case of capture.
Theresa looked icily at Eric Newman. “And you swear you didn’t know? You didn’t leave Richard to rot in prison for your mistakes?”
Now he jumped out of his chair like it was on fire. “I thought he was dead, Theresa. As far as I knew, there was nothing coming out of Moscow, nothing.” His words were like a dagger plunged in her chest. Knowing that he had been left in the dark the same as she did nothing to relieve her agony. “Do you think for one minute that if I knew Richard was still alive, I wouldn’t do everything in my power to save him? That I wouldn’t get on a plane myself, with or without Agency support, to find him and bring him home? He was my friend, too, Theresa. My oldest friend.”
She watched him storm back and forth, angrier than she’d ever seen him. She hadn’t expected him to yell at her, almost turning on her. Embarrassment for having been tricked? “Does that mean I can count on your support?”
He came up short. “Support in what? What do you plan to do?”
She was momentarily stunned. Wasn’t it obvious? “I’m going to confront them—”
He rushed toward her. “No, no, no. . . . You can’t, Theresa. It would be worse than futile, it would be suicide. You’re not going to like this but . . .” She closed her eyes, as though that would stop her from hearing the rest. “We have to accept what’s happened.” He spoke firmly. Sharply. He’s thought about this. Had he known? “Two years have passed and nothing’s changed. What are you going to ask the seventh floor to do—approach the Russians for a swap? They’ve been clear about it, freezing out you and me. As far as they’re concerned, the case is closed.”
She looked him at him levelly, searching for the slightest indication that he was hiding something. A wavering gaze, a twitch of the lips. Something to tell her that there was a chance, a hope however faint . . .
Nothing.
She was having trouble breathing, fought for air. “You mean you expect me to do nothing? When I know there’s a chance my husband is still alive?”
“I . . . I don’t know what else to say. This is for your own good. Otherwise you’ll just go crazy . . .”
She slapped him. So hard that her palm stung, before she had time to think about it. She had secretly worried that he didn’t have the guts to stand up to the merciless men who ran this place. He’d taken his punishment two years ago docilely enough, gone off to lick his wounds, hadn’t he?
Now he proved it: Eric Newman wasn’t the man she’d hoped.
Well, fuck Eric Newman. Fuck all of them. She’d be damned if she would join him in the corner. She would show them what came of perfidy. When you betrayed the people who had placed their trust in you. They thought they could get away with it because the men who run spy agencies thought they had the world on a string. That the rest of the world would only know what they wanted it to know.
These egotistical men thought they could keep something of this magnitude a secret.
She brushed by Eric as she hurried out the door. She walked down the halls, down the miles of Agency corridors to cool off, to calm her jangling nerves and focus her thoughts.
She kept her eyes down, not wanting to see the glimmer of recognition in anyone’s eyes—ah, that’s The Widow. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts.
There was a tiny, distant voice questioning whether she should listen to Eric’s advice. A survivor’s voice. After years of suffering, she was finally gaining some distance. Healing. She was able to see a future for herself and for Brian. This had reawakened all the old feelings, ripped her hard-earned peace away like a bandage off a wound. Taking Eric’s advice might be the smartest thing she could do.
Except she couldn’t. Eric Newman was not their friend, not hers, not Richard’s. This was proof.
She knew that she couldn’t go to Eric’s bosses in the Clandestine Service, the ones who had
opposed Eric’s scheme in the first place. Eric was right there: as far as they were concerned, it was over. They would never change their minds to side with her. They cut their teeth on the spy business during the Cold War. They were craven old men, notoriously conservative with a high instinct for self-preservation. What’s done is done, they’d say. Let sleeping dogs lie. Richard Warner would not be the first CIA officer sacrificed to preserve the Agency’s honor or to cover up another man’s mistakes.
Theresa turned a corner and headed into a little-used hall, turning thoughts in her head the whole time. Should she go to her congressman? She snorted at the idea: CIA would play the national security card and stonewall any official who pressed for an inquiry—if she could get anyone to believe her. They’d say she’d become unhinged by grief. Their word against hers. This never, ever worked. It was a dead end.
She sighed, a heavy weight in her chest. They wanted to think they held all the cards and that she was powerless, nothing more than a helpless little widow. They wanted her to go away, go sit in the corner, be trotted out at ceremonies. Smile, wave, be a brave little trouper.
But that wasn’t the case. No, she knew the answer. It had been with her all along.
Richard could be saved, and it was up to Theresa to do it.
NINETEEN
PRESENT DAY
It’s been less than twelve hours since Lyndsey was last in the office and even with the sunlight streaming through the windows and the bustle of people coming in to start their day, she can’t shake the feeling that she never left.
Because she didn’t sleep a wink. She spent the night drifting through her cheerless apartment like a ghost, unable to rest, her mind still in the office. She is haunted by two thoughts. First, that lingering shadow of a doubt about Theresa . . .
