Red Widow by Alma Katsu (good books to read for beginners txt) 📗

day, Lyndsey, but the Director is breathing down my neck. This meeting I’m going to? The Director has asked for an update every day until we have an answer. And he’s not a patient man. If he doesn’t like what he sees, he’ll start calling the shots himself. I don’t intend to be marginalized in my own office. Do whatever it takes to get answers, and if somebody stands in your way, you let me know. We need to figure out what’s going on before the Russians pick up one more of our assets. I know you can do this, Lyndsey—I’m counting on you.”

EIGHT

Closing the door behind Eric, Lyndsey’s thoughts turn back to Varya. Reading that report was a punch to the gut.

She throws herself into her chair, letting it roll backward to hit the wall with a jarring thud. Too much is happening at once. Even though she hasn’t seen Popov in years, losing him has shaken loose an old sadness inside her. She lost her own father when she was very young, but that loss has never gone away. It has merely been dormant, and now those emotions kick up like a sandstorm. Being left with her aunt while her mother rushed her father to the hospital. Her mother returning in the middle of the night—alone. The feeling that the floor has suddenly dropped out from beneath her. The sensation of being completely vulnerable. Of never being whole.

Poor Masha. Losing her daughter and now her husband. Though Lyndsey never met them, she has always felt as though she knew Masha and the daughters, Polina and Varya. Popov had told her stories about how it was just the two of them, he and Masha, for a long time, before the girls came along. For a girl who had few memories of her own parents together, it was a balm to hear about their marriage. How he valued Masha’s wisdom and had come to trust her judgment, even with his intelligence work. She remembered the photos he’d shown her of Masha from the early days, her round, serene face; the two in somber Soviet-era clothing, standing outside their grim, regimental apartment building. Later, Masha as a schoolteacher, her hair gray and piled on top of her head. Photos of the girls, too, of course: he was a proud father. Little girls in snow suits, teenagers in fur hats and lipstick.

Should she try to reach Masha, offer condolences? It would be risky to try to contact them directly right after Popov’s suspicious death. The authorities undoubtedly would be watching the family, particularly if they knew he was a double agent.

Lyndsey doesn’t have a way to contact Masha, anyway. There was no protocol for covert communications with the family, only with the asset. Strictly speaking, families were not supposed to be witting; it would endanger both them and the asset.

Thank goodness for modern technology. The spy’s friend. For backup, she’d had them both set up special accounts on a secure messaging app. It wasn’t even one of the popular ones; reputedly, it was used almost exclusively by teenagers. Popov had balked, saying he felt ridiculous having it on his phone, even if no one knew, but she had pressed and eventually they were both glad she had.

She’ll have to wait until after work to use the app. Cell phones aren’t allowed in secure spaces at CIA, for obvious reasons. Her phone sits out in her car, waiting patiently, like the family dog. Some people at Langley take a break to go out to their cars if they need to use their phones, but even that is frowned on. Lyndsey can be patient. She has plenty of work to keep her distracted.

—

As soon as Lyndsey is back in her cheerless apartment that evening, she leaves her purse and coat at the door and heads straight to her couch, cell phone in hand.

She stares at the black glass of her smartphone. She hasn’t used this secret channel since she left Moscow. Lyndsey swipes through the screens, looking for the app. She’s not a big smartphone user, not like some people she knows who download every hot app they hear about—use it a couple times and then forget about it. She can’t remember the name of the app but she remembers its icon: a square pink telephone sporting a cartoonish human face, one eye winking. On second thought, she can see why Popov didn’t like it. She finds it on the second to the last screen—she never used it in Beirut because she hadn’t developed any assets during her short time there, no one who merited special back-channel communications. The app is like a guilty memory, a reminder of her willingness to flout the rules, now buried on her phone.

It opens with a tap. Her account name is Mindreader, plucked out of thin air at the time but so silly now, so naïve, it makes her cringe.

There’s a red flag next to it. An unread message.

There was only one person she corresponded with on that app: Yaromir Popov.

Her stomach goes into free fall. She had turned off notifications after she’d been in Beirut for a few months, determined to put her old life behind her. The handoff to a new handler was where an asset could stumble; they both knew it. She and Popov had agreed he’d give the new handler a chance. Then, too, her life had been in such a state of flux: being pushed off the Russian target, told to prove herself by doing something completely different. See if you can make lightning strike a second time, COS Beirut had said with a touch of bitterness. It had been time to get back on track. To prove, if only to herself, that she could abide by the rules.

She squints at the tiny print. The message is dated the day before Popov’s Aeroflot flight.

Taking a deep breath, she opens it.

I need to talk to you. Something