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

“It wasn’t like that. We didn’t talk about work.” That is never true, not in this line of work. Now Lyndsey doesn’t want to say anything more, doesn’t want to relive it all over again. The wound doesn’t smart as sharply as it did this morning. Finally telling someone about it has loosened its power over her.

Except now Theresa knows something bad about her. Something she could hold over Lyndsey’s head if she chose to. She has given The Widow leverage.

But a true friend wouldn’t do that, would she?

“So, he was just a fling, this guy?” Theresa asks. “That’s too bad . . . It’s good, you know, being with someone in the business. They understand what you’re going through.”

Lyndsey’s heard this said before. But she’s not sure this isn’t just a way for Agency folks to excuse themselves. My wife doesn’t understand me. Then hop into bed with a coworker.

“It would be a shame to lose this guy if you really like him. It’s hard to find the right one. It would be too bad if you had to let him slip away.” Theresa takes a long draw on her coffee. “There’s another way to look at this, of course. Without a man in your life, you’re free to do what you want. Ask for an assignment in Paris, or Timbuktu, any place that takes your fancy. Take that plum assignment, volunteer to be the Director’s executive assistant. You can do the long hours now.”

Lyndsey chuckles. “You’re not going to tell me I need a husband?”

“God, no.” Theresa turns somber. They are treading on sensitive ground. “Marriage is a big deal. A commitment. I truly believe that. It’s a test of who you are as a person. You have to be sure that you’re ready.”

For a while, they sit in silence. The most important thing in Theresa’s life, it seems, was her marriage. Now that Richard is gone, what does that mean for Theresa? What is she if she’s not Richard Warner’s wife?

Lyndsey puts down her cup. “Thanks for being my talk therapy. I liked Davis—this man—a lot.” Referring to him in the past tense rankles, but Davis Ranford is part of her past now. She can’t see any way to get back together with him, not as long as she’s still working.

“The only advice I have is to do what feels right,” Theresa says. “If that’s fighting to keep this man, then fight. Or if you know in your heart that it was a mistake, let him go. Only you know the answer to that.”

Lyndsey walks out to the parking lot with Theresa. The women say their goodbyes and Theresa heads off to where she’s parked her Volvo as Lyndsey sits behind the wheel of her rental. She’s been unable to stop thinking about Davis since the conversation in the cafeteria. Was it a mistake to let him go, is this what’s been troubling her? There’s nothing she’d like to do more, at that moment, than lean against his long, rangy frame and feel his arm slip around her shoulder, drawing her close. To feel him nuzzle her hair and remind her that life is too short for regrets.

Taking a deep breath, she turns the key in the ignition and drives away.

FOURTEEN

The mornings begin to fall into a steady rhythm. Powering up her computer and spinning the dial on the combination lock to her safe. Shutting the door to mute the sounds of life outside, the murmur of voices and thump of footsteps approaching and receding. To put herself into the necessary mind-set to hunt a traitor.

She needs to be sure about Kulakov, that the official cause of death isn’t plausible. So, she calls Ruth Mallory, one of the old Russia hands. One of the few who has worked the target since the Soviet days, but Lyndsey hears she is about to retire. “Did you get that report I sent you?” Lyndsey asks as soon as Mallory answers the phone.

“Sure did. Those were some pictures.”

“Whose handiwork, if you had to guess?”

“Oh, it’s FSB, no doubt about it. Maybe the politsiya were involved, too. They’ve been known to go overboard if the FSB lets them in on the fun.”

“I’m disappointed they didn’t do a better job covering their tracks.”

“They have no reason to hide. It’s better, for intimidation purposes, for everyone to know what they’re capable of.”

When Lyndsey asks Mallory—who knows everyone who’s walked through the doors of Russia Division for the last forty years—what she knows about Kate Franklin, Mallory gives a brusque laugh. “It’s a fool’s game, trying to guess. I’ve been through that once, you know. Aldrich Ames. I was a junior officer. It’s a miserable ordeal to go through. Absolutely miserable. They turn the office inside out, question everyone. They investigate you to within an inch of your life. It destroys morale. Here, your whole identity is built around trustworthiness. You’re given access to secrets because they trust you, and—not for anything you did, poof, it’s all taken away from you. That’s when you see things for how they really are: they don’t trust us, not really.”

Lyndsey feels a flutter of recognition. Being pushed out of Beirut Station, sent home.

“Then you find out that one of you was a traitor, that it wasn’t a wild-goose chase like you hoped, and it’s worse. Infinitely worse. You remember all the conversations you had with him. You remember all the sketchy things about him, how no one really liked him, how it was so obvious that something wasn’t right and yet they let him continue . . . Why is that? Have you ever wondered? You want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but why is it that they’re always so slow to move on the bad eggs and so quick when it comes to the innocent? I’ve never really understood that . . . It seems a kind of cowardice, to me. And a disappointment to those who trusted the