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

believe so.” She extended a hand. “Theresa Warner. Jack and my husband were old friends.” Theresa wasn’t going to explain about Richard or share her personal story with Jack’s wife. If the two men had been close—and Theresa had no evidence of that, Jack’s name rarely coming up in all the time she was married—then Helen would already know what had happened. If not, then, there was no need to rehash it, not with Richard gone and Jack with so little time.

The wife shook Theresa’s hand limply. The grip of a woman in shock.

Jack looked at his wife. “Give us. A minute alone,” he said. How many times had he asked that of her, a CIA spouse? She didn’t seem surprised, not in the least. Secrets, right up to the end.

Clemens waited as the wife and the nurse shuffled out, his eyes trained on Theresa. There was something ominous in his stare, his silence. What in the world could this be about? Suddenly, she wished she hadn’t come. She wanted to leave before he could say whatever it was he wanted to tell her.

“Jack—” She looked longingly to the door.

He held up a hand to stop her. “Theresa, I have something to tell you. I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you sooner.” Then he stopped abruptly, coughing, then reached toward a pink plastic jug on a counter, a bendable straw jutting out of it. She held the jug for him as he drank. It reminded her of the early days with Brian, the sippy cups.

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