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

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.