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

He waves her off. He already knows. She can tell by the way he looks at her, the hint of disappointment he struggles to hide. “If it’s about what happened in Beirut, you don’t have to tell me.”

She’s not sure if she’s irreparably embarrassed or grateful that she doesn’t have to explain. “Well, I don’t know the details,” he clarifies quickly. “Security is pretty strict about that stuff. When I raised your name up to the seventh floor, that’s when they told me you were sent home early from Lebanon.”

She wishes she could walk out and spare herself this shame, but the feeling passes. You learn early in this job that it’s going to require an uncomfortable degree of candor. That you must admit your every trespass, your every failing, to complete strangers. You’re expected to lie to your spouse and your children in the line of duty, but you can’t lie to the Agency. It’s your confessor and parent and spouse.

She fixes her gaze on him. Steady. “You want me to tell you the whole story?”

“It’s your call. If it makes you feel better.”

Who knows, maybe it will. Aside from Security, she’s talked to no one about it. Left the Chief of Station’s office in Beirut so utterly embarrassed, she’d wished the earth would open up and swallow her. Her shame was red-hot, like she’d been on fire. What she needs is someone with a bucket of water. And here is Eric Newman, volunteer fireman. “Maybe sometime. Soon. I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

He seems disappointed but nods.

“If I’m cleared to work on this, I can only assume they don’t consider me a security threat.” She’s only a danger to herself.

Eric shifts again in his seat. “Well, they had their reservations, but I told them there were extenuating circumstances. There was no runner-up. It had to be you. Because there’s one more thing—something I haven’t told you yet.” The tentativeness falls away and suddenly he looks like the saddest man in the world. “Have you seen the Post this morning?” He is watching her face. “I’m sorry to have to tell you. So, so sorry.”

Enough with the apologies—tell me already. Her skin is crawling. How much bad news can one person take?

Eric takes a deep breath. “Yaromir Popov is dead.”

Her heart does a stutter step. Her first asset. Impossible. This cannot be.

Eric continues, talking over her shocked silence. “It happened last night. He was flying to D.C. From everything we’ve been able to gather, he had no reason to make the trip. It came out of nowhere. State Department didn’t have him scheduled for meetings, no ‘official duties.’ It could’ve been some other business or a personal reason, of course, but . . .” Eric trails off; they both know that this isn’t likely. “Are you okay? It’s got to be an awful shock. Can I get you some water?”

Lyndsey can only blink at him. To the rest of the world, Yaromir Popov looked like a mid-level diplomat in the Russian foreign ministry, a man who filled out the table during negotiations, chatted up visiting foreign delegations, and attended endless rounds of diplomatic functions.

But behind the quiet façade and accommodating demeanor, he was really a high-ranking officer in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. A man with thirty years in Russian intelligence.

A man who had been a double agent for CIA.

Lyndsey knows this because Yaromir Popov was her first triumph as a case officer. But there was more to their relationship. She could admit to some people—no one at CIA, of course, but the people who were really close to her—that Yaromir Popov was like a father to her.

And she’d already lost one father. Losing two might be too much to bear.

—

Time has slowed. Seconds pass like minutes. The sunlight falling across the conference table is so bright, it stings Lyndsey’s eyes. Sound is muffled, like the world has been wrapped in cotton batting, quietly ushered away.

She pictures Popov’s face. The way he smiled for her, like a delighted parent. Always happy to see her, even when the business at hand was bad. They met in that shabby safe house off Arbat Square or in rented cars parked along quiet Moscow streets. He always carried himself with dignity, but there had been sadness, too. He had been somewhat tortured, ending his career working with the enemy. But his disgust for what had happened to his country under the oligarchs ate away at his belief that the enemy was external. The more patriotic thing to do was to try to rid his country of the parasites.

He had managed to turn his sadness aside, and even seemed to enjoy working with his American handler. To channel his energy into teaching the tricks of the trade—his side of the trade, that is. He had come to see her, over time, as his protégée.

But now, he was dead.

She had been his recruiter, his handler. Yaromir Popov wouldn’t have been a target if it wasn’t for her.

Eric has the office manager bring coffee, dark as pitch from sitting too long on the burner. It unblocks her ears and focuses her eyes.

Her hands are unsteady on the cup, making the coffee tremble. “How did it happen?”

“It looks like a heart attack. He was on the last leg of the Moscow trip, JFK to Reagan National. It departed JFK at eleven p.m., arrived at Reagan about midnight. The attendant said he started showing signs of distress shortly after he boarded. That’s all we know. No surprise, the Russians are demanding the body back right away. We got the D.C. health department to hold on to it, saying he might’ve died of some communicable disease, but they could only do so much. It’s got to go back today. We’re waiting on the report.”

How did they kill him? Russian intelligence is known to love its poisons. They have a long history of political assassination by poison, quirky and cruel at once. Something about the delayed effects and painful drama