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

He picks up the phone and punches a few buttons. “Hello—who’s on the floor tonight? Put her through.” He must be calling the Watch, the round-the-clock center that runs things when the day shift has gone home. The Agency in miniature. Theoretically, it has the power to do anything that could be done by the regular shift, call in the Director if necessary.

“Oh hi, Rosalind. This is Pat. I need you to give Lyndsey Duncan immediate access to everything you have on Razorbill. Can you do that? Thanks.” He hangs up. The expression on his face hasn’t changed but he’s just done something remarkable: he’s done in five seconds what could’ve taken days of phone calls and waiting. “Go down to the vault: they should have the file pulled and ready for you. If not, let me know. I’ll be here another hour, at least.”

—

Lyndsey has never liked heading down to the vault.

She’s only had to do it a couple times in her career, make the long, twisting trek in the basement to the giant room that holds all the special files. It reminds her of police evidence lockers, which she has only seen on television. But the feeling is the same: a lonely room full of important but forgotten things. A lone figure sitting in the cage like a prisoner, like he’s done something wrong and this is his punishment.

She only knows one of the men who man the vault on a twenty-four-hours-a-day basis. Jim Purvis, one of the real old-timers. She thinks it’s a little criminal to let someone work at that age, but she’s heard a story about Jim, so odd that it can’t be true, that he actually threatened to go public with secrets—spill his guts online, post them on Facebook or Twitter, anywhere he could—if they didn’t give him a job. He hated being away from this world so much that he couldn’t stand it, couldn’t function outside. Luckily, Jim is not on duty this night. Tonight, it’s a bored-looking younger man with a goatee, reading a paperback science fiction novel. As Pfeifer predicted, the file is waiting for her.

Behind the closed door of her office, Lyndsey looks at this thing that was so hard to get. Made of pale green heavy-duty card stock banded with red on the cover. top secret, it reads, and handwritten underneath, Razorbill. The file is thin, holding only a few reports.

The paper smells musty. She looks at the list of records, only about five in all. The first one seems to be notes taken at a closed-door meeting. Judging from the short list of attendees—the Director and Deputy of the Clandestine Service, head of Human Resources, and a few names she doesn’t recognize—it had to be about something pretty serious.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD

August 13, 2016

Subject: RAZORBILL

Meeting with Chief Russia Division (Newman) held at 13:51 when Front Office was informed by COS Moscow of an unauthorized exfiltration attempted today by Agency personnel. Newman felt his authorization alone was sufficient to attempt exfiltration of asset PENNANTRACE. Newman claims he opted to use contract help for exfiltration and did not inform Moscow Station of the operation because imminent threat to PENNANTRACE resulted in an abbreviated timeline.

A creeping sense of foreboding comes over Lyndsey as she rereads that opening. An unauthorized operation on Russian soil? This is against all the rules. First, it’s unthinkable for the chief of a division back here in Langley to okay a mission in another country without bringing the Chief of Station in on it. It’s a sacred rule of the Clandestine Service. This alone would make the director and his deputy furious. How did Eric manage to hang on to his job?

She continues reading, her pulse accelerating with every word. This is about Richard Warner, what really happened when he went to Moscow to try to rescue his asset. What she reads doesn’t track with the stories Theresa and Eric have told her.

Time was of the essence, Eric is quoted in the transcript as saying. Olga Boykova was still at large but the police and the FSB were looking for her. It was only a matter of time before she was caught.

The logical choice would have been for the Station to send someone to meet her and hide her in a safe house until they could smuggle her out of the country, but that didn’t happen—whether it was because Warner didn’t trust the Station or knew Boykova would meet with no one besides him, wasn’t clear. The Station was kept in the dark. Which is crazy. Heresy.

This is a huge breach of policy, Newman. This from the head of the Clandestine Service. Lyndsey works the dates backward: it would’ve been Roger Barker, of the legendary temper. You can be terminated for this.

In the stories she’s heard Eric tell, the exfiltration was both their idea, his and Richard’s. But according to the transcript Eric says, Richard insisted. We were peers, I didn’t feel I could override him. Boykova was his biggest case. His star asset. I felt it was Richard’s call. I didn’t think I could take this away from him. He said he would take the blame if things went wrong.

The transcript doesn’t track with the legend. Of course, the transcript contains only Eric’s side. Maybe, after it blew up in his face, he lost his nerve and put the blame on the man who wasn’t there. It’s easy to imagine the scene, Barker’s face getting redder and redder as he yells and rants.

The transcript gets worse and worse. We put together a team of independent contractors—mercenaries—willing to go to Moscow. Lyndsey had worked with guys who fell in this category, former military and security services who’d served in lawless places like Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan. It’s not clear from the report whether Eric has used these men in previous operations or if they were unknown, but that would be another red flag, another indication of how rushed and desperate Richard and Eric