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

then there’s her uncertainty over Eric’s involvement in Yaromir Popov’s death. She needs to hear what the FBI finds out, but if Kincaid should die . . . She may run out of time.

“You want to see me?” She steps into Eric’s office.

“Close the door.” Maggie was right: Eric is tense. He points to the couch and steps around his desk to join her. “Any update from the FBI?”

For a moment, she is confused: he can’t know about the call to Herbert, can he? If that were the case, he’d be bawling her out for taking Agency business to the FBI. She scans his face for telltale tics that he’s hiding something, for anger bubbling under the surface, but either there’s none or he’s so good at hiding his true feelings that it no longer makes a difference. What he truly feels, what he truly believes, and what he wants others to believe. “FBI?”

But he doesn’t seem to notice her confusion. “The next time you speak to them, I want you to let that squad supervisor know that we’re going to have a team on the ground at the time of the arrest. It’s going to be a joint operation. Tell her I’m not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Is this normal procedure? Eric isn’t in the mood to be argued with. “Okay, I’ll bring it up to her. But—”

He is too impatient and interrupts. “We’re not going to let them hog all the glory, do you understand? This is our investigation—you’re the one who figured out it was Theresa Warner. This will be a huge deal and we can’t lose the limelight to the FBI. Do we know when the Russians are coming to get her?”

“The FBI thinks it could be any day now.”

A huge sigh of relief escapes from Eric. Finally, his shoulders relax, his body unclenches. “Good. We’re close now—so close. Keep a close watch on this, Lyndsey. We can’t afford to make one mistake. We’ve got to bring Theresa Warner to justice.”

—

The call Lyndsey is waiting for doesn’t come until the afternoon. Lyndsey picks up the secure phone on the second ring.

“It’s Sally Herbert. I thought this was going to be a simple job. I forgot that nothing with you CIA guys is ever simple.”

It started off well, Herbert explains. The name is unusual enough to narrow the field. She played a hunch that, with his prior work for CIA and in security, he might be ex-military. Once she concentrated on military records, Simon proved easy to track down. She found him in the Northern Neck of Virginia. The area is old, home to the birthplace of George Washington, rich in Colonial history, now a slow southern graceland, a patchwork of working farms and marinas filled with expensive weekend toys owned by retired executives. “Simon probably lives there because he is an outdoorsman,” Herbert says. According to his records, he’s into hunting and fishing. A member of the NRA, owner of at least a half dozen firearms. Being an independent security specialist makes it possible to live the lifestyle that he does, out in the woods in the Northern Neck with his pickup truck and rifles and his bloodhound. It’s the kind of work that takes him away for weeks and months at a time and pays well enough to afford him the opportunity to stay home and disappear into the woods for long, luxurious spells.

“I sent a couple agents out to talk to him. It’s the kind of job done better in person rather than on the phone. You need to read the body language. The Norfolk office sent two ex-military. They’d have the best chance of connecting with him.”

The FBI agents reported that Simon’s reaction was—interesting. “He seemed alarmed that two FBI agents came all the way out to his little hunting shack just to ask him a few questions. That set the agents’ radar off. They figured he was hiding something for sure. The more they pressed, the more nervous he became. We knew he had been to Russia, our database confirmed that, but when they asked what he’d been doing there, he got belligerent. He asked if it was a crime to go to Russia, then told them to get a subpoena. That’s never a good sign.” Herbert gives another dark chuckle. “Then he changed tactics. Decided to be a bit more cooperative. He told them he had gone on business, but he couldn’t give them the name of his employer. Wasn’t allowed to. The more they pressed, the more evasive he got.”

Eventually, Simon admitted to them that he had been on official government business—“You know, playing the ‘national security’ card. He said that if it were up to him, he’d tell them, but they didn’t have need-to-know. I guess he hoped that would be the end of it but of course, it wasn’t. They said they needed a point of contact who could corroborate his story.”

“Did he give them a name?”

“He sure did. Tony Schaffer.” She rattles off a phone number. “Know him?”

It is the name Lyndsey’s been dreading, though she doesn’t want to admit it to Herbert. Tony Schaffer manages classified contracts for Russia Division, handling everything that couldn’t be overtly tied to CIA. She is sure that if she finds the contract from the last time Simon had been hired, Schaffer’s signature will be on it, too.

“I take it you know this Schaffer guy?” Herbert asks after the silence.

It feels like she’s been punched in the gut. Any doubt about Eric’s involvement has been erased. Worse yet is having to admit this to Herbert. It means she’s been hoodwinked. Something nefarious had been going on and she failed to see it. “Yeah. I do.”

Silence. “Look, you didn’t explain Claude Simon’s relevance to the Warner case, but if there’s a connection you need to let me know. Does that mean he was working for you guys?”

Herbert made it clear at the kickoff with Eric that Theresa’s case belonged to FBI. She’d