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

around. It should inspire fear. Washington, D.C., lost its spine a few presidents back and it’s only gotten worse with time. Now it’s overrun with lobbyists and lawyers telling the government what to do, corporations backing politicians like it’s a horse race. They may be in it for the money in Moscow, too, but no one forgets who is in charge. It’s not a crazy land grab, everyone out to get what they can. Under the Hard Man, there is harmony. He keeps everyone in line.

In the Uber, he keeps an eye out for an FBI tail but he’s pretty sure he’s clean. He’s traveling under a new identity and it looks like they haven’t picked up on it yet. More proof that Washington isn’t the superpower it once was. There was a time when the FBI would be on them from the second they got off the plane. In Beijing, you have to worry about facial recognition everywhere you go. Again, a superpower that doesn’t fuck around. Younger Russian intelligence officers prefer to be posted to Singapore and Hong Kong and mainland China for the challenge. The technology in these places keeps you on your toes. Keeps you from getting complacent. It’s no fun when your adversary doesn’t give a fuck.

As he drinks that evening in the hotel bar, he is overcome with an ill-advised recklessness, a child whose parents have gone out for the first time without getting a babysitter. Should he stick a fork in an electrical outlet, leap from the roof of the garage into the bushes, play pranks on the neighbors? He orders up a rental car—no Uber for what he’s about to do—and drives out to northern Virginia, to the neighborhood where Kanareyka lives. He loops through the dark streets for over an hour just in case there is a tail following him, then parks within easy view of the gray-and-white house, lights a cigarette, and watches.

The Rezidentura has been circumspect about bugging the house of a CIA officer. For most assets, it would be a given, the price of doing business. They would sneak in under the guise of an electrician or other serviceman and place recording devices in the house. But the housekeeper doesn’t let anyone in when Kanareyka is away, and they know better than to try this with Kanareyka herself. The Rezidentura has to make do with men watching her house from fake service vans, risky in a neighborhood of former spies who think nothing of knocking on your window and demanding to see identification or, worse yet, calling the police.

Kanareyka’s Volvo is in the driveway. At one point, he sees Kanareyka through an upstairs window, her angular face in profile, arms crossed over her chest, looking down as though she is talking to someone who is very short. It has to be Kanareyka’s son, the one mentioned in the reports. There is a blue glow cast on Kanareyka’s cheek from a television or computer monitor. Is her son begging for a few more minutes to play his video games, like boys in Russia? Like boys everywhere. They talk for a few more minutes and then the light clicks off and the room goes black.

Everything looks normal, and that is good. Again, in this neighborhood of spies, you don’t want to raise suspicions that the family is about to leave. On the other hand, everything looks too normal, and that makes him nervous. Could Kanareyka be trying to trick them? Maybe she is not planning to flee after all. Maybe she’s going to defy them. He studies the quiet house—no signs of packing, no trash piled on the curb waiting for pickup, nothing out of place—and puffs on his cigarette. What does this utterly placid house tell him about Kanareyka’s state of mind? He needs to know more. After all, he’s the one walking into that house in a day’s time. It’s not too much to want assurances, to know he’s not heading into a trap. He needs to look inside.

Dropping the cigarette butt out the car window, he zips up the front of his dark jacket to cover the light-colored shirt beneath it, which glows like it’s radioactive in the dark. Like the seasoned case officer that he is, Tarasenko walks casually down the street, like he lives there, a homeowner taking in the night air. He doesn’t cross onto her property until he gets to a spot behind a huge tree, hidden completely in shadow. If anyone had been watching, it would’ve looked like he simply disappeared, but no, he is making his way behind the garage to the back of the house, where he can get close to the windows. For a big man, he is surprisingly quiet on his feet. He sidles around the shrubs and close to the window without snapping twigs or rustling old, forgotten leaves.

He finds one where the blinds are not all the way down, and he can use the gap of a few inches to peer in. The room is dark, but he can see through into the next room, where a light is on. It is very still. No television, no radio or stereo. It doesn’t appear that anyone is on the lower level.

He figures out a way to get to the second story. He pulls himself onto the roof over the enclosed patio and then crawls on his belly to the gable that looks over the backyard. There’s a faint glow from one of the windows so he heads toward that. It’s tricky, because the roof here is steep and the ledge under the window is narrow, mere inches. There is nothing to stop him if he should fall. It’s only about fifteen feet to the ground; he wouldn’t injure himself but there’s no way he wouldn’t be heard.

He makes his way cautiously, gripping the trim under the bank of windows to steady himself, then peers around the sill. Theresa left the curtain partly open, perhaps because she is