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

“Why?” Lyndsey checks herself before she can lunge at Cassidy. How could you betray him? You were his last line of protection.

Cassidy leans back in his chair like a schoolboy caught red-handed. “It was some plan of Newman’s. Look, he told me to do it. That’s what we do, we follow orders.”

“You don’t know what’s behind all this?”

“Oh no, I know what Newman was trying to do.” Cassidy turns to Herbert, his expression perfectly calm. Smug, even. “It’s a trap for Evgeni Morozov.”

His words fall on Lyndsey like a landslide. For a moment, nothing makes sense.

Morozov. Tarasenko’s boss. Tarasenko, Theresa’s handler. But there’s been no connection to Yaromir Popov . . .

Except for Eric. Eric is the only connection.

“Morozov’s been on CIA’s most wanted list for years now. This was a plan to shake him loose, to dangle something he wanted in front of his nose in order to get him to come out. And Morozov took the bait. To snare a CIA officer, someone from the inner sanctum . . . And Richard Warner’s wife, no less. The man Putin hated above nearly all others.”

Stars dance before Lyndsey’s eyes like she’s been hit with a baseball bat. It had been right in front of her, pieces of a puzzle begging to be put together. She sees Eric’s plan now, devastatingly cunning and breathtakingly selfish.

We’re nothing but pawns to him. Popov, Theresa, Richard . . . even me.

Lyndsey opens her mouth to speak but Herbert holds up a hand. “And who is the bait, Tom? Who is Eric Newman using to draw out this Russian?”

Cassidy blinks as though woken from a dream. “I—I’m not sure. I thought it was Popov.”

“He’s dead, so it can’t be him, can it?” Lyndsey slams her hands on the table. “Theresa Warner is the bait. A fellow officer.”

Only then does Cassidy acknowledge her. He turns his head slowly and smiles, the smile of a mortal enemy. Why would he hate her? She’s younger, and a woman; she’s done nothing to him, except be a better case officer. But that’s the only excuse some people need. “No one put a gun to her head to make her hand classified information to the Russians. She chose to do this herself.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lyndsey wants to tell him that he was tricked. He thinks he is clever, but he was played by a master. A soulless man with no conscience.

Herbert catches her eye. Don’t say another word. Let him talk.

“You think you know everything, Duncan, but you’re still a rookie. Where would you be without your protectors? Without Reese Munroe looking out for you, or Yaromir Popov? You think no one knows why Popov was so good to you—and for me there was nothing? It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. The old man was worthless since you left—worthless. If we lost him, it was no big deal.” He looks back to Herbert. “You can’t possibly understand. Morozov has been thumbing his nose at CIA for ten years. Killing one of our COS in broad daylight, in front of his own home. The guys who got Morozov would be heroes. We’d get anything we wanted. We’d be set for the rest of our careers.”

Lyndsey wonders what she would find in Cassidy’s personnel folder: botched operations, personal arguments with colleagues, pettiness and intrigues. Probably a bad marriage, estranged kids, maybe bankruptcies. Not one or two bad choices but a string of them, a chain of mistakes held together by self-pity. Bad people make bad decisions. Weak minds are easily led. It’s obvious that this wasn’t Cassidy’s idea: it was Eric’s. Cassidy is malleable, just what Eric needed.

She feels exhausted, suddenly. She aches all over, like she’s been dragged behind a truck. Days and weeks of searching, searching, searching—and this was under her nose all along.

Tricked. It was all a trick.

Cassidy is mad and red-faced, like a crying infant. He’s been waiting to say these things for a long time and now it’s his chance to show them—Herbert, the uninformed, and Lyndsey, the misguided—who really is the better man. “Here’s the other thing you don’t know, either of you: what Eric did, that’s the way it is at CIA. We’re supposed to be bold. We’re supposed to do the things nobody else can. You want to be all high and mighty and make us out to be the bad guys, but it only goes to show that you don’t get it. We didn’t do anything wrong here. The ends justify the means—you’ve heard that before, haven’t you, Lyndsey? Well, this is what it looks like.” He stares hard at her. “If you think what Eric Newman did was wrong, you don’t belong and you never will.”

Cold shivers run down Lyndsey’s body. So, assets like Yaromir Popov and officers like Theresa Warner can be toyed with so casually, because they don’t matter. The irony—lost on Cassidy—is that if Cassidy thinks Eric will be loyal to him and protect him now that the whole thing is unraveling, he’s delusional. There is no honor among spies, apparently.

“If you don’t think big, you’re not doing your job,” he says belligerently. “The only crime is getting caught.”

Where has Lyndsey heard that before?

—

They slip into a nearby room to confer, leaving Cassidy alone.

Herbert has an assistant fetch water, coffee, to give Lyndsey time to recover. Herbert excuses herself to check her cell phone while Lyndsey takes in everything she has heard. How she wishes she could leave the building, get into her car and drive. To look at something—anything—that will take her away from where she is. She feels the need to purge the deceit and lying from her head.

Lyndsey has to hand it to Herbert: she has a great poker face. She has no idea what the FBI squad supervisor is thinking at this moment.

“Well, now you know what I was working on,” Lyndsey says. “Eric Newman ordered Yaromir Popov’s death, and pushed Theresa into going to the Russians. Theresa