Red Widow

NINE

^MOSCOW

“Begging your pardon, Dmitri Ivanovich, but there is a report in your queue that requires your immediate attention. It has to do with Kanareyka.”

Kanareyka. Canary.

Dmitri Tarasenko’s assistant stands in the doorway. She is afraid to come in and so she stands twisting a lock of hair like an anxious little girl. I really should fire her, he thinks for the hundredth time. And he would, if he hadn’t been the one to encourage to her work for him in the first place, which he only did because she was so pretty. But she hasn’t slept with him yet, and that was the whole point, wasn’t it, why he’s suffered through four months of her incompetence. She loses his phone messages. His calendar is a complete disaster. At this point, he feels she owes it to him. It’s his due for putting up with her.

Tarasenko puts down what he is working on. “Very well, Teresa Nikolayevna, I will look at it right away, since you have interrupted my work.” Perhaps she will be more compliant if she suspects he is displeased with her.

She immediately crumbles. “Oh, I am so sorry, Dmitri Ivanovich, I didn’t mean to—”

He waves her away and looks for the email. Finds it, clicks on it.

Tarasenko pushes back in his chair, chuckling to himself. First, it is ludicrous for an asset to make demands. The FSB holds all the cards and Kanareyka should have realized this when the deal was made.

Honestly, what does he care if Kanareyka is discovered? The FSB had gotten all they were likely to get from this asset. Kanareyka is balky and obviously has no intention of giving the FSB what it wants. What’s more, Kanareyka is a traitor, and all traitors are by nature untrustworthy. They betray their masters, the hand that feeds; knowing this, you’d be a fool to trust them. Though it’s protocol to make a fuss over them, to call them heroes and applaud their courage and the like. Dmitri Tarasenko never believed in that. They are self-serving liars. They cloak themselves in glory, pretending to be doing it for one noble reason or other, but in truth they serve no higher purpose; they only serve themselves.

Still.

No sense slaughtering the cow when it might have more milk to give. As much as it would please him to burn Kanareyka, he realizes to do so now would be premature.

Then there is this matter of Yaromir Popov. The office had received word of Popov’s abrupt death; something about dying while on vacation, an obvious fabrication. A few of the old-timers were shaken up—you could still find one or two who liked the man—but it hadn’t mattered to Tarasenko, not at all. Popov was an old dinosaur who hadn’t done anything notable in years, one of these hangers-on who had no intention of retiring and seemed to want to die behind his desk. Well, he got his wish.

Still.

People don’t die on airplanes every day, much less SVR officers. And why would CIA set up this investigation if there wasn’t a reason? Obviously, Popov meant something to them. Who would’ve guessed that the old fox had been secretly betraying his masters?

Someone’s head would roll for that and Dmitri Tarasenko would make sure he had a front-row seat for the beheading.

Kanareyka is Tarasenko’s asset. Because of the sensitive nature of the situation, General Morozov put Tarasenko, his protégé, in charge from the beginning. Morozov trusted Tarasenko not to botch things up. It would be disastrous if things fell to pieces now.

Tarasenko looks back at the computer monitor, drumming his fingers on his desk.

Morozov has been restless lately, hinting that he might take a trip out of the country. Ten years he has been confined inside Russia. It is Morozov’s own fault. No one told him to kill CIA’s Chief of Station in Kiev. He had lost his temper. Usually, the stakes in the clandestine world are high for such folly. Morozov had gotten off lightly, all things considered. He could’ve been stripped of his position; he could’ve been jailed. Maybe the Hard Man had understood that the worst possible punishment was one meted out by CIA: a wanted man, Morozov risked being snatched up if he left the country. Dragged to the United States and put on trial.

Confined, Morozov is like a child in detention staring out the window at his classmates enjoying themselves in the playground. There are only so many times one could visit St. Petersburg or stay in the country in one’s dacha. He misses getting up to mischief in Paris and Vienna, Bangkok and Singapore—but mostly he misses Washington. Oh, how the old man misses Washington. It calls to him like a mistress. The old friend is snoozing, past offenses forgotten, Morozov claims. He is rested and ready to get into trouble again.

But so far, the Hard Man has ignored his requests. He needs Morozov alive and safe.

Morozov has a soft spot for Kanareyka, though. Kanareyka could be his downfall.

From Tarasenko’s point of view, that might not necessarily be a bad thing.

Many times, Tarasenko has protected his impetuous boss from his bad nature. Protected Morozov from himself, as it were. Morozov is his benefactor. Tarasenko, too, needs Morozov alive and safe.

But most men outgrow their benefactors, yes? A tree doesn’t grow strong if it remains in the shadow of the forest. Besides, Morozov is not above throwing people to the wolves, subordinates as well as rivals; Tarasenko has seen the proof. He’s learned to follow Morozov’s lead: stepped over their corpses, moved into their offices, moved his way up the ladder.

Tarasenko continues drumming his fingers against his desk. An opportunity might present itself from this strange confluence of events. This is how men get ahead in this pestilent kingdom: seeing opportunity before anyone else, and seizing it.

The matter bore watching, very closely.