Red Widow

TEN

^{TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA}

It is Saturday, a day for running errands. Lyndsey forces herself to tug on a pair of jeans, tie her hair up in a ponytail, and head over to the sprawling Tysons Corner mall. She only needs a few essentials and promises to get something good for lunch (Tacos? Sushi? Something she cannot make in the barren wasteland that is her kitchen) as enticement to get out of the apartment.

One purchase later (athletic socks), she is standing outside Macy’s when she sees Theresa. Lyndsey is always surprised when she sees someone from work out in the wild, as though the two worlds make a combustible combination and should never, ever touch.

There is no mistaking Theresa. Chic as always, trench coat cinched tightly at the waist, sunglasses pushed on top of her head. She holds the hand of a small boy and has leaned over to whisper something in his ear. The boy stares as though hypnotized by the sprawling play space in front of them. Children brush by him to clamber onto the huge plastic structures. They are all laughing and shrieking except for little Brian. He stares at a neon set of monkey bars with something akin to reverence.

Should she leave them to their moment? But when will Lyndsey have the chance to meet Theresa’s son? She walks over, tiny shopping bag swinging from her arm. “Hey, fancy meeting you here.”

The smile on Theresa’s face seems genuine. At his mother’s prompting, Brian turns to face Lyndsey, his big eyes mapping her face. He must take after Richard, Lyndsey decides. Those wary, owlish eyes.

“This is mommy’s friend. We work together,” Theresa says. Brian blinks and shifts his weight. Theresa crouches to speak to her son. “Why don’t you go play? Lyndsey and I will sit right over there and watch you. You’ll be able to see us the whole time. I’m not going anywhere.”

They sit on a plastic bench together and watch as Brian begins to hoist himself up the constellation of bars until he’s above the heads of the other children. A hint of excitement betrays Brian’s otherwise controlled expression, but his gaze stays glued to his mother, like a dog rescued from the pound.

“Two years Richard’s been gone, and Brian still doesn’t like to go anywhere without me,” Theresa says. The shopping bags at her feet are all from children’s stores. “The therapist says he’ll outgrow it.”

Lyndsey is aware that today will mark a change in her relationship with Theresa. Although they get together every day for coffee, their talks haven’t been overly personal. Lyndsey talks about her widowed mother living alone in rural Pennsylvania, and Theresa mostly frets about how Brian is doing in school. Today feels different, however. Today, Theresa seems to be in a mood to open up.

Does Theresa have any friends? Lyndsey wonders. She seems to have dedicated herself to her son and her son alone. It seems crazy that this has happened to the wife of Richard Warner, once king of their insular kingdom, the pair a golden couple. Theresa Warner had had her circle of friends, a queen with her court, but it seems they’ve all deserted her now. All those people who knew and loved Richard Warner—why aren’t they helping her? It seems Eric Newman is the only one left.

In an odd way, Lyndsey knows what Theresa is going through. They have both fallen from grace, their worlds turned upside down, and are now forced to build new ones. What happened to her in Beirut—that anyone felt threatened enough to want to see her fall—had been a surprise, but it also had taught her a valuable lesson about Langley. Most people keep their resentments hidden. Suddenly, she realizes that she probably understands Theresa better than she first thought.

Theresa watches children scamper agilely over the monkey bars. “I try not to dwell in the past, you know, but sometimes I think about how different everything would be if Richard was still alive.”

Lyndsey’s not sure how much to pry into such a sensitive topic, a man’s death, but Theresa seems to want to talk about it. “You know, I never heard what happened to Richard. The details didn’t reach Lebanon. We weren’t told anything at all.”

Theresa gives her a pained look. They’re not supposed to talk about classified stuff out of the office but it happens all the time, whenever two or more Agency employees are by themselves, wherever there’s a reasonable expectation that they won’t be overheard. They will skirt around the edges, of course. Talk in code, leave out details. Avoid the secret stuff.

Theresa rises from the bench and jerks her head toward a little alcove, close enough so that Brian can still see her, but away from everyone else. They are by themselves, a bubble in a sea of mothers and teenagers, no one paying attention to them.

Theresa takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly, ready to bare her soul. She drops her voice. “No one ever told me the whole story. I figured it out on my own from bits and pieces I heard over time. It started with a problem with an asset. The asset was a woman, one that Richard had been running from Langley. There was a case officer on the ground in Moscow, of course, but he only took care of the physical stuff, dead drops, stuff like that. Everyone at Langley knew that it was Richard’s case—and that it was a success because of him.” There is still pride in her voice for her husband, for what he did. She glances over her shoulder to make sure there’s still a wide buffer around them before continuing.

“But then Richard came home very late one evening, his face white. Brian had already gone to bed. Richard pulled out the bottle of Yamskaya, his favorite vodka, and poured us both a drink. They’d just learned the Russians were onto his asset. By sheer luck, she had not been home when the police came for her and managed to go into hiding. She wouldn’t survive long on the street, though, now that she was blown. And Langley had no resources who could help her, no one they were willing to risk.

“Richard wouldn’t let them desert his asset. It fell under Eric. Richard went to him and told him they had to get her out, no matter what. You know as well as I that extractions are complex operations. They take months to plan, not days. And dangerous, too. The whole thing seemed absurdly foolhardy, the gesture of a hard-core romantic—and for a moment I even questioned Richard’s motives, wondered if there was something going on with this asset that I didn’t know about.” She stops, her expression a tangle of regret and unhappiness. So, she’s wondered all this time, too, if Richard had been faithful, whether he had ulterior motives going to Moscow… The hurt this woman has been carrying is unimaginable.

“I wanted to ask him, ‘What about us?’ What about putting his family first? I wanted to throw it all in his face, but I couldn’t. It’s not that simple, is it? There’s no equation to tell you how much loyalty you owe to an asset.” She puts a hand over her eyes. Hiding from the pain. “He had to go, he argued. His asset had risked her life on his word. He couldn’t let the Russians catch her. Besides, no intelligence professional ever thinks he’s going to make a mistake. Richard didn’t think for a split second that he wouldn’t be coming home.”

Theresa takes a deep breath. Fighting back tears. “Eric Newman was the one to tell me. He called me into his office… I sat on the couch like everything was normal, even though I knew something bad was coming. Even though every nerve in my body was telling me to get out of there. To run.

“The rescue operation had not gone well, he said. It was as though the Russians knew Richard was coming. He had been the one to go in for her. He had insisted on escorting her to the safe house. She was his responsibility, he would take the risk. That was the last anyone saw him.”

Is this good, recalling all this? Lyndsey wonders. Is it cathartic? The woman had just admitted that she hasn’t any friends; she probably hasn’t talked to anyone about it, not in a good, long time.

Theresa continues. “Details came out over the next few months, bit by bit. It was like Chinese water torture. Eric claimed he was given permission to share it with me in fits and starts. The Russians refused to return Richard’s body. Apparently, CIA had scored a serious coup with this asset and made the FSB look bad.

“But then the counterarguments started—you know how that is, how they love to twist and twist and twist a story, to see if there’s some angle they can come up with, something no one’s thought of before. And sure enough, someone got it into his head that the asset had been a plant, an elaborate trap by the FSB to redeem itself in Putin’s eyes, and that Eric and Richard had been duped all along. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to support it, but that didn’t stop it from taking on a life of its own. The whole episode—the asset, Richard’s death—became radioactive on the seventh floor.” All the tension goes out of Theresa all at once. She is wrung out like a washcloth. “I was told to stop pushing the issue and to accept what had happened. There was nothing more I could do.”

With that, the spell is broken. The sounds of the mall courtyard return, yelps and laughter of excited children. Lyndsey blinks, the story Theresa just told her evaporating like perfume on the air. Did Theresa really just share all that with her, here, in a crowded mall? Maybe she can only tell that story outside of Langley. As an act of defiance. Outside the Agency’s domain, beyond their reach.

Brian runs up to them, a flush to his pale face. He has a few breathy words for his mother—“monkey bars for my little monkey” Theresa says as she ruffles his hair affectionately—before turning once again to Lyndsey with wide, curious eyes. Trying to make sense of her, her importance to his mother.

Something has happened just now: Theresa shared her burden with Lyndsey. Lyndsey now knows the complicated tale of loyalty and betrayal that has left a woman alone to care for a fatherless child. She suddenly feels close to Theresa and is sorry that this didn’t happen earlier. Why didn’t they become friends at the start? she wonders. Too dissimilar, probably: Theresa was already married, a young wife, whereas Lyndsey was just out of college and still green. Theresa was also the wife of a branch chief, in an entirely different social world. But circumstances have thrown them together now. Lyndsey realizes with a start, as Theresa gathers her shopping bags, that this is the most intimate conversation she’s had with a woman in the last five years. Overseas stations are notoriously light on female officers. And one tends to let old friends and even family slip away during covert overseas assignments.

Theresa Warner, The Widow, is the closest thing she has to a friend.

“That’s great, slugger,” Theresa says to her son as she places a hand to his back, gently steering him away from the play space and into the throng of shoppers. “But now it’s time for lunch. Where do you want to go? Do you want to get a hamburger? And a chocolate shake? And maybe if you’re very good”—her eyes flit to Lyndsey, holding her gaze for a second—“Miss Lyndsey will agree to join us. And she can become your new friend, too, like she’s mommy’s friend. What do you say?”