Red Widow

TWELVE

Time drags in Lyndsey’s minuscule office. With no window, she judges time by the sounds outside her door. Lyndsey is about to head downstairs for another coffee, her third of the day—and stifles the urge to text Theresa to see if she wants to join her—when an email appears in her inbox.

Popov. Her eyes skip down the page. She opens the attachment, a pdf of the report from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of the District of Columbia. While it is grainy it is also readable, but most of it is technical jargon and medical-speak that she doesn’t understand. One page in, she sees that she needs someone to interpret it for her.

Although it is past Theresa’s usual quitting time, she is still at her desk. She smiles at Lyndsey when she sees her approach.

Lyndsey looks over her shoulder for Maggie (does Maggie report this sort of thing to Eric? she wonders) before starting to speak. “Do you have a minute? I could use your help. Before I left to go overseas, there were a couple analysts who worked on medical issues. Do you know if they’re still around?”

“Let me show you a way to find out.” A couple taps on the keyboard and a website comes up on Theresa’s monitor that reminds Lyndsey of Facebook. It shows a wall of posts from an assortment of individuals, some with photographs next to the name, some with avatars. “In the last couple years, everyone’s started using collaborative tools more regularly. It really helps get things done. This is the latest. It makes it much easier to find who might be working on a target that’s similar to yours, or if you need someone with a particular expertise,” Theresa explains.

Lyndsey admires Theresa’s ease with the tool. Theresa types “medical analysis” in the search bar and hits Return. A number of links come up to posts where a robust dialogue goes on between analysts and officers: an outbreak of avian flu in Vietnam, prevalence of malaria in Australia.

“That was easy,” Lyndsey says. In the old days, it would take asking around until you found someone who could help you. This is much more efficient.

“Isn’t it, though? So… any of these what you’re looking for?”

Lyndsey hesitates. She shouldn’t get specific. Theresa doesn’t have need-to-know. “I’ve taken enough of your time. How about if I play around with it myself? What was the link again?”

Theresa scribbles it on a scrap of paper and hands it to Lyndsey.

Back in the privacy of her office, Lyndsey types “poison” into the search bar. She feels a twinge of guilt for not telling Theresa. It seems petty to hold her at arm’s length. Surely the toxicology report will be the talk of the office by quitting time. But given the task she’s been given, finding a potential double agent, Lyndsey of all people should obey the rules.

A handful of links come back and, after clicking through the first five, it’s readily apparent that there is only one expert on poisons at the Agency: Randy Detwiler. All she can make out from the tiny thumbnail is that he has wiry, light brown hair and wears glasses.

Lyndsey finds Detwiler on the internal system’s instant messaging service. Luckily, he’s at his desk. He asks her to send the toxicology report to him, and within fifteen minutes, he’s texted back. “Very interesting! But my response is too involved to type. Want to stop by my office?”

The trek to Randy Detwiler’s office takes less than ten minutes, but it feels like another world. Detwiler is part of the Agency’s collection of analysts who keep track of every matter of importance to policymakers. It’s home to a hodgepodge of skills—political scientists, researchers, historians, linguists, and economists, to name a few. Lyndsey, like many case officers, is secretly intimidated anytime she’s had to work with the specialists, but there’s no denying their usefulness, especially when it comes to esoteric matters like this.

The small team of medical analysts are kept in a sleepy hallway in the basement. The basement is a twisty maze of corridors, home to offices with strange needs, equipment that makes belching sounds or emits bad smells, or is too large or heavy to go in a conventional space. Detwiler’s office is in a lab, he’s warned her. She finds the entrance by its sign: laboratory of medical sciences.

She passes the lab itself, something out of a sci-fi series. Through windows in the double doors, stainless steel countertops support an array of equipment whose functions Lyndsey can only guess at. Shelves are filled with trays of mysterious vials. A few of the stools are occupied by researchers in protective gear hunched over microscopes, lost in whatever they’re examining: new strains of diseases, possible traces of nuclear material, blood samples from a crime scene? It seems wild to Lyndsey that something like this should exist in the Agency’s basement.

Beyond the lab, Lyndsey is confronted by a row of small private offices, no open floor plan here, like in other offices, as befits a team that’s made up of doctors and PhD researchers. She walks down the hall, checking the nameplates until she finds Detwiler. He towers over her when he stands to shake her hand. He must be at least six and a half feet, and looks to be in his mid-fifties. He has a benign, bookish appearance, like an accountant or librarian. His most distinctive feature, aside from his height, is a head of graying curls.

“That was quite an interesting report you sent,” he says. His tone is almost amused.

“Can you tell me what it means?”

“The short answer is that the cause of death was alkaloid poisoning. In and of itself, it’s not remarkable. It’s the source of the alkaloid that’s so interesting. Gelsemium. Have you heard of it?”

Lyndsey shakes her head. “Should I?”

“It’s commonly used as a homeopathic remedy. Used to treat colds, sleeplessness, that sort of thing. Do you know if the victim used homeopathic medicines?”

Like many Russians, Popov was a skeptic. In Lyndsey’s experience, he put his faith in very little. It might’ve been one reason why he enjoyed talking to her; he thought Americans were refreshing. “No, I don’t think so. The only thing he took for colds was vodka.”

“Compounds used in homeopathy can be tricky. Especially when the system isn’t flooded with the compound, like you’d see in a deliberate overdose.”

“So, you don’t think he was murdered?”

The man smiles at her question. “I might have thought that if I hadn’t been studying political assassinations for the past five years. Your run-of-the-mill police department would probably write this off as an accidental overdose. They might not even catch the exact chemical agent unless they had reason to look for it. Believe it or not, you sometimes see cases of alkaloid poisoning in people who’ve eaten too many green vegetables, though usually those people only get sick.”

Lyndsey nods, encouraging him to continue.

“When I see that someone has died from alkaloid poisoning, I think assassination. Both the Russians and the Chinese are known to use gelsemium in political murders. Let me show you.” Detwiler swivels the monitor around in Lyndsey’s direction so she can see the report up on the screen: a Russian name, a black-and-white photo of a man, forty-ish. “That’s Alexander Perepelichny. He was involved in the Magnitsky case—you know, the guy who uncovered the big swindle involving Putin. Because of his murder, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia.”

“Perepelichny was killed by this same poison?” she asks. Detwiler nods. “So, it’s something the killer can administer in one dose? Like a hit-and-run?”

“Exactly.”

“And how long before it takes effect?”

“It depends on a number of factors: the amount used, the victim’s condition, the usual variables… But it can be quite fast-acting. At the levels that were in his blood—thirty minutes, maybe.”

That narrows the time down to the flight, or possibly just before boarding. Her chest tightens at the thought of Popov dying alone in an airplane. Because of his trust in her. “How would it have been administered?”

“It’s usually done orally. Easy enough to slip into a drink, for instance. I’ll check to see if it can be injected.”

She looks at the monitor again, into the face of the dead man. “And who was responsible for Perepelichny’s death?” Lyndsey asks, even though she’s sure she knows the answer.

“Well, since the case involved elites in the Russian government laundering money overseas, it’s assumed that the FSB was behind the murder, but of course it’s never been solved.”

Will Popov’s murder go unsolved, too? What will happen to his wife and surviving daughter? Will the government take its ire out on them, harass them, cheat them, starve them? Lyndsey’s mind swims with questions.

It seems there can be no denying that Popov was murdered by his own country. The only question that remains is why? It would be easy to assume the Russians discovered what he was doing, but this is Lyndsey’s guilty knowledge talking. She shouldn’t jump to conclusions. There could be another reason, something CIA didn’t know about.

Whatever the reason, it won’t be found in the toxicology report. She has work to do.

She stands to leave. “Thank you, this has been very helpful.”

He walks to the door with her. “Sure, my pleasure. I read about this death in the papers. Unhealthy middle-aged men die every day, of course, including on planes, but when I heard he was a Russian official—well, it sounded awfully suspicious to me.”

A word catches in Lyndsey’s ear. “Unhealthy? Why do you say he was unhealthy?”

“It was in the toxicology report.” Detwiler rummages through the papers on his desk until he finds the one he wants. He runs a finger down a column of numbers. “See here? They list the medications in his bloodstream. It says that he was on SSRIs—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Antidepressants.”

Varya. It’s no surprise for a man whose daughter has just killed herself to be on antidepressants. Even for an old-school Russian, when the vodka wasn’t enough.

She shakes her head for Detwiler: nothing to see there.

He taps the page again. “He was on a bunch of worrisome medications. Diovan; it’s used to treat blood pressure, but it’s commonly prescribed for someone who’s just had a heart attack.”

A heart attack? Lyndsey raises an eyebrow.

He reads from the paper. “Tissue plasminogen activators—that’s for breaking up blood clots. You commonly see them administered after someone’s had a stroke. Anticoagulants. At the levels found in his blood, I’d say this man had had a serious medical episode fairly recently.”

Had Popov been ill? This case is one secret after another. What else doesn’t she know about her old friend?

“If he was so sick, how can you be sure he didn’t die from a heart attack?”

“No, it was the gelsemium, all right. You couldn’t have those levels in your bloodstream and live. But in his condition, it probably didn’t take much to get the body to shut down. It’s all right here in the report,” he says, rattling the sheet of paper, “though I’d be happier to run my own tests, you know, rather than go off someone else’s numbers. Mistakes happen. They’re rare, but they happen. Maybe I’ll call the medical examiner’s office and see if they have any material left.”

Typical analyst, wants to button things up. She is grateful to Detwiler, but their talk has nonetheless saddened her. Popov had not been this sick when she left. His deterioration was rapid.

Still. The clues are aligning too perfectly. It makes her nervous. She’s been trained to expect outliers. Sometimes it is a slam dunk, and everything lines up because the expected is exactly what happened. But other times…

“You’ve been very helpful. If you come across anything else of interest, even if you don’t think it’s significant, get in touch. Please.” After another handshake, she starts back to her office with one answer and a lot of new questions.