Red Widow

TWENTY-TWO

It had been three days since Theresa had met with the Russian and the guilt was only starting to fade. She tried not to think about what she had done, afraid it would show on her face while she was at work. In some ways it still didn’t feel real, like she’d imagined it all. Constantinov’s disbelieving face, the tightness in her chest, the breathless drive home. On Monday, she spent most of her day in a state of suspense, again waiting to be led away for a talk with investigators. It was only as the minutes ticked by and nothing happened that she grew more confident. She realized she could relax. They’d vastly underestimated her. She’d gotten away with it.

It was time to move on to the next step: find something to give to the Russians, something good enough to get them to agree to do as she asked.

It wasn’t something to rush into. The Agency’s computer system was a minefield, laden with traps—or so one heard. They were told so many stories, all meant to make employees afraid. Whether the traps existed or not, the seed of doubt was planted and did its job, keeping many of them from poking around where they shouldn’t. If she was going to try to fool the system, she had to be smart. She couldn’t leave behind a trail of crumbs.

She knew her limitations: she wasn’t a computer wizard. Paper files would be the safest, but these would not be easy to get to, especially not for the compartmented, special access cases, the stuff the Russians were most likely to be interested in—these would be kept under lock and key by Maggie. Or down in the vault, but she couldn’t go back to Jimmy Purvis; it would make him suspicious.

The only way she could think to explore without alerting anyone was through the collaboration tools on the Agency’s internal network. The tools were meant to remedy the problem, raised after September 11, that intelligence analysts worked in silos. They were told they needed to share their puzzle pieces if they were going to avoid the next intelligence failure.

In her daily routine, Theresa rarely used these tools but, as she poked around the forums, she realized that you could find out a lot about what others were working on. And while an office somewhere in the bowels of the building might keep logs, the whole point was collaboration, so it wouldn’t necessarily stand out if someone stuck their nose in subjects that technically weren’t their business. She didn’t think this would get her all the information she needed, but at least it was a start.

She sat at the computer, paging through the Russia forums. Officers and analysts were looking at every topic under the sun, and it seemed unbelievable that there were customers—policymakers, military commanders—interested in all that minutiae. She assumed it was a holdover from the Cold War days, when the Russians were doing so many crazy things that you couldn’t be sure what might end up being important, so you studied it all.

She scrolled down the list of sub-forums, so comprehensive that it was practically a grocery list. Which of all these topics would the Russians be most interested in? What would be important enough to merit giving up her husband? What would tantalize them? It stood to reason that they’d be most interested in CIA’s assets in Russia. You always wanted to know if you had spies in your midst, handing over your secrets, rendering your work useless. The identities of assets were closely guarded, however. It was unlikely she’d find names in the forums. But they might show her where to start.

After two days of carefully dipping in and out of discussion threads so she wouldn’t raise any suspicions, Theresa had a short list of cases to look into. One was an asset code-named Lighthouse. Theresa thought Lighthouse might be a scientist working for the Russian government in some capacity. The reports officer for Lighthouse, Jan Westerling, was pretty cagey. She didn’t provide details and so it was hard for Theresa to figure out where Lighthouse worked, exactly. But he seemed to know something about Russian missiles and the Russians would probably find that tantalizing, with recently renewed turmoil over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.

The most important thing, Theresa decided, was not to give the Russians anything especially harmful. The thought of doing something that would hurt the country made Theresa’s stomach turn. It was still anathema to her. She was mad at CIA but she still loved her country. She had to give Russia just enough information to get her husband released—and not one iota more.

After observing Westerling closely, Theresa realized that the young woman might be a new hire. That was both good and bad. New hires needed a lot of direction. Theresa remembered her early days, trying not to draw attention to herself so no one would realize how little she knew or understood, worried that if someone learned how incompetent she was they’d use it against her one day. She’d seen it happen, an old hand turning suddenly on a new hire to save his own neck or distract the boss from a mistake he’d made. She only saw now, from the distance of years, that being Richard Warner’s girlfriend had saved her from all that backstabbing and henpecking. Nobody went after her. She had been protected—another debt she owed Richard.

But now it was her turn to take advantage of someone’s inexperience. Well, let this be a lesson to you, she thought as she walked to Jan Westerling’s desk. Trust no one. I’m not your friend. I’m no one’s friend.

Westerling knew who Theresa was, of course. It didn’t matter that they’d never spoken to each other before; the reports officer would be flattered that The Widow had sought her out. It was easy to get Westerling to talk about herself. Graduated from the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts last May, passable Russian language skills, living with two roommates in an apartment in Tysons Corner, homesick for her family in Chicago. Still a bit dazed that she’d gotten a job at CIA and not fully aware of what it meant, the tremendous burden that it placed on her slender shoulders.

She proved it by giving Theresa everything she needed, without question.

Theresa started by giving something to Westerling. Something harmless, but it was recognition from someone more senior. Theresa pulled something from the back of her mind, a conference on changing Russian policy that the young woman probably hadn’t heard of or, being so junior, been invited to. “You should talk to Eric about getting to go,” she said, leaning against a pillar, casual and chummy. “Usually, they send Rodney to this sort of thing but he’s getting ready to retire. They really should send someone else. New blood. One of the up-and-comers. I could bring it up to Eric, if you’d like.” The look of gratitude that spread over Westerling’s face was almost painful to see.

She left it at that. It was enough for the first touch. She’d nurture this budding relationship along and start asking questions about Lighthouse and before long the name would leak out. It was easy to forget among colleagues, people you knew had the same security clearance as you, that there was still need-to-know. Where was the harm?

After this, she had a few false starts. From what she could find out about a couple of the code names on her list, the assets were no longer active and it was impossible to ask questions about their identity without drawing suspicion. In one case she looked into, the reports officer seemed so security conscious that Theresa withdrew before she made the woman suspicious. Theresa started to worry that she’d need to take bigger risks than she felt comfortable with—not that any of this was comfortable, not by a stretch. By the end of the day, she’d crossed all but one case—in addition to Lighthouse—off her list.

That last case was code-named Skipjack. From all the online chatter, it had been easy to figure out that Skipjack was in the military and that he had something to do with cybersecurity. The topic was so hot that the members of this sub-forum were careless, discussing cases with far too much familiarity. Kyle Kincaid, the reports officer for Skipjack, was especially complacent. My source is in the new Russian army cybersecurity unit and I’ll believe what he tells me over your amateurish speculation any day, he wrote in one post, striking back at someone who’d disagreed with his assessment of a situation. That caused some grumbling, a few people trying to remind him that a little skepticism was healthy when it came to assets who could lead you by the nose if you weren’t careful, but he blew that off, too. He would learn the hard way, Theresa decided. Pride goes before a fall.

Kincaid proved to be easier than Westerling to crack. Former military and perhaps insecure in this new environment, he was only too happy to talk about his case. Everyone had heard of The Widow, after all, and Kincaid was eager to get in with the Russia experts. It made doing counterintelligence easy when people were eager to show off.

“Oh yeah, Skipjack is an officer in the Russian army. He’s been in this new cyber unit since its inception. Anything he says, you can take to the bank,” Kincaid said, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on his safe like he was relaxing in his living room.

“It must be great to have such a trusted source. Eric must think a lot of you to give you such an important asset.” Theresa could feel him soak up the compliments like a sponge. Kincaid was likely lonely, perhaps having alienated himself from his teammates with his bragging and aggression. The man hadn’t the first clue that he was being worked, that here at Langley you were always being worked. It’s not like the military here. It’s not one big happy family. You have to control your own worst tendencies. She told herself she was doing him a favor and one day he’d be grateful—when it was over and CIA had learned what she’d done, when she was someplace safe with Richard and Brian.

It took some wheedling, and a half hour in the cafeteria over coffee, smiling until her cheeks hurt, but she had Skipjack’s true name by the end of their first chat. Gennady Nesterov, twenty-three years in the Russian army. Kincaid gave her every detail about him: he approached the U.S. after he’d grown disillusioned, sickened that his country had been taken over by greedy oligarchs. When he saw what the army was doing with his unit, making it into a powerful tool that would be used to further the oligarchs’ interests, not those of the Russian people, he made up his mind about what he would do.

Skipjack had potential. Under the right conditions, he could be a gold mine. The cyber target was getting more important every day and Skipjack was in a position to give them a lot. She got the sense from Kincaid that up until now, Skipjack had been stalling on them, maybe ultimately ambivalent about betraying his country. That wasn’t uncommon. Assets wanted money and a sympathetic ear but often got cold feet when it came to handing over the goods.

She had resolved that she would only give Russia unproductive assets, ones that wouldn’t do much damage if they were lost, and so she didn’t know what to do about Skipjack. Without him, she only had one name and a minnow at that: not enough to convince the Russians to work with her.

It was a gamble but… Maybe she could warn Skipjack before the Russians came to arrest him. They’d be happy to get the names and it would take time to evaluate them, but by then they’d have already released Richard. There would be damage, but she would try to minimize that.

Two potential names to give to the Russians. She turned both cases over in her mind, trying to be sure she wasn’t overlooking anything, missing an important thread that could lead back to her. Thinking, too, of the consequences for others. For the two reports officers, Westerling and Kincaid, there would be fallout. She felt bad for Westerling, not so much for Kincaid—she had the feeling he’d been hitting on her. It would look bad for Westerling but she’d survive. She’d get a second chance. The assets, Lighthouse and Skipjack, would get it worse. They would bear the brunt. But they would only go to prison. This wasn’t the bad old days of the Soviet Union. Spies weren’t executed or sent to hard labor camps, left to freeze and starve in a Siberian gulag.

In any case, she wouldn’t let it keep her up at night. This was part of the deal when you decided to spy for the enemy. If you didn’t realize the danger, you were a fool. And whatever happened to them was nothing compared with what her husband had suffered. That made her feel better—or at least less bad—about what she had made up her mind to do.