Red Widow

TWENTY-SIX

Theresa looks down at the notepad, the numbers swimming before her eyes. She is coding the message she needs to transmit to her handler, the ruthless Tarasenko, but she is getting lost in the rows and rows of numbers.

If she were being run by the book, she wouldn’t be coding by hand. The Russians would’ve given her special equipment for burst transmissions or some other technical wizardry. Every time they try to communicate with each other it’s a risk, the thread that tethers one to the other, damning if detected. Tremendous energy and cunning go into hiding those communications.

But because of the haste, she must make do: hand-coded messages sent through a messaging app, one that claims to be secure (end-to-end encryption, supposedly even the service provider can’t read the messages and has no access to the encryption key) but Theresa is not sure she believes it. Her freedom and her husband’s fate hang on it, after all.

She’s been struggling with how much to tell Tarasenko. It’s all calculations and risk. Tell the Russians no more than is absolutely necessary to achieve her ends. Hurt as few people as possible. She winces: she can’t stop thinking about the man, Anton Kulakov, who was killed. She snuck a peek at the report, couldn’t help herself though she knew she shouldn’t. The twisted body, so much blood. It’s all on her; there’s no squirming out of that one. A few days have passed, the overwhelming guilt with it. Rationalizations creep into her head automatically: he knew the risks when he decided to sell secrets. It comes with the job. These seem hollow, even to her, but she clings to them. They are all she has to ward off the all-consuming guilt. Once she’d seen the pictures, she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. It felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She was sick and wobbly all the time, feeling like the world had been turned upside down. They noticed around the office but she told them she felt under the weather, thought she might be coming down with a cold. She couldn’t fool Brian, though. Exquisitely sensitive, he picked up her anxiety like a bloodhound. She had to get it together for his sake.

She taps the pen against the pad of paper. Tarasenko will want to know how CIA is reacting to Kulakov’s death. You learn valuable things in the aftermath of the unexpected. Mistakes are made in the heat of confusion. If Theresa had been clear-headed, she would have used the moment for a better peek into the inner workings of the investigation. Pressed Westerling, maybe even risked asking Lyndsey a few questions.

Lyndsey. That’s where Theresa feels the most guilt. She’s grown to like her. It’s too bad they hadn’t been friends in the earlier days, when Lyndsey was one of the new, single girls looking for mentors to help them make sense of things. Lyndsey, she senses, would’ve been a good friend, someone who wouldn’t have drifted away when the political fallout came after Richard’s death. Now, being Theresa’s friend is a career risk.

Theresa looks down at the rows of numbers, neatly printed out in her precise hand. She will have to run these sheets through the shredder, afterward. Leave no trace.

Tarasenko will be expecting a message. She left a blue ball in the playground, signaling that she’d be in touch soon—hating that they must involve her son’s favorite playground, knowing it meant some Russian agent was watching it day in and out. Tarasenko would be enjoying her discomfort, eating it up.

What kind of sicko uses a playground in a covert operation?

She spent the day thinking about what she would write. It’s not like there aren’t things she could tell them. But she doesn’t want to be invaluable, so the FSB will pressure her to remain in position. She doesn’t want to be the FSB’s star asset. The flames of her anger have died down and now there are only glowing embers. Her desire for revenge has shrunk; all she really wants is her husband’s freedom.

Now that she’s home, door to the bedroom pressed firmly behind her, she has pulled the codebook out from a shoebox on the floor of her closet and begun her task.

Her gaze flits over the words. Reading between the lines, it calls them idiots for making it too obvious. They’ve made it too hot for her to stay. They’ve put her at risk, but they know that, of course. Their pride and vanity are more important than any asset.

But she knew that going in. That’s the way it’s always been, the way the game has always been played.

That’s why she trusts no one but herself. Depends on no one but herself.

She signs it, Kanareyka.