Red Widow

THIRTY-NINE

“We’ve had eyes on Cassidy since he landed at National.”

Lyndsey sits inside a humongous black SUV, an FBI agent at the wheel, a second in the passenger seat. Sally Herbert sits next to Lyndsey in the back seat, not nervous in the least. They’re streaking down the George Washington Parkway. A cloak of indigo has fallen over the city. D.C. is not a party town at night: the road traffic is thin and the sidewalks empty. The SUV glides through darkness decorated by red brake lights, streetlights, and the occasional distant glow from spotlights trained on a skyscraper or monument.

They’re going to the Hilton in Tysons Corner. Cassidy is staying there while he’s in-country; they know this from the itinerary he filed with Russia Division, which Lyndsey got from Maggie. According to his itinerary, he’ll spend a few days helping Eric with the side operation and then take a week of home leave in Ocean City, Maryland. He has no idea of the welcome he’s about to get.

The driver pulls up in front of the hotel. Lyndsey remembers the reception area from previous visits. It looks something like a futuristic ski lodge, roughhewn wood and stone finishes and modern furniture. There is little activity, thanks to the late hour. A couple strolls through the lobby from the bar, and in the far corner a small party is camped in a comfortable seating area finishing their drinks, light from the flames twinkling off martini glasses.

At reception, Herbert flashes her credentials at the clerk and the poor man’s face freezes as he tries not to betray alarm. “The man who just checked in—what’s the room number?”

On the elevator ride to the sixth floor, Lyndsey tries to calm the pounding of her heart. She’s done a lot of things in her career—shaking surveillance tails while feeling eyes on her back, following adversaries on their way to meet their assets in a crowded shopping district—but leading a team of FBI agents to a colleague’s room isn’t one of them. She hopes she’ll never have to do it again.

Cassidy answers the door and it’s obvious he had no idea what was waiting for him on the other side. He looks like he didn’t get a wink of sleep on the fifteen-hour journey. He’s in the same clothes he wore on the plane, jeans and a sports jacket, rumpled and wrinkled. A faintly sour, stale cloud hangs around him.

“Lyndsey? What are you doing here?” He seems to ignore the credentials Herbert holds up as she pushes her way into the room, less interested in the FBI than in her. They leave an FBI agent on station in the hall as Herbert closes the door.

“I’m Special Agent Sally Herbert of the FBI Counterintelligence Division.” She uses her height to her advantage with Cassidy, who is short, forcing him back a couple steps. With Lyndsey on the other side, Cassidy is boxed against the wall. He cringes as he backs away. He knows he did something wrong.

“We have your management’s permission to speak with you. Why don’t you take a seat?”

He turns away instead, rubbing the back of his neck. He doesn’t want to face us. “Now is not a good time. My flight just got in and I’m beat. Can’t it wait till the morning?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Reluctantly, he sits on the edge of the bed.

“We’re conducting an investigation into one of your colleagues”—Cassidy doesn’t look surprised, but then, Eric would’ve told him about Theresa—“and need to ask you a few questions.”

He runs a hand through his sticky hair, giving him a harried, disheveled look. “Whoever it is, they’re not going anywhere tonight. Look, I’m beat. The Moscow to D.C. route is a bitch. Can’t it wait till morning?” he asks again testily.

Herbert presses on. “New information has come to light concerning Genghis. He believed his cooperation with CIA had been revealed to the FSB, and that’s why he was headed to Washington.”

It’s a bluff Lyndsey fed Herbert, bait to see how Cassidy will react. He shrugs as though it’s common knowledge. “Why else would he be going to Washington?”

“You were the one who told him, right? But I couldn’t find any reporting to the fact—like there should be, right?—so perhaps you can tell us who gave you this information.”

Cassidy’s eyes dart momentarily to Lyndsey, an uncontrollable tell. The unmistakable look of a rat who feels the trap closing on him. “Why do you think it was me?”

This is the missing part, the piece that will bring everything together. Cassidy has got to be involved—he was Popov’s handler, after all—the trigger that sent the old Russian spy running to find Lyndsey.

All they have to do is get him to admit it.

“Masha told me,” Lyndsey blurts. The thought comes to her out of thin air. “Yaromir shared everything with Masha. He shared this, too.”

The color drains from Cassidy’s face. It doesn’t dawn on him to question her, probably because of the immediacy of the situation, the FBI agents hemming him in. “That’s right. I haven’t had time to write it up yet, so much going on. The information came from another of my assets. He told me Genghis was blown, so I passed it on to Genghis. Told him not to panic and to sit tight. We were in the process of deciding what to do for him when he bolted. It wasn’t my fault.”

Cassidy’s gaze shifts left and high, like he’s plucking thoughts from midair, another common tell. It could be that he and Eric didn’t work this part through, or that he’s exhausted and scared, and can’t remember the story they’d come up with. In all likelihood, though, they didn’t bother to tidy up this loose end, confident they wouldn’t be questioned. Popov was a double agent and if Russia found out, they would assassinate him. It happened with unfortunate regularity. No one would think to question it.

Herbert leans forward, using all her height. “Who is this other source, Tom? And why did you talk to Genghis before Station had a plan in hand to deal with it?”

She has rattled him. He looks at Herbert, and then around the hotel room at the dark gray walls and the curtains rippling over the big glass window. “I’m not going to discuss this here. These are highly classified sources and we’re in a hotel, for god’s sake.”

Herbert is unbothered. They’d hoped he’d make this very objection. “I was just about to say the same thing. Let’s go down to FBI headquarters. We’ll use the classified SCIF there, and then you’ll feel like you can speak freely.”

It was Herbert’s plan to take him to the forbidding FBI headquarters building all along. Now Cassidy is on Herbert’s territory. He was shaken up by the unexpected visit to his hotel room, but now he’s been whisked away, flanked by a pair of strapping federal agents and escorted through the deserted halls of this concrete fortress to a vault deep in the earth. It must feel like he’s being taken to prison. The overhead lights here are harsh and carve deep circles under Cassidy’s eyes. He looks like a convict. He’s left in an interrogation room by himself for a few minutes while Herbert and Lyndsey watch from behind a one-way mirror.

“It’s good to give them time to think,” Herbert says. “Our job tonight is to get him to tell us what his role was.” On the other side of the smoky glass, Cassidy sits with a forced look of blankness. He tries to seem dazed and overwhelmed and above all innocent, but Lyndsey suspects it’s an act. “This isn’t a typical case, and I’m not exactly sure what we should be looking for. I’ll know it when I hear it. But you should be prepared for bad news, Lyndsey. Whatever he did, we might not be able to bring a case against him. A lot of intelligence work falls outside of U.S. domestic law. There’s a good chance that whatever Cassidy did, it was under the direction of his supervisor. Even if it was illegal, and resulted in an unwarranted death, his culpability will be mitigated.”

Lyndsey tries hard to tamp down her anger, to stop thinking of Yaromir Popov. It’s all she can do not to burst into the interrogation room and shake Cassidy hard. How could you do this to him, she wants to ask. He depended on you. What could be worth that man’s life?

Before she can do anything, Herbert gives her a stern look. “I know how you must feel, Lyndsey, but stay with me. We need him to talk. Follow my lead.”

They go into the interview room together. The room is dingy and the sour smell has gotten worse. It’s the smell of fear. How many people have they interrogated here? It must’ve seen all manner of suspects: presumed terrorists and armed robbers and serial killers, yes, also federal types gone bad. FBI agents who cooperated with drug cartels and organized crime, CIA officers who sold their souls to the other side. Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen may have sat in that chair. Greed, ambition, bloodlust: these emotions hover in the air like poltergeists, impossible to banish.

Herbert sits in the chair opposite Cassidy, resting her forearms on the table. “You’re in a SCIF, Mr. Cassidy. Authorization for us to talk to you came from the highest levels of your organization. And you should know that I’ve been read into all Moscow Station’s compartments. There isn’t one aspect of your work that you can’t discuss with me. Is that clear?”

Cassidy gives a halfhearted smirk. He may be nervous but he’s not ready to throw in the towel.

Herbert takes in his smirk and nods. “Let’s get right to it, then, shall we? We know you told Yaromir Popov that the FSB knew of his relationship with the CIA. How had you learned this?”

“I told you: one of my assets.”

“You’ll give us his name. And he’ll corroborate this?” Herbert jabs a finger into the tabletop. “Look, we’re pretty sure the FSB didn’t know about Yaromir Popov. So you just told me a lie. Lying to the FBI is a federal offense.”

“It’s not my fault if an asset gave me the wrong information,” Cassidy blurts, shooting upright. “I was trying to protect him.” The reaction is right, but the tone of voice is all wrong: whiny and high. A liar’s voice.

Herbert doesn’t change. She’s a stone wall. “Look, we know something funny’s going on and we know you’re not behind it. You’re a bit player—you’re being used. Be smart. This is your chance to clear yourself, to give us your side of the story.”

A furrow deepens between Cassidy’s eyes. A man having an argument with himself. “You’re right. I was just following orders.”

“So, tell us what those orders were.” More internal struggle. Herbert tries again. “Who gave you the orders to talk to Genghis? Was it the Chief of Station?”

This should worry Cassidy. He doesn’t want to implicate someone wrongly. His frown is twisted; he’s conflicted.

Lyndsey decides to build on that. “You don’t have to say anything, Tom. We’ll take your silence to mean it was Hank Bremer. Just nod if that’s correct.”

From what she’s heard, Cassidy is tight with Bremer. The Station Chief seems to have been supportive of Cassidy, giving him good assets to run despite his questionable record. Cassidy wouldn’t want to burn that bridge. From where he’s sitting, he’s going to need all the help he can get.

He glares at her murderously. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You have it in for Hank, don’t you?” A good try, but Lyndsey is not going to let him push her buttons.

Maybe it’s the hours and hours of grueling travel, or being surrounded by FBI agents in this dark, airless space, but after another minute of silent struggle, something breaks inside Cassidy. “It wasn’t Hank. Don’t drag him into this—he wasn’t involved. It was Eric Newman. He told me to tell Popov he’d been blown.”

Lyndsey has to force herself not to react. Even with everything she knows and suspects, this is still hard to hear. A man she trusted ordered the death of a man she adored.

Herbert leans forward. “But it wasn’t true?”

Cassidy won’t look in Lyndsey’s direction. “Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Why?” Lyndsey checks herself before she can lunge at Cassidy. How could you betray him? You were his last line of protection.

Cassidy leans back in his chair like a schoolboy caught red-handed. “It was some plan of Newman’s. Look, he told me to do it. That’s what we do, we follow orders.”

“You don’t know what’s behind all this?”

“Oh no, I know what Newman was trying to do.” Cassidy turns to Herbert, his expression perfectly calm. Smug, even. “It’s a trap for Evgeni Morozov.”

His words fall on Lyndsey like a landslide. For a moment, nothing makes sense.

Morozov. Tarasenko’s boss. Tarasenko, Theresa’s handler. But there’s been no connection to Yaromir Popov…

Except for Eric. Eric is the only connection.

“Morozov’s been on CIA’s most wanted list for years now. This was a plan to shake him loose, to dangle something he wanted in front of his nose in order to get him to come out. And Morozov took the bait. To snare a CIA officer, someone from the inner sanctum… And Richard Warner’s wife, no less. The man Putin hated above nearly all others.”

Stars dance before Lyndsey’s eyes like she’s been hit with a baseball bat. It had been right in front of her, pieces of a puzzle begging to be put together. She sees Eric’s plan now, devastatingly cunning and breathtakingly selfish.

We’re nothing but pawns to him. Popov, Theresa, Richard… even me.

Lyndsey opens her mouth to speak but Herbert holds up a hand. “And who is the bait, Tom? Who is Eric Newman using to draw out this Russian?”

Cassidy blinks as though woken from a dream. “I—I’m not sure. I thought it was Popov.”

“He’s dead, so it can’t be him, can it?” Lyndsey slams her hands on the table. “Theresa Warner is the bait. A fellow officer.”

Only then does Cassidy acknowledge her. He turns his head slowly and smiles, the smile of a mortal enemy. Why would he hate her? She’s younger, and a woman; she’s done nothing to him, except be a better case officer. But that’s the only excuse some people need. “No one put a gun to her head to make her hand classified information to the Russians. She chose to do this herself.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lyndsey wants to tell him that he was tricked. He thinks he is clever, but he was played by a master. A soulless man with no conscience.

Herbert catches her eye. Don’t say another word. Let him talk.

“You think you know everything, Duncan, but you’re still a rookie. Where would you be without your protectors? Without Reese Munroe looking out for you, or Yaromir Popov? You think no one knows why Popov was so good to you—and for me there was nothing? It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. The old man was worthless since you left—worthless. If we lost him, it was no big deal.” He looks back to Herbert. “You can’t possibly understand. Morozov has been thumbing his nose at CIA for ten years. Killing one of our COS in broad daylight, in front of his own home. The guys who got Morozov would be heroes. We’d get anything we wanted. We’d be set for the rest of our careers.”

Lyndsey wonders what she would find in Cassidy’s personnel folder: botched operations, personal arguments with colleagues, pettiness and intrigues. Probably a bad marriage, estranged kids, maybe bankruptcies. Not one or two bad choices but a string of them, a chain of mistakes held together by self-pity. Bad people make bad decisions. Weak minds are easily led. It’s obvious that this wasn’t Cassidy’s idea: it was Eric’s. Cassidy is malleable, just what Eric needed.

She feels exhausted, suddenly. She aches all over, like she’s been dragged behind a truck. Days and weeks of searching, searching, searching—and this was under her nose all along.

Tricked. It was all a trick.

Cassidy is mad and red-faced, like a crying infant. He’s been waiting to say these things for a long time and now it’s his chance to show them—Herbert, the uninformed, and Lyndsey, the misguided—who really is the better man. “Here’s the other thing you don’t know, either of you: what Eric did, that’s the way it is at CIA. We’re supposed to be bold. We’re supposed to do the things nobody else can. You want to be all high and mighty and make us out to be the bad guys, but it only goes to show that you don’t get it. We didn’t do anything wrong here. The ends justify the means—you’ve heard that before, haven’t you, Lyndsey? Well, this is what it looks like.” He stares hard at her. “If you think what Eric Newman did was wrong, you don’t belong and you never will.”

Cold shivers run down Lyndsey’s body. So, assets like Yaromir Popov and officers like Theresa Warner can be toyed with so casually, because they don’t matter. The irony—lost on Cassidy—is that if Cassidy thinks Eric will be loyal to him and protect him now that the whole thing is unraveling, he’s delusional. There is no honor among spies, apparently.

“If you don’t think big, you’re not doing your job,” he says belligerently. “The only crime is getting caught.”

Where has Lyndsey heard that before?

They slip into a nearby room to confer, leaving Cassidy alone.

Herbert has an assistant fetch water, coffee, to give Lyndsey time to recover. Herbert excuses herself to check her cell phone while Lyndsey takes in everything she has heard. How she wishes she could leave the building, get into her car and drive. To look at something—anything—that will take her away from where she is. She feels the need to purge the deceit and lying from her head.

Lyndsey has to hand it to Herbert: she has a great poker face. She has no idea what the FBI squad supervisor is thinking at this moment.

“Well, now you know what I was working on,” Lyndsey says. “Eric Newman ordered Yaromir Popov’s death, and pushed Theresa into going to the Russians. Theresa was bait to lure Morozov out of the country. But Popov—I’m still not sure why he had him killed.”

Now that she’s said the words out loud and feels the truth of them in her heart, it only takes a second for Lyndsey to push that last puzzle piece into place.

It was for her.

Eric killed Popov to entice her to do the investigation. It wasn’t that Eric had faith in her: no, it was the opposite. To lead the investigation, he needed someone he could dupe and manipulate. To make sure they came to the right conclusion: that Theresa Warner was a double agent for Russia and that she’d done so out of spite and malice.

Lyndsey was nothing more than a pawn. In a way, she is responsible for Popov’s death.

For a moment, she can barely breathe. The human lie detector—I missed every sign.

She opens her mouth to tell Herbert—but stops. It is too embarrassing to admit. Too shameful.

It doesn’t matter: Herbert doesn’t give her more than a moment to recover—or maybe she can’t feel the depths of Lyndsey’s distress. She runs a hand impatiently through her short hair. “I have to hand it to you: FBI has its share of ambitious pricks, but you guys are in a league of your own.”

Lyndsey isn’t about to argue the point. “What are we going to do with Cassidy? He knows we’re onto Eric. What’s to stop him from telling Eric before the takedown?”

“FBI can’t detain him. There’s no evidence that he committed a crime. I’ll tell Cassidy he’d better keep his mouth shut. If he leaks word of our investigation to Newman, he’ll face federal charges. But maybe it would be better if CIA handles this one. Can you get your folks to take care of Cassidy? I have a feeling if the orders come from Langley, he’ll listen.”

Herbert looks Lyndsey square in the face. She’s sizing her up, that’s plain, taking her measure. “But we’ve got something bigger to worry about right now. This is where you and I figure out how we’re going to trap Eric Newman. If you’re right, he has a lot to take responsibility for… But you and I both know that he can try to deflect the blame, to wiggle out of it. Sometimes hiding behind clearances and policies, rules and regulations. If Eric Newman had your asset killed and provoked Theresa Warner into spying for the Russians, how are we going to prove it?”

It’s now the moment of truth. Her real fear, she realizes, is that she’s afraid everything Cassidy said is true and they’ll side with Eric. That they, too, will want Morozov so badly that they’d be willing to sweep it under the rug, look the other way.

She almost loses her nerve. Eric is not stupid; he will have covered his tracks well. They’ll need conclusive evidence of what Eric has done—does that even exist?

Then she thinks of it: somebody paid Claude Simon, and she is sure it didn’t come out of Eric’s pocket. Simon gave Tony Schaffer’s name to the FBI agents in Norfolk, which means he handled the contract that paid Simon. Eric’s signature would be on the contract, too.

“You’re going to have to subpoena the Agency to show you a classified contract,” Lyndsey says. Shakily at first but then with more confidence. “But yeah, I think we can prove it.”

She calls to set up an appointment with Patrick Pfeifer as soon as she gets into the office the next morning. She hasn’t been able to shake the suspicion that Tom Cassidy telephoned Eric as soon as he was released, but that was a risk they had to take.

Turns out Pfeifer is juggling a lot of duties as Director Chesterfield is on vacation, Lyndsey is informed rather grumpily by the secretary who answers the phone. “It’s of the utmost importance. I need to prepare him for a call from FBI,” Lyndsey says.

“You can have fifteen minutes,” the woman says curtly, and Lyndsey gratefully accepts.

She practices what she will say in her head over and over, but it dissolves like salt in warm water on the long walk to the seventh floor. She perches on one of the chairs in the anteroom, the secretaries explicitly ignoring her as they fall into the morning’s rhythms. Attendees arrive for the first morning meetings, prep for the President’s Daily Brief. Women and men walk by busily, throwing curious glances in Lyndsey’s direction. Voices drift in from the private offices in the back but Lyndsey deliberately tries to ignore them so that she can focus on the task at hand.

The investigation has come to a dangerous junction. She can only see one way to succeed, but once Pfeifer hears what’s going on, he may take it all out of her hands.

And what will she do if he looks her right in the eye and tells her she’s being naïve? That Eric is in the right and she in the wrong, just as Cassidy said.

One of the secretaries lifts her head in Lyndsey’s direction. Salt-and-pepper hair cut short, piercing blue eyes. “You can go in now.”

Pfeifer sits behind his desk, flanked by stacks of papers. This morning he seems more harried than usual. Is that a look of annoyance she sees flit across his face? Lyndsey is hypervigilant for any sign of impatience, and she wouldn’t blame him if he told her to stop these drop-bys. The Chief of Staff owes her nothing, after all. He’s just a kind man who paid attention to her years ago when she was a new hire. CIA has thousands of employees and he has a responsibility to each one. The strained smile on his face could be her tenuous connection to him going up in flames.

“Hi, Lyndsey. I have a teleconference with State Department in a few minutes, so we’ll have to keep this brief. Now, what can I do for you?”

Deep breath and it all comes out. She tells him everything, including her research, all the evidence she’s compiled. She almost stumbles when she gets to what happened last night, Tom Cassidy’s poisonous admission… Eric’s plan, it sounds so preposterous now, said aloud in the Director’s office, even if there is a contract with Eric’s signature on it that will bear her out… She wonders in the back of her mind if she’s hallucinating. She runs over her allotted fifteen minutes—the salt-and-pepper-haired secretary knocks at the door and, when there is no response, clears her throat, but Pfeifer asks her to get one of his executive assistants to cover the teleconference. State Department will have to understand.

As Lyndsey wraps up, Pfeifer’s face goes ashen—for which she is grateful. She wasn’t wrong to take this insane risk. To follow her gut. “This is incredible,” he says when she has finished.

She’s laid quite the problem at his feet. She wishes she were wrong, hopes there’s something she’s overlooked that Pfeifer, with his experience, will see. Her stomach roils while waiting for him to say something.

He sits back. “I don’t know Eric Newman all that well. We never worked in the same office, and that’s how you get to know a person. I’ve heard stories—but that’s all they were, stories, and I never knew how much stock to give any of them. I wish I’d paid more attention then. This is bad, Lyndsey. Bad.”

He doesn’t qualify his statement with “if it’s true.” He believes her, for which she is immeasurably grateful.

“What I should do is call Newman into my office, with Roger Barker, his boss. Give them a chance to explain themselves. That would be standard operating procedure.” For a moment, Lyndsey’s stomach is in free fall. “But I’m not sure what that will get me. Newman will deny it, of course, and things will drag on, and from what you tell me, we don’t have a lot of time. The meeting with this Russian agent is due to happen any day, you say?”

She nods.

Pfeifer rubs his chin. “And FBI is witting? They know the extraction is set to happen?” She nods again. He’s silent as he thinks. Lyndsey lets her gaze skitter over the piles of papers on his desk. There must be dozens of crises demanding his attention, secrets that could cause the rise or fall of a foreign leader, unrest that could boil over to violence. CIA serves the president, not itself. This is one of many things Pfeifer must juggle at this moment, but she fears it must be the most personal to the Agency.

At length, Pfeifer lets out a sigh. “Okay—let’s let this play out and see where it goes. It sounds like we have safeguards in place—FBI is witting, Newman’s planning to pounce on the Russian agent?” She’s explained that it’s not any Russian agent but Evgeni Morozov, one of CIA’s most wanted.

Even though this is what Lyndsey hoped for, she’s surprised at Pfeifer’s decision. She doesn’t know why it’s such a big surprise: the Agency takes risks every day. Some are moonshots. After a moment’s thought, Lyndsey realizes that going against protocol seems out of place for Pfeifer, that’s why it bothers her. He isn’t talking about replacing her. She expected that, after this meeting, she would be ushered to the side and someone more experienced would be put at the helm.

She thinks she knows why, though. Eric Newman has been Chief of Russia Division for a while now. A senior executive. He has his allies, people who know him and will find it hard to believe that he’s capable of this. Things could still blow up, even at this juncture. But Pfeifer has chosen to place his trust in her.

She almost wants to ask him—are you sure? I’m not a human lie detector. I almost didn’t see this. Eric nearly got away with it.

And yet, she did figure it out. By some miracle.

Pfeifer nods his head with finality. “We’ll let it proceed. I’ll inform the General Counsel’s office.”

As his hand goes for the telephone, Lyndsey brings up two more things. First, someone needs to pay a visit to Tom Cassidy. “If his loyalty is to Eric, he may have already told him what’s happened.”

Pfeifer grunts. “Considering I haven’t gotten a phone call from Newman yet, I doubt that’s the case. We’ll get the General Counsel’s office to handle this one. Remind him of his legal obligation.” It’s the best he can do under the circumstances, and she’ll just have to accept it.

The second ask is harder: Masha and Polina Popov need CIA’s help. “They’re in danger because of what Eric did. No one in the FSB suspected Popov was spying for us. He was safe. Now it’s only a matter of time before the Russians figure it out.” Help for Masha will be hard to keep from Eric. As long as he’s Chief of the Division, there’s a chance that he can find out about any operation that involves Russia. It could be an inadvertent slip by someone working logistical issues or the contracts office, pushing through the purchase of plane tickets or hotel rooms. There are a thousand little details that need to be taken care of in order to get someone out of hostile territory and set up a new life for them in America. To do it under intense time constraints increases the risk of discovery that much more.

“I’ll talk to Roger Barker and ask him to take care of it. I can’t make any promises until I talk to him, but… It sounds like we owe them at least that much.”

Her gratitude is so great she cannot find words.

“Keep me posted,” he says as she leaves, already turning back to the pile of paperwork on his desk, the next crisis beckoning.