Red Widow by Alma Katsu (interesting books to read .txt) 📕

small, weak creature, but she had stood her ground. She had withstood him, and was only starting to realize it, to feel better and stop shaking. She flexed her hands before placing them on the steering wheel of the rental car.

For the first time, she allowed herself to believe that this was going to turn out okay.

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