She twisted the key in the ignition, even though she could barely see the road through her white-hot anger. She would drive to Langley now to talk to Eric. To see what could be done, to find out if Richard was still alive.
Theresa was halfway to Virginia before she realized Jack Clemens’s deathbed confession would do her little good. Sure, he had told her the truth—a precious thing among spooks—but it would give her no leverage over the seventh floor. The men who ran CIA were masters of manipulation. That was how things worked at Langley. The deck was stacked. Running at things headfirst didn’t work: you had to come at them sideways. That was why Theresa had never gone into management or reached for more responsibility. She’d always found it too distasteful and—if truth be told—had been afraid she would be eaten alive.
She looked at the speedometer. Seventy-one. Trees streaked by in a blur on both sides. With a startled gasp, she lifted her foot from the pedaclass="underline" getting a ticket—hell, getting killed in a fiery crash—would not help her or Brian. She had to calm down.
She eased onto Chain Bridge Road, brightening at the thought of heading home to Brian. Langley could wait. She needed to see her son. Time to think. To plan.
She would step up to the challenge. She would outmaneuver the seventh floor, with or without Eric Newman’s help—because, let’s face it, to take on the seventh floor would take an extraordinary level of courage. Courage Eric Newman might not possess.
But she would do it. She would beat them at their own game. She would prove herself worthy of being Richard Warner’s wife.
She couldn’t let her husband down.
EIGHTEEN
Another weekday morning at Langley. Men and women streamed across the parking lots—past the towering parabolic antennas, the Blackbird spy plane made into a monument—to converge on a set of doors placed into a wall so discreetly that they could be secret doors, known only to the initiated.
It was a cold morning. In raincoats and windbreakers, they moved with mindless determination, like ants following the scent of sugar, minds already on the coming day, chores left undone from the day before, a confrontation anticipated with a boss or coworker. Or they were brooding over what they’d just left behind, an argument at the breakfast table, the last thing a child said before running for the school bus. Not one of them was thinking about what it meant to cross the threshold of the most secretive building in America.
Theresa Warner wended through the parking lot in a black raincoat, sturdy walking shoes on her feet, a pair of sensible heels in her tote. The day was no different from every day before it, and yet this morning felt different. She felt as though she was in disguise. That she was only pretending to be the woman she was yesterday.
Jack Clemens had changed everything.
Last night, she managed to drive home and act normally in front of her son. They ate dinner together and afterward, she helped him with his homework. Watched him brush his teeth and climb into bed. Kissed him on his head and fingered the familiar silky, dark brown hair while suppressing the urge to share this new secret with him. Brian, your father is alive!
But that would be unfair until she knew, really knew that she could get Richard back. Then she sat on the sofa and planned how she would enlist Eric Newman, get his help in taking on the men who ran the most powerful agency in the U.S. government.
Now she crossed the threshold into the building, going over her plan. Repeated the steps to herself as she waved her badge over the scanner and punched in her PIN. She avoided the guard’s gaze and the gaze of other people because if anyone looked into her eyes, really looked, they would be able to tell something was wrong. So instead, she followed the coagulating stream of people as they headed for the elevators. Stood as unobtrusively as possible in the crowd until the doors opened at her floor.
It would do no good to approach Eric first thing. Mornings were for meetings with the next level of management. Managing up was very important for bosses so it would be better to wait until the busyness of the morning played itself out. There was usually a lull around eleven a.m. when it might be possible to catch him, but Eric sometimes used the opportunity to slip down to the gym. Better to wait until after lunch, around two thirty, when things got sleepy. He’d be the most approachable. And she would be able to get him alone.
Though Theresa wasn’t sure how she would manage to get through her day. Every minute was agony. She kept looking for Eric, afraid that he might disappear, take off suddenly for a doctor’s visit or be called to some interminable meeting. She didn’t think she could wait another twenty-four hours to confront him.
At 2:20, Theresa peeked through the maze of partitions toward Eric’s office. She could just see him behind his desk, settled so low in his chair that he looked like he’d fallen asleep. She rose and wove quickly through the cubicles, eyes down on the carpet. She kept her mind blank; if she thought too much about what she was about to do, she was going to chicken out.
She leaned in the open doorway. “Say, Eric, do you have a minute?”
He looked up. For a second—just a second—she thought she saw a pained look on his face, but no, that was the face he always gave her. She just never noticed before that his warmth was offset with just a hint of pity. “Of course, Theresa. For you, anytime.”
She closed the door softly behind her and took the chair opposite his desk, clasping her hands in her lap to hide the shaking. She cleared her mind, so the conversation she practiced over and over last night would come naturally to the fore.
“I saw Jack Clemens yesterday.”
Eric crossed his legs and leaned back in his chair, a picture of unease. “Yeah, I visited him on Tuesday. Looks terrible, doesn’t he? Won’t be long now. It’s a shame—”
She closed her eyes. Her patience had been used up. “He told me Richard is alive. Alive.”
Eric froze. A dozen emotions seemed to pass over his face at once. Finally, he took a deep breath. “I wish that were true, Theresa, but we both know it isn’t.”
“He said there was a report that said Richard had been captured alive. They didn’t share it with you. You were never told.” As he listened, frozen as a statue in a Minnesota winter, Theresa recounted what Jack had told her. The report from Moscow Station, the seventh floor’s decision to keep it from him as well as her.
He gripped the armrest of his chair like a man in shock. “Ever since that day, I’ve been persona non grata on the seventh floor. They didn’t fire me, or remove me from this position, but I know that I’ll never go any higher. No one in the DO approved the op, but I gave Richard authorization. I only gave him what he wanted, a chance to save his asset.”
Jack had revealed this much, between gasps for air: that Eric, knowing the top men in the DO would never agree to take the risk, didn’t ask for permission. That he did the whole thing on the sly. And that, to keep it secret, no CIA resources—aside from Richard—were used. No tech ops officers, no additional case officers. Only a handful of freelancers to help smuggle Boykova out of the country. They used untried mercenaries to watch her husband’s back.
It was a fiasco from the start, Jack had told her, his papery voice thickened with remorse. With no CIA eyes on the scene, it was a full week before Eric and Jack found out what happened. Rumors began trickling in from shaky CIA assets in Moscow: something big had gone down. Assets in Russia got nervous, made them start asking for more money or new lives in another country. Or, for the most dedicated, poison pills in case of capture.