Wiser Than Serpents Read online

There, lit up on the screen, was her signal. “I found Kwan, only he’s not in Kaohsiung.” She looked up at David. “The signal’s here, in Taichung.” She pointed to the screen, then zoomed in to the street name. “It’s not on his boat at the harbor, which means he has it with him. Why would Kwan hang on to my cell?”

  “Maybe he’s using it.”

  “Maybe it’s a trap.” This from Vicktor, who came back to life from where he stood at the picture window. “Maybe he knows you’d try and track it down. Maybe he wants you to find it. And him.”

  “He’s right,” Yanna said, but Vicktor’s theory had David’s attention. She turned to him. “We’re going after that blip.”

  “I’m going after that blip. You’re staying here. Aren’t you supposed to be getting Vicktor a visa?”

  “It’ll be ready in a day or so,” Yanna said, trying not to be terse. They acted as if she was a glorified secretary. She did have combat training. And even knew how to use it. Sort of.

  Trish and Cho had gotten up from their places to lean over Yanna. “Where is that?” Trish asked.

  “It’s an address downtown.” She read off the address in Mandarin.

  “I know that spot. It’s a teahouse. I’ve been there a few times.” Trish set her cup down. “What would this Kwan man be doing there?”

  “Some traffickers use businesses to warehouse women en route because they’re high profile, an unlikely target,” Roman said. “Our team in Vladivostok raided a casino filled with Korean and Chinese women on their way to inland Russia.”

  Trish put her coffee down. “Well, I think I need some tea.”

  “Trish—” Cho said, his tone dark. “Don’t—”

  She rounded on her husband. “No, you listen. While I’m there, Yanna can have a look around. She can pretend to go to the bathroom or something. I won’t get hurt.”

  “You could get hurt,” Yanna said.

  “I’ll be fine. Besides, I want to help. I’ve been in the country long enough to know about this problem, and to feel frustrated by my inability to help. I’m doing this.” She turned to Cho. “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  Yanna looked at David. His expression broadcast his feelings loud and clear.

  Cho took his wife’s hand, his expression mirroring David’s.

  In the corner, Vicktor sat down on the sofa, sighing so loudly that he sounded as if he might have had something terrible to eat for breakfast. And she’d made the pancakes, so—“What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just driving me crazy. Now that I know Yanna’s okay, I can’t get her out of my mind. If I could just get a hold of her, know she’s okay…”

  She didn’t have to ask who. “Going to America is a really bad id—”

  “I need to be Dr. Vladimir Zaitsev. Today.”

  “Vicktor—” Roman started. “That’s a forty-eight-hour medical pass. That’s barely enough time to hail a taxi. If you get caught with a fake visa, you’ll be deported, and then you’ll never get back to America, and you might as well kiss marrying Gracie in the States and living happily ever after goodbye, because they’ll take your visa application and use it for dart practice.”

  “Who’s Vladimir Zai—” Trish started.

  “You’re assuming that I’m the kind of guy who just twiddles his thumbs while the woman I love is in trouble.”

  “No, we’re assuming that you didn’t dump your brains in the Pacific on the flight over and can see that a few missed phone calls doesn’t a national emergency make,” David said.

  “Vladimir Zaitsev is a, let’s say, friend who lets Vicktor borrow his identity…occasionally, for sudden trips into the U.S.,” Yanna said quietly to Trish.

  Vicktor got to his feet.

  “In Vicktor’s defense,” Roman said, stepping between David and Vicktor. “Gracie’s been acting weird, and he can’t get a hold of her. She might be mixed up with the wrong fella.” He turned to Vicktor. “Still, you can’t go running off to America every time she doesn’t answer the phone.”

  Yanna stood up. “Vladimir Zaitsev has a forty-eight-hour pass from Russia to America. I can make that happen for you, keep it under the radar and have you pick up your visa in Taipei. But you have to promise that you’ll leave the States in two days or you’re not the only one who will be chipping ice off the sidewalks if you screw up. An FSB agent going AWOL—”

  “Not just AWOL,” Roman interrupted.

  “In the United States,” Yanna clarified, “is going to raise more than a few eyebrows in Moscow. And Washington.”

  “What she’s saying is that we might all be writing to each other from various correctional facilities around the world,” David said.

  “Gracie needs me,” Vicktor said, and the expression on his face, filled with so much agony, or perhaps fear, was enough for Yanna to sit back down at her computer and start digging around her records.

  Because, deep inside, in the places she didn’t want to visit, she desperately wished that David might look and say that about her someday. And come running.

  Instead of always running…away.

  “I must have lost my mind. There seriously must be a fracture of some sort in my head where there is gray matter leaking out because, never in my wildest dreams, in any scenario did I ever see myself agreeing to letting Yanna and some untrained American citizen put their lives on the line while I sat in a battered van, watching from across the street.” David put down his camera and looked over at Roman. “Check. Do I have liquid running from my ears?”

  “They’re going in,” Roman said from his place beside him. “We have about ten minutes before Yanna goes into play.”

  The teahouse, located in the center of the city, flanked on one side by a courtyard and a professional office building, and on the other by a clothing store, looked like something David might see in an Asian tour magazine, all crisp lines and lotus flowers, with a typical pagoda-style roof and columns beside the doors. Scooters lined up on the sidewalk outside the building, and Cho had to circle the block for an hour before he could find a spot this close to the door. Even so, it would take them roughly twenty-three seconds to go from the white English-school van to the front door, and that was barring any traffic. Way, way too long.

  “If this goes south, you have my permission to beat the stuffing out of me.”

  “I’ll take you up on that,” Roman said. “Yanna, can you hear me?”

  “Everyone calm down,” she whispered. Her voice reverberated through the cell-phone speaker. “We’re in, and being seated.” They heard her interact with the reception staff, sit down, heard the waitress hand her menus. David had been inside a teahouse once on this op. He knew they could be upscale places with Oriental music and hundreds of different teas served in individual pots. Personally, his taste buds had been so hardened by gut-rot coffee he didn’t understand the fascination.

  He heard Trish and Yanna putting in their orders.

  “I hate myself,” David whispered.

  “She’ll be fine,” Roman whispered back, his hand over his mic. “You forget that she is a trained agent. She really can handle herself.”

  Roman’s words held resonance only in the fact that the gizmos that allowed them to talk to Yanna had been created by Yanna herself from parts she’d found at the market—cell phones, some wax, wire and lots of creativity. Yeah, she’d earned David’s respect.

  But respect wasn’t the issue here.

  “It only takes one second, the wrong place, the wrong time.”

  David shoved his hands through his hair, which thankfully, he’d gone ahead and cut short and dyed back to its natural blond color. At least when he looked in the mirror he wouldn’t hate the face looking back. Well, not if everything went well.

  He might still have that urge. “I can’t erase the moment from my mind when I saw her sitting on Kwan’s boat, looking up at me, as if I might let Kwan kill her.” He sucked back the emotion that threatened to enter his voice. “I was…scared.”

  He looked at Roman
, but his friend didn’t meet his gaze, just stared at the salon.

  “It’s no secret how you feel about her, David. We all know that.”

  He froze. “She knows that?”

  “Not unless you told her.” Roman looked at her. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

  “You think I want to feel this way? To have her inside my head, inside my heart, right there, reminding me of what we don’t have, what we can’t have? I have tried, really tried, to get her out of my system, but it’s like she’s lodged there for all time.”

  “You’re still praying for her.”

  “Every day.” David couldn’t count how many hours he’d logged on his knees for Yanna, practically begging God to show her how much she needed Him.

  “Sometimes, Roma, I’m so close to giving up.” He looked at him. “I have to tell you something, but you cannot say anything. Not one comment. On pain of death.”

  Roman looked over at him. “Now you’re scaring me.”

  “I mean it.”

  David’s throat tightened, no, his entire body tightened. “Remember what happened at the beach, all those years ago?”

  Roman nodded.

  David looked at him. Raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m trying to keep my promise. Yes, I remember.” Then Roman’s face darkened. “You guys didn’t…I mean, I know what a little stress can do to a relationship, but David—”

  “I know, Roman.” David scrubbed his hand down his face. “Sometimes I love her so much it just hurts, right here in the center of my chest, and I want to scream. I nearly pointed my scooter north last night, and rode away with her. The urge inside me was so powerful, it scared me. And then in the boat—”

  “What happened in the boat,” Roman said softy, the slightest edge of warning in his voice.

  “Yeah, the boat. There she was, shivering, and the wind was cold, and she was crying a little.”

  “What happened in the boat?”

  David looked at him. “It would help if you’d stop jumping to conclusions. Nothing happened. I promise. But not because I didn’t think about it. And that’s the problem. I’m sitting here telling you that, yes, I have issues. I thought this would have been out of my system by now.”

  “Because you’re a…man of steel? I mean, I know you’re a superhero and all—”

  “Knock it off. I’m as red-blooded as you. But I’m not twenty-one anymore. And I’m past a lot of the temptations I had then. At least I thought so.” He groaned. “Until I see Yanna, and then I’m right back there holding her, and—”

  “Okay, we might be bordering on too much information than is good for me.”

  “I’m just saying that seeing her makes me hurt, because…” He took a long breath, “The fact is I’d marry her in a second, but I know in my heart I wouldn’t be enough for her. I’d do something stupid, and let her down, and then, she’d see me the same way she saw every other man in her life. The same way she sees God. And I know that would be it. She’d never ever let God into her life. And we’d be separated for all eternity. And that would be far worse than never having her here, on this side of forever.”

  He turned back to the teahouse. “But what if, what if she never ever believes? What if I’m wasting all this time for nothing? What if I could be the man for her, and I refuse to be because I’m holding out for something that will never happen?”

  The thought of never having her in his arms again, well, he thought he’d resigned himself to that. Or maybe he’d just been fooling himself; otherwise why would he spend every off-duty hour thinking about her, or chatting with her or writing to her…yes, he definitely had been seriously pulling the wool over his eyes, because he still longed for her with every cell in his body.

  “But what if you’re right?” Roman said in a whisper. “What if you’re not supposed to be her husband, but be the man who loves her enough to let her go?”

  “I think I hate you. You weren’t supposed to speak.”

  “On the other hand, what if you’re supposed to be the one who shows her that God is on her side?”

  David stilled. “Now you’re just confusing me. And I’m really tired and probably cranky. Are you saying that I should tell her how I feel?”

  “Not necessarily. But I am saying that maybe, someday, you should and you will, so don’t give up. And by the way, it’s never a waste of time to pray for someone’s salvation.” Roman looked at him, finally. “Who do you have in heaven to fight your battles?”

  David frowned at him. “God.”

  “And who on earth?”

  “Obviously, God.”

  “So, the point is, God is on your side, in heaven, and here. And He knows your heart for Yanna.”

  Roman looked back at the building, lowered his voice. “And as for the other thing, you’re not going to fall, David. Because you’re a man of integrity. Of honor. And in your moment, God is not going to forsake you. And He’s not going to forsake Yanna, either.”

  Oh, I hope not. Because, God, I long for her even more to know You. To know Your peace. Your healing.

  “I’m going to use the restroom,” Yanna said to Trish and the two men in the van, from inside the teahouse.

  David watched the building, listening to Yanna as she gave them a play-by-play so softly he had to lean close to hear it. But his own words hung in his mind.

  Yanna equated God with men. And she’d never get past what the men in her life had done to her.

  Sometimes, it made David want to put his fist through the wall, remembering the stories she’d told him, her knees drawn to her chest, her voice tiny. College had been gentle, he realized, because the real truths, however guarded, came later. Over e-mail. And online chats.

  In a way, the Internet had given her a way to share herself without risk.

  Now, suddenly, they were face-to-face with that risk. How David wanted to fix it, make her past better, help her see hope. Be the man who didn’t let her down.

  But until this moment, he’d forgotten the real danger they faced. Over the Internet he was a name, a friend.

  Face-to-face, he was just another man.

  Another disappointing man.

  And although he really wanted to believe Roman’s words about himself, about his integrity, lately, he’d felt himself slipping.

  His heart was going first. And after that, well, he didn’t trust himself. Not at all.

  “We’re going to find Elena if I have to track Kwan down and pry the information out of him with my bare hands,” David said to no one but himself. And then maybe she’d see that—please, God—all men weren’t the same.

  In fact, maybe she’d wonder if perhaps she had it all very, very wrong.

  Chapter Eleven

  A nd He’s not going to forsake Yanna, either.

  Yanna heard Roman’s words, spoken into the cell phone a second before she decided to get up and meander to the back of the teahouse, in so-called search of the restroom.

  She wasn’t sure she agreed with him—after all, she had little, if any, proof that God even knew she existed, but somehow those words ignited the dying embers of courage inside her.

  Because if God hadn’t forsaken her, in all her doubt and disbelief, then maybe He wouldn’t forsake Elena. She certainly deserved Him. After all, it was Elena who had faith in people.

  Then again, look what trouble that sort of naiveté had landed her in.

  See, it was a good thing to be a steely-hearted, man-wary, just-friends kind of gal.

  Yanna rose, smoothed the crop pants that Trish had given her. Although Trish stood a good three inches shorter than Yanna, the pants fit her well, as did Trish’s silky black sleeveless shirt. Yanna felt nearly normal, as if she belonged in this posh teahouse, in this surreal world where women sipped herbal teas while Taiwanese music played and woman talked in Mandarin, probably about their children, their husbands, their homes. Orange sprays of bird-of-paradise flowers and white orchids stood on tall marble pedestals around the room, decorated wit
h busts of Buddha. Their waitress, a woman who looked about a size one, with chopsticks in her hair and a high-cut sleeveless metallic dress, approached, holding a tray. Atop it sat two teapots, each capped with an inverted teacup. She smiled and raised a thin eyebrow as Yanna approached her.

  “Restroom?” Yanna asked in Mandarin. The waitress inclined her head and motioned toward the back.

  Yanna smiled at her, looked at Trish, who barely raised her eyes to meet hers. But Trish did check her watch. If Yanna didn’t return in five minutes, then she was to simply leave.

  Yanna resisted the urge to glance outside, but Roman’s voice in her ear felt strangely reassuring.

  “Be careful,” Roman whispered. “No fancy stuff—oy!” From the muffled sounds, some sort of struggle for the mic was happening and she fought to keep her face from betraying the chaos in her ear as she headed back to the bathrooms.

  “You see any sign of Kwan and I want you out of there, no hero stuff, you hear me, Yanna?” David had obviously won the battle.

  What did he want from her, a Yes, sir! right here, in front of all these patrons? “Mmm,” she said.

  “I’m serious, I want Kwan as badly as you do—probably worse—and I know you want to find your sister, but I’m not going to lose you.”

  She smiled at another waitress. But oh, how she wished those words might be real, and not about her getting in the way of his mission. Because they both knew that as soon as she found Elena, it was back to separate sides of the world and the occasional Friday-night chat—if he was still talking to her.

  Another set of rooms angled off through an arched doorway. She glanced back at Trish, and noticed the waitress had left their teapot and vanished. Instead of entering the restrooms, Yanna slid into the adjacent hallway.

  A doorway at the end of the hall beckoned, and she opened it.

  A closet, filled with table linens and silverware, a broken black wooden chair. She bit back her disappointment, closed it, then returned to the hallway. Another hallway, sectioned off by dangling black beads, hinted at more doors. Passing through the beaded doorway, she continued through the narrow hallway to the end, where she opened another door.