Wiser Than Serpents Page 4

  Bruce closed the door. “Now we wait. Kwan’s men saw that you meant business, and got a taste of the merchandise. So, you let them bring that message back to Kwan and let him get hungry.”

  “Kwan could be on to me. My cover could be blown.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you’re one step closer to putting a face to the name and bringing down his operation.”

  “So another criminal can slide in and fill his spot?”

  “Kwan has fingers all the way from Canada to Thailand, and well into America. We bring him in, we cut him a deal and nail his counterpart, the other Serpent. Then we start to dismantle the Twin Serpents from the top down. And it’s not just arms. It’s drugs, and human trafficking. It’s twelve-year-old girls from Burma who get to go home. It’s making life safe for the people you care about.” Bruce reached out to David and squeezed his shoulder. “It’s doing the right thing and looking at yourself in the mirror every morning and living with the person you see.” Bruce raised an eyebrow, patted him once and left.

  David let him go, not sure what to believe. Not sure that he could live with the man he saw in the mirror. And not sure who, exactly, might be on that list of people for whom he fought to make the world a safer place.

  No, wait, he knew exactly who topped that list of those he fought for.

  Wait for Kwan. David had been a soldier for so long, it felt unpatriotic to even question Bruce’s words. But suddenly he longed to jump ship and vanish. Head north by northwest to Russia. He felt so close…on the right side of the world, at least.

  He waited five minutes then stepped out of the bathroom and cut left, past the kitchen and out the back entrance. Quick-stepping through the alley, he came out onto the sidewalk. Twilight bent shadows around the three-story apartment buildings that lined both sides of the street. The main floor housed business, restaurants, grocery stores, kiosks of clothing and household goods. On the second and third floors lived the families who ran the stores. Toward the edge of the sidewalk, leaving a narrow path between building and machine, a thousand scooters lined up like dominos. He smelled grilled something—chicken or pork—stuck his hands in his pockets and walked down the street.

  After checking for traffic, he crossed the street and entered an alley to the next street, ducked into an Internet café and crossed to the back booth. He sat down, aching for something, someone, to connect to. He’d been sleeping in flophouses for three days, eating strange food from street kiosks and he’d begun to despise his own smell. All he wanted was a friendly face. Words to remind him that if he might be shot and left for dead in a shipping container, someone somewhere would miss him.

  At least he hoped so.

  He opened a page on the Internet and accessed his chat room. Something sweet and wonderful washed through him when he saw Yanna’s icon lit. He knew he shouldn’t—he’d been deep for so long that to screw up now would be colossally stupid—but, well…

  He opened the chat screen and discovered she’d been looking for him.

  Are you there? she’d written.

  Yes, he typed back. I’m here. I’m sorry I’ve been out of pocket for so long. How are you?

  He waited, watching his cursor blink. Blink. Blink. Blink…now in time with his heartbeat. Disappointment filled his chest. Probably it was wrong, even dangerous for him to long for something so much. But he couldn’t help it. Writing to Yanna had become more to him…well, he couldn’t rightly put it into words.

  All he knew was that sitting here staring at his cursor was the only thing that made any sense to him at the moment.

  C’mon, Yanna, I’m here. I’m right here.

  Anyone who knew his son would know that he’d raised an idiot. All those boarding schools in England, and later Japan and America. The years of private tutoring, of taking the boy under his wing, and how did his son repay him?

  By nearly blowing his cover.

  By letting David Curtiss, operative and potential troublemaker, get too close.

  Kwan stared out of his office window, to the snarl of scooters and traffic below, watching the trucks spit exhaust. The view in Moscow had been grander—overlooking the old district, with its bold architecture and cobblestone streets. He’d loved to stroll Arbot Street and dine with the ambassador at Spaso House. His time in Mongolia and China had been equally rewarding, and he’d learned things he couldn’t put a price on. But it had been Hong Kong that had changed his life. Where he’d learned exactly who his parents were, and why he’d been born. Where for the first time, he understood the nature and sacrifices of love. And where the future had been conceived.

  He’d only accepted the post in Taiwan for his son’s sake. And now, he’d have to clean up the boy’s mess.

  And what was worse, Curtiss was good, too good. Kwan had been looking for him for days, and the man had shown up right under his nose, during a meal of boiled tilapia. Kwan had lost his appetite right then.

  The pencil Kwan held snapped between his grip and graphite spilled on his silk shirt. He stifled a curse and threw the shards down onto his desk.

  They’d have to let him get closer.

  Only then would he, and his legacy, be safe.

  Chapter Three

  “T his is crazy, Yanna, and I’m not letting you do this.” Roman leaned past her, grabbed the jacket she’d added to her duffel bag and threw it across the room. If the frustration in his voice left any room for doubt, the abuse of her leather jacket clearly displayed exactly how he felt about her little undercover op. The jacket fell across the desk where her computer worked away, steadily retrieving all of Elena’s e-mail and Internet correspondence over the past three months. Anything that had to do with Zhenshini & Lubov, the mail-order service Elena had used to find “Bob.”

  “Hey, what if it’s cold where I’m going?” Yanna retrieved the jacket.

  “Which is exactly my point,” Roman snapped, now taking her jeans out of the bag. “You don’t have the faintest idea where Elena is.”

  Yanna picked up her jeans and held them with her jacket to her chest, hating the accuracy of his words.

  Elena’s “Bob” didn’t exist. Or rather he did exist—a lot of him, in the form of a long list of aliases, including Katya’s New Jersey boyfriend. Hence, why when Yanna had done her initial background Bob check, he’d turned up wealthy and healthy and a good churchgoing man. He probably fit the criteria for every prospective bride registered on Zhenshini & Lubov.

  She had never felt so thankful for Vicktor’s fascination with America—and the fact that he’d done an internship in Seattle a few years prior with the police force—as when he’d picked up the phone and pulled in favors across the ocean. The Seattle detectives had tracked down “Bob’s” address and found a vacant lot. So much for the swanky beach house.

  Which only turned the ball of pain inside Yanna to living fire. The address listed for the bridal service in Moscow also turned out to be phony—the only link to actual, live people she could squeeze information from being the Web master who hosted the site from a tiny two-room office in Saint Petersburg. And after Roman’s fellow Mafia-fighting FSB/Cobra pals in St. Pete had wrung the Web master dry of information, she’d learned roughly…nil, nada, nichevo.

  Which led her back to Elena’s university friends and a thin brunette named Olga, fellow subscriber to Zhenshini & Lubov, recently—and conveniently—engaged. With Yanna’s credentials and a little brutal reality, Olga had handed over her airline ticket to America.

  “I’m an idiot,” Roman said, making a grab for her duffel bag to—what, toss it off her third-story balcony? She hip-checked him, a skill learned from their days playing street hockey. He banged into her closet, his hazel-green eyes sparking. “I should have known you were up to something when you issued yourself a new passport. You used Olga’s name, didn’t you? You’re hoping that whatever happened to Elena will happen to you.”

  “Is this why you woke up all my neighbors in the middle of the night trying to break down my door?” Darkness p
ressed like coal smoke against her windows.

  “I would have taken it off at the hinges with a blowtorch if you didn’t open it. And if you don’t listen to reason, I’ll call in reinforcements. I’ll tell Sarai to bring enough sedatives to knock out a tiger. By the way—” he scooped up the passport lying on the bed “—you do realize that you’re at least ten years older than the age listed for Olga, right?”

  “I’ll pass for her. Just you wait until you see what I’m wearing.”

  “You had to say that, didn’t you?” He tossed the passport onto the bed. “I hate everything about this.”

  “I have no choice, Roman. My sister has vanished.” Yanna rolled her jacket into a ball and shoved it again into the bag. “Apparently you’ve forgotten that when you went running off to a province under martial law to rescue Sarai—against orders, I might add—I was the one to drive you to the airport.” She grabbed her makeup bag and tucked it in next to her jeans.

  Roman just stood there, hands on his hips, glaring at her. He looked a bit ragged, even dangerous, in his black jeans and matching T-shirt, his tawny-brown hair tousled beyond repair. If he got serious, he could keep her from leaving. One of those wide, muscled arms across her door, and well, she just hadn’t kept up the hand-to-hand combat skills she’d learned in the military. Besides, Roman not only worked out every day, he had a passion about him that never said quit. It used to scare her. Today it only made her angry. “I’m going, Roma. End of conversation.”

  “Then I’ll go with you—”

  “You don’t have a ticket, and the flight is full—”

  “I’ll drag someone off, or bribe them or maybe I’ll just tell the pilot that a crazy woman is on the flight who needs constant medical attention.”

  Yanna grabbed her lipstick from her purse, refusing to be baited. “I’ll be fine. I have a weapon—see?” She uncapped the tube and turned the base. A knife protruded.

  “That is not a weapon. That’s a toy.” He tried to snatch it from her, but she pulled away.

  “I probably won’t even use it.”

  “It probably wouldn’t help if you did. Especially if someone tries to grab you.” Roman raised his hands in the air in a gesture of frustration, turned and stared out the window. He was visibly shaking and, for a second, the concern in his posture muted her.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe, in fact, she should wait for Roman or Vicktor to go with her. Or even David, to whom she’d written after returning from the morgue.

  Seeing pictures of Katya’s battered body had made her nearly retch, but the relief that poured through her kept her from going right over the edge and into the comfort of a pint of vodka.

  But she wasn’t her mother. Not yet. Hopefully not ever. And the hope that Elena might still be alive galvanized Yanna. Kept her upright and thinking. Believing that she could find her.

  Yanna had written to David, three times, in fact, over the last few days since her sister disappeared. And not a word. She tried not to be angry. Really. He was probably deep undercover. But the truth felt hard and glaring—the first time she’d ever needed the famous Preach and perhaps his prayers and, well, he wasn’t there.

  However, Roman filled David’s shoes well; she could practically hear David. “Yanna, you’re not a field agent—never have been. You’re a computer whiz. Let Vicktor and I find her.”

  “I need to find her now, Roma.” Yanna sank down on the bed, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly, exhausted. “Every second matters. If she’s still alive, the window for opportunity to locate her closes with every day. I think she’s been trafficked, and worse, by the Twin Serpents. Apparently, people in your department, I might add, have been watching this group for years. It’s been almost one week since she got on that plane. I need to leave on tomorrow’s flight.”

  Roman turned back, and she saw the tension in his bloodshot eyes. “I hate this. Everything inside me is screaming that I should drag you down to HQ and lock you in a holding cell until we find her.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said, her voice shaky.

  He sighed, his shoulders falling. “I might. I should.” He ran his fingers into his eyes, rubbing them. “No. I wouldn’t.”

  She rose and came over to him, putting her hands on his broad shoulders. Once upon a time, she’d had a crush on the dashing Mr. Charm. But then again, so did half of Moscow, and three-fourths of Khabarovsk. Every single woman her age she knew had entertained fantasies about Roman Novik. But he’d only ever had eyes for the girl who got away. The girl for whom he’d surrendered everything. The girl who had helped him find himself—David’s kid sister, Sarai.

  “Roman, listen. I’ll take my cell phone. You know it has global GPS. And I’m wearing my new earrings…see?” She touched her ears, the tiny faux diamonds that Artyom had made. “They not only have GPS, but one-way transmission abilities and a panic button. You can find me anywhere on the planet.”

  “But I can’t get to you if I’m in Russia.”

  “Then follow me. I’m leaving on this morning’s flight to Korea. And I’m going to find Elena and bring her home.”

  Roman took her into his arms and held her, and she felt his heart thumping. “I’ll be praying for you, Yanna. Be careful. Please.”

  Yanna nodded. “I’ll be fine, Roma. I promise.”

  David sat in one of the deep plush seats of Kwan’s thirty-six-foot high-performance speedboat, Gladiator, the wind parting his hair, his face against the salty seawater, his hands gripping the gunwales. Kwan had expensive toys, and David knew that by motoring him out to his yacht, Kwan hoped to impress him, Ripley the gunrunner. Yet David’s mind couldn’t stay fixed on the hundred-twenty-foot yacht looming on the horizon. Worry edged his thoughts, his focus. Yanna had never answered his instant message, and he hadn’t been able to return to the Internet café. But something in his gut didn’t feel right.

  Lord, wherever she is, please watch over her. David lifted his gaze to the sky, the twilight sending fire across the dark water. Glancing back at his chauffeur, he also raised a prayer for himself.

  A week since he’d shot Chet, David was finally going to meet Kwan. David wore a digital recorder sewn into the lapel of his leather jacket, and with twenty-four hours of recording time, he hoped to nail Kwan through his own words. Somehow he had to stay in character, reinforce the fact that Chet had been a rat, and that he lived to make as much cash as fast as possible and any way he could—no questions asked.

  There were times, like now, when he wished his life, his job, might be simpler. Like his sister, Sarai’s. Save lives—that felt like a pretty decent job description. The things he did and the choices he made felt so far from the side of good, at times he wondered if he cost lives rather than saved them.

  By the time he calculated the cost, he usually found himself already neck-deep in trouble. Like the night he’d met Yanna Andrevka.

  “Pomegetye!” David should have known, from her terrified scream for help that found its way to his soul, that he’d never quite get over meeting her.

  Sometimes he went back to that night. Heard his and Roman’s footsteps as they walked toward Red Square. Felt the screams ignite his adrenaline as he dove into the shadows and found a lithe girl wrestling with a man twice her size. He tasted the fury as he tackled the man, who kicked him, wrenched free and took off running. David’s legs had reacted on pure instinct. He’d nearly had his hands on the attacker twice before the guy ditched him in the alleys off Prospect Pushkina.

  He’d returned to find his hockey pal Roman being decked by a second attacker, and he’d leaped on that man. Roman had got a lick in just as Yanna turned to David, digging her fingers into his arms.

  “Please, let him go,” she’d said. Although her voice shook, he saw in her demeanor a strength and a concern that reached past her own terror to stop a brawl. It turned out that the second man he’d tackled had been her date, and a hockey pal of Roman’s. And, after raking her date—Vicktor—over good
, he and Vicktor had parted allies and, soon after, became friends.

  David pinpointed that moment in Red Square as the precise second Yanna had knocked the wind out of him. He’d never really recovered. It wasn’t just those beautiful brown eyes, or her feisty, independent spirit or even her femininity that made him a little breathless.

  It was the fact that she trusted him. At least over e-mail. Face-to-face, it wasn’t quite that easy. The last time he’d seen her he couldn’t escape the sense that Yanna was hiding something. Holding back.

  Which meant that maybe she didn’t really trust him, despite her words.

  The boat bounced over choppy waves, jarring his teeth, turning David’s attention back to his mission. After waiting far too long for Yanna to check in to their chat room, he’d finally returned to his flat—a two-room dive above the Anchor, a grocery store/ CIA front. From the shop below, the putrid scent of tea eggs—eggs boiled in soy sauce and tea for a zillion decades—destroyed his appetite. Especially when Kwan’s contact tracked him down and invited him for a rendezvous on his yacht.

  The chauffeur cut the speed and David felt the boat settle into the water, slowing as it motored toward the silver-and-black yacht. Keep your eye on the ball, Preach. David found his expressionless look that gave him one of his few advantages. Besides, after shooting Chet, nothing that Kwan threw at him would faze him.

  They glided up smoothly next to the aft deck, and the boats nudged each other as the ocean rolled them. Tying the boats together, the chauffeur nodded to David. The man had already patted him down and searched for weapons, coming up empty. David wasn’t that stupid.

  David climbed across the seats, glancing at the sleek dual console with its gauges and padded steering wheel. In another life…

  But he didn’t have another life. This was his life. Mingling with murderers…only being honest via e-mail with a person he could neither touch nor see.

  Head in the game, David. He couldn’t keep living in the what-ifs. Not if he wanted to stay alive and unearth Kwan.