Wiser Than Serpents

by Susan May Warren

  “Ouch. Listen, I worked those streets when I lived in Seattle. This isn’t about me losing her. Or even needing her to need me. It’s about me knowing that she is still dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and wanting her to feel safe.” Vicktor got off the walkway and followed Roman toward the lobby of what looked like a restaurant. Inside, at a counter, Roman stopped. Flashed his FSB credentials.

  “I’d like to speak to your manager,” he said.

  Vicktor leaned against the wall, arms folded. Maybe Roman was right. Maybe he did need to stop worrying about Gracie. He tapped the cell phone. I love you, too, Gracie. Enough to back off and let her decide their future. His words to Roman were honest—he didn’t want her to need him—well, yes he did, but he mostly wanted her to love him as much as he loved her.

  He touched his chest where it tightened, right above his heart.

  “Can I help you?” The voice came from a slight Asian man, well-groomed in a beige silk suit. Why hadn’t Vicktor grabbed his own suit instead of a pair of faded jeans and an old T-shirt? He leaned up from the wall and tried to look clean.

  “We’re looking for a friend of ours, an Olga Rustikoff. She was supposed to check in here two nights ago?” Roman dug “Olga’s” picture from his wallet. “She’s in her late twenties.”

  The manager, who introduced himself as Mr. Choi, studied Roman’s and Vicktor’s credentials for a moment, the picture, and then opened his listing of guests.

  “She checked in, but never checked out.” Choi wrote down the time. “We book by the six-hour blocks, and she used one block of time. When she didn’t check out, we charged her for another block. Housekeeping notes say they checked in on her room during the third shift, but it was vacant. Did she make her flight to America?”

  Roman glanced at Vicktor. “How did you know her destination?”

  Choi looked about forty, but with a youthful tan and little facial hair. “We take all the flight and passport information, in case they haven’t checked out an hour before their flight. Sometimes, patrons oversleep.”

  “So, you never saw her leave?” Vicktor asked. He wasn’t sure why, but places like this that rented by the hour always made him feel as if he might be walking into a back-alley brothel. Despite the manager’s three-piece suit and the welcome-to-Korea smile.

  “Not that I recall. Her account says that she had dinner in the restaurant shortly after she checked in. I’ll ask my staff if they remember seeing her.” He handed Roman a card. “If you will write your phone number, I can call you if I have any further information.”

  Roman scribbled down his cell number. “Can I see the room she stayed in?”

  “It’s been cleaned numerous times since her visit.”

  Roman glanced at Vicktor. “We have a couple hours to kill.”

  Vicktor turned to Choi. “I think we’d like to see the room.”

  They followed Choi down a long orange-and-lime-green hall, passing through another long corridor until he stopped at a door. He opened it with an access card.

  An Asian double-size bed jutted from an alcove beyond the bathroom. Vicktor followed Choi and Roman inside. The room smelled of stale air and artificial room freshener.

  “It’s a sleeping room. Most guests use it while waiting for international flights, like your friend Olga.”

  “The only way in is with the key card?” Roman asked. He stood at the door, holding it open with his foot.

  Vicktor stared at the television, a queasy feeling in his gut. What would he do if it were Gracie who vanished?

  She was fine. Hadn’t she texted him? He needed to listen to Roman and trust Gracie. He acted as if she was going to get kidnapped or murdered. He’d clearly let their history with the Wolf go straight to his head.

  “I told you there was nothing here,” Choi said. He had turned to go, just as a housekeeper came pushing her cart down the hallway. Roman darted out to catch her.

  Vicktor held the door, blocking Choi’s exit.

  “Ma’am, do you clean this section of hall?” Roman asked in English.

  The woman, a middle-aged Korean, with a wide face and short, dark hair, stared at him. She glanced at Choi. Vicktor followed her gaze and saw nothing written on Choi’s face.

  “We’re looking for a friend who stayed in this room. A young Russian woman, long, dark hair, traveling alone. Did you happen to see her?”

  The woman glanced again at Vicktor, but he stepped in front of Choi. For a second, she looked surprised. Then, shook her head, frowning.

  Probably she didn’t understand a word he’d said.

  Then, in a voice barely above a murmur she said, “No see. Sorry.”

  Roman frowned, stepped back toward the room. “Thank you.”

  The woman continued down the hall. Roman turned back to Choi, still trapped behind Vicktor. But as the woman reached the next hallway, she stopped and looked back at Vicktor. And deliberately pulled something from her pocket.

  She let it drop onto the floor. Then she pushed her cart around the corner.

  “Let’s go. There’s nothing here,” Roman said, but Vicktor cast him a look.

  “Stay here. Be right back.”

  Vicktor took off down the hall, but by the time he got to the corner, the woman had vanished. At his feet, however, was a small silver locket.

  He picked it up, ran his finger over it. And everything inside him went very, very still.

  David lost Yanna in between the fried squid on a stick, the fresh tilapia fish still gasping their last breath, the hedgehog-looking, horrible-smelling durian fruit, a vat of sweet potatoes and a woman making Ba Wan that had him so distracted with the smell, it was no wonder Yanna easily ditched him. And because she was smart, as well as sneaky, the woman had waited until right after he’d purchased her a fresh papaya and a bamboo sack filled with rice.

  At least he didn’t have to worry about her starving as Kwan tortured her to death. Super. Could this day get any worse?

  He turned, looking for the leggy Russian brunette, but of course every other person in Taiwan also had long dark hair, wore a size four and moved as if they were late for work or, in her case, running from the man who’d saved her life. Thankfully, she also stood about half a foot taller than every woman at the market. However, not a woman Yanna’s height was in sight. He wove past a table of vendors selling fish heads, and toward a booth of sushi. “Yanna!”

  Of course, his voice carried about as far as the star fruit vendor’s in the din of the market, and hum of the street traffic. Morning market always reminded him of the Philippines, where he had attended boarding school, while his missionary parents worked in Japan—the din of the crowd, the smells of fresh vegetables brought in from the villages, people on bicycles and scooters weaving through foot traffic.

  He stood, surveying the heights of the patrons. Yanna had a good six to eight inches on the average Asian woman. Only he’d also purchased her a pair of flip-flops, which cut his advantage severely. He almost longed for her spike-heel boots.

  Clothes. She needed a change of clothes. And it was then he realized she would have also lifted his wallet. He checked his front pocket, where he’d slipped it just as they were walking into the market. Nice, very nice. She’d probably nicked it when he was arguing with the Ba Wan lady about which dumpling he wanted.

  So, Yanna had his wallet and his cash, leaving him high and dry while a murderer hunted them down. Apparently she had a short memory when it came to people saving her life.

  Then again, when Yanna wanted something, especially something near and dear to her heart, she usually got it. Stubborn. Blunt. Capable. Qualities that had netted her respect in her FSB department but managed to scare off every man on her side of Siberia.

  He had to wonder, perhaps, if she did it on purpose.

  The only thing that scared him about Yanna was the fact she so easily shrugged off her own safety for the good of the people she loved. Which meant that if she hung around David for any length of time, it me
ant pain and sacrifice. Because Kwan would find him. And when he did, people would get hurt.

  The second he found Yanna he’d handcuff—no, hot glue—her to himself until he shoved her on an airplane to Russia. She might hate him when they were finished with this, but he couldn’t look himself in the mirror if he let Kwan hurt her.

  Contrary to what Yanna might think, he didn’t intend to leave Elena high and dry, either. But first stubborn Russian woman first.

  David turned for a moment in the middle of the market, gathering his bearings. Like a maze intended to trap customers, the tables of food—from nuts in bags, to dried seafood, to raw meat suspended from hooks, to fresh vegetables—stretched as far as he could see under the low-hanging metal roof. Beyond the offerings of food, kiosks filled with kitchen utensils, plastic wear, cheap aluminum pots, rice cookers and woks, and an electronics store ringed the outside entrance to the market.

  Which reminded him that he should probably ditch his current cell phone, grab a new one.

  Oops, one normally required money for that.

  He headed out the back entrance, toward the clothes vendors. Styles in Taiwan ranged from skimpy to spandex, with most of the women wearing their size-two crop pants low on their hips, their blouses tight, their skirts avert-his-eyes too high. And the colors—bright and gaudy seemed the fashion of the hour. He should be able to spot Yanna in her boring white blouse, leather skirt. Beyond this alcove of kiosks, the street jagged down along the coast, littered with buildings lit with vertical neon characters in Mandarin, again, in all colors. Exhaust fumes, meat and rice frying in a giant wok and the cloying smell of women soaked in perfume seasoned the too-warm air.

  He dodged a man riding a bicycle and ran across the alley to a kiosk filled with women’s lingerie.

  “Foreigner?” he asked in Mandarin. An oversize woman sitting on a bench looked at him and shook her head. In the next booth overflowing with shoes, a woman pointed toward the center of town.

  “Shei-shei,” he said, thanking her, dodging marketers and more bicyclists. He clipped a stand of durian fruit, scattering them on the ground. The vendor came screaming out of his booth, but David didn’t slow. Why, Yanna, can’t you just trust me?

  I’m here to find my sister. Kwan kidnapped her. Her quiet words, torn with emotion and spoken as they drifted to shore, replete with images that made him wince, laced his thoughts. What if it were his sister who’d been gulped into Kwan’s world of slavery? They’d have to sedate him probably and even that would only slow him down. In fact, he’d shown up—or asked pals around the globe to show up on her behalf—for nearly a decade, most recently during a coup in the center of Siberia. It wasn’t easy keeping track of a woman who put the welfare of her patients miles ahead of her own.

  No, he wouldn’t leave his sister in the lurch. And he could hardly blame Yanna for acting the same way.

  Once she got clothes, where would she go?

  He stopped at the intersection, waiting on the light, or at least an opening in traffic. Beyond this street, he saw signs for lodging.

  The bus station.

  The first thing she’d do would be to get back to the nearest big city—Kaohsiung—and regroup, maybe fire up some of her electronic gizmos, see if she could get a bead on Kwan.

  David, for one, planned on camping out at Kaohsiung Harbor until Kwan resurfaced.

  The light changed and David followed the crowd across the street. She couldn’t be that far ahead of him, and he jogged past a clump of betel-nut-juice-spitting taxi drivers. “Bus station,” he asked, and they pointed him beyond the hotel and across the main thoroughfare. He didn’t wait for the next light, just darted out into traffic, dodging cars, the horns, the Mandarin that couldn’t be welcoming.

  Across the street, up on either side of the sidewalk, scooters lined up like dominoes, one squashed next to the other, helmets perched on their seats. A two-foot-wide channel separated the rows and David quick walked down it, eyes on the end, where the busing kiosks began.

  There. The woman in the brown-and-orange shirt, halfway down the row of scooters. She looked over her shoulder and he ducked his head. The minute she spotted him was the minute she’d vanish into some kiosk. The coast seemed clear because she continued walking quickly, her dark hair shimmery down her back.

  He picked up his pace, breaking out into a trot.

  Then his foot caught the exhaust manifold of a shiny red scooter. Like a waterfall the bikes began to tumble, one into the next into the next, dominoing down the row. He gave a halfhearted attempt to grab one, stop the wave, then surrendered to a full-out run.

  He dodged the scooters—thwunk, thwunk, thwunk—and cringed as the entire block-long row tumbled over.

  Yanna turned and, for a second, their eyes met.

  Hers widened, and then she began to run.

  His pants leg caught on the fender of a scooter. No! Behind him, he heard shouting and a glance over his shoulder told him that at least one irate owner had spotted him.

  He yanked free and charged toward the buses. Way to tick off the entire country.

  The woman in brown had vanished into a bus terminal. The Taiwanese busing system ran out of individual storefronts, each destination and bus line operating inside a street-side lobby. David read the signs overhead, looking for the Kaohsiung sign, scanning each passenger who sat on the outside vinyl seats, waiting for the bus.

  A bus pulled up beside him and he sounded out the destinations on the side—thankfully the Mandarin had been transliterated into Western characters.

  Taipei, Taichung, all north of Kaohsiung. He broke into a jog—how could she simply vanish?

  Behind him, another bus pulled up. He turned around.

  There, the woman just climbing aboard.

  He sprinted back to the bus terminal, pushed through the line to the counter. “One, to Kaohsiung,” he said, and reached for his wallet.

  No. No! He stared at the woman as she printed out the ticket. Backed away from the counter. Perfect, just perfect.

  He wrestled his way back out to the sidewalk. The bus driver had exited the bus, was taking tickets, stowing luggage.

  David beelined to the bus, aiming for the stairs, and plowed aboard.

  Yanna sat slouched in the backseat, looking out the window, her head down, hair over her face. Her blouse might be clean and new, but she looked wrung out. As if, maybe, she’d spent the past twenty-four hours lost in the ocean. Windburned. Hungry. Tired.

  “Yanna!” he shouted down the length of the bus.

  A hand grabbed his arm. He whirled, but whoever the bus driver had been in a former life, he knew to duck. David stumbled, and the driver yanked him down the aisle and gave him a heave-ho onto the sidewalk. He scrambled back to his feet, but the driver had already closed the door. As the bus coughed and grinded into gear, David looked for Yanna.

  He found her in the somber woman who gave a feeble wave as the bus pulled away from the curb.

  Chapter Eight

  “T hat’s a decent-size goose egg, Gracie.” Mae Lund replaced the bag of frozen peas. “Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor?”

  “I’m fine, Mae.”

  “So after you bonked your head on the door, and Bad Kosta had you by the jacket, then what did you do?” Mae Lund, recent retiree from the air force, sat back on the hardwood floor of their apartment living room, and leaned against the overstuffed sofa, her knees pulled up to her chest, her face alive. Gracie had wondered over the past month how Mae’s recent move out of military life and into the private sector would change her. Hopefully, it would also calm Vicktor down to know that Mae would be moving into Gracie’s extra room, although she didn’t know why he was so paranoid. Okay, maybe that wasn’t fair. After today, she did. It would probably be good for all of them since Mae was currently short on allies.

  After Mae had hopped aboard a C-130 transport to Russia and flown an outdated tin can across protected airspace in order to save her friend Roman from execution, i
t was either resign or face discipline. Although she’d easily landed a job as a SAR pilot for a local Emergency Services crew, she had to miss her life of training and commitment. Still, maybe the move would be good for her. She looked comfortable in civilian duds—her brown crop pants, the green T-shirt. Then again, tall and slim, Mae looked good in just about anything. She’d let her hair grow, and the curly mane of auburn only made Gracie wish she hadn’t let herself be duped into cutting her straight blond hair short, nearly into a pageboy.

  Next to Mae’s easy style, Grace felt like a refugee in her old jeans, sleeveless tee, and with the purpling goose egg over her eye.

  Now, Mae acted as if Gracie might be telling her a campfire ghost story, all wide-eyed and wearing disbelief on her face.

  Probably exactly how Gracie had looked as she’d driven up to her brownstone and stumbled up the three flights of stairs, banging the door open and slamming it behind her, dead bolting it. Good thing Mae was already inside unpacking, because Gracie planned on barricading herself in.

  “I don’t know, Mae, I just lost it. I guess I was right back there in the past, with the Wolf dragging me out to his getaway plane, about ready to blow me up, and I just reacted. My therapist says that it’s normal to feel you’re right there, for the smallest things to trigger a memory, and that—”

  “What did you do, already?”

  “Oh, I stabbed him with my keys. Right in the hollow place in his neck. Then I went for broke and kneed him, just like I learned in self-defense, jumped in my car, locked the door and floored it home.”

  Mae sat back in her chair and stared at her, a new admiration in her expression. See, she wasn’t helpless. Mostly.

  “Do you think you were followed?”

  “I doubt it. It was a pretty crazy drive home.”

  Gracie lowered the peas, touched the bump on her forehead. “Think I should tell Vicktor?”

  Mae got up and went to the pile of boxes in the corner. She opened one, began to dig through it. “Want him to lose it? Because he will. He’ll be on your doorstep by morning. Well, for the few seconds before they deport and/or jail him.”