Wiser Than Serpents (2 page)

She’d never told him that, of course. At this rate, never would. Her body would simply wash ashore on some foreign soil and he’d never know that after fifteen years, she still dreamed he’d fly halfway across the world to take her in his arms and tell her he couldn’t live without her.

It was the drugs in her system talking. Because she—an FSB agent, and David, an American Delta Force major had as much chance of hooking up as she had of escaping this ship and not being devoured by sharks.

Apparently, her backup team, the ones with a supernatural connection—Roman and Vicktor, Gracie and Sarai—needed to up their piety because God certainly hadn’t heard their prayers for her safety. Either that, or Yanna was simply correct in her belief that prayers to an unseen—and uncaring—God accomplished nothing. After ten years fighting crime in Russia, she could have told them that.

Kwan picked up his metal garbage can, set it at his feet. Then, taking his lighter, he ignited the passport and dropped it into the can. The acrid smell of plastic filled the room. Yanna stared wide-eyed at the black smoke.

“Why—?”

But she knew why, even as the word left her mouth. Kwan reached behind him and held up a tube of lipstick. Saying nothing, he uncapped it and twisted the base. Yanna held her breath as a three-inch curved blade extended.

Kwan nodded. “Want to explain to me how a schoolteacher smuggled this onto an airplane? Or better, what is this?” He pulled her cell phone from his pocket, one of her best designs, the one with global GPS active 24/7. When she’d given one to Roman, it had helped save his life, and she’d counted on the little transmitter planted inside to save hers. “This doesn’t look like a Nokia from the central market.”

She kept her expression cool, but inside dread pooled like blood.

Why, oh, why, had she talked herself into believing she could do this alone? Every muscle in her body tightened when Kwan dropped the phone into a drawer and pushed himself off the desk. He approached her slowly, dug his fingers into her hair, then yanked her head back. Her scalp screamed, but every nerve centered on the sudden cold prick of her not-so-cute-anymore knife scraping the well of her neck.

She swallowed. “I…my…cousin works airport security. He—”

“Agent Andrevka, I’m not that stupid.”

She refused to flinch, to give any indication that his words sliced through her, leaving her cold.

Yes, this was definitely the dimmest of her bright ideas.

“I’m not sure, exactly, what to do with you.” He ran his hand down her hair, smoothing it. “You’re very beautiful—”

A knock came at the door. With a sigh, Kwan let her go and stepped back from her. She felt his gaze on her like daggers, or maybe it was simply her pounding heart, cutting her chest to shreds.
Get a hold of yourself, Yanna.
She hadn’t worked in the field since her training days, but she’d been taught how to think ahead, look for opportunities.

To have backup. Oy. She hoped her other transmitter was still operating.

“Enter,” Kwan said, hiding the knife behind his back as he crossed his hands.

The door opened, and Yanna heard footfalls even as she kept her eyes ahead of her. Fu spoke quickly, softly. “He’s here.”

Kwan’s breathing, and the silence that followed felt like a noose, choking off her air.
Think, Yanna!
Now might be her one and only chance for escape…but what about Elena?

“Escort him in—”

“But the wom—”

Kwan raised a hand, cutting Fu off. Every muscle in Yanna’s body coiled as she watched Kwan sit down at his desk. He closed the lipstick case, capped it. Folded his hands. His silver eyebrow spike gleamed against the sunlight.

Yanna twisted her hands in her cuffs and, for a moment, considered a prayer, just in case she might be wrong about God caring.

She heard voices at the door, and Fu entered the room followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man. She scrutinized him through the curtain of her long hair, wondering how many steps it might take to break free and launch herself out the door. The visitor didn’t look her way as he entered, but she glimpsed ponytail-long dark hair, a close, trimmed beard and an arrogance in his step. She looked away. Dressed in a pair of designer jeans, a gray silk shirt and a pair of black hiking boots, he looked American. Of course. The center of the human-trafficking trade. Yanna worked her handcuffs as she listened to their conversation with her rusty Mandarin.

According to her translation, Mr. American slave trader wasn’t exactly fluent, either. But he made his point. His shipment waited in Taiwan and he wanted to set up an exchange.

She wondered if she, or Elena, might be among the cargo.

Yanna studied him, took in his wide shoulders, the way he held himself and a memory stirred inside her. Fu saw her perusal and slapped her.

Pain exploded in her face and tears rushed to her eyes. As she cried out, the visitor turned. She saw his body jerk, and she looked away, hating the foolish bravado that lied to her and told her she was field material. Too much time spent with her hero pals Vicktor and Roman.

She was a computer tech, with a knack for gadgets. What had made her think she wouldn’t face the same fate as Elena? Or worse, the same fate as Katya?

Nothing but desperation.

“What is she doing here?” the voice said, and Yanna looked up. Blue eyes,
familiar
blue eyes looked down at her, and for the briefest of seconds, they filled with horror.

She’d seen that horror before. Just outside Red Square in Moscow fifteen years back, right after a man had grabbed her and wrestled her into the shadows.

Right after David Curtiss had jumped him and pulled him off her.

And two seconds before she’d lost her heart forever to a six-foot-two, blond-haired, blue-eyed American boy with a soft spot for the oppressed.

No, it couldn’t be. But under all that dark hair, the flashy California attire and the painful Mandarin she plainly recognized the guy on the other end of her e-mail dreams, Preach, aka David Curtiss. She stared up at him, and shock turned her pale. This was his big undercover assignment? The truth flashed across his face.

He recognized her, too.

“You like her?” Kwan asked, finding his feet.

Yanna looked away, not wanting to see David’s expression when he answered.

“I do,” he said, and something inside her turned warm at his words. Even though she knew it was an act, tears of relief filled her eyes. Yes, let Kwan give her to David. Together they’d find Elena and—

“She’s not for sale.”

Yanna closed her eyes.

Kwan came around the desk, leaned against it.

“Why not?” David said, his voice low. “I want her.”

And then, Yanna realized exactly how Elena might have felt. Cheap. A commodity. A sickness welled inside that had nothing to do with the sea.

“She’s not who you think. She’s a Russian agent.” Kwan nodded to Fu, who clamped her around the back of the neck and forced her face up. She kept it averted from David’s, fearing the look of derision in his eyes. Whatever undercover plot he had strung together, her appearance might just be unraveling it, and fast.

“An agent?” David repeated. “Then why do you want her?”

Kwan was silent. He drummed his fingers on his arms, staring at her. She winced as Fu’s grip dug into her neck.

“I don’t,” Kwan finally said. “We’re done with her.” He reached across his desk, behind him.

“Then let me—”

“No.”

Yanna recognized the lipstick tube and her blood drained from her body as Kwan opened it and twisted out the blade. He glanced at Fu, who let her go and it was all she could do not to collapse. But she wouldn’t do that. Not in front of David.

Never in front of David.

Out of her periphery, she saw Fu pull out a small silver Makarov pistol that looked painfully like the one she had back home. He leveled it at David.

Yanna’s eyes widened as Kwan stepped up to her and smiled at David. The man she loved.

“I’m going to kill her,” Kwan said softly. “And then maybe we’ll do business.”

One week earlier

Y
anna Andrevka hadn’t spent the past ten years of her life putting her kid sister through college to watch her throw it away on some pudgy, bald American named Bob.

Then again, she wouldn’t be doing cartwheels if Elena were marrying a hip, urban Russian named Sergey or Ivan, either. The very fact that her bright, beautiful sister put any man before finishing her law degree had Yanna turning the beet she was chopping into a blood-colored mash.

“About finished with the salad, Yanna?” Katya asked as she drained off the water from the mashed potatoes into the sink. Steam rose, cooking the already stifling galley kitchen. The tourists who thought that Siberia in summer still meant glaciers and bitter winds should spend a day in her apartment in August. The Gobi Desert was probably cooler; certainly it was less humid. Yanna scraped the beets into a bowl along with onions, pickles, diced cooked potatoes and cooked carrots. She picked up a wooden spoon and began to stir.

“Where’s Elena? She’s supposed to be back by now.” The fact that her sister had lifted nary a finger for the goodbye send-off she’d planned gave Yanna sufficient ammunition to let her anger simmer. It felt better than facing the fact that in twenty-four hours, she’d be alone in their two-room flat, no one to greet her when she stayed too late at volleyball practice, or harass her about having no social life.

She had a social life. Namely, Elena. Especially now that Yanna’s other friends—Vicktor and Roman—had ladies who took up their free time. Ever since Elena had moved back to Khabarovsk two years ago, after getting her undergrad degree in Saint Petersburg, Yanna’s life had taken on new vibrancy. Maybe it was watching Elena come into her own and blossom into a beauty like their mother. Or maybe it was living vicariously through her soap-opera romances, or listening to her dreams of life after school. Until two years ago, Yanna had seen her kid sister as a nuisance, a leech, just another price Yanna had to pay for her mother’s foolishness.

Now, she wasn’t sure just how she’d survive without Elena snuggling up to her when she arrived home from a date, or a class, regaling her with her latest drama.

Bob had better be worth it. Or Yanna would cross the ocean in a single bound and spike his head across his two-story beach house. The pictures did look nice, however.

“She’s picking up her wedding dress,” Katya said. “I told her they have dresses in Seattle, but she says she wants a Russian dress. You can take the girl out of Russia, but you can’t take Russia out of the girl.” Katya looked up from the potatoes she was mashing. Skinny as a sixties-era model and wearing a pair of jeans and a sheer white blouse, Katya looked like she hadn’t the strength to mash a pea. With long, bottle-bleached hair and brown eyes, the twenty-two-year-old English teacher had a ticket to Seattle with Elena. She’d continue on to Jersey to meet her prospective groom. She poured more milk into the potatoes. “I’m getting my dress from a store in New York. I already told Mario that.”

Yanna swallowed a remark and turned back to her salad. She added oil, salt, pepper, and tried not to let her cynicism leak out. She should be happy for the two girls. They’d won the lottery, according to too many Russian women. American husbands. Life in the promised land. True, most women in Russia today struggled to find jobs and, when they did, pulled in less than eighty percent of the salary men did. Yanna had to be twice as good at her profession to get half the respect a man did. Still, after seeing what loving the wrong man—too many times—and living with a permanently shattered heart had done to their mother, well, Yanna wasn’t about to mess with the good thing she had going. Decent friends, a solid job, an apartment to come home to…she had more than most women could hope for.

Besides, she had already found her true love. And, even if he never knew it, their e-mail relationship was enough for her. Actually, it was probably safer, even more rewarding her way. If he never knew how she felt, he could never reject her, could he?

Yanna poured the salad into a glass bowl then, lifting it above her head, squeezed past skinny Katya and out into the family room. She’d set up her dining-room table, pulling it out from the wall and placing it in front of the sofa. Three chairs were set opposite the sofa, and with an end table added from her bedroom, she’d made seating for at least eight. The rearrangement left little room to maneuver, what with her shelving unit running across one end of the room and her television on the other. Khrushchev forgot to leave room for breathing when he designed the tiny single-family flats.

The doorbell buzzed. Yanna grabbed her key from the latch by the door and peered out the peephole. Elena smiled broadly. Her teeth looked huge in the domed view.

Yanna pulled open the inner door, then unlocked the outer door. Her fellow FSB pal Vicktor had installed the vaultlike steel barrier during the reign of a serial killer a few years back. It squealed on its hinges as it opened.

Elena squeezed past Yanna into the narrow entry hall. She toed off her sandals, setting a bag down beside her. “Guess what I got?”

“Your wedding dress?” Yanna closed the door.

Elena’s face fell. “Katya, you rat!”

“Oh, please,” Yanna said as she brushed past her sister. “I spy on people for a living. If you think I didn’t know what you were up to, you haven’t lived with me since you were a kid.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you have my computer and my cell phone bugged, as well as listening devices planted throughout the flat and in my schoolbag.” Elena placed a kiss on her sister and scooted into the kitchen as Yanna finished setting the table.

Sometimes, she seemed so much like Yanna, it was difficult to believe not only their fifteen-year age difference, but that they had different fathers. Long, mink-brown hair, flashing dark eyes, a reserved smile—these things Yanna recognized of herself. But Elena’s willingness to embrace new ideas—like Internet dating—or even her belief that she could make marriage work with a man she’d never met, these were from her father, their mother’s youngest and most outspoken boyfriend. Her mother had been wildly happy with Genye, the dreamer. Until he’d been arrested for drunk driving and beaten to death in his holding cell.