Rising Tiger Read Online Free Page B

know.”
    There was a long silence. Jake stood and looked at himself in the full length mirror. His body was still relatively toned from simple push-ups and crunches. But his skin was blemished with scars from bullet and knife wounds over his long career. Many of those had happened with Toni in close proximity. Then he ran his hands through his longer hair, which was streaked now with gray against the darker locks. He was afraid to let his beard grow out completely for fear of looking like an old man.
    Finally, Jake said, “Are you serious?”
    “About?”
    “A partnership.”
    Without hesitation, Alexandra said, “Yes, of course. I love working with you.”
    “Then let’s do it. But we keep it informal. I don’t want anything I do to fall back on you.” He also didn’t want to put her in any more danger than necessary. There were still too many people who wanted Jake dead.
    “That sounds Wunderbar.”
    “What about your current case with the BND?”
    “My boss has told me to get over it. I can live with that.”
    “How would you like another road trip?”
    “You mean like the last time you almost got me killed?”
    Jake laughed. “So you know what you’re getting into.” He sat back on the bed.
    “What do you have in mind?”
    “Do you still have your Canadian passport?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then get your nice butt on the next flight out of Munich and fly to Singapore.”
    “Why Singapore?”
    “That’s where I’m heading next.” He explained a lead he had gotten from Jenkins before taking off from Costa Rica. “But I still have to talk to a man tomorrow here in Taipei.”
    “What about the files I sent to your server?” she asked.
    “You won’t be able to download them until after my system reset itself. We can download them when we meet in Singapore.”
    He worked out details on where they would meet in Singapore, and then they both clicked off their phones. Jake grabbed his laptop, opened it and got back into the files he had downloaded from the jump drive he had gotten from the Taipei banker before the guy was murdered. He really did need to get some help with the Chinese parts of these files. But what he could understand was what he had suspected. The deposits into various accounts had come from banks in Beijing and Shanghai. The so-called Chinese communists were quickly learning the tricks of capitalists. And he knew that Remington must have had something to do with this.
    He closed the computer, turned off the table light, and tried to get to sleep. But this new prospect of working with Alexandra had invigorated him. During their last time together, they had actually discussed this possibility. Yet Jake had no idea it would happen so soon, if at all. It had just been talk over beers and a camp fire.
    Then his mind drifted back to his current case. The banker had been killed because of the information he had transferred to Jake. Whatever was on his computer was damning enough to kill over, and that meant Jake was on the right track. He only wished he had spent some time talking with those two men in the alley earlier in the evening. But instead he had just gotten a few more bruises and a sliced arm on his leather coat.

4
    Taipei, Taiwan
    Shangwei stepped off the Red Line subway car at the Jiantan Station, the clock on the wall reading just after one in the morning. Glancing to street level, he could tell that the Shilin Night Market was winding down, with many of the kiosk stalls closed down and others being broken down now. Within the hour, he knew, these streets would look just like all the rest in this north Taipei district. He had tried to catch up with his target, hoping the man would get off after a few stops. But he never did find the man with the hat.
    The commotion from the man getting murdered in the streets was long over, the blood quickly cleaned away as if nothing had happened there earlier in the evening.
    Shangwei found the western-style bar and wandered inside, taking a