Wiser Than Serpents Read Online Free

a tall Napoleon cake of thin layers and abundant cream. Yanna couldn’t help but notice how she glowed, just like a bride should. She’d pulled her dark brown hair back, and it cascaded in curls along the neckline of her sleeveless tank. With a hint of tan on her arms and nose, she looked about sixteen. Yanna could hardly believe this was what Elena really wanted. But then again, if Yanna were to look deeply, perhaps her dreams weren’t so very different. Not really.
    Someone to love her? To count on? No, that wasn’t so foreign a desire.
    Yanna picked up her glass of sok, raised it to the group. “To Katya and Elena. Cheslivaya Vechnaya! ”
    “Happily ever after,” they all chorused as they touched their glasses for a toast.
    He’d never eaten deep fried frog on a stick, but David Curtiss was a patriot, and he’d do just about anything for his country.
    “Shei-shei,” he said as he took the delicacy from the vendor, fished out a New Taiwan dollar and dropped it into the vendor’s hand.
    He wondered what might leave a worse taste in his mouth, fried frog, or meeting a man who had beheaded the two undercover agents who had tried this trick before David. But if all went as planned, his culinary sacrifice would lead him to the identity of Kwan-Li, leader of the Twin Serpents, the largest organized crime syndicate in eastern Asia.
    The smells of night market were enough to turn even his iron gut to mush—body odor, eggs boiled in soy sauce, fresh fish and the redolence of oil from the nearby shipyard. Even worse, the fare offered in the busy open market sounded like something from a house of horrors menu: Grilled chicken feet, boiled snails, breaded salamander, poached pigeon eggs, and the specialty of the day—carp-head soup.
    “What did you get me into, Chet?” he whispered, wondering if Chet Stryker, his cohort for his unfortunate op, was grinning at the other end of his transmitter. “Squid or even snails, okay, but a frog?” Chet had set up this meet—and the frog signal. “Next time, you’re going to be drinking asparagus juice, buddy.” He hoped Chet’s silence meant he still had his eyes on him. David hadn’t seen his partner in the forty-five minutes he’d been walking around the market—a sign of Chet’s skill, no doubt.
    David looked at the brown and crispy frog and wondered if he was supposed to add condiments—he’d noticed a sort of ketchup and horseradish at the bar.
    A few more seconds and he’d have to take a bite. It wasn’t enough to just stand here and try to blend in with the crowd, not an easy task given that every man who brushed by him stood around chin height. Even with David’s long dyed-black hair, silk Asian shirt and designer jeans, he knew he looked like a walking American billboard. Thankfully, foreigners flocked to the novelty of night market in this part of Kaohsiung in Taiwan.
    He saw a couple of Americans stroll by, listened to their comments about the food, the smells. A short blonde, slightly pudgy, wearing a blue Taiwanese shirt and shorts set probably purchased in a local beach shop sucked on the straw of a jujube shake. Next to her, her husband was finishing off a grilled squid. Aid workers, probably. The island had a plethora of Americans working in relief and humanitarian aid agencies. Especially after the last earthquake.
    If only that shaker had dismantled Kwan’s organization. But unlike the hospitals and island utilities, organized crime kept their systems up and running without a hiccup, transporting heroin out of mainland China, and arms and munitions in, where they ended up in rogue countries like Afghanistan, or even Iran, and in the hands of rebel groups like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, and countless crime syndicates from Thailand to Malaysia.
    But the disruption of services in Taiwan had given David what he needed to slip under Kwan’s radar and place himself on his doorstep. If he played this right, Kwan would agree to his offer of pistols,