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emanating from the café kitchen only made his stomach roll. He wished that someone would remind him, again, why he was trying to take out Kwan? Because lately he had a hard time figuring out which side he was really on.
    “I’ve run the scenario through my head a thousand times. The leak had to come from someone inside.”
    “We’ll figure it out, David. Only a handful of people knew about this op. Me, my director, the American attaché to Taiwan. And even they didn’t know names. We’ve swept our phones for taps, scanned all communication going in and out of the embassy. I don’t know, but I promise, I’ll find out.”
    David closed his eyes, ran his hands down his face. He sighed. “Now what?”
    Bruce stepped to the door, opened it and glanced outside. When David shanghaied him, Bruce had been dining with two Taiwanese ladies and a small contingency from the American Institute, aka the American embassy in Taiwan. “I’ll talk to Lee. See if he knows anything.”
    Lee Quinn, the khaki-wearing, apple-cheeked man from Iowa who ran the American Institute? The boys on Bruce’s staff called him Q, mocking his ability to even boot up his computer without crashing a system or two. Yeah, he was sure to have insider information.
    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