The Spy and Her Serpent, page 1
The Spy and Her Serpent
Maria Ying
Hua Publishing
Copyright @ 2022 Devi Lacroix
Copyright @ 2022 Benjanun Sriduangkaew
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the authors, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
The characters and events depicted in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents
Title Page
One: The Ugly American
Two: A Love of High Places
Interlude: The Sisters of the House of Hua
Three: My Fair Lady
Interlude: Mercury Heron
Four: The Queen and I
Interlude: At Any Cost
Five: The Tower is Tall
Six: Snake Takes Talon
Coda: A Peace to End all Peace
Bonus Story: A Rose for Her Hound
Sneak Preview
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Other Works by The Author
One: The Ugly American
DALLAS
The scent of exhaust and salt—the sea reaches even the runway, brining the air—and then back to sweat, mine and others’, as I’m shoved face-first into the truck. Armored, likely. The world remains black; no one has yet decided to pull off the bag around my head. I breathe in my own smells and theirs. Shoe polish, leather, rank sweat—no one emanates roses after a flight from the Pacific States to Singapore, doubly so when they flew in the hold of a cargo plane.
It seems no time at all before the sack is finally yanked off. It seems forever. My skin burns from the rough material scraping along. Someone moves to take off the blindfold. Someone else simultaneously cuffs my hands to the chair. Seat’s bolted in place. My bad luck, not that I’d try anything: too many guns pointed at me, I can tell without looking.
I squint into the harsh halogen—being blindfolded for eight hours will do that. The air conditioning is icy. Someone speaks: “Please leave us. I’ll handle her.”
Her voice is like a glacier’s edge.
The noise of boots against linoleum, then the door thudding shut. We’re still in the airport, but it must be some secret place, kept away from the eyes of commercial passengers, of tourists. There is no noise at all from the outside, no announcements, no anything. Completely soundproof. I could scream myself hoarse and all it’d get me is being pistol-whipped.
Little by little detail clarifies. The room: featureless, windowless, near-unfurnished except for my chair and hers. The woman: makeup that has been skillfully applied so it appears as though she’s wearing none, a clean line of throat that disappears into a creaseless shirt, no jewelry and no piercings. She is young, her clothes so prim she looks more like an office clerk than an intelligence officer, but then that is the point. “Inspector Yuwada Thammarangkul,” she says, an unnecessary introduction—it’s not as if I need to know—but perhaps she takes pleasure in the fact that I cannot possibly pronounce her surname.
Her chair is elevated, to drive home the balance of power between us. I grin up at her with a swollen mouth. “A pleasure. Dallas Seidel.”
“I am aware.” She looks me over. What she sees fails to impress. It’s a toss-up whether her disdain has to do with me being a criminal or with me being American. When a foreigner looks at me, they see not a person but a country: I represent not myself and my own foibles but the sins of empire, the great excesses of it that have gouged scars into the tissue of the world. “I requested you specifically.”
I tongue a place in my gums that still hurts; about hour six of the flight, one of my guards punched me out of boredom. “I’m flattered.”
Yuwada sneers. It really is a waste of a face so pretty. “Don’t be, Dallas. I think very little of you. In fact, I don’t even think of you as human—you’re a louse in the hair of the body politic. But I have a very specific job for a woman of your questionable talents, and you’re in no position to refuse.” She stands, snaps on latex gloves as though I am too disgusting to touch with her bare hands. Around me she steps, and with a click unlocks my cuffs. I don’t have time to appreciate the freedom, because she leans close and asks, “Have you heard of the Huas?”
I must have shown a reaction: an indrawn breath, a twitch in my jaw. Vertigo grips me. “Yes.”
Her laugh grazes my nape. It should be warm, but the temperature in here is so frigid it doesn’t register. "You're going to help me kill them."
♦
San Francisco. Three years past.
The Huas have this attack dog. A real beast of a woman, one who shares my nationality but no loyalty to the continent: once of the Christian Dominionist League, now collared in service to Hong Kong’s worst. Her name is Yves Hua, taking on her mistresses’ pedigree, no doubt wearing it like a badge of honor when all it means is that she’s owned. It is impossible for me to forget her face, her name, and what she is capable of.
I wasn’t there at the time. I returned to a bar wet with gore, piled high with bodies and spent bullets. It wasn’t until I got picked up by the police—later, even, not until I was convicted and in prison—that I would learn the Huas were responsible. I didn’t find out which Hua ordered it, the gunrunner or the narcotics empress, but the distinction doesn’t matter: Yves Hua traveled far from home to wipe out my gang for a reason no greater, no more personal, than securing a market share on her mistresses’ behalf.
The core of me isn’t sentimental. I grew up on the streets. I was recruited because I was a good fixer, and I served a purpose, same as any job. There was affection there, regard, occasionally respect. There were women I’d taken to bed and who admired my body if not my soul. I'm not maudlin that I miss them, but—
Our turf wars at least had rationale, guided by grudges as much as profit motive. Hatred was humanizing. But to the Huas, it was just business.
I tried to make do in the ruins of my once-life, but it didn’t last. Everyone I knew was dead, and I lived in fear of whoever butchered my gang coming back for me. They never did, and once I learned who the Huas were, I understood why—the hit was finished, the supply chain locked in, the San Francisco police too cowed to impede such a powerful, international organization as the Hua syndicate.
And it was a mutually beneficial relationship, between the cops and the criminals. Apparently, the police decided that since the Huas had done most of their work for them, they could dust up the loose ends like me. Maybe the commissioner needed to prove himself. Mass arrests happened, raids in places that were merely guilty by association. Countless lives were upended overnight—a bunch of band-aids on surface scratches, a blind eye to the corpse riven with cancer.
And now, like then, I’ve been left alone in a featureless room, given a cursory examination to make sure I have no concussion or any other lasting damage, then painkillers. A duffle bag at my feet that contains all my earthly possessions (worn clothes, prescriptions, a few keepsakes), local currency, a laptop, and two phones. Richest I’ve been in years. Yuwada said, half-seriously, that if she could she would chip me like a dog. But there’s no need for that, is there? Her smile was slow, poisonous. We’re united by a common cause.
My cover story: that I am an immigrant, like so many others, fled from the ruin of what was once glorious. The inspector has prepared accommodation for me in Americatown—the district with the highest crime rate in Singapore—and will arrange an incident that’ll bring me to the attention of a Hua recruiter.
On my feet, I stretch, testing muscles that went numb during the cramped flight. Some bruises, no lasting damage. More or less fine altogether. I didn’t even lose the tooth.
The public areas of Changi Airport look ridiculously lustrous. Not one but five indoor gardens, long stretches of green with massive water features. Everything is polished, manicured within an inch of its life; even the tourists dress well. Everything smells clean. San Francisco is one of the more intact towns in America, but it’s nothing like this. Standing under the sweeping glass and steel, it’s easy to buy wholesale into the idea—that my homeland is a barren ruin, and this is a bastion of civilization. That this is where real humans abide.
The taxi driver looks askance—I’ve obviously been hit in the face—and when I tell him I need to get to an address in Americatown, he says he’ll drop me several blocks away. I don’t argue. The driver seat is on the right, a disorienting thought.
Despite Americatown’s reputation, I find that I don’t have to wade through mounded corpses and crime scenes to reach the high-walled tenement that will serve as my home away from home. Hell, there’s even a busker performing a horrible rendition of Bruce Springsteen, for the tourists that brave the supposed danger to take a photo and gawk at the refugees. Flags of the homeland proliferate. I stop to buy lunch from a taco truck.
My rented room isn't terrible. Not large, not small; no evidence of bedbugs; clean sheets. The blandest decor imaginable, anonymous in its lack of personality. There are probably tourists staying in the same building even, cheap or slumming. Compared to where I have spent the past several years, it’s downright palatial.
I examine my equipment next. The first phone is fully charged, normal-looking enough, not a device customized for the use of state intelligence; the other one will be the more sensitive device, with real
An indifferent laptop—the workhorse sort, impact-resistant and heavily cased. I turn it on and input the password Yuwada gave me. Desktop’s bare except for a few files. I open them, eating carefully as I browse. Dossiers on the Huas. First the younger sibling—Viveca, the public-facing arms dealer. The profile is replete with photos from CCTVs and public outings where she looks as ordinary as any civilian; apparently she has had children kidnapped and murdered in cold blood, and she was involved in an all-out crossfire right here in Singapore a few years ago.
Of the elder Hua sister, Oleysa, information is much thinner. No photos at all. Word is that she is seizing Singapore’s underworld, that her security is absolute, and that most of her underlings don’t even know what she looks like. Yuwada said she is our first target, and it will be her part of the cartel that I am infiltrating.
Another dossier: the lapdog, Yves Hua.
I put down the taco, appetite curdled. Rationally, I know that she’s just a hound acting on the command of her mistresses, that she would never have even known we existed otherwise. Less rationally, I want to wrap my hands around her neck and break it; I want to shatter her face against the concrete; I want her loved ones to walk-in on the carnage I found, and know a fraction of my anger and pain.
There is lots of conjecture about her movements—why she left North America, which arms dealers she has worked for, why she has now thrown her lot in with Huas. A lengthy digression into her religious background, some analyst really leaning into his racist thesis that Anglo-Christians are predisposed to violence. Finally, there is footage of Yves Hua executing a Caucasian man on a Little India rooftop in broad daylight. Untouchable, even here in civilized Singapore.
A cold comfort comes to me. I think back to Yuwada’s expression and voice when she spoke of the Huas. I knew then that in her I have, not a friend, but at least a kindred spirit. She hates the Huas as much as I do, and she’ll scorch the earth itself to get at them.
Perhaps it’s principle; perhaps it’s personal, a minion of the Huas having hurt someone she cared about. I don’t care; it’s personal for me, and that’s motivation enough. Yuwada is an ally of convenience, if that. Let her look down on me and mine; it’ll be my hands stained red with Hua blood.
I finish the taco. Wasting food will just leave you hungry later.
♦
A diner, situated in the inner warrens of Americatown. Dimly lit, a jukebox in one corner, the menu full of familiar items: bacon and waffles, chicken-fried steak, sandwiches, apple pie. Grease in the air, mixing with cheap beer; someone has strung up some black-and-orange bats for Halloween. It’s just like home, really. There even are photos of my country, pre-Fall—famous landmarks, now debris; beautiful vistas, now rubble.
Do all empires look the same in wreckage? I thought about this a lot in my prison cell. From within its gray walls, the outside world might as well not have changed; prison is a microcosm unto itself. In that regard, the things that made America what it was are still alive, still with us, violent and unchanging substrate beneath a glittering facade. Empire, then, as a polite veneer; rip that off and the bones and mucus below are the same whatever the continent, whichever the culture. It is this knowledge—that everything is violence, that no law or government is sacrosanct, that death is political and any life can be taken—which fortifies me in my impossible war against the Huas.
One-third of the tables are occupied by Americans of every ethnicity: it’s not one of those segregated establishments, a small relief. The once-powerful often double down on the racism and jingoism, pack it into their luggage and carry it with them, let it burn in their hearts even as they are obligated to make a home in a dark and foreign place. I remember Yuwada’s sneer and can’t feel angry about it; before it all fell apart, we Americans worked hard to earn the reputation we have.
Regardless, I’ve never had a good time with white supremacists, for all that I’d nominally fit in. But I fit in here, too, without appealing to racism; what unites these diners and me is the fact that we all look tough, that none of us are dressed well, that everyone is a construction worker or janitor or line cook—those jobs which are available to refugees whose credentials and degrees, if any, have no meaning on this island with its spotless streets, its forest of skyscrapers.
If you’re lucky—belong to the right ethnicity, have the right kind of skin and face—you can apply for heritage repatriation. I had no such luck, though I hear a few Chinese-Americans have assimilated into the mainland that way. Most people lack such options, are impeded by a lack of linguistic fluency or cultural connection; we may have perfected discrimination in the States, but racism is endemic.
And so the refugees come to Americatown here, a Little America elsewhere, diasporic pockets springing up around the world: grotesque and filthy, like pale earthworms struggling out of the soil after a rain. But it is life. You must give it that much.
I order a Coke and an apple pie. The waitress is freckled and plump, a woman who I expect has an East Asian parent but who doesn’t quite make the grade for heritage repatriation. Strange how the world upends, how this or that set of features becomes an advantage—or otherwise—with the shift of who is ascendant, who has been brought low.
The pie arrives piping hot; probably came out of a box, but I’m not going to complain. I eat slowly and set the Coke aside. You don’t want to go into a brawl with a too-full stomach.
Yuwada’s arrangement happens when I’m halfway through the pie.
Two cops in their navy blues—such a hateful color, wherever you go. Their movements feel almost choreographed, or maybe it’s that it is so routine, the constant of relations between police and underclass. Their chosen victim—and therefore a minion of the Huas—is an old man, Latino I think, who is texting on his phone and sipping his orange juice. It’s perfectly chosen. Even if I weren’t party to this play, there’s something about the elderly that invites instant sympathy. You immediately imagine for them a life long and gently lived, grandchildren they dote on, sitting at their feet to hear stories. Reality may be otherwise, but the surface appearance is key.
They push him around. They upset the glass; it falls and spills, drenching the old man’s lap. I wait a few seconds and discover no one’s going to step up. Same as ever.
I stride over, tap one of the cops on the shoulder. “Excuse me. What’s this man done?”
He glares. “This is a police matter.”
“I’m just curious. He’s my coworker’s uncle, and—”
The cop takes a swing. Whether it’s part of Yuwada’s script or he’s doing it because he can, who knows. Either way I dodge and throw my full cup of Coke in his face, carried over for this express purpose; street techniques aren’t about playing fair. He splutters and spits as ice cubes trail down his face and I drive my elbow into his partner’s gut.
I grab the old man. We make a run for it.
The police give chase, but not far and not with any real ferocity. By the time we’re two blocks away, we’re safe.
The old man is less winded than I expected. He gathers his breath before turning to me. “Now why exactly did you do that, young lady?”
I haven’t been addressed like that for a long time. His accent signals he’s not actually my countryman at all. British, maybe, the moneyed pronunciation of news anchors. “I’m no saint, but two cops beating up an old man is hard to swallow.”
He makes a rattling laugh. “And what if I’d been a suspect for some awful crime? The murder of a little child, an arson, a home invasion?”
“Then you would be that, I guess. I’d still have done what I set out to do. Can’t read minds.” I let my accent take over, thickening my vowels, not what you show immigration officers. Not that I had to pass through any customs, but even with Inspector Thammarangkul I kept my English crisper, nicer than my natural pronunciation.
“They’ll remember your face, you know.”
I shrug. “Hell, plenty of women look like me. You think they can tell us apart? I’ll just keep away from public places for a few days.”
