by Ted Peters
Cyrus Twelve
Leona Foxx Suspense Thriller #2
Ted Peters
Apocryphile Press
1700 Shattuck Ave. #81
Berkeley, CA 94709
Copyright © 2018 by Ted Peters.
All rights reserved.
Paperback ISBN 978-1-947826-86-1
Ebook ISBN 978-1-947826-87-8
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Thanks
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
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Thanks
To word smith, phrase smith, brilliant literary critic, and belovéd spouse, Karen Ann Peters, I render humble thanks for polishing this book.
“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia,
‘The LORD, the God of heaven,
has given me all the kingdoms of the earth,
and he has charged me to build him
a house at Jerusalem.”
—2 Chronicles 36:23
Chapter 1
With his left hand he reached into the terrarium swarming with snakes. After three stabbing motions, he successfully seized a cobra around the neck just under the head. He lifted the serpent, turning it so that he held the adder’s head shoulder high while its undulating five-foot length hung down toward the ground. An angry open mouth thrusted a frantic tongue, searching hopelessly for an object to light on.
With his right hand the diminutive forty-year-old Chinese man in the blood-smudged white apron picked up a large kitchen knife. He placed the point, carefully and precisely, just under his left hand, on the neck of the snake, then punctured the soft under-jaw skin. With a single ceremonious motion, he slit downward, impaling the entire length of the underbelly. The serpent’s body throbbed wildly. After dropping the knife, the man inserted his index finger in the snake’s neck. With a one sweeping downward motion, he stripped the serpent’s interior of its entrails creating a bloody cascade into the street gutter below. Then he turned and carried his still writhing reptile toward the kitchen.
Leona Foxx stepped over the gutter filled with snake entrails into the open-air section of the night market restaurants. The air was filled with a dank, thick aroma, a curious combination of freshly discarded innards mixed with those swept aside hours earlier. She walked past the tanks holding pythons and poisonous slithering imports. She walked past the cages holding domesticated rats and mice. Snakes eat rodents and people eat snakes.
Leona stood pensively in the middle of the restaurant for a few seconds, visually surveying the customers, not certain who she was looking for. A man, to be sure. But, Chinese? Anglo? Other? All she had been told was that he would be an elderly gentleman dining on snake meat and drinking its blood. Numerous customers fit this description. Now, just who might be looking for me?
Tables in Taiwanese restaurants typically host an entire family including infants along with their siblings, parents, and grandparents. The undercurrent of voices, occasional laughter and babies crying throughout the crowded market somehow made her visual task of scanning more challenging. Someone sitting alone should be more easily distinguishable. Leona’s eyes continued to dart from table to table until she thought she could see one such individual near the rear of the restaurant’s interior eating area. She walked toward his table. It was set for one, but it was flanked by three chairs.
The lone diner was wearing a traditional Chinese red silk embroidered shirt fastened neatly with black cord frogs. It fit loosely, with bulky sleeves that draped onto the table. Snake on the plate next to his bottle of Taiwan Beer? Leona thought. Where’s the glass of blood? Is blood even served in glasses? The graying Chinese senior seemed to concentrate on his food, not noticing Leona intruding herself into his immediate environment. He seemed oblivious to her approach.
Perhaps I’m mistaken. Leona halted and turned to survey the restaurant guests once again. Then she heard a mumbled, English phrase, “Cyrus Twelve.” It was spoken by the man somewhat under his breath while placing a bite of snake meat into his mouth. He still had not looked at her directly.
Leona slowly stepped around to the far side of his small table and seated herself. At five foot eight, the American visitor to the island Republic of China towered above her average Asian counterparts. Her shoulder length amber hair set her apart from the native black hair. She had scarcely made herself comfortable when the waiter showed up. “Taiwan Beer and a bowl of sea turtle soup,” she said in English without having looked at a menu. Turning to the elderly man across from her, she continued: “Is that what I should order?”
“Whatever suits you,” he said, looking up at her. “Do you have anything to say to me?”
“Yes, of course: Cyrus Twelve,” re
sponded Leona.
“Now, that was easy,” he said. “Are you enjoying your vacation in Taipei?”
Leona felt a certain level of discomfort at this awkward introduction, but she veiled any suspicion behind a warm yet serious smile. She looked directly into the man’s luminous brown eyes and was reassured.
The waiter promptly brought a twenty-ounce brown bottle of beer and poured a foamy portion into a six-ounce straight up glass. Leona took a sip, and waited a moment. “I’m not here on vacation; despite what I’ve told my Chicago friends. Getting down to business right now is okay with me. But, first I’d like to ask why you’re so fluent in the Queen’s English?”
“My father’s father fought with the Kuomintang. Once the Republic of China was established in the 1950s and the Americans provided for our security against an invasion by the Peoples’ Republic of China, I had the opportunity to serve in the army next to Americans.” the man spoke while continuing to chew his snake meat.
“I even spent some time in your country with the army and later in the UK working on my doctorate. I not only improved my English, but picked up the bad American habit of smoking and then chewing gum,” the man said with a smile and chuckle. “I graduated from Fu Jen Catholic University here in Taipei and later earned a Ph.D. in History at Cambridge.
“So, there is the Reader’s Digest version of my English acquisition, complete with a reference to Reader’s Digest!” he said with an amused tone, looking at Leona to see if she might break her intense stare. She did and smiled back at him.
“Now, are you ready to get down to business?” he asked.
“Of course. Thanks for breaking the ice. Where do I go from here?”
“Okay. Our cutout is a young woman, Katia Rui. Her first name sounds like the Russian nickname for Katearina, Katya. She doesn’t work for anybody. Well, not for anybody like us. She’s a lab technician and courier in a computer components company, called TaiCom. It was quite by accident that she stumbled upon the plot and was able to steal a sample chip. Actually, it’s more than a sample chip. It’s the prototype that will be used later in manufacturing. It tells all. We need it. I can’t go for it because everybody knows me. That’s why we’ve asked you to make the connection. All you need to do is look like a tourist. Katia will take care of the rest.”
“So, I get the chip from Katia. I give it to you. Then what?”
“Over the weekend we make a copy. Then we get it back before Monday morning. Nobody will even know it was gone.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Leona said with a hint of disbelief in her voice as she scanned the room with a bit of uneasiness. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed three men, seated at an outdoor table, under the restaurant’s awning. All Asian, perhaps Mongolian. All young and not as talkative as one might expect of three boys out for the evening. One was dressed in traditional Chinese garb, the other two in Western style sweatshirts. Only beer sat on their table. No food.
She gave her attention back to the man across from her. “What is your name?” she asked her new comrade.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said curtly. Leona responded with a look that scrunched her brow as if to say that it did. But said nothing.
The waiter arrived with her soup, bowing and smiling, and placing the spoon neatly next to the bowl.
“For the sake of Bremerhaven, do you see what I see?” Leona said in a loud whisper. “Over there. Under the awning.”
He looked without looking like he was looking. “Asian fecal matter,” he muttered. “Pretend you don’t notice them.”
“Okay. Now, who knows about Katia?” she asked
“No one knows, we hope. But, we can’t be sure. If she’s discovered, she will be in danger. As of right now, however, we think everything’s copasetic. Once she has divested herself of the chip, she’ll be safe if the rest of us keep our mouths shut.”
“Does she know all this?”
“Oh, yes. We helped her devise her plan to pass it off.”
“What’s the plan?”
“That’s where you come in.”
“I gathered that.”
“She’s expecting to meet you at the Lungshan Temple tomorrow morning, Friday, at 11:30. She will find you. She’ll be on her lunch hour. Have a pleasant lunch together. Get to know one another. Make it look like a friendship, just in the unlikelihood that you’ll be watched.”
“Will she physically pass me the chip?”
“Yes. But, that’s not all. She needs to provide you verbally with a conceptual map of operations. She’ll explain just what we need to know about the chip. Once we have the chip, we’ll copy it. In addition, we’ll modify it with a fault, modify it so that it malfunctions. But, the change will be invisible. At least we hope it’ll be invisible for a while. We’ll accomplish all this over the weekend. On Monday morning, you’ll give it back to Katia. She’ll replace it with this modification, and TaiCom’s plan will go forward. But the TaiCom people will confront a frustrating failure. By the time they remedy the fault, our counter technology will be in place to thwart the entire project.”
“How did you ever connect with Katia? It amazes me that you were able to find someone so close to the source.”
“It’s a long story which I will tell you after the switch is complete. Let’s just say that the old American saying, ‘It’s not what you know but who you know’ applies here. We connected with her through a third party. Katia has a strong sense of justice and knew she had to turn a ‘wrong’ into a ‘right’.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Leona could see that one of the three men she’d been watching had left their table. Two remained seated. Where had the third one gone? Perhaps to the toilet. After placing a few spoons full of turtle soup to her mouth and sipping the beer, she addressed her tablemate. “We’ll need to decide on a way to contact one another. Do you want my cell phone number?”
Each punched the other’s number into their respective cells. Leona noted a text message had arrived from Angie, her BFF in Dearborn, Michigan. She ignored it.
“Just what name should I assign your number to?” asked the American.
“Bernard Lee. You might as well know my name. We’ll meet again after you’ve secured the chip. Tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. Front gate of the Lungshan Temple. Got it? I will tell you the story of Katia.”
Just as they had pocketed their phones, the third man from the corner table pulled up a chair and sat at their table.
Chapter 2
Taipei
Like Bernard, the new visitor was wearing a traditional red silk Chinese shirt, fully buttoned, with draping sleeves. The embroidery was less intricate, indicating a cheaper version of the classic style. On his left hand at the base of the thumb knuckle was a small tattoo, a dragon with a tail as long as a snake, that wrapped around the body of the dragon, the tip of the tail pointing down towards the wrist. Under the dragon was a single Chinese character.
Bernard studied the man, carefully inspecting the detail of his tattoo. Leona studied Bernard, and noted that his eyes opened wider. Bernard looked Leona squarely in the eye with an intensity that sent a shiver through her.
The man spoke a few staccato words in Mandarin. His tone clearly spoke anger. Leona did not understand Chinese, but she instantly understood they were in danger. The other two men from the outside table had risen to their feet, walking with a purposeful gait into the restaurant’s interior. Then the two separated so they could walk toward the table from opposite directions. Leona figured it was time to act.
Leona casually picked up the large steak knife her dinner partner had been using on his snake meat. She raised it high, then plunged the knife through the draped sleeve of the uninvited guest, burying it down deep into the wooden table. His arm was now trapped. With all the frogs fastened on his shirt, he would not be able to quickly extricate himself.
Bernard gave Leona a smile of gratitude. “Now, run for it!”
The two leaped up and raced through the restaur
ant door into the narrow street. The two suspicious looking thugs followed, while the third remained temporarily imprisoned at the far table.
“Split up,” said Bernard as he raced to his left. Leona took off running to her right. Their two hunters also split, each chasing one of the prey.
Leona in her running shoes raced through the crowd of night shoppers swarming around the alley shops, followed close behind one of the toughies. Each dodged a myriad of bicyclists and baby carriages. Leona looked over her shoulder frequently but, to her dismay, she had not yet shaken him. Surprisingly, the chase drew relatively little attention from the pressing crowd.