The Dragon's Mark

4

It felt as if a giant hand picked her up and threw her against the floor, the concussion hammering her senses until her head reeled. She bounded off the marble floor and slid into the wall with enough force to nearly knock her senseless.

Only the fact that it had been a concussion grenade, rather than an explosive one, saved her life. She was still trying to figure out which way was up when Garin rushed to her side.

“Annja! Are you all right?” he asked, his voice seeming to come from miles away as the roaring in her ears continued.

She nodded, still too caught up in the emotion of the moment to speak. Her heart was beating like crazy and she fought to get her breathing under control as Garin helped her into a sitting position.

At last she found her voice.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m all right.”

Using his arm for support she pulled herself all the way to her feet and then stood on still-wobbling legs. Her gaze landed on the lock of hair that the intruder’s sword had cut from her head.

Too close.

She glanced over at the intruders. Or rather, what was left of them. Garin hadn’t spared any ammunition it seemed; every body was riddled with bullet holes and blood leaked across the marble floor beneath them.

“Did you have to kill them all?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Now why didn’t that surprise her? “But if you had managed to only wound one or two, we might have been able to question them. Learn who they were and why they were here.”

Garin grunted. “Or they might have managed to kill us both. Thank you, but I’ll take the safer way out every time, particularly where my life is concerned.”

Annja did not doubt that in the slightest. When it came to protecting his long life, Garin was exceedingly ruthless.

At any rate, it was too late now to argue about it.

Garin stepped over to the window and cautiously looked out, but the intruder must have been long gone for he turned away, shaking his head. He was on his way back to Annja’s side when Roux and Henshaw arrived.

“Is everyone all right?” Roux asked as he stepped into the room, surveying the death and destruction before him.

“We’re fine,” Annja replied as Garin nodded in assent.

“What happened up here?” Roux asked.

Annja explained how she’d arrived to find the intruders already in the room and what had happened after that. She didn’t mention her near defeat at the hands of the final swordsman; that was for her and her alone. No one was too surprised at the realization that Annja had held off six attackers on her own; they had all seen her wield Joan’s sword at one time or another in the past and they knew just how deadly she could be with the weapon in hand.

“Did they say anything? Do anything that gave you some idea what they might have been after?”

Annja shook her head.

“I don’t get it,” Roux said. He glanced around the room, a puzzled expression on his face. “The assault force at the front of the house seems to have been a diversion. They made no attempt to take the manor itself and only put up just enough of a fight to keep the security force occupied.”

“Given what we know at this point, I’d say the whole thing was a diversion to allow this group to enter the house from the back,” Henshaw suggested.

“A logical assumption, I agree, but why? What was it they were after?” Roux glanced at the weapons decorating the walls and Annja could see him silently cataloging each one, gauging whether there was something valuable enough among them to warrant such an attempt. By the confused look on his face she could guess that the answer to that question was a solid no.

As the others looked on, Garin squatted next to one of the bodies. Reaching out, he pulled off the dead man’s ninja mask and hood, revealing his face.

The man was Asian. Somewhere in his thirties or so, was Annja’s guess. He was dressed in a dark blue coverall, similar to those worn by special forces units all around the world, with dark combat boots on his feet. A quick check showed that any identifying tags or markings had been stripped from the uniform.

“Recognize him?” Annja asked, only half-jokingly.

Garin scowled at her, annoyed by the comment apparently. “No, I don’t recognize him,” he replied. “Do you?”

Annja snorted. She wasn’t the one who dealt in the shadow world of dirty tricks and ruthless competition.

Neither Roux nor Henshaw had ever seen the man. With Henshaw’s help, Garin lined the bodies up next to one another and then he began to methodically search them for information while the other three looked on. He stripped them of their masks and pulled back their hoods, gazing at each face as if it might be able to tell him something. He went through their pockets, checked the labels on their clothing and even looked inside the boots they all wore.

Finally he stood, a disgusted look on his face.

“Nothing,” he said. “They’re as clean as a whistle.”

“Professionals, eh?” Henshaw asked, and the expression on his face told Annja how he felt about that revelation. A random break-in was one thing, but the knowledge that this had been planned and executed to within a fair chance of success was something else entirely.

Garin nodded. “Seems to be,” he replied. “Though that doesn’t tell us what they were after.”

“Or whom,” Roux added.

Annja had been content to listen in on the exchange but broke in at this point. “What do you mean ‘whom’?”

“Seems rather obvious, doesn’t it?” Garin answered for him. “They slip a group in the back door while the security team is otherwise occupied dealing with the assault out in front. With all of our attention in that direction, the second group would have had the opportunity to move through the house at will. Probably could have ambushed any one of us before we even knew they were there.”

Henshaw glanced over at Annja. “Seems you saved the day, Ms. Creed.”

“But that still doesn’t tell us what they were after.” Roux scowled down at the bodies in front of him. From his expression Annja knew he would have killed them himself had they lived through the assault.

She caught Garin staring at their host and recognized that mischievous expression in his eye.

Uh-oh.

“Pissed anyone off lately, Roux?” he asked, perhaps with a bit more force than he’d intended.

The damage was done, however. Roux noticeably stiffened, then shot back with, “No more than usual. Perhaps they were after someone with a bit less scrupulous business dealings.”

Now it was Garin’s turn to bristle. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. You have a far greater capacity for annoying others than I do! Maybe they were here to settle a debt with you.”

The younger man threw up his hands in annoyance and took a step toward his former companion. “Oh, I get it. It is your home that is attacked, your security that is penetrated, but suddenly I’m the one to blame.”

Rather than back down, Roux moved to meet him. “You’re right—it is my home that was attacked, my security that was penetrated. And I suppose it is just a strange coincidence that it happened on the evening that you planned a surprise party for me, now, isn’t it?”

Annja watched as Garin’s face grew red with anger. “You think I had something to do with this? That I would stoop so low as that? To try and kill you in your own home?” He was shouting now, and Roux was shouting right back, throwing accusations back and forth like some misguided game of catch.

Henshaw stepped between the two men, hands up, holding them back, trying to dissipate the anger before the two went after each other with more than words. The goodwill generated earlier in the evening was gone. If she didn’t do something quickly, Annja realized, there would be blood on the floor soon.

“Stop it, both of you!” she said sharply, and much to her surprise, they actually did.

“Given the incredible number of artifacts and pieces of art inside this house, the most reasonable assumption is that this was nothing more than a well-staged robbery. Lucky for us and unlucky for them, they just happened to choose the wrong night.”

Both men backed off but it was clear that no one was happy with the situation. After a few minutes of angry silence, Roux pulled Henshaw aside and spoke to him quietly, occasionally casting glances in Garin’s direction.

Garin, on the other hand, pretended to ignore him, then announced that he was returning to the study downstairs. Annja went with him. It was a good ten minutes before Roux joined them, which was probably for the best as it gave both men some time to cool down.

Within minutes of his arrival it was clear that the night was over. What had made the evening enjoyable was gone and the chances were slim that they would be able to recapture it. It wasn’t so much the armed assault on Roux’s home, though that would normally be enough to put anyone off their game, but the suspicions that had been tossed around afterward that made their continued conversations strained and uncomfortable. After a short period of time Garin excused himself, claiming a business engagement early in the morning, and offered to give Annja a ride back to her hotel.

When she refused, he said, “Suit yourself,” and left the estate without even a goodbye to their host.

What had started so well had ended badly and Annja couldn’t help but wonder how many times over the years the same thing had happened.

No wonder the two of them were reluctant to spend any time together, she thought.

To fill the silence after Garin’s departure, Annja asked Roux whether he had called the local authorities or those in Paris. “Detectives from the city would probably be better equipped to handle this kind of thing,” she reasoned.

Roux stared at her. “Why on earth would I want to do something so…counterproductive?”

Annja was almost certain that the word on his lips had been stupid, not counterproductive, but she let it go in order to deal with the issue at hand. “Your estate has been attacked. People have died. How can you not call the police?”

“Quite simply, really. We’ll deal with this internally, just as we always do.”

“But—”

He cut her off. “I said no police, Annja. I don’t need incompetent idiots poking around my house, touching my things, when my staff is perfectly capable of handling this on their own.”

At that moment Henshaw stuck his head in the door. “The room’s been cleared, sir. The cleaning crew will be in first thing in the morning to scrub the blood off the floor and to patch the bullet holes by the window.

“Very good, Henshaw. Thank you.”

Annja was aghast. “You can’t just destroy evidence like that!”

Roux laughed and this time it was an ugly sound. “This is my home, Annja. I can do whatever I want in it, including shooting armed intruders foolish enough to enter it. You and your friend Garin would do well to remember that I am not the feeble old man you appear to think I am.”

With that he got up and left the room, leaving Annja staring openmouthed in amazement that he had felt the need to threaten her, of all people. Just what had this night come to?

Deciding she’d had her share of five-hundred-year-old egos for the evening, she strode through the house and back to the second floor, intending to collect her backpack from the room she’d stored it in and get the heck out of there before she said something she would regret later.

But once on the second floor, she felt herself drawn back to the room where she’d come close to losing her life, as if called there by the secrets they were trying so hard to figure out.

5

Annja Creed stood inside the doorway and let her gaze just wander about, without focusing on anything in particular. Her thoughts kept returning to those few moments just before the fight, when she’d first entered the room. She could still see them in her mind’s eyes, the first five men arranged in two precise rows, their swords out and ready, providing the most protection possible for their leader. They had all been standing still, eyes forward, almost as if they had been…

Waiting.

That was what was bothering her.

They hadn’t been moving throughout the room. They hadn’t been actively looking through the artifacts on the walls or heading toward the door to join their colleagues at the front of the house.

They’d been standing still.

Waiting.

But for what?

She didn’t have a clue.

She looked past the bloodstains on the floor and the pile of extra sheets that had been set there in case more were needed to transport the bodies out of the house, and tried to see the place through fresh eyes.

She was missing something and she knew it. It hovered there, on the edge of her mind, like a presence felt but not seen, a watcher in the darkness. There was something here for her to find, something important, but all she could see was row upon row of swords and the fragments of the window scattered across the floor thanks to the combination of Garin’s bullets and the concussion wave of the grenade.

Finally, frustrated and more than a bit annoyed at everyone involved, she turned away, intending to arrange a ride back to her hotel and call it a night.

That was when her eye caught something out of place, a slight anomaly in the otherwise orderly arrangement of the collection.

She turned back and began going over the rows of weapons again, one item at a time, piece by piece, until she could rule each out.

There!

Standing on the hilt of a broadsword that was remarkably similar to the one that had come to her through the centuries was a small figure. When she stepped closer to get a better look, she discovered that it was made from paper. The origami figure was in the shape of a dragon, with swept back wings and a long winding tail.

She stared at it, trying to figure out how it had gotten there.

Annja had been around Henshaw enough times to know that he ruled the cleaning staff with an iron hand. None of them would have dared leave something like the origami dragon behind, no matter how innocuous it seemed. Certainly Henshaw would never do such a thing himself.

The lack of dust on the weapons meant that the display had been cleaned recently, probably in the past day or two. In turn, logic dictated that the paper figurine could only be that old, as well; after all, had the cleaning crew found it they would have thrown it away, if only to save themselves from Henshaw’s ire if he found it himself.

While there was certainly nothing innately threatening about a small piece of paper folded into the shape of a mythical creature, something about this one made Annja distinctly uncomfortable.

It was so unexpected and so out of place that it made her skin crawl, the same way hearing a voice in a darkened room when you think you are alone will.

It was almost as if it had been purposely left behind. A small token to remind them that someone other than themselves had been here, in this place, where no outsider should be.

She reached out to pick it up and then thought better of it and swiftly withdrew her hand. If it had been left by the intruders, then she needed to take care to preserve whatever evidence might have been left behind.

She needed to treat it as carefully as she might a thousand-year-old artifact just recently exposed to the light.

Annja left the display room and walked down the hall to the room, where she’d left her backpack. Retrieving her digital camera, she returned to the display room.

She half expected the origami dragon to be gone when she got back—having it disappear would be about par for the course that evening—but it was still there, right where she left it. She turned on her camera and went to work. She took close-up pictures of the figure from as many angles as possible and then made certain to get some positioning shots, as well, to illustrate just where on the wall the sword on which it stood was hung.

When she was finished, she used a pair of tweezers to lift the paper sculpture off the shelf.

Now it was time to do some serious research.

Roux had already refused to bring the intrusion to the attention of the Paris police, but that didn’t mean that Annja was out of options.

Far from it, in fact.

FROM A PUBLIC PAY phone in Paris the call was routed through a number of middlemen and cutouts, designed to hide the origin of the contact should anyone be listening in, until it was at last picked up via cell phone in the back of a limousine.

“Yes?”

“She’s an interesting opponent. Perhaps even a worthy one.”

“I didn’t hire you to evaluate her abilities. Can you carry out the task we discussed or not?”

There was a soft, mocking laugh. “Of course I can. Am I not the Dragon, myth incarnate and legend made flesh?”

“Don’t be overconfident. She’s survived far too often when the odds were arrayed against her. You’d do well to remember that.”

Again the laugh. “Let me worry about the odds. You just be sure the money is in the account as agreed. You have the hotel information?”

“Yes. She’s staying at the Four Seasons.”

“Oh, fancy. Nothing but the best, I see.”

The other ignored the jibe. “Remember, she must give up the sword voluntarily. Anything else will defeat our purposes.”

“I know the details. You remember the money and we won’t have any issues.”

The call ended as quickly and as anonymously as it had begun.

Just the way both parties preferred it.

6

Because Henshaw was still involved in the cleanup at the estate, Roux had one of his other men drive Annja back to her hotel in the city. She was fine with that; if she had seen Henshaw again that night she would have had to tell him just what she thought of his participation in eradicating a crime scene and that wouldn’t have gone over well with either of them.

Once back at the hotel, she checked her messages at the front desk and then rode the elevator to the sixth floor. Not satisfied with anything as simple as a basic hotel room, Garin had booked her into a three-room suite, complete with a spa bath, a comfortable sitting room and a separate bedroom.

As soon as she was safely ensconced inside, Annja fired up her laptop and hooked her digital camera to it, downloading the pictures she’d taken of the origami dragon. Once she was finished she chose four of the best images and then attached them to an e-mail to her friend, Bart McGille.

A Brooklyn detective who was also a dear friend, Bart had helped her in the past when she needed information, and he was as good a source as any to start with.

Dear Bart,

Attached are several photos of an origami figure that was left behind by a thief who broke into a friend’s apartment in Paris. Due to the owner’s reluctance to involve the police, I can’t have the authorities here examine the figure but it has certainly sparked my curiosity. Can you do an Interpol search for me and let me know if anything similar has turned up at other crime scenes?