“Well, if it isn’t my rooftop savior,” she said. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. Score one for Henshaw, she thought.

The newcomer at least had the grace to look sheepish about the deception. “Sorry I couldn’t say anything to you then. Operational parameters and all that.”

If there had been even a trace of smugness in his response she would have made him regret it, but since he sounded entirely sincere, Annja let it go.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

Henshaw made the formal introductions. “Annja, meet Marco. Marco, Annja. Now let’s get on with this.”

Marco explained that he was there to show Annja how to wire herself up with a microphone and receiver for the next night. “Have you ever used anything like this before?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I know how to use a walkie-talkie. Does that count?”

Marco laughed. “Technology has come a long way since then, but at least the principle is the same.”

He walked over to the desk and took several small black cases the size of jewelry boxes from the pockets of his light coat.

He opened one of them and removed two flesh-colored pieces of plastic from inside. To Annja they looked like earbud headphones minus the wires.

Marco handed one to Annja and one to Henshaw.

“This is your receiver,” he said. “It sits inside your ear just like a hearing aid does, except it is so small it is practically invisible to anyone standing nearby. They would need to actively look inside your ear to spot it. Go on and try it—we need to make sure we get the fit right.”

Henshaw had obviously used one before. He popped it, tugged on his earlobe for a moment and announced that it was fine.

Annja, on the other hand, had to twist and turn hers for a moment before she got a good fit.

Marco picked up one of the other boxes, opened it and showed them both the wafer-thin piece of flesh-colored plastic it contained. “This is a microphone disk. Peel away the protective covering to expose the adhesive and then just press it firmly against your skin. Somewhere near your neck or upper chest is usually the best place. It’s extremely sensitive, but I wouldn’t count on it picking up your words if you stick it on your calf, for instance.”

Marco picked up the mini-walkie-talkie from the pile of gear on the table in front of him. “Go ahead and put on a mike, then we’ll give them a test.”

He waited to be certain they both followed the instructions he’d given and then walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

A moment later Annja could hear Marco’s voice in her ear. “Testing, one, two, three. Can you hear me, Annja?”

“Yes, I can hear you.”

“All right, hang on a minute while I check Henshaw’s gear.”

He repeated the sequence with her partner and then returned to the living room. He collected their equipment, put the each set of earpieces and corresponding mikes into a single case and handed a case to each of them.

“They have a battery life of twenty-four hours, so don’t put them on until you’re ready to go—” he hesitated for a moment “—wherever it is you’re going.”

Annja eyed the box in her hand thoughtfully. “What about interception or interference?”

Marco shrugged. “The radios use a pretty rare frequency and the signals are encrypted automatically, so you won’t pick up anyone else’s traffic, nor will they pick up yours. The transmitter might be small but it’s powerful. You should be able to remain in contact with each other up to two miles away. It will even penetrate solid rock up to five hundred feet thick, so the walls of a building or even an entire house shouldn’t be any kind of problem for you. That’s the best I can do on short notice.”

Annja nearly laughed. If that was what he could do on short notice, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he’d be capable of when given more time. Probably reroute the NSA’s supersecret satellites just to get his voice mail, she thought.

With the communications issues resolved, Henshaw saw Marco out the door. He was gone for a few minutes, and when he came back Annja was waiting for him with an annoyed look on her face.

“Let me guess. He’s an old friend who just happened to be hanging around down the street when you called. Out with it, Henshaw.”

He mumbled something about not knowing what she was talking about.

But after all that had happened, there was no way she was going to settle for a feeble excuse.

“I said, spill it!”

Henshaw hesitated for another moment or two, then sighed. “No sense in keeping things a secret now, is there?” he asked.

Annja chose to take that as a rhetorical question and simply waited for him to continue.

“We’ve had you under surveillance ever since the day you left the estate,” he said.

“Why?”

“Roux was worried. He knew about the Dragon—knew what he was capable of, how far he would go to get something he wanted. At the same time he’d heard rumors about an artifact the Dragon was supposed to possess.”

“You mean Muramasa’s sword?”

“Yes, right, the sword.” Henshaw tried but failed to hide his surprise that she knew about the weapon.

Of course she knew about the weapon. Did they think she was an idiot?

“And then what?” she prompted, feeling her anger rise. “Did he think he was going to just dangle me out there as bait? Wait and see what happened?”

Henshaw’s face went still. “I wasn’t privy to all his plans, Ms. Creed.”

So they were back to Ms. Creed now, were they? “I have half a mind to just leave him there, Henshaw. He was playing games with my life!”

Wisely her companion remained silent.

After several minutes, Annja said, “Okay, we both know that I can’t leave him in her hands any more than you can, no matter how angry I am. So let’s figure out the rest of this plan and call it a night.”

They talked for another hour, getting everything straight so that when the time came they both knew what they were supposed to be doing and when. It was a reasonable plan, straightforward, without too many things that could trip them up. Of course, she thought, there was always the unexpected, but that couldn’t be helped.

Afterward they made arrangements with the manager to have a cab waiting for them in the hotel’s underground garage so they could slip away from the hotel without being seen.

Assuming that Annja’s loft was being watched, they staged an argument just outside, with Annja yelling at Henshaw through the cab’s window, telling him she didn’t want anything to do with him and that she would handle things on her own, all in an attempt to convince the watchers they knew were out there that Annja was following the Dragon’s instructions to the letter.

Sleep was a long time in coming for Annja that night.

26

Several months earlier

Shizu eyed the lodge in front of her through the curtain of falling snow. Inside that building was the man she had come to kill. All she had to do in order to complete her contract was to enter the house, kill its occupant and get out again without being caught.

Not a problem, she thought with a grin.

She circled the property, noting the position of the security cameras and how often they moved in their preset arcs, and laughed silently. Whoever was in charge of security was an idiot; the cameras moved in defined, repeatable patterns. All she had to do was wait for the right moment.