Текст книги "The Dragon's Mark"

Автор книги: Алекс Арчер

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

23

Most of Annja’s day was taken up with correcting the issues that had come up after Doug had begun to do the final edits on the episode. She spent the afternoon working with him and by the time she was done night had fallen and the streets were full of commuters trying to get home from work. People pushed past on both sides, but she barely noticed, her focus completely inward.

The past few days had been a blur of action and reaction. She was being stalked by an international assassin for reasons unknown, though she was pretty sure it had to do with the sword she carried. She’d been attacked twice in the past forty-eight hours, more than likely by men in the assassin’s employ. The assassin himself had broken into her hotel room, sent someone to interrupt her lunch and was, more likely than not, out there, somewhere, right now, watching.

She’d seen a hypnotist, allowed herself to be put in a trance and been able to draw a perfect replication of the emblem on the assassin’s own sword, a sword that was most likely cursed and just as mystical as her own. She’d even watched a man die only inches away from her, and she couldn’t imagine that death by subway was an easy way to go. Last but not least, the assassin himself broke into her loft and tried to kill her while she slept.

Frankly it was a lot to take in.

Annja walked down the street, lost in thought. She had lots of questions but few answers. What did the Dragon want? How had he found out about her? What did he know about the sword she carried? How did her sword compare to his?

What made it all the more frustrating was that she felt as though the answers were all right there in front of her and she just wasn’t seeing them clearly enough to put everything together into a coherent whole. Like having all the pieces of a puzzle but, without a picture to work from, she didn’t know if the blue pieces represented the ocean, the sky or some other colored object.

As a scientist, she was used to looking at things through a logical progression that more often than not was based on a cause-and-effect relationship between two items. In order to sort through the mess she found herself in, she decided to apply the same elemental logic and see where that got her.

So what did she know?

She knew there had once been an international hit man known as the Dragon, who apparently had survived the explosion everyone else thought had killed him, and he was following her around New York City.

Garin had claimed that the Dragon carried a sword that was the mystical opposite of her own, the dark to her light. The information she’d managed to haul out of her subconscious while under hypnosis had provided her with the image she’d seen etched onto the Dragon’s sword, and her visit to Dr. Yee had revealed that the sword itself might be the fabled Juuchi Yosamu, Ten Thousand Cold Nights, the final katanaproduced by the master swordsmith, Sengo Muramasa. The sword was said to have been instilled with all the bloodthirsty madness that had characterized Muramasa’s final days. All of which confirmed what Garin had been suggesting.

The Dragon had passed up the opportunity to kill her on two different occasions; first, during the assault at Roux’s estate, and later while she lay sleeping in her hotel room in Paris. Since then his agents had not only followed her about New York, but had tried to kidnap her, as well.

Clearly he wanted something from her.

And there was only one thing, she knew, that was possibly valuable enough for him to go through all the trouble. One thing that he wouldn’t be able to get his hands on simply by killing her outright.

Her sword.

It came when she called. It existed to do her bidding and her bidding alone. While she wasn’t positive, she suspected that killing her would leave the sword lost in the otherwhere until it chose another bearer, and who knew when that might be?

It was the only thing that made sense.

The Dragon wanted Joan’s sword.

With that realization the Dragon’s demands from the night before finally made sense. “Give it to me!” he’d said. At the time she’d had no idea what he was referring to. She had, in fact, assumed that he’d been mistaken in thinking that she had some rare or unusual artifact in her possession.

You were right, in a way, she told herself. Except the artifact in question was none other than her sword.

Annja had no intention of giving it to him.

She found herself at the Eighty-first Street entrance to Central Park and decided that a walk through the park would be a nice way to end the evening. The thought of going back to her apartment, the one the Dragon himself had been in on more than one occasion, just wasn’t all that appealing at the moment. If she had to, she could always catch a cab back to Brooklyn when she got to the other side, on Fifth Avenue.

There were quite a few people still in the park, despite the fact that evening had come and the sun had already set, and Annja enjoyed the sensation of getting lost among them, anonymous even if only for a few stolen minutes.

She had been wandering the grounds for about fifteen minutes when she saw him.

He was hanging back, not making it too obvious, but there was no doubt that he was keeping her in sight, lingering in her wake.

He was wearing a dark windbreaker and slacks, with a hat pulled low over his face so that she wasn’t able, especially from this distance, to get a good look at his features.

It was at least the second time in as many days that she had been followed and she was starting to resent the attention. They hadn’t been shy about chasing her through the subway system and she had the same feeling now; the tourists around her would not be a deterrent to her capture, if that was indeed what he wanted.

For a moment she was tempted to confront him directly, to shout, “Hey, you!” and start striding determinedly toward him, just to see what he would do. Only the idea that he might just pull a gun and simply shoot her, prevented her from such a brash course of action.

Instead of a direct confrontation, she opted for a more covert approach.

ROUX WAS BORED.

He’d only been in the hotel for a little over twenty-four hours, but laying low and staying out of sight was not something he was interested in doing. For a man who had lived as long as he had, he had surprisingly little patience.

He knew Henshaw had things under control with regard to the Dragon’s sudden interest in Annja. That wasn’t the problem. The problem lay in the fact that if he had to sit there and stare at those same four walls for another minute he was going to go nuts. Why did Henshaw have him hiding out anyway? Annja was the one in danger, not him!

“Enough of this!” he said to himself, and got up to dress for dinner. Roux had old-fashioned tastes and one of the things that he appreciated about the Waldorf was that you were expected to be properly dressed for dinner. None of this casual-dress nonsense that seemed to have become the norm, and thank the heavens for that, he thought.

Attired in a crisp blue suit and matching tie, Roux headed for the main dining room.

Two hours later he was relaxing after his meal over a glass of brandy when he spotted the most exquisite young woman sitting alone several tables away. She was Asian, looked to be in her twenties, and was dressed in a figure-hugging black dress that highlighted her every curve. She had that classic porcelain-doll look—pale skin, full red lips, her long hair as dark as oil at midnight.

Her beauty wasn’t what had attracted his attention, however, but rather the fact that she had been casting surreptitious glances in his direction throughout his meal.

It appeared he’d found something that would make a worthwhile diversion for the evening.

Roux’s success with young women was matched only by his skill at the poker table. The trick, he knew, was to make them think it was all their idea.

He caught and held her glance for a long moment, then signaled for his bill. When the waiter brought it, he signed it to his room and, taking his drink with him, he moved across the restaurant to the bar on the other side of the room.

He intentionally chose a seat several chairs away from anyone else and waited, knowing the conclusion was already a foregone one.

“Is anyone sitting here?” a feminine voice asked.

Roux turned to find the young beauty from the restaurant indicating the chair beside him, a smile on her face and a spark in her eyes.

“Please,” he replied, smiling back. “Be my guest.”

She slid deftly onto the seat, managing to look extraordinarily graceful and at the same time giving him a flash of tanned and supple thigh through the slit in the side of her dress as she did so.

Roux couldn’t help but smile.

It was going to be an interesting evening, after all.

The bartender wandered over. Roux’s new companion glanced at his glass and said, “I’ll have one of what he’s having.”

Roux raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

She turned to face him. “Aren’t you even going to ask me my name?” she asked with a smile.

“No. If you want me to know it I’m sure that you’ll tell me eventually.”

“And if I don’t?” There was amusement in her voice.

“Then our lovemaking will be all the more passionate for the mystery.”

She laughed aloud at that one. “That’s rather forward of you. What gives you the idea that I intend to sleep with you?”

“Because a woman like you can’t resist a challenge.” Roux grinned and extended his hand. “But if it will set you at ease, my name is Roux.”

Her grip was strong. “Hello, Roux.”

Now it was Roux’s turn to laugh when she didn’t give her name in return. “I take it that puts the ball firmly in my court?”

The bartender returned with her drink and she took a healthy swallow of the one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old brandy as if she had it every day.

“Do you think you are up to it?” she asked.

“We’ll never know unless we give it a try, now, will we?”

Her eyes smoldered. “What did you have in mind?”

Roux shrugged. “How about we retire to my suite and see what we can do with a full bottle of this fine brandy?”

“An excellent suggestion.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Maybe, if you’re good, I’ll tell you my name when we’re finished.”

“Whatever the lady desires,” Roux replied.

He signed the check, asked for a bottle to be delivered to his suite and then extended an arm to the gorgeous young creature by his side.

They didn’t say much in the elevator, though more than a few sidelong glances passed between them. They made some small talk about nothing of consequence on the way to his suite and arrived to find room service already waiting outside with their order.

Roux opened the door, let his guest inside and then dealt with the room-service waiter. He left the cart in the entrance hallway where it wouldn’t be in their way and, drinks in hand, Roux returned to living room, only to find it empty. The bedroom door was open and a pair of high heels lay discarded in the entrance. Just beyond, her cast-off dress lay in a pool of silk.

Her voice floated out of the darkened bedroom. “Bring me that drink, Roux. I’m thirsty.”

Never one to deny a beautiful woman, he did as he was told, an I-told-you-so grin on his face.

The lights were off in the bedroom, but there was enough illumination coming through the thin curtains covering the windows to reveal his guest, now naked, languishing across his sheets. The light cast dappled shadows across her sensuous form and as she rolled to face him the tattoo of the dragon that covered much of her taut young flesh seemed to ripple and writhe, as if the creature was rising to life from the surface of her skin.

“Come to bed, Roux.”

As uncharacteristic as it was of him, Roux again did as he was told.

24

Annja kept walking, but began to steer herself toward one of the side paths, away from the crowds. She knew the layout of the park pretty well and was counting on the fact that her mysterious follower more than likely did not. It would give her the chance to spring the trap that she was getting ready to set.

The direction she chose led the two of them along a paved footpath through a thick copse of trees. A few hundred yards into the trees was an old discarded construction pipe, the kind that was large enough to drive a truck through. At night it would be a haven for drunks and junkies, a place to avoid the police patrols that routinely went through the park, but at this hour it would more than likely be empty.

It was there that Annja intended to spring her ambush.

The trail took a quick little dogleg before it reached that particular point in the walkway, and as soon as she knew she was out of sight, Annja broke into a jog. Reaching the construction pipe, she slipped inside, her back to the wall.

It took a few minutes but soon she heard the hurried pace of her pursuer. Annja waited until he stepped past the mouth of the pipe and then she struck.

Stepping out of the shadows, she grabbed him by the shirtfront and hauled him back into the pipe, using her momentum to slam him against the nearby wall hard enough to make his teeth rattle. Half a second later she had the tip of her sword against his throat.

“You’ve got ten seconds to start talking,” she said, applying a little pressure to the blade for emphasis.

“No need for violence, Ms. Creed,” a familiar voice said in response.

Lowering her sword, Annja stepped back, surprise and annoyance vying for dominance on her face. “Henshaw! What are you doing here?”

In his typically unruffled kind of way, Roux’s man replied, “Following you.”

He glanced down at the sword in her hand. “And not very well apparently.”

Annja released the sword. She wasn’t in any danger. Not from Henshaw.

“Following me? Why would you do that?”

Henshaw didn’t say anything.

It didn’t take her long to figure out what his silence meant. Henshaw would be acting on orders and those orders came from one person only. “Roux,” she said.

But why?

Henshaw didn’t know. Or if he did, he wasn’t saying. When she asked, he simply shrugged his shoulders.

“Was it your people in the subway the other night?”

Again the shrug.

“Fine,” she said, and she let the heat show in her voice. If Henshaw wouldn’t tell her, she’d just have to ask Roux himself. “Give me your phone and I’ll speak to Roux myself.”

He handed it over without objection and perhaps the slightest trace of relief.

She hit the redial button, figuring that Henshaw would have been in constant contact with Roux as he followed her through the city streets. She waited for her mentor to answer.

The phone rang several times.

She began to get an uneasy feeling as it went on and on. If Roux had said he would wait for Henshaw’s call, then that was what he would do.

She hung up and handed the cell phone back to Henshaw. “No answer,” she told him. “Are you sure he’s waiting for your call?”

Henshaw looked concerned. He immediately pressed Redial and waited through a set of rings. The longer it went on without an answer the more concerned Annja became.

Something wasn’t right, an inner voice told her.

The longer she watched Henshaw waiting for Roux to answer the phone, the more certain of it she became.

Something had happened to Roux.

“Come on,” she said, and headed for the exit to the park. Once on Fifth Avenue she flagged down a passing cab, waited for it to come to a stop and then climbed inside with Henshaw at her heels.

“Waldorf-Astoria,” Henshaw said as the cab pulled away from the curb and headed into traffic. “Please hurry.”

Annja’s anxiety ratcheted up a notch. She’d never seen Henshaw in a hurry, not even when under fire. Apparently his inner alarms were going off, too.

The cabbie got them through the city streets in record time. Henshaw shoved a handful of bills through the slot and the two of them were out the door and rushing into the hotel before the doorman could even get out his usual “Good evening.”

The elevator seemed to take forever and Annja was grateful that no one else tried to get on board with them. Henshaw was practically vibrating with tension and she didn’t think listening to the prattle of civilians, for lack of a better word, was going to do him any favors.

When they hit the eighth floor, Henshaw drew a gun from his jacket and led the way down the hall, toward the suite at the other end where Roux was staying for the duration of his visit to New York.

They were still a half dozen rooms away when they saw that the door to the suite was partially open.

Annja called her sword to her, getting a firm grip on the hilt with two hands, ready to deal with whatever might be waiting for them inside.

Henshaw glanced back, saw that she was ready for a confrontation if it came to that and crept down the corridor to the room itself. Reaching out with his free hand, he silently pushed the door the rest of the way open.

There was a short corridor between the front door and the living area and this naturally limited what they could see from outside in the hall, but even from there they could tell that a struggle had taken place inside the room. Cushions had been pulled off the coach and a chair had been knocked to the ground.

Cautiously they stepped forward.

The living room looked as though it had been the scene of a fight. In addition to the furniture that had been knocked over, the glass top of the coffee table had a starred crack in the center, as if someone had driven the heel of their foot into it, and the television had been knocked out of the entertainment cabinet to lay shattered in a heap on the floor.

Seeing the damage, they quickly checked the rest of the suite, doing it as a team so that they could provide cover for each other if they found someone or something unexpected.

In the end, they didn’t find anything more.

The suite was empty.

Roux was gone.

“Maybe he wasn’t here,” Annja suggested, trying to see the bright side. “Maybe he’s down in the bar or in the dining room right now.”

She could tell by his face that Henshaw didn’t think it was very likely, but he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called down to the front desk where he asked to speak to the manager. They spoke for a few minutes and then Henshaw thanked the man and hung up.

He did not look happy with what he had learned.

“Roux left the restaurant in the company of a young Asian woman around nine. The manager says he’d never seen her before, so that reduces the possibility she was one of the professionals that they’re used to seeing who use the hotel as a meeting place. They tend to be known quantities in a place like this. Then he checked with room service and they confirmed that they delivered a bottle of brandy to an older gentleman and a younger woman here in this room about an hour ago.”

Annja’s mind went immediately to her encounter at the café with the mysterious Shizu. Was that who Roux had been seen with? If so, how had she found him? Had the Dragon had them all under surveillance without their knowing it? Could they be under observation even now?

She was just about to say something along those lines to Henshaw when she was startled into silence by the ringing of a telephone.

The two of them immediately checked their individual cells, but neither one was receiving a call, which left the hotel phone somewhere beneath all the debris. Luckily the caller just let the phone ring until, at last, Annja was able to locate it.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Creed. What a surprise to find you there.”

The voice seemed to be older, deeper, but Annja recognized it nonetheless.

Shizu.

“You’re not surprised and you know it. Where’s Roux?”

At the mention of his employer’s name, Henshaw walked into the bedroom next door and Annja soon heard him searching around in the debris, looking for another extension to listen in on.

“The old goat is fine. For now,” Shizu said.

Annja heard a gentle click and knew Henshaw had found the other phone.

“Whether or not he remains that way depends on you, however.”

Annja frowned. “What do you want?”

“I thought that would have been obvious by now. I want the sword.”

The bold statement left her at a momentary loss for words.

Shizu laughed. “My, my, my. Has the proverbial cat got your tongue?”

At last Annja found her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What sword?”

Shizu said something to someone else in Japanese and in the background there came a sudden wail of pain. When silence returned she said to Annja, “I can do this all night, if you’d like, but I don’t think your friend Roux is up to it. Are you sure you want to play it this way?”

Annja bit down on her lip, fighting for control. “I told you, I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said again, trying to stall for time as she fought to figure out just what to do.

This time Roux let out a long mewling cry of such pain and terror that it didn’t even sound human. Annja felt her stomach churn at the thought of what they had to do to a man, particularly one as tough as Roux, to get him to make a sound like that, never mind keep it going for several very long minutes. In the other room, she thought she could hear Henshaw retching.

Yeah, you and me both, buddy.

To Shizu, she said sharply, “All right. Lay off. I know what sword you mean.”

“Of course you do. Seems you’re not so tough, after all, Ms. Creed.”

We’ll see about that, she thought.

“Bring the sword with you to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden tomorrow at sunset. Come alone. Walk to the viewing pavilion inside the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden. I will meet you there with the old man and we’ll do an exchange, your sword for your friend’s life. Understood?”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll be there,” Annja said.

“Good,” Shizu said, her voice dripping with satisfaction. “And one other thing. Be sure to leave that British bastard, Henshaw, behind. You don’t need him trying to be a hero and messing up what should be a simple exchange.”

With that parting shot, Shizu hung up the phone.