Garin answered with a laugh. “I didn’t say, actually, but if you must know I’m visiting some of my electronic plants in Japan for the next few days. No luck tracking down the Dragon, then?”

So much for her change of subject.

“I spent a day or two looking into it, but I haven’t found anything solid. Why? Have you learned something new?”

Garin shouted something unintelligible to someone on his end, then said to Annja, “No, nothing new. Just thought you might have. You’re so good at that kind of thing, after all.”

Another shout, though this time he covered the mouthpiece of his receiver so that it came out muffled.

“Sorry, Annja, gotta run. They’re holding the plane for me. Best of luck and let me know if you find anything.”

Before she had a chance to say anything back, he hung up.

She stared at the receiver in her hand for a minute, muttered, “Idiot,” and hung up.

Garin’s call made her uneasy for a reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and she lay in bed wondering about it long into the night.

THE NEXT MORNING SHE ROSE early and prepared for her day at the studio. Doug Morrell was counting on her and the editing team to cut nineteen hours of video down to a thirty-minute segment, a task that was never easy for Annja. She wanted her viewers to get as much information as possible and there was only so much she could jam into a lousy half hour.

Still, it had to be done and she didn’t trust anyone else to work on her shows if she was available to do so. The few times she’d let Doug handle the chore, he’d stuffed so much garbage into the show that it had looked like one of Kristie’s episodes. And if there was one person in the world Annja couldn’t stand, it was her cohost, Kristie.

While she would just normally take the subway over to Manhattan, today she decided to splurge on a cab. Along the way she tried to shake any tail she might have picked up by having the cabbie make half a dozen turns at the last minute and double back a time or two down the same streets. When she was at last satisfied that no one was following them, she let him take her the rest of the way to her destination by a more direct route.

The editing team was already assembled in the cutting room when she arrived and for the rest of the day Annja threw herself into the work in front of her. She didn’t think about the Dragon. She didn’t think about a mystical sword, hers or anyone else’s. All she did was focus on making her next episode of Chasing History’s Monstersthe best it could be. They had less than an hour of work to go when quitting time arrived, and Annja convinced the others to stay around and finish up so they wouldn’t have to come back in the next morning. To make the decision easier for them, she offered to have pizza and beer brought in for dinner.

That did the trick.

By seven o’clock they were finished. The video had been cut, the still shots selected and Annja had even recorded the necessary voice-overs that were needed to pull the whole thing together as a cohesive unit.

When Doug came into work the next morning, he’d find the entire package on his desk, ready to go down to production for the final assembly.

Not bad for a day’s work, Annja thought.

Perhaps more importantly, it left her next day free so she could look into a few of the details she’d uncovered earlier that morning, which had been the entire point of the exercise in the first place.

She said goodbye to the three technicians, grabbed her backpack and the precious drawings it contained and headed down the street toward the subway station where she intended to catch a train back to Brooklyn.

She had only walked a few blocks before she felt a stranger’s eyes upon her again, just as she had the other day. In the middle of the block she abruptly stopped and bent down to tie her shoe, glancing backward as she did so. Maybe it was because it was getting dark and they didn’t think they’d be seen or maybe they just didn’t expect her to be as aware of her surroundings as she was, Annja didn’t know, but whatever the reason, her little stunt worked.

About a block and a half back, two men abruptly stopped and turned away from her. One pretended to be examining a magazine stand and the other pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and acted as if he was answering a call.

Annja knew the truth, though. She’d seen how intent they were on watching her in those first few seconds before they’d turned away.

She was being followed. There was no doubt about it.

The man in front was short and thick, with shoulders that looked as if they belonged on an NFL linebacker. His shaved head gleamed in the streetlights. His partner was taller and thinner, with a thick head of wavy hair and a goatee. Both were dressed in dark pants, shirts and jackets.

Annja stood and continued walking, but this time she glanced back over her shoulder a few times, watching the men behind her.

They clearly weren’t from New York, as they hadn’t yet developed a New Yorker’s odd talent for moving through a crowded sidewalk without disturbing the slower pedestrian traffic moving around them. Where Annja slipped through the crowd, moving easily with the changing patterns of those around her, her pursuers plowed their own path and it was this disturbance in the natural flow that had caught her eye and let her know that they were still back there.

Even as she watched, the two men quickened their pace, obviously trying to close the distance between themselves and Annja.

She wasn’t about to let that happen.

Let’s see if I can flush the foxes out of the henhouse, she thought, and then broke into a run. Her sudden move caught them off guard and her long legs allowed her to widen the distance between them in those first few seconds, giving her some precious lead time.

She raced across the traffic against the light. Horns blared, people shouted, but she didn’t stop, counting on a little bit of luck and a lot of divine provenance to get her through. She barged through the crowd standing on the opposite corner and shot down the street perpendicular to the direction she’d been traveling in, headed for the subway station on Broadway a block and a half away.

By the time she reached it, she had widened her lead to almost two whole blocks. Unfortunately, her pursuers had doubled in number, as well, for as she stopped for a moment at the top of the steps leading down to the subway station, she could see four men shoving their way through the crowd toward her.

Time to go, she told herself, and raced down the steps two at a time.

At the bottom she caught sight of a couple of transit cops standing around chatting and she momentarily considered getting them involved, but decided against it at the last minute. If it was the Dragon’s men behind her—and really, who else could it be?—then she didn’t want to drag them into her mess.

Instead, she charged forward, vaulted the turnstile and dashed down the steps in front of her, headed for the center platform. The station serviced four different sets of tracks, two northbound and two southbound. The center platform would give her access to one of each, which seemed her best bet at the moment. When she had managed to lose her pursuers, she could always get off at another stop, cross over to the opposite platform and head back the other way, if necessary.

Once on the platform she slowed her pace and began to mix in with the crowd around her. The little magazine-and-snack stand was selling Mets caps for fifteen bucks, so she hurriedly bought one and, stuffing her hair up underneath it, jammed it on her head. She thought about grabbing a pair of sunglasses while she was at it, but decided against it. She didn’t want anything to hinder her vision of the people around her.

There was a commotion on the stairs and Annja turned away, not wanting to be caught gawking and give herself away. She moved down the platform and then looked back the way she had come.