He led her across the room and into the next, which was set up like a command center—the walls were covered with charts and photographs and long stretches of dates and names; the tables were littered with boxes of files and computers running massive database searches.

Sensei stepped into the center of the room. Raising his hands, he gestured at the information gathered around him.

“A man died recently. His name is not important. In fact, I doubt we could find three people outside of those who have been in this room who could tell you what it actually was. He acquired a new identity long ago, one that he built into a legend, and it is that legend that I am interested in. Go on, take a look around.”

It soon became apparent that the man, whatever his name, had been an international assassin of no little skill. His long list of targets included ambassadors, government ministers, diplomats, even bankers and prominent businessmen. They were from more than a dozen countries. He had been like a ghost, infiltrating heavily guarded locations to deliver death by his own hand rather than with a bullet or a bomb, and the more she read, the more respect and admiration Shizu felt for this man. The work he had done. The skill with which he had done it.

Sensei must have noted her reaction. He said, “He was known as the Dragon and he elevated killing to an art form. You, Shizu, are going to take his place and be his successor.”

Shizu spun around, shock and surprise flooding her system.

“Successor?” she asked.

Sensei nodded. “The man was unimportant, but the legend he created, the symbol he represented, that is something too precious to be lost. For the past ten years, Shizu, I have been training you to revive the legend, to become the new Dragon.”

He gestured at the information around him again. “Study what is here. Learn who he was. How he killed. What it was that let an ordinary man, a cheap killer, become the myth that the world feared. This chateau will be your home, your base of operations. The staff has been instructed to serve your every need and there is money in an account to cover any expenses you might have.

“And when at last you are ready, I have a very special target for you.”

21

The news the next morning was full of stories about the shoot-out in the subway. Only one of the television stations mentioned the mysterious woman who, they claimed, was at the heart of it all, Annja was relieved. The last thing she needed was to be in the middle of a major news story, never mind have someone recognize her as the host of Chasing History’s Monsters.If they did, she’d have paparazzi camped out up and down her street. The police would certainly want to hear her side of the story as well, to say the least. She was happy to see the majority of the news channels were calling it a gang-related event, which she knew would sink people’s interest in it faster than the Titanic.

Besides, she had more important things to concentrate on. She knew that the sword the Dragon carried was the key to the whole situation. If she could understand the weapon, she could understand its bearer. So as soon as it was late enough the following morning, she made a series of phone calls and arranged to meet with Dr. Matthew Yee, curator of the Asian Hall at the American Museum of Natural History and the closest thing that New York City had to an expert on samurai culture.

He agreed to see her when she mentioned a Japanese sword with a dragon emblem etched into the blade. He had some free time late in the afternoon where he could fit her in, which meant that she had the whole morning to kill while she waited.

She decided to pay a visit to the New York Public Library, specifically the research section, and see if they had any information on the Dragon’s past or present that she might not yet be aware of.

The New York Public Library actually consisted of eighty-nine separate libraries—four nonlending research libraries, four main lending libraries, a library for the blind and physically handicapped and seventy-seven neighborhood branch libraries in the three boroughs it served. But it was the building on Fifth Avenue between Fourtieth and Forty-second streets that most people thought of when the library came to mind. The two stone statues of the lions outside the main entrance, named Fortitude and Patience, seemed to guard the entrance from unwanted troublemakers and were the public face of the library the world over. As Annja walked past them on her way into the building, she gave the closest one a quick pat on the head.

“Good kitty,” she said, and laughed aloud at her own joke.

The library held in excess of fifty million items, from books to periodicals to film and video. She hoped that somewhere, in all that data, she could find something new to help her understand just why the Dragon had taken an interest in her.

She started with the periodicals first. The assassinations had occurred in different countries, but the targets had all been prominent enough that the American media had reported on them, as well. Unfortunately, the reports were dry, devoid of all but the most basic of facts, and Annja gleaned little from them that she didn’t already know. Her fluency in several languages allowed her to check out some of the foreign editions, too, but the end result was the same.

After an hour Annja decided to switch tactics. If she couldn’t find anything specific about the Dragon, maybe she could track down the Dragon’s sword.

Much of what she uncovered in the next hour was material she already knew, such as the fact that Japanese swords were classified by the length of the blade, with the shortest being a tantoand the longest being a katana,and that the majority of them came from five houses, or schools, of craftsmanship. She discovered a catalog of signatures for swordsmiths all the way back to the twelfth century, but none of the images matched the one she had drawn while in her trance. There were a few that were close, and she made a note to ask Dr. Yee about them later.

THE DRAGON HAD NOTED THE watchers of Annja’s apartment the day before. They were good, just not good enough, and sometimes it was that little bit that made all the difference in who came out on top.

Like now.

Dressed as a plumber in a grease-stained coverall and driving a battered old van, the Dragon showed up outside Annja’s apartment building about fifteen minutes after she had departed. The building had a security gate, but getting inside was just a matter of pressing several of the buttons on the directory and waiting for someone to hit the buzzer without bothering to ask who it was.

It didn’t take more than two tries. It rarely did.

Once inside the building, the Dragon went directly to Annja’s apartment on the fourth floor, knocked and pretended to be waiting for someone to answer the door. A long look around showed that the hall was empty, so out of the tool bag the Dragon was carrying came a crowbar. The locks themselves might be sturdy, but the wood around them was as old as the rest of the building. It didn’t take long to pop the locks and gain entry.

The loft was an open floor plan, with a large window occupying one entire side. Thankfully the curtains had been left drawn and the Dragon didn’t have to worry about the observers across the way taking note of what was happening.

At first, the Dragon just stood there in the center of the room, soaking up the atmosphere of the place, trying to get a feeling for the woman who lived there. There was a sense of a life lived in constant motion, of comings and goings without any real time in between. It felt more like a way station than a home to the Dragon—a not-unfamiliar feeling.