As usual, once inside the house, Henshaw led her to the study, where she found Roux seated in the leather chair behind his desk, reading the day’s copy of Le Monde.
Seeing her, he rose and smiled. “Annja, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
She had already decided to play it straight. “I wanted to talk to you about last night.”
“Of course.” Roux ushered her over to a pair of leather armchairs and offered one to her while settling into the other one himself. “Before you say anything else, let me apologize for my boorish behavior at the end of the evening. My remarks were totally uncalled for and I hope you let them pass as the angry grumblings of a man whose home had just been invaded by thieves.”
He smiled pleasantly and Annja realized that he was being sincere; he really did feel bad for the things he had said to her. She gracefully accepted his apology and moved quickly past it to the reason she’d made the drive all the way out here.
Reaching into her backpack she withdrew a cardboard box in which she had safely tucked away the paper dragon, then withdrew the latter from inside the box. She stood the little paper dragon on the table between herself and her host.
“What’s this?” Roux asked, picking up the dragon and turning it over in his hands. “What a marvelous specimen. I didn’t know that you did origami.”
“I don’t,” Annja replied. “I discovered it in the display room last night while helping to clean up in the wake of the attack.”
Roux stopped looking at the figure and turned his head in her direction instead. She wasn’t surprised by his carefully blank expression—after all, he was a world-class poker player—but the very fact that it was there told her what she needed to know.
Roux understood the significance of what he was holding.
He wasn’t going to make it easy, though. “I’m sorry?” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her correctly.
She relayed the tale as quickly as possible—how she’d gone back to the display room looking for something, she didn’t know what; how she’d found the paper dragon and what she’d done afterward to try and understand just what the simple figure might mean. She told him of her suspicion that it had been left there intentionally, as a type of calling card, to let them know that this wasn’t yet over and that they were up against a foe who made your typical hired gunman look like a schoolboy compared to the skills the other could bring to bear.
“I think your life is in great danger,” she told him finally, and then sat back to await his reaction.
Roux had been silent throughout, had let her get her facts on the table and had patiently waited through her explanation as she pointed out the things she’d done and the thought process she’d used to arrive at her conclusion.
When she was finished, he sat quietly for a moment before speaking.
“You can’t be serious,” he said at last.
It was not the reaction Annja was hoping for.
“Of course I’m serious! Did you think I would drive all the way out here to talk to you just for the heck of it?”
“But, Annja, seriously. Do you really think an international assassin, this mysterious Dragon, a hired gun who specialized in political killings, is really trying to kill me? Whatever for? What possible reason could he have? And let’s not forget the fact that this Dragon is supposed to be dead.”
“I don’t know what reason he might have. That’s what I was hoping you could tell me,” she answered.
Roux scowled and waved his hand in dismissal. “Now you sound like Garin, for heaven’s sake. ‘Pissed anyone off lately, Roux?’” he mimicked, in a passable imitation of the other man’s voice. “I’m the least likely man ever to be involved in politics, Annja.”
“I know that, Roux. But what if it’s something more? What if the Dragon is no longer interested in political killing but has decided to branch out, handle contract work, for instance?”
Rather than convince him of her sincerity, her plea only made him laugh. “Now you sound like something out of a spy novel, Annja. Political killing? Contract work? It was a simple robbery, nothing more.”
“If that’s the case, then what were they after?” she asked hotly.
For just a second she thought she saw a triumphant gleam in Roux’s eye. It was there and gone again in less than a second, so she couldn’t be sure, but something deep down inside said she’d just played into his trap.
“While you were gone we were doing our homework, too, Annja. And we think we’ve found the answer to that very question.”
The older man rose and walked over to his desk. From behind its massive bulk, he lifted a sword box and carried it back to Annja. Handing it to her, he said, “Go on, open it.”
Annja did so, revealing the long curved blade of a U.S. cavalry saber, circa the late eighteen hundreds, with a leather-wrapped hilt and brass guard. It was pitted in a few places, but she could still make out the initials GACetched into the blade just above the guard.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The saber worn by General George Armstrong Custer the day he fell in battle at the Little Bighorn,” Roux answered proudly.
Annja winced. “I wouldn’t be so quick to defend that claim.”
“Nonsense,” Roux said, taking the box back from her and closing it up tight. “I can assure you that the provenance of this blade is without blemish. Custer carried this sword the day he died and it has hung on my wall in that display room ever since I acquired it at a very private auction. It was the only item of any serious value in that room last night.”
Roux’s idea of “serious value” was enough to bankroll a small country, but that didn’t mean he was right. Annja would have bet her left arm that no one had come looking for that sword, namely because it wasn’t worth the steel from which it was made. She knew Custer hadn’t worn a saber at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and neither had any of the other officers in the Seventh Cavalry. Popular art showed him holding his cutlass aloft as the Indians surrounded him, but eyewitness accounts from that terrible day told a different story.
She tried to point this out to Roux, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Nor did he accept her arguments that a single experienced thief would have had an easier time breaking into the display room to steal the sword than a group the size of the one she’d encountered there. He had convinced himself that there wasn’t any real danger and it seemed that nothing she said would sway him from that conclusion.
When she finally left, hours later, she had gotten exactly nowhere. Her instincts were telling her that Roux was in danger, but he refused to see it.
As she climbed into her rental car, she was already trying to figure out what to do next. One thing was for sure, she wouldn’t leave one of her friends in danger.
ROUX WATCHED THROUGH THE window as Annja descended the front steps, climbed into her rental car and drove off toward the gates. He heard someone enter the room behind him and without turning, he said, “You heard?”
“Yes, sir,” Henshaw said. He never would have dreamed of listening in on his own accord, but Roux had ordered him to do just that.
“And?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I don’t think we have enough information.”
“Even with the rumors we’ve been hearing about the Dragon’s interest in a certain sword?”
“Even so, sir. After all, as you say, they are just rumors. The Dragon, if that indeed was who it was, could have been here for an entirely different reason.”
Roux thought about that for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t see how. If the Dragon had been hired to kill me he wouldn’t have gone about it the way he had. The assault was staged and I think we both know why.”