She knew the microphones were sensitive, that they could pretty much pick up anything, even a whisper, so Annja kept her voice low and her head turned away so no one could see her seemingly talking to herself.
“Henshaw, you out there?”
There was a long moment of silence and then, “Right here, Ms. Creed.”
Annja breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t realized until just that moment how much she was depending on the radio system to keep her in touch with Henshaw. Or how much his presence helped calm her nerves. She’d already faced off against the Dragon and lost; the idea of doing so a second time was in the forefront of her mind. But this time, her life and Roux’s depended on her success.
It was a heavy burden to bear.
“All right, I’m inside the park. I’ll make my way around to the pavilion and we’ll see what’s what,” Annja said.
It took her fifteen minutes to reach the Japanese garden. This particular one was the first Japanese garden built within an American public garden, and its creator, Takeo Shiota, had done the city proud. It blended the ancient hill-and-pond style with the more modern stroll-garden style and managed to carry it off wonderfully. Annja thought the beauty of the place was amazing. Evergreen trees and bushes dominated the landscape, and here and there bright splashes of color from flowering plants were used with restraint. Annja could see a wooden bridge extending out to a small hump of an island that reminded her of a turtle’s back, but it was the building standing right at the water’s edge that drew her like iron to a magnet.
The viewing pavilion was a large, wooden pagoda-like structure made in typical Japanese fashion. The wood had been stained a deep brown and stood out against the trees without being conspicuous or seeming to be out of place. A vermilion-colored torii, or floating gateway, could be seen in the middle of the lake. Annja knew that the torii indicated the presence of a shrine somewhere nearby, but when she looked around for it she couldn’t see it.
She walked over to the pavilion and entered. It appeared to be empty, just one large room without furniture but which offered several places from which one could look out upon the lake.
“Still with me?” she whispered.
“I’m here. Looks like you’re about to get company. Someone is approaching from the opposite entrance.”
Annja waited a moment, then turned to face that direction just in time to see Shizu enter the Pavilion
HENSHAW BROUGHT THE RIFLE to his shoulder and centered the sights on the Dragon as she approached Annja.
A twig snapped behind him.
Henshaw whirled around, thinking he’d find a stray hiker or a runaway dog. Instead, he saw a figure standing in the shadows not half a dozen yards away. The gun in his hand was a dead giveaway that he didn’t have Henshaw’s best interests at heart. Henshaw couldn’t believe what he was seeing; he’d been so careful all day long, so intent on making certain he wasn’t seen, that his mind just couldn’t accept that someone else had gotten the drop on him. He made an effort to get his gun up and around in the right direction, but the other man fired before he made it.
Henshaw was close enough to see both muzzle flashes as the pistol in the man’s hand went off. What a sledgehammer slammed into his chest, followed immediately by another one, and as he went over backward, the darkness already closing in, Henshaw had a moment to wonder about the lack of the sound of the gunshots.
Then the darkness closed in and he knew no more.
ANNJA WATCHED AS THE Dragon seemed to step right out of the shadows as she entered the building. Shizu glanced around, saw Annja and began walking toward her.
“Here she comes, be ready,” Annja whispered into her microphone.
But she didn’t get the reply she expected. Instead, from her receiver, came a harsh grunt, then nothing else.
“Henshaw?” she asked, doing what she could to keep the look of concern off her face. She was supposed to be alone and didn’t want to jeopardize the meeting.
There was no reply.
By that time the Dragon was too close for Annja to take a chance with another message. She’d just have to hope that he’d heard.
It wasn’t an auspicious beginning.
The Dragon stopped about ten feet away from Annja and the two women looked each other over. Gone was the slightly over-the-top fan from the other day. Annja could see that in her place was a stone-cold killer with dead-flat eyes. She was dressed in loosely fitting dark clothing that Annja knew had been chosen not just to allow for ease of movement but also to hide her amid the shadows that were settling all around them now. The hilt of a sword rose up over the edge of one shoulder.
“Where’s Roux?” Annja asked, leaning to the side to look past the Dragon, as if he might be waiting back there in the darkness from which she had emerged.
Shizu laughed. “He’s here. You’ll be reunited with him in a moment. Where’s the sword?”
Knowing that only one of them was going to make it out of this encounter alive, Annja didn’t care about the Dragon seeing the truth and so she reached into the otherwhere and drew forth the sword.
One moment her hand was empty and the next it was filled with the hilt of an ancient broadsword, the tip of the blade pointed directly at the Dragon’s throat.
Shizu’s face showed surprise, though it was masked very quickly.
Annja had seen it, though, and she wondered about it. Did the Dragon’s sword operate differently? Is that why she wore it openly on her back rather than letting it rest in the otherwhere? Or was it all just a trick to throw her off the track, to lull her into making a mistake?
The Dragon made a strange flicking motion with her hand and suddenly there was a pistol in it. She pointed it at Annja.
“Put the sword down on the ground.”
Annja stood resolute. “No, not until I know where Roux is.”
“I told you, he’s nearby. You’ll see him soon enough.” The pistol rose slightly, until the barrel was level with her face. “It would be a shame to mess up those pretty features,” Shizu said.
Annja clicked her tongue twice, one of the pre-arranged signals she and Henshaw had come up with for when they were in the thick of things. This particular one meant that he was to put a warning shot right across her bow, to show the Dragon that she wasn’t the only one with arms and support.
Nothing happened.
She did it again.
Click, click.
Still nothing.
Apparently she was on her own.
Annja suddenly felt very inadequate for the situation she faced.
The Dragon chambered a round into the barrel of the pistol. “I said, put the sword down.”
Not seeing any other alternative, Annja did as she was told.
As she prepared for the sword to leave her hand she had a momentary flash of panic. She didn’t know what it was that made the sword bond to her in the first place, nor did she know what it took for it to remain in this world. She had always assumed that it would stay in her possession until she died, but here she was voluntarily relinquishing it to another. Would the sword pass on to its new owner as a result? Would it abandon her in the mistaken belief that she was abandoning it?
Easy, Annja, she told herself. The sword will understand. Have faith.
At this point, that was all she had left—faith.
She put the sword on the ground and willed it to remain and not vanish into the otherwhere.
“Now, move over there,” the Dragon said, pointing with the barrel of the gun to where a screen in the side of the pavilion had been pulled back, revealing a small balcony overlooking the lake.