The Dragon's Mark. Alex Archer

just to be safe, she took another few minutes to search the entire suite, including the closets, the bathroom and even under her bed.

      Then and only then, satisfied that she was indeed alone, did she release the sword back into the otherwhere and return to bed.

      This time she made certain to shut the bedroom door firmly.

      Her last thought, as she drifted off to sleep, was that someone was watching.

      7

      When she checked her e-mail late the next morning, she discovered a very succinct note from Bart in reply to her.

      Call me, was all it said.

      A glance at the clock told her that it was early back in the States but she picked up the phone and dialed his number.

      A sleepy male voice answered. “McGille.”

      “Hi, Bart. It’s Annja.”

      “Hey! How’s Europe?”

      “Not too bad.” They chatted for a few moments about what they’d been up to recently and then Bart turned the conversation to the reason she had called.

      “So what’s this about a robbery?”

      Annja gave him the fake story she’d concocted about how her friend’s apartment had been vandalized by a thief who’d left behind the origami figure as “payment” for what he’d stolen.

      “Sounds like a job for the Paris police. Why send the pictures to me?”

      “My friend is subletting the place from the current tenant without the owner’s permission. If she goes to the police, the owner finds out and that will be that.”

      Annja knew that was all she had to say. As a veteran New Yorker, Bart would understand the need to keep the sublet a secret; real-estate prices were so outrageous that subletting rent-controlled apartments had become a thriving black market in the Big Apple and Bart would no doubt believe the same about Paris. For all Annja knew, the situation in Paris might even be the same.

      “Say no more,” he said good-naturedly.

      On the other end of the line Annja breathed a sigh of relief. “So what did you find out?”

      “To tell you the truth,” Bart replied, “not much. I made a few phone calls, had some folks check some records for me, and what they came up with were all negatives. No similar crimes in your area. No record of origami figures being involved in any crime, regardless of the type, in more than seven years. Basically they found nothing to tie this burglary to any other, in France or elsewhere. Maybe your cat burglar just has a sense of humor.”

      Annja digested that for a moment, knowing that she was partially hampering Bart’s ability to get her information by not telling him the entire story. Still, it couldn’t be helped.

      Something Bart said jumped out at her. “What do you mean you didn’t find any link to crimes committed in the past seven years? Were there some before that with the same M.O.?” she asked.

      Bart laughed. “That’s where you nearly gave me a heart attack. Ever hear of the Dragon?”

      Annja frowned. “Wasn’t there a Bruce Lee movie with that name?”

      “No, that was Enter the Dragon. Great movie, too. But that’s not the Dragon I’m thinking of. This one is an international assassin who likes to leave little folded origami figures at the scenes of his kills.”

      He said it so matter-of-factly that at first Annja didn’t think she’d heard him correctly.

      “Did you just say ‘assassin’?”

      “Yeah, an international hit man, if you can believe that. Responsible for more than eighteen deaths in half a dozen countries, including France. Real son of a you know what.”

      Annja felt her stomach do a slow roll as she remembered Garin’s words from last night. Probably could have ambushed any one of us before we even knew they were there.

      Bart wasn’t finished, though. “And talk about someone who loves their job, this guy managed to get up close and personal to each and every one of his victims. They say he took it as a personal challenge. He’d get in, do the deed and vanish before anyone even knew he’d been there. The police had nothing on him for years, except for those stupid little paper dragons he would leave behind with the bodies in his wake.”

      Bart laughed. “You sure there wasn’t a dead body lying next to that origami, Annja?

      Anger flared. “Jeez, Bart, that’s not funny!”

      “What? Okay, come on, Annja, lighten up a little. Do you think I’d still be yammering away on this end of the phone if I thought you and your friend were being targeted by some crazed international assassin?”

      That was the problem. He thought they were still talking about some harmless burglary.

      She couldn’t tell him the truth now; he’d be worried sick. “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” she said instead, laughing it off, while inside she was burning to know more.

      Luckily Bart was a talker. “And talk about old-fashioned. Guy manages to pull off eighteen major hits and not once does he use a gun? Come on! What is he, stupid?”

      A shiver ran up Annja’s spine. Hesitantly she asked, “If he didn’t use a gun, what did he use?”

      “A big-ass sword apparently. One of those curved Japanese blades, like the one Sean Connery carried in Highlander.”

      Annja hadn’t seen the movie, but there was no mistaking what Bart was talking about. “A katana?” she asked, dreading the answer but needing to know, anyway.

      “Yep, that’s it. A katana. Can you imagine getting close enough to a major political figure to try and take him out with a freakin’ sword? When everybody else has guns? What a maniac!”

      This was getting worse by the minute.

      “Did they ever catch him?”

      “Of course they did. Why do you think I’m not worried about you, given the kind of trouble you get yourself into?”

      She had to admit he was right; ever since taking possession of the sword, she had a knack for getting herself into the biggest messes possible.

      Like now.

      “So what happened to him?”

      Bart snorted. “Got blown up when he tried to take out the British prime minister at a summit in Madrid back in 2003. There wasn’t enough left of him to fill a Baggie.”

      Just when she started to feel better about the situation Bart had go and ruin things again.

      “So they never found a body?”

      “What did I just say? There wasn’t anything left of him to bury, Annja. But trust me, you and your friend can rest easy. Whoever it was that broke into your friend’s flat was probably just trying to be funny.”

      “Some sense of humor,” she said, and laughed along with him while inside she was getting more and more nervous by the minute.

      She made small talk for a couple of moments more, thanked Bart for what he had dug up and then got off the phone as quickly and as gracefully as she could without raising his suspicions.

      As soon as she had, she headed for her laptop.

      A quick search online turned up a decent number of feature stories and news reports from the eighties through the nineties that talked about the mysterious Dragon. All of them told the same basic story Bart had—assassin for hire, no one knew his background or what he looked like, or even if the Dragon was a man or a woman, only that he always killed with his weapon of choice, a katana, and would leave a piece of rice paper folded into the shape of a dragon at the scene of every killing. The press had given him the moniker “the Dragon” when word of the origami figures leaked