Here she was questioning her own judgment. Not good.

She got off the bed and walked to the desk. The laptop sprang to life, and the screen saver vanished and left the search engine flashing at her. Annja sat down and poised her fingers over the keyboard. What am I looking for? she wondered.

She put her hands down and sighed. "This is ridiculous."

Instead of typing, she put the computer back to sleep, turned out the lights and crawled back into the bed. She needed sleep. A good sleep that would help her get up tomorrow and start the hunt with a rested mind.

There'd be plenty of time to discuss the wacky occurrences of the night with Ken en route to wherever he was taking her.

She settled her head on the pillow and took three deep breaths.

"It appears you weren't lying."

Annja's eyes snapped open. She tried to sit up, but a firm hand held her down. She could make out a set of eyes staring at her, surrounded by black cloth and face paint.

"Don't. You will only succeed in making me angry if you do that."

Annja stayed lying down. "I told you I didn't have it."

"We needed to see you weren't lying. But if you had been, the first thing you would have gone for was the dorje dorje. You didn't do that. So, I believe you don't have it. That's good."

"So, you'll leave now?"

"Not quite. We want to propose a simple business arrangement."

Annja shook her head. "Forget it. I don't make business deals with people I don't know."

The man hovering above her paused. "Ask yourself if you really want to know who we are, Annja. Ask yourself truthfully. Are you prepared-really prepared-to know that kind of thing?"

Annja sighed. "What's the deal?"

"We know he's taking you west tomorrow. If you find the dorje dorje, we want it. It's that simple."

Annja looked at the blackened face. "What do I get out of it?"

He appeared to smile. "Your life."

"That's not much of a deal."

"I could kill you now, if you'd prefer."

The way he said it was so matter-of-fact, Annja didn't doubt for a moment he could do it easily. She shifted slightly. "Fine."

"We'll be watching you. Don't renege on our deal, Annja. We'll know where you are, wherever you are. And if you betray us, there will be no escape from our vengeance. It doesn't matter where you go, we'll hunt you down. Remember that."

"All right."

"It's time for you to sleep now."

Annja felt a soft pressure on the side of her neck.

And then felt nothing.

Nothing at all.

11.

Nezuma Hidetaki watched from the back of the black BMW M3 through heavily tinted windows as Annja Creed and Kennichi Ogawa walked into the train station near Ueno Park. He'd been tailing them since they'd left the hotel earlier that morning, using a network of low-grade idiots to do the grunt work while he stayed in his car and monitored their efforts.

But Ogawa was proving himself quite adept at nonchalant countersurveillance skills, purposefully backtracking several times, nearly catching one of Nezuma's men as he tailed too close by a video store in Kanda. A last-minute break spared the entire team from being burned, but one careless mistake had almost ruined the entire surveillance effort.

That man now lay in the foot well next to Nezuma. He was sweating tremendously and Nezuma sighed once before looking at him.

"You should have antic.i.p.ated that he would backtrack. You were told to expect such tactics. This man is not a fool." He sighed. "I wish I could say the same for you."

The man's eyes widened. "Master, forgive me. It will not happen again. Please, I beg you!"

Nezuma shook his head. The problem with the youth of today was their rampant sense of self-ent.i.tlement. Not one understood the need to work and work hard for what they got in life. Youngsters these days deemed themselves worthy without having to prove their worth. As a result, they were sloppy and inefficient.

Not to mention wholly annoying, Nezuma concluded.

Nezuma blamed the plague of idiocy on a politically correct generation of parents who rewarded failure as if it were success lest they damage a child's self-esteem. He sniffed. What bulls.h.i.t. Nezuma knew that the only way to build self-esteem was to challenge oneself on the anvil of life. Only by failing and then trying again, failing more and then eventually succeeding did you prove yourself worthy of victory and all the spoils that went with it.

During his time in America, Nezuma had grown nauseous at the sight of parents coddling their children and never letting them discover the nature of risk. He had also seen an almost complete lack of parenting-no discipline instilled in a misbehaving child.

G.o.d forbid they use the word no no, he thought.

All of this left Nezuma with a pool of talent that would have perhaps been better if he poured bleach into the mix. His young guns were fools who thought a new Ducati motorcycle made them impervious to seasoned veterans of battle. They imagined their bravado alone would grant them respect.

And when they failed, they still expected to be rewarded.

Ridiculous.

All of his employees were like this, except one. In the front seat behind the steering wheel sat the only person Nezuma trusted with his life-Shuko.

Her ebony hair hung in a tasteful bob, unmarred by the trendy tea-brown staining so common to others of her generation. At twenty-five, Shuko was Nezuma's finest pupil and most loyal servant. Adept with her hands and feet as she was with firearms and explosives, not to mention an almost superhuman ability to face risk and danger and overcome both, Nezuma valued no one as he did Shuko.

Her voice cut through the whimpering of the man in the foot well. "We should go soon if we hope to stay with them."

Nezuma nodded. "I would very much hate to miss my train."

"Master..." The young man in the foot well couldn't have been any older than twenty. He was weeping now. Mixed with the tears and sweat, the BMW would no doubt reek if Nezuma had cared enough about it.

He calmly withdrew the silenced Beretta .22-caliber pistol and aimed at the man's head. "Failure is not to be tolerated."

When he fired, the subsonic bullets barely made a sound. But they penetrated the skull and bounced about inside, tearing open the brain cavity and killing the man.

Nezuma sighed again, disa.s.sembled the suppressor and pocketed the gun. As he opened the door, a slight breeze gave him a healthy breath of fresh air and he sucked it in greedily.

Shuko slid effortlessly from the car, retrieved their bags from the trunk and then closed it with a thump. Together, they walked across the street.

"Thank G.o.d I have you," Nezuma said.

Shuko bowed from her waist. "I am yours, master."

Nezuma smiled as the bright sunshine streamed down through the morning haze. They reached the other side of the street and entered the train station. Shuko sidled through the crowd and acquired two tickets for the bullet train heading west toward Osaka.

She handed one to Nezuma. "We should get aboard. The train will be leaving in a few minutes."

Nezuma took in a breath and let it ease out through his nose. "You're right, of course." He smiled. "But what about the car? We can't simply leave it there like that."

Shuko's eyes danced as she withdrew a slim white iPod from her pocket. She scrolled through the menu for a moment and then handed it to Nezuma.

Nezuma looked down. She had selected a song called "Demolition." Nezuma pressed Play.

Outside of the train station, the BMW M3 blew apart in a giant fireball that sent metal and body parts skyward for a hundred feet before cascading down to the ground in a fiery rain.

Nezuma clapped his hands amid the screams and chaos. He turned to Shuko. "Very impressive. Is it a new formula you've recently cooked up?"

Shuko smiled. "Something I've been working on for some time now. I'm glad I had a chance to field-test it before our trip."

"As am I." Nezuma kissed her lightly on the cheek. "You're marvelous and I don't deserve you."

"Master."

"But I will happily accept your service. G.o.d knows you're the only one I can count on to get things done properly."

The compliments seemed to run right off of her. "Our train."

"Yes, yes." Nezuma walked with her. "It would be rude, I'd imagine, to keep our friends waiting."

"What if the American woman spots you?" Shuko asked.

"I doubt very much she will. Besides, she is likely still sore from the other night. Probably more so than she will be willing to admit. But the pain will serve to keep her awareness dulled a bit."

Shuko frowned. "And Ogawa? He is far too dangerous to risk seeing us right now."

Nezuma followed her to the platform. "I don't think Ogawa knows the extent of our involvement, if he even suspects it at all. He seems far too interested in recovering the dorje dorje than he does in discovering who is truly after the artifact besides him." Nezuma clenched his hands into fists. "His devotion to his family will be his final undoing." than he does in discovering who is truly after the artifact besides him." Nezuma clenched his hands into fists. "His devotion to his family will be his final undoing."

They boarded the train and headed toward the rear compartment, pa.s.sing a snack car and scores of other pa.s.sengers.

Shuko said, "I was able to find out their seats are to the front. They are due to get off in Osaka."

"Excellent. We'll keep tabs on them anyway, just in case Ogawa has any surprises in store for us. It would pain me terribly to reach Osaka only to discover they had gotten off somewhere earlier."

Shuko smiled. "I don't think even Ogawa is foolish enough to risk jumping from a train traveling in excess of one hundred miles per hour through the countryside, over rivers and amid rocky terrain."

"Nor do I, but he is a ninja." Nezuma looked at her. "And they are a devious, cunning bunch, even if they have no honor. I will put nothing past him and I would urge you to follow suit."

Shuko bowed again. "As you say, master."

They settled themselves into their seats and Shuko immediately began reading the various books she'd brought with her. Nezuma insisted she maintain a steady diet of literature and current affairs.

When he'd met her, she'd been a homeless girl of sixteen, living under the bridges by Tokyo Bay. While others like her had readily sold their bodies for money, Shuko had maintained her dignity by refusing to do so. Instead, she scrounged for old computer parts and had taught herself how to make them work again. She was eking out the barest of existences when Nezuma came down looking for other young guns he could recruit.

His monthly forays always granted him unlimited access to the desperate and depraved. Nezuma set up pit matches between the liveliest fighters and watched as the skinny, ravenous youths tore each other apart for the promise of money, food and a job.

But on this foray, Nezuma found himself surprised in more ways than one. Just prior to the match, he'd seen a scuffle in the cardboard community that bordered the fight ring. The unmistakable sound of a slap on skin set his heart thumping.

The sudden barrage of kicks and punches and the body of a young man flying through the air and landing at his feet further shocked him.

In the dim light he saw Shuko bending back to work on her computers on a decrepit particleboard desk. He cleared his throat to make himself known. "What's your name?"

Nezuma had expected a deeper male voice to answer him, but he heard only a soft one honed to an edge by the poor economic conditions that had forged a raw spirit. "I am Shuko."

"The Claw?" Nezuma had stifled a laugh. "That's quite unique. Do you like cats or something?"

Shuko had turned to look at him. He could see the beauty in her eyes, hidden under the smudges of dust and soot. But there was something else in her eyes that moved Nezuma-honor.

"Cats have nothing to do with my name."

Nezuma nodded and took another stab at getting her to open up. "What did he want?"

Shuko shrugged. "What they all want-my body."

"Did he offer you money?"

She sniffed. "The little he had, yes. But I don't want their money for that. I am not a wh.o.r.e."

Nezuma nodded. "And do you know who I am?"

"You are the man who sets up fights and recruits the winners to work for him. I am told most of those you hire end up dead within a few months. This is because they are fools who are unused to the risks they so desperately seek."

Nezuma leaned against one of the bridge girders. "That is true. I have, so far, found no one who can handle the work I set before them. It is tough finding good help."

"The people you hire are morons," Shuko said.

Nezuma laughed. "Are you always so blunt in your opinion of others?"

"Only if it is deserved." She glanced at him again. "I am not opposed to giving respect to those who merit it."

Nezuma looked around. "Down here, I'm sure you don't find that very often, do you?"