Provenance

The kitchen was clean. Intact spice jars lined the racks. They looked vaguely out of order, and she thought there had been more. But the floor was not a crunchy carpet of broken glass and cinnamon and thyme.

Cautiously she moved to the living room entrance. She smelled the sharp tang of disinfectant.

There were no bodies, no bloodstains, no shattered glass on the floor. The couch sat upright. The skylight overhead was intact.

It was as if nothing had happened.

6

Morning sunlight streamed through the window, bringing its peculiar vivid-edged glow. The sky was clear except for a few white clouds. Down in the street the traffic rumbled and honked.

Annja sat on the window seat and tried to concentrate on notes she was trying to type up for the show. It was all so normal she wanted to scream.

Normal it may have been. But all was not as it had been before.

There were little things out of whack. The papers and periodicals were stacked on two-thirds of the couch as haphazardly as usual. But the cushions on the couch were new, the colors and patterns different from what they had been before. Similar—but distinctly not the same. Likewise the throw rug. The one that had been comprehensively bled upon was just an inexpensive throw she’d bought at Wal-Mart. This one, again, resembled the old one. But it wasn’t the same. Aside from lacking bloodstains.

The semblance of normalcy did nothing to diminish her creepy feelings of violation. They only added an edge of eeriness, as if the old Twilight Zone theme played constantly in the background.

Aside from the mind-fry elements, Annja had to admit a certain elegance to it all. It made reporting the incident to the police even more problematic. Hello? Remember me? Ninja girl? Well, it turns out the ninjas took all the dead bodies with them and cleaned up the bloodstains. They even replaced my throw rug and the contents of my spice rack!

Mentally replaying the hypothetical conversation for about the tenth time she shook her head. That conversation would not end well.

Why? she thought, for far more than the tenth time. Who? She sighed. She didn’t even know where to start investigating.

She tapped at the keys a bit more.

Investigate recent reports from the Republic of the Congo of sightings of a large animal which allegedly resembles a dinosaur. If there’s anything to it, it may be the model for the mysterious creature, the dragonlike sirrush, represented on Babylon’s ancient Ishtar gate….

She stopped. “I can’t concentrate,” she said aloud. “I may just have to go out to get anything done.”

She picked up the remote to click on the TV. It felt like an admission of defeat.

The 24/7 news channel had finally gotten over the abortive Ocean Venture hijacking. It was back to showing the usual processions of disaster and despair, interspersed with the standard assurances that all would be well, if only the viewers trusted the government. She sighed and turned it off.

Her phone rang and she answered it. “Hello.”

“Hello.” The man’s voice had a mannered, almost English accent. “My name is Cedric Millstone. Am I speaking to Ms. Annja Creed?”

“Yes, you are, Mr. Millstone,” she said, secretly glad of the interruption. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d very much like to meet you and talk to you, Ms. Creed.”

Uh-oh, she thought. He sounded a little older than her usual obsessed fan. “I’m sorry, Mr. Millstone,” she said. “I’m pretty tied up right now. I have a number of very pressing commitments.”

It was true. Annja couldn’t—honestly—claim she never lied. But she tried to tell the truth.

“I’m sorry,” the mellifluous voice said. “I know how this must sound. I could tell you I am a man of some standing in the community, a man of considerable means, but I fear that might only tend to confirm your altogether natural suspicion that I harbor improper intentions. I can provide you references, but doubtless you are aware the voice that answers at any number I give you might not be whom he portrays himself to be.”

“You’re right, Mr. Millstone. I have to tell you, that’s almost exactly what I’m thinking,” Annja said.

“Then let me tell you I wish to offer an apology, and an explanation, for your recent inconvenience.”

She drew in a sharp breath. She felt a complicated mixture of fear and anger.

“Inconvenience,” she said. It was almost a hiss.

“An inadequate word, I grant. As I say, I shall endeavor to explain, and insofar as possible, make amends. May I call upon you?”

Don’t do it! the ever-cautious voice at the back of her head cried. Nothing good can come of this.

She felt her mouth stretching in a tight-lipped expression that someone near-sighted might mistake for a smile in bad light. I can rationalize about how it’s a matter of personal security to find out all I can about whoever attacked me last night, she thought, but the truth is I’ll go crazy if I don’t find out.

“We’ll meet,” she said.

ARJUNA’S COFFEE SHOP was a favored hangout of Annja’s, in easy walking distance of her loft and convenient to the subway station where she caught the train to Manhattan to work. It managed to be at once spotless and cozy, not an effect all that easy to achieve and not too common in this part of Brooklyn. The owner, Mr. Brahmaputra, was a stout, friendly, voluble man who always wore an apron over his capacious belly, and had slightly protuberant, heavy-lidded eyes behind thick round lenses.

Annja associated India with chai, not coffee. She’d once asked Mr. Brahmaputra why he opened specifically a coffee shop, instead of a chai emporium. “Because I like coffee better,” he replied. Both the coffee and chai he sold were excellent, as was everything else. That and the friendly ambience of the place had helped him build a loyal clientele over the years, enabling him to withstand repeated efforts of a well-known chain to displace him.

Despite the café’s name, Arjuna wasn’t Mr. Brahmaputra’s first name. It referred to the Hindu hero-god, whose charioteer in battle was no less than the god Krishna, who was always lecturing him about karma in Bhagavad-Gita. Reproductions of some fairly alarming traditional portrayals of Arjuna adorned the walls, many with Blue Boy crouched at his side, nagging away.

“So, Mr. Millstone,” Annja told her companion through the steam rising from her freshly filled cup in the artificially cooled air, “I believe you had in mind to apologize and explain. Given the enormity of what you have to apologize for and explain, I’d say you have your work cut out for you.”

Cedric Millstone, or at least a man who bore a decent resemblance to the pictures she’d seen in a quick Google search, nodded his head. He had a large face, more sideways-oval than round, red as a brick beneath a wavelike coiffure of hair as white and perfect as a marble sculpture. His dark blue suit was expensive-looking, his nails recently manicured, his watch a Rolex. His cuff links resembled the exposed works of a small watch, gilded. Annja was disappointed the little gears didn’t turn.

“There has been a terrible misunderstanding,” he said. He had the kind of plummy voice that always suggested its owner was chronically constipated to Annja.

“I’ll agree with the terrible part,” she said.

He nodded as if accepting a passed sentence. “Truly, I know, there can be no restitution for what was done to you.”

“You could make a start,” she said, sipping her coffee and savoring its strong taste, “by cutting out the evasions and getting to the point.”

He showed her a pained smile. “Quite. I’m sorry. This is rather difficult, you see—although not, of course, nearly as difficult as what you have been put through. I represent a certain private international society devoted to humanitarian works.”

“Humanitarian? Is that what you call breaking through people’s skylights in the middle of the night and trying to kill them?”

“Not kill, Ms. Creed. I assure you. The men who…attacked you…had been given strict instructions not to harm you.”

“They shot at me.” It was perhaps a testament to the sort of life she’d been living of late that it didn’t take any particular effort to keep her voice down. If anything, she was way more upset about the violation of her personal space. People shot at her all the time. It no longer particularly bothered her. So long as they missed.

“Tranquilizer projectiles only,” he said quickly. “A…proprietary design. Quite painless and free of distressing side effects.”

“Aside from being captured like—what? A black bear who’s wandered into the suburbs? And if all they wanted was to capture me, why did they come at me with swords?”

“I surmise, in an attempt to intimidate you into surrendering. Obviously, an ill-advised course of action. Terribly so, in light of what happened. Nor in honesty can I blame you for the actions you took. You defended yourself and your home against a violent invasion. You acted within your rights. Laudably, even,” Millstone said.

“What did they intend to do with me, once they intimidated me, or knocked me out?”