As soon as his door closed behind her, the intercom buzzed.

“Hold my calls, Louise.”

With deliberate grace he reached into a desk drawer, pulled out a letter opener made of human bone, and slid the blade under the smallest imperfection in the seal.

When the bone encountered the wax, the seal stirred itself from the box, and began to form into a tiny simulacrum of a dragon. The wax-dragon yawned, stretched its legs, and climbed down off of the box top and onto the ink blotter, to observe the ritual.

The box unwrapped itself, displaying its contents. It had been a very long time since he was the sort of man shocked by the sight of a severed hand holding a snub-nosed revolver, or an almost-living dragon made from wax.

The dragon looked up at him and said, “Compliments of your friends in Chongqing.”

Mr. Kaufman picked up the hand and gun, examined them closely, and set them back on the top of his massive oaken desk.

He pressed the call button on his phone and said,

“Send her in.”