The thing Lanier didn’t see, that nobody foresaw, was what happened the night of Dunkelzahn’s victory, when the dragon—in human guise—departed a party at the Watergate Hotel, stepped into his presidential limousine, and then vanished in a fiery explosion only blocks away from the hotel, leaving nothing but a huge crater, a livid scar in the skin of the highway, to mark his passing. Maybe Dunkelzahn foresaw it, Lanier thought to himself. Or maybe there is someone better at playing the game than even a great dragon .