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“Get off me!” Marri said, swinging a fist in what passed for a weak right cross. Rapp blocked it easily, and when he did, something caught his eye. The edge of the chef’s thumbnail had been filed to a sharp point. Rapp examined it for a moment and then dropped a knee into the man’s chest.

“Mitch!” Warch said from behind him. “This has to stop. It’s time for you and me to get out of here before anyone finds out this happened.”

Rapp pushed up the left sleeve on Marri’s chef’s coat. He knew he was onto something when the man suddenly found the strength to start thrashing. Rapp rammed the back of his head into the concrete hard enough to daze him but not hard enough to knock him out. The groan that followed came from Warch, not Marri.

Rapp finally found what he was looking for on the underside of the man’s forearm. The tiny blister pack was completely invisible, colored to perfectly match Marri’s skin and glued down seamlessly. The only way he could tell it was there was the soft, fluid feel.

“Got it,” Rapp said. “On his arm.”

Warch let out a long breath. “Thank God.”

When the effects of his head hitting the floor faded, Marri started to whimper.

“Everything stays the same,” Rapp said, dragging him to his feet. “Except you put that in Taj’s food instead of Chutani’s.”

“I won’t. Ahmed Taj is a great man. He will create a new Pakistan that will—”

Rapp had heard enough of this Muslim superpower bullshit from Gadai and his patience was finished. The dossier on Marri had been thrown together at the last minute from public domain information but it didn’t paint a picture of a man with any real convictions. He was neither a religious fundamentalist nor a political radical. No, Marri was just a pathetic little man looking to better his social status. He had no desire to martyr himself.

Rapp glanced back at the slabs of meat hanging near the rear of the refrigerator. Finding an empty hook, he grabbed Marri with both hands and began driving him back. When they were less than three feet from the steel spike, he lifted the chef off his feet.

“Stop!”

Marri’s scream was loud enough that it would have been heard throughout the palace if they hadn’t been closed up in the refrigerator. Rapp didn’t stop, though. He accelerated. Marri’s back was only inches from the hook when Rapp pulled right and slammed him into a wall stained with dried blood.

The man was blubbering now and his legs wouldn’t support him. When he crumpled to the ground, Rapp went with him, grabbing the back of his hair and forcing him to meet his gaze. “Decision time, Obaid. I leave you here on a hook or you do exactly what I tell you.”

“I’ll . . .” he stammered.

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll do it.”

Rapp pulled the man to his feet and shoved him toward the door. Marri stumbled but Warch caught him. He straightened the man’s coat and wiped away the tears that had started to flow down his soft cheeks. “Stay calm, Chef. It’ll all be over in a few minutes.”

CHAPTER 61

RAPP kept his eyes locked on Obaid Marri.

The red marks on this throat and right cheek were still visible and he was sweating profusely, but those things were plausibly explained by the heatstroke story. If the kitchen crew had any curiosity about what happened in that refrigerator or why there was a security man standing watch over the kitchen, they didn’t show it.

Marri was working on a bowl of soup, carefully arranging sprigs of cilantro before tapping chili powder artistically over the top.

“Secretary of State Wicka,” he said to the server waiting obediently at the end of his worktable. The man took it and hurried toward the door. Despite actually being an ISI operative, he passed by without giving Rapp so much as a glance. Such was the power of Chef Obaid Marri to beat down anyone in his presence.

He continued to personally adorn the dishes of the most important guests, prioritizing them based on the complex protocols that politicians were so obsessed with. While Rapp spent his time being shot at in places without electricity or running water, the world’s elected officials filled their days worrying about who got the shiniest fork.

Jack Warch entered the kitchen and took up a position next to Rapp. “I’ve got nothing. I’m sorry, Mitch.”

The former Secret Service agent had been poring over building plans and manpower distribution charts to find an escape route for Rapp in case he had to take Taj out himself. The result wasn’t much of a surprise. Warch and the Pakistanis had specifically designed their security to be foolproof.

If Marri failed, Rapp’s best option would be to just stride into the room and put an unsilenced round into the back of Taj’s head. The panic would be immediate and he could use that. With luck—a lot of it—he might be able to disappear into the chaos and make it to the main gate.

Marri glanced at a list clipped to the shelf in front of him and froze. When he began moving again, it was to push up his left sleeve.

“This is it,” Rapp said quietly.

Warch brought his wrist to his mouth. “We have a report of a potential threat. Don’t make any overt moves, but stay alert.”

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