Rex Dalton Thrillers: Books 1-3 (The Rex Dalton Series Boxset Book 1) by JC Ryan

Author:JC Ryan [Ryan, JC]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-27T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

Outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, 10:15 p.m., June 24

REX FOUND WHAT he was looking for before he’d rounded the corner to the back of the house. The door was not grand, nor did it lead to a part of the courtyard that was interesting or landscaped. In fact, it looked very much like what it turned out to be – a door to the working part of the house. A small anteroom Rex found himself in when he cautiously eased the door open led in one direction to the kitchen, in another to what his nose told him was a laundry, and in the third, to a hallway.

Suspecting that the hallway led to servant’s quarters and the laundry to a dead end, he selected the kitchen as his best option for getting into the main part of the house to locate the surveillance camera monitors. As soon as he entered the kitchen, he wished he’d put the man-jammies in his backpack. With those on he could have blended into the bustle for at least a minute, before someone realized he didn’t belong.

As it was, he was forced to immediately dispatch the first person he saw, the cook, he assumed, from the man’s position in front of a stove, stirring something on it. He did it by swiftly taking the man from behind in a choke-hold and tightening his arm until the sudden weight in his arms convinced him he’d crushed the man’s windpipe. The silent death gave him the time to drag the body into an alcove and strip it. He drew on the clothes he’d just acquired quickly, and went in search of the target room, on the lookout for other servants on his way.

The place was unlike anything he’d seen before anywhere in Afghanistan. Inside, it resembled pictures he’d seen of palatial Middle Eastern homes of royalty. The stark walls were softened by rich textile hangings or what looked like paintings of the Old Masters, in direct defiance of the Muslim proscription against figural depiction. Rex knew that the proscription was often honored in the breach in secular painting, even in the homes of ordinary Muslims, who could be as unfaithful to the central tenets of their religion as hypocritical Christians back home who with pious faces filled the front benches of churches for an hour or so on Sundays but during the week were unrecognizable as Christians in how they lived their real lives. But this display was almost obscenely outspoken in its opulence.

Highly polished woods, an explosion of color from vases, precious Persian rugs, and rococo-style brass, silver, and gold frames for the art and mirrors were jumbled together in more of a celebration of conspicuous consumption than carefully planned décor.

Usama was a very wealthy man, and he had no compunction about showing it.

Rex was too busy doing his best to avoid appearing in any of the mirrors from any angle to express his opinion about the pretentiousness. He managed to get past several openings that would have been better for him had there been closed doors in them without encountering anyone.

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