Brooke looked into his smug face and felt as if bolts of flame would shoot from her eyes. She did not stand.
“You will participate, Mr. President,” she said in words of ice, “or I will personally detail for the international media a year’s worth of attempted infiltration of the United Nations by Ling Chu, the assassin, while employed by the Chinese Consulate in New York, and let them make their own judgments about who sent her to kill the secretary-general. This gathering will end immediately, and there is not a person on this planet who will not be made aware of who is to blame for its failure. Can your economy really withstand that kind of censure and isolation again, sir?”
The silence in the room was physical. She slowly turned her head to take them all in, then pointed toward the doo
