The Third Option Page 7

  The first face Kennedy saw was that of Tom Lee, the CTC’s deputy director and Kennedy’s number two. Lee was speaking with two of the case officers who had been working on the Hagenmiller case. When he saw her, Lee cut off the two case officers and crossed the room to Kennedy. Halfway there, he jerked his head in the direction of her office.

  The two converged outside Kennedy’s door, and Lee gave his best “You’re not going to believe what happened” look. Kennedy and Lee got along well. Both were quiet, even-tempered intellectuals. As was traditional with the deputy director slot at the CTC, Lee was not an employee of the CIA. He was FBI. This was the brave new world that the Counterterrorism Center had pioneered. Under Kennedy’s command were employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Justice Department, and scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Lawrence Livermore. Fifteen years earlier, not even the heads of these agencies would have been allowed to view the classified material that these mid-level analysts were able to.

  Lee closed the door and placed his hands on his hips. Bureau all the way, he was wearing a suit and tie, even on a Saturday morning, though at least he had taken his jacket off. The CTC tended to be a little looser on the dress code than the rest of Langley. Most of the case officers out in the pen were wearing jeans. Lee was a native of Seattle, though his parents had immigrated from Korea. He had graduated from the University of Washington with a double major in accounting and computer science.

  Kennedy set her bag down and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Lee shook his head slowly. “We think Count Hagenmiller was killed last night.”

  Kennedy’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  “Yes…really.” Lee studied Kennedy for a sign that she might know more than she was letting on. He had his suspicions that Kennedy and her beloved Agency didn’t always tell him what was going on. On a certain level he respected this, but there were times when it made him a little nervous. As was always the case, her expression betrayed nothing.

  After sitting down in her ugly government-issue chair that was covered in some mystery gray fabric, she asked, “What do you mean, we think?”

  “We are not entirely sure what is going on at this point. What we do know is that several Hamburg TV stations are reporting that a fire broke out at the Hagenmiller estate last night. The damage was extensive. We know from NSA intercepts that two bodies were discovered in the ashes. Both were badly burned. They presume that one is the count and the other is his bodyguard.”

  “I assume we can rule out an accident?”

  Lee nodded. “As we’ve discussed…we’re paid to be paranoid. Even with that in mind, the odds that a burning log rolled out of the fireplace and then tackled and killed the count aren’t good.”

  “I’d have to agree.” Kennedy grabbed her coffee. “What’s our early assessment?”

  “That’s a good question. Our first thought was that Saddam ordered the hit for…take your pick of reasons. Hagenmiller screwed him somehow, maybe Saddam thought he blew the whistle on the heist. Maybe Saddam wanted all of the equipment for half the dough. Who knows? Saddam is the obvious candidate, but we have another interesting development.” Lee pulled up a chair and sat. “About an hour ago, our fax machine started humming. The BKA has put out a bulletin on three individuals. Two men and one woman, all Caucasian. Sally just got off the phone with her contact at the BKA, and they are fuming.” Lee was referring to one of the case officers who dealt with the European Union and the various law enforcement agencies that helped with counterterrorism. “Supposedly, these three individuals gained access to the Hagenmiller estate last night by posing as agents from the BKA. They have them on tape arriving in one car, and this is where it starts to get a little weird. Two of them get out of the car and go into the house. One man and one woman. A couple of minutes later, the woman comes running out and jumps into the car, and she and the driver leave. Now, about five minutes pass, and all of a sudden the fire starts. At about the same time, they have the third guy on tape leaving the house from a side door. He steals a car and leaves the estate by a back road. They found the car that he stole in the parking garage at the Hanover airport about two hours ago. They have him on airport surveillance catching a cab and have put out a nationwide bulletin for the vehicle.”

  Kennedy tried to remain calm. “What about the other car?”

  “No word on it yet.”

  She took a sip of coffee and focused on concealing the fear that was clawing at her gut. “Any other developments?”

  “One.” Lee’s face took on an exhausted look. “The secretary of state called five minutes ago.”

  Kennedy didn’t like the sounds of this. She set her coffee mug back on the desk.

  “It appears that he and Hagenmiller are, or in the count’s case I should say were, avid art collectors. They have many mutual friends…a list that reads like a who’s who of foreign dignitaries and royalty. The secretary of state said that he knows we had the count under surveillance and that he would like us to cooperate with the German authorities in apprehending the assassins.” Lee leaned back and added, “Apparently, a very valuable collection of art was destroyed in the fire.”

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “No. I guess some very well-known and valuable originals were lost.”

  “No.” Kennedy frowned in a rare show of emotion. “He told you he knows that we had the count under surveillance and that he wants us to cooperate with the BKA.”

  “Yes.”

  “And just how does he know we had him under surveillance?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have any ideas?”

  Lee thought about it for a second and said, “Maybe.”

  “Make it a priority to find out, please.” Kennedy reached for her phone. “In the meantime, I’d better see what I can do to head the secretary off before he does any more damage.”

  It was noon, it was fall, it was Saturday, and if you were a native Washingtonian, it was the best time of the year to be in the nation’s capital. Spring was nice, but it brought too many tourists and the dreadful humidity of the Potomac River Valley. In the fall, the air was crisp, the colors were vibrant, and in neighborhoods all around the city, the coeds were back and excited about another year away from Mom and Dad. As Peter Cameron walked hurriedly around the south side of Washington Circle, he thought of none of this. He wished he could be out enjoying the gorgeous Saturday afternoon, but there were more urgent issues at hand.

  Cameron had been back in the States for only a few hours, and in that time he had discovered some very bothersome information. He and the Jansens had left Germany just after midnight from a small airfield on the outskirts of Hamburg. Then they flew to Meaux Esbly, another small airfield an hour from Paris. Cameron took the first flight for New York out of Charles De Gaulle in the morning, and the Jansens left from Orly and were to fly nonstop to Mexico City. From there they were to take a flight to Los Angeles and then home to Denver.

  Cameron reached the northwest side of Washington Circle and continued up Pennsylvania Avenue. He had just left his small office at George Washington University. Cameron had worked at the CIA from 1974 to 1998. During his last year at Langley, he had been approached by someone who presented him with a job opportunity that would increase his income five-fold and allow him to dabble, free of congressional oversight, in something he really enjoyed. Part of the package was a professorship at GW that required about ten hours a week and paid as much as his old job at Langley. The class was about the CIA, it met three times a week, and he had two full-time teacher’s assistants. There were other consulting jobs that came along with his new package and some cash bonuses for doing exactly what he was doing right now.

  At 25th Street, Cameron took a right and headed halfway up the block before ducking i
nto the Columbia Hospital for Women. He approached a row of pay phones. Three were being used, and two were not. Cameron plugged in the proper change and dialed a number. When the voice answered on the other end, Cameron brought his fingers up and pinched his larynx. His voice sounded scratchy and a pitch higher.

  “I need a cab.”

  The voice on the other end asked, “How fast, how far, and how many passengers?”

  “In an hour. Twenty miles, domestic, and four passengers.”

  There was barely a pause on the other end, then the reply, “Site four in sixty minutes. Anything else?”

  It took Cameron an extra second to remember that site four was the Montgomery County Airpark, and then he replied, “No.” He hung up the phone and left the hospital. He hated using phones. It came from years of knowing first-hand the capabilities of the NSA and the CIA, but there was little choice, given the urgency of what he had to do. Cameron had just left one of the computer labs at George Washington. He rarely used his office computer to surf the Web, and when he worked out of the labs, he tried to use a different computer each time. He had also obtained a list of students with Internet accounts and their passwords. The Internet was the strange new world, and the laws protecting privacy on it hadn’t yet made it into the infancy stage. Virtually every law enforcement, military, and intelligence agency monitored the Web searching for patterns of suspected spies, terrorists, and criminals.

  Cameron turned onto M Street and headed west toward Georgetown. Just twenty minutes ago, he had used the account of a sophomore who was majoring in international business to surf the Web. It was the top story with all of the German newspapers and TV stations. The London Times had even posted it. Cameron had expected the Hagenmiller assassination to be fairly high-profile. That was part of the plan. But what he didn’t expect to see was that the German authorities were seeking three individuals. Not two but three. When he had left the estate, there had been no fire, let alone a fire that would go on to destroy half of the century-old mansion. The stories also reported that the remains of two badly burned bodies had been found in the smoldering wreckage. Beth Jansen had specifically said three bodies, not two. Hagenmiller, the bodyguard, and Rapp. Something was wrong, and Cameron thought he knew what it was.

  He was starting to sweat. He unzipped his blue jacket as he crossed over Rock Creek and flapped it open several times to let his body heat escape. The parkway below was crowded with bikers and joggers. Cameron pushed on across the bridge, cursing the fact that instead of enjoying the day and relishing a job well done, plus a sizable cash deposit in one of his offshore accounts, he now had to deal with these incompetents.

  At 29th Street, Cameron found another pay phone and punched in a number. He said, “Hey, I’ve got a tee time in an hour. Can you make it?”

  The person hesitated and then said, “An hour might be pushing it. Where are we playing?”

  “Montgomery Village Golf Club.”

  There was another pause. “Is it a tough track?”

  “It can be, but I think you can handle it.”

  “Do we have a foursome?”

  “No.” Cameron looked over his shoulder. “We could use two more, and make sure they’re good sticks. And I don’t want to play with any strangers.”

  “Got it. I’ll meet you out there in ninety minutes.”

  Cameron hung up the phone and headed up 29th Street. The cobblestone sidewalk was steep and heaved from tree roots. A sheen of sweat coated his face, and his beard was starting to itch. His apartment was at the top of the hill on Q Street. It was only six blocks, but all of it was uphill. The forty-eight-year-old veteran of the CIA cursed himself for the extra weight he’d allowed to build around his abdomen. When this was over, he would check into one of those high-class spas where they flushed all of the crap out of you and the weight just melted away. That’s what he needed—to be pampered and surrounded by beautiful people. For the first time ever, he had the money to enjoy the finer things in life.

  But first he needed to take care of this loose end. Up the hill Cameron trudged. By the time he reached Dumbarton, the jacket was off, and the pits of his button-down shirt were soaked through. The two bags he needed were already packed, and his car was parked in a rented garage two blocks away. Downhill, thank God. He would have to stop at one of the safe deposit boxes and get cash for the freelancers. No one in this line of work came cheap. He would, of course, ask his employer to reimburse him later, and with any luck he would be able to retrieve the money he’d paid the Jansens. Cameron debated for several seconds whether or not he should send word to his employer. As he crossed the intersection at O Street, he decided against it. The man hated shoddy work and loved people with initiative. He would take care of the problem on his own and then give him a complete accounting of the events. The Jansens had to go. If Irene Kennedy got her hands on them before he did, his employer would have an aneurysm. Cameron might have to disappear for a while. Maybe forever.

  THEY HAD ARRIVED in Freiburg at ten minutes to six in the morning. The city of a little more than two-hundred thousand was just starting to stir. During the night’s journey, Rapp had discarded his silenced Ruger and encrypted radio as they passed over a bridge near Stuttgart. He had also burned the BKA credentials and several other documents. Rapp had been to Freiburg once before in his mid-twenties. He had picked it randomly as a place to disappear between assignments. His memories of the city in the middle of the Black Forest were good ones. The plan back then was to stay one week, but he ended up staying for two. He had arrived before the annual Hocks Festival. Freiburg was a big cyclist town, and it didn’t take long for Rapp to hook up with one of the clubs. He spent his days racing through the forest and river valleys with a pack of crazed cyclists who enjoyed the pain almost as much as he did, and his nights drinking great German beer and chasing beautiful German women. There would be none of that on this trip.

  Rapp had found a spot near the Munsterplatz, the town’s marketplace, and ditched the cab. Farmers and craftsmen were already arriving to set up their stands for the busy Saturday morning crowd. Rapp and Geoffrey had set off on foot. A mile later, they walked into a small inn called the Zum Roten Baren. Geoffrey had followed Rapp’s instructions perfectly. He told the man behind the front desk that they had driven down from Frankfurt to spend the weekend hiking and that they had planned to come down the night before but had to work late, so instead they got up early and drove down.

  The elderly innkeeper seemed to buy the story. Rapp had instructed Geoffrey to pay for two nights in advance with cash. The innkeeper happily took the money and gave them a room without checking IDs, which pleased Rapp all the more. Up in the room, Rapp gave Geoffrey the money he’d promised, blindfolded him, and tied him securely to the bed. Before leaving, Rapp went over Geoffrey’s story with him one final time. “Just lie on the bed and try to sleep. When the housekeeper discovers you, have them call the police and tell them the whole story. Tell them I threatened to kill you if you didn’t cooperate, just like we discussed in the car.”

  Geoffrey nodded one last time, and Rapp placed a gag over his mouth. With Geoffrey safely tucked away, Rapp stripped nude and took out his blue contacts. His eyes screamed relief as soon as the foreign objects were removed. In the shower, he washed and rinsed his hair five times to get all of the brown out. He tried not to irritate the cut on the back of his head, but it was impossible. When he got out of the shower, he left the water running and cleaned as much of the blood off the back collar of his dress shirt as he could.

  After dressing, he went back into the bathroom, turned off the water in the shower, and cleaned the drain trap of hair. He threw all of the towels into a white plastic laundry bag that the inn provided and checked the room one more time. As he left the room, Rapp placed the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and closed it.

  It was 6:45 by the time he left the inn by a side door. Rapp walked two miles across town to the area by the Albert Ludwig University. On the way, he dropped the plas
tic bag containing the towels in a Dumpster behind a restaurant and stopped at two separate drugstores and a hotel gift shop. When he reached the university, it was after 7:30, and the temperature was in the sixties. Rapp found the student commons and scouted it out until he found a bathroom that was private enough. It was unisex and on the third floor. He locked the door and went to work. Taking the clippers he had bought at the first drugstore, he put an inch and a half guard on the end, plugged it into the outlet, leaned over the sink, and started buzzing his thick black hair. Then he put a half-inch guard on and buzzed the sides and back of his head. Again, he cleaned up the hair and then put on a blue T-shirt that had a picture of Freiburg’s most famous landmark, the Munster Cathedral. Over that Rapp put on a plain gray sweatshirt. He also wore a pair of tan shorts, white sweat socks, and blue shoes. His clothes and shoes from the night before were bundled up and shoved into a canvas shopping bag. Everything else went into a large green backpack that he had bought at the second drugstore, with the exception of the Glock pistol, which he shoved into the waistband of his shorts and covered with the bulky sweatshirt.

  It was a huge relief to get out of the clothes. He had wanted to do it much earlier, but he didn’t want Geoffrey to see his transformation. Rapp left the university and found a bakery just blocks away. He was famished and devoured several pastries, a croissant, and a bottle of orange juice. Next he found a coffee shop and killed another twenty minutes sipping a piping-hot blend. At five minutes to nine, he started out for his next destination.

  The bike shop was almost exactly as Rapp remembered it. The enthusiasts and club members were already milling about in front of the small shop in their brightly colored, tight-fitting lycra outfits waiting for the order to mount their bikes. Rapp picked his way through the crowd and into the shop. Bicycles hung from virtually every inch of the ceiling and lined the walls. Rapp approached the counter and asked for help in French. A man behind the counter directed him to a young woman with long black hair. The woman was French. He quickly found out that she was from Metz and was spending the school year studying abroad at the University of Freiburg.