The Third Option

He stopped at the next door, listened for a second, then opened it and checked the hallway. To his right he could hear voices coming from the general direction of the kitchen and the main hallway. He stepped into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him, and moved quickly through the open glass doors of the solarium.

The room was an a

Rapp quickly extinguished the lights and checked back down the hall toward the kitchen. There were still no signs that the fire had been discovered. He moved across the solarium, crouching behind various plants. When he reached one of the patio doors, he looked beyond a row of hedges where a group of limousines were parked. The drivers stood around smoking and playing cards. Rapp needed to get past them to the other cars that had been driven by the guests. He hoped a valet might have been kind enough to leave the keys in the ignition.

The shouts came from the direction of the kitchen at first, and then almost instantly the limousine drivers noticed something was wrong. The drivers ran toward the front door of the mansion to investigate. Rapp sprang from the solarium and ran across the patio, his chest aching with each breath of air. He went down the steps to the crushed-rock driveway, shot to the right, and ran past the limousines. The first car he passed was a Jaguar. Rapp didn't bother to check for keys. He needed something that would blend in a little better, preferably something that was made in Germany. Next was a red Mercedes-Benz; he passed on that one, too, but stopped at the third, a black Mercedes coupe. Rapp breathed a sigh of relief as the door opened and he saw the keys dangling from the ignition.

The car started, and Rapp eyed the gas gauge as it rose to two-thirds of a tank. He was in luck. Rapp shifted the car into first gear, and instead of pulling out onto the driveway, he turned the opposite way onto the grass. He drove the car across the side lawn toward the rear of the house. He looked over to his right to see if anyone had noticed him. Everyone appeared to be focused on the fire. The headlights lit the way as the sporty car picked up speed across the level, plush lawn. Rapp got a little too anxious with the accelerator several times, and the wheels spun out on the dew-covered grass.

Rapp never went anywhere without an escape plan, and this was no exception. From the moment he arrived, he had started memorizing avenues of escape. He knew where the adjoining roads led, the nearest train stations and airfields, anything that would help him get away as quickly as possible if things went wrong – and something had gone horribly wrong tonight. He couldn't even begin to imagine how he had been set up. Rapp smashed his fist down on the leather steering wheel and swore at himself for ignoring the warning signs that were now so obvious.

He turned the car onto one of the walking paths that cut through the large garden in the backyard. It occurred to him that the roof-mounted security cameras were undoubtedly recording his movements, but he discarded the worry after only a second. The fire would keep everyone busy for quite some time. He reached the end of the large garden, and the car gained speed as it cut across another large swatch of grass and the tires found the soft gravel of a horse trail. Rapp shifted the car into third gear and then fourth. With the car climbing above sixty miles an hour, he checked the odometer and noted how far he would have to travel before the first turn.

The road rolled down and away from the mansion, and Rapp kept his focus on the path ahead, heading for the small bridge that would get him over a creek that separated the manicured lawn from the forest. Moments later, the car flew over a short wood bridge, its side mirrors inches away from clipping the railings. Rapp slowed, looking for a turn that, according to the satellite photos he'd studied, should be coming up on his right. Rapp glimpsed the fork and, downshifting, shot up a small hill and into the woods.

It was a little over a mile to the first paved road. Rapp eased off the accelerator, reminding himself that the twenty or thirty seconds gained by racing through the woods would be quickly negated if he slammed into a tree. As the car bounced its way along the winding, rutted path, Rapp began to run through his options. Denmark was one hundred miles to the north, and the Netherlands was one hundred miles due west. Rapp wasn't crazy about going to either country. The subtle nuances of their language and culture were not second nature to him as they were in the countries to the south. Italy was an option. There was someone in Milan, someone who had been special to him once. Ke

France was the best choice. Rapp had safe deposit boxes in Paris, Marseille, and Lyon. Boxes no one at the Agency knew about. In France, there were friends he had made through his consulting business and his days as a triathlete, people he could trust from a life he had intentionally kept secret from his handlers. Not even Ke

Rapp downshifted into second gear and maneuvered the car through a sharp turn. The road snapped back around to the left and continued its meandering way through the forest. As he plotted the course ahead, he thought about Irene Ke

The car finally reached the firm traction of black asphalt. Rapp looked to the north and then the south. He hesitated for only a second and then turned the car toward Hanover, away from Hamburg. The E4 autobahn was only four miles away, and once he got there, Rapp could be on the other side of Hanover in less than forty minutes. From there, it was another hour and a half to Frankfurt. With the fire raging back at the estate, it would take at least an hour, he hoped, for them to discover that the car he was driving was missing, and even then they might not realize the importance of it. One thing was certain, however: when the German federal police found out that the assassins had gained access to the estate by posing as BKA agents, a dragnet would be thrown the likes of which the country probably hadn't seen since the old divided days of east and west. Radios moved much faster than cars, and that meant he might have to part company with his new wheels before Frankfurt.

The car flew down the road at more than eighty miles an hour. Rapp ignored the pain in his chest and his throbbing headache and focused on the problem. He had to disappear. He had to get out of Germany and find out who in the hell had set him up. A frightening thought gripped Rapp, driving him to near panic. Cursing, he pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor. There was a problem that needed to be dealt with immediately. Rapp weighed the risks of making the call from his digital phone. No, there were too many security issues. As much as he hated the delay, the call would have to wait.