The Third Option

Rapp had spent the last decade hunting the terrorist and had finally come face to face with him the previous spring. Aziz was now dead, and the anger was gone. It had been replaced with something very different – an emotion Rapp didn't know he could still feel. A

Jane Hoffman removed her headphones and a

Rapp looked at his watch. It was five minutes to eight, about two and a halfhours before show time. It was time to check in with Ke

IF DR. IRENE Ke

Washington was a town that loved drama and gossip, and no one loved it more than the politicians. With the delight of brooding Shakespearean characters, they had started their deathwatch. Several of them had gone so far as to call, feigning concern for Stansfield and his children. Ke

This was not going to happen. Stansfield's entire professional life had been centered on keeping secrets. He was not about to break with that. This, of course, was of no comfort to those in Washington who had committed the most egregious sins. It was of no comfort because they couldn't imagine possessing such valuable information and not using it.

It was painful for Ke

Hagenmiller and his companies had first landed on the CIA's radar screen back in the early nineties. At the time, Ke

Rather than see his dream bombed to the ground, Qaddafi closed the plant and began searching for a new place to set up shop. In early 1992, the CIA discovered the site of his new weapons plant. The Libyan dictator was trying to build the plant deep inside a mountain. Once the facility was complete, it would be impregnable to every- thing except a direct strike by a nuclear warhead.

In an effort to stall the completion of the facility, the CIA launched Rabta II. They identified all equipment, technology, and perso

Ke

On the next page were photos of the count's various homes. A brownstone in one of Hamburg 's oldest neighborhoods, the family's estate an hour to the south, and a mountain retreat in Switzerland. Hagenmiller's family had rich royal roots and a lot of debt. Five months earlier Ke

Ke

Two weeks earlier Ke

There were more incriminating photos, of Hagenmiller taking a briefcase from Khatami and then shaking hands. After their meeting was concluded, Hagenmiller drove to Geneva with his bodyguards and deposited the money in his bank. The following day the CIA's hackers got into the bank's computer system and discovered that five million dollars had been deposited in Hagenmiller's account.