Vince Flynn - The Third Option

It was a nice fall morning in Milan as Donatella walked to work. Every spring the people of Milan eagerly awaited summer. It meant trips to some of the world's most beautiful lakes. But by the time August rolled around, they were once again ready for fall. The warm, humid air of summer brought smog and choking pollution to the city. The crisp cool air of autumn helped clean things up.

Donatella took her time walking this morning, which probably had something to do with the boots she was wearing. They had a four-inch heel on them, and as was the case with most of the fashion she helped sell, they were not very practical. She passed the House of Gucci on Via Monte Napoleone and resisted the urge to spit on the display window. She took a right onto Via Sant' Andrea and crossed the street. Up ahead was the House of Armani, her home for almost fifteen years. Donatella was fiercely loyal. It was, in fact, probably the only thing she had inherited from her mother other than her looks. She was the byproduct of an Austrian father and an Italian mother. Her mother was a Jew from Torino, Italy, and her father was a Lutheran from Dornbirn, Austria; it was no surprise that their marriage had failed.

Italy was, after all, the Vatican 's backyard. The country had a not so illustrious record of crushing religious dissent. The marriage lasted three short years, and then she and her mother returned to Torino, where they lived with Donatella's Orthodox Jewish grandparents. At sixteen she ran away to Milan. She wanted to model, and she didn't want any more religion. She got her way on both counts, and it was the start of a very bumpy road.

Now, all of these years later, Donatella Rahn entered the House of Armani knowing that her colleagues hadn't the slightest idea of her full range of talents. She eschewed the elevator, as always, and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. As usual, she was one of the first to arrive. She entered her sanctum and closed the door for privacy. Her office was modem industrial, a miniaturized version of an airplane hangar. Sketches of clothes cluttered every available inch of the two couches and four chairs. Her coworkers liked to complain that there was nowhere to sit in her office. Donatella wondered if they would ever take the hint that she wanted it that way.

The only thing in the office that wasn't covered with sketches was a large glass desk. Donatella sat down behind it and turned on her computer. Her sleek flat Viewsonic screen came to life a moment later. She checked her work e-mail and then her personal e-mail. After wading through seventeen messages, she checked a third on-line mailbox. This mailbox, she had been assured, could not be traced back to her. There were only three people in the world who knew about it. One in Tel Aviv, one in Paris, and one in Washington. Almost all of the messages came from the person in Tel Aviv.

This morning was no different. Donatella clicked on the message, and the decryption software on her computer went to work. When it was done, she began to read. She was being offered a job in Washington. It was rated at a quarter of a mil- lion dollars, which meant the individual was not high profile. If he were, the rate would be a half million or more. On this she had to trust her handler. He had only screwed up once. It had almost cost her her life, but in his defense, it had been an honest mistake. She read a brief profile of the target and then checked her electronic organizer. There was a show in New York this coming weekend. It wasn't a big one, but then again, part of her job was to find undiscovered talent.

She thought it over for a minute and then decided to accept. She typed in her reply and logged off. She would receive a more thorough dossier within several hours. The next call was to her travel agent to book a ticket and check the availability of the company's apartment in Manhattan. With that accomplished, she set about clearing her schedule for the remainder of the week. Donatella Rahn was indeed a very complicated woman.

IT WAS RAINING, and the Wednesday morning temperature was a chilly fifty-two degrees. Kennedy's sedan drove east on Independence Avenue. Traffic was thick, as the deluge of government employees scrambled to make it to their desks by nine. The sedan rolled past the Air and Space Museum and then crossed 4th Street. Kennedy looked out the window at the throngs of people huddled under umbrellas waiting for the light to change. Normally, she would have brought something to work on during the ride from Langley to the Hill, but she had forced herself not to. She needed to straighten some things out in her head.

The only good piece of news since Saturday was that Mitch was alive. She could have done without his dramatic reappearance and his skepticism in regard to her loyalty, but, as he had pointed out, she wasn't the one who had been shot. Mitch was a different breed, and Kennedy had always respected that. He operated much closer to the edge than she ever would or could. He had once again proven that his level of skill was bewildering. With no help whatsoever, he had made it out of Germany and back to the United States, where he then broke into the CIA director's house and in the process also broke the jaw of the CIA employee who was there to make sure such a thing never happened.

When Rapp finally settled down, they filled him in on what lime they knew. He in turn had asked a lot of questions for which they had almost no answers. The situation was dismal, Rapp was disgusted, and Kennedy was embarrassed. Rapp, never one to pull a punch, had placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the director of the Counterterrorism Center and Stansfield, telling them, «You've got a leak, and if you don't find it, I'll find it for you.»

Kennedy already knew she had a leak, but in the current political climate, the last thing she needed was Mitch Rapp running around Washington banging people's heads together. To Kennedy's consternation, Stansfield had actually encouraged Rapp to find the leak, but in her opinion, it was time to let Mitch take a long vacation. With the chairman watching like a hawk, she didn't need Rapp drawing unneeded attention to himself, and ultimately her – no matter how good he was.

What Stansfield had neglected to tell Kennedy was his real reason for wanting to turn their bull loose in the china shop. His doctor had told hint the day before that the cancer was progressing much faster than anticipated. And indeed, he could feel it eating away at his insides. Each day was a little worse. It was no longer an issue of months but weeks. He needed to put things in order before he passed. He needed to find out who was behind the recent events. Rapp had been the target in Germany, but something told the old director that whoever was behind this move had a much bigger target in mind than Rapp. There wasn't enough time left for subtlety, only results, and if there was one thing Rapp was exceptional at, it was getting results.

The government sedan passed the Sam Rayburn House Office Building. The four-story behemoth was named in honor of Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn, the congressman from Texas who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1912 to 1961. The people of Texas had sent Rayburn to Washington a staggering twenty-five times. From 1940 until his death in 1961, Rayburn served as speaker of the house seventeen times. During that time, very little happened in Washington without Sam Rayburn's approval. Chairman Rudin had an office inside the Rayburn Building, but he spent most of his time in a second office on the top floor of the Capitol. He liked to refer to it as his eagle's nest. Max Salmen, the CIA's deputy director of Operations, called it the vulture's lair. Rudin didn't like this one bit, but that, of course, was Salmen's intent. In recent: years, Salmen had stated that his sole mission before retirement was to drive Rudin insane. At first, Kennedy wondered why Stansfield tolerated this, and then it dawned on her that the more Rudin focused his hatred on Salmen, the less he would have left over for die rest of die Agency; She wished that were die case this morning.