Vince Flynn - The Third Option

«Hello.» Donatella spoke perfect English.

«Good evening, ma'am. Are you checking in?»

«Yes. The name is Mary Jones.» Donatella extracted a credit card from her purse and slid it across the counter. She also had a California driver's license with the same name. She had picked them up in Manhattan at a safe deposit box she kept.

«You'll be with us for four nights, Ms. Jones.»

«That's right.» Donatella signed the charge slip with her own pen and took the room key. The woman pointed to the elevators and informed the guest that a bellhop would be up with her luggage in a moment. Donatella thanked the woman and took the elevator to the fifth floor. Once in her room, she grabbed a sunglasses case from her purse and opened it. Inside was a small countermeasure device designed to detect RF transmitters, tape recorders, and AC line carrier transmitters. Donatella swept the entire room. She didn't bother checking the phone, though. She would not be using it.

When the bellhop arrived, she gave him a five-dollar bill and then locked and chained the door. The clock next to the king-size bed told her it was 9:41, which meant it was almost three in the morning in Milan. Sleep would have to wait. Donatella took off her Armani suit and hung it in the closet. From her suitcase, she grabbed a pair of jeans, brown boots, and a large wool sweater. She dressed quickly and put a faded red Eddie Bauer baseball hat on her head, pulling her ponytail out the back. From her purse, she grabbed a pair of small binoculars, her StarTAC Trimode phone, and her Heckler amp; Koch HK4 pistol. The compact gun carried eight. 32-caliber rounds and was easily concealable under her bulky sweater.

Donatella left the hotel, heading west on M Street for several blocks and then taking a right onto 30th Street. The evening air was chilly but pleasant. It felt great after spending most of the day on a plane and a train. On the flight over from Milan, she had carefully studied the dossier of her target. The choice of the Four Seasons Hotel was an easy one. It was centrally located between the man's home and office. Donatella took her time walking up the steep hill. She was canvassing the neighborhood as she had been taught by the Mossad.

Donatella Rahn was not a very conflicted woman, at least not when compared to the person she had been in her twenties. At thirty-eight, she had learned to let certain things go. The Mossad, however, was a different story. They had turned her into something she had never been and in all likelihood would never have become. The vaunted Israeli intelligence service had turned her into a spy and an assassin, and it had not been of her free will.

As Donatella's modeling career had taken off, so had her drug use. By the age of twenty-one, she was a full-fledged coke fiend. On a modeling job in Tel Aviv, she had been busted trying to bring an ounce of coke into the country. She was in a jail cell, strung-out and freaking out, when a man named Ben Freidman came to her and offered her a way to avoid going to prison. The man told her he would help her kick her drug habit, and after a period of time she could return to Milan. He also assured her that her release had nothing to do with sex.

Not exactly being of sound mind and desperately wanting to avoid jail, Donatella agreed. The next day, she found herself strapped to a bed in a medical facility shaking and sweating from withdrawal. By the time the first week was over, they had helped her shake the habit. It would not be the last time they would do so. They indoctrinated her slowly at first, teaching her information-gathering techniques and then self-defense. She was sent away after that first month feeling grateful and, for the first time in her life, as if she had a real purpose. They had helped her understand her Jewish roots, helped her understand the plight of her people and their need to defend themselves against those who had sworn to rid all Jews from the face of the earth.

This was just the beginning. At first, her assignments were simple, nothing more than observing a certain individual or passing on information as she jetted around the world, but as the years passed, things got more serious. She had four more relapses into drug use, and with each one they drew her in a little more. The training changed. At first, it was done under the guise of self-defense, but it slowly became apparent that something else was going on.

Colonel Ben Freidman of the feared Mossad had become her teacher and her protector. He was one of the two men she had ever met in her life whom she could trust completely. The other hurt too much to think about.

Donatella had to be honest with herself, though. From the beginning, she had enjoyed it immensely: The thrill of stalking another human being and killing them was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was better than any I drug, even better than sex. Donatella Rahn had an addictive personality, and she couldn't stop. She enjoyed her work, and she was paid extremely well.

As Donatella hiked up the heaved cobblestone sidewalk, she did so knowing who she was. She knew it might seem like a small thing to most people but not to her. She had spent her entire life confused, searching for a father she never knew, and eventually hoping she would never find him. And now, she had finally figured out who she was and where she was headed. To her, that was a very big thing.

THE CROWN VICTORIA rocked gently as it rolled down the old county road in rural Maryland. The familiar landmarks gave Rielly some comfort. They had just spent more than an hour driving all around the city. At one point, Rielly thought she might get carsick. She didn't know her way around the city that well and had been lost five minutes after they'd picked her up. There were a couple of times where she thought things looked familiar, but she couldn't be sure. The experience was very disorienting, and after a while she found it best to sit back, crack her window, and close her eyes.

The two agents seemed competent enough. Special Agent Pelachuk had told her when they got into the car that they were going to have to take some standard precautions to make sure they weren't being followed. Special Agent Salem, the blond one, was doing the driving. He didn't say much. Early on. she had asked them where they were taking her. She was happy to find out that they were going to Mitch's house. Rielly asked if Mitch was already there, and Pelachuk told her he didn't know.

Rielly grew eager with anticipation as they turned off the country road and onto the street that would take them to Mitch's. There were no streetlights this far from the city. The communities around the Chesapeake Bay had a tendency to want things to stay as they were a hundred years ago. Building permits had to be paraded past one inspector after another, and variances were rarely granted. Something as modern as a street lamp would be a blight on the landscape. Rielly knew this was one of the reasons Mitch had moved this far out. He loved his alone time, and out here he could get it. As Rielly looked out the window, the only things she could make out were the lights of several farmhouses off in the distance.

A few minutes later, the car slowed to ten miles an hour, and the two agents stuck their chins over the dashboard in an effort to find the right address.

From the back seat, Rielly said, «It's the third one on the left.» As they got a little closer, she added, «That one right there by the white mailbox.»

The car turned and started down the long driveway. Rielly immediately noticed that all the lights were off in the house, and her heart sank. Mitch wasn't there yet. Salem turned the car around, driving on the lawn in the process, and parked in front of the garage facing the street.

Neither agent made an effort to get out of the car, so Rielly asked, «What are we doing?»