The Third Option   ::   Flynn Vince

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Five months earlier Kennedy had consulted her counterpart in German foreign intelligence, the BFV, and he had told her the United States wasn't the only country inquiring about the count. He had recently received calls from the Israelis and the British. When questioned by the BFV just three months ago, Hagenmiller had sworn that he would personally oversee the sale of all sensitive equipment.

Kennedy didn't buy Hagenmiller's new promise and put him wider the microscope. Hackers from the CIA compromised Hagenmiller Engineering's computer system and looked into the count's personal finances. A picture began to form of a man who had squandered the family's fortune. He was on his fourth wife, and the first three hadn't let him off easy. The heavy costs of maintaining the family's properties and his jet-setter lifestyle had drained the nest egg.

Two weeks earlier Kennedy had sent a tactical reconnaissance team to Germany to put Hagenmiller under twenty- four-hour surveillance. The team followed the count to Switzerland, and that was when things got really interesting. Kennedy studied a series of photos taken from the woods near Hagenmiller's mountain retreat. Some of the shots were grainy, but several of them were clear enough to make out the man Hagenmiller was meeting with. He was Abdullah Khatami. Khatami was a general in the Iraqi army, the man in charge of rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. He was also Saddam Hussein's cousin, and like many of Saddam's closest followers, he had grown a thick black mustache.

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.

Kennedy immediately ordered surveillance stepped up and went to the president with the mounting evidence. Hayes was looking for ways to fight Saddam but wanted to be absolutely sure that the count wasn't being duped. Kennedy's people found irrefutable evidence the following! day. Sources had told them that at eleven o'clock this evening, Hamburg time, a staged breakin would occur at the Hagenmiller Engineering warehouse. Four computerized lathes and a variety of other equipment used in the production of highly sophisticated nuclear components would be stolen and loaded onto a waiting freighter at the German port of Cuxhaven.

Kennedy laid out the evidence before the president.

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