With a look of complete shock, the count asked why in the world the BKA would be paying him a house call. Jane Hoffman began answering Hagenmiller in his native tongue, going along with the cover story they had rehearsed. Not more than two lines into it, the second man stepped forward and announced forcefully that he was the count's attorney and that he would like to see some ID.

Rapp was following the conversation closely, but he had kept most of his attention on the bodyguard. The man stood like a sphinx off to the side, his arms folded across his chest. Hoffman was between Rapp and the door. Directly across from Rapp was the count, and on his right were the lawyer and the bodyguard. When the lawyer stepped forward and asked to see credentials, Rapp made up his mind. Every second they hung around was a chance for something to go wrong.

As he started to slide his left hand into his jacket, Rapp glanced to his right to see Jane Hoffman pulling out her fake BKA identification. His hand eased into the hidden pocket and grasped the Ruger Mk II. Turning his body to the left, he extracted the silenced. 22-caliber and extended his arm.

The count was no more than four feet away from the tip of the extended weapon. Rapp squeezed the trigger once, and a bullet spat from the end of the long black barrel. Instantly, a red dot appeared between the count's neatly trimmed eyebrows. Rapp did not pause to watch the man fall-he knew he was already dead. He switched the Ruger from his left hand to his right, took one step forward, and delivered a vicious left hook to the attorney's jaw: The man tumbled to the side and back, almost taking out the bodyguard as his unconscious body rolled across the floor. With the Ruger still in his right hand, Rapp took a step back, gaining some distance between himself and the bodyguard. The man was already taking his first step toward him, reaching for his gun.

Rapp yelled, «Halt!» but the bodyguard kept reaching.

He had only a split second to think. He fired a second shot – this one hit the bodyguard in the wrist, and his heavy semiautomatic pistol thudded to the floor. The man instantly bent over in pain, grabbing his wrist with his other hand., Rapp took two big steps and kicked at the man's face as if he were punting a football. The blow sent the three-hundred-pound bodyguard reeling back, landing him on top of a small wooden end table with a porcelain lamp delicately perched atop its polished wood surface. The lamp shattered as it hit the wood floor, and the table splintered into a dozen pieces under the weight of the heavy man.

Rapp pushed Hoffman out of the way and bounded for, the door. Just as he got there, it opened, and the small head I of the butler appeared. Rapp grabbed the man by the tie and yanked him into the room. Taking the butt end of the Ruger, he smashed it down on the butler's temple with far less force than he normally would have. The butler's eyes rolled back into his head, and his knees went limp. Rapp released his grip from the man's throat and let him slump to the floor. Next, he stuck his head into the hallway to see if anybody was watching and then closed and locked the door.

He moved across the room like a machine. His first priority was the bodyguard. After grabbing three pairs of plastic flex-cuffs from his pocket, he turned to hand one of them to Jane Hoffman and froze in his tracks.

In that one fleeting moment, Rapp couldn't believe what he was seeing. The words fell from his lips in slow motion. «What in the hell are you doing?»

Rapp barely got the words out of his mouth before Jane Hoffman fired the first shot from the end of the suppressed Heckler amp; Koch P7. The 9-mm parabellum round hit Rapp square in the chest and put him back on his heels. The second shot propelled him back over the legs of the bodyguard. The air was gone from his lungs as his ass hit the floor, and his upper body fell back, sending his head with a whiplash effect toward the bottom rung of a wooden library ladder. Rapp's head hit with tremendous force, his eyes rolled back into his head, and his entire body went limp.

Jane Hoffman's heart was racing, and her hands were shaking. It was her husband who was supposed to be in here, and she was supposed to be out in the car. With her gloved hand, she picked up Rapp's Ruger from the floor and shot the bodyguard twice in the chest. She tossed the Ruger over by Rapp's body and then detached the silencer from the end of her pistol. When she was done, she placed her own gun in the bodyguard's hand. Grabbing a small canister from her pocket, she sprayed a fine mist of gunpowder residue onto the bodyguard's hand so it would appear that he had fired the weapon. She stood and backed up. She was looking for something. On the floor by her right foot, she found it: the bodyguard's Heckler amp; Koch pistol. She picked it up and put it in her holster.

Relieved to be done, she ran to the door, unlocked it, and stepped out into the foyer. She walked quickly to the front door, the joyous sounds of the party spilling forth from the ballroom, no one the wiser to what had just happened. Jane Hoffman was outside and down the steps in seconds. Her husband was nervously waiting for her behind the wheel of the sedan, and the second she was in the car, he sped down the driveway.

The man stood near the edge of the forest not more than a hundred yards from where Rapp had been the night before. From his elevated position, he could clearly see the front of the mansion. He had one hand against his left ear and was holding a small pair of binoculars in his right hand. A coil ran from his earpiece down under the collar of his dark brown jacket and was attached to a Motorola Saber encrypted radio. He listened with great interest to what was going on inside the house. It had already started. He had heard the surprise in Rapp's voice at the sudden of turn of events. Now he was waiting for the woman to exit the mansion. If she didn't make it out alive, that was fine, but if she was merely wounded, that was not acceptable. No one could be left alive to talk, He was under strict orders.

It had to look as if Rapp had been killed by the bodyguard. Hagenmiller must die first and then Rapp. If the Jansens could pull it off and make things look convincing, they would live. If they screwed up in the slightest way, they would be eliminated. That was why he was there – to manage the situation closely.

The bearded man standing in the woods was a former employee of the CIA. He was known by a few close friends as the Professor. His real name was Peter Cameron. At first glance, he was not the type of person you would expect to find in this line of work. In his late forties and a good thirty pounds overweight, he was not about to get physical with an adversary. But that had never been his style. Cameron managed situations from a discreet distance, and if he needed to intercede, it was always done with his right index finger, not his fists. He was an expert marksman and believed fervently that the easiest way to kill a man was with a bullet. More often than not, though, he was a voyeur – a man who worked behind the scenes and watched from the shadows. Cameron dispatched the assassins, and more and more, he had enjoyed the thrill of going into the field and watching things develop. It was far more interesting than sitting behind a desk at Langley and getting briefed via satellite uplink. Cameron needed to be on top of every detail, and he couldn't do that from the other side of the Atlantic. A lot was riding on this mission. An incredible amount, really.

Cameron had heard murmurs about the man they called Iron Man, and if the stories were only half true, Mitch Rapp was amazing. Cameron admired him for his skill and determination. In a raw egotistical way, he was excited about being the person responsible for taking down someone as strong as Rapp. Yes, there was a little bit of guilt involved in killing an asset who had served the Agency so well, but like many others, Rapp was just another pawn, another foot soldier, who in the end was expendable. History was full of them, and in truth, that was why Cameron had left Langley. He had been shown the path by someone who truly valued his talents, someone who was willing to reward him for his years of hard work.