A few minutes later, he's at L'Enfant Plaza fussing with his BlackBerry, firing notes to his scheduler. The column has set official Washington on fire. News stories are being written about it. Pundits are opining, on and on.

He sees this as for the good--it foists the issue of terrorists with nukes into in-boxes all over town, bumps it right on top for the New Year. He's busily booking appointments that'll stretch forward two months, a round of briefings for top officials in the intelligence community, the NSC, the Vice President's Office, about what's happening in the "markets," where he's sure weapons-grade nuclear materials are on the block. He'll badger them in his urgent whispers, stitch together a bit of the known into a tapestry of the supposed, vividly render the probable, making it feel real enough to touch.

This, after all, is his specialty, his improbable passion. Rolf is a madman--charmed, wild-eyed, intense and distractible, affable and terrifying. He's broadly versed, was once recruited to teach philosophy at his alma mater, West Point, speaks four languages, including fluent Russian, is a skilled pianist and a former paratrooper--a tall guy, fifty-two, and solidly built at six feet two, with a thick mop of prematurely whitened hair, a quick smile, big laugh. But he's sometimes grim, prone to deep funks, and, like anyone who's succeeded in the clandestine world, adept at working in both sunlight and shadow. Throughout his career he's been the lone voice who's been right enough times that the near-misses, the hair-on-fire rides and panic-button frenzies, have been tolerated. People have Rolf stories, some used as example and encouragement; some kept safe, on ice, for ready inspiration when a chance comes to strangle him.

Yet in many ways, he was constructed across decades for this very moment. He's perfectly suited for the schizophrenia that comes from chasing ghosts.