It was a randy opener, to be sure, but it helped break the ice and set the mood for the evening. If you weren’t any fun, the Contessa didn’t want to have anything to do with you. Life’s too short had always been her motto.
Accompanying the Contessa was her longtime boyfriend, Giovanni Lorenzo. A retired diplomat, Lorenzo had served as Italy’s Ambassador to the European Union, as well as Deputy Secretary of NATO. Currently, he was president of a little-known NGO called the NATO Defense College Foundation.
Established to further the goals of NATO, the foundation worked closely with the Rome-headquartered NATO Defense College.
The college had been the brainchild of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. The idea had been to create a university where both civilian and military members of NATO could pursue training, which would result in the strengthening and constant improvement of the North Atlantic Alliance.
Romano was pleased to see Lorenzo there. It had been a fifty-fifty shot. While the retired diplomat was a regular guest, he didn’t attend every one of the Contessa’s dinners. She was a good twenty years younger, had a lot more energy, and craved the limelight much more than he did.
Stepping across the threshold into the dining room, the handsome Italian moved to the side to allow others to pass. He set the shopping bag down on the floor next to him and pretended to scan the room for a group of dinner companions.
Inches away was a waiter’s station. As his eyes moved from table to table, he saw people engaged in their own conversations, occasionally glancing at the Contessa and her guests, but not paying attention to anything else, much less to him.
Casually parting the fabric skirt of the waiter’s station, Romano pushed the bag underneath, greeting card facing out, with the toe of his beautifully polished shoe.
With his package placed, he strolled out of the restaurant, stopping only at the front door to depress a button on the wireless key fob in his pocket.
He was more than a block away when the bomb detonated. Even then, the blast was so intense that it shattered all of the windows around him and knocked him to the ground.
Within hours, newscasters would be calling it the worst bombing in Italy since the Marxist terror attacks of the 1970s, and the People’s Revolutionary Front would be known as the deadliest European terrorist organization since the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
CHAPTER 30
* * *
GOTLAND
Harvath didn’t like having to deceive Chief Inspector Nyström about his true purpose and identity. The man seemed like a good cop. Deception, though, was a necessary part of the job—especially now.
They were in Sweden, running a black operation without the knowledge of its government. They were supposed to have had the help of one of its most senior intelligence officers, but Lars Lund was now dead. They were 100 percent on their own.
Harvath deeply regretted Lund’s passing, but he was used to operating in this position, often in much harsher environments. He had only forty-eight hours. They would have to make it work. He wasn’t going back to Brussels empty-handed.
Dropping Harvath back at the airport, the Chief Inspector had offered to stick around to help make sure all of their arrangements were taken care of. Harvath had thanked him and reiterated that he’d call him if he needed help. That reminded the policeman that he hadn’t gotten Harvath’s cell phone number, which he promptly asked for, “Just in case anything pops up and I need to get in touch,” he had said.
Harvath didn’t want the Swedish police being able to track his movements, so he provided Nyström with a dummy number Nicholas had set up that would dump right into voicemail and ping Harvath’s current phone number if any messages were left.
Writing down the number in his notebook, the Chief Inspector thanked him, the pair shook hands, and the cop drove off.
With his most pressing headache out of the way, Harvath turned to the others on his list.
Because the man in the hat had been in charge of providing the team with vehicles and a place to stay, they now had to scramble.
The rental car situation was less than optimal. The car choices were lousy, and he could rent one only under his false “Hallman” identity. As the driver of the second vehicle, Chase Palmer would have to use one of his false driver’s identities as well.
Fully backstopped covers were very time consuming and expensive to create. They didn’t grow on trees. Among the major advantages of working with the man in the hat were the top cover he could provide and the preservation of the team’s anonymity. ID wouldn’t have been required for anything. That was a good thing, especially in a covert operation.
In fact, it was Tradecraft 101—something the Old Man had repeatedly pounded into him. As an example of what not to do, Carlton loved to cite a horribly botched operation Langley had run in Italy about a decade earlier.
Two dozen CIA operatives had participated in an assignment to snatch a Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan and render him for interrogation. Inexplicably, the operatives not only traveled under their own names, but also used their personal hotel rewards programs to rack up points, and ran all around Italy with their personal cell phones, leaving a trail of electronic bread crumbs.
The Italian government tried all of them in absentia for kidnapping, false imprisonment, and torture, resulting in unanimous guilty verdicts. The trial was followed by sentencing, in which massive fines and jail time were levied. None of them would ever again be able to travel to Europe without fear of arrest and imprisonment.
To call it amateur hour would be an insult to amateurs. The Old Man had been adamant that Harvath and everyone else at The Carlton Group hold themselves to a higher standard.
But even in the presence of best intentions, an immutable law of covert operations remained—if something could go wrong, it would.
Harvath had already witnessed Murphy’s Law on full display in Norway. He didn’t intend to let Murphy pop his ugly head up here. Though, if it did, no matter what got thrown at them, they would adapt and overcome. Failure was not an option.
With Harvath’s and Chase’s aliases each tied to a rental car, they used Sloane’s alias to book their accommodations. The less anyone could connect the team’s dots, the better.
That same mindset applied to where they’d be sleeping. The fewer people who saw them coming and going, the better.
As Gotland was a popular vacation destination, Staelin had looked beyond hotels, searching for off-season houses and apartments that might be for rent. Within five minutes online, he had found the perfect spot.
Once paperwork had been completed and their vehicles—a blue Kia Sedona minivan and a gray Toyota Camry sedan—had been brought around, they transferred over the gear from the plane and headed out of the airport toward the rental house.
The old country house sat on fifteen allegedly “quiet” acres twenty minutes outside town. They stopped along the way at a gas station minimart to load up on provisions. Harvath stayed outside to keep an eye on the vehicles.
While he waited, he banged out a text on his encrypted sat phone. He wanted to give Ryan a fuller picture of what was going on and how they were dealing with it. With his message sent, he shut down the phone and turned his attention to the cars.
Since leaving the airport, he had kept a close eye on their six o’clock. It hadn’t seemed as if they were being followed. But in the age of GPS, a person didn’t need to physically tail you in order to monitor where you were going.