Chapter 63

ALL FOUR OF US enter into a room through the secret door set into the wood panel. In contrast to the interview room, it’s a room that’s outfitted in black acoustical wall and ceiling tiles, and black rubber mat flooring laid upon a computer subflooring system. Just about every square foot of space is occupied with computer and surveillance equipment of one kind or another. Several flat-screened LED TVs are mounted to walls, along with stacks of electronic equipment too complicated and high-tech for me to recognize even as a professional soldier in the digital age.

Graham and Carbone lead Betti and me to a laptop computer set up on a counter. Carbone sits down in a tall black leather swivel chair before the computer, swiftly types in several commands, then sits back in the chair contemplatively. After a few seconds an image appears on both the computer screen and every wall-mounted digital monitor in the square-shaped room.

It’s a clear black-and-white shot of Piazza San Marco shot from a few dozen feet above the hard stone surface. Included in the shot is the café where Grace and I sat for our last lunch together. What’s also included is the table we occupied. In the video, we are seated at the table.

“What you’re viewing here,” Carbone begins to explain, “is a surveillance video shot from five meters up on the north corner of the cathedral. It took some doing to sort through the video, but we eventually narrowed it down to the twenty or so minutes from your arrival at the café to Grace’s disappearance. What’s even more unfortunate is that it took us a couple of days to get our hands on it from the cathedral authorities.”

“You don’t have your own surveillance equipment set up in a busy tourist zone like that?”

Carbone nods. “Naturally. We just don’t have every single angle covered, no matter how hard we try. Cameras and equipment are getting smaller, to be sure, but you still have to maintain a degree of stealth and invisibility or else people get nervous and start yelling about their human rights.”

Alessandra steps forward, her stocking-covered thighs pressing up against the counter.

“Detective Carbone,” she says, “are we about to witness the kidnapping of Grace Blunt?”

“Just keep watching,” Graham breaks in while crossing long lanky arms over his narrow chest.

On the monitor, Grace assists me with taking my seat at the table since, at the time, I was blinded. She then makes her way around to the opposite side of the table and takes her own seat. A waiter approaches us, takes our orders, and brings us our drinks. That waiter is not the man I would later come to know as Giovanni. But another man altogether. A true employee of the café. It’s then that Grace seems to become distracted. She’s not looking at me, even though I am clearly speaking to her. She’s instead looking over my left shoulder at someone who must be standing behind me.

The overcoat man.

“I’m going to speed things up a bit here to save time,” Carbone says, hitting a key that makes the video fast forward. But he stops when a key figure enters into the scene.

“There’s the overcoat man you spoke of, Captain. You can see him standing only a few feet behind you. He appears to be staring directly at Grace and he’s getting away with it too because of the massive amount of people already crowding the café.”

The detective is right. Despite hordes of people moving all around the café perimeter and even rudely walking in between the tables, the overcoat man seems to present a formidable figure. Tall, dark, bearded, wearing sunglasses, and slowly approaching our table. He eventually comes so close, Grace is visibly shaken up and looks almost like she’s about to scream in alarm. Or, at the very least, alert me to the presence of this strange man.

“You can see the overcoat man approach the table,” Carbone observes. “He doesn’t stand behind you for more than a few seconds, Captain, before making his move.”

On the screen, the overcoat man scurries around the table and makes a threatening move towards Grace. But that’s when he disappears. Rather, he doesn’t disappear so much as his presence is blocked by a group of tourists who suddenly enter into the frame.

“People,” I say. “All I see is people.”

“Yes, a Japanese tour group entered into the frame at exactly the wrong time,” Carbone says. “Or perhaps for the overcoat man, at exactly the right time.”

“But due to the camera placement over the crowd,” Graham adds, “you can eventually make out the overcoat man and Grace as they move away from the table. Watch.”

On the screen it takes the tour group maybe five seconds to pass by our table. By then you can see the overcoat man, with his right arm wrapped around Grace. He’s forcibly shoving her in the direction of the basin.

Carbone says, “A closer look shows that the overcoat man is pressing something into her ribs with his left hand. A gun perhaps.”

He clicks a couple more keys and the scene appears far more enlarged but at the same time, far more grainy and distorted. But there is no doubt in my mind of what I’m witnessing. The taking away of my Grace.

“From there,” Graham adds, “we believe he boarded her onto a boat or a barge disguised as a supply vessel, and carted her away. Perhaps to one of the islands. Perhaps to one of the buildings on the main island. We just don’t know yet.”

Carbone turns around in his chair to face us.

“All we are fairly certain of at this point, Captain, is that Grace has not left the country. There is only two publicly accessible ways out of Venice other than by water, and that’s by train or motor vehicle. Our eyes are constantly monitoring roads, water, and rails and thus far we’ve picked up no sign of their leaving.”

“What about a chopper?” I pose.

“We’ve not been alerted to helicopters operating in or around the area since Grace’s abduction,” Carbone answers.

“We’d know if someone did a hop/skip in and out of one of the islands,” Lowrance adds. Then, shaking his head, biting down on his bottom lip. “I can only wish I’d been on the scene just two minutes earlier. I might have caught the overcoat man in the act.”

“We also have a solid theory as to why the overcoat man wouldn’t want to cart her away from Venice,” Graham says.

“And what would that be?” Alessandra poses.

“We believe the overcoat man wants to eventually flush the Captain out. They want him to find Grace, and once he does, he will kill them both.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Retaliation,” he says. “Revenge for the death that occurred on a hilltop in Afghanistan.”