TUESDAY
Harvath awoke to the sound of the doorbell ringing. Sitting up, he looked at the time. It was after nine a.m.
Wearing a white bathrobe, her hair still wet from a shower, Sølvi had stepped out of the bathroom and had already answered the door.
A room service waiter in a white jacket and black tie was standing in the hall next to a cart adorned with silver cloches, baskets of bread and pastries, a carafe of ice water and one of juice, a large pot of coffee, glasses, cups, linens, and other assorted breakfast accoutrements.
The waiter thanked Sølvi for opening the door, and with a polite bow offered for her to go first, and stated that he would follow her into the living room.
Once inside, he asked where she wanted breakfast set up. “How about on the balcony?”
“Perfetto,” the waiter replied. Perfect.
While they prepped everything outside, Harvath slipped into the bathroom, splashed some water on his face, and brushed his teeth.
By the time he rejoined Sølvi, the waiter had already gone.
“Coffee?” she asked as he stepped onto the balcony and pulled out his chair.
“Yes, please.”
Sitting down, he put his napkin in his lap and lifted up his cloche.
“I tried to get you the most American breakfast they had,” she said. “Scrambled eggs, bacon, roasted potatoes. No Texas toast, though. Sorry.”
Harvath smiled and accepted the cup of coffee she had poured for him. “Thank you. And not just for the coffee. Thank you for everything back in Vilnius—with Simulik and the Russians. I should have said something last night.”
“It’s okay. You’re welcome.”
“When did you order all of this?”
“After I got back from my run.”
“You’ve already been on a run?”
She smiled. “You looked so søt while you were sleeping. I didn’t have the heart to wake you. I figured you needed the rest.”
“You’re like a Norwegian ninja. I didn’t hear anything.”
“That’s a Norwegian woman for you. Silent and deadly. Make sure you take care.”
Harvath smiled back and after a sip of coffee began his to eat his breakfast. “How was your run?”
“Educational. You’ll never imagine whose villa I ran past.”
“So many possibilities. Let me guess. The Contessa’s?”
“Exactly. She has a very nice home, by the way.”
“How’s the security?”
“Better than we’ve seen with either Landsbergis or Simulik.”
“Meaning?” he asked.
“She lives in Old Town, close to the castle. There are a lot of architectural restrictions. The cameras she has placed are subtle. You almost don’t even notice them if you’re not sure what to look for.
“In addition to the cameras, there are passive measures like walls, landscaping deterrents, and lighting. She’s actually done a good job. Her villa is low-profile, for a villa, but highly secure.”
“Guards? Dogs?”
“None that I saw or heard.”
“I’d like to get the drone up to do a little more reconnaissance,” said Harvath. “Does that seem doable?”
“There were a couple of guys flying drones out over the water. I asked them what the rules were and if they’d had any pushback from locals. They said per Italian regulations, it’s supposed to be line of sight and no higher than seventy meters.
“They admitted, though, that they’ve been flying up and down the peninsula—out of sight and up over one hundred meters—and nobody has complained. People just seem to have gotten used to drones being in all the tourist spots. And, with everyone on their phones, it’s practically impossible to tell who’s flying versus just scrolling.”
Harvath liked that. They’d be able to hide their drone right in plain sight. That brought him back to the Contessa’s security system.
“What else would you need to see in order to make a final assessment of the security system?”
Sølvi thought about it for a moment. “Ideally, I’d like to know what all the measures are, where the sensors are placed, if the property is being monitored remotely, if so by whom, are there human eyeballs—if any at all—on those cameras or is it AI, how does the feed go to the alarm company—hardwired, cellular, or both, if an alarm is triggered is it silent, and finally, who responds—private security or police, and what’s the response time? And that’s just for starters.”
“Did you have all that intel when you broke into Landsbergis’s house?”
“No, but his system was much less sophisticated.”
“Okay,” said Harvath as he excused himself from the table, went inside to grab his phone, and came back onto the balcony.
Thumbing out a text to Nicholas, he listed everything Sølvi had just asked for. Then, looking up at her, he asked, “What if we don’t take her in the house?”
The Norwegian shook her head. “You can’t take her in town. There’s too many tourists. Even on my run, first thing in the morning, I had to weave in and out of people. Maybe if we came back in February.”
“We’re not coming back in February. This is happening now.”
“I know. I was being sarcastic.”
Harvath smiled and took another bite of food. “Let’s pull the lens back a bit. What are our specific goals?”
“Simple,” said Sølvi. “We know Kovalyov sold the Contessa information about Carl and his involvement with you in the Kaliningrad operation. The question is what she did with that information. Did she reveal it or sell it to anyone? If so, who?”
That was it in a nutshell. And, if the Contessa was anything like Nicholas, he knew she was going to be obsessed with not only her personal security, but also the security of her data. People in their line of work made some serious enemies. They also took some serious measures to protect themselves. Harvath didn’t want to stumble into an Indiana Jones–style situation where if he stepped on the wrong floor tile in the entry hall, he got a poisoned dart in the neck.
He doubted the Contessa had poisoned darts and a huge rolling boulder that would come chasing after him, but he also didn’t want to find out what her version of those things might be.
Had they more time, he would have set up extensive surveillance, developed a list of possible characters, and then would have tried to turn someone like a housekeeper or a cook.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have the luxury of time. It just wasn’t in the cards for them. They needed to get to Montecalvo ASAP.
“What if there was a way to get her outside the villa and away from the Old Town?” he asked.
The Norwegian thought about it for a few seconds. “And then what?”
“Then we grab her, put a bag over her head, and interrogate her.”
“Where would we do that? A public park? An alley somewhere? Maybe a parking garage?”
Harvath looked out over the vast expanse of water and replied, “No. On a boat.”
Sølvi followed his gaze. It was a bit half-baked, but not terrible. Once they had her out on the lake, they could keep moving. And with the roar of a motor, no one was ever going to hear her—even if she screamed her head off.
“Okay,” the Norwegian said. “Tell me more.”
“We work backward from heading out into the center of the lake. Where, onshore, do we load her onto a boat? Once we have that nailed down, we go backward even further and figure out where we intercept her.”
“So we need someplace quiet, without a lot of witnesses.”
“Exactly,” replied Harvath, opening up a map of the area on his phone and turning it around so they both could study it. “Our best plan would be to do it in the evening.”
“As in tonight?”
He checked his watch. “If we can get everything pulled together in time, yes.”
“How do we know we’ll even be able to get her out of the villa?”
“We’re going to have someone she trusts make her an offer she can’t refuse.”