Use of Force

CHAPTER 89

Returning to the operations center back at Vatican City beneath the Monastery of Mater Ecclesiae, Harvath asked Carl to roll the footage for them.

“Coming up,” Carl said, as he scrolled through. “Okay, that’s him entering Vatican City. Blue blazer, tan khakis.”

Freezing the shot, he zoomed in.

Harvath looked at it, and then at the picture on his phone. It was definitely the same guy. “How’d you find him?”

“We ran the photo through facial recognition. The computer did the rest.”

“Unfreeze it,” said Harvath. “Show me where he goes.”

The Vatican intelligence officer did as asked.

Everyone in the room watched as he strolled St. Peter’s Square and then headed through security and over to the bronze doors of the basilica. There, he began speaking with a pair of Swiss Guards.

“What’s he doing now? Have you spoken with those two Swiss Guards?”

“Personally,” said Carl. He was there to pick up a ticket for tomorrow’s papal audience.”

“Did he show any ID?”

“Yes. He had an Austrian passport and the ticket had been reserved ahead of time.”

The Vatican intelligence officer handed Harvath a copy of the reservation.

“Why would he want a ticket?” Argento asked. “He’s not going anywhere near St. Peter’s Square tomorrow.”

Harvath thought about it for a moment. “It could be a scalp. Just a sick souvenir. On the bin Laden raid, the SEALs allegedly found some 9/11 memorabilia in his house in Abbottabad.”

The answer seemed to satisfy Argento, and they watched the rest of the footage. It lasted right up until the man left Vatican City. Stepping out onto the Via della Conciliazione, he eventually disappeared into the throng of morning tourists.

“Rome has a billion CCTV cameras. You can’t follow him through those?” Harvath asked.

“My authority ends at the walls of Vatican City.”

Harvath looked at Argento, who was already dialing a number on his cell phone. “I’m on it,” he said.

As great as the ROS operators had been, Harvath had no idea who would be put in charge of sifting through the CCTV footage to try to locate their subject. For all he knew, it was some twenty-year-old kid, working for the City of Rome, who had been out all night partying and had showed up to work with a hangover and no sleep. Every second counted.

“Carl, could I get a copy of your footage?” Harvath asked.

“I don’t see why not. How do you want to receive it?”

Harvath scrolled through his phone and pulled up a DropBox account he used with Nicholas. The Vatican intelligence officer took the information down and went to have one of his IT people copy and upload the footage.

Picking up a mug, Harvath filled it with coffee, added a shot of espresso, and after asking Argento for the keycard back headed upstairs to make a few phone calls.

Stepping outside, he wandered into the garden, where he found a small, shaded bench. Setting his pack down next to him, he fished out his satellite phone, extended the antenna, and fired it up.

When Nicholas answered, he filled him in on everything that had transpired. After describing what their target was wearing, Nicholas agreed that there’d be lots of people dressed like that in Rome today. He also agreed that the Italians were going to have a tough time finding that needle in such a large haystack.

“That’s why I need you to hack into their CCTV system. There’s already footage from Vatican City being uploaded to my DropBox account. Use it as a baseline and then apply the gait algorithm to all the cameras in Rome.”

The gait algorithm was a program that could run concurrently with facial recognition software. But instead of studying faces, it studied how people walked. Your gait was unique, almost like a fingerprint. Once the program knew what it was looking for, it could race through footage until it located and identified its target.

“That could take a while,” the little man replied.

“I need it as soon as possible,” said Harvath, and before Nicholas could respond, he had already disconnected the call and was on to his next.

He called Staelin, who, along with Barton and Morrison, had stayed behind to help Vella continue his interrogation of Vottari. After bringing him up to speed, he asked for an update on their end. Staelin put Vella on the phone.

The doctor explained that he was coming to the end of what he could do in the field. He might be able to extract more back at the Solarium, but he doubted it. He was pretty confident they had wrung everything of value out of the Mafioso.

Harvath thanked him for the SITREP and told him he’d be back in touch as soon as he could.

Now came the hard part. Picking up his mug, he prepared to wait. Stretching out his legs, he was about to take a sip of coffee when something about the CCTV footage hit him.

Grabbing his pack, he ran back inside.