Blowback

“These are all very interesting from a historical perspective,” said Jillian, “but they don’t really shed any more light on Hannibal ’s mystery weapon itself.”

“The Arthashastra talked about applying poisons to edged weapons, right?” said Harvath.

“Yes.”

“Maybe we should have these analyzed then.”

Jillian noticed Marie tense and discreetly motioned for her not to worry. “If Hannibal was going to eliminate every Roman man, woman, child, and even their animals, he wasn’t going to do it one sword stroke at a time. He had a bigger delivery vehicle in mind. We need to find Ellyson’s dig.”

Harvath shook his head. “No. This is a dead end. We need to find Emir Tokay.”

“And how are we going to do that? We don’t have any leads.”

“We’ve got the e-mail address that Marie used to contact Rayburn, and we know Rayburn was involved with Emir’s kidnapping. I’d say that’s a pretty good lead.”

“Only if it leads somewhere. Look,” she continued, “if we can find the dig, maybe we can find enough physical evidence to help us piece together what this mystery illness is all about and figure out a cure.”

“And Emir?”

Jillian was silent as she considered her response. “We don’t even know if he is still alive. It’s possible that he’s been killed. The answers we’re looking for might be closer than we think. We’re here now and finding Ellyson’s dig is at least a possibility we can’t afford to turn our backs on.”

Jillian was right, but how the hell were they going to locate the dig? Teams much more experienced and much more familiar with the area had searched for the missing men for weeks and had come up empty. How were he and Jillian supposed to accomplish what they couldn’t? They didn’t even have any new information. The only thing Harvath could think of doing was to re-cover the ground the police had already been over and hope to find something that they had missed. Without much hope, he turned back to Marie Lavoine and said, “I need to use your telephone, and then I’d like to see Bernard’s personal effects for myself.”

FORTY

After Harvath called Nick Kampos on Cyprus and gave him the e-mail address Rayburn was using under his Elliot

Burnham alias, he and Jillian spent the rest of the evening poring over Bernard’s personal things. They studied all of his maps, charts, and atlases without finding anything of use. Their eyes blurry with fatigue, neither of them wanted to believe that they had come all this way only to drive straight down a dead end. It was well past two in the morning when Jillian suggested they finally call it a night.

Harvath was absolutely exhausted, but as he lay in bed, sleep refused to come. His mind was plagued with thoughts he had been able to keep at bay for most of the day but which now returned with a vengeance. He was troubled by what his life might be like if he lost his job and was “outed,” for lack of a better word, on international television.

As he lay there, his mind and body numb with fatigue, there was one simple question he could not answer: Without my career, who am I?

He had never considered himself a weak man, but doubt was beginning to peck away at the edges of his psyche. The more he tried to push his problems from his mind, the harder and faster they came rushing back at him. Finally, he gave up hope of getting any sleep at all and walked downstairs.

The chalet was quiet. After starting a fire in the fireplace in the reception area, Harvath walked into the kitchen and found a bottle of Calvados and a clean snifter. Filling the snifter, he took the first glassful in one long swallow. Then he removed Hannibal Crosses the Alps from the mantelpiece and poured himself another drink. Snifter in hand, Harvath slumped down into an overstuffed leather chair, opened the book, and tried to escape his own world by losing himself in someone else’s for a while.

It was half past seven in the morning when Jillian found him, along with Marie Lavoine, poring over boxes of paperwork on the floor of the hotel’s office. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Last night I kept thinking about what you said, that the answers to this mystery illness could very well be waiting for us at Ellyson’s site. When I couldn’t fall asleep I decided to come downstairs and read awhile. I wanted to see why Ellyson was so interested in that particular book about Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

“And?”

Harvath pulled the book off the chair next to him and tossed it to her. “Page one seventy-one.”