Blowback

Alcott flipped to the page and read aloud the passage Harvath had underlined in pencil. “Until the Alps give up the remains of an elephant, or a Carthaginian officer, or an African or Spanish cavalryman, we will never know for certain exactly where Hannibal crossed. The possibility of discovering the archeological evidence, however, is not as remote as one might think. During no other period in history have scholars had the access to the Alps and the technological assistance that they have today. Satellites, helicopters, and airplanes have allowed aerial surveys to be conducted which yield views of the valleys, ridges, and peaks never before available on such an accurate and detailed scale. “Jillian balanced the book on her thigh and looked up at Harvath, waiting for some sort of explanation.

“Summers in Europe have been getting progressively warmer, and with that heat, Alpine glaciers have begun to recede. As the book says, today’s scholars have tools available to them unlike any time in the past. No archeologist worth his salt would ever think of conducting a search like this without as much technological help as he could muster. The Silenus manuscript may have helped Ellyson narrow down the area where the team carrying Hannibal’s secret weapon was killed and swept off the side of the mountain, but there was no way it could provide a pinpoint, X-marks-the-spot location. Ellyson may have known the general vicinity of where his needle was, but he needed to shrink the hell out of the haystack.”

Jillian was finally with him. “You think he did it with satellite imagery.”

“And Bernard Lavoine paid for it.”

“With Rayburn’s money, of course.”

“Of course, but what I’m hoping is that Bernard did it with his own credit card and then just invoiced the expedition or took the corresponding amount from whatever pile of money Rayburn had left here for exactly such an expense.”

It was forty-five minutes later when Marie Lavoine uncovered the first credit card statement that made reference to an international satellite company from Toulouse called Spot Image. Soon thereafter, they uncovered several more statements, all referencing the same company. While Bernard had done a lot of business with Spot Image, it was the last set of imagery he had ordered that Harvath was most interested in.

The most logical step was to have Marie call them up, explain who she was and what she wanted. But when the company informed her that their privacy policy prohibited them from providing anyone but the original customer with copies, Harvath knew he was going to have to come up with a better plan.

He had no desire to drive all the way to Toulouse to try to conduct another black-bag job to steal the information. Besides, being a satellite company, Spot Image would be a business that ran around the clock. It wouldn’t be empty in the middle of the night with just a couple of security guards sitting behind a desk the way Sotheby’s Paris annex was. There had to be someone Harvath knew outside his established intelligence contacts who could lean on Spot Image hard enough to get him what he needed. Suddenly, he knew just who that person was.

FORTY-ONE

Harvath had met Kevin McCauliff several years back while he was still with the Secret Service. Both he and McCauliff had been members of an informal group of federal employees who trained together every year for the annual Washington, DC, Marine Corps Marathon.

McCauliff worked for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Formerly known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the NGA was a major intelligence and combat support agency of the Department of Defense. Though the NGA was very much a member of the intelligence community, Kevin McCauliff wasn’t what Harvath would refer to as an established intelligence contact. For a few weeks out of the year, they ran together. That was pretty much the extent of their relationship. The possibility that anyone would be watching for Harvath to make contact with Kevin McCauliff was beyond infinitesimal. And even better, McCauliff owed Harvath a favor.

The imagery analyst was one of the few senior people at the NGA who actually enjoyed the nightshift because, as he put it, that was when all the action happened. The NGA’s operator put Harvath through to McCauliff’s desk and the twenty-eight-year-old, two-hour and fifty-five-minute marathoner answered on the first ring. “Kevin, it’s Scot Harvath, “He said from among the boxes of paperwork scattered across Marie Lavoine’s office.

“Harvath?” replied McCauliff’s familiar voice from over four thousand miles away at the NGA’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. “It’s almost three in the morning. The marathon isn’t until October. Don’t tell me you’re losing sleep over strategy already.”

“I never lose sleep over strategy, Kevin. It’s just a race, “He replied.

“I’ll make sure I remind you of that at mile twenty-five if we get dusted by another pack of young leathernecks this year.”