“I have no idea,” said Marie, shaking her head sadly. “I took several of those pieces of tape to a friend of Bernard’s who is also a mountain guide. I hoped he would be able to decipher it. I thought it might be GPS or something like that. I thought maybe it would help us find Bernard and Maurice, but they seem to be just a bunch of numbers that do not make any sense.”

“Actually,” replied Jillian as she read the numbers along her bag, “they do make sense. They’re grid coordinates.”

“Like on a map?”

“Very similar. Ellyson must have established a grid system over the site where the artifacts were found. The first numbers are a reference point, maybe an outer corner or dead center in the middle of the site. The next set of numbers explains what part of the grid the item was found in.”

“What about this last set of numbers, the one with a degree marker after it?” asked Harvath. “That’s not a longitudinal or latitudinal designation?”

“No. It’s degree of elevation followed by a depth designation. I’d say Ellyson was dealing with a very steep surface and was cataloging not only at what point along the slope he was finding things but also how deeply embedded.”

“Embedded?”

“Yes, probably in ice. Call him what you will, but the man was thorough,” said Jillian.

“Thorough, but not to the point that these strings of numbers will tell us where the actual discovery was made.”

“No. They’re all in relation to that first set of numbers. Those are the anchor which all the others work off of. We’re missing one key piece of the puzzle-the Rosetta stone, if you will, which explains the overall message.”

Harvath turned to Marie and asked, “When Bernard failed to return home, did you call the police?”

“Of course,” replied Marie.

“What happened?”

“They came and asked the same questions they always ask when climbers have not returned.”

“What did you tell them?” asked Jillian. “Did you mention anything about the Hannibal connection?”

“I told the police basically everything I knew, that my husband was climbing the crevices somewhere near the Col de la Traversette and he had not come home.”

Harvath looked at Lavoine and asked, “The local police looked through all of your husband’s maps, charts, whatever they could find that might tell them exactly where he was climbing on the day he disappeared?”

“The police and his climbing friends. They looked through everything, but they found nothing. Doctor Ellyson was trying to keep his work a secret, so it is no surprise Bernard left no record.”

It was obviously painful for Marie to relive the experience. Nothing was said for several moments as Harvath set down the falcata and wandered among the rest of the artifacts.

“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.”

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.