Perlmutter set it aside, popped a canapé in his mouth, and washed it down with another sip of champagne. He leafed through a couple more letters, settling on one written to Stewart by a bosun who had served under his command during the Barbary Wars. The writing was barely legible, and the author, one John Jackson, appeared to have had limited schooling. He reminisced about being a part of the raid to burn the USS Philadelphia and the subsequent gun battle with a pirate ship called the Saqr.
St. Julian was well aware of these exploits. He’d read Captain Decatur’s firsthand account of the burning of the American frigate, although there wasn’t much material on the fight with the Saqr other than Stewart’s own report to the War Department.
Reading the letter, St. Julian could almost smell the gun smoke and hear the screams as the Saqr lured the Siren in close then let loose with a surprise broadside.
In the letter, Jackson asked the admiral about the fate of the brig’s second-in-command, Henry Lafayette. Perlmutter recalled that the young lieutenant had leapt aboard the Tripolian ship a moment before her cannons fired, and he presumably had been killed since no ransom had ever been asked for his return.
He read on, piqued as he realized he had it wrong. Jackson had seen Lafayette fighting the Saqr’s captain, and both had gone over the port rail together. “The lad fell into the sea with that fiend (spelled feinde) Suleiman Al-Jama.”
The name jolted Perlmutter. It wasn’t the historical context that surprised him—he dimly recalled the Saqr’s captain’s name. Rather, it was the present-day incarnation of the name that tripped him up: Suleiman Al-Jama was the nom de guerre of a terrorist only slightly less wanted than Osama bin Laden.
The modern Al-Jama had starred in several beheading videos and was the spiritual inspiration for countless suicide bombers throughout the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. His crowning achievement had been leading an assault on a remote Pakistani Army outpost that left more than a hundred soldiers dead.
St. Julian searched though the letters to see if Stewart had responded and kept a copy, as had been his practice. Sure enough, the next letter in the stack was addressed to John Jackson. He read it once, rushing through it in astonishment, then read it again more slowly. He sat back so the leather seat creaked under his weight. He wondered if there were any contemporary implications to what he had just read and decided there probably weren’t.
He was about to start perusing another letter when he reconsidered. What if the government could use this information? What would it gain them? Most likely nothing, but he didn’t think it was his call to make.
Normally, when he came across something interesting in his research, he would pass it along to his good friend Dirk Pitt, the Director of the National Underwater and Marine Agency, but he wasn’t sure if this fell under NUMA’s sphere of influence quite yet. Perlmutter was an old Washington hand and had contacts throughout the city. He knew just who to call.
The car’s telephone had a Bakelite handset and rotary dial. Perlmutter detested cell phones and never carried one. His thick finger barely fit in the telephone dial’s little holes, but he managed.
“Hello,” a woman answered.
St. Julian had called her direct line, thus avoiding an army of assistants.
“Hi, Christie, it’s St. Julian Perlmutter.”
“St. Julian!” Christie Valero cried. “It’s been ages. How have you been?”
Perlmutter rubbed his bulging stomach. “You know me. I’m wasting away to
nothing.”
“I sure that’s the case.” She laughed. “Have you made my mother’s Coquilles St.-Jacques since you cajoled her secret recipe out of me?”
Apart from his vast knowledge of ships and shipping, Perlmutter was a legendary gourmand and bon vivant.
“It’s now part of my regular repertoire,” he assured her. “Whenever you’d like, give me a call and I’ll make it for you.”
“I’ll take you up on that. You know I can’t follow cooking instructions more sophisticated than ‘Pierce outer wrapper to vent and place on microwave-safe dish.’ So is this a social call or is there something on your mind? I’m a little swamped here. The conference is still months away, but the dragon lady is running us ragged.”
“That is no way to refer to her,” he admonished mildly.
“Are you kidding? Fiona loves it.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“So what’s up?”
“I’ve just now come across something rather interesting and I thought you might like first crack at it.” He relayed what he’d read in Charles Stewart’s letter to his former shipmate.
When he finished, Christie Valero had just one question. “How soon can you be in my office?”
“Hugo,” St. Julian said when he replaced the telephone on its cradle, “change of plans. We’re going to Foggy Bottom. Our Undersecretary of State for Mideast Affairs would like to have a chat.”
TWO
OFF THE COAST OF SOMALIA FOUR MONTHS LATER