Corsair (Oregon Files 6)

“Reward doesn’t necessarily mean treasure,” Linda said, realizing that Bumford was interpreting Al-Jama through his own money-grubbing prism.

“Young lady, I was brought out here because I am the expert. If you don’t care to listen to my explanations, please leave me be.”

“I’m curious,” Linc said. “Just how lucrative was piracy for the Barbary pirates?”

“What do you really know of them?”

“I know the Marines kicked some butt like the song says—‘to the shores of Tripoli.’ ”

“That was actually five hundred mercenaries under the command of ex-American consul, William Eaton, and a handful of Marines who sacked the city of Dema, a backwater in the Bashaw of Tripoli’s holdings. True, their action may have hastened a peace treaty, but it was far from a legendary battle worthy of a hymn.”

Linc had some Marine Corps friends who would have killed the man for such a remark.

“Between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries,” Bumford continued, “the Barbary pirates had a stranglehold on the most lucrative sea routes in the world—the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic coast of Europe. During that time, those nations that wouldn’t or couldn’t pay the exorbitant tributes had their shipping fall prey to the pirates. Their cargos were stolen and their crews either ransomed or sold into slavery. Nations like England, France, and Spain paid the pirates millions in gold to protect maritime commerce. For a time, even the United States was paying them. And by some accounts, more than a tenth of the federal revenue went to various Barbary Coast rulers. The pirates also went on raiding parties to kidnap people from seaside villages as far north as Ireland. By some estimates, more than a million and a half Europeans were taken from their homes and sold into slavery. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah,” Linc said with a trace of irony.

Bumford had warmed to his subject and chose to ignore the African-American’s gibe. “We’re talking about one of the preeminent naval powers of their time. And Suleiman Al-Jama was perhaps the most successful and by far the most ruthless pirate of them all. Though he had first studied to be an Imam, his family had a tradition of piracy that went back for generations. There are tales of his ancestors preying on ships returning from the Crusades. It was in Al-Jama’s blood. I’m sorry, but from what I know of him, he would never renounce what he saw as a holy war against the Western powers any more than the modern terrorist of the same name would.”

And Linda saw her mistake. His prism wasn’t that of his own personal greed. He saw what they were trying to accomplish through the lens of the continuation of inevitable terrorism and the triumph of indefatigable Islamic dogma. She was speaking to a man defeated, a man who had never fired a shot in the war against extremists of a culture he professed to study but had never understood.

She went on anyway. “But this is when Thomas Jefferson decided the United States would no longer pay tribute. For the first time in their history, the pirates were facing a first-class navy that was willing to fight rather than hand over money. Surely Al-Jama must have understood their free rein was over. Jefferson’s unilateral declaration of war against piracy was the beginning of the end for them. One nation had taken a stance against their form of savagery despite the rest of the world continuing to cower.”

Even as she said it, the parallels to the present struggle against terrorism sent a chill down her spine. Europe had spent the latter part of the twentieth century living under the constant threat of terrorism. There’d been bombings in nightclubs, kidnappings, assassinations, and hijackings all across the continent, with very little response from the authorities.

The United States had taken a similar route following the first attack on the World Trade Center. The government had treated it as a criminal act rather than what it truly was: the opening salvo in a war. The perpetrators had been duly arrested and sent to prison, and the matter was largely forgotten until 9/11.

Rather than ignore the truth for a second time, the government had responded to the 2001 attack by taking the fight back to any and all who supported terrorism in its many forms. Like it had chosen two hundred years earlier, America had proclaimed to the world that it would rather fight than live in fear.

Bumford said, “Even if I grant the possibility that Al-Jama had a change of heart and found ways to reconcile the differences between Islam and Christianity, there is the practical matter of finding his ship, the Saqr. It is simply impossible that a vessel has remained hidden in the desert for two centuries. It would either have been destroyed by the elements or looted by nomads. Trust me, there is nothing left to find.”

“For the sake of argument”—Linc cut in when he could tell Bumford’s pessimism was about to make Linda snap—“if it somehow survived, would you have any clue where it might be?”

“From the letter I read back in Washington, I do believe it must be on the dry riverbed to the south of us, but Alana, Mike, and Greg have scoured it completely. They stopped only when they came to a waterfall that when the river was flowing would have been impassable. There is no Barbary pirate ship hidden out there.”

“Was there any other clue in the letter? Something insignificant, even.”

“Henry Lafayette said it was hidden in a large cavern that was accessible only through the use of, and I quote here, ‘a clever device.’ Please don’t ask me what that means. Alana pestered me for weeks on end about it. The only other thing I have is a local legend that the ship is hidden beneath the black that burns.”

“The what?” Linda asked.

“The black that burns. The tale comes from the journal of Al-Jama’s second-in-command, Suleiman Karamanli. It survived because he happened to be the Bashaw of Tripoli’s nephew, so it was housed with the Royal Archives. What it means, I’m afraid, is beyond me. I am sorry.”

“So am I,” Linda muttered.

If a trained archaeologist like Alana Shepard couldn’t find Al-Jama’s ship after spending weeks using sophisticated equipment, there was little hope she and Mark and Linc would discover it in the remaining days before the peace conference.

Linda glanced at her watch. They had an hour to hike back to where they were going to rendezvous with Mark and the Pig. After reporting that they’d struck out with Bumford, she was going to tell Max their best course of action now

was to prestage the Pig to Juan’s location in the hope that the Chairman had had better luck.

“Come on, Linc,” she said. “Dr. Bumford, thank you for your time. And I don’t think I need to remind you that we were never here.”

“Yes, of course,” the scholar said. “By the way, have you found any sign of the rest of my team?”

Linda bit back a barb about his concern for the others being an afterthought. “One of the men is dead. Either Greg Chaffee or Mike Duncan. Single gunshot to the head. The vultures didn’t leave enough to make an ID. We don’t know about the other two.”

“Dear God. Is it safe for me to remain here? Maybe I should return to the States.”