Corsair (Oregon Files 6)

“Trust me.”

Still uncertain, but never one to doubt the Chairman, Max asked, “So how is this going to work?”

“In a minute.” He turned his attention to Murph and Stoney. “What did you two come up with?”

“There’s not a whole lot out there that doesn’t fall into the realm of fantasy.”

“Hold it,” Max interrupted. “What did you have them research?”

“Alana said there might be something called the Jewel of Jerusalem stashed in the original Suleiman Al-Jama’s tomb. She was told about it by St. Julian Purlmutter. Even he wasn’t sure what it was. What did you guys find?”

“You haven’t given us much time on this, so our report is sketchy at best. There are two schools of thought. Well, three, if you include the vast majority of scholars who think the whole thing is baloney. Anyway, one school says the jewel is a cabochon ruby about the size of a softball with some words carved into it. People believe it may be Sura 115 from the Koran, a final chapter to the Muslim holy book that appears nowhere else because Muhammad believed it so perfect and so special that it could only be written on a flawless jewel.”

“Any idea what it says?” Juan asked.

“Depends on which side of the radical line you stand. The nut jobs think it says they should kill infidels all the livelong day. Moderates ascribe to the idea that it promotes peace between Islam and Christianity.”

“So no one knows.”

“Exactly,” Mark said skeptically. “Take any object, give it the ability to bring special knowledge or power, and, voilà, you’ve got yourself a legend that’ll last for generations. Kinda like the Ark of the Covenant. Total bunko, but people still look for it today.”

“Skip the commentary and stick to the story.”

“Okay. They say that Saladin first brought the jewel to Jerusalem following his siege of the city in 1187 and that the stone was kept in a cedar box in a cave beneath the Dome of the Rock. The legend says that any man who dared gaze upon the stone went blind or mad, or both. Convenient, eh?

“So the stone sits in its underground vault until the Sixth Crusade in 1228. During this one, Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire made a treaty with the ruler of Egypt that turned over control of all Jerusalem to the Christians, except the Dome of the Rock and the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque. It was during this period that German mercenaries working for the Knights Templar stormed the Dome and stole the jewel.”

“Why would Christian knights want an Islamic relic?”

“Because they thought it was something else. Remember, I said there were two schools of thought. This is where their paths cross. You see, the Templars believed the Jewel of Jerusalem wasn’t a ruby at all. They thought it was a pendant fashioned a thousand years earlier for a man named Didymus, or Judas Tau’ma.”

“Never heard of him,” Max grumbled.

Eric said, “You know him better as Doubting Thomas, one of Christ’s twelve Apostles.”

“And this pendant?” Juan prompted.

“As you know, in the Bible story Thomas didn’t believe Christ’s resurrection and demanded to touch the wound. The Bible doesn’t say whether he did or didn’t touch Him, but the Templars were convinced that he did. They believed the Jewel of Jerusalem was a crystal into which an alchemist called Jho’acabe had encapsulated the traces of blood left on Thomas’s fingers. The crystal was then hung from a necklace that fell into Muslim control when Saladin took the city.”

“If that were true wouldn’t the Muslims have destroyed it?” Hanley asked.

“Actually, no,” Eric replied. “By all accounts, Saladin treated the city’s Christians and their churches respectfully. He might not have given back the pendant, but I doubt he would have intentionally destroyed it either.”

“So now the jewel, either a ruby or a necklace, is in the hands of the Templars. How does it end up entombed with Suleiman Al-Jama?”

“Because the ship carrying them back to Malta—”

“—is attacked by Barbary pirates.” Juan answered his own question.

“One of Al-Jama’s ancestors, in fact,” Eric said. “The cedar chest with the jewel inside gets passed from father to son until Al-Jama’s death. Henry Lafayette left it in the tomb, and so it sits today.”

“It’s all crap,” Mark spat. “Chairman, if you saw some of the websites where we found this stuff you’d know there’s nothing to it. It’s a myth like the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot or the Lost Dutchman Mine.”

“There was a kernel of truth behind the myth of Noah’s Ark, if you recall from our little adventure a few months ago.” The Chairman went quiet for a moment. “We know for a fact from Lafayette that in his later years Al-Jama saw there was hope of peace between Christians and Muslims. This has only recently come to light, right? It isn’t something conspiracy buffs are privy to. Here’s a little speculation. What if the first version of the story’s right, about the jewel being an inscribed ruby, and Al-Jama read Muhammad’s last words and that led to his change of heart. It does lend a lit

tle credence, yes?”

“Possibly. But come on. What are the chances it ends up in Al-Jama’s possession?”