Corsair

by Clive Cussler

  “I took an archaeology class my junior year in college,” Linda whispered. “We went on a dig for a long weekend. We never had servants like this.”

  “You didn’t have the State Department paying extra to let some of their people tag along.”

  “Good point. So what do you make of Bumford?”

  “If I were to guess, I’d say he’s making a healthy per diem being out here and is in no hurry to find out what happened to Alana Shepard and the others.”

  “Nice,” Linda said sarcastically.

  The Tunisian representative approached Bumford about an hour after he’d settled into his chair. They spoke for only a moment. Bumford made elaborate gestures with his arms and ended the conversation with a nonchalant shrug.

  Linc whispered in a thick, faintly Arabic accent, “ ‘Professor Bumford, have you heard from your people?’ ” He then made his voice pinched and nasally. “ ‘ I have no idea what happened to them . . . Surely you have contacted your university and reported them missing . . . That isn’t my responsibility. I am only here as a consultant . . . But aren’t you concerned? They are several days overdue . . . Not my problem.’ And local guy exits stage right.”

  Linc’s pantomime and prediction was spot-on. Bumford didn’t give the conversation a second’s thought before returning to his book.

  They waited twenty more minutes for the camp to quiet down. The native staff was nowhere to be seen, so Linc crept from his hiding place and threaded his way to the back of Bumford’s tent. He slipped a knife from a deep pocket of his coveralls. It was an Emerson CQC-7A. The blade was so sharp that when he slit the nylon, it made no more sound than a knife cutting butter.

  Stepping silently into the tent, he crossed over to the entrance. Bumford’s back was toward him, less than a foot away, and the man had no idea anyone was looking over his shoulder. Linc glanced across to where Linda crouched behind barrels used to keep the camp’s generator fueled. She held up a slim hand for Linc to wait while one of the cooks crossed the compound headed toward the pit latrine. As soon as he vanished, Linda clenched her fist.

  Linc reached out and grabbed Bumford under his arms and heaved him into the tent in a fluid motion that sent the Ottoman specialist sprawling onto the dirt floor. Lincoln was on him like a dark wraith, one hand clamped over Bumford’s mouth, the other poised with the knife so the portly professor could see it.

  A moment later, Linda stepped into the tent through the hole Linc had cut. “Damn, you made that look easy. He must weigh two-fifty.”

  “Closer to two-seventy. That was my variation on the clean and jerk. I call it heave the jerk.”

  Linda hunkered low next to Bumford’s head. The doctor’s eyes were as big as saucers, and sweat beaded his domed forehead. “My colleague is going to remove his hand. You are not going to move or cry out. Understand?”

  Bumford lay there like a gutted fish.

  “Nod if you understand.”

  When he still didn’t move, Linc prompted him by yanking his chin up and down. Bumford’s eyelids fluttered as the first wave of terror ebbed, and he nodded vigorously.

  When Linc pulled his hand away, Bumford whimpered, “Who are you?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Linda said. “We’re here about Alana Shepard, Mike Duncan, and Greg Chaffee.”

  “Who are you?” Bumford repeated. “I don’t recognize you. You aren’t part of this group.”

  When Linda reached across him, Bumford seemed to try to burrow into the ground. She straightened his glasses on the bridge of his nose and curled one of the spectacles’s arms around his ear where it had dislodged. “We’re friends. We need to talk to you about the other members of your team.”

  “They aren’t here.”

  “What is this guy, an idiot savant?” Linc asked.

  “Professor Bumford,” Linda opened again, as smoothly as she could, “we’re here to ask you a few questions. We’re part of an American search-and-rescue team.”

  “Like the military?”

  “Strictly contract civilians, but people in Washington thought your mission important enough to hire us.”

  “It’s a waste of time,” Bumford said, regaining a little of his equilibrium, and his arrogance.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You do know who I am, yes?”

  Linda knew he was fishing for a little recognition to prime his ego. “You’re Emile Bumford, one of the world’s foremost experts on the Ottoman Empire.”

  “Then you must know I needn’t explain my opinions. You may take them as fact. This expedition for the State Department is a complete waste of time.”

  “Then why in the hell did you come?” Linc asked.

  Bumford didn’t answer right away, and Linda saw the furtive look in his eye. “Don’t lie,” she cautioned.

  With a sigh Bumford said, “I lost my tenure because of an affair with a student, and I’m now in the middle of a divorce. My soon-to-be-ex-wife’s lawyer is treating my wallet like a piñata, and I didn’t make that much teaching in the first place. Add that to the fact that I haven’t published a book in ten years, and you figure it out.”

  “Money.”

  “The State Department is paying me five hundred dollars a day. I need it.”

  “That’s why you’re out here sitting on your butt even though the rest of your team is missing. You’re just racking up your per diem.” There was neither denial nor shame in Bumford’s expression.

  Linda wanted to slap his smug face but instead said as calmly as she could, “Well, it’s time you start earning your money. Tell me exactly why you think this trip is a waste of time.”

  “Do you know the story of Suleiman Al-Jama we were told—about how he befriended an American sailor and had a change of heart concerning his jihad against the West?”

  “We’ve heard it,” Linda said.

  “I don’t believe it. Not for a second. I’ve studied everything Al-Jama ever wrote. It’s almost as if I know the man. He wouldn’t change. None of the Barbary corsairs would. They made too much money waging war against European shipping.”

  “I thought Al-Jama fought for ideological reasons, not monetary gain,” Linc countered.

  “Al-Jama was a man like any other. I’m certain he would’ve been tempted by the riches that raiding provided. He might have started off wanting to kill infidels for the sake of killing them, but in some of his later writings he talks about the ‘rewards’ he accumulated. His word, not mine.”

  “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 fed
eral 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.”

  Linc grabbed her arm before she decked the Ottoman scholar. “Easy, girl. He ain’t worth it. Let’s go.”

  The two of them slipped out the back of the tent and made their way across the quiet camp. Neither noticed the small figure of a boy who’d listened to the conversation by crouching at the side of the tent. He waited until the pair disappeared over a sand embankment before scampering away to find the Tunisian representative. Twenty minutes later, the information was passed on to a contact in Tripoli for a healthy sum of money, and a further forty minutes after that the turbines of an Mi-8 helicopter at a remote mountaintop training camp began to shriek.

  EIGHTEEN

  When Ambassador Moon caught his first glimpse of the debris field from the cabin of an executive helicopter, it took all his self-control not to throw up on the lap of his companion, Foreign Minister Ali Ghami. The devastation was nothing less than total. The remains of the State Department plane were strung out for almost a mile, and other than a fifty-foot section of the cabin and the engines there didn’t appear to be any pieces larger than a suitcase.

  “Allah, be merciful,” Ghami said. It was his first time at the site as well.

  Down on the ground, protected by a cordon of Libyan soldiers, men were examining the wreckage. This was the advance team from the NTSB as well as a couple of local aviation experts. They’d arrived only a short time before the American Ambassador, and their helicopter was parked a good mile from the wreckage.

  “Mr. Minister,” the pilot called over the intercom in the specially soundproofed cabin. “We will need to land near their chopper so our rotor wash doesn’t disturb the site.”

  “That’s fine,” Ghami replied. “I think the walk and fresh air will do both the Ambassador and me some good.”

  “Understood, sir.

  The Minister turned to Moon, resting a hand on the American’s shoulder. “On behalf of my government, and myself, I am so sorry, Charles.”

  “Thank you, Ali. When you called with the news that the plane had been found, I held out hope.” He gestured out the helo’s Plexiglas window. “Now . . .” He let his voice trail off. There was nothing more to say.

  The pilot settled the French-built EC155 executive chopper next to a utilitarian helicopter with military colors. Ghami’s bodyguard, a tight-lipped, no-necked mountain of a man named Mansour, opened the helicopter’s door while the blades still whirled overhead. Ignoring the blast of grit kicked up by the rotor wash, Ghami leapt down to the ground and paused while the more portly Moon fol
lowed.

  They started walking toward the wreck. Moon was sweating after only a couple of paces, but neither the Libyan Minister nor his guard seemed affected by the heat and the blazing sun. The smell of charred plastic and aviation fuel carried over to them on the occasional slap of wind.

  In Moon’s estimation, approaching the debris on foot made it look worse than from the air. Everything was burned dark and warped by the fire that had consumed the plane. They paused at the cordon of soldiers and waited for the lead investigator from the NTSB. The investigator was moving slowly through the debris, snapping pictures with a digital camera, while a man with him was recording everything on a camcorder. When the investigator finally noted the dignitaries, he said a couple of words to his companion and trudged over. His face was long and gaunt, his mouth turned down at the corners.

  “Ambassador Moon?” he called when he was within earshot.

  “I’m Moon. This is Ali Ghami, Libya’s Foreign Minister.”

  They shook hands. “I’m David Jewison.”

  Moon saw Ghami shift position ever so slightly at hearing the name.

  “Can you, ah, tell us anything?” Moon invited.

  Jewison glanced back over his shoulder and then returned his gaze to the Ambassador. “We weren’t the first people to come here. That much is certain.”

  “What are you saying?” Ghami asked sharply.

  Moon knew that Libya’s handling of this crisis would have an impact on their relations with the United States and the Western powers far beyond the Tripoli Accords. Jewison’s revelation doubtless put both Ghami and his government in a difficult position. If there was any evidence of tampering, then an accusation of a cover-up wouldn’t be too far behind.

  “From what we can tell, a group of nomads has been over the site. They left behind hundreds of footprints, as well as cooking fires, camp detritus consistent with their lifestyle, and the body of a camel that had been shot in the head. Our local guide said the camel appeared to be near the end of its life, judging by the wear on its teeth, and was probably put down because it no longer had value.