Chapter Four

Bahiret El Bibane, Tunisia

Alana didn’t mind the sand or the tremendous heat that blasted out of the desert in unending waves. What got to her were the flies. No matter how much cream she slathered onto her skin or how often she checked her tent’s mosquito netting at night, there seemed to be no relief from the winged devils. After nearly two months on the dig, she couldn’t tell where one welt ended and its neighbor began. To her dismay, the local workers didn’t seem to even notice the biting insects. To make herself feel a little better, she’d tried to think up some discomfort in her native Arizona that these people couldn’t handle but couldn’t come up with anything worse than traffic congestion.

There were eleven Americans and nearly fifty hired laborers on the archaeological dig, all under the leadership of Professor William Galt. Six of the eleven were postdocs like Alana Shepard. The other five were still in grad school at the University of Arizona. Men outnumbered women eight to three, but so far that hadn’t become an issue.

Ostensibly, they were here digging at a Roman site a half mile inland from the Mediterranean. Long believed to be a summer retreat for Claudius Sabinus, the regional governor, the complex of crumbling buildings was turning out to be far more interesting. There appeared to be a large temple of some kind completely unknown before. The buzz around the camp among the archaeologists is that Sabinus was the head of a sect, and, given the time he ruled the area, there was speculation he might have become a Christian.

Professor Bill, as Galt liked to be called, frowned on conjecture, but he couldn’t stop his people from discussing it around meals.

But that was just for cover. Alana and her small team of three were here for something quite different. And while it had an archaeological component, their mission wasn’t about discovering the past but rather saving the future.

So far, things were not going well. Seven weeks of searching had turned up nothing, and she and the others were beginning to think they had been sent on a fool’s errand.

She recalled being excited about the project when she’d first been approached by Christie Valero from the State Department, but the desert had burned away any remaining enthusiasm long ago.

Standing just five foot four, Alana Shepard was often confused for one of her students though she was a year shy of her fortieth birthday. Twice divorced — the first was a big mistake she made when she was eighteen, the second an even bigger mistake she made in her late twenties — she had one son, Josh, who stayed with her mother when Alana was in the field.

Because it was easier to maintain short hair in the desert, her dark bangs were cut across her forehead, and the hair at the back of her head barely covered the nape of her neck. She wasn’t particularly beautiful, but Alana was so petite that she was universally considered cute — a term she professed to hate but secretly loved. She had a double doctorate from the University of Arizona in geology and archaeology, which made her particularly suited to the job, but no number of sheepskins hanging on her office wall in Phoenix would help her find something that wasn’t even there.

She and her team had combed the dried–up riverbed for miles inland without seeing any sort of anomaly. The sandstone canyon carved by the river millions of years ago was as featureless as a utility corridor until it reached what once had been a waterfall.

There had been no need to search farther upstream than that. When the river was flowing two hundred years ago, the falls would have been an insurmountable obstacle.

The sound of a rock drill broke Alana from her reverie. The machine was mounted on the back of a truck and positioned horizontally so it could bore into the cliff face. The diamond–tipped bit chewed through the friable sandstone with ease. Mike Duncan, a geologist from Texas with oil–field experience, manned the controls at the rear corner of the rig. They used the cutter head to probe old landslides to see if they hid any sort of cavern or cave. After more than a hundred such holes, they had nothing to show but a half dozen worn–out bits.

She watched for several minutes, pausing to wipe perspiration from her throat. When forty feet of the drill had been rammed into the ground, Mike killed the diesel engine. Its roar faded until Alana could hear the wind again.

“Nothing,” he spat.

“I still say we should have shot a few more holes in that rock slide about a mile downstream.” This from Greg Chaffee. He was their government minder. Alana suspected CIA but didn’t want to know if she was right. Chaffee had no academic or professional qualifications to be with them, so his opinion was generally ignored. At least he did his share of whatever job she set out for him, and he spoke Arabic like a native.

Emile Bumford was the fourth member of the little group. Bumford was an expert on the Ottoman Empire, with a particular focus on the Barbary States. He was a prissy lout, in Alana’s estimation. He refused to leave the camp set up near the Roman ruins, saying that his expertise wasn’t needed until they actually found something.

This was true, but back in Washington, D.C., when they had met Undersecretary Valero, he had boasted of vast field experience, saying he “loved the feel of dirt under his fingernails.” So far, he hadn’t lifted one of those manicured nails to do anything other than constantly straighten the safari jacket he wore as an affectation.

“Another one of your feelings?” Mike asked Chaffee. They shared a common interest in horse racing and trusted their guts with the ponies as much as the information they read in the racing forms.

“Can’t hurt.” Chaffee shrugged.

“Won’t help either,” Alana said a little harsher than she intended. She lowered herself to the ground in the truck’s shadow. “Sorry, that sounded worse than I wanted it to. But the cliffs are too tall and steep there. It wouldn’t have been possible to lead camels down to unload a ship.”

“Are we sure this is even the right old riverbed?” Mike asked. “You don’t find too many large caverns in sandstone. It’s too soft. The roof would collapse before erosion could make it large enough to hide a boat.”

Alana had thought the same thing. They should be looking for limestone, which is perfect for caverns because it was soft enough to erode but tough enough to withstand the aeons. The problem was they hadn’t found anything other than the sandstone and a few basalt outcroppings.

“The Charles Stewart letter was pretty clear as to the location of Al–Jama’s secret base,” she said. “Remember, Henry Lafayette stayed there for two years before the old pirate’s death. Satellite imagery shows this to be the only possible riverbed within a hundred miles of where Lafayette said they lived.”

“Hey, at least it’s on this side of the Libyan border,” Greg added. His blond hair and fair skin made him especially susceptible to the sun, so he wore long sleeves and a big straw hat. His shirts were always stained at the collar and under the arms and had to be washed out every night. “Despite the upcoming summit in Tripoli, I don’t think old Muammar Qaddafi would like us digging around in his backyard.”

Mike said, “My father worked the Libyan oil fields before Qaddafi nationalized them.” He was taller and leaner than Greg, hardened by a lifetime of working outdoors so the wrinkles around his blue eyes never vanished. His hands were callused like the bark of an oak tree, and the corner of his mouth bulged with a wad of tobacco the size of a golf ball. “He told me the Libyan people are about the nicest in the world.”

“People, yes. Government, not so much.” Alana took a swig from her canteen. It was as warm as bathwater. “Even with them hosting the peace thing, I don’t see them really changing their tune.” She looked at Greg Chaffee, asking pointedly, “Doesn’t the CIA believe they once sheltered Suleiman Al–Jama, the terrorist who took his name from the pirate we’re looking for?”

He didn’t rise to the bait. “What I read in the papers is that Al–Jama tried to enter the country but wasn’t allowed in.”

“We’ve been up and down this wash for weeks. There’s nothing here,” Mike said disgustedly. “This mission is a complete waste of time.”

“The nabobs in the know don’t seem to think so,” Alana answered, but with reservations.

She thought back to her meeting in Washington with Christie Valero. In the Foggy Bottom office with Undersecretary Valero had been one of the largest men Alana had ever seen. He had the unforgettable name of St. Julian Perlmutter, and he reminded her of Sydney Greenstreet, except while the old actor had always seemed sinister Perlmutter was the quintessential jovial fat man. His eyes were as bright blue as Alana’s were green. Valero was a trim, pretty blonde a few years older than Alana. The walls of her office were decorated with photographs of the places she’d been stationed in her twenty–year career, all in the Middle East.

She had risen from her desk when Alana had been shown into the room, but Perlmutter remained on the sofa and shook her hand sitting down.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” Christie said.

“It’s not every day I get an offer to meet with an Undersecretary.”

“They’re a dime a dozen in this town.” Perlmutter chuckled. “Turn on a light at a party and they scurry like cockroaches.”

“Another crack like that,” Christie said, “and I’ll have you black–listed from all the embassy dinners.”

“That’s hitting below the belt,” St. Julian said quickly, then laughed. “Actually, that’s hitting the belt line precisely.”

“Dr. Shepard —”

“Alana. Please.”

“Alana, we have a particularly interesting challenge that’s suited to your talents. A few weeks ago, St. Julian came across a letter written by an admiral named Charles Stewart in the 1820s. In it, he describes a rather incredible tale of survival by a sailor lost during the Barbary Coast War of 1803. His name was Henry Lafayette.”

Christie Valero outlined Lafayette’s role in the burning of the Philadelphia and how he was presumably lost at sea following the attack on the Saqr. St. Julian picked it up from there.

“Lafayette and Suleiman Al–Jama made it to shore, and Henry removed the pistol ball with his bare fingers and packed the wound with salt he scraped from rocks. The pirate captain was delirious for three days, but then his fever broke and he made a full recovery. Fortunately for them, Henry managed to gather rainwater to drink, and he was skilled at foraging for food along the shore.”

“Now, you must understand that Al–Jama was a pirate not because of the financial reward. He did it because of his hate for the infidel. The man was the Osama bin Laden of his day.”

“Is this where Suleiman Al–Jama gets his name?” Alana asked, referencing the modern–day terrorist.

“Yes, it is.”

“I had no idea his name had a historical context.”

“He chose it very carefully. To many in the radicalized side of Islam, the original Al–Jama is a hero and a spiritual guide. Before turning to piracy he was an Imam. Most of his writings survive to this day, and are closely studied because they give so many justifications for attacking nonbelievers.”

“There was a painting done of him before his first sea voyage,” Undersecretary Valero said. “We often find pictures of it in places of honor whenever there’s a raid on a terrorist stronghold. He is an inspiration to terrorists throughout the Muslim world. To them, he’s the original jihadist, the first to take the fight to the West.”

Alana was confused, and said, “I’m sorry, but what does any of this have to do with me? I’m an archaeologist.”

“I’m getting to that,” St. Julian replied. His stomach grumbled, so he gave it an affectionate rub. “And I’ll make it brief.”

“Now, Lafayette and Al–Jama couldn’t have been more different if one of them had been from Mars. But they shared a rather strange bond. You see, Henry had saved Suleiman’s life not once but twice. First by towing him to shore, then by nursing him back from the bullet wound. It was a debt the Muslim simply couldn’t ignore. Also, Henry, who was French Canadian, looked exactly like Al–Jama’s long–dead son.”

“They were stranded in the desert at least a hundred miles from Tripoli. Suleiman knew that if he returned Henry there, the Bashaw would imprison him with the crew from the Philadelphia, or, worse, try him for burning the ship and execute him.”

“However, there was an alternative. You see, apart from using the city, Al–Jama also had a secret base in the desert far to the west. It was from there he staged many of his raids, allowing him to avoid any naval blockade. He assumed that his ship would defeat the Siren and that his men would meet him at their lair.”

A natural storyteller, Perlmutter put extra emphasis on the last word to bolster the drama.

“So they headed west, walking along the shore whenever they could, but they were oftentimes forced to trek inland. Henry didn’t know how many days it took them. Four weeks, was a rough estimate, and it must have been utter hell. Water was always scarce, and on more than one occasion both thought they were going to die from thirst. ‘Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.’ Coleridge had it right. They were saved by the occasional rain squall and the juice of clams they found.”

“A funny thing happened, too. The two men began to become friends. Al–Jama spoke some English, and because Henry was already bilingual he was able to pick up Arabic very quickly. I can’t imagine what they discussed, but talk they did. By the time they reached the hideout, Al–Jama wasn’t keeping Henry alive because of an obligation. He did it because he genuinely liked the young man. Later, he would call Henry ‘son,’ and Henry referred to him as ‘father.’ ”

“At the secret base, they discovered the Saqr, but the men, who had thought their captain dead, had returned to their homes along the Barbary Coast. In his report to the Navy Department, Charles Stewart stated the Saqr was burning heavily and sinking after they broke off the engagement, but obviously it survived.”

“By Henry’s account, the hideout was well provisioned, and there was an elderly servant to attend to their needs. Every few months, a camel caravan would come by to barter for food in exchange for some of the plunder Al–Jama had hoarded, though he made them promise not to tell his men he was alive.”

“Plunder?” Alana asked.

“Henry’s exact words were ‘a mountain of gold,’ ” Perlmutter replied. “Then there’s the belief that Al–Jama was in possession of the Jewel of Jerusalem.”

Alana looked to Undersecretary Valero. “Do you want to send me on some sort of treasure hunt?”

Christie nodded. “In a manner of speaking, but we’re not interested in gold or some mythical gemstone. What do you know about fatwas?”

“Isn’t that some kind of proclamation for Muslims? There was one issued to kill Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses.”

“Exactly. Depending on who issues them, they carry tremendous influence in the Muslim world. Ayatollah Khomeini issued one during Iran’s war with Iraq, giving permission for soldiers to blow themselves up in suicide attacks. You must be aware that suicide is expressly forbidden in the Koran, but Khomeini’s forces were being routed by Saddam’s, and he was desperate. So he said it was okay to blow yourself up if you’re taking your enemies with you. His strategy worked — maybe too well, from our perspective. The Iranians pushed back Iraq’s Army and eventually came to a cease–fire, but his fatwa remained in place, and is still used as the justification for suicide bombers from Indonesia to Israel. If it could somehow be countered by an equally respected cleric, then we might see a drop in suicide bombings all over the world.”

Alana was beginning to understand. “Suleiman Al–Jama?”

St. Julian leaned forward, the couch’s leather creaking. “According to what Henry told Charles Stewart after his return to the United States, Al–Jama did a complete reversal of his earlier position concerning Christians. He had never even spoken to one until Henry rescued him. Henry read to him from the Bible he carried, and Al–Jama began to focus on the similarities between faiths rather than the differences. In the two years before he died in the hideout, he studied the Koran like never before, and wrote extensively on how Christianity and Islam should coexist in peace. That is why I believe he didn’t want his sailors to know he had survived the attack, because they would want to go raiding again and he did not.”

Christie Valero interrupted. “If those documents exist, they could be a powerful tool in the war on terrorism because it would cut the underpinnings of many of the most fanatical terrorists. The killers who so blindly follow Al–Jama’s early edicts on murdering Christians would be honor–bound to at least consider what the old pirate had written later in his life.”

“I don’t know if you are aware,” she continued, “that there is a peace conference in Tripoli, Libya, in a couple of months. This is going to be the largest gathering of its kind in history, and perhaps our greatest shot at ending the fighting once and for all. All sides are talking serious concessions, and the oil states are willing to pledge billions in economic aid. I would love for the Secretary of State to have the opportunity to read something Al–Jama wrote about reconciliation. I think it would tip the scales in favor of peace.”

Alana made a face. “Wouldn’t that be, I don’t know, largely symbolic?”

“Yes, it would,” St. Julian answered. “But so much of diplomacy is symbolism. The parties want reconciliation. Hearing about it from a revered Imam, a powerful inspiration for violence who changed his mind, would be a diplomatic coup, and the very thing these talks need to be a success.”

Alana recalled feeling excited about helping to bring stability to the Middle East following her meeting with Valero and Perlmutter, but now, after weeks searching vainly for Al–Jama’s secret base, she felt nothing but tired, hot, and dirty. She pushed herself to her feet. Their break was over.

“Come on, guys. We have another hour or so before we have to head back to the Roman ruins and check in with the dig supervisor.” As part of their deal for tagging along with that other expedition, Alana and her team had to return to camp every night. It was an onerous burden, but the Tunisian authorities insisted that no one spend a night alone in the desert. “Might as well check where Greg’s gut is telling him our discovery awaits, ‘cause the geology isn’t telling me squat.”