Corsair

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

THE INDIAN OCEAN WAS A SHIMMERING JEWEL, PERFECTLY clear and blue. But on its surface was a flaw in the shape of a five-hundred-and-sixty-foot freighter. The ship was barely making headway, though her single stack belched copious amounts of noxious black smoke. It was clear the vessel was plying the sea-lanes far beyond her intended life span.

She was so low in the water that she had been forced on a circuitous route from Mumbai to avoid any storms because seas much above four feet would wash across her deck. Her port side would ship water in smaller swells because she had a slight list to that side. The hull was painted a scabrous green, with patches of other colors where the crew had run out of the primary shade. Tongues of scaly rust ran from her scuppers, and large metal plates had been welded to her sides to shore up structural deficiencies.

The tramp freighter’s superstructure was just aft of amidships, giving her three cargo holds on her foredeck and two aft. The three cranes towering over the decks were heavily rusted and their cables frayed. The decks themselves were littered with leaky barrels, broken machinery, and clutter. Where pieces of her railing had rusted away, the crew had hung lengths of chain.

To the men studying her from a nearby fishing boat, the freighter didn’t appear promising, but they were in no position to ignore the opportunity she presented.

The Somali captain was a wiry, hatchet-faced man missing a tooth in the center of his mouth. The other teeth around the gap were badly rotted, and his gums were black with decay. He conferred with the three other men on