Corsair

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.