Corsair

“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 federal 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 begi

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.”