“You’re not making any sense.”
“He was executed in Tripoli, Beth, in 1804. You see, he was either running guns or grain, it doesn’t really matter. But he was ambushed and captured off of Cape Bon. He spent a year in captivity. Then, in mid-July of 1804, just a few weeks before Preble’s first attack on the city, he was publicly executed.”
Beth gaped. It was a moment before she spoke. “Alex, this doesn’t make any sense. Listen to yourself, please! You’re going to Libya because some guy died there two hundred years ago?”
Alex sat down on the bed, regarding her hands. “I know.” Should she tell Beth about Blackwell’s ghost?
“You know?” Beth was incredulous. “Yet you’re going anyway? And what do you hope to find in Tripoli? His ghost?”
Alex slowly lifted her eyes to meet Beth’s brown gaze. “I’ve already found his ghost.”
Beth did not move.
Alex’s heart raced. “Ohmygod, Beth! I’ve seen him—twice! I’m scared, I admit it, I don’t understand what’s happening to me, but something is happening, and for some damn reason, I justhaveto go to Tripoli!”
Beth sat down beside Alex, pushing piles of clothing behind her. “You’ve lost all of your marbles. Alex. There are no such things as ghosts.”
Alex remained silent. She couldn’t tell Beth, her best friend, everything. That she was convinced now that Blackwell had tried to make love to her in her hotel room in Boston. She looked down at her softly tanned hands. Refusing to tell Beth that she was right.
Because Beth wasn’t right. She couldn’t be right. For Alex also wasn’t certain that Blackwell hadn’t been with her the last two nights, there in her studio. She had been unable to sleep, filled with tension, stiff as a board. She had been afraid, no, almost terrified. She had kept the lights on. Alex had told herself repeatedly that no one was there, that she was making up everything inside of her head.
But dammit, she had felt him, all around her, watching her.
“Change your mind,” Beth said flatly. “Don’t go.”
Alex hesitated. “I have to go, Beth. I wish I could explain, but I can’t.”
Beth didn’t speak for a full minute, “You’ve read too many romance novels, Alex.” She jabbed an accusing finger at Alex’s bedside table where a romance novel rested atop a history text. “There are no such things as ghosts. You know what your problem is? All you do is read, study, and work out. You haven’t had a decent date since Todd—and he dumped you three years ago. I know you loved him—I know he was your childhood sweetheart, that you two always planned to marry, and I am sorry he shafted you, but you need a man, Alex, you need to have fun, you need a life. A real life. If you had a real life, you wouldn’t be sitting here now telling me this crazy ghost story!”
Alex did not reply. She couldn’t help wondering if Beth was right. But she still had to go to Tripoli. She had a forged passport and a visa waiting for her in Paris. She had already purchased her airline tickets.
Beth sighed and wrapped an arm around her. “Alex, you have to stop this, now. Ghosts don’t exist. Okay? I want you to meet John’s cousin. His name is Ed. I want you to think about seeing a shrink. And you’re not going to Tripoli, Okay? Just drop it. End it. Now.” Beth smiled reassuringly. “Before something horrible happens.”
Alex looked at her friend, saw the concern and love in her eyes, and was briefly torn. Beth really cared. She was Alex’s best friend. She was all Alex had, really, and Alex considered her family. And Beth was working on her masters in economics. She was the epitome of logic, objectivity, and common sense. Beth was probably right. She did not read romance novels.
“Tripoli,” he said.
Alex started, paling. “What?!”
“I didn’t say a thing,” Beth said, frowning.
Alex looked warily around her studio, which was filled with her wicker furniture and summer sunlight. She stood up. “I have to go,” she said.
“For godsakes, why?”
Alex wet her lips and finally verbalized what she had been afraid to admit, even to herself. “I’m in love,” she said hoarsely. “I’m in love with a man who’s been dead for a hundred and ninety-two years.”
3
Tripoli
ALEX CRANED HERneck in order to stare at Tripoli Harbor as the taxicab she had taken from the airport came to an abrupt halt on the two-lane, palm-lined highway just outside of the city. The highway ran at a higher elevation than both Tripoli and the bay, and Alex had a pefect view of the harbor where Blackwell would have first arrived.
The bottleneck entrance to the harbor was guarded by a mole. The pale stone ruins of a fort stood atop the farthest end of the mole. Ancient cannons were still mounted on the fort’s walls. Behind the mole, in the harbor, which was a cluster of docks, fishing trawlers and cargo ships were placidly at anchor, alongside many smaller dories and rowboats. The city itself, a jumble of five- and six-story buildings made of pale stone, was set on a small neck of land, surrounded on three sides by the sea. Orange tiled roofs and the onionlike domes of a hundred mosques glinted in the bright, hot African sun.
In her mind’s eye she pictured Blackwell, standing tall and proud and manacled on a two-masted corsair cruiser. Above him, the tricolored flag of Tripoli flew. He was surrounded by Turkish janissaries and perhaps even the rais himself. A crowd would have gathered on the wharf to watch the spectacle of Christian captives being brought to Tripoli in chains.
Alex shook herself free of the very vivid image. She licked her parched lips. The flight to and then from Paris had been endless. Meeting her contact in Paris and receiving her forged passport had been hell. Libyan customs had been nerve-racking, as well. She had shown the stone-faced officials some handwritten French manuscripts and had been interrogated briefly—in French—before being allowed to enter the country. Luckily, Alex was fluent in the language. And even then, she had been warned that she must report to Libyan customs again within twenty-four hours. Apparently she was a suspicious person and guilty of God-knew-what until proven innocent, and the bureaucrats intended to keep tabs on her.
