Her taxicab, a twenty-year-old Mercedes sedan, inched forward. Horns blared. Young boys and adult men in T-shirts and polyester pants or blue jeans weaved dangerously through the stalled traffic on rickety bicycles. The cars surrounding her taxi were all small, older-model Renaults, Fiats, and Volkswagons, and the roadway appeared strange. Several heavily veiled women carrying plastic shopping bags stood waiting for the stoplight to change at the intersection. Exactly to Alex’s right, the beach was pristine white and dotted with a few male sunbathers. Gawky teenage boys were trying to catch a wave.
A few minutes later her taxi—which was not air-conditioned—crawled into the U-shaped drive in front of Tripoli’s best hotel, the harborfront Bab-el-Medina. The hotel was made of shimmering white limestone, balconies Jutted out from every room, lush palms lined the drive, and the front walk was tiled in a beautiful blue, white, and gold mosaic pattern. Alex got out of the taxi, her white suit sticking to every inch of her. Because she was in the Middle East, she was wearing classically cut trousers instead of a skirt.
As she registered, she took in her surroundings. Alex was pleased to spot several men who were clearly European in the dimly lit lounge to the right of the lobby’s atrium. But all the women she had so far noticed were entirely veiled, including an animated group in the lobby. Alex grew more uneasy. So far she had received numerous looks from the bellboys, the concierge, and even the clerks registering her; even the European businessmen and the Moslem women stared. She felt more like an alien from Mars than a tourist. Clearly she stood out like a sore thumb.
Pocketing her room key, she stopped at the concierge for a map of the city and directions. Alex was not going to waste even a single minute by relaxing in her room even though her body was telling her somewhat desperately to stop and rest.
Alex hurried out of the hotel. The sunlight blinded her and she paused to don dark sunglasses. She took a deep breath of the salty air. Ohmygod. She had made it, she was here, here in Tripoli. Alex could hardly believe it.
She had intended to walk over to the harbor first, but even from where she stood now she could see the wharves and ships, including what appeared to be a huge iron gray oil tanker—she would explore the harbor tomorrow. The hotel concierge had already told her that the old castle that had once belonged to the many bashaws of Tripoli was now a museum. It was in the oldest part of the city, and the many small alleyways around it were filled with souks.
Alex left Tripoli Harbor, her strides brisk. She was too tired to even consider walking. Spying an ancient Mercedes, she raised her hand. The driver veered towards her. She had guessed correctly, it was a cab, and Alex jumped in. Again, the air-conditioning seemed out of order. Alex fanned herself with her map.
She could barely wait to arrive at the palace. She was trembling. Quickly she negotiated a fare with the cabbie, whose body odor was overwhelming, and who pretended not to speak either French or English. The Mercedes groaned and took off. Alex had lost that round, agreeing to pay him ten American dollars for what she estimated would be a very short ride.
But she couldn’t care. Two minutes later the car had paused in front of a huge, rambling stone castle surrounded by immensely thick, extremely high walls. Alex was paralyzed.
She could not seem to move her legs to slide out of the cab.
And she could see Turkish soldiers, in loose trousers and large turbans, wearing muskets and pistols as well as scimitars, marching through those open gates.Janissaries.
“Mademoiselle?!” The driver was shouting.“Ouvrez la porte!”
Alex jumped and jerked open the door of the cab. She had read enough about nineteenth-century Tripoli to be able to imagine it vividly. Yet her daydreaming had made her skin crawl.
Alex halted in front of the palace’s open gates. It was hard for her to breathe, because of the shimmering desert heat. A group of Arabic schoolchildren and another group of Swedish tourists wandered through the gates past her, but Alex did not move. She felt ill. She had to face the fact that she was becoming debilitated from jet lag.
She should return to the hotel; she needed to eat and sleep. She needed to get a grip on herself and her emotions and her very wild imagination.
But this was the bashaw’s palace. Blackwell had been incarcerated here. Somewhere near here, he had died.
She swallowed, staring into the courtyard, sweating and wishing for some shade. It was too hot; she felt distinctly faint. Inside the walls she could see that the palace itself was a jumble of connecting stone buildings, courtyards, arches, terraces, and towers. Date trees and palms lined the interior court.
Suddenly Alex felt terribly weak. Her knees had turned to jelly. She needed air, desperately—cool air—and something to drink. Afraid she might actually faint, Alex turned and retraced her steps at a run, fleeing under the awning of the nearest shop. When that proved insufficient, she dashed inside.
Upstairs, the young man bent over his small desk, studying under the light of a single lamp. He was home on summer vacation from Harvard University where he was a political science major. He was supposed to be reading about the events leading up to the fall of Mussolini, but instead, he had gotten sidetracked, severely so. Not for the first time. He was immersed in an account of the war between the United States and Tripoli in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
The relationship between the United States and the Barbary Coast in the early nineteenth century had always fascinated him. Yet tonight he could not concentrate.
Joseph stared, his eyes oddly silver, out of the small window above his desk. The sun was just beginning its descent for the night. He could see the palace walls, and they were cast in an incandescent orange light.
Joseph’s jaw flexed. As a small boy he had spent hours and hours wandering about the palace museum, equally fascinated and repulsed by his people’s history. Sometimes he would try to stay away from the palace, but always, after an absence of several days, he would feel compelled to return.
This summer was the same. As soon as he had returned to Tripoli after a year spent at Harvard in the States, he had wandered over to the palace, and was at once overcome with a bittersweet feeling he could not comprehend. It was like coming home to a place where he had never been particularly happy.
Joseph sighed and stood up, hunching over because his attic bedroom had a very low ceiling. He was just shy of five feet eleven inches, his build was lean, his features sculpted and arresting. Although he was an Arab, his eyes were the palest shade of gray, making a striking contrast to his olive skin and dark hair. Clearly one of his ancestors had not been Arabic.
Joseph leaned on his desk, staring out of the window, disturbed. He had felt uneasy all day. There was no reasonable explanation. He had almost felt as if he were waiting for something to happen—something utterly important—something he would understand if only he could think hard and long enough. Yet Joseph could not figure out what it was. And the eerie sense of anticipation did not fade; to the contrary, it grew stronger as the day wore on.
Alex paused in the open doorway of the small, cluttered antiquities shop. She leaned heavily against the doorjamb, perspiration running in rivulets down her body, taking great lungfuls of air. She was definitely dizzy—the room seemed to undulate around her in waves.
A middle-aged merchant was suddenly standing in front of her, his brown eyes dark with concern. He spoke to her in a language she could not understand but recognized as Arabic. Alex was feeling so ill that she reached out and gripped the man’s arm. “Help me,” she whispered in English.
“Joseph! Joseph!” More incomprehensible gibberish spewed. And then the bearded Arab was pushing her down.
Alex was panicked, not just because he was pushing her to the floor, but because the room was growing so dark now—and then her world went entirely black.
“Anglezi!“
