Captive (4 page)

Alex did know. She might be a romantic fool, but she was hardly stupid. “I’ll be very careful.”

“They kidnap beautiful women, Alex, and throw them into harems. It’s called white slavery!” Panic laced Beth’s voice. “You’ll never come home!”

Alex did not answer. She knew that she was crazy to go,
but there was this voice inside of her head, insisting that she go. She knew, she just knew, she would find out more about Blackwell there, where he had been imprisoned and murdered.

Beth came forward to stand in front of Alex. “What is going on? What has gotten into you? Has something happened that I don’t know about?”

Alex had to have someone to confide in. “Beth, you know I stopped in Boston last week. I went to Blackwell House. It’s a museum. It was once the home of this powerful shipping family.”

Beth stared. “I do not understand.”

Alex wet her lips. When she spoke, she heard the excitement in her own tone. “The heir to Blackwell Shipping at the turn of the nineteenth century was Xavier Blackwell. I saw his portrait there. His bedroom.” She paused.
And his ghost,
she thought. “He was an incredible man.”

“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 just
have
to 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.”

Tripoli

A
LEX CRANED HER
neck 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.

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.