Corsair

But he was the last of them home after what had been perhaps the toughest mission the Corporation had ever undertaken. At dawn, they had rendezvoused with their two wandering lifeboats full of ex-prisoners. The Foreign Minister already had his old job back and was at the conference. Adams had picked up Linda and the others from the desert cave not long afterward. When they had emerged from the cavern, they discovered Professor Emile Bumford bound and gagged at the entrance. The two gundogs who’d gone into the drink during the attack on the Sidra had been picked up, half-drowned, by the rescue Zodiac with nothing worse than flash burns on their hands and faces. Hux and her staff had patched them up, tended Alana’s hands and Eric’s shoulder, and removed what seemed like a pound of stone shrapnel from the group Mark dubbed the “Fantastic Four.”

Alana had remained on the Oregon for just a night. She was anxious to return to Arizona and her son. Unfortunately, without any kind of provenance and with its crystal ruined, no one would risk their career by saying definitively if the necklace she’d found was indeed the fabled Jewel of Jerusalem. The real team of archaeologists who’d been excavating the Roman villa had been sent into the caverns after the pall of smoke had been extracted. The Saqr had been reduced to ashes, and only the gold remained in the side chamber. But it in itself was a numismatist’s wildest dream come true. The gold was mostly in the form of coins from every nation of Europe and every corner of the old Ottoman Empire, stretching back hundreds of years. It was the accumulated hoard of generations of the Al-Jama family, and even the most conservative estimate put the coins’ worth ten times higher than the value of the gold alone.

The delegates at the Tripoli Accords had already declared that the proceeds of the sale of so many perfectly preserved and diverse coins would help fund antipoverty programs across the Muslim world. And that was only the beginning of the sweeping reforms the leaders had on the table.

A half dozen helping hands eased Hali Kasim out of the chopper and into the waiting wheelchair.

“You don’t look so bad to me,” Max said, wiping at his eyes.

“I’m still on pain meds, so I don’t feel so bad either,” Hali replied with a grin.

“Welcome back.” Juan shook his hand. “You sure took one for the team this time.”

“I’ll tell you, Chairman, I don’t know what was worse: getting shot or getting so completely bamboozled. Mossad agent, my brown butt. I just hope he suffered in the end.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Linc said. “Lung shot’s about the worst way to go.”

The bright note about the archaeological finds from the tomb were the three books Alana had managed to save. One was Henry Lafayette’s Bible, which he’d left with his mentor, and another was Suleiman Al-Jama’s personal Koran. The third was a detailed treatise on ways the two great religions could and should coexist if all of the faithful were strong enough to live up to the moral standards set down in the sacred texts. The writing had already been authenticated, and while some of the diehards called it a forgery and a Western trick, others—many, many others—were heeding the Imam turned pirate turned peacenik’s words.

No one kidded themselves, least of all Juan Cabrillo, that terrorism was about to end, but he was optimistic that it was on the wane. He’d have no problem with that, even if it meant that the Oregon would head for the breaker’s yard and he would light out for a tropical retirement.

Everyone followed Hali as he was wheeled into the ship except for Max and Juan. They lingered over the fantail next to the Iranian flag their ship sported. Water churned in the big freighter’s wake as she started to get under way again.

Max took out his pipe and jammed it between his teeth. The fantail was too windy and exposed to light it. “Couple pieces of good news for you. A team of NATO commandoes raided the new base Ghami’s people were building in the Sudan. With their leader imprisoned, they put up only token resistance. Not so, however, the ones still in Libya. The last of them tried to storm the prison where he’s being held.”

“And . . .” Juan prompted.

“Shot dead, to a man. A single guard was killed by a suicide blast when he tried to take one of them prisoner. Oh, hey,” Max exclaimed, suddenly remembering something, “I read your final report this morning about this whole fur ball. Question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“On the Sidra, when you went back after the Secretary told you not to shoot Ghami’s bodyguard . . .”

“Mansour.”

“Right, him. You wrote you kneecapped him. Is that true?”