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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 hardfor 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