Dazzle - The Complete Unabridged Trilogy

by Judith Gould

  'It was smooth and right on time, thank you,' Najib said, already on his way down the ramp, Elke and the other stewardess following with the two briefcases and a suitcase.

  The Daimler had just pulled up and the driver got out to hold the rear door open. Najib nodded to him in greeting, recognizing him as Hamid, a Lebanese Shiite and one of Abdullah's most trusted lieutenants. He ducked quickly into the back of the car, and Hamid slammed the door from the outside and put the luggage in the boot.

  The air conditioning was like ice, and so was the woman on the back seat.

  Najib hadn't expected company, and he eyed her with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. She would have been quite attractive under normal circumstances, he thought, but her blonde hair had been shorn to little more than a crew cut, and she was dressed in unflattering baggy men's battle fatigues: tunic, bloused trousers, jump boots, and webbed belt. It was obvious that she had done everything in her power to defeminize herself, right down to the bitter, down-turned corners of her mouth and the hard, unrelenting set of her jaw. From the slightly mad feverishness in her Aryan-blue eyes, he took her to be a fanatic, probably a European terrorist in training. On her lap lay an American-made M16 A-l, pointed in his direction.

  He reached over and moved the barrel carefully aside. 'I get slightly nervous when those things are pointed straight at me,' he said in English. He gestured at the ammunition clip. 'Especially when they are loaded.'

  She gave him a look of pure steel. 'I know who you are,' she accused harshly with a heavy German accent. 'I recognize you from the pictures in the newspapers and magazines.' Her jaw tightened perceptibly. 'Someday, all capitalist pigs will have guns trained on them, and the world will belong to the people.'

  He raised his eyebrows. 'Is that so?' Despite himself, he couldn't help but smile. She was so serious, he thought. So humourless and repressed. 'I am not your enemy, young lady,' he said in a stern voice. 'It would serve you well to remember that.'

  Her eyes flashed with rabid passion. 'All capitalists are our enemies,' she said, 'especially those who are bedfellows of the American pigs and pretend to be our friends!'

  Hamid's eyes flickered back at them through the rearview mirror. 'I would not pay her too much attention,' he said easily. 'Monika's heart lusts for blood, but her head is warped by the Marxist propaganda. She is with the Baader-Meinhof gang and came to learn how to set off bombs correctly.' He chuckled. 'I hear she needs the training. She almost blew three of her friends to Paradise when she set off a bomb at a US Army base in Kaiserslauten.'

  Najib glanced at her. She sat there tight-lipped and seething, so angry that he wouldn't have been at all surprised if she had emptied her cartridge clip into Hamid's back right then and there.

  Hamid chuckled again and shook his head as he put the big car into gear. 'You should see her in action. She can outshoot, outfight, and outcurse any of our men. The only thing she will never learn is making bombs and throwing grenades. Those things are still best left to men.'

  Monika swore. 'You sexist pig! You men think you know it all.' She tossed her head. 'One of these days you'll awaken to the fact that we women are equal to any of you. You won't be able to keep your women subdued forever you know!' Her voice had risen with such feverish triumph that Najib realized she was probably mentally disturbed. He didn't like the idea of her walking around armed.

  'Her trouble,' Hamid said, lighting a cigarette and grinning over his shoulder, 'is that she is so butch no man wants to even try to fuck her. It is said she keeps razors in her garden of earthly delights. Her anger, Allah help her, comes from being sexually repressed.'

  'Sex!' Monika scoffed contemptuously. 'That is all you can ever think about!' She turned to Najib. 'I suppose you are just like him.'

  Najib thought it wise to ignore her. 'Has Abdullah arrived yet?' he asked Hamid. He had to talk very loud to make himself heard above the screams of the jets as his plane hurtled down the runway and swooped up into the air directly above them.

  Hamid nodded. 'He is here, but he has to go to Tripoli tomorrow night.' He glanced back intermittently, cigarette dangling from his lips. 'He is looking forward to seeing you.'

  'And the woman?'

  'The actress, you mean?'

  'Yes.' Najib nodded. 'Her.'

  'Khalid, Mustafa, and Muharrem are with her. They have already smuggled her into Jordan. Tomorrow they will cross the Saudi border near Dhāt al Hajj with a group of bedouins headed for Mecca.'

  Najib tightened his lips. 'That means they still have a thousand miles to go. I should have waited some more days before coming.'

  'Once they have crossed the border they will be here in a matter of hours,' Hamid assured him. 'Abdullah has arranged for air transit for them.'

  Najib nodded and kept his face bland. They were approaching the palace compound, and to his astonishment he saw that the walls were not only concrete but also sloped up in a cresting, overhanging curve to make scaling them nearly impossible. They were fifteen feet high, and the top edges were embedded with lethal broken-glass shards. And if that were not enough to discourage intruders, five feet of high-voltage fencing rose even higher. Twenty feet, with walkways along the parapets. It was overkill, he thought to himself, and wondered what it was the Almoayyed brothers feared so much to have built such a prison for themselves.

  The car had reached the main gates of the palace compound and crept to a halt. It took a full minute for the gates to slide open. They were electronically controlled from inside and weighed tons. 'Two-foot-thick steel!' Monika boasted. 'Abdullah told me they were made by a bank-vault company, and it would take a tank to blast through them!'

  They drove on, past the green lawn and perfumed gardens. All around, water sprinklers twirled lavishly, throwing out scintillating rainbow sprays and keeping everything lush and moist. Water fountains crashed and leapt.

  Najib glanced around, noting electric eyes attached to statuary, walls, and posts. He guessed that there was probably a network of laser-activated alarms as well.

  It was a luxurious prison, one which was infinitely peaceful, but formidable. One from which there would be no escape.

  One by one the Boralevis were going to be snatched up, brought here, and made to suffer until they slowly died.

  Hamid swung the big car up the gently sloping drive to the main entrance of the palace and parked it in front of the sweeping marble steps. Getting out, Najib felt dwarfed. It was a huge edifice, much bigger than it had looked from the air, and it was all polished beige-mottled marble and sheets of green mirrored glass. Close up, he could see that it had been exquisitely finished, the telling details hinting at highly skilled craftsmen. Looking around, it was difficult to believe that beyond the encircling walls lay a desert wasteland. Water seemed to gurgle extravagantly from all sides; fountain jets leapt into the air and came crashing back down, only to leap again moments later.

  Monika waited in the car while he and Hamid went up the marble steps. To either side of the front doors stood two guards, automatic rifles at the ready, black wraparound sunglasses rendering their expressions featureless. A third guard, armed to the teeth and grenades hanging from his web belt, opened the heroically scaled hammered-bronze doors from inside.

  The palace air conditioning was working overtime; it was as cold as the interior of the Daimler had been. Najib looked around, surveying the octagonal foyer. It would have done a Miami high-rise proud, and was done up in that peculiar fusion of futuristic Italian modern and traditional Arab design which the nouveau riche of the Persian Gulf all seemed to go in for. Las Vegas Araby, he thought uncharitably. Anywhere else in the world it would have been considered tasteless and brazen and gauche, but as with the pink Daimler, it seemed somehow to fit in this hot, rainless climate with its stark, blinding light. There was a sunken octagonal fountain in the exact centre of the floor, where four entwining plumes of spume danced gracefully up into the air and fell crashing back into the octagonal basin in silvery sheets of crystal water
. Chandeliers of thin vertical crystal rods covered the entire ceiling. Two sweeping white marble staircases with glass railings and brass banisters curved up to a second-floor gallery. The seating banquettes were long and low and futuristic, and the predominant colours were white, silver, and turquoise.

  'Everything has been prepared for your visit,' Hamid said. 'I think you will find things to your satisfaction. I will have your briefcases and suitcase brought upstairs. You are to stay in one of the brothers' suites.'

  Najib nodded. 'And the Almoayyeds' servants?'

  'For the time being, they have all been dispatched to the brothers' main palace in Abu Dhabi. Abdullah saw to it that we will have absolute privacy.'

  Najib nodded. 'I would like to speak to him immediately if that is possible.'

  'He has asked me to bring you to him the moment you arrive.' Hamid gestured. 'He is in the majlis. Come with me.'

  Najib followed him up one of the staircases, along the mezzanine gallery, which completely encircled the foyer, and past a three-storey waterfall which began near the ceiling and rippled down an angular wall of smoothly polished purple-striated white pavonazzetto marble, to disappear into the recessed, coved edges of the white floor below.

  They came to an intersection of four identical corridors. Hamid unerringly chose the correct turnoff and led Najib down the wide expanse of cool marble to the majlis. Now priceless Oriental rugs softened the marble floors underfoot, and modern sculptures stood in careful placement under specially designed skylights which bathed them in floods of natural light.

  Eventually Hamid knocked on a set of imposing sculptured bronze doors which looked as if they had been designed by Louise Nevelson. Without waiting for a reply, he pulled them open.

  The majlis, or reception room, seemed to stretch from the doors to infinity. Najib guessed it to comprise a generous quarter of an acre, and its domed ceiling rose to a height of three storeys. Through its stained-glass panels, colourful dappled light streamed down and glowed a radiant circle on the floor. Abdullah was standing by the curving wall of tinted windows, looking down upon the velvet lawns, his paramilitary green-and-black-banded, checkered headgear thoroughly out of place amid all that stunning luxury. His hands clasped behind his back, he turned around as Najib approached, and raised his chin. As usual, he held out his hand imperiously, waiting for Najib to take it and press it to his lips. 'So,' Abdullah said, 'the time has finally come.' He watched Najib's reaction closely through his hooded, cunning eyes. 'You did not sound pleased over the telephone.'

  'The news was unexpected.' Najib kept his voice purposely bland. 'After so many years, it seemed quite anticlimactic. Almost as though it was not worth the bother.'

  'Ah, but she is most definitely worth the bother. Do sit while I explain why she is more than worth her weight in gold.' They took a seat on facing turquoise-upholstered, white-framed bergères. Abdullah gestured to an antique silver coffee service on a silver tray mounted on cabriole legs. 'Would you like some refreshment?'

  Najib looked at the coffee service and shook his head. 'No, thank you, half-uncle. I would prefer something cooler.'

  'Cooler? Or stronger?' Abdullah's liquid black eyes squinted shrewdly. 'Perhaps something alcoholic is more to your liking?'

  Najib shook his head, some deep instinct warning him off. 'No. Actually I would like some sparkling water with ice, if that is not too much bother.'

  A fleeting look of disappointment flicked across Abdullah's face, and was gone so swiftly that Najib almost missed it. But he, too, had been watching closely, and he realized that his instinct had paid off: his half-uncle was trying either to test him somehow or entrap him. The drinking of alcohol was, after all, a major vice. Good Muslims did not drink, and the imbibing of spirits was punishable by law, though it was common-enough knowledge that many Arabs drank up a storm when they went abroad, and many even went so far as to have secret stashes of alcohol and wines in their homes. Najib would have willingly bet half his fortune that somewhere within the palace compound, the Almoayyeds had a wine cellar that would have rivalled that of half the châteaux in Bordeaux.

  'Over there.' Abdullah gestured to a white armoire which had been lacquered in so many layers that it shone with the same smooth richness as the body of a Rolls-Royce. 'Inside that is what I believe the infidels call a . . . "wet bar"?' Under his thin, pointy salt-and-pepper beard, his thick vulpine lips twisted in distaste at the very words.

  Najib rose to his feet, went over to the armoire, and pulled open the double doors. He had to smile. He would have won his bet without even having left the room. The specially designed armoire, outfitted with a small built-in sink, refrigerator, and icemaker, was fitted with bevelled glass shelves holding a bartender's ransom in spirits—everything from amaretto to zinfandel.

  He took a cut-crystal highball glass, some ice, and squirted some soda from a siphon, then crossed back over to Abdullah, looking abstracted.

  He was glad of the distance he had to walk; it gave him time to think, to ponder his half-uncle's attitude toward him. Abdullah's goading had recently become downright hectoring, as if he had found unimpeachable reason to suspect that Najib was traitorously working against him—a suspicion that was ridiculous, since it was groundless, but which to Abdullah's twisted mind was probably very real. Perhaps paranoia was the fate of all rebels who rebelled for too long, Najib considered; Abdullah had become his own worst enemy. Once he had at least been able to shoulder the blame for shoddily planned disasters which were his fault, but now he blamed his men; once he had delegated authority, but now he listened to no one; once he had been trusting, but he now regarded even his closest lieutenants and most faithful associates with distrust; and once his actions had burned with righteous fervour, but now they were all planned with but one thing in mind—the glorification of his own infamy. Though he still kept his pulse on the problems of the Mideast, and saw himself as the only possible saviour for the Palestinians in the refugee camps, the people were now merely the means toward an end, and his own power-hungry schemes took precedence.

  Abdullah had come to revel in power. He delighted in it, used it indiscriminately. Najib sipped at his iced soda and decided to try to keep the conversation neutral: one had to dance circumspectly around Abdullah, gauging his every change of mood. He sat back down and looked at his half-uncle. 'How did you come across this palace?' He gestured with his tinkling glass.

  Abdullah followed Najib's gesture with his eyes and then looked back at him. 'For many years the Almoayyed brothers have been lax in supporting our cause,' he said smugly. 'Now, it seems, they wish to make amends for their past slights. They have put this palace at my disposal whenever I so wish.' He gave a thin smile. 'You would be surprised at how amenable they have become.'

  Keeping his voice mild, Najib said conversationally, 'Hamid said he expects the Boralevi woman to be brought here tomorrow.'

  Abdullah nodded. 'She will be coming on the same plane on which I am flying out.' He seemed to puff up visibly with self-importance. 'Muammar has invited me to Tripoli for a week. A great supporter of mine, Muammar is. And I of him, of course. The colonel is the one leader who has backed me from the moment he came into office.'

  Najib was starting to get angry. 'I wish you could have forewarned me that you will be gone.' He couldn't help the note of asperity in his voice. 'What am I supposed to do while she is held captive here? Sit around and kill time until you return?' He looked down at his glass and rattled the ice cubes. Then he looked up again. 'In case you have forgotten, I have businesses to run. I cannot see the point of having to wait around.'

  'Ah.' Abdullah held up an index finger. 'But there is a point.' He smiled with malice.

  Najib waited in silence.

  'It is a test. You do see that.'

  Najib felt a stab of pain in his bowels, and the moistness shone on his forehead. But otherwise he appeared outwardly calm. He shook his head. 'I am sorry, but I do not see. Perhaps you will be so kind as to explain.'
>
  Abdullah looked at him craftily and placed his hands on the carved white arms of the chair, 'I want to see whether you still have it in you.'

  Najib was suitably outraged. 'Have it in me? Have what in me?'

  'Najib, please.' Abdullah flapped a hand in a pacific gesture. 'Why do you insist we play these games? We both know very well of what I speak. Your Westernization. The softness which I suspect your life of wealth and position has lulled you into.' He smiled mockingly, the sharp lower teeth showing in front. 'It is time for me to see if the injustices of the past still rage like the fires of hell within you.'

  Somewhere deep within himself Najib found a reservoir of careless fury. 'The past, the past!' His harsh voice tore up out of his throat. Suddenly he did not care what the consequences of an outburst might be. He had had enough. 'You always bring up the past,' he said grimly. 'You forget, perhaps, that it was my sister—my sister—they killed, and not yours.' He glared at Abdullah.

  'We are all brothers and sisters in the eyes of Allah,' Abdullah quoted stiffly.

  'Why is it that whenever things get difficult, you always use Allah to hide behind?' Najib demanded. 'When things need an excuse or an explanation, it is always Allah this, Allah that.'

  Abdullah's dark face went white with trembling rage, and he was barely able to control himself. 'You are not only treading the quicksands of treachery,' he screamed, 'but you blaspheme as well! I have had men executed for less!'

  Najib tightened his lips across his teeth in a kind of grim grin. 'Execute me, then.' His soft voice reflected a controlled contempt. 'Kill off all your supporters, and one day you will look around and find yourself alone, wondering what has happened to all your friends.' He got to his feet, surprised to find himself suddenly calm, and not really caring one way or another what the consequences for this outburst might be. He looked down at Abdullah. 'I have had enough. I will be in my room. You can send for me when you have come to your senses.'

  'Sit down,' Abdullah said gloomily. His eyes had dimmed, the maniacal light going out of them.