Dazzle - The Complete Unabridged Trilogy

by Judith Gould

  But nothing helped. Dead tired though he was, as soon as he shut his eyes, all he could picture were Daliah's eyes.

  Cursing, he finally switched on the bedside lamp, got up, splashed some Napoleón brandy into a glass, and prowled the carpet restlessly, his body naked, the drink in hand.

  He sipped and thought, sat and paced. He knew very well what his problem was, although he kept pushing it away, unwilling to admit it.

  It was because of her. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't exorcise Daliah from his mind. Whether he was trying to sleep or moving about, all he could think of, hour in and hour out, the only thing that seemed significant to him anymore was her. Her. Her. Her. Daliah Boralevi had taken control of his life; she haunted his every hour and suddenly took precedence over all else.

  Her old films which he used to play and replay countless hundreds of times in order to nurture his hatred, and which he had memorized, scene by scene, were now having the exact opposite effect he'd intended. Each time he shut his eyes, the same thing would happen. Long-memorized scenes from her films would come rushing headlong toward him and flash past with a whoosh! like the headlights of traffic in an oncoming lane. They were Technicolour mental videos, and seemed even more vivid and real than they had on film. One after the other, the scenes rushed and jumped crazily: a flash of curved elbow; a curtain of ebony silk hair; shiny, moist teeth.

  A rage of helplessness rushed through him, and crying out in despair, he flung his drink across the room and watched the silk-clad wall explode in a wet stain and the glass shatter and burst and rain down. Then he whirled around and pounded his fists against the wall again and again. 'It's not fair!' he moaned. 'It cannot be!' Then, his fists slowing in futility, he flattened himself, his forehead pressed against the wall, his raised hands slowly uncoiling, his fingers raking the silk. He was breathing heavily. Streaks of sweat were running down his forehead.

  And still the Daliah scenes keep flashing in front of him. Daliah Boralevi was Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and the Mona Lisa, all rolled into one.

  She was also the spawn of the butchers who had slaughtered Iffat, one of the greedy hordes who had stolen Palestine from his people. Even worse, she was an infidel.

  So? a tiny voice whispered in his mind. She didn't kill Iffat, did she? She never hurt anybody. Did she?

  Shut up.

  He clamped his mind shut against the persistent voice, but it kept creeping back in, whispering and taunting. How could she have stolen Palestine? She was a baby back then. Babies are innocent.

  Shut up! Shut up!

  She's an infidel only by Muslim standards, the sneaky little voice continued. Sure, you're a Muslim, so it's easy to say she's an infidel. But Jews believe in only one God too. And according to both your religions, there is but one God—

  As if his anguish was not enough, he had that infernal voice attacking him now too, like a hammer chiselling away at the very bedrock of his foundation.

  You want her.

  You need her.

  Shut up shut up shut up! his mind screamed silently.

  The tortured hours crawled by interminably. The truth, when he finally gave in to it, seemed to cut off his oxygen, as though the air had been sucked out of the suite. You've fallen for her, the tiny voice in the back of his head whispered, and you might as well come to terms with it.

  Violently he shook his head, damning that insistent tiny voice, and thrust the truth away. No, it simply could not be! Not her, anybody but her. How was it possible? What devious witchcraft had been played on him? But yes, oh Allah be merciful—he was in love.

  He groaned aloud, clapped a hand to his forehead, and reeled drunkenly. He was in love with his arch-enemy.

  He was in love with her! Of all the billions of women in the world, it was Daliah Boralevi—his sworn enemy.

  He was in love with a Jew, a love that could never be.

  The knowledge hit him like a physical blow; the force of it jerked his head with such overwhelming physical force that he flinched. For a moment he paced wildly, first in one direction, then the other. Finally, he staggered over to the windows and yanked aside the white silk curtains.

  His view faced east, and outside, the first grey of dawn was just beginning to pale the sky. As he watched, the sun began to do daily battle with the night. Then, suddenly, as can happen only in the desert, it slid victoriously up from under the edge of the world and its lemon-yellow explosion blasted the night to pieces with such intense speed and power that he had to shield his eyes against it.

  And with the coming of light, his anguish melted away and a kind of wonderment came over his face. As suddenly as that desert sunrise, it came to him in a flash—kaboom! Out of the clear blue, lightning had struck—unfried his brains and thrown open the doors. The simplicity of the situation dazzled him.

  Screw everything! He was in love, and love made its own rules, did it not? So she was Jewish. So he was supposed to hate her and her family. So Abdullah would try to squash him. So what?

  For it was her that he loved, and if it had initially taken the seeds of hatred for love to germinate, it only went to show how powerful love could be. Even more important, if love could rise out of the embers of bleakness and destruction, then surely the poets were right and it could conquer all.

  Nothing else mattered; he knew that now. What mattered was Daliah; her and nothing else. Even if it killed him, even if she would never be able to find it in her heart to forgive him for her imprisonment, even if she never spoke to him again, he would still show his love for her by extricating her from Abdullah's clutches.

  He would let her go!

  His eyes glowed. Everything inside him began to sing. For the first time in his life he was filled with a surge of pure undiluted joy. It was so overpowering that he felt as if his feet had left the ground and he was floating upright in midair.

  And to think he had never even known such a feeling could exist!

  Then his burgeoning euphoria began to deflate.

  What rot these emotions were! he thought, as gathering clouds of depression closed in. What use was love? In reality, he and she were worlds apart. Not only were they not compatible religiously and ethnically, but even if those gaps could be closed, that still left Abdullah to deal with. His half-uncle would never hear of such a union, let alone allow it to take place. Heads would roll—the heads of Najib al-Ameer and Daliah Boralevi, specifically.

  He could feel the walls moving and closing in.

  Abdullah's long-ago threat still echoed loud and clear. Should he ever be treacherous, not only would he die, but all his generations, past and present and future. He, his aging parents who lived in the outskirts of Beirut, perhaps even Yasmin, the loveless wife he had once been married to. Everyone, every last man, woman, and child who shared his blood, all nieces and nephews and uncles and aunts—everyone, of course, but Abdullah himself!

  He stared at the blinding sun, and like a thunderclap, another door was thrown wide open to dazzling light.

  A world without the madness of Abdullah, a safer, saner world where his long-ago rash pledge of allegiance no longer held....

  The vision flashed and seized hold, and he could feel his excitement growing.

  The storm clouds of depression were fleeing now. He knew what he had to do, and it was so simple, so elementary. It wasn't murder: it was a surgical procedure to cut out the deadliest and most dangerous cancer of them all, and if he had to be the surgeon, then so be it. The world would be a better place for it—the nerve centre of a deadly terrorist cell would be removed once and for all; financial and armament conduits to terrorists worldwide would be plugged; there would be less killing, far fewer innocents wounded, fewer bombs and snipers and hijackings. Peace would be given, if not a real chance, then at least a better one.

  A life free of the dark spectre of his mad half-uncle.

  A life with just slightly less hatred and violence.

  Above all, a life in which he could live and love as
he pleased, no puppet strings attached, no allegiances to a madman.

  He took a deep breath and held it, the awesome scope of his vision just starting to sink in. The sun no longer seemed to scorch; it seemed to shine gloriously. For the first time in his life he had a warm feeling, however slight, that he had touched upon something good and greater than himself, something even possibly heroic.

  Of course, it would require intricate planning, and he would have to be twice as cautious and crafty as he normally would be. Fingers trembling with excitement, he punched out a call to Newark, oblivious of the time difference, and caught Captain Childs just after he'd gone to sleep. 'Bring the jet to Riyadh,' Najib ordered, his excitement mounting steadily.

  He was pacing again, but his steps had quickened and were purposeful.

  Now that he had at last awakened from blindness to dazzling vision, his creative thoughts knew no bounds. Ideas, plans, and plots crowded his mind.

  He would need the yacht, because it was equipped with a helipad, and—more important—a long-range Bell Jet Ranger helicopter.

  He eyed the telephone thoughtfully, and then made another call, this time to Monte Carlo, where his yacht occupied the prime berth just inside the stony arm of the breakwater.

  Now he awakened Captain Delcroix from the middle of his sleep.

  'Start the engines at daylight,' Najib instructed the groggy man. 'Bring the Najah at full steam through the Suez Canal, and anchor her along the coast of Oman.'

  From the coast to this palace was one hundred and eighty miles by air. Three hundred and sixty miles round trip would leave just enough range for the helicopter, which had been specially outfitted with long-range fuel tanks. The helicopter, he suspected, would come in handy.

  But he wouldn't tell Daliah, he thought. Not yet. Not until everything was set to go and there was no turning back.

  He flopped down on the sun-washed bed, put his arms under his head, and shut his eyes. He basked in the warmth and smiled. He had made up his mind and felt wonderful.

  For that matter, he felt better than he remembered ever feeling.

  He was going to help her escape, and would fight to overcome whatever odds stood in their way.

  Perhaps by doing this he would prove to her that he truly loved her. Perhaps this way, too, he would find redemption for the pain and terror he had caused her.

  It was then, at long, long last, with sunlight flooding the bed, that for the first time in days he drifted off into a deep, nourishing, and completely untortured sleep.

  Like the pleasure dome of a latter-day odalisque, the enormous bed was piled high with as many books and magazines as Daliah had been able to find, the lamp on the bedside cabinet glowed softly, a glass of water and the TV remote control were within easy reach, and the stereo played soft string music. 'A Man and a Woman.' 'Lara's Theme.' 'Moon River.'

  Daliah lay there amid it all, the quilted pink silk covers pulled up to her chin, a black velvet sleep mask covering her eyes. She was still as a statue, but her breathing was irregular. She was wide-awake.

  She'd tried counting sheep, counting backward from a hundred, chanting a silent mantra, and mentally numbing her body from the toes upward, just the way Toshi Ishagi had taught her. She'd leafed through the magazines and tried to start a book. Then she lay back, convinced that if nothing else worked, at least Mantovani would lullaby her to dreamland.

  Well, he hadn't. All she had done for the last two hours was toss and turn and keep fluffing the down-filled pillows.

  She sat up, whipped off the sleep mask, and flung it aside. She pounded the bed with a fist.

  It was just ... no ... good. None of the sleep remedies worked. No matter how she yearned to blank out her mind and welcome sleep, the maddeningly persistent images of Najib al-Ameer—of all people—kept jumping into her mind. Najib al-Ameer, the prick to end all pricks, the schmuck who out-schmucked all the world's greatest schmucks, the Arab criminal who she knew had gotten her into this life-threatening situation in the first place—may he be drawn and quartered, and then rot and fry slowly in hell for eternity!—she'd tried everything to banish him from her mind. She had even gone so far as to fantasize suitable fates for him—dismemberment in a horrible accident; crippling spinal-cord injuries; advanced leprosy; castration, which sounded especially appealing. When that still didn't put him out of her mind, she tried to kill him mentally, imagining herself as some kind of mad operatic Medea. In her mind she stabbed him, shot him, clubbed him, electrocuted him—she tried every method of murder she could think of, the more macabre the better—including the use of an electric knife, a steam iron, and a blowtorch. But the vision of him survived all these mental onslaughts intact, and persisted as a healthy whole—which only made her crosser and crosser.

  Finally, her nerves still strung as taut as steel springs, she abruptly flung back the covers, swung her legs out over the bed, and jumped to her feet. Her nerves were so shredded that her hands were actually shaking. Then she sank down onto the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand. She had to get control of herself. Otherwise, if she wasn't careful, she was soon going to find herself going off the deep end. Her mood swings had been fluctuating too radically, from deepest despair all the way up to the peaks of anger.

  It was so unlike her. So disturbing.

  What was happening to her?

  The night crawled on and on.

  Sleep, she thought yearningly. If only she could sleep, then she would at least stop thinking about him for a few blessed hours! How marvellous that would be.

  She climbed back into bed, pulled the covers up over her, and shut her eyes.

  But she remained awake for hours longer.

  She had never felt such torture, such anger, such extreme helplessness.

  He, her enemy, had taken up residence in her mind and wouldn't let himself be evicted.

  Damn!

  As if she were not in enough trouble with the kidnapping, now she had to deal with the voices of her heart as well— voices of emotional turmoil and anguish-causing confusion. Hour in, hour out, there he was, springing up before her, his predatory eyes staring hotly, probing, always probing deeper within her, as though trying to penetrate to some secret spot.

  She was in—

  Hastily she slammed a door in her mind.

  That was one thing she couldn't face. Not the misguided desires she felt for him. It was too perverse to even consider. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, once she got out of this wretched place and far away from him, then he would be not only out of sight but also out of her mind. Maybe then she would be able to forget him. He couldn't, after all, have really reached that far down inside her, all the way to the centre of her soul.

  Could he?

  Finally, just before dawn, she drifted into a shallow, uneasy doze.

  And dreamed, of course, of him—who else? In the dream he had captured her in his arms and was holding her in a steel-and-sinew embrace, such a real embrace of supercharged flesh that she felt his heat and could hear the rapid beating of his heart.

  He felt hot and hard and deliciously moist—

  With a start, she awoke in a cold sweat. Her forehead pounded. Her pulse raced. She lay there confused and shaking, filled with shame and bitter self-loathing. The dream had seemed all too real, and she felt soiled by it, as though she'd been violated, somehow raped. How could she even dream such a thing?

  But why, the little voice in her mind whispered slyly, why, if she really hated him so much, did her heart burn with the treasonous flames of desire?

  She raked a hand wildly through her hair. Why him? Oh damn damn damn, why him?

  She struggled to sit up and it was then that she was truly appalled with herself. The dream had seemed so real, so passion-filled, that she had actually reacted physically.

  Her thighs were sticky.

  Dumbly she reached down and felt the seeping moistness between her legs. For an instant she was frozen with horror. Then she lunged wildly from
the bed and looked around like a madwoman. The first object to come to hand was a heavy crystal cigarette box.

  Her pulse tripped furiously. Her blood boiled so wildly she could hear it crashing in her ears.

  In a rage of overpowering frustration, and needing to hurt someone—him . . . anything—she aimed it at a priceless Venetian mirror which gleamed, one of a pair, frostily on a pink suede wall.

  She flung it with all her might.

  The instant it hit, the mottled antique mirror exploded into a cobweb of cracks, and a corner of the baroque frame broke off as though in slow motion and fell soundlessly to the carpet.

  Then, for the first time since her capture, she sank to her knees, bowed her head to the carpet as though in supplication, and wept.

  Fifteen hours later and 375 miles to the north, Najib's Boeing 727-100 touched down in Riyadh.

  Chapter 16

  The prospect of holding a press conference was daunting for all of them, but for Tamara in particular it had all the makings of a nightmare. Because of Daliah's fame, she knew that even without her own presence it would be a worldwide event; with it, it would become a three-ring circus. Dani told her she didn't really have to attend, but she disagreed. 'I'm Daliah's mother,' she'd told him flatly. 'I have to be there, Dani. You know it, and I know it.' And she had seen the relief deep in Dani's eyes, and knew why it was there. In order to get the kind of news coverage they sought, the long-retired platinum-blonde box-office star of the 1930s was the carrot being dangled in front of the press.

  She knew this was every journalist's dream story. It had all the ingredients necessary for selling papers and filling airtime—crime, mystery, and no less than two famous movie stars, one of whom was a virtual recluse. From this day forward until long after the kidnapping was over, the media were going to have a field day, and for as long as they could, the press lords would keep this story alive, fanning it furiously until every last ember winked out. It didn't take much imagination to visualize the sensational headlines that would roll off the presses that evening: