Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (156 page)

'You're suggesting we might take matters into our own
hands?'

'If it comes down to that, yes.' Schmarya spread his hands
helplessly. 'For my granddaughter,' he added quietly, 'I would
do anything. Even commit murder.'

'These thoughts I would keep to myself if I were you,' Golan
warned.

Schmarya was undeterred. 'But what if she is in Libya? Or Jordan? Or worse, even somewhere slightly friendlier? How
can we guarantee that there'll be an outright rescue attempt
if it's a country our government's trying to talk peace with?'

'It's politics you're talking now, Schmarya.' Golan downed
the remainder of his coffee and rose from his bentwood chair.
'That question, I can't answer. You know that. It's purely
hypothetical. We'll have to wait until the time comes, and God willing, it won't. But if it should, then we'll discuss it.
Go, get things set up for the press conference. Meanwhile, I
will forget we ever discussed this. And you I advise to do the
same.'

Schmarya smiled weakly. 'Fair enough. And thank you,
Chaim. I know you didn't have to come.
Toda raba.'

'B'vakasha,
Schmarya. If you hear anything, you let me
know.'

'You'll be the first,' Schmarya promised.
'L'hitra'ot.'

Golan gave a half-wave.
'L'hitra'ot.'

Schmarya watched him leave and melt into the passing
crowds. Then, spying a passing waiter, he raised his hand to
attract his attention. 'Waiter!' he called.
'
Ha'hesbon!'

Chapter 14

Restlessly Daliah prowled from one room to the next. Every
thing about the rooms was engraved in her mind, and she feared that if she managed to get out of this alive, she would never be able to forget this place for as long as she lived. She
knew the dimensions by heart. Not counting the sixteen-foot-square foyer alcove, the living room of her prison measured
twenty-one moderate steps in width, and in length thirty; in
other words, it was thirty-eight feet wide by forty-six feet long.
The bedroom was another thirty-eight by twenty-four feet.
And the two enormous marble-sheathed bathrooms—one
clearly 'his' and one 'hers'—both equipped with beauty-
parlour chairs, carved marble pedestal sinks in the shapes of
shells, and whirlpool tubs set with mosaic tiles, would each
have made respectable studio apartments in New York City.
There were two walk-in closets, seventy-six running feet of
closet space in all, and a forty-six-foot length of floor-to-ceiling
sliding glass windows—but despite all that glass, as a prison it
was highly effective. The electronically controlled steel security shutters were down and locked into place, making escape impossible; the electronic controls for them had been discon
nected. So had all eleven telephones, including the two in each
bathroom, one mounted above the sink and the other built
right into the side of the Jacuzzi.

As she stalked about like a caged tiger, the richness of every
thing only succeeded in making her crosser and crosser. She felt like she'd stumbled onto some stupid set and was trapped
in a ludicrous skit. What kind of a prison was this, anyway, with its tons of veined pink marble, acres of quilted pink-
suede-upholstered walls, and soft pink silk fabrics? It was far
cical. Ridiculous. An Alice-in-Wonderland prison that suc
ceeded in unnerving her more than any tiny six-by-six-foot cell
ever could, because of its unexpected luxury.

Abruptly bored with her pacing, she threw herself down
into a pink suede couch, sinking slowly deeper and deeper into
the overstuffed, down-filled cushions. How much longer were
they going to keep her here, anyway? Two days had now
passed since she had been brought here, and she knew every corner and bibelot. Once again, for the twenty-fourth time in
the space of one hour, she glanced over at the desktop clock. That was another thing about being imprisoned. Although
time had become academic, she was constantly aware of its
passing and leaving her behind. No matter where she looked,
clocks ticking away were all around her. Curiously, her captors
hadn't tried to confuse her about the passage of time, something she'd once read all kidnappers tended to do, and she
wondered whether she should infer anything significant from
that. She wondered, too, if putting the clocks away, out of
sight, would make any difference psychologically, and decided
it really wouldn't. Every eight hours, she would know exactly
what the time was, since they brought her her meals so regu
larly that she could have set the clocks by them: each meal
was dictated by the beginning of a new guard shift and thereby
spaced eight hours apart. Breakfast was brought promptly at
eight a.m., lunch at 4 p.m., and dinner at midnight. It played havoc with her sleep and general functions. But she guessed that it had nothing to do with her discomfort: it was simply more convenient that way. From the quality of the cooking,
she guessed that the cook—as well as the other servants—was
not currently in residence.

From listening at the door, she knew that there were at least
two guards stationed outside her door at all times. She also
gathered that two more guards were stationed below her shut
tered windows at all times. Sometimes, if she opened the slid
ing glass panels, she could hear voices below her windows,
and could catch the smell of pungent cigarette smoke drifting in through the hairline cracks between the metal slats. Three people took turns bringing her the trays of food and checking up on her every now and then: two men, Ahmed and Haluk,
and the German girl, Monika.

Monika was the cruellest because she was the most truculent
and hate-filled of them all. For some reason, Daliah suspected
the German girl resented her; whatever the reason, she made
that fact painfully clear in as many little ways as she could.
When there was soup, she made a point of having spilled most
of it on the way; the same went for coffee. Or she would carry
a food tray so that the plate was positioned just right for her
thumb to poke into the main course. Once, sliding her cold,
bleak eyes in one of her sidelong glances, Monika had
muttered, 'I didn't spit or piss in it. Not
this
time.' Her lips
had scarcely moved, but the vitriol was potent.

Daliah pretended to be unfazed by the German. She knew
better than to argue with her. Monika, she knew, was spoiling
for a fight, and it was important that she do everything to
prevent one. Each time Monika baited her, she forced herself
to remember the first rule of hand-to-hand combat. It seemed a million years since she'd worn her olive-green uniform and done her stint in the Israeli army, but her combat instructor's
lessons stayed with her. 'If your adversary is armed and you're
not,' the burly sergeant had barked, 'avoiding confrontation
may be your most effective combat tactic.' At the time, she'd
never thought that the lesson would sometime serve her well.

Monika was armed to the teeth.

Most of the men, on the other hand, weren't too bad, except
for the little one named Ahmed. He had a nervous manner
and never seemed to be able to keep completely still. He was
always dangerously wound up; always bouncing up and down,
as though dancing to some beat only he could hear. He also kept one hand in a pocket, blatantly playing with himself as
he leered at her. Every time he grinned at her, his silent mes
sage was like a screamed threat: One of these times, I'm going
to come in and stick it in you! Instead of checking up on her
every hour or two, when he was on duty he kept popping in
every fifteen or twenty minutes.

Ahmed frightened her even more than Monika did, because
she sensed he was genuinely crazy.

The rest of them tended to ignore her, looking in on her at
regular oneor two-hour intervals. Sometimes she could hear
them swapping ribald jokes on the other side of the door or below her windows. Other times they played radios or tape
recorders, and the music filtered in.

Of one thing she was unarguably certain: she was being
guarded around the clock. They were taking no chances that
she'd escape.

Not that she hadn't tried. Immediately upon her arrival,
she'd gotten the bright notion to use her dinner fork to pry the
security shutters loose. She'd received a rude awakening. The
shutters were electrified: the shock hadn't been powerful
enough to kill her, but she'd felt her hair stand straight up;
then she'd been flung backward a good ten feet.

The most obvious means of escape, those well-guarded
Nevelson doors, were like the doors of bank safes: thick,
impenetrable, and unyielding.

Wearily she let her head drop to the back of the couch and
gingerly felt her forehead with her fingertips. From the base
of her temples all the way around the crown to the back of her
skull, her head was beginning to pulsate and throb. There
was nothing, she thought, quite like mental depression for
manifesting itself into a very real physical pain. If your mind
was fouled up with garbage, and things were beyond your
control, the body picked up on the negative rhythms and never
failed to get in on the act. She could feel a whopper of a
headache coming on.

She slid to the floor, knelt with her knees planted wide
apart, and leaned her head back as far as it could go. But still the feeling persisted that, for once, her spirits were at such an
all-time low that even the Ishagiatsu pressure-point exercises
wouldn't help.

One of Najib's earliest memories was of a time when he found
himself alone in the little house at al-Najaf after his mother
had sped to his grandparents' house across the way on an errand, giving him the opportunity to experiment with mat
ches. He had become so entranced with lighting them and
throwing the little flares around the room that he never even
heard his mother return. The shock and horror she felt made
themselves known in a punishing lesson: instead of spanking
him, she simply lit a match, grabbed his hand, and grimly held
it to his fingers until they blistered. After that, she never had
to worry again. Having had his fingers burned once, he had
gained a healthy respect for matches and was cured from play
ing with fire—forever, he'd thought.