Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (3 page)

It was a thought which would scratch at his memory for the
rest of the day.

Who, then, was the stranger who had sped Daliah Boralevi
so efficiently off the aircraft?

'If you'll give me your passport and baggage claims, Miss Bor
alevi,' the VIP representative was saying to Daliah, 'we can
skip the usual formalities.' He smiled pleasantly, but his eyes
were curiously cool as he stuck out one olive-skinned hand,
palm up.

Daliah nodded and without breaking her leggy stride dug into her bag, handing him her ticket folder and the Israeli
passport, sheathed in thin Mark Cross leather with triangular
corners fashioned of smoothly polished twenty-four-carat
gold.

Eleven years, but I've still kept my citizenship,
she told her
self approvingly.
And I'm glad I did. It would have been so
easy to become a naturalized American after five years, but I
didn't bow to temptation. I might have stayed away forever, but
I didn't have the desire (or courage?) to cut the umbilical tie to
my heritage. That counts for something.

Doesn't it?

The man marched Daliah swiftly past the backed-up line of
passengers from an Athens flight, flashed her open passport
to an official behind the counter, who nodded and waved them
past. Then the VIP man guided her efficiently through the
crowded, noisy terminal, making a beeline for the exits.

'Wait!' Daliah stopped, turning toward him just as he was
sliding her passport and the ticket folder with the stapled-
on luggage claims inside his jacket pocket. 'What about my
luggage? And I need my passport!'

His smile was cemented in place. 'I'll have the baggage
delivered to you by special courier within the hour. The same
goes for your passport. Our first consideration is you. We have
to be very security-conscious, and you, Miss Boralevi, are an important national treasure. El Al does not like highly visible
celebrities, especially one such as yourself, who hails from
a prominent family, to be unnecessarily exposed to possible
danger in public areas.'

She stood her ground. 'Surely there's a VIP lounge,' she
said with irrefutable logic. 'I can wait there while you get the
luggage, and save you a lot of trouble. Besides, I can't walk
around without my passport. If I remember right, it's against
the law here not to carry identification papers at all times.'

He smiled at her typical Israeli regard for official law. 'Don't
worry,' he said airily. 'For you, carrying identification has
been temporarily waived.' Apparently her logic was refutable
after all. 'I have strict orders, and your safety is our sole con
cern. The car is already waiting outside.'

Her heart surged with eagerness and her eyes glowed with
unexpected moisture.
The car, with my family in it, no doubt, waiting to welcome me back within the warmth of their loving
fold.

Without further delay, her Andrea Pfister heels clacked
such a rapid staccato on the tile floor that it was the VIP
representative's turn to keep pace. She reached the glass doors
with such a rush of speed that she had to wait impatiently for
them to glide smoothly apart. Then she burst out into a blaze of such stark white-hot sunshine that she was momentarily
blinded. Blinking, Daliah groped in her bag for her huge dark sunglasses and slipped them on. Already her body was wilting,
recoiling from the heat. After the air-conditioned cavern of
the terminal, the dry broiling heat hit her with the hellish
intensity of a blast furnace. The heat and sun were much har
sher than she'd remembered, unrelenting and undiluted, of an
almost surrealistic clarity. How easily one forgot things like
that.

The VIP representative was right behind her, guiding her
toward a shiny old Chrysler limousine waiting at the kerb.
Its tinted windows were tightly shut, obviously cocooning the
interior's air-conditioned coolness from the ungodly temperature outside. The driver waited behind the wheel, and in the back seat, at the far side, Daliah could make out a shadowy figure.

Only one person's come to greet me, she thought with a pang of misgiving. Who would it be? Dani? Or Ari? Perhaps Tamara?

The El Al representative gripped the rust-speckled chrome handle and yanked open the rear door. Daliah ducked inside the big car. Then she clutched the doorframe, her stomach heaving in fear.

It wasn't any of her family come to greet her, but a hawk-nosed, dark-skinned stranger, who was not offering her a welcoming bouquet but a victim's-eye view of the round, malevolent barrel of a revolver. It was lined up point-blank with her suddenly wary green eyes.

Time came to a standstill.

'Welcome to Israel, Miss Boralevi,' the stranger said with a ghastly smile, his Hebrew heavily accented with an Arab dialect.

She blinked and turned slowly as another pistol prodded her spine. The man posing as a VIP representative pressed close behind her, shielding his pistol from any curious onlookers with his body. On the sidewalk behind him, she caught sight of two wiry policemen in short-sleeved uniforms. Her heart gave a hopeful surge.

'I would get in very quietly if I were you,' the voice behind her whispered threateningly. 'If you try anything, you'll get shot, and innocent bystanders will get killed too. We have people staked out all over the airport.'

She didn't doubt him one bit. Wordlessly she climbed into the car. The bogus VIP man got in beside her. The door slammed shut against reality. Two pistols, one to either side of her, pressed through her expensive clothes, into her flesh.

'What's going on?' she demanded as the big car surged off smoothly. Her face was bleak, drained ofits naturally creamy colour.

The men remained silent.

'Tell me. What do you want with me? I've done nothing.'

'Ah. So you too are one of the holy innocents.' The man who had been waiting in the back seat barked a short laugh. 'You have more than your share of skeletons rattling in your
family's closet,
film star,'
he spat out harshly. 'It is time some
one paid for them.'

'Paid?' She nearly laughed hysterically, choked it down with
an immense effort. 'Whatever for?'

'Let us say
...
for the sins of the fathers and the mothers.'
His smile was fixed.

'You won't get money from them. They refuse to buckle in
to kidnappers' demands. You should know that.'

'It's not money we want.'

Her face burned feverishly. 'What, then?'

'To pay them back
...
in kind. Call it payday, if you wish.'

'You know what you are,' she said with a blunt, cool vehemence, somehow managing to keep her voice subdued
and steady. 'You're nothing but common criminals.
Crimi
nals,'
she pronounced a second time, as though needing to
make her point twice.

But her mind was racing. What did he mean by 'the sins of
the fathers and the mothers'. Was he being metaphorical?

Or was she meant to take it literally?

BOOK ONE

1911-1922

Composers, playwrights, choreographers, and dancers
found favour, fame, and fortune in pre-revolutionary Rus
sia, but because of the fleeting popularity of its stage stars and the lack of records on film, only a solitary name has survived from the stars of the theatre of that pre-motion
picture era—the legendary Senda Bora.

—Rhea Gallaher, Jr.,

Stage and Screen: A History of World Entertainment

Chapter 1

The pale afternoon sun cast weak, shifting shadows on the soft
mossy ground in the birch forest. The canopy of tender green
leaves overhead diffused the light even further, softly dappling
Senda's purposeful features with a luminous glow. She was
humming softly to herself, the tune one of the lighthearted
lullabies Grandmother Goldie used to sing to her at bedtime
as a child. Now the tune was especially appropriate, she con
sidered. It was soft and lulling, light and innocent, and she
appreciated the innocence it conveyed because she knew that
the tryst toward which she was hurrying was anything but.

She lifted her heavy quilted skirt and with a swiftly bouncing
step darted through the trees, ducking here and there to avoid
the low-hanging branches. She breathed the brisk chill air and
laughed to herself. Spring had definitely dawned; last night's
frost had disappeared. She took it as a good omen and hurried
even faster. Soon she left the village far behind, and only once
she crested the hill and reached the familiar clearing did she
stop to catch her breath.

This was her favourite spot. To her right was the wellspring
of the stream which flowed past the village, the water in the small pool clean and crystal clear. She treasured the solitude
this spot afforded, and proprietarily thought of it as her own—
and
his.
Here they could make love together, far from prying
eyes. Here, too, she could be at peace with only the sounds of
the babbling water, the rustling of the leaves, and the chirping
of the birds. Surveying the countryside from the clearing, she
felt that the world was at her feet, the tiny rustic cottages built
of mud, wattle, and wood appearing tinier yet, but the distance
made the mean poverty of the village fetching, with the most
important building, the synagogue, standing apart, larger and
therefore more imposing.

Her breathing returned to normal, and she spun around,
her skirt swirling about her legs. Her eyes searched the trees.
She was alone.

The anticipation of seeing Schmarya again brought a glow
ing flush to her cheeks, intensifying her already natural start
ling beauty. Her face was a blend of her father's finely chiselled
features, far too beautiful and delicate in a man but striking
in a woman, and her mother's more harsh and determinedly
disciplined, though no less eye-catching, strength. In Senda,
the distillation was arresting, lending her a peculiar, unearthly
beauty all her own. Her face was a perfect oval, with striking
Slavic cheekbones, exquisite Botticelli hair and dazzling emer
ald eyes. Seen close, they were not perfectly emerald, but
touched with glints of hazel and slivers of aqua, each a perfect
jewel set within a star of copper lashes which matched her
thick, gleaming hair. Her eyebrows were bewitching and
decidedly witchlike, slanting upward at the ends at an elfin
angle, and her skin had the lustre of pearl touched ever so
slightly with a faint healthy pink glow. There was a naturally
poetic lilt to her carriage, and she was by far the most beguiling
young woman in the village, far more lovely, it was said, than
even Grandmother Goldie had been, and Goldie Koppel was
still as famous for her long-lost beauty as for her razor-sharp
tongue. At the tender age of sixteen, Senda's beauty was in
its flowering prime. Seated against the thin, supple trunk of the birch under its vast umbrella of green, with her knees
drawn up close to her chin, Senda looked remarkably like one
of the wood nymphs which populated the fairy tales she'd been
told as a child. Not even the voluminous, shapeless quilt of a
skirt in its drab shade of mud brown, and the modest off-white
peasant blouse unadorned with any finery, not even an inch
of lace, could detract from her magical appearance. Her sole
feminine adornment was her precious bright scarlet scarf, tied
like a sash around her waist. As soon as she'd left the village
behind, she'd snatched it off her head and wrapped it around
her. It was a desperate attempt at beautification, at the finery
she hankered for but knew would forever elude her in this poor, puritanical village. But no matter what she wore, her nineteen-inch waist and well-matured breasts could not be
disguised, to the chagrin of her shrewish, domineering
mother, her sedate, archconservative husband, Solomon, and her disapproving in-laws. 'She's far too beautiful for her own
good,' her mother-in-law, Rachel Boralevi, was all too fond
of suspiciously uttering to any sympathetic ear she could find.
Not that Rachel Boralevi didn't have a point. But for all her
suspicions, even she had begun to admit that maybe Senda
wasn't all that bad, and that she had, thank God, settled down since she'd married the apple of Rachel's eye—her dear brilli
ant and sensitive Solomon. But Rachel Boralevi saw what she
wanted to see. She had even begun to take Senda's afternoon walks at face value, and Senda, knowing there was little love
lost between them, tried her best to conceal her true self. At
home she was demure, almost decorously prim and silent, not
so much because she wanted to give a false impression of
herself as because she was trapped in a loveless marriage—a
marriage which was slowly killing her spirit. And it was this
sullen spiritlessness that let Rachel Boralevi breathe a little
easier. She was blind to the fire which burned within Senda's emerald eyes. It glowed constantly and turbulently, pleading
for the three things she treasured most: freedom, adventure,
and true love.