by Judith Gould
'There isn't anyone else in your life, is there?'
Daliah shook her head. 'No,' she said miserably.
'Then that proves it,' Patsy said triumphantly. 'You still love him. Now, take my advice and pick up the phone and call him. He's really quite reasonable, you know. He told me he's willing to forgive you your . . . your tantrum, if you will—'
'Now, wait a minute, Patsy,' Daliah growled. 'This isn't exactly something I want to be forgiven for.' She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes into dangerous green slits. 'What kind of song and dance did Jerome give you, anyway?'
'None at all.' Patsy puffed nonchalantly on her cigar. 'Oh, he said that you'd had a little spat, sure. But he assured me that it really wasn't anything serious.'
Daliah's voice cut in, sharp as a newly honed knife. 'Did he tell you what it was about?'
'Well, he did say it had something to do with financing the picture.'
'That's right,' Daliah nodded. 'He wants to take Arab money, and I refuse to let myself be tainted by it.'
'Arab, schmarab.' Patsy waved her cigar expansively. 'This is business, dollcake, so try to keep this and your highfalutin personal standards separate. In this business, it's your professionalism that counts, and no one cares where money's been, only where it's going. Besides, this movie of Jerome's is going to be a classic.'
'Then it will have to be a classic without me.' Daliah raised her chin resolutely. 'I will not be in an Arab-backed film. This discussion is closed.' She sat back, folded her arms in front of her, and looked at Patsy coldly. 'I would have thought that you, of all people, would have understood that. Or have you forgotten you're Jewish?' she added softly.
Patsy bristled. 'Just because you were born in Israel doesn't give you the right to be any more Jewish than me!' she said hotly. 'You sabras haven't exactly cornered the market on Judaism, you know.'
'I never said that; you just did. But I've grown up closer to the Arab problem than you have. It was my brother they blew up with a bomb, not yours.'
Patsy's voice was soothing. 'I know all that, dollcake—'
Daliah bristled. 'And for God's sake, stop calling me "dollcake"!' she shouted angrily. 'I'm not your dollcake . . . My name happens to be Daliah.' She tossed her head in that peculiar way that indicated she was very upset.
Patsy stared at her. She knew when she'd gone too far, and she started to back down. 'Daliah, then,' she said quickly, and urged, 'Daliah, please try to be reasonable—'
'No, you try to be reasonable,' Daliah snapped. 'Go home and think about what I've just told you. For once, try to put yourself in my shoes. Better yet, take a couple of months off and go live in Israel. Then, when you come back, then you can tell me what I should or should not do for my faith.'
'Then why aren't you there now?' Patsy countered sharply. 'If memory serves me correctly, you've been living the cushy life in this country for years now. If you're so pro-Israel, why don't you go back and live there full-time? Or aren't you really cut out for the tough life?'
'Why am I not there?' Daliah said softly, more to herself than to Patsy. Her eyes took on a distant look. 'You know, that's a very good question.' She nodded slowly to herself. 'It gives me something to think about as well.' She rose to her feet. 'Please, go home, Patsy,' she said wearily. 'Go back to bed. I've still got a lot of packing to do.'
'Daliah—'
'The case is closed,' Daliah said coldly. 'Or must I remind you that as my agent, you're supposed to be supportive of me, and working exclusively for me! I don't recall your ever having been hired to represent Jerome St.-Tessier.'
Patsy stared at her. 'I ... I can see that you're upset,' she said quickly.'Tell you what, doll . . .Daliah. I think I'd better let you sleep on this.' She bent over to retrieve her shoes and struggled to get them on over her swollen feet. She attempted a smile, but it came off ghastly. 'Whaddya say we talk again in a couple of days, after we've both simmered down?'
When Patsy disappeared as abruptly as she'd arrived, Daliah almost had to smile. She knew good and well why Patsy had left in such a hurry. It all came down to the lowest common denominator—dollars and cents. Patsy's commission on two and a half million dollars would come to a respectable quarter of a million, and Jerome or no, Patsy knew where her priorities lay. She wasn't about to sacrifice the goose that was laying her golden eggs—and certainly not over any arguments about religion or politics.
Done like a true agent, Daliah thought. She shook her head and sighed to herself. That was the one thing about agents. You could trust them to do cartwheels, light firecrackers, or sell their mothers if that was what it took for them to get their commissions. And that was exactly what Patsy had just done. She had backed down only because her commission was in jeopardy, not because of any ideals about Israel or Judaism.
Chapter 4
The sun had slid below the Palisades of New Jersey two hours earlier, and the large half-million-dollar media room was dim, with the electronically controlled champagne-coloured raw-silk curtains closed across the glittering expanse of Manhattan. Najib al-Ameer never ceased to be dazzled by the view, and this was one of the very few times he could remember that he'd been in New York and shut out the shimmering backdrop of city lights. He was watching the videotape of To Have and To Hold, one of Daliah Boralevi's earliest films, on the big Sony projection TV, and other than the three concurrently running tapes on the three built-in regular televisions beside it, he didn't want anything, least of all the expensive view, to tempt his hawklike eyes from the screens for even a moment.
One of the smaller televisions showed a videotape compiled of black-and-white close-ups from all of Tamara's old movies.
On the set right beneath that one, a succession of news photo stills, videotaped interviews, and news footage showed image after image of Dani ben Yaacov.
The third and lowermost set endlessly repeated the few times Schmarya Boralevi had ever been photographed or filmed. Most of these images were grainy and blurry, having been shot by distant telephoto lenses.
The multiple images fuelled Najib's hatred. Fanned his waning thirst for vengeance sworn long, long ago.
He stared at the screens in the intense silence.
The push of a button on the gold-plated control panel built into the bone-coloured leather couch on which he sat had cast the soundproofed media room into a hushed, unearthly quiet. He did not need sound. The images were enough.
Daliah, dominating his vision on the big screen. Her beauty was almost magical. Those extraordinary cheekbones and fathomless eyes, which she had inherited from her famous mother, and the determined, aggressive cast of her jaw, as well as that proud way she had of holding her head high, which obviously came from her father.
Tamara, queen of the thirties, possessed of an unnatural, haunting beauty with her candy-floss white angel's hair. And those eyes, those famous pale eyes which, coupled with her extraordinarily high Slavic cheekbones, had made her the most fabulous face of them all.
Dani, her husband, former ambassador to Germany and Great Britain, his handsomely rugged features and smooth demeanour a casting agent's dream for the part. And rumoured to be involved in Mossad activities. Handsome, powerful, and dangerous, a disquieting combination.
And finally, the old man. Camera-shy. So unassuming and casual that he could have been mistaken for a lone tourist wherever he went. The man his own grandfather had once saved from certain death. Who for a time had visited the oasis regularly and brought them gifts and won their friendship. Who was leader of that accursed infidel community which had raided his village and killed his sister.
His sister. Iffat.
He attempted to conjure up a mental image of her, but try as he might, too many intervening years had passed, and she remained but an elusive, faceless blur. With each passing year, she had faded more and more from his memory until she was but a recollection without a face.
And all because of those Jews. If they hadn't killed her, she would be alive today.
&nbs
p; His face was drawn. His jaw muscles quivered tensely.
The past twenty-one years had been extremely kind to Najib al-Ameer: the handsome son of the oasis had turned into a sleek, imposing man with an inborn regal bearing that left no doubt of his commanding presence or the extraordinary wealth he had accumulated. His face was craggy and proud, with liquid black eyes which missed nothing, and his olive skin was smooth and as yet unlined, thanks to the comforts and care his fortune had helped provide. His one sign of ageing was his thick hair; the black was greying at the temples now. He wore it swept back in the same style as the Shah of Iran; his silk lounging pyjamas and matching dressing gown, as well as his socks and slippers, from Sulka, custom-made, would likewise not have been out of place gracing a Pahlavi. Nor would his fortune. The most recent estimate of his personal wealth hovered, incredibly, somewhere between the fourand five-hundred-million dollar mark and, more important, he actually controlled billions more, thanks to his uncanny business acumen, his strong ties to his Arab friends, the power Abdullah held over the influential leaders of Islam, and the rich oil reserves hidden beneath the sands of the Middle East.
At the still relatively young age of forty-two, Najib had become that twentieth-century phenomenon, a pirate of the international financial world, with billions of petrodollars at his disposal at any given time. Consequently he had to change time zones with the ease that other men commuted four miles to work. This he could do as swiftly or as leisurely as he liked, with an arrogant disregard for airline schedules. Not for nothing did he own a private Boeing 727-100, equipped with long-range fuel tanks, which functioned as his business command centre. This cross between a flying palace and a multimedia discotheque was so full of luxuries that Aladdin would have blushed. It boasted a huge bedroom complete with a king-size bed (equipped with seat belts in case of a bumpy flight), a compact gourmet kitchen, a living room which could seat twenty in comfort, as well as a carefully ballasted Jacuzzi which sat three; cruising along at thirty-five thousand feet with the Jacuzzi jets blasting, while the view out the Perspex windows was of a sea of clouds, was the ultimate way to travel. And then, of course, there were the two Lear jets, the fleet of helicopters, and the two-hundred-and-sixty-foot yacht complete with swimming pool and helipad, which he kept in the Mediterranean.
There was his country house high in the cool flower-fragrant hills of Lebanon, the Moorish palace in Tangier, his twenty thousand-acre game reserve in Kenya, his private island off the coast of Turkey, two adjoining villas in the South of France, the mansion in Beverly Hills which had once belonged to Tamara and which, out of a sense of perverseness, he had bought for himself, and the apartments in Tokyo and on Maui. And then there was his city palace: the quadruplex atop the Trump Tower, where he was ensconced at the moment, one of Manhattan's, and perhaps the world's, most ostentatious, prestigious, and unabashedly luxurious addresses—with all of New York City glittering at his feet on all four floors and all four sides. If the in-flight Jacuzzi would have made Aladdin blush, then the indoor swimming pool, high above Central Park, would have made him choke with envy.
In the beginning, these visible perks of wealth had been slow in coming, but after Najib had made his first million he soon discovered the magic of money and its dizzying geometric progression. One million easily became ten million, and ten million almost effortlessly mushroomed into a hundred million. And though he was gifted with the Midas touch, luck had had more than a little to do with it. Never before in history had the time been so ripe for building a fortune as during the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. The silicon-chip, state-of-the-art communications systems, and the world's ravenous demand for ever more oil had opened up a plethora of international trading opportunities. Men were hurtling through space every few weeks, and science was undergoing giant leaps. And suddenly, the world was within reach: the jet plane had shrunk a transcontinental flight down to five hours, and a single ordinary telephone could dial any other telephone anywhere in the world, so that multimillion-dollar deals could be negotiated by simply letting one's fingers do the walking.
Nothing seemed impossible for Najib al-Ameer.
Gifted with extraordinary foresight and an uncanny ability to pick winners, he was the acknowledged highest roller in the high-stakes game of making megabucks. He was among the first to invest in aerospace and Silicon Valley; he foresaw the Japanese high-tech industries before they came into being; he seemed to know precisely when to buy oil tankers and when to sell them. No matter what he did, his timing was always impeccable.
It was in 1963 when he made the first of the deals which would become his trademark and enable him to leapfrog his way to his first hundred million dollars. After arranging to control exclusive oil-export rights for two minor but oil-rich emirates, he then flew to New York and approached the staid WASP bankers for a loan. Armed with his oil contracts, he easily borrowed forty million dollars and used it to purchase a fleet of oil tankers; two years later, he was building the world's largest-ever supertanker in a shipyard—of which he was part owner—in Japan. And then he hit the real jackpot.
The oil sheiks were a withdrawn lot, suspicious of foreigners who came to curry favour and pump their oil. Ever cunning, Najib placed himself between the sheiks and the corporate representatives. When Great Britain and America's most powerful oil companies wanted to arrange business deals with the Arab nations, they found they had to come to him. Thus, he found the largest single source of his income, and his true calling. Simply by arranging these deals—without investing a single cent of his own capital—his commissions amounted to countless millions every year and earned him the nickname 'Mr. Five Percent.' And those millions he invested, and then reinvested. Money begat more money. And enough money made for true power. Soon his power was such that he was wooed by the ultimate power brokers, and he hobnobbed with leaders of the Kremlin as easily as he brushed shoulders with the VIPs of Washington, D.C. At one point he owned no fewer than forty small to mid-size companies, all carefully diversified, and then he began to shape them into a single powerful conglomerate.
By 1965 he had made his first quarter-billion and was well on his way to the half-billion-dollar mark. By 1970 he was the world's most-celebrated Arab, and was constantly written about in the columns. His smiling visage became as familiar a face as the shah's or the Saudi king's. His flying palace with its gold-plated faucets, Lucite shower, and priceless Persian carpets became famous for swooping down at a different airport every few hours while he consummated one business deal or another, after which he would take off for halfway around the world and celebrate his successes on board his luxurious yacht. His life seemed to be an open book. When he divorced Yasmin, his wife of twelve years, her fifty-million-dollar divorce settlement made the headlines in New York, Sydney, London, and, as if to prove non-Soviet decadence, even Moscow. So did his affairs with some of the world's most glamorous and desirable women.
But there was an awesome price to pay for all this wealth and position, and his life, in reality, was open only to the pages he wanted the world to see. Those who came into contact with him saw only the suave charm of the high-living hedonist or the cold efficiency of the ruthless corporate raider. But there was a third side to him, the dark one, the part he had worked as hard to keep hidden as he had slaved to amass his riches. Despite his own staggering fortune and the billions of dollars at his disposal, he was not his own man.
Around the globe, millions of people envied him his power and fortune, but no one knew that he was merely a puppet. Najib al-Ameer, the womanizer who seemingly answered to no one, who billed himself as one of the five richest men in the world, was in fact completely under the control of Abdullah, the most feared authority of them all. More and more, Najib had become only too aware that in the shark-infested waters of big business, he, one of the biggest sharks of them all, could all too easily be harpooned. All it would take was a single public proclamation from Abdullah. If ever he incurred Abdullah's wrath, his entire empire would crumble and eve
rything he had worked for would become but a heap of ashes.
It was a shaky foundation for any empire, especially one where half a billion dollars was at stake, and he had grown to curse the devil's bargain he had made with Abdullah, from which he saw no way to extricate himself. The blood oath he had sworn so eagerly in his youth was binding.
Admittedly, his secret association with Abdullah had served him well. It had provided the seeds he'd needed to get started, and the business training and contacts he had made at Harvard, thanks again to Abdullah, had opened all the right doors, just as his half-uncle had foreseen. But Abdullah had not only sown the seeds for financing a dark empire; he also reaped part of the harvest, and a grimmer reaper did not exist. More and more often lately, Abdullah's hunger for creating senseless violence and chaos frightened Najib. It was almost as if the terrorist leader's power had gone to his head. Abdullah had begun to revel in bloodshed and in taking stupid chances. Small though it was, Abdullah's PLF was a powerful, monstrous instrument, and Abdullah a force to be reckoned with.
Najib steepled his elongated lingers and tapped them thoughtfully against his lips. His mind had been wandering for a full ten minutes now, and he had become oblivious of the scenes unfolding on the television screen. With a jerk, he pulled himself together and made himself concentrate.
The twilight of the Boralevis and ben Yaacovs was at hand.
Finally everything was falling into place. After three decades of waiting to fulfil his long-ago vow of vengeance against the family of Schmarya Boralevi, the time to do so had come. Just as he had begun to believe that Abdullah had forgotten all about it, the message to proceed had arrived.
One by one, the family of Schmarya Boralevi was to be picked off and destroyed.
And, as though fate had conspired to bring it about, the telephone had rung just a few hours ago. He had been in the big dressing room off the master bedroom, dressing for a dinner party. Looking at the flashing light on the multiline telephone, he had immediately noticed that it was his most private line. Only a handful of people had that particular number, and it was the best-kept secret in an empire replete with them.
