by Judith Gould
The face of a huge Shelley Winters lookalike, with the same brownish-blonde tight curls, filled the screen. 'It's an outrage, you know? One moment the world's fine and the sun's shining, and the next you don't know what the hell's going on!'
The camera switched back to the anchorman. 'To repeat, at the head of the news tonight, Daliah Boralevi, world-famous screen star, is presumed kidnapped in Israel ... In other world events, the military government in—'
Najib pointed the remote control at the television set and flicked the Off button.
For once, he felt curiously ambivalent, as though not quite certain what to think. Good, bad; he had no inkling what effect the broadcast would have. On the one hand, the press conference had been a brilliant concept. He didn't doubt that summer tourists who had been at Ben-Gurion Airport the day Daliah had been kidnapped were going to start remembering little things they had seen and given no heed, and connect them with the kidnapping. The police were soon going to start getting definite leads. In that way, the press conference had probably been a very smart move.
On the other hand, he was afraid that it could have dire consequences for Daliah. It was just possible that the news might frighten Abdullah into moving her to another spot—a place perhaps even Najib himself wouldn't know of. Or his half-uncle might work himself up into one of his famous rages and order her killed on the spot.
But worst of all, the press conference could easily throw a wrench into his own plan for Daliah's escape.
He stood in the centre of the room, his face stony, his hands on his hips.
For once, he just didn't know what to think.
Some twelve hundred miles northwest, the telephones were starting to ring.
'I strongly advise against answering the phones yourselves,' Dov Cohen of the Shin Bet had told them emphatically. He was a big man of about forty, with shoulders too wide for his suit jacket, and a face of chiselled granite. There was something eminently comforting about his massive size and intelligent eyes. 'Our men are trained to handle situations such as this. While I can understand your wanting to—'
'Please, Mr. Cohen,' Tamara had interrupted smoothly, rising fluidly from the wing chair. 'It's important to us that we do something.'
He gave her a long look. 'You'll wish you hadn't,' he warned her. 'There's no telling the kind of creeps who are liable to call. Just in case you change your mind, I'll leave two men on duty here, and another shift will take over in the morning. Meanwhile, I'll stay on a few more hours myself.'
'Thank you.' Tamara tried to smile, and watched him sit down and slide a pair of headphones over his ears. Just then the telephone shrilled. 'Wait!' she called out. She raced to the extension just as Dani pressed the Record button to activate the tape deck of the main line. Holding his hand on the vibrating receiver, he nodded across the room to her. She nodded back and they both lifted their receivers in unison.
'Hello,' Dani said, forcing his voice to sound normal. 'This is Dani ben Yaacov speaking.'
'I'm calling you about the ransom,' a rough voice growled.
Dani's heart seemed to check, miss a beat, and then race furiously. He caught Tamara's eye. She was staring across the room at him.
'Who are you?' he asked tightly.
'Never mind who I am!' The voice was threatening. 'Just listen carefully. I want one million US dollars in twenties. Got that?'
'Yes.' Dani gripped the receiver with both hands.
'Put the money in a suitcase and take it to the General Post Office. Just inside the Jaffa Road entrance there's a rubbish bin. You can't miss it. Put the suitcase in the bin and leave. You have until noon tomorrow!'
'How do we know she's—'
'Just do it!' the voice snarled. 'And come alone. If we see policemen, she'll be killed.'
'How do I—Hello! Hello!' Desperately Dani rattled the cradle, but the connection was broken.
With shaking hands he replaced the receiver and turned to Dov Cohen.
'I don't know,' the big man said dubiously with a shrug. 'It could well be a crank.'
Dani's face burned angrily. 'Don't you think we should be collecting the money alrea—'
'No. We wait.' Dov Cohen's expression was grim and his eyes flinty. 'You can't hand over a million dollars to any Abe, Dave, or Moishe who calls. If they're for real, they'll call back. When they do, they'll have to prove they've got Daliah, and that she's alive. Otherwise, it's a no go.'
'Hello. This is Dani ben Yaacov speaking.'
'You're the ones looking for Daliah Boralevi?' a stranger's voice asked.
Dani could feel a steel band constricting his chest. 'Yes,' he said tightly. 'Do you have any information?'
'I know where she is.'
Dani's hands tightened on the receiver. 'Can you tell me where?'
'They've got her.'
'They? Who is "they"?'
The voice turned whispery. 'You know, the green men. The ones in the UFO. They've taken her away to their planet.'
He heard the crackle and click as the connection was broken.
The caller had hung up.
'Damn!' Dani shut his eyes and flung the receiver into the cradle.
Dov Cohen stretched out his hands, palms up, and looked beseechingly up at the ceiling. 'God help us,' he muttered. 'This should never have been publicized. It was begging to hear from all the crazies.'
'Hello. This is Dani ben Yaacov speaking.'
'I saw the press conference on television,' a woman's voice gushed with barely suppressed excitement. 'Is this the right number to call?'
'Yes, do you have any information?'
'I have to talk to Tamara. I won't tell it to anyone else.'
'I'm sorry, but she isn't available. Can I take your information?'
'No! I will only tell her.'
He sighed and looked questioningly across the room. Tamara nodded.
'Hello,' she said pleasantly. 'This is Tamara.'
The gushing voice turned into a shrill, thunderous shriek. 'Just because you're rich and famous you can beg for help on TV! Well, what about us regular people? When my daughter was sick and I had no money, the doctors didn't give me the time of day, and she died! I hope Daliah dies too! If she doesn't, I'm going to kill her myself!'
Tamara dropped the receiver and shrank back in wide-eyed horror. The room was spinning wildly around her.
'Darling, darling.' Dani was at her side, cradling her head and rocking her back and forth. 'Forget it, darling, try to forget. . .'
'Oh, Dani, Dani,' she moaned. Suddenly she felt overwhelmingly tired and defeated. 'How can people be so awful?' She looked searchingly up at him. 'Maybe Mr. Cohen is right. Maybe it's best if we let the Shin Bet answer the calls.' She shuddered and clung to him. 'Let's go to bed, Dani. It's been a long day.'
He nodded and pulled her to her feet. 'Too long,' he sighed, holding her tightly. His cheeks tensed. 'I have a feeling that the only thing the news conference has accomplished has been to open Pandora's box.'
The water sluiced off him as Najib pulled himself out of the swimming pool and threw himself down on the umbrella-shaded chaise. The heat already felt as if the sun had sucked all the oxygen from the air, even though it was not yet nine-thirty in the morning. He was filled with a pantherlike tenseness and a need to flex his muscles, and yet he was weary; he felt heady with the excitement of outmanoeuvring Abdullah and causing his downfall, and yet he felt curiously remote from Abdullah already. He was as thrilled as a chess player who has made a series of moves, each one so brilliant in and of itself, that he believes them good enough to determine the final outcome of the game. The battle for which he was preparing still loomed distantly, and there were many problems to work out before the first salvo was fired.
One of them in particular seemed insurmountable.
He had to get through to Schmarya Boralevi or Dani ben Yaacov, but he couldn't do it through ordinary channels. Certainly he couldn't simply pick up the phone and dial long distance from the palace; he wouldn't pu
t it past Abdullah to have all telephone calls, both incoming and outgoing, monitored or taped. Nor could he fly to Israel without arousing undue attention. His arrivals and departures anywhere in the world were invariably reported in the press. Fame had its advantages, but it had severe disadvantages too.
He mulled over the problem. He could, of course, call them from elsewhere—even from his plane in midair. But since the press conference, Daliah's family was probably being buried under an avalanche of crank calls, and every call would require careful scrutiny—a process too slow and dangerous to suit him. He had to cut through all the red tape. What he needed was something of Daliah's which they would instantly recognize, irrefutable proof that his was a serious call. Furthermore, since he couldn't meet them in Israel and he had to speak to one of them in person, whatever he used to lure their attention had to be something impressive enough to get them to leave Israel and meet him elsewhere—a remote spot, in Greece perhaps, or someplace on Cyprus.
If only he had something of hers! A driver's licence or a passport. . . even an identifiable piece of jewellery.
But she had arrived in bedouin clothes, empty-handed, and everything had been taken from her. He couldn't just walk up to Khalid and ask to borrow a ring of hers, or her passport.
There had to be something . . .
And then an idea came to him. Grabbing his towel and staying as much as possible in the cooling shadows, he made his way back uphill to the palace and went straight to his suite. He searched the various closets and drawers for twenty minutes before he found what he was looking for.
A Polaroid camera.
He would simply take her picture. Then he would summon his jet, give the picture to Captain Childs, and have him deliver it personally. Meanwhile, he needed to find some film.
It took another fifteen minutes of searching.
He loaded the camera, tested it, and smiled.
It's strange how everything's working out, he thought. Each time I run across a problem, the solution pops up. Now, if only that keeps up . . .
After slipping on a pair of slacks and a shirt, and steeling himself for a confrontation of fire and ice, he headed straight to her suite.
Chapter 18
'Where are your robes?'
Najib looked at her and blinked in surprise. Her words and expressions were absolutely level, normal, and without spite. There was no fire and no ice, and even her slight frown seemed absolutely genuine.
'In certain classes of Arab society, the men often wear Western dress,' he explained, 'and the women even Paris couture. Behind closed doors, of course. I thought you knew that.'
She glanced at his beautifully tailored Sulka shirt, open at the collar, and his dark Milan-tailored slacks. 'In other words, the last two times when you wore your sheik get-up . . . that was for my benefit.'
He smiled slightly. 'Those were no sheik's robes, I'm afraid. They were very average.'
'I see.' She looked at him doubtfully and then, catching sight of the peculiarly gentle look in his eyes, she swiftly turned away in agitation and focused her attention on the expensive bric-a-brac on a sideboard. She rearranged the circular Japanese ivory boxes, nine amber glass balls, Indian ivory goblets, barley-twist candlesticks, and miniature globes. '1 ... I wish you'd go away now.' Her voice quivered huskily.
His expression was almost loving, but inside, his heartbeats came in quick succession. He felt the overwhelming need to try to explain everything to her, to make her understand that he had no wish to see her come to harm, that he had not wanted to go through with this mad scheme; that the vow of vengeance he had sworn so long ago had ceased to be of any importance to him, and that he, like her, was a prisoner trapped in the webs of the past. Above all, he felt the surging urge to let her know that somehow, even if he had to move heaven and hell to achieve it, he was going to get her out of this mess.
He actually opened his mouth to speak, but the words would not come, and he was glad they hadn't. They would have sounded so inadequate in light of what she was going through.
He watched her with a growing sadness as she kept moving the objets around. She was so close—just a few steps away. And yet, they might as well have been light-years apart.
If only she would understand . . .
'I need your help,' he said softly.
She stopped her aimless rearranging and stood stock-still.
'Please, I'm not going to hurt you.' He took a step toward her and then checked himself. If he got too close, he might frighten or anger her. There were too many barricades between them as it was; the last thing they needed was another. 'Please,' he said again in a low voice.
He could see her unfreeze and sigh, the striped cotton caftan moving slightly with each deep intake of breath.
'Daliah,' he began, 'if you ju—' Abruptly he clamped his mouth shut with an audible snap. He had never called her by her first name, and the fact that it had slipped out so unexpectedly and unconsciously startled him as much as it did her. He could see her jerk painfully at the sound of her name, and then her shoulders squared under the caftan. She whirled around so swiftly that a curtain of hair swung across her face. She raked it apart with slashes of her talons, and he took an involuntary step backward. She was the hellfire bitch again, and her rage was monstrous.
It was demonic, this rage, all the more so as it had come without warning. For a moment he had almost believed that she was human and rational, that he could reason with her. The next, the she-devil within her had taken control.
Her mouth curled down with loathing and her eyes blazed with white fire. 'Get out!' she shouted.
He drew back slightly. 'This will take but a minute,' he said quietly. He lifted the camera to his eye and peered through the viewfinder.
'Don't you understand?' she roared. 'I don't want to see you!'
He stepped closer to frame her in the picture, pressed the button, and waited for the built-in light meter to adjust to the room's dimness. Suddenly the flash exploded in blue and the mechanism whirred, feeding out the blank, milky picture.
'You bastard!' she flung herself at him, her fingernails slashing wildly. 'How dare you do that?' Her slaps rained against his left cheek, his right, his left again. 'Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone!'
'Daliah. . . '
'How dare you call me by my first name! Filth! Pig!' She smacked him again and again.
Najib did not move, he stood there frozen, stoically holding the camera in one hand, the undeveloped picture in the other, while his head swivelled from side to side with each stinging slap.
'Hurt, damn it!' she panted. 'Hurt! Why don't you cry or moan or at least try to defend yourself, you bastard!' Her mouth sprayed spittle, the tears streaked down her face, and her slaps grew even wilder.
'Stop it.'
The deceptively soft note in his voice held such an undercurrent of menace that her hand froze in midair, and the slap for which it was poised never came. She stared at him with a sudden stab of cold fear. His face, which had been a stiff, immovable mask, seemed to have changed expression and darkened, as though a powerful storm was flashing and rolling just beneath his skin.
The fight drained out of her as his charged sexual tension transferred itself to her. Her raised arm dropped weakly to her side.
Under the caftan, she felt her sticky wetness trickling down the inside of her thighs. Her brow furrowed in confusion. A moment before, all she had felt was anger, and now it was replaced by an overt sexuality of such force that she could barely control it.
Danger signals clanged in her head, and the air was hot and alive, crackling with peril, as though a thousand lethal rattlesnakes were coiled on the carpet all around her.
She felt her legs begin to tremble. What was wrong with her? She couldn't understand what was happening. Never before had such a torrent risen within her. It wasn't as if she consciously wanted him. Why, then, had her awareness of him as a man become so overwhelmingly heightened? She stared at him. He was tall and str
ong and stood proud, and she could sense the rippling of his muscles beneath his shirt and the swelling of his manhood within his trousers. The room seemed to tilt and recede. The strength and power of him was all that she noticed, and a hunger of wanting such as she had never before known surged up in her. The heat within her was almost unbearable. Her heart pounded like wildly hammering jungle drums. A building pressure clogged her ears, muffling all sounds except her own heartbeat. Without realizing it, she had held her breath. Although her lungs were ready to burst, she was almost afraid to breathe, as if that would somehow convey her needs.
Tears of self-loathing squeezed out the corners of her eyes and she shook her head violently. She couldn't want him!
She swallowed hard.
Anybody but him!
But she had sensed the male essence of him, and her body, heedless of all her mind's railings, was already preparing itself by lubricating her for him. She recalled, suddenly, how long it had been since she had last made love—in Cannes, with Jerome. But even then she had not felt such an overpowering need.
God help me!
She stood there for a moment, frozen and indecisive, all too aware of the muscular lines of his body and the heat emanating from him. Moistness. As though to infuriate her further, ever more sticky moistness trickled from within her, coating her thighs. The scratchiness of the nubby cotton seemed pronounced as her nipples thrust against the caftan.
No! No! No!
He locked eyes with her, communicating his intentions without words. From a primeval knowledge handed down through the millennia, she understood. She knew exactly how he would drain off his rage. She was to be the outlet for the strong pressures bursting within him.
She took a deep breath. He was undressing her with his eyes.
'No!' she gasped, shaking her head. Sensing the purpose within him, she took an involuntary step backward, then another, and yet another.
