Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (104 page)

The minutes ticked by and once again they joined the world
of the living. At last he moved, and she stifled a cry as he slid
limply out of her.

It was over.

O.T. leaned up on one elbow and smoothed the damp hair
out of her eyes. 'Are you okay?'

She sniffled and nodded. 'For a moment, I could have sworn
Louie was here,' she said shakily. 'And then he was gone.'
She stared at him. 'Just like that.'

'He'll be gone for good now,' he replied. 'You're free of
him now. His memory can no longer hold you back.'

She nodded.

'Strange, isn't it? I've wanted you for years, and it turns out
we made love only to chase away the past.'

'Was it . . . what you expected?'

'It was good. Hell, it was very good. But no, it wasn't what
I expected. I thought you'd be forever elusive. And you know
what?'

Tamara shook her head.

'You still are—I know this won't happen again. But . . . I'm
glad we did it.'

She gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek. 'So am I. I thought
I was finished as far as making love was concerned.'

'I'd say you've barely begun. You've got a whole lifetime of
loving ahead of you.'

She took his hand and pressed it warmly. 'Thanks, O.T.—
for giving me back my womanhood.'

'I don't think you ever lost it. Maybe it just . . . went into
hiding.'

'Maybe. '

He sat up slowly and stretched, then heaved a sigh and looked around for his clothes. 'Well, I'd better be going, or
you'll never finish packing.' He swung his legs over the edge
of the bed, stood up, and started to dress.

She nodded and started dressing also. 'And I'd better finish soon or I won't get a wink of sleep tonight. We're leaving first
thing in the morning. Right now, Inge's out arranging for a
sleeper on the train to New York.'

He looked surprised. 'Why don't you fly? It's a lot less tiring
and a helluva lot quicker.'

'It's a lot more expensive too. Besides, I'm in no rush.' She smiled. 'I've got all the time in the world now, and the train
only takes five days.'

'And once you reach New York?'

'We'll stay a week or so and then book a cabin on the next
steamship for Europe. Then we'll probably have to change
ships two more times. Palestine's not exactly on a direct trade
route, you know.'

'No, I don't suppose it is.' He made a moue. 'I tell you what.
As a going-away present, I'll pay your fare—'

'O.T.—'

He raised a hand to ward off her protestations. 'No, I want
to do it. I can't bear the thought of you travelling steerage.'

She laughed. 'We're not exactly planning to go steerage.
And besides, there are two of us. Inge and I are going to be
travelling together. I can't afford to upgrade her fare, or
expect you to pay it as well.'

'Of course I will. It's my money, and I can do with it as I please. That's one of the nice things about being wealthy. No
one can tell you how not to spend your money. You don't
think I can sit back and let my biggest star travel anything but
first class, do you?'

She sighed good-naturedly. 'All right, you win. You always
do come up with a good argument, I'll give you that.'

'Good. I'll see to it that the tickets are delivered to you
tomorrow morning. And you'll use them—that's final.' He paused. 'Don't get angry with me, but they'll be round-trip.
The return dates will be left open.'

She started to protest, but he silenced her. 'If you don't
come back, you can always cash them in after a year, no strings
attached. Deal?' He held out his hand.

She smiled. He just wouldn't give up. 'Deal,' she said, shak
ing on it.

'If you ever get stuck in Timbuktu or need anything, call
me. Okay?'

'Okay. First thing.' She escorted him to the door.

'Good luck,' he said. 'I just hope you'll be happy.'

Oscar Skolnik didn't try to sleep. Going to bed would have
been useless. He never could sleep right after he'd made a
major new acquisition. Something about the thrill of owner
ship kept his adrenaline pumping.

He sat in the darkened study of his mansion, his eyes never
leaving the luminous colours of the paintings that had once
hung on the living-room walls at Tamahawk. They were
flooded with light in the shadowy room. All five of them
seemed to glow with an unearthly life of their own.

He puffed contentedly on his pipe. He'd always wanted
those paintings, and now they were his. Even after Bernard Katzenbach's ten-percent commission, he'd only paid a little over a third of their current market value, so they were also
his single biggest art bargain to date. It only irked him that the
Matisse had escaped his walls.

He heard a movement behind him and turned around as a
beautiful face peered in at him around the door. 'Aren't you
coming to bed, O.T.?' the girl complained sleepily.

'Later,' he said in a bored voice. 'Go back to bed, Marissa.
I want to be alone.'

She pouted but withdrew obediently. When he heard the
door close, he sighed to himself. She was just another of the
thousands of hopefuls that comprised the vast pool of girls he
could choose from. So many of them thought that sleeping
with him would earn them a magic ticket to stardom, the little
fools, when in reality all they got was a bit part, a part that
invariably was the high point of their short, miserable careers.
Meanwhile, they were his until he grew tired of them. Not one
of them had what it took. None of them was like Tamara.

He turned his attention back to the paintings and stared at
them until dawn lightened the east windows. Only then did
the realization hit home that Tamara would never return. She would never have sold these master works of genius on a mere
whim.

He could only continue to stare at them bleakly and console
himself with the fact that he had profited immensely from her,
right up until the very end.

Chapter 22

'Ahead of us is the bay, which sweeps all the way from Haifa around to Akko, in a sort of wide, teacup kinda curve,' Cap
tain Dusty Goodhew told Tamara and Inge.

The three of them stood on the wraparound bridge in front
of the wheelhouse of the ten-thousand-ton steamship
Lerwick,
and although the steady rumble from the ship's engine room
could not be heard up here, it could be felt: the decks vibrated
pleasantly beneath their feet.

The captain continued, 'It's a deep, natural bay, among the
finest in the entire Middle East. It's been dredged at Haifa
by Her Majesty's government to accommodate deep-water
vessels such as this one.'

They were heading straight into the sunrise, and Tamara had to squint against the dazzling glare. At first, it seemed to
her that the sun was rising directly from the sea, but then as it
rose swiftly higher, sending out celestial beams to engulf them,
she could make out the dark, narrow band of distant land
silhouetted below the brightness like a long thin, black-purple
ribbon.

There it was at long, long last. Tamara's first glimpse of
the strange, faraway land which until now had only evoked
dreamy Utopian visions. There it was, a very real band of terra
firma at the easternmost shore of the Mediterranean. For this
she had given six weeks and travelled some ten thousand miles
by air and sea. And she hadn't reached it quite yet. It was just
near enough to tantalize, yet too far to see distinctly. Miles of
open Mediterranean with choppy, blue three-foot-high waves
stretched between it and the ship.

Captain Goodhew handed her his binoculars. 'If you focus
and look to yer right, mum, you ought to be able to catch yer
first glimpse of Haifa harbour and the city risin' up the side o'
the hill.' He pointed with a stubby, calloused forefinger.

She broke her reverie. 'Thank you, captain.' She looped the
thin leather straps around her neck and, holding the binoculars
to her eyes, followed the direction of his finger. At first, every
thing seemed to swim in a hazy blur, but as she focused the
little dial between the two lens tubes, the blur suddenly
jumped into sharp focus.

She caught her breath. The hillside looked incredibly steep
and green and was dotted with houses.

Captain Goodhew was saying, 'If you look closely, you'll
see that Haifa is actually three parts. The port and the main
town are below. In the middle is the section called Hadar-ha-
Carmel. And the top is ha-Carmel. Yer see it?'

She nodded. Sweeping the binoculars downward, she
caught the panorama of the busy harbour with its clusters of
ships. She felt vaguely disappointed. It resembled any other
of the many Mediterranean harbours at which the ship had
docked over the past weeks. They were all interchangeable, right down to the army of antlike dockworkers swarming
about while cargo booms swung from ship to dock and back to
ship again in the never-ceasing ritual of loading and unloading.
Between the tramp steamers and two small passenger ships,
she could make out the distinctive gunmetal grey of Her
Majesty's naval cruisers flying the Union Jack. Multitudes of
gulls, attracted by a fleet of incoming fishing vessels, hovered
overhead.

Beside Tamara, Inge was making impatient little noises,
and Tamara reluctantly unlooped the binoculars from her
neck and handed them to her. Then, clasping her hands, she
leaned her forearms over the polished railing of the bridge,
raised her head, and shut her eyes. She inhaled deeply.