Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (149 page)

Hamid's eyes flickered back at them through the rearview
mirror. 'I would not pay her too much attention,' he said
easily. 'Monika's heart lusts for blood, but her head is warped by the Marxist propaganda. She is with the Baader-Meinhof
gang and came to learn how to set off bombs correctly.' He
chuckled. 'I hear she needs the training. She almost blew three
of her friends to Paradise when she set off a bomb at a US
Army base in Kaiserslauten.'

Najib glanced at her. She sat there tight-lipped and seeth
ing, so angry that he wouldn't have been at all surprised if she
had emptied her cartridge clip into Hamid's back right then
and there.

Hamid chuckled again and shook his head as he put the big
car into gear. 'You should see her in action. She can outshoot,
outfight, and outcurse any of our men. The only thing she will
never learn is making bombs and throwing grenades. Those
things are still best left to men.'

Monika swore. 'You sexist pig! You men think you know it
all.' She tossed her head. 'One of these days you'll awaken to
the fact that we women are equal to any of you. You won't be
able to keep your women subdued forever you know!' Her
voice had risen with such feverish triumph that Najib realized
she was probably mentally disturbed. He didn't like the idea
of her walking around armed.

'Her trouble,' Hamid said, lighting a cigarette and grinning
over his shoulder, '
is
that she is so butch no man wants to even
try to fuck her. It is said she keeps razors in her garden of
earthly delights. Her anger, Allah help her, comes from being
sexually repressed.'

'Sex!' Monika scoffed contemptuously. 'That is all you can
ever think about!' She turned to Najib. 'I suppose you are just
like him.'

Najib thought it wise to ignore her. 'Has Abdullah arrived yet?' he asked Hamid. He had to talk very loud to make him
self heard above the screams of the jets as his plane hurtled
down the runway and swooped up into the air directly above
them.

Hamid nodded. 'He is here, but he has to go to Tripoli
tomorrow night.' He glanced back intermittently, cigarette
dangling from his lips. 'He is looking forward to seeing you.'

'And the woman?'

'The actress, you mean?'

'Yes.' Najib nodded. 'Her.'

'Khalid, Mustafa, and Muharrem are with her. They have
already smuggled her into Jordan. Tomorrow they will cross
the Saudi border near Dh
ā
t al Hajj with a group of bedouins
headed for Mecca.'

Najib tightened his lips. 'That means they still have a thou
sand miles to go. I should have waited some more days before
coming.'

'Once they have crossed the border they will be here in a
matter of hours,' Hamid assured him. 'Abdullah has arranged
for air transit for them.'

Najib nodded and kept his face bland. They were approach
ing the palace compound, and to his astonishment he saw
that the walls were not only concrete but also sloped up in
a cresting, overhanging curve to make scaling them nearly
impossible. They were fifteen feet high, and the top edges
were embedded with lethal broken-glass shards. And if that
were not enough to discourage intruders, five feet of high-
voltage fencing rose even higher. Twenty feet, with walkways along the parapets. It was overkill, he thought to himself, and
wondered what it was the Almoayyed brothers feared so much
to have built such a prison for themselves.

The car had reached the main gates of the palace compound
and crept to a halt. It took a full minute for the gates to slide
open. They were electronically controlled from inside and
weighed tons. 'Two-foot-thick steel!' Monika boasted.
'Abdullah told me they were made by a bank-vault company,
and it would take a tank to blast through them!'

They drove on, past the green lawn and perfumed gardens.
All around, water sprinklers twirled lavishly, throwing out
scintillating rainbow sprays and keeping everything lush and
moist. Water fountains crashed and leapt.

Najib glanced around, noting electric eyes attached to statu
ary, walls, and posts. He guessed that there was probably a
network of laser-activated alarms as well.

It was a luxurious prison, one which was infinitely peaceful,
but formidable. One from which there would be no escape.

One by one the Boralevis were going to be snatched up,
brought here, and made to suffer until they slowly died.

Hamid swung the big car up the gently sloping drive to
the main entrance of the palace and parked it in front of the
sweeping marble steps. Getting out, Najib felt dwarfed. It was
a huge edifice, much bigger than it had looked from the air,
and it was all polished beige-mottled marble and sheets of
green mirrored glass. Close up, he could see that it had been
exquisitely finished, the telling details hinting at highly skilled
craftsmen. Looking around, it was difficult to believe that beyond the encircling walls lay a desert wasteland. Water
seemed to gurgle extravagantly from all sides; fountain jets
leapt into the air and came crashing back down, only to leap
again moments later.

Monika waited in the car while he and Hamid went up the
marble steps. To either side of the front doors stood two
guards, automatic rifles at the ready, black wraparound sunglasses rendering their expressions featureless. A third guard,
armed to the teeth and grenades hanging from his web belt, opened the heroically scaled hammered-bronze doors from
inside.

The palace air conditioning was working overtime; it was as
cold as the interior of the Daimler had been. Najib looked
around, surveying the octagonal foyer. It would have done a
Miami high-rise proud, and was done up in that peculiar fusion
of futuristic Italian modern and traditional Arab design which
the nouveau riche of the Persian Gulf all seemed to go in for.
Las Vegas Araby, he thought uncharitably. Anywhere else in the world it would have been considered tasteless and brazen
and gauche, but as with the pink Daimler, it seemed somehow
to fit in this hot, rainless climate with its stark, blinding light.
There was a sunken octagonal fountain in the exact centre
of the floor, where four entwining plumes of spume danced
gracefully up into the air and fell crashing back into the octag
onal basin in silvery sheets of crystal water. Chandeliers of thin
vertical crystal rods covered the entire ceiling. Two sweeping
white marble staircases with glass railings and brass banisters
curved up to a second-floor gallery. The seating banquettes
were long and low and futuristic, and the predominant colours
were white, silver, and turquoise.

'Everything has been prepared for your visit,' Hamid said.
'I think you will find things to your satisfaction. I will have
your briefcases and suitcase brought upstairs. You are to stay
in one of the brothers' suites.'

Najib nodded. 'And the Almoayyeds' servants?'

'For the time being, they have all been dispatched to the
brothers' main palace in Abu Dhabi. Abdullah saw to it that
we will have absolute privacy.'

Najib nodded. 'I would like to speak to him immediately if
that is possible.'

'He has asked me to bring you to him the moment you
arrive.' Hamid gestured. 'He is in the
majlis.
Come with me.'

Najib followed him up one of the staircases, along the
mezzanine gallery, which completely encircled the foyer, and
past a three-storey waterfall which began near the ceiling and
rippled down an angular wall of smoothly polished purple-
striated white
pavonazzetto
marble, to disappear into the
recessed, coved edges of the white floor below.

They came to an intersection of four identical corridors.
Hamid unerringly chose the correct turnoff and led Najib
down the wide expanse of cool marble to the
majlis.
Now
priceless Oriental rugs softened the marble floors underfoot,
and modern sculptures stood in careful placement under speci
ally designed skylights which bathed them in floods of natural
light.

Eventually Hamid knocked on a set of imposing sculptured
bronze doors which looked as if they had been designed by
Louise Nevelson. Without waiting for a reply, he pulled them
open.

The
majlis,
or reception room, seemed to stretch from the
doors to infinity. Najib guessed it to comprise a generous quar
ter of an acre, and its domed ceiling rose to a height of three
storeys. Through its stained-glass panels, colourful dappled
light streamed down and glowed a radiant circle on the floor.
Abdullah was standing by the curving wall of tinted windows,
looking down upon the velvet lawns, his paramilitary green-
and-black-banded, checkered headgear thoroughly out of
place amid all that stunning luxury. His hands clasped behind
his back, he turned around as Najib approached, and raised
his chin. As usual, he held out his hand imperiously, waiting
for Najib to take it and press it to his lips. 'So,' Abdullah
said, 'the time has finally come.' He watched Najib's reaction closely through his hooded, cunning eyes. 'You did not sound
pleased over the telephone.'

'
The news was unexpected.' Najib kept his voice purposely
bland. 'After so many years, it seemed quite anticlimactic. Almost as though it was not worth the bother.'

'Ah, but she is most definitely worth the bother. Do sit while
I explain why she is more than worth her weight in gold.' They
took a seat on facing turquoise-upholstered, white-framed
bergères. Abdullah gestured to an antique silver coffee service
on a silver tray mounted on cabriole legs. 'Would you like
some refreshment?'