Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (152 page)

'No, no. So sorry, Excellency, so sorry.' A look of fear grew
in the woman's eyes, and she shook her head and made Daliah lie back down, tucking the scratchy blanket gently around her.
'So sorry,' she repeated sincerely. 'We will bring you more
water and lamb stew soon. So sorry . . .'

Then the woman scooped up the kerosene lamp, and the
three of them backed off as one and scurried to the tent flaps.
Lifting them, they slipped soundlessly out into the blackness
of the night.

Daliah shivered. She wished she hadn't caught sight of the
night. It was completely dark out, and the darkness was of an
intensity such as she had never before encountered.

Wearily she let her head drop back down to the goat-hair
floor covering. She closed her eyes.

She might as well try to go back to sleep.

Chapter 11

Eighteen hours had passed.

In the Hayarkon Street apartment, the festive decorations
were still up; no one had bothered to take them down, and
the drooping
welcome home daliah!
letters were mocking
reminders of her absence. They moved with each current of
stirred-up air as Dani paced restlessly beneath them.

Tamara, her face grey, sat in a wing chair, crumpled and
tearful. Sissi and Ari held hands, sitting white-faced side by side on the floral chintz couch, their faces strained and tor
tured. Schmarya, having worked himself up into a fury of Biblical proportions, stamped about, his artificial leg thump
ing heavily on the floor with each second step.

'It's our own damn fault, by God!' the old man was thunder
ing. He brought his fist crashing down on a sideboard, and
everyone jumped; their nerves, already worn thin, were so
frazzled by tension and lack of sleep that they were all at the
snapping point. 'We've become so complacent during the lulls
between wars that we're shocked when something like this happens! I tell you, we deserve every bomb and bullet and
kidnapping if we don't protect ourselves better! And yet, how
can we expect to do that,' he went on, now launching into
his favourite subject, 'when the Neturei Karta, damn their
Orthodox souls, do not even recognize the State of Israel? I ask you! They want to live here as Jews and have the best of
it, but will they live as Israelis? No! They won't even recognize
Israel as a sovereign state! How on earth can we expect to
survive our enemies' attacks from without if we tear ourselves
apart from within?' He shook his head and slammed his fist
again and again on the sideboard.

The three strangers in the room, two of them men from the
Shin Bet, the General Security Services, Israel's equivalent of
the FBI, and the third, a certain Mr. Khan, who, perhaps
because of his imperturbability and soft-spoken manner, Ari and Sissi suspected was Mossad, ignored the old man's tirade
and calmly continued hooking up the tape recorders to the
telephone lines, adding two extensions to listen in on.

Once started, Schmarya found it difficult to stop. 'How
many times have I tried to make those thick-headed fools
in the Knesset see that unless we constantly maintain a
united—'

'Oh, Father, do shut up!' Tamara cried wretchedly. Her
hands were in her lap and she was fidgeting constantly. 'We're
nervous enough as it is, without your going on and
on!
We
don't need any lectures now as to what we could and should
have done to avoid this! If you go on ranting and raving and
slamming your fists around, I'm going to start screaming in a
minute!' Suddenly her voice began to crack. 'I don't know why
anyone would want to do anything to dear, dear Daliah, and
all I know is that she's disappeared and I want her.' She repeated, 'I
want
her,' and bit down so hard on her lip that
she drew blood. Then she clapped her hands over her eyes
and began to sob violently. She dabbed at her eyes with a
handkerchief. 'It's just that . . . if only we'd heard something
already, some sort of ransom demand . . . something
...
if
only we'd heard
something'
That's what usually happens, isn't
it?' She turned her head sideways and directed this last ques
tion, instinctively and guilelessly, though she couldn't have
said why she had chosen him in particular, at Mr. Kahn.

Sensing that she was speaking to him, he raised his eyes
from the wires he was hooking up. 'In usual kidnapping cases, yes, that is what normally happens,' Mr. Khan said with a nod.

'Well, it's been over eighteen hours,' Tamara fretted. 'We
should have heard something by now, don't you think? I mean . . .
Oh, my God?
Suddenly her mouth dropped open
and she sat bolt upright, turning in the opposite direction. Her
hand shot out and caught Dani in mid-stride. She shook his
arm violently. 'Our telephone number's not listed! Perhaps that's it! Oh, good Lord, Dani! They might have tried to call
and—'

'Mrs. ben Yaacov.' It was Mr. Khan, still unperturbed and
unemotional. 'If your daughter has been kidnapped for ran
som, the kidnappers will surely find a way to make their
demands known to you. Perhaps they already have your num
ber. Or they can get it from your daughter. Or a message may
be delivered by mail.' He shrugged. 'There are countless ways
they might go about it. But in case they do not have the num
ber, and call information, this new telephone line has been
listed in your name.'

Instead of calming Tamara, his words had the exact opposite
effect. 'You keep referring to "usual cases" and say "if she's
been kidnapped for ransom"!' Tamara's voice became shrill
and piercingly raw. With every passing hour the dignity with
which she'd held herself for the first few hours had crumbled
away, bit by bit, until she'd become the mass of raw, naked
nerves she was now. The emotional toll was showing in her
face as well: for once she looked old and caved-in. 'Of course
it's a usual kidnapping,' she snapped. 'What else would it be?
Someone kidnapped Daliah and is holding her because he
wants something.'

'True,' Mr. Khan said. 'But I must caution you, it may not
be money.'

'Dani!' She twisted back around in her husband's direction.
'What does he mean by that? Of course it's money. Shouldn't
we already be trying to raise it?'

Dani looked at her with compassion. 'Mr. Khan may be
right, darling,' he said quietly. 'It's no use raising any money
until we know the specific demands.' His features tightened
into a hideous expression and he looked away. 'If there are
any demands.'

'Dani!' She paused. 'What are you trying to say?'

'This is Israel, darling. Kidnappings for money are
extremely rare. Almost unheard-of.'

'You mean,' she said shakily, her voice dropping, 'it might
be . . . political?'

'Look, darling, it's past midnight. Let's try to get some sleep. All incoming phone calls will be monitored. Someone
from the Shin Bet will be here at all times. If there's a call,
they'll wake us up.' He drew closer to her chair and placed his
hands on her shoulders. 'All we can do is wait.'

'Wait,' she repeated dully, and sighed. 'Oh, God.' She
reached up, seized his wrists, and tilted her head back so that
she could look up at him. 'I'm so frightened, Dani. They won't
hurt her, will they?' And when he didn't reply, she dug her
fingers deeper into his wrists.
'Will they?'

They were constantly on the move, it seemed, and now they
were moving on once again.

For breakfast, the women had fed her broken bits of dry, unleavened bread, two meagre strips of tough, dried lamb, three mouthfuls of tepid water, and a tiny cup of bitter hot strong black coffee. Then they had dressed her in bedouin
clothes, in a heavy black
abbeya,
and a veil with only a rec
tangular meshed eye opening through which she could see out
hazily, but no one could see her. She recognized it as the most extreme of the various Muslim women's veils, and any hopes she had entertained to be recognized and freed were dashed
the moment she saw the outfit. Even her parents, if they had
been standing right in front of her, could not have been faulted
for not recognizing her. She had been rendered utterly sexless
and shapeless, a walking bundle of faceless rags.

She shuddered to think of the ghostly figure she cut.

To avert suspicion, two of the other women wore the exact
same extreme outfits.

Daliah noticed that, herself included, there were sixteen
in the party. Twelve were bedouins; the other four included
herself and the three men who had captured her. They too
had changed from Western clothing into bedouin gear. She
would have been hard-pressed to recognize them, the change
was so drastic.

The one named Khalid was in charge. It was he who, from
his perch high atop one of the six camels, checked and
rechecked their course constantly on a small German com
pass, and it was he, too, who decided when and where they
would stop to rest or eat, and for how long. He paced them
so that they neither slowed nor rushed, but kept going at a
steady speed.

They had started while it was still cool and pitch dark out,
and the sky was blanketed with enormous stars. Khalid had
sat her atop one of the camels, her wrists still tied, and had
lashed her feet to the saddle. To avoid any danger of the camel
breaking away and running off into the night with her, one of his men rode alongside on another camel, holding her camel's
ropes.

She supposed she should have been grateful for not having to walk, but the saddle was uncomfortable, and the constant
sideways swaying motions made her feel seasick. Her arms,
from the shoulder sockets all the way down to her wrists,
ached and cramped without letting up, and her legs, tied
immovably to the saddle, soon grew numb and started going
to sleep. Before long, her entire body was tingling with numbness. She shut her eyes and let her mind drift, pretending that
the swaying motions of the camel were the rocking of a boat.
Anything was preferable to facing harsh reality.