Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (60 page)

Eight days later, Senda's renewed surge of hope was dashed
once and for all. The Danilovs' names were once again spla
shed across the headlines: both the Prince and Princess had
been murdered.

'An execution, the newspaper says it was,' Inge whispered
hoarsely as she read the article which Senda could not bring
herself to read.

'Executed!' Senda cried. 'You mean murdered in cold
blood, don't you?'

'I'm just telling you what it says here,' Inge said. 'And it
says that a gun was held against the tops of their spines. All it
took was a single shot each. Death was apparently instan
taneous.'

'Oh, God,' Senda said softly, shuddering as if something
cold and wet had rubbed against her.

A SINGLE SHOT EACH. THAT WAS ALL IT HAD
TAKEN...

'It's supposed to have been the way the Okhrana executed Bolsheviks during the reign of the Czar. But now . . .' Inge's
whisper dropped even lower as her eyes scanned ahead to the next paragraph. 'Now the Bolsheviks' Cheka is hunting down
White Russian emigres abroad, killing them in the same
fashion! Good Lord, it says it's happened in Berlin and Paris,
too!'

'And now here.' Another icy chill slithered through Senda.
She covered her face with her hands. No matter which way
she turned, it seemed defeat was always there to greet her.

Inge shook her head and pushed the newspaper aside.
'Ironic, isn't it?' she said softly. 'A crook like Kokovtsov is
safe and lives in jail while his intended victims are dead. Mur
dered by someone else.'

Senda felt suddenly too weak to move.

Death. Death and violence. For too long, they had been
part and parcel of her life. Was there no escape?

Senda's health took a sudden swing for the worse. She had
put so much stock in Vaslav's helping her secure a future for Tamara that the news of his murder was the final nail in her coffin. Her racking coughs increased. Her lungs burned with
an even fiercer, more unbearable fire than before. Each day
her handkerchiefs became soiled with larger amounts of
blood.

Inge cared for her as best she could, summoning expensive
doctors who could do little but prescribe cures at an expensive
spa. Senda refused to go. The money from the sale of the
brooch was all gone, and Inge had already had to sell the ring
as well.

She wasn't about to let any more of the precious, dwindling
money be spent on her deteriorating health.

Only one last dream kept Senda going. For too long, she,
Inge, and Tamara had been roaming without a country, citizens of nowhere. Even if she herself would not live long
enough to enjoy a secure future, Tamara could—with Inge's
help.

'We're leaving, Inge,' Senda said one evening. 'We're going
to Hamburg. With luck, there'll be just enough money to get
us to America.'

Inge stared at her, wondering if Senda was lucid. 'America!'
she exclaimed. 'This is out of the blue! You're not in any
condition to tra—'

'America.' Senda's voice, weak and wheezing though it was,
left no room for argument. Then she doubled over suddenly.
She wrapped her arms around her chest as she coughed. She spat bloody phlegm into her handkerchief and wadded it up.
'America,' she said again between rasping gasps.

Inge shook her head. 'We don't even know any English! We
might not even have enough money! How do we know things
in Russia won't improve? We might be able to return to St. Petersburg
.'

Senda said, 'We're leaving for Hamburg tomorrow. My
mind is made up. Once there, we'll see about steamship
tickets.'

Senda refused to listen to Inge's arguments to the contrary.
If it was the last thing she would live to do, she would see to
it that the three of them—and if that wasn't possible, then at
least Inge and Tamara—would sail to New York.

For wasn't it in America, she'd heard, that golden oppor
tunities awaited everyone?

Well, Tamara would have them.

Senda slept quietly throughout most of the exhausting train
journey from Geneva to Hamburg, and Inge let her. She knew
that Senda needed her rest. She didn't try to wake her until
they pulled into the railroad station at the end of the line.

'Senda, we're here,' Inge said softly, giving Senda a shake.
And then she froze.

Senda was dead. She had died en-route.

Fate had reserved its cruellest trick for last.

The liner
Lübeck
shuddered and creaked as it plunged through
the dark troughs of the North Atlantic. In the cramped con
fines of the windowless inside cabin, Tamara sat wordlessly on
the lower bunk, her lips tightly compressed. She looked down
at her hands, in which she clutched a picture of her mother. 'I
love Mama,' she whispered, the tears sliding down her cheeks.
'I still love her. I want her to be proud of me.'

'And she will be,' Inge assured her. 'So she will.'

'She loved acting.' Tamara licked the salt tears off her lips.
'She loved it so.' Tamara nodded emphatically. 'And so will
I.' She turned to Inge. 'I want to become an actress too.'

'We will see, dear.' Inge smiled gently. 'You've plenty of
time to make up your mind.'

'My mind
is
made up.' Tamara furrowed her brows and
studied the picture in her lap. 'I'm serious, Aunt Inge. I want to become the greatest actress in the world. And I
will!'
Her
little voice faltered, and she clenched her small hands and
shuddered. Then she raised her tear-streaked face to Inge's,
and at that moment the Boralevi strength shone in her eyes,
brilliant, faceted emeralds catching the light. 'I'll do it for
Mama,' Tamara said resolutely, her face hardening with an
adult determination. 'And myself.'

It was at that moment that Inge first became truly aware of
how much her mother's daughter Tamara truly was. She could
not stifle the uncanny sense of déjà vu coursing through her.
Tamara's force and determination reminded her so much of
Senda that a stab of pain sliced through her. Now that she thought about it, Tamara reminded her of Senda in many ways. She had the same translucent, pearly skin, identical luminous emerald eyes, and precisely the same thin-boned
elegance. Only her hair was different, not coppery, but a lus
trous, corn-silk gold.

'I will make her proud of me!' Tamara said forcefully. 'I
will.'
Then together she and Inge wept throughout the night.

_{Interlude: 1926}

The stage for modern Mideast crises was set long before
the British control of Palestine. To truly understand the
powderkeg that characterizes today's Arab-Israeli conflict, one must study the very first actors in this ongoing drama,
the Biblical Israelites of Moses. In the centuries since, the
play itself has remained much the same; only the actors
have changed.

—Contrucci and Sullins,
The Mideast Today:

Strategies to Cope with the Seeds of Yesteryear

Chapter 1

'Eieeee, but this is some climb,' Schmarya growled breathlessly to himself. Grunting as he summoned up a last great
effort of will, he pulled himself up the one remaining outcrop
of rock at the flat crest of the sun-scorched cliff. He cursed his useless wooden leg; as usual, the leg which was no longer part
of him ached and throbbed fiercely.

Digging his elbows into the sandy limestone, he crawled
forward for a few yards, thankful that he hadn't let his artificial
leg hamper his getting around. His body had in some ways
compensated for his deficiency, and for that he was extremely
grateful. His arms, upon which he had to rely to offset his one
useless leg, had become extremely powerful and packed with
hard muscle. And his good leg had become much stronger
than it had been initially.

Using his arms and his good leg, he stiffly scrabbled up into a semi-kneeling position, and then pushed himself up. Spread
out gloriously below him, as far as the eye could see, was the
magnificently arid Negev, its apocalyptical, naked brown hills
interspersed with haphazard jumbles of red and purple cleft
rock. Overhead, the cloudless sky was blue, the brightest,
most uniform shade of incandescent blue imaginable. Far up in that ultramarine a solitary bird circled slowly, a falcon or a
hawk cruising for prey. He could only shake his head at the
beauty of it all and wonder, not for the first time, if the desert's
spectacular ruggedness would ever become monotonous. He
didn't think it would. He considered it home.

To its few hardy, scattered inhabitants, the word 'Negev'
was synonymous with 'desert', and when Schmarya had first arrived, he'd been under the mistaken impression that the two
words were interchangeable. He soon discovered the Hebrew word meant 'south' and, as such, there was no real geographi
cal boundary to it.

Schmarya had become a 'southerner' by chance and by
choice, and in many ways he epitomized the hardy pioneering
spirit of those who had settled in this ancient, unforgiving
land. At thirty-one, he was no longer the handsome, dashing youth filled with vague dreams. Over the years his blue eyes
had taken on maturity, and the slight, parched creases in his
sun-darkened skin bespoke both purpose and determination,
of dreams becoming concrete reality. The fiery-eyed youth of the Ukraine who'd fought against oppression and left Russia
ten years ago had, if anything, become an even more deter
mined, though still fearless, man out to change the world. But
now he was armed with a mental blueprint of what he wanted
to achieve.