Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (148 page)

Water.
She had always loved water. She had taken glassfuls
and tubfuls and poolfuls for granted, had soaked in it, luxuriated in it, and loved it so much she half-believed herself to be
a Pisces changeling. But now there suddenly was no water,
not a single drop, and the stratospheric temperature seemed to climb higher and higher. Water. Water. She was almost
delirious with her need for it.

In a sudden flash of enlightenment it hit her.

If there wasn't any real water, perhaps she could slake the
worst of her immediate thirst with
imaginary
water. After
all, wasn't she an accomplished actress? Couldn't she imagine
almost anything, and actually believe it for a while? If she could pretend a three-sided set was a real place, an actor a
real character, and a gun loaded with blanks capable of killing,
why couldn't she do that now with water? Why couldn't she
ease the worst of her thirst by acting as if it were there?

She shut her eyes, conjuring up a dripping tap, and then
lavishly sprinklered lawns, cool foggy morning mists, refresh
ing drizzles, and violent rainstorms. She imagined pools, lakes, oceans and oceans of glorious, cool, clear water.

And then, imagining her trussed arms were free, she raised them gracefully above her head and dived neatly as the danc
ing smoothie holding his umbrella aloft sang 'Singin' in the
Rain'.

Before she hit the water, she plunged into the safe, welcom
ing blankness that was sleep.

Chapter 9

At four thousand feet, the pilot rolled the 727-100 gently to
port and then banked the plane in a wide sweeping curve.
Najib was seated in the living-room section on a leather couch
specially fitted with seat belts. In anticipation for landing, he
had changed from his Western clothes into the traditional
Arab robes and headgear, and he was staring unseeingly out
the little square window at the tilting desert below.

It was the Rub' al-Khali, the 'Empty Quarter' in the Saudi
Arabian southeast, and its name fitted it perfectly. All there
was, as far as the eye could see, was desolate wilderness. Alter
nately golden sand and dung-coloured rocks, it was a place where nothing grew and where it never rained, where, aside
from a sprinkling of oil wells and refineries, there was nothing,
and the only signs of life were the aeroplanes flying high in the
sky and very rarely a tribe of bedouins crossing the desert on
their camels, heading to or from Mecca the same way their
forebears and their forebears' forebears had crossed it before
them. It was a cruel wilderness, harsh and unforgiving, and
was avoided by all but the most foolhardy and the bedouins
who knew how to survive it.

A stewardess in a red St. Laurent shift came soundlessly up
behind him. 'We're coming in for the final approach now, Mr.
al-Ameer,' she said in a breathy little voice.

He looked up at her and nodded. She was one of the two
handpicked stewardesses: Elke, the blonde Austrian Valkyrie
who, except for her too-large bosom, looked like she had just
stepped straight off the cover of
Vogue.

She leaned closer, enveloping him in a heady cloud of per
fume and musk. Her smooth, manicured fingers reached for
his seat belt and clicked it together around his waist, her clever
fingertips grazing his groin. Her pale grey eyes held his gaze.
'Will we be stopping over, or are you planning to send us back,
Mr. al-Ameer?' she asked huskily.

He looked surprised. 'Captain Childs has forgotten his
instructions?'

She shook her head, her eyes lowering obviously to his groin
and then back up again. 'I would like to know,' she said, her
voice heavy with promises.

He gave a rueful little smile. 'I'm afraid I will be staying on
alone. The plane is returning to Newark right away.'

'Oh. I see.' She tried to hide her disappointment and moved
away.

He turned back to the window and stared out. At first, all
he could see was desert, desert, and more desert. And then
suddenly, like a mirage, there was the palace, sliding into view
a few miles ahead. It was a huge sprawling modern building
built on a manmade hill, and looked like a cross between
a terminal at Kennedy Airport and a flying saucer. Massive
concrete buttresses crisscrossed in arcs above it, giving the
illusion that the palace was actually suspended from them. The entire perimeter of the eight-acre compound was sur
rounded by thick protective walls, inside of which were also
some scattered outbuildings with satellite dishes and revolving
radar antennae on their rooftops, lush emerald-green lawns,
clay tennis courts, a sparkling turquoise swimming pool, and
two tall water towers disguised as postmodern minarets.

He looked straight down as they flew over it. He could see
armed guards patrolling the grounds, the rooftops, and the walks atop the walls. At the moment, their attention was on the plane; they all had their faces upturned. He smiled twistedly to himself. He could tell from their paramilitary green
field uniforms and white Arab headcloths that they were
Abdullah's men. Then his eye caught the distant flash of silver.
Twin gleaming lifelines, one a pipeline for fuel, the other for
water, stretched from the house for one hundred and eighty miles to the desalinization plant on the coast. And beyond the
far side of the compound, the private airstrip was a shimmer
ing water mirage, a ribbon of concrete writhing amid the
sands. A small Cessna and a twin-engine Beechcraft were parked at the far end. A windsock hung limply.

It certainly looked as though the Almoayyed brothers had
built themselves the ultimate hideaway, even if every pound
of soil had had to be flown in and every fluid ounce of water
pumped across the desert. Abdullah, requiring all the secrecy and privacy he could get his hands on, had been wise in borrowing it from them. With its sophisticated communications
systems, state-of-the-art electronics, and the remotest of
remote locations, its nearest neighbour eighty miles away, the Almoayyed palace was a formidable fortress, and virtually
impregnable. One could come and go and do whatever one wished without anyone knowing about it. But he wondered
idly, as he often did when it came to the palatial homes of
Arab millionaires, sheiks, and oil ministers, why, when money
was no object, they insisted upon buildings which looked and
felt, inside and out, like expensive modern public terminals or
high-rise hotel lobbies.

That thought slid out of his mind as the palace slid out of
view. The fuselage shuddered as the landing gear lowered and
locked into place. The desert seemed to rise to meet the plane. Then the golden sands rushed past in a blur and the plane
touched down smoothly, the engines whined in reverse, and the instant the captain applied the brakes, Najib felt himself thrust backward in the couch. Even before the plane taxied
completely to a halt, he could already see the boarding ramp
being towed forward by a tractor, and an elongated shocking-
pink Daimler limousine with black-tinted windows coming
behind it.

He unhooked the seat belt, got up, and walked forward.
Elke was already pushing the door open to oppressive heat.

The pilot ducked his head out from the cockpit. 'You still
want us to take off and leave you here, Mr. al-Ameer?'

Najib nodded. 'I do, Captain Childs. Take the plane back
to Newark and wait there for further instructions. I'll let you
know when to pick me up. You can refuel in Riyadh.'

'Will do, Mr. al-Ameer.' The pilot gave a casual half-salute.
'Hope you enjoyed your flight.'

'It was smooth and right on time, thank you,' Najib said,
already on his way down the ramp, Elke and the other stew
ardess following with the two briefcases and a suitcase.

The Daimler had just pulled up and the driver got out to hold the rear door open. Najib nodded to him in greeting, recognizing him as Hamid, a Lebanese Shiite and one of
Abdullah's most trusted lieutenants. He ducked quickly into
the back of the car, and Hamid slammed the door from the
outside and put the luggage in the boot.

The air conditioning was like ice, and so was the woman on
the back seat.

Najib hadn't expected company, and he eyed her with a
mixture of surprise and curiosity. She would have been quite attractive under normal circumstances, he thought, but her
blonde hair had been shorn to little more than a crew cut, and
she was dressed in unflattering baggy men's battle fatigues: tunic, bloused trousers, jump boots, and webbed belt. It was
obvious that she had done everything in her power to defemin
ize herself, right down to the bitter, down-turned corners of
her mouth and the hard, unrelenting set of her jaw. From the
slightly mad feverishness in her Aryan-blue eyes, he took her
to be a fanatic, probably a European terrorist in training.
On her lap lay an American-made M16 A-l, pointed in his
direction.

He reached over and moved the barrel carefully aside. 'I
get slightly nervous when those things are pointed straight at
me,' he said in English. He gestured at the ammunition clip.
'Especially when they are loaded.'

She gave him a look of pure steel. 'I know who you are,'
she accused harshly with a heavy German accent. 'I recognize you from the pictures in the newspapers and magazines.' Her
jaw tightened perceptibly. 'Someday, all capitalist pigs will have guns trained on them, and the world will belong to the
people.'

He raised his eyebrows. 'Is that so?' Despite himself, he
couldn't help but smile. She was so serious, he thought. So
humourless and repressed. 'I am not your enemy, young lady,'
he said in a stern voice. 'It would serve you well to remember
that.'

Her eyes flashed with rabid passion. 'All capitalists are our
enemies,' she said, 'especially those who are bedfellows of the
American pigs and pretend to be our friends!'