Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (168 page)

'I said—
look!'
Abdullah hissed so fiercely that Najib could
feel the sour spray of spittle on his face.

He forced himself to turn around and stare at that impaled
hand with its wriggling fingers. His eyes kept trying to slide
away, but somehow he held his gaze on that hand.

'Shukkram,
Ghazi,' Abdullah said. 'That is enough.'

Najib watched in morbid fascination as Ghazi grasped the
handle of the pick and, in one swift movement, and once again
completely devoid of any emotion, pulled the pick free. A
thin spray of blood squirted up and fell back like a silent red
fountain. Then the spray stopped and the blood leaked out
thickly, as if from a stigmata.

The cutting board was a shiny pool of gleaming blood.

Abdullah handed Ghazi a damask napkin, and the big
Libyan wrapped it around his hand and stepped back.

'Surour,' Abdullah said. 'You are next.'

Najib turned away. He could not bear witness to this self-
mutilation any longer. It was sick. No, it was worse than that.
It was insane.

'Half-uncle, please,' Najib said weakly. 'Enough is enough.
We get your point.'

Abdullah ignored him. 'Surour!' he commanded. 'Impale
your hand.'

Surour's pick flashed, but without the sickening crunch of
bone.

Then it was Khalid's turn.

Shaking and white-faced, Khalid poised the pick above his
palm. Then, before he could bring it down, he swayed on his
feet, his eyes rolled inside their sockets, his eyelids fluttered like butterflies, and he dropped the pick as he fainted dead
away.

Abdullah turned to Najib triumphantly. 'Now perhaps you
can see why I need my personal guards. Obviously, the men
about me cannot be relied upon.' With his boot he rolled
Khalid over in disgust. 'He has the heart of a chicken and the
courage of a woman!' he spat contemptuously. 'How can I count on him to protect me in times of danger?'

Najib's head was spinning out of control and he was weak-
kneed from horror. He felt he should point out to Abdullah
how devoted Khalid had always been, and how often he had
put his life on the line, but his mouth was dry and bilious. It
was all he could do to nod dumbly.

'And now,' Abdullah said with a little taunting smile, 'it is
your turn, Najib.'

Najib went stone cold and time seemed to screech to a stop.
He stared at Abdullah and then at the butcher block. Ghazi
and Surour's blood was already coagulating, becoming a pool
of thick red gelatin.

'Najib?' Abdullah's voice was deceptively mild.

Najib stared at him, then down at his palm. Slowly he raised
his hand to his eyes. He stared at his palm. The X was smearing
from the sudden sweat he had broken out in, and what was
left of the mark seemed to pulsate and throb, becoming bigger
and smaller, bigger and smaller, as though coming closer and
receding again. As though it were a beating heart.

Sweat was beginning to drip down his forehead too, and
his lips were twisted into a moist grimace. He stared at that pulsating X with such concentration that the tears stood out
in his eyes and a silver thread of saliva drooled out of the
corner of his lips.

'Well?' Abdullah said softly. He placed a hand on Najib's
forearm and forced his hand down on the bloodied board. He
looked into Najib's eyes.

Najib took a deep breath and held it. He poised the point
of the pick an inch above the centre of the X. He was shaking
so hard that the point kept wavering back and forth.

He couldn't.
He just couldn't!

But he knew he had to. If he didn't, Allah alone knew what
Abdullah might do to him. Have him assassinated? And then
what would happen to Daliah?

She would be at the mercy of that merciless madman, with no one in the world to turn to for help. If he refused to impale
his hand, he might very well be signing her death warrant.

'Must I doubt your allegiance?' Abdullah's voice turned
hard.

The sweat was pouring off Najib in a sheet now, dripping
down on the butcher block, glistening on the blood. Gritting
his teeth, he clutched the ice pick with all his might and let out a grunt. In a single surge of blinding strength, and imagining
her face, her
eyes
—those hypnotic green striated jewels—he let out a scream that came out 'Aaah!' and with all his might
slammed the pick down through the air, through his hand, and
into the thick block of wood underneath it.

The pain was like a burst of lightning as the ice pick's silvery
steel shaft punched through his flesh. Abruptly he let go and stared at his impaled hand in horror. The handle quivered
back and forth and . . . and he could even move his
fingers.
He wiggled them, then clenched them halfway. A sense of
ridiculous triumph filled him to bursting. He had managed to
do it. Because of Daliah, he had been able to, and he felt a
savage joy. Surprisingly, there was very little blood.

'Very good.' Abdullah nodded, his eyes gleaming. 'That is
enough,' he said gently. 'Pull it back out.'

For some reason, it seemed to take more effort to pull the pick out than it had taken to plunge it in. Grabbing hold of
the shaft, Najib squeezed his eyes shut and in a massive single
pull yanked it out of his hand.

The blood spurted now, raining all around in thick droplets.

Abdullah handed him another heavy damask napkin. With
his left hand, Najib gave it a shake to unfold it, and wrapped
it tenderly around his injured hand.

Abdullah smiled suddenly. 'Now that that is done,' he said
with all the politeness of a Beverly Hills hostess, 'let us transfer
to the dining room. The food should have been prepared by
now.'

As though, Najib thought weakly, his stomach churning,
any of us has an appetite left after this.

He held up his injured hand. 'I will be back momentarily to
join you in the dining room. First, I want to wash this.'

He hurried up to his suite, found a bottle of alcohol in the
bathroom, and poured half of it over his hand. He had to bite down on a towel to keep from screaming. The alcohol burned
like liquid fire, and both his palm and the back of the hand were swelling so tenderly that when he wrapped a bandage gingerly around the wound, he screamed momentarily.

Just to make it through dinner, he swigged a half-pint of
bourbon straight out of the bottle.

Abdullah presided over the dinner as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. The food was tasteless, greasy and
grey and rubbery, and had been prepared by one of Abdullah's
men.

Like footmen, the Libyan zombies were stationed just steps
behind Abdullah's chair.

Najib pushed the fatty lamb around on his plate with dis
taste. With all the refrigerated and frozen gourmet delights in the kitchen, he found it difficult to believe that such slop could
be served. Not that it mattered, really. It could have been
oysters and caviar, and he still wouldn't have had any appetite. The bandage he'd wrapped around his right hand was stiff and
dark brown with blood, and he could barely hold his fork for
the bolts of pain which shot through his hand and sliced all the
way up to his elbow.

Like some mad medieval monarch, Abdullah waited a full
twenty minutes before he would touch his food. The zombies
had to taste it first. The week his half-uncle had spent in Libya,
Najib noticed, had unleashed his paranoia to new, previously
unparalleled heights.

'Mecca, the Wailing Wall, and St. Peter's Square in Rome,'
Abdullah was saying conversationally as he chewed a piece
of long-cold lamb. 'A three-pronged attack occurring over a
period of three days. It will be a multiple explosion heard
round the world.' He smacked his lips and took a long sip of
water.

Khalid dropped his fork with a clatter and Najib stared at
his half-uncle in stunned shock.

'Mecca!' Khalid was the first to find his voice. 'Why . . .
Mecca is the most holy shrine in all Islam! In all the world!
It... it would be desecration!'

Abdullah stared at him sternly. 'Sometimes,' he said darkly,
gesturing with his fork, 'it is necessary to tear down the old
before rebuilding it for the better.'

'It's folly!' Khalid whispered. He pushed his plate aside.
'The Wailing Wall and St. Peter's
...
I don't like those targets
either, but they, at least, are infidel shrines. But Mecca—'

'It must be done!' Abdullah said sharply. He, too, pushed his plate away. 'The holy war must be started at once. The
sooner it begins, the sooner it will be over, and then the entire
world shall be Islamic. Consider for a moment.' He drummed
his fingernails on the marble. 'First, Mecca will be destroyed.
Bombs placed strategically will bring the walls tumbling down.
Muslims the world over—Muslims in India and the Far East,
Muslims in the four corners of the world—will be outraged
and rise up as one! A day after that explosion, the infidels'
Wailing Wall will be but a pile of Jerusalem rubble, and the third day . . . ah! On the third day, St. Peter's will come tum
bling down. But Mecca must be the first! The outrage of that act will, of course, be blamed on the infidels. It is very simple,
you see.' From the rising excitement in his voice it was clear
that he was warming to the theme. 'The Christians and Jews
will be blamed for the destruction of Mecca, and in turn, the
destruction of their infidel shrines will be blamed on us
Muslims. It will spark a holy war of such magnitude that the
Crusades will pale in comparison! We will rewrite the world's
history, my brothers, and in the centuries to come we will be
almost as revered as the Prophet. All three of the world's
major religions—and thus their armed forces—are going to
battle to the death! And Islam will win!'