Touch of Magic

by M. Ruth Myers

  "No one's supposed to know why I'm here, except you and Oliver." She kept her voice just above a whisper, the shaken feeling giving way to rage at last. All she'd felt, all her suspicions of these last few minutes, began to spew free. "That man was innocent -- he died in something set up for me. And don't tell me you believe what happened was an accident! I never touched that ice bucket -- never put anything in it to spill. For another thing, Ballieu'salready here. I've seen him. How else can you explain what happened?"

  Something crossed the surface of Bill Ellery's eyes. His tight lips parted as though to challenge her. Instead he shoved her, no more gently, through another door.

  They were in one of Palacio Sol's many lounges, this one vest-pocket-sized and nearly deserted. Bill Ellery stopped at the bar and spoke to the bartender.

  "Two double ryes."

  Channing saw he meant well, but his blunt assumption that she'd drink whatever was offered annoyed her.

  "Make one of those dry sherry," she said.

  She heard his breath fume out as he let go of her elbow. His eyes swept down her once, as though he'd like to make her vanish.

  Abruptly he turned aside as the bartender brought their drinks and moved on toward the opposite end of the bar to polish glasses. She could almost see the man next to her reining his temper.

  "Okay," he said, his voice as low as hers had been and with an edge of hardness she hadn't heard before. "It probably wasn't an accident. Want out?"

  His directness caught her off-guard. The admission crimped her nerves into tight, chilly bundles. Confronted with the chance to turn her back, to retreat into safety, she let her breath out slowly.

  "No. I don't."

  He paused with his glass to his lips, surveying her above the rim.

  "Because of the doc who got blown up in Beirut?"

  Channing's fingers contracted around the stem of her sherry glass. Indignant surprise made her suddenly hate the people who'd recruited her. That was her life, her private pain.

  "How much do you know about me?"

  He drank gingerly, eyes lowering now.

  "Same thing I'd want to know about anyone I had an assignment with. Everything possible."

  Deliberately, without answering, Channing downed her sherry. She held its bitter richness on her tongue, along with words she'd like to utter. Maybe she'd relinquished her right to privacy, her right to be a private citizen, when she'd taken this job.

  "Look, your personal life's none of my business," said Ellery tersely. "I shouldn't have brought it up."

  She shrugged. He was the one with experience. She had to trust that and swallow feelings if they were going to work together. Her life could depend on it. She'd had a moment of doubt when she'd seen him back on the path, unexpected and conveniently near the electrocution. Now his very hardness was making her trust him. Something had already gone wrong in this setup, but she didn't think he knew why, any more than she did.

  He was studying her, but before he could speak, a young female employee with a china doll's face bustled in.

  "There you are, Ms. Stuart! Mr. Jurgens said to tell you we're going to take extra special care of you for the rest of your stay. We've moved you to one of our best suites. The front desk has the key. Oh -- and your bar tab's going to be on us."

  She smiled brightly.

  The business-as-usual attitude disgusted Channing.

  "Jesus! Afraid of a lawsuit," muttered Ellery.

  The similarity of his reaction made Channing draw herself in tightly, wary of having too much in common with him.

  Serafin, she remembered suddenly. She'd told him to wait in the arcade, and that had been much too long ago. Now, as if summoned by her thought waves, his dark head appeared in the door.

  Channing set her glass down, making visual contact with the boy over Ellery's shoulder.

  "Wait a minute," said Ellery as he realized she was about to depart. "We've got things to discuss. What happened out there means something's wrong -- you're at more risk than we'd counted on--"

  He turned just as Serafin ducked out of sight.

  Channing shook her head, unable to believe Ellery would pursue this tonight. Or that it hadn't occurred to him she might already have reached the same conclusions.

  "I've had it for one day, Ellery," she said wearily. "If you want to talk, see me at breakfast!"

  * * *

  In the lodge's main lounge Henri Ballieu leaned easily against a crowded circular bar, awaiting confirmation that the woman working with him had been successful. At its far end the room where he waited had scores of tables and a fair-sized stage on which the second show of the evening was now under way. The glass in Ballieu's hand held the establishment's most expensive brand of Scotch, and from his vantage point he could see through an archway to a hall that led to hotel offices. He recognized the burst of activity when it came. Hotel officials scuttled down the hall in one direction, then scuttled back in greater number. They conferred in undertones. Setting down his glass, Ballieu strolled out to find if the girl Khadija had accomplished her task.

  By the time he had strolled to the men's room and back, he had overheard enough snatches of conversation to realize something had gone wrong. A resort employee was dead, not the Stuart woman.

  The scuttling officials were calling it an accident. Their main concern was keeping the incident from their guests. He was safe for the moment at least, he thought angrily, resuming his place at the bar and ordering another drink, which he did not touch. Still, he was annoyed. This was what came of depending on someone else. The group in Paris had forced an assistant on him. Now she had failed where he would not have. The important question, he thought, resisting an impulse to rub at his chin and betray inner tension, was whether she'd recovered the tape.

  He wouldn't make contact tonight. She had bungled and she might be under surveillance. Something in her inexperience might have aroused suspicion. He'd have to wait until morning -- and plan.

  Of course, he could pull out. A car with the key hidden under its license plate had been left along the road for him -- just as one had been left on a street in Los Angeles. In case he'd arrived and sensed problems, there'd been that provision for escape. At dawn, if he hadn't taken the car, it would be reclaimed. Once past that time, there would be no further opportunity to scrap this assignment. He'd be committed to seeing things through, sending only a brief message to alert those waiting on the other end when and where to pick him up.

  Ballieu didn't intend to pull out. That would be defeat. He would begin now to weave a net of safety for himself.

  His eyes scanned the crowd.

  It took ten minutes to select an appropriate woman: plump, pleasant-looking. In a dress that was slightly too girlish for her. And alone. It took an equal amount of time to establish visual contact with her several times.

  Finally, as she ventured a hopeful yet circumspect peek, Ballieu moved in. He smiled first, with a little nod, then stirred from his place at the circular bar and walked toward her.

  "It's a terrible thing to watch a show like this alone," he murmured, stopping at her table. "May I join you, or are you waiting for a jealous lover?"

  She laughed with embarrassed delight at the compliment of his latter words -- as he'd known she would.

  "I'm not waiting for anyone," she said. She was blond, artificially so, and older than Ballieu himself. Several good-sized diamonds glinted on her hands as she made a nervous gesture to the chair facing hers.

  "Harry Cardwell." Ballieu reached his own hand across the table to take hers in introduction. He let his fingers linger. She looked pleasantly flustered.

  "Mildred Farrow," she whispered over the vocal duet that was starting on stage.

  "You're not really here alone?" asked Ballieu with pretended disbelief.

  "Well ... yes ...."

  She seemed a bit hesitant. Ballieu sat back, taking care not to crowd her. He must go easily, he saw now. She'd be put off by too much charm.

  "M
ay I offer something to drink? You're so kind, sharing your table."

  He'd let himself sound vaguely European. It appealed to women. Her round face relaxed.

  There was a pampered gullibility about Mildred Farrow that reminded Ballieu of his aunt, who had suffered him and his mother to occupy a spot in her household as poor relations, obligated for the crumbs they received. His aunt had been a dull woman, never questioning the luck that had left her comfortable and others poor, just accepting it as her due. Looking down on those who were less fortunate. Judging. Giving orders.

  Ballieu smiled. He spoke the rhetoric of the bourgeoisie now. It allowed him to fit in and better serve his cause. But he felt for the woman across from him the same contempt he'd felt for his aunt.

  "I'm afraid I'm not very good at the bachelor life," Ballieu said, launching into easy fabrication of how his wife had died. He had realized long ago that women saw a widower as safer, somehow, than a bachelor.

  Having a woman on the string was insurance. It was sometimes a source of useful information. It would also be, in this case, a way of diverting undue attention from occasional brief contact he might need to have with his female assistant.

  "It's hard getting used to things without someone you've lived with," Mildred Farrow said, her defenses vanishing. "My husband's been dead three years...."

  Inwardly Ballieu celebrated his victory. Breaking the ice with a woman was always more useful than doing the same thing with a man. Women read more into it. They defined themselves in terms of men. Be nice to a woman and she construed it as interest. She would tell anyone who asked that you were nice. She would lie for you in a pinch.

  Besides, on the rare occasions when it became necessary to take a ready-made hostage, people were always more protective of a woman.

  Seven

  By morning the resort looked to Ellery like the sort of place that would have attracted his parents and Reid: sprawling, equipped with all the upper-class amenities, and booked to capacity. A hell of a place to square off against someone like Ballieu. Which was exactly why Ballieu had picked it.

  Savoring the last cool breeze the morning was likely to offer, Ellery stopped to study the walks leading into the main building from the pool and outdoor dining areas. It was seven A.M. He'd been roaming the halls and paths of the resort for almost two hours. In his mind he went over its layout, where every door led, the location of power panels, sprinklers, walls that were likely to stop bullets instead of letting them ricochet. Tension tugged at his insides.

  Ballieu didn't play by the rules. Ballieu, in those rare, tight situations where he'd come close to being trapped, had taken hostages. Insuring the safety of Channing Stuart in a place like this was going to be a problem.

  "Breakfast, sir?"

  A waiter's voice made Ellery realize he'd paused too long on the outdoor dining terrace, measuring the walkways. He was irritated by his slip into visibility. To his way of thinking, it verged on carelessness.

  "Orange juice to go," said Ellery. "Great place here."

  They'd be burying Sam this afternoon, and he wouldn't be there. It felt wrong, missing that final good-bye, but Sam of all people would have understood. Better to prevent another death here if that's possible, huh, Sammy?

  He signed for the juice and strolled, sipping it. He hoped Channing Stuart was still asleep. He hoped she wasn't given to panic. She'd seemed close to it last night.

  Oliver had promised to pull another team from somewhere to send in, but so far Ellery hadn't seen any sign of familiar faces. If he had to keep a really tight watch on Channing Stuart, he hoped Ballieu would take him for nothing more than a red-blooded male on the make.

  Eyes squinting slightly, he marked sections of walk against the range of the .38 hidden beneath his light jacket. The gun wasn't going to be much good once these walks and dining areas filled up with people.

  That was the difference, he thought. His side had rules.

  Henri Ballieu's side didn't.

  * * *

  Henri Ballieu had been seventeen when he discovered how easy it was to kill someone, and how much it accomplished. Rarely did he recall such moments from his past. When he did, it usually annoyed him. This morning's memory returned to him with pure satisfaction, dislodged, no doubt, by last night's encounter with the woman who resembled his aunt.

  Shutting off his electric razor, Ballieu slapped after-shave onto his cheeks. It was still a bit too early to be out and about in a place like this without attracting notice. He slid a long, razorlike blade just inside the pack of cigarettes he would carry, and let the memory of his uncle's execution flow into him.

  Ballieu's mother had been taken in, in disgrace, when the foreigner who'd made her pregnant had abandoned her. She'd sewn and cooked like one of the servants, and Ballieu, as soon as he was old enough to carry trays of lead type, had been sent to work in his uncle's print shop. Day after day he'd worked his muscles sore while his cousin of a similar age, who would own the shop someday, spent his afternoons drinking tea with girls and reading poetry. Seething at the inequity, Ballieu had become aware that there were individuals in the streets who spoke aloud of such injustices between the classes. Mostly they were university students, little better off than he was himself.

  Gradually he had become a part of one of their groups. They had needed political pamphlets run. Ballieu had run them on his uncle's press. His uncle had fired him.

  One of the students thought he could make plates for currency.

  "Do it and I'll run them," Ballieu said.

  He himself studied paper and ink that would give an authentic effect. They needed financing for a people's revolution. It would rob men like his uncle of their bloated status and carefully guarded wealth. It would put bread in the mouths of hungry children, dignity in the labor of workers.

  When his uncle came in unexpectedly in the midst of their venture, Ballieu raised a gun and shot him. He had been a bit too close. The blood had splattered his arm.

  Commended for his work, Ballieu had been spirited out of the country. A larger, more organized group than the students had taken him in. It meant nothing to him to see his mother again. The passion for equality was in his blood.

  He was eager to please his new comrades, eager to rise in their ranks. He had killed a policeman in a public square, the act well planned and calmly executed. He had kidnapped a municipal official. He was not yet nineteen.

  The following week he had been approached by a well-dressed man smoking strong cigarettes.

  "Why are you wasting time on provincial officials?" he asked. "Come to Paris. We can give you better targets. We can bring whole governments to their knees."

  That had been thirty years ago. In the decades between, Ballieu had never felt so acutely the cold deliberateness that filled his veins now. He had felt it raising the gun to shoot his uncle -- a sense of fate. Now it was underlaid by years of experience.

  Ballieu smoothed his collar.

  It was eight in the morning. By now a few golfers and tennis players would be stirring, eager to have their games before the heat of the day. He would not attract notice. Picking up a small tape recorder, shifting his cigarette package so his finger rested on the blade inside it, he walked toward the elevator.

  He would ride two floors down. He would see whether anyone was watching the hallway. If they weren't, he'd discover whether the female helping him had, in spite of last night's blunder, recovered the tape.

  "Well?" he demanded as she opened her door to him.

  Her mouth was defiant.

  "How was I to know some stupid worker would go in first? How was I to prevent it?"

  No apology, no nervousness at her failure, only her sullenness daring him to upbraid her. She wore bright shorts, looking the part of a girl on holiday. Her black hair was free on her shoulders.

  "The cassette?" Ballieu asked coldly.

  She turned her back on him and crossed the room.

  The cassette was hidden under a false bottom
she'd glued into a leather bag. She ripped it free with fingers Ballieu knew were strong enough to strangle a man. She was not completely without qualifications. He snapped the tape into place, and they sat warily on either side of the low table with the tape player between them, the female's resentment now dying down into curiosity.

  At first, as the words coming off the machine began to sink in, Ballieu thought they must be a trick. Disbelief, followed by a fleeting sense of disgrace and then anger, crowded out other feelings inside him.

  "... and the king of hearts is upside down ...."

  The magician's voice mocked him.

  Everything mocked him. The way things were starting. The pain that cut suddenly into his belly. The look on the girl's face.

  Her head tipped back, and laughter issued from her throat.

  "A magic trick! You made me risk my life for a magic trick, Ballieu."

  His fist slammed down, stopping the machine.

  "Of course it could be a code," the girl suggested, and laughed again, the sound a sneer.

  She didn't believe it. She believed his whole concern had been unnecessary.

  Ballieu felt mounting rage. Under other circumstances he would kill her. Would send her away, at least. He had seen her kind before. She was a young jackal, sniffing, waiting for his body to fall. In her eagerness to see him trip, she would be careless herself. She could not be depended upon.

  He swore to himself. The most important, the last mission of his life, and he was stuck with a female whose neck he would like to break. She had accomplished nothing -- minor assignments, no doubt, which had swelled her ego. Yet she sat there looking confident. And he was dying.

  "Maybe the Stuart woman tricked us," he said, focusing all his thoughts on that possibility as he rose and started to pace. "Perhaps she's smart. She must realize you were hunting something there in her study. Perhaps she knows we're watching her. And we can't risk another accident. Not after you bungled last night."