Touch of Magic (34 page)

The door opened unexpectedly.
Ballieu
whirled,
catching up the automatic that lay on the desk beside him. His alertness quickened as he saw the
Stuart woman shoved through the doorway by the
two men who had arrived this afternoon to help
him.
Ballieu
had left nothing to chance. He had
thought it prudent to have men and weapons on
hand in case he encountered American authorities
once he had the film.

"She was outside," said one of the men. "She had
a knife. She attacked
Khadija
."

Ballieu
saw at their heels the sullen female who
had opposed him at every step. Her arm dripped
blood.

"You were so sure she was harmless!" She
sneered, her face contorted by rage and pain. "You
were too soft to deal with her,
Ballieu
!"

He saw the sneer give way to fear in the split
second that he raised his pistol in her direction and
fired. The arrogant little she-dog who had snapped
at his heels fell with barely a whimper, shot through
the throat.

The act gave him satisfaction. He had proved how
soft he was. Even to her.

"She never would have survived the trip. She
would have slowed us down," he said coldly, glanc
ing down at her body.

The gun in his hand shifted toward the Stuart
woman. His gripped tightened. "And you, you work
for the State Department!"

The smile of the woman facing him was almost
seductive in its challenge. "The State Department
thinks so. Even him."

She nodded toward the traitor, ignoring the man they'd taken hostage as completely as she ignored the body that had fallen. This was some tactic of
hers. It had to be,
Ballieu
thought. Yet her boldness was a thing of art, a thing that he could admire,
even knowing he'd end it.

"You trust him, don't you,
Ballieu
?" Her words
purred in her throat. She tilted her head back.
"You'd better look at that film again."

Ballieu
felt a silken thread of doubt curl through
him. The other agent, the one named Ellery, looked
stunned and uncertain. Max, flushed with rage, be
gan to move swiftly toward her.

"What the hell -- ?"

"Max is part of their plan," she said, cutting in, her eyes flicking toward him.

The man tied in the chair tried to heave himself
up.

"Shut up, damn you!" Ellery shouted.

Ballieu's
gun swung toward Max Hopkins, halting
him in his tracks. The man's joviality was deserting
him,
Ballieu
noted. With his guards picking up his unspoken order to keep the man in his place,
Bal
lieu
once again trained his automatic on the
magicienne
.

"I thought you were an imposter,
Ballieu
," she was continuing, moving calmly and steadily closer to him, toward the front of the desk. "I just found
out that isn't true. The State Department had been
watching
Yussuf
for months. When they ap
proached me and asked me to help them, I thought
it was a trap."

"Fascinating," said
Ballieu
.

He was disappointed in her. He had thought her almost his equal. This fabrication of hers was as flimsy as paper. Yet her eyes had hardened.

"You'll think 'fascinating' if you don't listen!" she
snapped. "The film in that safe was a fake. There never was any film stolen."

The traitor started to lunge at her.

"You lying -- "

A brief veering of
Ballieu's
gun both stopped and
silenced him. The woman stopped, too, but she
hadn't finished what she had to say.

"Give me the film,
Ballieu
. I'll show you the flaw.
I'll show you how they set it up so immigration officials can spot members of your group."

"You'll burn for this!" threatened the man in the chair. One of
Ballieu's
guards was restraining him
now.

"This is crap! They're playacting -- both of them!"
Max Hopkins said desperately.

"Keep him quiet," said
Ballieu
.

The guard with the beard brought his weapon up,
aimed at the man who'd sold the film.

Ballieu
listened for the
hélicoptère
and was startled to find himself thinking in French. It was happening more of late. He wondered why. He found the pain in his belly less troubling too. It burned
constantly now, but he was achieving a victory over
it. As he would triumph over this flimsy attempt to deceive him.

Raising the automatic, he pointed it directly at Channing Stuart's head. He motioned her forward.

"All right," he said affably. With his free hand he
reached into his jacket to bring out the film in its
envelope. "Show me."

The guard with the mustache, at a glance from
Ballieu
, also had trained his rifle on the woman who
stood before them.

"May I get a magnifying glass?" she asked.

Ballieu
almost smiled.

"Here," he said, freezing her as she started to reach toward a pocket. "I have a glass."

He extended the loupe he himself had used. She received it with her left hand,
Ballieu
noted. Her right hand reached for the film.
Ballieu
followed each small movement with his eyes.

"Watch her hands!" he said sharply to the guard
with the mustache. "She likes to make things disap
pear."

He could hear her breathing. He looked at her
face. Her eyes were dark and tried to draw his, but
Ballieu
, with an effort he found surprisingly hard, resisted. She was a consummate performer. He
wanted to see the extent of her nerve.

Her hand, with the loupe between thumb and
second finger, dodged slightly out. The rifle in the guard's hand jumped at the movement.
Ballieu
felt
his own reflex copy the motion. A second faster on
her part and she would have been dead.

Her hair shone around her like some aura of the powers she pretended to possess. Her eyes, as he glanced at them, held a strange and unsettling brilliance. Smoothly her hands began to move toward each other, the one with the loupe turning over, the one with the film giving an authoritative flick. She
held the loupe over the film.

"There," she said, offering both to him. "See the
final stroke of the last letter? It's too large."

Ballieu
pretended to go along with her. He balanced both pistol and film in one hand and studied it closely. Accustomed to living with treachery for
most of his life, he took the precaution of really
inspecting the film, of moving his skilled engraver's eyes across the width of every stroke. Without com
ment he returned the film to its envelope and then
to his pocket. He had seen no flaw.

Suddenly the side of his gun hand smashed out
against the side of the woman's face and sent her
sprawling. He felt the release of pent-up tension.
Again she had tried to make a fool of him, as she had
from the very beginning. He had wanted to bed
her.

"Lies!" he spat. "All lies so you could get close
enough to get one of our guns and free your boyfriend."

Ellery had made a last desperate attempt to free
himself, but a rifle butt in his belly had stopped him. He had struck his head. Still tied to the chair, he lay
unconscious on the floor.

Ballieu's
straining ears picked up a sound.

"Helicopter's coming," Max said, still flushed
with anger but swaggering forward to reclaim his place as an equal.

"We've no need of hostages now," said
Ballieu
,
jerking his head toward the other Americans.
"Shoot them."

"Hey, now. That's no way to treat Billy." There
was malice in the traitor's face. "He'd rather go out
with a bang. The lady deserves to squirm a little too.
She's got too good an opinion of herself. Let's just
set this little firecracker for them."

Removing the explosive charge once wired to the
vault, he held it out.

Ballieu
looked impatiently back from confirming
that the helicopter was the one he expected, not
some sort of trouble arriving. The disposal of those
left behind was of no consequence to him.

"It's your neck if they get away," he said.

The crooked American was crossing into Mexico
with them. It had been a part of their deal. He
planned to spin a story of being
Ballieu's
hostage,
say he'd escaped, return to his position of trust. If he succeeded,
Ballieu's
organization might at some fu
ture date buy information from him.

"Get away in ten minutes?" He snorted and knelt,
resetting the timing mechanism and placing it at
Ellery's head. "Old Billy's good with a bomb, but
not that good. Especially with his hands tied. I want him to think of me while he's lying there feeling the
seconds tick past."

Max Hopkins's teeth glinted fanglike in the un
even light. He patted the man on the floor.

"Guess we finally know which one of us was bet
ter, huh, Ellery? Remember me."

He rose and snatched a rope from the hands of
one of
Ballieu's
men, who was starting to tie the
woman. She was struggling furiously.

"That's too easy for her with the tricks she
knows," he said. "There's a couple of straitjackets
left in that closet where the scrub buckets are. Get
one of those."

He grinned.

"Sorry, Channing. Guess I'm jealous. Thought
you might take a shine to me."

He played, an overgrown child indulging his feel
ings, thought
Ballieu
irritably. Feelings were the
thing to master, the beginning of competency.

For a brief time in the afternoon, he had almost
forgotten that lesson. He had felt fear. He was start
ing to bleed from the rectum. Standing in the lava
tory, no longer able to deny the fact that his life was
leaking away, a fear of failure and weakness had
welled up inside him. Then he had simply set it
aside. He had reminded himself of his soldier's training, that he would think nothing of pushing on with blood seeping out from a wound in the leg or
gut. Now he felt the film in his pocket, watched the
jacket brought from the closet, and savored the
taste of success.

By the time Channing Stuart was strapped up like
a madwoman, the jacket around her torso and ropes
around her feet, the helicopter was landing. Pistol
in one hand, assault rifle in the other, Henri
Ballieu
led the way to the rear of the aircraft.

He waited until the door opened, then stuck the
rifle barrel under the arm of the pilot who stepped out. A great breath of victory swelled him. He felt young and strong. He had accomplished a nearly
impossible job. His name would be remembered.

"We are a liberation army," he said proudly. "We
will not hesitate to kill you. You will do exactly as we
say. You will fly us to Mexico."

Twenty-five

All the nerves in Channing's body seemed to
end and sputter inside her head as she heard her
captors' footsteps fading away. She was bound and helpless and probably going to die, yet a single
thought danced defiantly in her mind:

She had suc
ceeded.

Neither her hand nor her nerve had failed. She had proved herself a Stuart. She had reclaimed
her birthright.