Touch of Magic (10 page)

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 as
sumption that she'd drink whatever was offered an
noyed 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 be
fore. "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 sud
denly 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 conve
niently near the electrocution. Now his very hardness was making her trust him. Something had al
ready 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 bus
tled 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 Chan
ning.

"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 con
tact 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 El
lery 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 con
firmation 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 offi
cials 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 conver
sation to realize something had gone wrong. A re
sort 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 recov
ered the tape.

He wouldn't make contact tonight. She had bungled and she might be under surveillance. Some
thing in her inexperience might have aroused suspi
cion. 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 circum
spect 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.

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

He'd let himself sound vaguely European. It ap
pealed 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 fortu
nate. 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 in
stead 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 be
ing 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 careless
ness.

"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 under
stood. Better to prevent another death here if that's
possible, huh, Sammy?