Touch of Magic (11 page)

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 an
noyed him. This morning's memory returned to
him with pure satisfaction, dislodged, no doubt, by last night's encounter with the woman who resem
bled his aunt.

Shutting off his electric razor,
Ballieu
slapped af
ter-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 spir
ited 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 exe
cuted. 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 resent
ment 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 con
cern had been unnecessary.

Ballieu
felt mounting rage. Under other circum
stances 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 accom
plished 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."

The girl in the chair ignited, springing up to face
him.

"I didn't bungle! The electrocution went per
fectly."

"Except that she isn't dead."
Ballieu
let his sarcasm lash her.

"Then I'll kill her some other way!"

"And start an investigation?"

It was his turn to sneer as he pointed out her inexperience. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

"Are you afraid,
Ballieu
? I'm willing to die for our
cause! And perhaps you should tell me what we are
here for -- what we're to accomplish. If you make
another error in judgment and are taken prisoner, I will have responsibility to finish here!"

Ballieu's
open hand flew out, the force of his slap
knocking her to the floor. She fell against the bed.
She would learn her place if nothing else, he
thought with satisfaction.

"The most important assignment we've had in
ten years, and they send me a hothead with more
rhetoric than common sense!" he said bitterly. "You
have no need to know anything. You are an errand
girl. You were sent to deliver the money sewn in
your coat -- and whatever else I choose to tell you.
Learn to keep your mouth shut."

She pulled herself to her knees, one finger going
to her bleeding mouth, then stoically moving away.
Her eyes, thought
Ballieu
, suddenly noticing them
for the first time. Where had he seen eyes like hers?

   
"I was sent because some people think the great
Henri
Ballieu
is getting too old for jobs like this!"
She spit the words at him. "That you've grown more
interested in your own glory than in democratic
liberation." In spite of the blood, her lip gave a curl
of defiance. "Some think your judgment's not as
good as it used to be."

Ballieu
felt himself go motionless. Nothing could
make him fail in this mission -- not her, not her
barbs. He would not let vanity goad him into mak
ing a misstep.

Glancing at his watch, he began to shrug casually
into his jacket.

"Too much has gone wrong," he said, abandoning
the argument he knew she would like to pursue.
"We have to speed things up. Give me twelve min
utes. Then meet me at the magazine stand."

With his eyes daring her to move, he unwrapped
a peppermint candy and dropped the cellophane
onto the floor. The peppermint would soothe the
pain in his stomach.

"Be stuffing your blouse in as you leave here," he
added. "Someone may be watching me. Nothing
will be made of our contact if they think you were
whoring."

He turned his back, confident her eyes were
burning with hate. At the door he paused to look
indifferently over his shoulder.

"We're here to pick up a piece of film designed to make U.S. passports. Your group has been promised
first use. You'll be a heroine,
Khadija
-- if you learn to
take orders."

This was the way to train the young and too impulsive, he thought, closing the door behind him.
Alternate parts of fear and reward. It kept them
loyal.

This time the elevator took him down to lobby level. As he stepped out
Ballieu
made note of the
time again, surveyed his surroundings for any faces
that might be following him, and moved toward a row of pay phones. The booth he chose had been predetermined. He had allowed himself a cushion of nearly ninety seconds. Pretending to peruse the booth's directory, he waited, picking up the phone beside him on its first ring.

"Do you want to buy oranges?" inquired a muf
fled voice at the other end.

"A boxcar,"
Ballieu
answered. "I have cash."

Now that contact was established, he found him
self relaxing slightly. Things were starting to go ac
cording to plan. His eyes raked the lobby again. Then he spoke quickly.

"I want the transaction today -- this afternoon."