Touch of Magic (14 page)

"Hunch your shoulders forward and cut the wa
ter with your hands, eh?" whispered
Ballieu
. He pantomimed the hand position. "Then it won't hurt
so much." He winked.

The boy stared at him in awe.

"Hey, thanks, mister!"

Folding up like a clam, the boy dove, came up,
and waved triumphantly.
Ballieu
, feeling satisfied,
walked casually to his appointment. He lowered himself onto one of the lounge chairs ringing the
pool.

"Is the safe guarded?" he murmured to the
woman who lay
facedown
in the chair next to his.

   
Khadija's
slim, oiled body was as motionless as an
adder
.
Ballieu
had just bought two drinks for a girl
in a blue bikini. When he left here, it would be to make arrangements with a high-priced prostitute.
With such attention to women, his occasional con
tacts with
Khadija
would not arouse undue notice.

"Only one, hired by the magician," she answered.
"I left him in a storeroom. We'll be gone before the
body starts to smell."

Under the pretext of applying sunscreen,
Ballieu
scanned the crowd and picked out a familiar face.
He was sure now that he had identified two men
watching him. One was black and looked out of condition; the other was flashy and white. They
traded turns.

"The bomb is a new design, set to go off if even
one of its wires is touched before the time elapses,"
the female beside him was reporting. "My group
has seen only one, and it blew up the man who
thought he could take it apart. But I believe a spray
fixative might dull the contacts. I'll go back to
night--"

"No."
Ballieu's
command was soft but swift. "An
attempt that fails would destroy the film."

He could see by the way her body stiffened that she disagreed with his decision. He was satisfied
with her nerve, but she was too caught up in her
zeal. Cleverness was their only chance now. And
nerve. They were being watched. They were out
numbered, possibly. But they had the advantage of
the Americans wanting to catch whoever was sell
ing the film.

  
"We'll wait them out," he said aloud. "It takes
more courage to walk with a bomb between your
legs than to storm a camp with a rifle. We are walk
ing with a bomb, and we will have our victory. Do you understand? Besides, we may have help. The Stuart woman called me--"

He broke off as Mildred Farrow, who last night in
the lounge had shared a table with him, walked
past, sending him a look and a hopeful flutter of her
fingers.

"Bridge class at two," she called. "Are you going
to come?"

"Of course," he called back cheerfully. "Would
you like a partner?"

Beneath its layer of paint, Mildred Farrow's face
broke into a smile. She had a bracelet around her
ankle and painted toenails.
Ballieu
watched her
buttocks, squeezed ridiculously into white pants, as
she pattered off on high-heeled shoes.

"The Stuart woman called, and she wants a meet
ing," he said, resuming.

"It's a trick!"

"Perhaps."

He was noting the hate in
Khadija's
eyes as she watched the people around them. She had not been a wise choice to send amid Westerners. Her lan
guage was good, but she lacked sophistication. She
didn't understand how much could be gained by
playing a role.

She tried to sweeten her tone.

   
"Let's plan something more,
Ballieu
-- something more than getting the film. Suppose something goes
wrong? Suppose the call you got was a trap? Suppose we don't get the film -- we could still
accom
piish
something here that would make our trip
worthwhile. Look around!"

Ballieu
hesitated, coaxed by what she was saying.
He closed out the thought. It would be bad luck. If
you anticipated failure, you failed. He would not anticipate failure.

"How we feel personally doesn't matter," he said,
hardening his voice. "We are soldiers. Our only ob
jective is to win. Wait for my instructions."

He rose and walked off, and
Khadija
lay with her
nails stabbing into her palms.
Ballieu
was losing his
nerve, she thought. Or his judgment. He was going
to wait and play the Americans' games while they
sprang some sort of trap. It was stupid.

Above the sounds of the pool she could hear the
constant clatter of dishes being cleared away and
new dishes coming. Things to drink, with umbrellas
and colored cherries on top. Ice cream. Sandwiches
that were pushed away half eaten. Twenty-four
hours a day Americans ate and drank while other people starved.

Four teenagers descended, laughing, on the chair
Ballieu
had abandoned. Fat Zionists,
Khadija
thought, the girls obscenely overflowing their bath
ing suits. The boys sniffed after them like dogs. One
of the boys turned to leer at
Khadija
. The sweet
desire to see all four of them with their brains splat
tered out rose inside her.

  
Khadija
turned her face away. She had been born
in a refugee camp and had grown up in guerrilla
outposts in the
Bekaa
Valley. Her little brother had died in a Zionist raid on one of the camps.
Khadija
carried inside her own body pieces of shrapnel. Her mother had died in a failed attempt to blow up a
diplomat's car. A heroine.
Khadija
had been fifteen
when she first shouldered a rifle in her people's
cause.

The soft and stupid youths beside her laughed
again.

Splintered glass? It would be such an easy and unsuspicious way to slaughter a few pigs and the Stuart woman as well.
Ballieu
was mad not to kill her.
Khadija
wavered, drowning in her own anger.

Even if she could defuse the bomb and get the
film tonight, she would have to depend on
Ballieu
to
get it out of the country. She had no idea who his
contacts were. She had been sent simply to help. Yet
more and more it became apparent to her that
Ballieu's judgment couldn't be trusted.

If he waited and they were captured, they would
accomplish nothing. They would be fools, not mar
tyrs. They would be held up for the world to laugh
at.

She rose and walked angrily back into the lodge.
Coming after a piece of film was all very well. She
could see its endless value to her group and others. But she had expected more when she volunteered
for this assignment. She had expected a bombing, a
kidnapping -- some chance to kill Americans.

Prowling down a side hall, she was forced to move
aside for a long cart bearing a display of fruit. The two men wheeling it noticed something missing,
stopped and conferred, then disappeared back through a distant door.

   
Khadija
stared at the tiers of fruit cut into fancy shapes. Huge clumps of grapes, whole pineapples,
and uncut melons sprawled around them. Her eyes
lighted, lingering, on a thick-skinned melon the size
of a man's head.

She could not force her eyes to move. Instinct,
rather than a conscious effort to check, told her the
hall was still deserted. Her face contorted. In a dart
ing movement the side of her hand slashed out to
cave in the side of the melon. Flesh and sticky juices
oozed across her fingers.

She had no recourse against
Ballieu's
infernal
waiting. But she wasn't going to content herself
with a piece of film.

*
  
*
  
*

Every sort of sleight of hand performed, with
coins or thimbles, ropes or cigarettes, cards -- or film -- brought into play a subtly different group of mus
cles. Channing felt the reminder of it throughout
her hand as she held the film before her, flicked her
fingers, and watched in the mirror for any telltale
movement. Since morning she had executed the
switch a thousand times, flawlessly. She had thought
herself in peak condition because of her coin work, but she could feel muscles throughout her forearms
pleading for rest.

  
She and
Serafin
had enjoyed a leisurely lunch
from room service, and now she became aware she
hadn't yet heard him leaving for the pool, which he
adored. Stepping through the bath that connected
their rooms, she found him sprawled across the bed with his chin in his hands. His face was toward the television, but she could tell by his expression that
his thoughts were on nothing remotely connected
to the images flickering there. A dark unhappiness
pinched his features. Channing snapped off the TV
and sat down next to him.

He seemed to anticipate her question even be
fore she opened her mouth to speak.

"Why do you figure Mr.
Yussuf
was being so nice to me?" He rolled over and looked at her, and again she thought how his eyes were too old for his years. Yet this time they were haunted as well. "What was
he going to use me for?" His forehead wrinkled.

Channing felt clumsy, unsure how to cancel out
the self-doubt and betrayal she heard in his voice.
Didn't she, too, feel betrayed by what
Yussuf
had
been?

"He wasn't going to use you," she said, and the
words came out harsher than she'd intended.

Serafin
looked stubborn.

"Bullshit, Channing. I heard most of what those
men said when they came to your house. He was
rotten."

"So what? He still was capable of being a friend." She was snapping now, saying things she wasn't sure
of herself because it was important that
Serafin
be
lieve them. And she knew he'd forgive her
brusqueness
, even as she softened it. "
Yussuf
was nice to you
because he liked you. You've got to believe that."

He squinted at her for a long minute, then sighed.

"Yeah, maybe."

She could hear the hurt still lodged deep down,
but the child in him became more cheerful.

"I'm hungry. You think we could get a piece of pie
or something?"

"I thought you were going swimming. You'll sink
like a rock."

"Yeah, maybe I
oughta
swim first." He slipped off
the bed and gave her a grin. "Oh, say, Channing,
don't worry about me when you've got things to do,
okay? I already talked to Wilbur. Told him I was
getting tired of the rat race and all this traveling. I
said I was interested in finding out about hotel work
when he had some time, and he said fine."

Two minutes later
Serafin
was out the door, whistling. Channing resumed her position in front
of the mirror. She switched the film. She'd meet
Ballieu
tonight, and she felt ready.

She turned to observe a different angle and flexed
her muscles to repeat the switch. Suddenly the
smoothness of her movement was marred. She felt a
tug. A piece of film veered and buckled, midway
between her fingers and her sleeve. Channing
stared, aghast, a sensation of coldness spurting
through her pores.

The film had slid on into position, forced by the automatic movement of her fingers. But there had
been a visible hitch. Something had happened.