Touch of Magic (21 page)

"You found the tape?"
Ballieu's
solicitude
sounded deliberately less than sincere. Again, as
though they were playing a game, she thought.

"And took an opportunity to play it on a recorder the management kindly furnished," Channing said,
matching his tone. "I'd hate to think we couldn't
trust each other."

"Of course." He settled in across from her. She
could feel them squaring off. "How charming to find you a woman of sentiment."

He started to pour her wine, but she asked the bar
waiter already descending upon them for iced tea
instead. She'd been drinking a lot of it here, which
maybe explained why her nerves were jumpy. But
better on edge than too relaxed, she rationalized.

Ballieu
lounged back, his arm resting carelessly
over the side of his chair.

"How long did you work for the man you're replacing?" he asked.

"Six years. Seven." Channing shrugged. "I'd
known him all my life." There was always the possibility that
Ballieu
could check. If he did, she'd come
up clean with this answer.

"And I never heard a breath about you? Amaz
ing." His tone was mild but perhaps deceptive. His
eyes were missing nothing. The care with which he
noted the shape of her hair, the measure of her
shoulders, each element in her made Channing
want to draw back.

"I was a hidden asset." She forced her mouth into
a teasing expression.

A waiter came. They placed their orders.

"You know" --
Ballieu
rocked his wine in its glass
and continued to watch her -- "there is something
very intriguing about a woman willing to take the risks that you do. It hangs around her ... like a
musk."

The way he was looking at her made her queasy.
There was something blunt and repelling in it. An
appetite.

Determination drove her, giving her a strange
calm. Sitting here across from him was vindicating
Yussuf
in a way she couldn't quite explain.

"My work is safer than yours," she said, sidestep
ping his compliment.

"I've survived to an older age than you."

He smiled.

Before he could speak again, Channing saw the almost imperceptible quickening of his attention. He had noticed something over her right shoulder.
Surely not Ellery. Surely Ellery wouldn't be that
clumsy. Her pulse quickened. She turned as casu
ally as any other dining companion might and saw a
girl with long black hair sitting down at one of the
tables. She'd been watching them avidly.

One of
Ballieu's
lady friends, jealous and keeping
an eye on him? Channing wondered. She looked rather sulky. Whatever the situation,
Ballieu
didn't like it. He had frowned, but his face was smooth
again.

Then their plates arrived, and with very little
conversation they ate. It was all a charade, Channing thought. She was watching
Ballieu
. He was watching her. It took all her willpower just to keep from looking each time his pale hands poised and his knife sliced down at his food.

Am I a Stuart yet, Gramps? she thought silently,
angrily. It takes more audacity to sit here with him than to pass a silk through a rope under someone's
nose.

"So do we do business?" she asked when he'd
ordered coffee and she'd requested more tea. She
was not as afraid of
Ballieu
as she'd been last night.
She was holding her own.

"I never rush a decision," he said. "And we've
plenty of time."

Damn. She was getting nothing out of him.

"Tell me about your operation," he said, "How
the connection was made with
Marinka
, for exam
ple."

"We must have our secrets, just as you have
yours."

Her answer seemed to amuse him.

"Ah, but we must trust each other, you said."

He was watching something over her shoulder. Some activity on the part of the girl with the black
hair, no doubt. A moment later the waiter arrived
to serve
Ballieu's
coffee and bring her a second serv
ing of tea.

Channing frowned as she squeezed the lemon
wedge from the side of the glass and pushed it down
into the dark tea. Why had
Ballieu
wanted this meeting, and what should her next move be? She
didn't dare force his hand.

Ballieu
seemed to be looking at her now, but she had an unsettling feeling his eyes watched something else too. Had someone else come in behind
her? Dry-mouthed, wondering how they would end this interview, she raised the cold glass of tea to her
lips.

"Don't!"

Ballieu's
hand shot out, knocking the glass from
her hand. The glass hit the carpeted floor and
cracked into two parts, its shaved ice scattering.

Drops of tea had splashed the arm of her jacket, spilling or bouncing back. Channing didn't know
which.

She sat, scarcely able to breathe. The movement by
Ballieu
had been little more than a blur, almost
as fast as she could change a coin. And in the instant
her brain had registered his hand darting at her,
she'd thought he held a gun.

"How clumsy of me," he said, passing her his nap
kin. "There was a crack in the glass. Very easy for germs to collect there. We wouldn't want you to fall
sick."

She stared at him, trembling inside. What had
that move been about? Had there been something in her glass? Had he been intending to poison her
and at the last minute changed his mind?

"Perhaps you'll want to go and see to your
jacket," he said. His eyes were hard.

Channing nodded. She rose and started out al
most blindly. Max sat at a table near the door. His
ailment must be improving. Face thoroughly ashen,
he jerked a look at her and then back at
Ballieu
.

Ellery met her in the hall. He must have been
inside the bar just off the dining room and seen it all,
she realized. He caught her arm.

"What the hell happened? What was that all
about?" He looked almost as tense as she was. The
pressure of his fingers hurt.

"I don't know -- but he scares me!"

The words rattled out in a gasp that sounded nothing like her own voice. Her doubled-up fist hit
a button to summon an elevator.

She was furious hearing herself, furious hearing
her own admission. For she knew fear was exactly the reaction Henri
Ballieu
was counting on. He had
won this round.

Fourteen

As she opened the door to her room,
Ballieu
slammed the insolent female who had been sent to
help him into the wall. His fingers caught her throat
as they might the loose skin on a kitten's neck.

"You stupid idiot!" he said, snarling.

Her eyes were filled with rage, not submission.
She had come to her room directly from the restau
rant, knowing he would follow. She caught his wrist in a soldier's grip. Her defiance hissed out in spite of
his hold on her.

"You ruined it -- she would be dead!"

She twisted, bringing her shoulder up against him
and almost breaking free. Once more
Ballieu
slammed her against the wall.

"She'd be dead when we might need her! If any
thing goes wrong -- if the men try to stop us -- don't
you realize her value as a pawn? What did you put
in her tea when you stopped the waiter? Those
splinters of glass you were so eager to try?"

"Yes! And they'll soon be carting those Zionist brats off with belly pains too! No one would have
suspected. I planned very well!"

Ballieu
shook his head with fury. He'd discarded
his watch behind a picture frame as he got off the
elevator to her floor and could speak freely.

"You've done nothing well!"

He wanted to kill her. But you didn't kill your
own kind. Not unless they deserved it. His breath
was coming in short gasps as he thought how she'd
nearly destroyed all their chances when they were
within a single day of putting their hands on the
film. With her hotheadedness she could have come
between him and the successful completion of this
assignment. If she'd killed the Stuart woman, the
other Americans would have been left no choice but to retaliate. He spun his young helper around
and struck the side of her face.

"Fool!" he repeated. "Daughter of dogs!"

He started to tell her he'd see she never again
received a job more important than polishing boots.
Then, with the cold reason that had always given
him mastery, he realized he still needed her. To
night, especially.
Ballieu
changed tactics.

"You're very talented,
Khadija
." His voice had
become detached. Almost patient. That of teacher
to student. "You could be quite valuable someday.
Why do you not follow orders?"

Her whole face sneered at him.

"You think you can report me for this, don't you,
Ballieu
? But I'll report how you've lost your nerve.
I'll report how there's something wrong with your
belly!"

By the time he felt her shifting, her foot drove in.
Ballieu
felt an explosion of white, blinding pain. She sprang free of his momentarily loosened fingers. He
lunged, and she fell backward, taking him with her
and flipping him over her. He rolled expertly, com
pleting the somersault to land on his feet.

Already she was crouched to receive his attack.
 
They circled each other. Her hands were held open
and loose, silent weapons that would not be heard
outside this room with its air-conditioning and pad
ded carpeting.

"What's wrong,
Ballieu
? Can't you kill a woman?"
Her words taunted him. "Is that why you sit down
with her, talk with her, knowing any instant that
she could betray you? Or are you sniffing after her
the way you did that whore you hired?"

Ballieu
felt each muscle and nerve in his body
tuning itself. The precision needed to kill or maim
was flowing through him.

"She's unimportant," he said. Because he needed
this unstable female who thought to challenge him,
and he would let her live. But he was closing in.
"Untrained. It's the man with her who controls her.
He tells her what to do. She'll be nothing without
him. They'll allow us one kill if they think they can learn who the seller is. Not two. It would leave too
bitter a taste in their mouths. Understand what I
say."

He wondered fleetingly why there was such a
flush of triumph on
Khadija's
cheeks and why her
eyes directed such hatred toward him.

Khadija
spit.

"Excuses! You'll never get that film. You've gotten
yourself in a hole and will never get out! You'll ac
complish nothing!"

He measured the distance. He couldn't strike her
again; it would show. He had to leave her unblem
ished so she could mingle unnoticed with the hotel's
guests. They continued to circle. His movement, when it came, was like lightning, cutting the edge
of his hand up under her jaw, bringing the toe of his
shoe hard into the sensitive spot between her legs.