Touch of Magic (24 page)

Serafin
grinned.

A knock sounded at the dressing room door.
Channing turned with a wave of uneasiness.

"Everything okay this evening?" asked Wilbur,
beaming in at her when she answered.

The light from the hall reflected off his balding
head. An armload of fragrant red roses engulfed her in sweetness from another world as he passed them
to her.

"I -- uh -- thought you might like these. I may get a
chance to see your act tonight. If there's not a cri
sis."

Aware of movement behind her, Channing's pe
ripheral vision tuned in to the end of
Serafin's
thumb-and-forefinger "okay" sign.

"I'll look for you in the audience," she said, and
thanked him, closing the door. She turned to
Serafin
with a narrow look. "What was that all about?"

"I told him a bunch of roses would probably get
him in good with you."
Serafin
squirmed a little in
the face of her silence. "Aw, come on, Channing. He's had a bad day. Some kids who checked out complained of stomachaches when they got home,
so the health department's been here inspecting
the kitchen. I had to do something for him for letting me hang around so much. And it's for a good
cause."

For a good cause. Was that how Ellery rational
ized taking risks? There was a job to do, and no one
else to do it, and so he would? She almost laughed at
the irony. It sounded like Tony.

Holding the roses carefully out from her sleeves, she marched across the room and laid them on her dressing table. She wiped her hands again. A knot that she thought must be disgust or indignation had
lodged in her chest. In the paper she'd seen that
photograph of the man she realized must be
Ellery's
brother, bathed in publicity while Ellery was
risking his life -- alone -- tonight.

She recalled what Ellery had let slip when he'd shown her his grandfather's watch. That was what
drove him -- he had ghosts to slay. She understood it
even as she hated it. She, too, had something to
prove. To Gramps.

Twenty minutes later she and
Serafin
went on
stage. Henri
Ballieu
sat waiting, in the second row.

*
  
*
  
*

Ballieu
had vomited blood in the lavatory before
he came to dinner. It didn't concern him. Victory
was too close now. Every moment was bringing it nearer, and everything was planned. He had eaten a hearty dinner to restore his strength. Shish kebab
on rice pilaf. A plate of cheeses. Fruit. He could still
taste the sweetness of melon dripping across his tongue. He had ordered brandy and sat toying with
the snifter without sipping it.

The revelation of the girl who was the product of
his nights with
Saleha
Adawi
meant nothing to him.
He felt no emotion at all at the link between them.
She was a flawed piece of merchandise whose de
fects, like those of a rifle whose scope was off, must
be taken into account. He could predict her now
and had proved his superiority. She would do well
enough in the small chores left to her. The first show of the evening ended with the last song of a particu
larly uninteresting singer, and
Bailieu
applauded.

It had been very easy to watch the magic act.
There was something fascinating about the Stuart
woman, particularly now that he knew what she
was. A dark elusiveness like the shadow of fire
seemed to cling to her. As though she might conjure
a scarf and snap her fingers under the nose of death itself,
Bailieu
thought with admiration. The way in
which her entire being challenged his excited him.
A pity they would not have more time.

Bailieu
looked at his watch.
Khadija
, who was sit
ting somewhere in the back of the room, would
leave now. As soon as the magic act began a second
time, he would leave too. His contact had assured
him that the U.S. agents would all be occupied --
 
two of them staying upstairs, one following him to
the place of rendezvous, and the Stuart woman in
front of her audience. His strategy was simple, yet
effective.

When the lights dimmed for the second show,
Bailieu
reached casually under his watchband and
removed the bug. When the magician, in her glit
tering costume, appeared again, he rose and
dropped the listening device in a potted plant, then
left the room.

The bug would continue to broadcast sounds of the show in progress. Whoever was listening up
stairs would find nothing amiss. The man who followed him probably had no way of monitoring the listening device but would follow in any case, per
haps even hopeful of being led to the film itself.

As
Ballieu's
car turned out of the entrance to the
parking lot, his check of the rearview mirror picked
up another car pulling out. It showed no lights.
Ballieu grunted his satisfaction.

Everything was in readiness. The snares were
ready to spring. He was pleased he'd had the fore
sight to order the two well-built rifles with infrared
scopes. He was about to make his escape with the
film a great deal easier.

Sixteen

Channing entered the dressing room, dropped
the nesting silver boxes from the last number in her
act, and fanned the lapels of her hot jacket. She'd
seen
Ballieu
leave - - had been waiting subcon
sciously for him to make the move - - and her uneasiness was mounting. His timing had been too careful,
waiting till she'd come onstage. She threw down a
handful of coins that had been in her pocket. Damn.

She wasn't sure if it was logic or some gut feeling
that kept pushing at her. But she was sure she couldn't let Ellery take a chance he didn't have to
take. Decision made, she spun and almost collided
with
Serafin
. His arms were laden with a few of her more valuable props. His face went motionless with
speculation.

"
Serafin
- - "

" - - go stick with Wilbur. I know." He was at her
heels as she hit the hall. He hurried to keep pace
with her. "Sure you don't need me with you?"

His voice held a thread of worry. Berating herself that she'd let her anxiety show, Channing shook her
head.

"I don't expect to be too long. I'll just feel bet
ter - - "

" - - if I'm not alone. I know. Hey, Wilbur!" he
called in the same breath. They had reached the
lobby. The assistant manager was checking some
thing at the desk.

"Is there a rock shaped like a cat somewhere
around here?" Channing cut in as Wilbur started to
speak.

"Oh, you must mean Puma Rock. Out that way, about twenty minutes from here. Nice place to pic
nic when it's not too hot. Say, would you like to - - "

"How do you get there?"

Poor Wilbur looked crestfallen.

"It's that dead-end road off the main drag. Leads
right to it. But you're not going now - - "

"No, just out for a breath of air," said Channing,
already at the door. "See you later,
Serafin
."

She took two more almost normal steps before
breaking into a run toward her Jeep. A spare key
was fastened under the front bumper, held in place
by a catch it would take a Stuart's trained hand to
unfasten. Channing felt a seam at her shoulder rip
as she stooped for the key. A moment later she was
behind the wheel, spinning out toward the main
road.

The landscape she passed looked nothing like it
had in daytime. A few twisted trees reached up out of desolate
barenness
. Rock ledges carved by ero
sion called to mind a dead and abandoned planet.
Even the glitter of stars through the clear air didn't soften the sense of waste everywhere as Channing
shot by.

Her foot was too hard on the accelerator. She
knew it and thanked whatever force guided human affairs that she met no other traffic. Ghosts seemed to be in the Jeep with her. The one that had been
Tony and the one that could be Ellery. As different
as night and day, she thought: the one who was dead
no matter what she did; and the one who was part of
the here and now.

She missed the ruts leading off to the right until
she had passed them. Hitting her brakes, she
backed up, swung off onto the dead end, and killed
her lights. There was no hope of speed now. She crept along over rough terrain, glad for her sturdy Jeep. The track she was following twisted steeply
up, and so far there was nothing around that resem
bled a cat - - or a puma. In the darkness ahead, broken here and there by scrubby growth or a twisted
tree, she could barely make out the first shapes of a boulder field.

Suddenly her foot reached for the brake. She
could see the outline of a car to the side of the road.
Impossible to tell the color, or even the shape, but she thought it must be Ellery's to be this far back.

What if she'd endangered him by coming here?
The thought entered her mind for the first time.
What if her arrival called attention to him or dis
rupted whatever meeting was taking place?

Rundell
would have been the first to point out the
dangers of her impulsiveness, she thought bitterly.
Maybe this was a perfect example of why Ellery had
been leery of working with her. As she hesitated, hand hovering over the gearshift, torn between instinct and common sense, the darkness ahead split
open with the ominous cracks of a shooting gallery.

*
  
*
  
*

Ellery hit the ground and rolled as a dead tree
exploded just over his head. One of the particles
lodged in his eye. He rolled again, instinctively.

Night scopes, he thought as another volley of
shots ricocheted off the rock that was sheltering
him. They'd have to be using them to come this
close to hitting him. The shots were coming from
two directions. He'd walked into a trap.

He crawled on his belly, zigzagging, jerking back, and rolling again as the shots tried to track him. His only hope was to find a rock with a larger overhang
or to make his way out, the latter being very un
likely. He'd left the car too far away, figuring
Ballieu and whomever he was meeting would be here
already and parked closer in. Blinking the speck of
wood from his watering eye, he cursed his own fail
ure of judgment.

How the hell had they known he was there? He
wore rubber-soled running shoes. He'd moved
without making a sound. They had to be watching
for him... .

A shot
whanged
into the rock above him. No time
for thinking. He slithered and twisted, the pistol in his right hand useless.

He hit the side of the boulder he'd been aiming
for and found its contour smooth to the ground,
useless as shelter. If he died here, what would they
tell his mother and Reid? That he'd been some low-
level State Department researcher? The truth? No matter. Either way he'd go out in his family's eyes
with the same reputation he'd always had - - a fail
ure.

Ellery gritted his teeth. He wasn't going to fail.
He gathered his muscles for action and leapt toward
the shape of a tree.

A half instant later his overtaxed brain gave form
to a sound he'd heard but hadn't recognized, a car
engine bearing toward him. He saw it just as a vol
ley of shots from above turned in its direction, shat
tering what sounded like a headlight. It swerved as if one of the tires were hit, but then he realized that the swerving was deliberate. It was coming purposely but erratically into the mouth of the dead
end. The fire from above divided between him and
the new target.