Free Touch of Magic by M Ruth Myers Page B

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