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  The guard with the mustache, at a glance from Ballieu, also had trained his rifle on the woman who stood before them.

  "May I get a magnifying glass?" she asked.

  Ballieu almost smiled.

  "Here," he said, freezing her as she started to reach toward a pocket. "I have a glass."

  He extended the loupe he himself had used. She received it with her left hand, Ballieu noted. Her right hand reached for the film. Ballieu followed each small movement with his eyes.

  "Watch her hands!" he said sharply to the guard with the mustache. "She likes to make things disappear."

  He could hear her breathing. He looked at her face. Her eyes were dark and tried to draw his, but Ballieu, with an effort he found surprisingly hard, resisted. She was a consummate performer. He wanted to see the extent of her nerve.

  Her hand, with the loupe between thumb and second finger, dodged slightly out. The rifle in the guard's hand jumped at the movement. Ballieu felt his own reflex copy the motion. A second faster on her part and she would have been dead.

  Her hair shone around her like some aura of the powers she pretended to possess. Her eyes, as he glanced at them, held a strange and unsettling brilliance. Smoothly her hands began to move toward each other, the one with the loupe turning over, the one with the film giving an authoritative flick. She held the loupe over the film.

  "There," she said, offering both to him. "See the final stroke of the last letter? It's too large."

  Ballieu pretended to go along with her. He balanced both pistol and film in one hand and studied it closely. Accustomed to living with treachery for most of his life, he took the precaution of really inspecting the film, of moving his skilled engraver's eyes across the width of every stroke. Without comment he returned the film to its envelope and then to his pocket. He had seen no flaw.

  Suddenly the side of his gun hand smashed out against the side of the woman's face and sent her sprawling. He felt the release of pent-up tension. Again she had tried to make a fool of him, as she had from the very beginning. He had wanted to bed her.

  "Lies!" he spat. "All lies so you could get close enough to get one of our guns and free your boyfriend."

  Ellery had made a last desperate attempt to free himself, but a rifle butt in his belly had stopped him. He had struck his head. Still tied to the chair, he lay unconscious on the floor.

  Ballieu's straining ears picked up a sound.

  "Helicopter's coming," Max said, still flushed with anger but swaggering forward to reclaim his place as an equal.

  "We've no need of hostages now," said Ballieu, jerking his head toward the other Americans. "Shoot them."

  "Hey, now. That's no way to treat Billy." There was malice in the traitor's face. "He'd rather go out with a bang. The lady deserves to squirm a little too. She's got too good an opinion of herself. Let's just set this little firecracker for them."

  Removing the explosive charge once wired to the vault, he held it out.

  Ballieu looked impatiently back from confirming that the helicopter was the one he expected, not some sort of trouble arriving. The disposal of those left behind was of no consequence to him.

  "It's your neck if they get away," he said.

  The crooked American was crossing into Mexico with them. It had been a part of their deal. He planned to spin a story of being Ballieu's hostage, say he'd escaped, return to his position of trust. If he succeeded, Ballieu's organization might at some future date buy information from him.

  "Get away in ten minutes?" He snorted and knelt, resetting the timing mechanism and placing it at Ellery's head. "Old Billy's good with a bomb, but not that good. Especially with his hands tied. I want him to think of me while he's lying there feeling the seconds tick past."

  Max Hopkins's teeth glinted fanglike in the uneven light. He patted the man on the floor.

  "Guess we finally know which one of us was better, huh, Ellery? Remember me."

  He rose and snatched a rope from the hands of one of Ballieu's men, who was starting to tie the woman. She was struggling furiously.

  "That's too easy for her with the tricks she knows," he said. "There's a couple of straitjackets left in that closet where the scrub buckets are. Get one of those."

  He grinned.

  "Sorry, Channing. Guess I'm jealous. Thought you might take a shine to me."

  He played, an overgrown child indulging his feelings, thought Ballieu irritably. Feelings were the thing to master, the beginning of competency.

  For a brief time in the afternoon, he had almost forgotten that lesson. He had felt fear. He was starting to bleed from the rectum. Standing in the lavatory, no longer able to deny the fact that his life was leaking away, a fear of failure and weakness had welled up inside him. Then he had simply set it aside. He had reminded himself of his soldier's training, that he would think nothing of pushing on with blood seeping out from a wound in the leg or gut. Now he felt the film in his pocket, watched the jacket brought from the closet, and savored the taste of success.

  By the time Channing Stuart was strapped up like a madwoman, the jacket around her torso and ropes around her feet, the helicopter was landing. Pistol in one hand, assault rifle in the other, Henri Ballieu led the way to the rear of the aircraft.

  He waited until the door opened, then stuck the rifle barrel under the arm of the pilot who stepped out. A great breath of victory swelled him. He felt young and strong. He had accomplished a nearly impossible job. His name would be remembered.

  "We are a liberation army," he said proudly. "We will not hesitate to kill you. You will do exactly as we say. You will fly us to Mexico."

  Twenty-five

  All the nerves in Channing's body seemed to end and sputter inside her head as she heard her captors' footsteps fading away. She was bound and helpless and probably going to die, yet a single thought danced defiantly in her mind:

  She had succeeded.

  Neither her hand nor her nerve had failed. She had proved herself a Stuart. She had reclaimed her birthright.

  The pounding of her own head deafened her. Then she realized it was the time bomb ticking. She realized that exhaustion and panic had claimed her momentarily. Now she rallied against them.

  "Ellery!"

  He lay on his side, still unconscious.

  "Ellery!" she said more frantically.

  With her arms restrained as they were, she couldn't even pull herself across the floor. The straitjacket didn't leave her an elbow for getting a grip. And Ballieu's men had tied her ankles with the rope they didn't use on her hands.

  She rolled. The body of the woman who had once been her attacker lay directly in her path. Repulsed, and reliving the coldness with which Ballieu had killed, she steeled herself and went over.

  "Ellery!"

  As she nudged him, his eyes slowly opened. Outside, she could hear the sound of the departing helicopter.

  "You've got to get this unfastened!" she said, turning over to show the ties of the straitjacket. "Use your teeth. Use your tongue!"

  Everything in her background told her the ties would yield more easily than the ropes binding him. If he could just free her, she could get them both out of here.

  Twisting, she saw his eyes, still glazed, move toward the bomb. Nine minutes remained. He shook his head in an effort to clear it, then bit into her restraints.

  A moment later he rolled back in defeat.

  "It's no use, Channing. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Why'd you come?"

  "To switch the film -- remember?"

  As she spoke, she began to struggle rhythmically inside the jacket. In childhood she'd tried a few times to escape a jacket like this, but she'd never gotten adept. She had theory but no real practice. Desperation drove her.

  Ellery pushed wearily up on his elbows. His eyes were dark with things unsaid. And with the inevitability of the outcome here.

  "You almost made it," he said. "But we're not going to outrun this thing."

  Vain as it was, Chan
ning felt herself snap with indignation.

  "What do you mean, 'almost made it'? I did make it, Ellery -- if you mean switching the film."

  He blinked. He had started to work at his own bonds.

  "When?"

  She let a grin fly, even though her lips were bleeding from the way her teeth were grinding into them in concentration.

  "You were watching. Didn't you see?"

  She switched the method of her wriggling. The jacket seemed to be tightening, rather than loosening, around her. Ellery staggered to his feet.

  "I'm going to break down that door. I can slide the bomb down the hall with my belly."

  "No, dammit, Ellery! Don't try to be a hero! Even if you get through the door, there's an iron gate on the other side -- maybe fifteen feet farther. It'll be locked too."

  If he went, she knew he would never make it back. Tears were blurring her vision. For she knew that if she were going to die, she wanted it to be like this, half arguing with this particular man.

  "Please." The words almost stuck in her throat. "Stay with me, Ellery."

  For an instant he hesitated. His eyes held hers. With a lightning-quick, decisive motion he turned and kicked a chair to its side, then bottom side up. Straddling it, bearing down with his rope-bound hands, he tried to pry a leg loose from the metal strip that held it.

  The dial on the time bomb said eight minutes were left.

  * * *

  "Channing? Serafin? Open up! It's Oliver Lemming."

  Oliver pounded on the door some balding hotel lackey had pointed him to after no one answered in Channing's room. Oliver and his team had descended on the resort like demons, flashing credentials while their helicopter waited with its motor running. Each discovery had added more weight to that already crushing his shoulders. Walker dead. No sign of Max or Ellery. Channing vanished before her final show of the evening. What the hell had happened here? Was he too late to save any of them?

  The door opened and he saw the boy. Behind him stood a pinch-faced, elderly man he remembered from the house in Altadena.

  "What's happened here, son?" Oliver bent and dropped a hand on the boy's shoulder to convey the urgency he felt. "One of our men upstairs is dead. There's no sign of the others. Where's Channing?"

  For several seconds he thought the kid might hold out on him. There was something uncommon about his manner for one so young. And his eyes were strange. They'd been scanning Oliver's face as though it were some sort of book. Now they went distant. Dark. They gave an eerie impression of looking straight through Oliver, the walls, everything.

  "That old clinic," the boy said suddenly. "We found it this morning."

  "If Dr. Stuart's in trouble, you had flaming well better get her out," snapped the old man, hustling toward them.

  Oliver nodded. He spoke again to Serafin.

  "Can you show us the way?"

  One of the men who'd accompanied Oliver came huffing up from the lobby. He spoke in gasps. "The dogs needed walking. We gave them a turn through some shrubs by the pool. They went crazy. Found enough plastic explosive out there to blow this place sky-high when the trigger wore through!"

  Oliver's insides turned over. He set off for the stairs, not willing to chance the elevators. His concern was beyond the professional level. Had been all along, he realized. He cursed himself. He'd trade his own life for young Bill Ellery's. And Channing Stuart's.

  Something in the way she'd looked at Bill that first day had made Oliver hope she might not only do the job, but also prove a good match for Bill in more ways than one. Bill deserved that.

  Now, running, Oliver Lemming couldn't outrun the dread that the plan he'd conceived, which had seemed so reasonable at the outset, could be responsible for both their deaths.

  * * *

  "My father -- could get out of one of these -- in under two minutes."

  Channing fought and bunched at the straitjacket. Strands of hair had plastered themselves to her forehead. She seemed to have changed position inside the folds of canvas, but time was going to defeat her, Ellery thought. Four minutes remained on the clock.

  He pushed himself to continue his futile sawing at the ropes behind him by watching her face. No fear showed there, only fierce concentration. And a wounded professional pride, he recognized with a final amusement that choked as it passed over him. If he could just figure a way to get her out of this alive, then running second to Reid all his life would be okay. If he couldn't, his one prayer was that she'd still be this lost in concentration when the time ran out.

  "Another minute -- and I think I'll have it!" Channing said, panting.

  But Ellery saw the clock hands on the timer slip to three.

  When the bomb went off, it would take out this whole floor. Maybe more. He knew by the size of the charge wired to it. Savagely he bore down on the half-sawed rope that held him and heard it snap.

  He rubbed his wrists as he flung the loops off and rolled over on his belly. His hands felt numb. His fingers grasped the bomb expertly, and he felt its rhythm.

  In his mind he could see every wire and turn of its circuitry. He knew its intricacies. New as it was, he knew his fingers could probe and coax it apart. Except for one thing. This configuration of wires grew extremely sensitive to tampering as it approached the moment of detonation. They'd already crossed the margin of safety. If he tried to disarm it now, he could blow them both up.

  He spoke aloud the words that were in his mind.

  "It's too late."

  Channing had ceased her struggle, but now she resumed it. Ellery rolled to his feet.

  There was one particle of a chance remaining. He couldn't untie Channing's feet in time, and he couldn't carry her far enough, but maybe he could get the bomb out. Charging like a football player, he threw his weight against the locked door. The old wood splintered. Another hit, the shock waves traveling through his chest to his healing wound, and the door gave way.

  Two minutes. Racing back, he jerked over Khadija's body and grabbed the pistol he'd seen at her waist. With his hands tied, it had been useless. Maybe not now.

  "Roll into the vault. Pull the door closed behind you," he ordered.

  Carefully, as slowly as he dared, he picked up the bomb in his left hand, held firmly at his fingertips. Maximum shock absorption. Keep it as isolated as possible from his body's movements.

  "Like hell I'll hide -- " began Channing, still writhing inside her straitjacket.

  "Roll!" he shouted.

  Ignoring the sweat that wanted to pour from him, and moving as cautiously as possible, Ellery moved across the room and through the open door. If Channing survived, she could put out the word on Max. If she survived, she could tell Oliver the film had been switched.

  The iron gate loomed in front of him. Channing was right. It had been locked. He stepped back and fired at the lock, braced mentally for a larger explosion.

  There was only silence, and the ticking of the bomb in his hand. He dared not look at its timer now. Dared not even think. The corridor ahead of him seemed endless. There was a window at the end.

  Ellery had the sensation of someone else, not him at all, walking down the empty hall. The someone else tried to move with speed but was hampered by the need for caution. His limbs were made leaden by the burden suspended ahead of him.

  Ellery knew that the someone who planted his feet so carefully was moving toward his death. Yet he moved with determination. What would it be like, the end, when it came?

  Channing's hair, and a picture of her hands as they moved, came to him. The freckles that sprinkled her forearms. The way she liked to roll her sleeves.

  She'd been right. Nothing ever really vanished. Almost from the first, no matter how he'd struggled against it, the desire to risk facing what he felt for her had been there.

  He had reached the window. There were iron bars over it. Calmly, detached now from the seconds trickling out to make way for a roaring, instantaneous death, he shoved the butt of the pistol he still held throug
h the bars and smashed the glass.

  Nervelessly he let his left arm slide into night air and dropped the bomb. He watched it hit the dark waters of the swimming pool below and sink.

  Dazed, he brought his attention up to the window in front of him and moved back a step. He was alive. Breathing raggedly, he retreated another step, another step, still staring at the window with a sense of doom.

  Then the explosion hit.

  The force of it flung him down the corridor. He felt himself hit the floor. Part of the ceiling fell. Debris bombarded his shoulders, his legs, as he brought his arms up to protect his head.

  At last there was only dust settling. He heard sound first, the slapping of a helicopter coming in. Almost afraid to look, he raised his shoulders. He turned his head toward the room where they'd been imprisoned.

  She stood in the doorway.

  Free of the straitjacket.

  "I told you I could get out in another minute," she said.

  Twenty-six

  "...and the king of hearts is upside down."

  Channing concluded her trick and sat back in her chair in the Magic Castle. It was a private club, a hangout for professional magicians where she'd spent many an evening with Gramps once she was old enough to be admitted. Some of the men who sat at the table with her, or stood making approving sounds around it in the gracious old upstairs bar, had known her forever and welcomed her back like a prodigal. To others she had been introduced as the Great Sebastian's granddaughter. Everyone seemed to know she'd just finished a two-week run of her own at Palacio Sol.

  Two weeks, she thought. Incredible that she'd stayed and finished it like a real engagement. But she'd had nothing better to do, and performing after all these years had been like a tonic.

  "That was Yussuf Bashim's trick," someone said as she gathered the cards.

  Her smile was faint but steady.

  "Yes. He left it to me."

  They didn't know about Yussuf. They never would. And the part of him that had been good, the part of him that had been their valued colleague, would live on through her each time she performed this effect with the cards.