A flicker of hope warmed Peter's breast. Perhaps she had landed a fat one. Perhaps his alarm was premature; she might want nothing but a drink, a toast to the old days. But Pepe's next words doused this feeble flame like a jet of ice water.
"But he's not used to paying for them, I think."
"Listen carefully. They may ask you if I called. Say no. If they offer you money, I'll go one thousand pesetas over their best offer. Okay?"
"That's not necessary, Senor Churchman."
"I don't want our friendship to work a hardship on you."
"If you put it in those terms, I can only accept. Thank you."
Peter left his office and hurried to the bar. Greetings sailed towards him from a half-dozen tables; invitations for elevenses; for golf; for fishing. Peter's presence turned on smiles; in six years he had become a popular fixture in the life of the village.
He called Mario to the end of the bar and showed him the letter from Angela.
"Who brought this?"
"A man, a Frenchman."
"Tell me about him, Mario," Peter said, and the urgency in his tone brought a co-operative frown to Mario's plump face.
"He's tall not as tall as you though and slender. He walks well. He may have been an officer. He's about forty. Dark hair, quite handsome. He wore a blazer, flannel slacks. His manners are good, but I have an impression Mario rocked a hand judiciously 'that he acquired them by observing. Not at home. Not at school."
Peter matched Mario's description against various index cards in his mind, and drew blanks. Someone new then. Not Bendell. Not Canalli.
Not the Irishman.
Wearily he said, "Please give me a double vodka, Mario."
Mario raised his eyebrows. "Is something wrong?"
"Now whatever gave you that idea?"
Peter drummed his fingers on the bar. Mario shrugged and poured him a double vodka.
CHAPTER TWO
In a sense Francois Morel's eyes were the best of his features; insolent, greedy, but frankly so; the rest might have been made in a factory. When he put on sun-glasses to join the woman sunning herself on the terrace of their suite, his face became a brownly neutral oblong, devoid of weakness, strength, or character of any kind at all.
"You talked to the desk clerk?" asked Angela, without opening her eyes. She wore a bikini and shimmering layers of sun lotion.
"Twice. He says he doesn't even know Peter Churchman."
"Did you offer him money?"
"Of course." Francois sat on the lounge beside Angela. "You said Peter Churchman would come flying to your side. So?"
"So! Most men would. But he's not like most men."
She turned on to her back. Under a cap of metallic black hair, Angela's features were unpleasantly hard and sharp, but, at thirty-five, her body was still tiny and exquisite; when she twisted to a more comfortable position, the movements hollowed out a shining concavity between her ribs and her loins, and caused the muscles in her thighs to tremble like silken cords being gently agitated beneath a satin coverlet.
This excellence was a memorial, in a sense, to an aesthetic father who had worshipped her doll-like fragility, and had embedded in her unconscious the compulsions to preserve it. But none of his gentle injunctions and rebukes and denials had been able to preserve her face.
Once it had been as smooth and pretty as the surface of a pond fed by healthy springs; but then, it seemed, the springs had dried up and the water had become streaked and marred by things from the depths that were forcing themselves to the surface.
This was an irony she had lost the capacity to savour. For many years Angela had been amused by the contrast between certain of her needs, and the shell-like forehead and discreetly masked eyes which hid them from the world. But she was no longer amused by this, for the thing inside her was no longer concealed from view; each year it became more obvious, more recognisable, boldly peering from eyes, lurking insolently at the corners of her mouth. One day the bitch thing would claw through to the surface, to mock at the world it hated through her eyes, to deride it with her lips."
Life would not be pleasant for the old witch she would eventually turn into, Angela knew; it would, in fact, be sheer, bloody hell, unless she were financially secure. She could not, as a result of her father's training, ask favours of people; to beg or wheedle caused pains in her head and stomach that were beyond enduring. For several years now the only thing that could brighten her eye or excite her senses was the prospect of money.
Francois took her hand, squeezed it gently. "We need Peter Churchman, my dear."
She opened her eyes and studied him gravely. "You're overdressed."
"Am I?"
"Yes. You've dyed your hair. Lost thirty pounds. Put lifts in your shoes. But you still hang yourself like a Christmas tree."
Francois removed his glasses and studied what he was wearing, puzzled: brown suede shoes, light flannel slacks, a blue blazer, snowy white shirt, a blue cravat; wrist watch, a silver ID bracelet, an opal ring.
"I think I'm dressed quite well."
"You are not."
"Don't be unpleasant, darling."
"I'm being instructive."
"It's the same thing really."
Angela sighed. "All right. Peter will come here, don't worry. I want you to remember something. He can fool you with his manner. He makes jokes and appears to take things lightly. He flew with the RAF. before the United States came into the war. I think he enjoys playing the silly ass; it's something he must have picked up from the British. But I want you to keep this in mind: He is the most dangerous man I ever knew."
"All women say that about their ex-lovers. It gives dead affairs significance."
"I'd hardly say that about you, Francois."
"I'm not dangerous?"
"No."
"Please don't be unpleasant again, dear. Or instructive."
"You're only dangerous because you're without any concept of loyalty."
He was still holding her hand. Smiling, he bent it slowly down towards the fleshy part of her forearm. She turned her head aside and closed her eyes. The tendons in her throat stood out.
"Well?"
She was silent.
"Well?"
The ugly conflict lasted no more than a minute "Stop it," she said quietly.
"And?"
"Please." The word sounded small and cramped, as if it had been squeezed out of shape by the straining cords in her throat.
"Of course. I don't like being childish, darling. But instruction exasperates me."
She let out her breath slowly, but didn't open her eyes.
"All right, forget the instructions. Forget everything, Francois, except that our lives depend on Peter Churchman. And that he is dangerous. We are going to make him do something that he will not want to do. We'll have a tiger on our leash, not a tabby cat."
He smiled. "I commanded a company in Algeria. One man is very much like another, I discovered; their breaking points are simply in different places."
The phone in the suite rang. Angela hurried to answer it.
"Peter, darling!" she cried joyously. "How wonderful to hear your voice again. Do come right up."
***
"Angela, how delightful." Peter kissed her cheek. "How marvelous!" He kissed her other cheek, held her at arm's length, beamed at her. "You found it! You must have! That fountain Senor de Leon was hunting for." He smiled at Francois. "Ponce, of course?" Stop it, he thought, with a flutter of panic. Only fools giggle on cracked ice.
"Angela, I mean it! You look wonderful. You haven't changed a bit."
"It's nice to hear, even if it isn't true. And this is Francois Morel. Francois, Peter Churchman."
"Can I get you a drink?" Francois asked him.
"Fine idea. Orange juice?"
"I'll ring down for it."
"Oh never mind. Just a glass of vodka
"A glass?"
"Yes, old man. With one ice cube."
In the sunny, expensively
cluttered suite, Peter felt as if he were walking a tightrope across a crocodile-infested gorge. The sea beyond the terrace winked with a thousand sunny lights, and fishing boats skimmed like white birds against the blue horizon. Angela and Francois looked rich and comfortable. Handsome luggage stood about everywhere.
A carton of cigarettes, a tin of caviare, a mink-lined raincoat were heaped cosily in the lap of a chair. A bottle of Moet et Chandon and a pair of evening slippers with rhinestone heels stood on a portable record player.
They were on the wing! Relief flooded through him, warming the cold knot of anxiety in his stomach. Smiling widely he accepted a glass from Francois.
"Now look. Am I going to be able to give you lunch? Or dinner? I imagine you're just passing through, but still and all-'
He trailed off. Angela was watching him with an odd little smile. "No, we're staying on, Peter," she said.
"Grand," he said, and drained the glass of vodka.
They were both smiling at him, he realised; appraisingly, confidently.
"Another drink?"
"Thanks, Francois. Thanks very much."
Near the windows of the terrace stood a motion picture screen; a projector faced it from a table a dozen feet away. Somehow, their presence seemed ominous. Peter distrusted the incongruous, for he knew from experience how simple it was to trick people with unexpected juxtapositions of ideas or objects. All his antennae were quivering now, reading the winds for danger. He knew his alarm had been justified; the warm, fragrant air fairly cracked with tension.
Francois gave him a fresh drink and Angela settled herself comfortably on a lemon-coloured lounge. She wore a white linen beach coat, with a blue sash at the waist. As she crossed her legs, and allowed her body to compose itself gracefully on the pillows, Peter noted that the claws of time had been greedily at work on her features. Basic Angela was showing through, no doubt of it; the cupidity and corruption that had lain in wait so long and patiently under the creamy-white flesh was becoming bolder with the years, blurring and coarsening the rosy features, whose blandness and innocence had once prompted people to exclaim at the appropriateness of her given name, Angela.
"Peter, is this something new
"What's that?"
"You didn't used to drink in the daytime."
"Oh. Well, just the odd sherry now and then."
"Would you prefer sherry?" Francois asked with a smile.
"No, this is fine."
Angela sighed. "Peter, this isn't going to be pleasant. So I might as well get on with it. We need your help."
"Things have been going rather well for me, as a matter of fact," Peter said, although he realised bleakly it wasn't money they wanted; he was stalling in a largely futile effort to gird himself for what was coming. "How much do you need?"
"This isn't a touch," Angela said. "You knew that, of course."
"All right. What is it?"
"We need your help to rob a bank, Peter."
"Ha, ha. Very good," he said.
"Peter, dear. I wasn't trying to be funny That was suddenly quite obvious to Peter. He managed a smile. "I presume you mean you'd like some advice. A few pointers. Very well. In the first place, I strongly recommend that you forget it. Put it right out of your mind."
Angela smiled. Excitement glittered deep in her eyes. "We don't want advice, Peter. We want much more than that." She drew her fingernails slowly across her bare knee-cap where they left marks like tiny ski-trails on the snowy flesh, and, Peter recalled, with a premonitory pang, that the only times Angela savoured such perverse stimuli was when she held all the aces in the game.
He began pacing. The Frenchman smiled at Angela, who was watching Peter with the same clinical interest she might have accorded an insect struggling on a pin. "We want you to plan the job," she said, quite amiably. "We want you to tell us who and what we'll need. The timetable, the execution, will all be in your hands. And of course, Peter dear, we want you to lead us, to lead us as brilliantly and fearlessly as you did she began to smile with excitement 'in those days when you were known to Scotland Yard, to the Surete, to Interpol but only as that shadowy menace, the Black Dove."
"Angela, you were never intelligent," Peter said. "But neither were you stupid."
"There's nothing to worry about. I've told Francois all about you."
"And I am as the grave," Francois said with a bow, a smile.
Peter looked steadily at Angela. "I didn't believe you could be this stupid. This foolish."
"I'm not foolish, Peter. I'm very serious."
"We are deadly serious," Francois said. "You can save a lot of time and trouble if you remember that."
Peter was still staring at Angela.
"Did you hear me?" asked Francois, a touch of colour in his cheeks.
"I heard you," Peter said, without looking at him. "Now please shut up. I think, on what I admit may be insufficient evidence, that you're a tiresome person. Angela, you've done a stupid thing coming here. A phase of our lives ended ten years ago. For you and me, for Bendell, for the Irishman, for Canalli. Each of us accomplished what we set out to. And we agreed to give it up. We agreed never to meet again. To keep away from one another, to put oceans between us. We've been lucky. But the police have a substitute for luck patience. They can wait, sipping hot coffee in their dusty offices, until someone makes a mistake. And you may have just made that mistake."
"You got what you wanted," Angela said stonily. "But I didn't."
"My God, you had millions."
"It's gone. I gambled. I made bad investments."
Peter glanced briefly at Francois. "Yes, I see."
"I don't mind your being unpleasant," Francois said. "It may be the other way round soon. Let me remind you again, we are deadly serious."
"And so am I. Let me repeat: My answer is no."
Francois looked surprised. "You don't want to know the details? The amount of money involved?"
"I most certainly do not. Angela, I won't insist on squatters' rights to Spain. Since you are here, I shall leave. That will reduce the danger to both of us. I shall come back in a month or so. In my absence, I trust you will do the decent thing and go elsewhere. Far elsewhere."
He gave them unsmiling nods and turned resolutely towards the door. As his hand touched the knob, he heard what he knew he would hear, Angela's voice: "Peter dear, don't go just yet. I want to show you something."
Of course, he thought hopelessly, she would be holding aces.
"I'm rather rushed for time."
"This won't take long. Francois, draw the curtains."
The room became dim. Peter squared his shoulders: The darkness seemed to him a symbolic blindfold, the initial formality accompanying his execution.
"Would you like to sit beside me, Peter?"
"I'm quite comfortable, thank you."
"You once liked to stroke my ankles. Remember? It amused you that you could circle them with your thumb and forefinger." In the gloom her teeth flashed in a smile. "And you said once that my body must have been created by magicians and glassblowers."
"A pretty speech," Francois said judiciously.
Peter stood mute, thinking black thoughts. He had come through, but only to this: to be baited by jackals.
Francois turned on the projector and the screen flickered to life.
The scene that came imperfectly to view was vaguely familiar to Peter: a wide and busy avenue in a large city; pedestrians hurrying along sidewalks; policemen at intersections stopping and starting thick sluggish lanes of traffic; a slanting rain falling over everything.
Francois made an adjustment; the images became sharper.
"Now that's much better," Angela said. "I was sure my films weren't so poor. Do you remember this, Peter?"
"Indeed I do." He smiled faintly. "Lisbon, isn't it?"
"Of course."
They looked at a large and formidable building, with barred doors and massive intricacies of ironwork guarding its windows. Near the doors, set into th
e stone walls, was a sturdy bronze plaque; the letters on its surface were obscured by the fuming rain.
"Can you read what it says, Peter?"
"I don't need to." He experienced a pang of nostalgia, as he recalled the challenge of this fortress; the problems it had presented; the risks it had involved; and the rewards it had given them in the end.
"September, 1958, wasn't it? The Banco Commerciale?"
"But of course."
"How brave we were-"
"You were brave, Peter. The rest of us followed like trusting children. But look. The fun starts."
They were inside the bank. In the gloom the steel doors of the vaults gleamed like an altar in a cathedral raised to Mammon. God, how formidable, Peter thought, as he studied the cone of light that surrounded the vaults. Four figures appeared abruptly, against this wall of illumination. Peter's excitement mounted; the figures became clearer as they crept stealthily towards the vaults.
"Easy now," he said quietly.
As it had been then, so it was now; tension pulled painfully at the muscles of his back while he watched the four men commence their work on the doors of the vaults.
Their figures became larger; their faces dominated the screen.
"Oh, how I loved to watch you work," Angela said. "I'm practically looking over your shoulders now."
"Don't come any closer," Peter said tensely; he was lost in time now.
"I had nothing to do on that job. So I took these pictures."
She had got the action wonderfully. There was the Irishman, lean and functional as a whip, examining the surface of the vault as an artist might a palette, wielding braces and drills like delicate brushes.
While Bendell and Canalli poured liquids into test tubes, drop by drop, watching the rising vapours with narrowing eyes, their faces graven as master chefs.
Good old Bendell, Peter thought fondly. Forever worrying about trifles. Had the rain spoiled his new hat? Where were his cough drops? Did anyone remember to tip the cab driver last night? And Canalli!
With the face of a gargoyle and the strength of a bull, forever in love, forever forsaken, forever forgiving. Taking the children of his mistresses for walks while the women entertained slim, boyish men who stole their money. Ah dear!
The Caper of the Golden Bulls Page 2