"I said shut up."
A roar like a mighty wave washed over the plaza. From the balconies, floodlights swept across the crowds in the streets, cutting so swiftly and blindingly through the darkness, and in such intricate and dazzling patterns, that the effect was as fantastic and impressive as great swords swinging in the hands of giants.
Everyone was standing, climbing on to chairs and tables.
To a roaring drumbeat, the Virgins of Spain were entering the Plaza del Castillo, borne on massive and dazzlingly decorated floats by hundreds of proud attendants.
Angela stood on tiptoe, straining to see, and the glitter in her eyes was no less vivid than the blaze of the jewels on the arms and throats of the Virgins.
Each float was surrounded by a cordon of police and soldiers. When the platforms dipped and swayed with the rhythmically lurching strides of the men supporting them, the motion caused sparkling eruptions from the gems and jewels hung about the statues of the Virgins.
Everyone was cheering. In stately sequence, and to mounting applause, the serenely expressionless statues were carried about the square, bathed in brilliance from the spotlights. The Blue Tears of Santa Eulalia, gleaming at the throat of the Virgin of Granada, earned an ovation. They were followed by the Golden Oars of Navarre, the Silver Slippers of Saint Peter, and the Tears of Christ incredible rubies supported on golden pilasters. Then a gasp of admiration swept the plaza like a sudden gale, as the Diamond Flutes of Carlos and the Countess of Altamira's Net and Trident of diamonds were borne into the square.
Peter studied them thoughtfully. Angela's eyes were on fire.
The Flutes of Carlos were not musical instruments, but exquisite silver columns whose miniature Doric capitals were studded with square-cut diamonds. There were three of these, each eleven inches long, and each worth, Peter estimated, about a million dollars on the fence market, and perhaps three times that if it were possible to sell them honourably over the counters of Cartier's or Tiffany's.
The pliable gold mesh which secured the Net of Diamonds was hung like a wedding veil on the smooth plaster brow of the Virgin of Seville. In her arms was the Trident of Diamonds. The Trident symbolised the Holy Trinity of the Catholic faith, and each of its tines was capped by a diamond, of a size and perfection, chosen, it was understood, to represent the relative status of the personages of the Divine Triumvirate. The Father's was the largest; the Son's was next in size, while the Holy Ghost's was the smallest of the three, but any one of them, Peter thought, was big enough to use as a doorstop.
Theologians had explained these disparities in size variously; some held that the Divine Spirit, being pure essence, was best served and symbolised by the smallest stone; others insisted that the difference was seeming, not real, since all material riches were the same, i.e. nothing, in the eyes of the Lord; a modern view had it that the overshadowing of the Son by the Father was apostate and Oedipal; but another camp (the syndicalists) argued that the Son and Spirit (Worker, Union) were conclusively greater than the Father (the State), and while this was interesting in theory, its application in the area of practical politics had landed quite a few people in jail. A waiter touched Peter's arm. "A note for you, senor."
Peter read it and frowned. Francois was watching him. "Who gave you this?" Peter asked the waiter.
"A man. Over there." He waved with a suggestion of total frustration and impotence towards masses of people on the opposite side of the terrace. "Over there. A man."
Peter saw no one he recognised. He put the note in his pocket.
"Excuse me," he said to Angela. To Francois, he said, "Same time tomorrow morning. Don't be late."
Then he hurried off. But as he fought his way through the crowds in the plaza." someone hailed him by name. "Peter. I knew I'd come across you. What wonderful luck!" Antonio Gonzalez y'Najera, the policeman of their village, smiled broadly and pounded Peter's shoulders with rough affection.
"I asked for you at the Administration of Police. I thought you would call on them."
"I've been busy, Antonio. What the devil are you doing in Pamplona?"
"I am guarding, if you will forgive my using an important word for an unnecessary task, I am guarding our Virgin's trinkets. Here she comes now. Bringing up the rear, with hardly a thousand pesetas' worth of finery on her poor head." The small float which supported the Virgin of Santa Maria was brilliant with flowers. There were wild poppies, marguerite daisies, tiny blue iris, mimosa, carnations, and roses.
Sprays of jasmine, the tiny trumpet blossoms waxen and fragrant, formed a double border around the float.
In the arms of the Virgin was a bouquet of white roses. In her simplicity and dignity, it seemed to Peter that she represented something of Spain that was not quite reflected in the opulence of her grand sisters. The applause for her was warm and affectionate. "She's getting quite a hand, Antonio."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Listen to the applause."
The policeman dismissed it with a shrug. "It's a sentimental response. Patronising and contented. It's like the millionaire on the terrace of his villa smiling wistfully at the fishermen toiling below him on the beach. Ah, how he envies them! Such purity and innocence! But in his heart he is very glad not to be burdened with such innocence. Let's have some wine, Peter."
"I've got to meet someone. How about to-morrow?"
"I'll look for you."
***
The hotel, the Aguilar, was in the new quarter of the city. Peter rode to the third floor in an elevator, hurried along a clean, carpeted corridor, rapped on a door. It was opened by Morgan.
"Oh, Peter, I knew you'd come. I knew you wouldn't desert me."
"What kind of trouble have you got yourself into?"
"The very worst kind, Peter." Morgan's sigh caused his stomach to swell out like a sail in a great wind. "The very worst!"
"Your note said someone was trying to kill you. Is that on the level?"
He walked into the room. Morgan stepped aside and closed the door.
Something hard prodded Peter's spine.
From behind him Blake said: "Take it nice and easy now. If you think this is a gun, go to the head of the class."
Tonelli appeared in the doorway of the adjoining bedroom.
"Hello, Mr. Churchman," he said with a faint smile. He held a forty-five automatic in his right hand with a suggestion of familiarity and competence. "As my pal suggested, take it nice and easy. You're going to be our guest for a couple of days."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In Grace's room, Francois looked bitterly at Angela. "It's not* puzzling to me, not in the least. He's run out on us. I think that should be clear enough by now."
"You may be right. But it isn't like him."
"You're both talking like fools," Grace said. "You know Peter wouldn't quit. Something's happened to him."
"Yes, of course," Francois said, in a voice suddenly high and rigid with emotion. "And I'll tell you what it was. He knew I was on to him."
Grace looked helplessly at the walkie-talkie she still held in her hand. It was a mute link to Peter, an earnest token of her faith in him, and she hadn't been able to put it aside. But hours had gone by and there was no word from him. Not a whisper.
"Oh, damn him," Angela said, more in weariness than anger. "Even if he came back, it wouldn't matter. We missed our chance today."
Francois had been looking intently at Grace.
"Now listen: He received a note in the Castillo last night. It disturbed him. Or he meant me to think it disturbed him. I don't know which. What do you know about it?"
"Why, nothing at all," Grace said.
"You're quite sure?"
"Of course."
Francois smiled faintly. "You're getting nothing from this? And neither is Peter? The risk, the danger, are all debts owed to honour, eh? Well, I doubt it very much."
"What do you think?" Angela asked him.
"Perhaps they want the diamonds for themselves "Oh, you're an idiot,"
Grace said. "We're wasting time. We've got to go out and look for him. He may be lying unconscious in a hospital, or in jail."
"Yes," Francois said drily. "And while we run about the town searching for him, what will he be up to?" He smiled. "No, I don't like that idea. So unless you tell me the truth, I am going to do something very unpleasant to you." Still smiling, he explained the details of techniques he had seen employed on stubborn natives in Algeria, and when he had finished, Grace, who was rather pale by then, said, "Well, I shouldn't like that at all. It sounds most disagreeable."
"Then be intelligent. Co-operate with us."
"Very well. I'm an awful coward about things like that. Peter said if anything unexpected happened I was to give you two things." Grace picked up a copy of the magazine Espana from a coffee table and gave it to Angela. "This was one of them."
"Did he tell you what I was to look for?"
"He said that you would know."
"And the second thing?"
"It's here on the dresser." Grace's slim, dark skirt whispered lightly as she hurried across the room. Sunlight the colour of ripe lemons gleamed brightly on the white bow of her throat and lent a pale liquid sheen to her nylons. She fumbled with combs and brushes, and then pulled open a drawer with a suggestion of haste and desperation.
But when she found what she wanted, and spun around to face them, her eyes were cold, and something small and deadly glittered in her hand.
It was a twenty-five calibre automatic, decorated with mother-of-pearl handgrips.
She said quietly: "This throws high and to the right. Francois, if you take another step towards me, I'll aim for the: middle of your left thigh. I'm a good enough shot to put a very painful cloud over your technical qualifications to manhood."
Francois seemed to be trying to smile, but he only succeeded in flattening his lips, for the steady blue shine of the muzzle was not less unnerving than the light in Grace's eyes.
Angela threw the magazine on the floor and stamped on it.
Grace picked up the telephone. When the operator answered, she gave her a number in rapid Spanish… Peter watched the first fragile lights of dawn rising on the horizon. It was Sunday morning, and in a few more hours the bulls would be running for the last time in this fiesta of San Fermin.
***
It was all over now… He and Morgan shared a sofa. Tonelli sat facing them with a gun in his hand. He looked alert and wary, despite the long vigil, but he also wore a 'sportsman's' ring, and cords knotted with a jewelled clasp in lieu of a tie, and Peter could not believe he was a serious man. Blake stood at a table against the wall making himself a drink. He was the hairy one, with the bunched-up features, the head pointed like an artillery projectile, the fingers like bananas.
"Peter, I'm dreadfully sorry," Morgan said, for perhaps the fiftieth time.
"Knock it off, Fatso," Blake said.
"I was merely trying to explain that if Quince hadn't taken such a conservative view of things, we might-"
"Okay, okay," Tonelli said, cutting him off irritably.
***
It was still dark outside and through the darkness came occasional flashes of fireworks like heat lightning, and on the air drifted the muffled sounds of marching bands and pounding drums. But the fiesta of San Fermin was drawing to a close; tomorrow's bullfight would end it.
And already the hikers were buying bread and sausage and wine for their rucksacks, and charting courses north and south through gorges with rushing green streams that would take them on to Biarritz or Madrid.
Tomorrow the roads fanning out from Pamplona would be clogged with cars and motor-cycles, and in the strange silence that would settle in their wake, the Basques would reclaim their old town, reclaim their tables in the cafes, and by nightfall the debris of the fiesta would be sluiced away by watering trucks, and nothing would be left of these explosions of emotion and hilarity but clean, damp streets shining under the old stars.
***
It was all over for San Fermin and Pamplona, all over for Peter Churchman. The most audacious undertaking of his career, and perhaps the most honourable, had been smashed by these improbably authentic hoodlums, who had forced him to call Mr. Shahari and ask him to bring twenty-five thousand dollars to Pamplona. Shahari had been dubious at first, but friendship had prevailed at last; he had agreed to take the risk, to accept the possibility of being put out of business and into prison by the Spanish government, which allowed him to deal in money in the south for the sake of the tourists, but which sternly forbade him to set a foot farther north than the town of Granada.
Tonelli glanced at his watch. "You're sure you can trust this guy, Shahari?"
"He's a reliable person," Peter said.
"You'd better pray he shows," Blake said.
"May I wash my hands?" Peter asked a bit later.
"You just did," Blake said irritably.
"It's nerves, I expect."
"Come on."
Peter walked to the bathroom with Blake's gun at his back. He turned on both taps in the hand-basin, and, with but little hope, took the walkie-talkie from his pocket and tried to raise Grace. They hadn't found the set when they searched him; it had been concealed and padded by a handkerchief in the rear pocket of his trousers. But it might have been at the bottom of the sea for all the good it had done him.
But even so, there was a lonely consolation in her silence.
For it was Peter's fervent hope that she had prudently packed up and cleared out of town. He whispered her name twice but the speaker remained silent. With a sigh, he put the walkie-talkie away and returned to the living-room.
"Peter, they said you were a lawyer, and I had an uneasy feeling about lawyers at the time."
"That's all right. It doesn't matter."
The phone rang and Blake picked up the receiver. After listening for a second, his expression sharpened and he glanced at Tonelli. "It's the desk clerk. He says what's-his-name's in the lobby. Shahari. But he wants to talk to Churchman."
"Okay," Tonelli said to Peter. "Tell him to come up. Don't put any English on it. Just get him up here."
Peter rose and took the phone from Blake, who moved behind him and put a gun against his spine.
Peter said, "Mr. Shahari?"
"Yes, Peter." It was a low and pleasant voice, pitched just above a whisper. Peter felt his heart lurch abruptly. If he were a camel, he thought, with a dizzying irrelevance, he would now be lying flat with a broken back; for this was the last straw.
"Well, hello," he said.
"Darling, can you talk?" Grace said softly.
"As a matter of fact, I can't."
Blake's gun dug into his back. "Cut the chatter "Excuse me a second." Peter covered the phone and looked evenly at Tonelli and Blake. "If you don't want to blow this deal sky-high, you'd better listen. He's got the wind up. He wants me to meet him in the lobby. Alone. You heard me tell him I can't. I'd better explain I'm not dressed. Anything. But let me talk to him. Perhaps I can calm him down."
They exchanged dubious glances, but before they reached a decision, Peter spoke again into the phone. "As a matter of fact, Mr. Shahari, I just stepped out of the shower. Why don't you come on up?"
"Do you mean that?"
"Oh, no," Peter said smiling.
"I understand," Grace whispered rapidly. "I called Mr. Shahari yesterday. I thought you might have needed tools or equipment. It was all I could think of. He told me what you'd asked him to do, where he was meeting you. How many are there?"
"Oh, two, I should say."
"Keep on talking."
"Well, I'm sorry I put you to so much trouble." Peter winked at Tonelli and Blake, who were watching him with uncertain frowns. "Excuse me a second." He covered the phone. "This is better. He's explaining the difficulties he had raising the money."
"Then get him up here," Tonelli said sharply.
"I'm trying my best. But he doesn't like doing business this way. He prefers a cafe or restaurant." Peter spoke
to Grace. "Well, all's well that ends well. You have the money?"
"Peter, Mr. Shahari's not coming. I told him not to. Was that all right?"
"Why, that's fine."
"Don't be angry, but I did something else."
"Really?"
"Yes. I - I called Mr. Bendell and the Irishman. They're here."
"Now that was enterprising of you. I wouldn't have thought of it. Or even considered it, as you must realise."
"Please, darling. I had no choice. I knew what was at stake. And they wanted to help. They blasted yesterday morning. We can reach the vault on schedule."
"Well, god dammit Peter said weakly.
Blake's gun dug into his spine. "No more chatter. If he doesn't want to come up, I'm going down and get him."
"Good," Peter said into the phone. "I'll expect you right away."
He dropped the receiver into its cradle, and rubbed his hands together briskly. Now a humble submission to the designs of fate seemed in order.
"Listen carefully," he said to Tonelli and Blake. "I'll explain to Mr. Shahari that you are business associates of mine. So put those guns out of sight and button your jackets. I want you to look as proper as possible."
Seemingly mesmerised by his crisp injunctions, Tonelli and blake stuffed their guns into their belts and buttoned their jackets over them. "But how about Fatso?"
"That's all right. Mr. Shahari knows Morgan."
Peter hesitated an instant, frowning indecisively. Then he thought, to hell with the Irishman, let him find his own fun, and with that decision firmly and unalterably in mind, Peter kicked Tonelli in the stomach, and struck Blake across the jugular with a cutting chop of his hand.
There was a discreet tap on the door.
Peter took no chances with Blake. He pumped three rights into his stomach, and these made it imperative for Blake to breathe, but the damage to his throat made it difficult for him to do so; the combination of conflicting interests caused him to sink to the floor, trying earnestly to stay alive until he could get some air into his lungs. Tonelli was well out of it.
The Caper of the Golden Bulls Page 14