The Caper of the Golden Bulls

by William P. McGivern

  And at that instant there was a sudden crack deep inside the foot-thick layers of steel, and the chrome steel linkages grudgingly released their hold on bolts and tumblers.

  The door swung open, and Francois was inside the vault with two long strides.

  "Go now," Peter said to Bendell and the Irishman.

  "Oh, God bless you, Peter," the Irishman said, sucking air deep into his lungs.

  "Go, for the love of God, go!"

  They wrung his hands, scooped up their jackets, and raced through the gloom towards the stairs which led to the basement. Francois hurried from the vault with the Diamond Flutes of Carlos, and, in the dark light, it looked as if he were holding cylinders of frozen Gre in his arms. Peter placed them on the length of chamois cloth and marvelled at their purity; there was something sacred in their flawless beauty, and he knew then as he had known all along that the price he must pay for this sacrilege would bankrupt his soul.

  He placed the Net and the Trident of diamonds beside the Flutes of Carlos, and flipped the cloth about them, concealing their brilliance in a flexible tube of chamois that was about five inches thick and three feet long.

  Then he looked sharply towards the front of the bank and saw the shadow of the Cabezuda, monstrous and huge, swaying across the green shades on the windows. There was still a chance, he realised, still a few seconds in which to pray for miracles. But as he ran through the bank, he had the strange conviction that they would make it. Yes, they would make it now. For unless they succeeded he would have no way to make amends. And he didn't believe for a minute that God would refuse him this last chance. It seemed to Peter as if he were doing everything from memory now, effortlessly and precisely.

  He pulled the shade back, revealing the huge, rounded skull of the Cabezuda pressed against the iron grille work its bulk filling the window, blocking out all the light from the street. Peter tugged at the piece of tape, and a window-pane fell silently into his waiting hand. The aperture in the rear of the Cabezuda slid open. Peter lined it up with the empty window-frame, and fed the tube of chamois through the window, through the square of grille work and into the interior of the Cabezuda, where slim, white hands snaked it swiftly from sight.

  It was over, finished, and Peter knew they had made it. Even before the glass and window shade were back in place, and the Cabezuda had lurched away from the side of the bank to sway into the street, even before these last swift links were connected, Peter knew everything was going to be all right.

  "Get started now," he said to Francois, and moved the shade with his fingertip and looked into the street.

  He heard the Frenchman's running footsteps going towards the stairs, and he saw, in the street below him, the Cabezuda swaying and listing precariously; but Peter knew it wouldn't fall, he knew there would be no ironical failure at this juncture the broken shoestring, the chance malfunction of a traffic signal, the innocent parade of Girl Scouts blocking escape no, nothing like that, no booby traps, no sneak punches now, they were home free, and all that remained was for Peter Churchman to pick up the cheque that would bankrupt him.

  The police were steadying the Cabezuda. That was a delicious touch, he thought a bit sadly, a lovely grace note at the falling close of the song. Several of the policemen braced the swaying figure, steadied it, righted it, and, at last, sent it wandering along the streets with friendly slaps and shouts of encouragement.

  And now it's all over, Peter thought with weary satisfaction. He stayed at the window until he saw the Cabezuda disappear around a corner. Then he walked through a marine translucence to the vault and began to put away the drills and punches. There was no point in tidying things up, of course, but, on the other hand, there was no reason not to.

  And suddenly Peter froze. But the warning scream of his senses had come too late. He turned and tried to duck, but he was too late, far too late, to escape the blow that whistled softly through the air towards his head. The butt of a gun struck his left temple and knocked him sprawling to the floor.

  A splinter of thought pierced the darkness in his mind. The film… but his strength was gone, his powers usurped by pain.

  He heard only one thing more, the faint sound of running footsteps.

  Soon they too were gone… The marble floor was cold against his cheek, and his limbs were filled with a shuddering impotence. And the darkness fell about him like the wings of a great black dove… The Cabezuda lay on its side in the draughty shed by the river. The tip of its long splayed nose rested on the dusty floor. Its broken eyes stared at the wall with a suggestion of lugubrious anger.

  Phillip had demolished the huge head methodically. He had kicked holes through its eyes and forehead, smashed the drum that hung from its neck, ripped off the tricorn hat, and pulled the splintered wood apart with his hands.

  The gaping interior of the Cabezuda was empty.

  "Where are they?" he asked Angela.

  Phillip held her by one arm, as he would a child, and looked into her eyes. Despite his exertions, his voice was gentle and reasonable, but it was the gentleness and reasonableness of a man who had a firm grip on the levers that operated a rack; there was no need to shout or scream, that was the victim's role. The look in his eyes sent a chill down Angela's spine.

  "I told you the truth," she said. "Something went wrong. The window at the bank didn't open."

  "Phillip struck her across the face. "You can make this as difficult as you like. But I want the truth."

  "Stop it, you pig!" She struggled fiercely against the grip of his hand, but she might as well have tried to tear her arm from a vice.

  Phillip struck her again, with more authority this time, and Angela's head snapped about on her shoulders like a flower in an erratic wind-storm.

  "Stop it!" she cried. "I told you the truth "Where is Francois?"

  "I don't know. I don't know."

  There was a sudden glimmer of understanding in Phillip's eyes. "I should have kept in mind that swine's talent for betrayal. You must have given him the diamonds on the way from the bank. While I was carting you through the streets and alleys."

  "I swear to God I didn't Oh listen to me, you great stupid pig! Peter's tricked us. Don't you realise that?"

  "No, you and Francois are the specialists in that area. So let's see which you prefer: the diamonds or your pretty face."

  "No, stop it!"

  After a while Phillip was forced to consider the possibility that she might be telling the truth. He released her arm, frowned at his watch, and went swiftly through the door, without another glance at Angela, who lay huddled on the dusty floor beside the smashed head of the Cabezuda.

  ***

  A scream waked Peter. Or so it seemed, as he rolled on to his side and sat up, bracing his weight with a hand against the floor. The silence in the dim interior of the bank was troubled by echoes; it was like the trembling silence in a room in which a telephone has just stopped ringing.

  The lump above his ear pulled his right eye into a squint. His head ached dreadfully. He got to his knees and looked through the tool kit, driven to this by the kind of pointless hope that impels a starving dog to return with futile persistence to an empty plate.

  But of course it was gone; the can of film was gone. Dear sweet Christ, he thought wearily. That was why Francois hadn't bothered to kill him. He hadn't needed to. Peter got to his feet, and breathed slowly and deeply, summoning the last of his strength for what lay ahead of him.

  He had been prepared to pick up the cheque, to make amends, to pay the bill with his freedom. But he couldn't do that now. For when Angela sent the film to the police, the prison doors would swing shut on Bendell and the Irishman too.

  It was ten-thirty. Francois had a long start on him. But there was still Phillip, the one last hope, the one threat Francois could have no way of anticipating… Peter lowered himself through the manhole, climbed down into the big drain which ran under the basement of the bank. The cold and dampness now seemed more intense; he could see his b
reath in the gleam of his flashlight, hazy and white on the heavy fetid air.

  Heran along the tunnel until it began to narrow; then he went to his knees to cover the last half-dozen yards. He was quite weak, but his mind was functioning clearly. Nothing very subtle or complex had occurred to him however; find Francois and recover the can of film, those were his simple goals.

  And for all practical purposes, Peter achieved both these ends by the unspectacular and unheroic act of pointing the beam of his flashlight down the narrow link between the two mains.

  What he saw nearly made him retch. He snapped off the light, but there were still hotly glowing little eyes, and the scratch of claws on slimy stones, to remind him of what horrors had been revealed in the glare of his torch.

  Francois had had a long start on him, to be sure, but this was as far as he had got; his body was lodged in the narrow connecting tube, and there it would stay until the fall floods swept it into the next main, and then on to the river.

  Peter drew a deep breath and snapped on his light. He forced himself to look down the tube, and then he saw and understood what had happened to Francois: The can of film, tucked under his belt, had become wedged into a crack in the stone surfacing of the tube. One of its flanged rims had been driven deeply into the fissure, and Francois, with his arms thrust ahead of his body, and his weight pressing heavily on the can of film, had been unable to free himself; the confines of the tube had made it impossible for him to shift his weight or move his arms.

  With his body slanting downward at a forty-five degree angle, the Frenchman's cramped hands and feet had been totally impotent against the force of gravity. He couldn't slide down to the big main ahead of him; and he couldn't fight his way back up and out of the connecting tube.

  All he could do was scream.

  And that hadn't deterred the rats for long… Peter followed the light of his torch back along the tunnel, and up to the basement of the bank.

  His capacity for irony was sufficient to allow him to appreciate, if not to relish, the appropriateness of Francois's fate. But he couldn't manage a philosophical shrug at the punch line of this bitter joke. For now he was trapped just as helplessly as the Frenchman had been.

  Francois's betrayal had worked out quite neatly, although not in the manner he had intended it to. He had planned to destroy Peter Churchman, and he had managed it by blocking the only route to freedom with his dead body.

  There was still the other exit, the shaft they had blasted from the basement of the adjoining warehouse. But this offered little hope now.

  It was eleven in the morning, and the plaza and sidewalks in front of the passageway would be clogged with traffic and pedestrians. But Peter made a reconnaissance anyway, crawling through the shaft and peering cautiously from the window into the passageway. His estimate of conditions had been conservative, he saw: Not only were there crowds surging by, but at the juncture of the passageway and the street, stood a broad-shouldered policeman, his back to Peter, his eyes flicking alertly over the people and traffic passing before him. He was fifteen feet from Peter, and despite the fact that he rocked slowly from side to side on his stout boots, he gave the impression of being rooted to the spot as a tree in the ground.

  Peter waited hopefully for him to leave. If the policeman went away, he might try to open the window, remove the grille work and climb into the passageway, taking the long, long chance that no one would notice him crawling out of the basement in broad daylight.

  But after fifteen minutes he decided it was no use. Peter returned to the second floor of the bank, and sat wearily at a desk near the open vault. Don't quit, he thought. As long as you can think, there's a chance. But he found he didn't really believe this. He felt he had never been a player in this game, but only a pawn. And so what was there to think about? He opened drawers and looked at paper clips and rubber bands and pencils. At ledgers, notebooks, files. He drummed his fingers on the desk, frowning at inkwells, calendars, a telephone, a spike fluttering with flimsy papers.

  Suddenly he sat up straighten He rubbed his hands together nervously and picked up the phone. In his ear the operator's voice sounded, small and crisp: "Digame?"

  Peter let out his breath and replaced the receiver in its cradle. He had an electrical link to the outside world But how could he use it?

  He stood and paced in front of the desk, frowning at the phone. In his career, he realised, he had departed the scenes of crimes by a variety of means: fast cars, aeroplanes, a tractor on one occasion, a helicopter on another, and in Venice, this was by speedboat.

  But he had never had an occasion to use the most conventional method of all, and he wondered if this were the time to chalk up a first. He decided it had to be. Peter said a hasty prayer, which he realised he could expect no results from, and picked up the telephone. When the operator answered, he said: "If you please, I'd like to order a taxi.

  Yes… now let me tell you where I'll be standing…"

  The cab driver was a plump, middle-aged philosopher who relished arguments with Authority, not because he believed he might ever win one, but because he believed he served a useful function in keeping Authority awake and on its toes. What he feared was a drowsy Authority, for he believed that the somnolent exercise of power created excesses; orders given with yawns, surveillance through sleepy eyes, and the like.

  And so, for the third time, he said to the policeman: "My dispatcher directed me here. I don't drive about whimsically."

  Horns sounded behind him. He had stopped at the intersection of the passageway and the street.

  The policeman, whose name was Carlos, blew his whistle and waved an arm. "You're blocking traffic. Drive on."

  "Permit me to make one point. Think of the client who ordered this taxi. Think of my dispatcher. And think of me, please. I am not a free agent. I am an instrument serving the orderly-"

  "Drive on! Drive on!"

  "-needs of transport in our city," Carlos blew his whistle. The stalled traffic raised a clamour that soared in dizzying blasts above the plaza.

  "A last point if you please."

  "No! No!"

  "Very well, I have tried-"

  Peter tapped Carlos on the shoulder. "Excuse me, please."

  Carlos turned and blinked at him. "Yes, of course."

  Peter climbed into the cab and gave the driver the name of his hotel.

  "One moment," Carlos said.

  "Yes?"

  Carlos frowned uncertainly at Peter. "Senor Churchman?"

  "Why, yes."

  "We've met before, I think."

  "Oh yes, so we did."

  Horns honked. The driver sighed. "May I proceed?"

  "No. One moment." Carlos scratched his ear and looked down the passageway, studying its blank walls and barred windows. Senor Churchman had emerged from this passageway, which was quite literally impossible. As Carlos pondered the puzzle, his fingers trembled for a pencil and notebook, and the official phrases to describe the incident began to march in orderly sequence through his mind. But then he recalled that Senor Churchman had earned the right to wear the Order of the Blue Star. And he recalled too, with a pang of self-pity, the icy smile of the superior who had lectured him with such exquisite sarcasm on the distinction between the calls of duty and the calls of nature.

  Carlos sighed and waved the cab on.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The watering trucks had gone and the breezes in the Plaza del Castillo were fragrant with the clean smell of damp earth and flowers. Lights from the cafes bordering the square gleamed softly on the wet pavements and sidewalks. In the gutters the frothing water was crested with cigarette stubs and artificial flowers and torn bull fight tickets. And down all the drains in steady streams sailed business cards and matchbook covers with addresses and telephone numbers scribbled on them.

  Waiters stood at ease in the terraces of the cafes, cheerfully attentive to half-filled tables. No fire-bulls exploded in the streets, no rockets or drums shook the air, and no l
ines of dancers twisted through the plaza for the week of San Fermin had come to an end.

  It was a bitter-sweet moment, a time to forget passion and excitement, a time to return to the matters of a practical world, but passion could not be forgotten so easily, so quickly, and a residue of it seemed to tremble on the quiet air, like the melody of a half-remembered song; but in those faint echoes, fainter with each passing moment, was the promise of the eventual silence, the inevitable loss, that would tend the wake of the death of passion.

  "Peter, you must keep one simple fact in mind, and you must cheer up," Morgan said.

  "And what is that simple fact?"

  "Well, let me see." Morgan frowned and stroked his lush blond beard. "It's quite easy to give way to doubt and confusion. It's a question of getting off the tracks." He tapped his forehead significantly. "Up here. I'm beginning to have an uneasy feeling about heretics, Peter."

  Peter was silent. He had no heart for talk; his world lay in pieces at his feet, and he was certain that no one least of all himself could ever make it whole again.

  "Well, that's one way of looking at it, I suppose," Morgan said. "Heretics, you see, allow the engine of faith to leap, that's it, leap off the tracks of conviction," He looked at the sky, frowning. "Yes. To leap off the tracks of conviction -and, yes, plunge, that's it, plunge into the gorges of error."

  "As it were," Peter said wearily.

  "Yes. As it were. So don't let that happen to you, Peter. Just remember this one simple fact: She did it all for you. Everything Grace did was for your sake."

  "I once had an enormous talent for self-delusion. I'm praying it hasn't deserted me. Because I want to believe you."

  They sat at a table on the terrace of the Cafe Kutz looking out across the dark expanse of the Plaza del Castillo.