The Caper of the Golden Bulls

Chapter four

Peter worked with speed and precision in Pamplona. Time was his challenge and his enemy, but he deliberately made himself stand apart and examine the problem from a viewpoint that was nearly academic in its detachment and serenity. He analysed possibilities and calculated risks with surgical dispassion; this had always been his great strength, this ability to choose plans as if they were going to be executed by robots while he himself was off taking the sun on safe and distant beaches.

He would have liked weeks to study this job. Instead he had only days, only hours, to decide on a scheme that might save his old friends from Angela’s reprisals. No, he couldn’t be choosy; Peter was quite willing in fact to settle for anything that was not demonstrably suicidal.

He gave a list of things he might need to the desk clerk at his hotel.

“Yes, senior I’ll attend to it. Street maps. And films of San Fermin. Yes, I can have them sent over from the photographer’s shop.”

“I’ll also need a sixteen millimetre projector and screen.”

“I’ll attend to everything.”

“You’re very kind.”

“It’s a pleasure, senior Since you love San Fermin as I do, we must be compadres.”

“I was only here once and I did love it. But that was long ago.”

“Never mind. The pictures will bring it all back. And time stands still for those with passion.”

“Thank you. That’s a comforting thought. Will you send the things up to my room, please?”

“I’ll take care of everything, senior.”

“Thank you so much.”

The clerk beamed after Peter: it was a pleasure to serve a gentleman, a compadre. Such a rare pleasure.

Ten minutes later Peter sat across a desk from an officer of the Banco de Bilbao.

“I don’t much like the idea of opening an account in Spain, Senor Galache. You never know what can happen. It’s like South America. But I’ve got to. Tell me: You got a statement of your current financial position?”

“But of course, Mr. Clay.”

“Okay.” Peter accepted a booklet, put it away in his pocket without looking at it. “Now, you got any banking facilities in the Far East?”

“Yes. In Hong Kong. May I ask the nature of your business, Mr. Clay?”

“Heavy equipment. Earth movers, cranes, bulldozers, that sort of thing. Your vault’s from Samsons in London, I see. It’s the old Model X-fifty, I suppose.”

“No, it’s rather more modern. It’s the X-one hundred.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll look at your statement. If it’s all right, I’ll be back after lunch.”

“Are you staying in Pamplona for the Fiesta of San Fermin?”

“No.”

“That’s a pity. It’s very colourful. Since you’re right here, why not wait over till next week?”

“Next week? Hell, I’ll be in Calcutta then.”

The Spaniard thought: I don’t care where you will be, Mr. Clay. Leave your American dollars but take your American manners far away.

“In that case, may I wish you a pleasant trip?”

“Sure. So long.”

Peter disliked the role he had played; it made him quite gloomy, in fact. That it had been necessary hardly made it more agreeable. Peter had forced the pleasant young Spaniard to concentrate on his bad manners, so that he wouldn’t wonder at his questions about the number and model of the bank vaults. Clever, oh yes, he thought. But he didn’t enjoy behaving like that. He sighed and wondered if he had become too sensitive for this sort of work.

For the next few hours Peter strolled leisurely about the town, deliberately absorbing its texture and atmosphere. This seemingly aimless tour was essential to his preparations, and he knew from experience it wouldn’t pay to hurry it; time was precious, but so was information about which way the streets ran, and where the policemen stood at given hours, and when the crowds would be thickest in the squares and market places.

He liked the old Basque stronghold. He liked its yellow buildings and stone fortifications, its avenues and monuments, and the briskly sturdy look of its people. He found the street of the Thousand-Broken-Heads where Ignatius of Loyola had received the wound that turned his steps and reflections to sainthood, and he carefully measured and studied the Calle de la Estafeta, through which the foolhardy and courageous of all ages would run before the encierros of bulls each morning during the fiesta of San Fermin.

Peter stopped for a glass of beer at one of the cafés that ringed the Plazz de Castillo. The great square was now quiet and orderly but next week it would be the joyously thumping heart of the fiesta; thronged with dancers, musicians, merrymakers; trembling with the explosions of rockets and fireworks; all the cafés mobbed, every table sprouting thick clusters of bottles and glasses and saucers.

After a bit Peter left some coins for the waiter and went back to his hotel.

At the wheel of a grey Citroen parked in the Plaza de Castillo, a man in a black raincoat looked after Peter with a frown that delicately rearranged the pattern of scars on his forehead. Seated beside him was a short stocky man with silvery white hair and features so hard and seasoned that they might have been hacked from a block of mahogany.

The man in the black raincoat said, “I don’t understand it, sir. He’s drifting about like a tourist.”

“Not quite, Phillip. Tourists shop for things. Postcards, souvenirs, and so forth. Not Mr. Churchman. He is looking at things. And looking very carefully.”

“I see. That didn’t occur to me, Colonel.”

“Well, I was paid to notice such things, and you weren’t, Phillip.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Please, Phillip. That’s all over.”

“It’s difficult, sir. It’s a strong habit, sir.”

“Would it help if I made it a direct order?”

“Yes, I’m sure it would, Colonel.”

“Do not address me by rank again, Sergeant Lemoins. That is an order.”

“Very well, sir.”

The colonel glanced at his watch. “We must talk to Mr. Churchman soon. But first I suggest we have our lunch. Did you like the place called The Four Crowns?”

“Very much, sir.”

“Then let’s go there, Phillip.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Peter spent much of that afternoon in his darkened hotel room studying films taken the previous year during the fiesta of San Fermin. He watched daredevils in the Calle de las Estefeta fleeing before fighting bulls; saw amateur toreros ca ping bony and frantic young oxen in the Plaza de Toros; followed snake-lines of exuberant dancers looping and curling through the crowds in the Plaza de Castillo.

Something else caught his eye and he quickly stopped the action on the screen.

High above the crowds in the Plaza de Castillo floated gigantic heads, their mouths stretched wide in fiercely cheerful smiles.

Peter studied them intently, while a tantalisingly amorphous idea began to take shape in his mind. He remembered those huge, gaily painted heads from his first visit to Pamplona. And what else? Did time really stand still for those with passion? He remembered the bulls and the fireworks and the men dancing in the street, the bad news on the radio and the goatskins of wine raised high through all the reeling night, the funny, unpronounceable names of the towns in Poland, and a sudden wistful knowledge that passion and excitement died with the loss of innocence.

He was oddly disturbed by his memories. Very well, he thought sadly, let the innocent weep for such things; sinners know the value of peace and a bottle of good wine.

He made himself concentrate on the heads. They were called Cabezudas, he remembered, or Gigantes. Peter stood abruptly, as if physical activity might be a specific against his strange gloom, and measured the heads immobilised on the screen. As nearly as he could judge by using the human figures in the scene as a scale the eyes of the Cabezudas were ten or twelve feet above the ground, and their foreheads were about three feet wide. The heads were constructed, it appeared, of lacquered cloth or leather stretched around wooden frames. The men who supported them were concealed by flowing robes which dropped from the shoulders of the Cabezudas. Eyeholes cut in the cloth allowed the men to guide themselves safely through the streets. For several minutes Peter stared at the silent screen, a frown shadowing his eyes.

He was wondering how much strength and stamina one would require to carry a Cabezuda about the city for an hour or so... At last he rose and made himself a drink. Gripped by mounting excitement, he paced the floor and stared at the grinning heads frozen on the screen. An idea flickered and danced about the dark corners of his mind like a will-o’-the-wisp. It was so audacious that his first impulse was to put it straight from his mind, to fling it away as he would a ticking bomb.

But this element was precisely what appealed to Peter, for his strange genius warned him that the problem he faced could not be solved by prudent and cautious means. In such a situation, danger was often the finest camouflage. Peter respected the police of all countries profoundly; otherwise he would have been in prison long ago. But he knew from experience that the police at times fell into the error of confusing the criminal mind with their own, declaring, in effect: “Only a fool would take such a chance!” What they forgot, or had never known, was that men and women who went about breaking into banks and museums were fools, and quite naturally should be expected to behave like fools. Words such as ‘suicidal’ and ‘foolhardy’ and ‘impregnable’ were frequently the thief’s most valuable ally, for they created the climate of official complacence in which the seeds of a plan might sprout, undetected and unsuspected, into lovely and profitable blooms.

No, Peter thought, danger was an asset. The problem was timing! How to mesh frail and erratic human nerves and reflexes with the impersonal, inexorable sweep of a second hand... Stimulated by the challenge to his professional skills, Peter put his glass aside, scooped up his hat, and left the room.

Twenty minutes later he stood in the gathering darkness near a bridge and looked across the river towards the corrals of the bulls. Lights winked below him on the sluggish water. The area was now deserted and quiet; only an occasional worker strolled by to break the stillness with the damp and hollow ring of boots on the old cobblestones.

Peter stood with a stop-watch in his hand, and allowed his formidable imagination to create pictures against the night. How would it be next week during the fiesta of San Fermin? The hands of an official would grip a plunger, while his eye watched a second hand sweeping towards six o’clock. At the stroke of the hour a deep, booming roar would shake the city. Birds would fly screaming from the spires and steeples of the churches, and the runners packed in the Calle de la Estefeta would know that the fighting bulls had been released from their corrals.

Peter imagined the seven dark shapes trotting out to a false freedom in the early dawn, their shoulder muscles cresting ominously as they shadow-boxed the air with lethal horns. Flanked by massive, imperturbable oxen, the bulls would quickly calm down and bunch themselves into a protective encierro; in this fashion they would begin their race through the barricaded streets to the appointed place of their execution that afternoon, the Plaza de Toros at the foot of the Calle de la Estefeta.

The instant they formed an encierro and started running, a second blast would shake the city; and the daredevils in the streets would know that the bulls were loose and on their way.

Peter clicked his stop-watch, turned, and sprinted up the street. The first stretch was a difficult two hundred yards over treacherous cobblestones to the small plaza in front of the Ayuntamiento, Pamplona’s city hall. Arriving there, Peter leaned against a wall to catch his breath, and waved off sympathetic offers of air from several concerned Spaniards. Then he looked at his stop-watch. It would be tight, very tight, he realised grimly.

He inspected the plaza. During the running of the bulls all its openings and passageways would be sealed off with double wooden barriers. Every window with a view of the square would be packed with faces; crowds would throng the top of the barricades; the square itself would be occupied by a few dozen suicideros, those insanely courageous, or insanely neurotic, young men who would not take to their heels until they actually saw the bulls thundering up that two-hundred yard stretch from the river banks.

Fortunately, considering certain elements of his plans, Peter was quite certain that no one in the crowd would have eyes or thoughts for anything but the arrival of those bulls. The noise would mount in wild waves, and these would break into sheer pandemonium when the first dark and murderous shapes topped the rise of the street and exploded into the plaza. And that was fine, Peter thought.

He strolled across the square and went into a passageway between two buildings. It was narrow and dark and damp, and smelled of rust and old mortar. Peter played the beam of his flashlight over doors and windows. Moisture glistened slickly on the walls. The noise of the town was muted and indistinct; the passageway was like a narrow tomb stretching off to a gloomy infinity.

Peter felt the old excitement creeping over him. Steel bars and vaults were a gauntlet flung in his face, a challenge he couldn’t resist. He went carefully along the passageway until he came to a solid brick wall. There was no turning right or left. This was the end. The windows at the base of the wall were guarded with clusters of iron grille work Peter inspected them carefully under the beam of his torch, programming their measurements into data for the computers in his mind. But even as he worked he experienced a certain sadness, a certain guilty gloom, for he realised now how much he had missed this sort of thing, and how pleased and excited he was to be back at it. And he couldn’t help wondering if he had really been honest about wanting to make restitution for the colossal error he had committed during the war. Or had he simply been rationalising a need to steal? Or to prove, perhaps, that he was cleverer than the police?

Suddenly Peter blinked in surprise. He had always been vain about his eyesight, which was like that of eagles, but now, of all times, it appeared to be letting him down.

For there seemed to be two beams of light crisscrossing the barred windows at the base of the wall.

“Have you lost something, senior?”

Peter turned, smiling blankly. The second beam of light moved up to his face. The man directing it at him was a policeman. Peter had a shadowy impression of brass buttons, red epaulets, a young unsmiling face.

“As a matter of fact, I seem to have lost my way.”

“What address were you looking for?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’m trying to find the Banco de Bilbao. Someone told me it was near here.”

“He misinformed you, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps I misunderstood.”

“Yes, that’s possible. You realise the Banco de Bilbao is closed?”

“Yes, I know. But I wanted to find it so I could get there first thing in the morning.”

The policeman smiled. “You’re not far from it right now.” He rapped his knuckles against the brick wall. “It’s on the other side of this building. Twenty or thirty feet away.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. But unless you can walk through solid walls, I don’t think that will help very much.”

Peter smiled too. “No indeed.”

The policeman embroidered his little joke. “And I don’t imagine you’d want to buy some dynamite and blast your way into the bank.”

“No, I certainly wouldn’t.”

The policeman took Peter’s arm and led him back along the passageway to the square. “In that case, I think the best thing would be to walk around the block. You’ll be at the door of the Banco de Bilbao in a matter of minutes.”

“Well, thanks very much. And good night.”

“It’s nothing, senior Good night.”

The policeman, whose name was Carlos, smiled after Peter.

Tourists never seemed to be at home, he reflected philosophically.

Always losing their way, forever straying into strange places, and then smiling like shy children, like naughty children, when someone set them straight. With a tolerant shrug, Carlos turned and strolled off in the opposite direction, hands clasped behind his back, his clear dark eyes alertly roving the streets for anything amiss. Then Carlos frowned faintly, stopped and looked over his shoulder.

Peter was already out of sight. Carlos stood indecisively for a moment, his head tilted in thought. At last he took a pencil and notebook from his pocket, moistened the tip of the pencil with his tongue, and began to write an account of the incident.

Carlos was a meticulous policeman; he bored his superiors with extensive and accurate accounts of all happenings on his beat which seemed to him in any way curious or suspicious.

Carlos knew how his superiors felt towards him, but he had a notion they might not be bored with this particular report. Not if the rumours going around about the Banco de Bilbao turned out to be true.

Peter returned to his hotel room with a headful of worrisome considerations, none of which, however, was related to his plans for stealing the jewels and gems of the Virgins during the coming week.

Cursing himself for a mooning, irrelevant ass, he flung his hat and coat in the general direction of a chair, and reached for the light switch.

He was troubled by guilt, troubled by innocence, troubled by the dubious purity of past and present motives; he was behaving as idiotically, as witlessly, as a man on a scaffold worrying about whether the drop would disturb the part in his hair.

Peter’s hand froze on the light switch; he stood motionless, hardly breathing, while his remarkable senses scanned the dark and silent room for danger. Fool, he thought, irrelevant fool! Troubled by harmless thunder; ignoring the fatal lightning bolt.

He dipped a hand quickly into his pocket and took out a cigarette lighter. Gripping it tightly in his fist, he extended it at arms’ length, parallel to the floor.

“Ecoutez, mes amis,” Peter said quietly. “Don’t move; don’t talk. I am holding three ounces of tri-nitro-cellulose in my hand. Should I be forced to drop it Pouf! Et finis!”

A gasp sounded behind Peter.

He snapped on the lights.

“Darling, what are you raving about?” Grace asked him anxiously.