The Caper of the Golden Bulls

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 the 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!

On the left side of the screen a younger Peter stood apart from the group bunched at the doors of the vault, his hands moving in gestures of encouragement, his head tilted critically, his eyes studying every move, organising and controlling the operation like a conductor with a symphony in full cry.

The holes were punched; Bendell and Canalli moved forward, tilted their test tubes. They streaked away from the vault, merged with the darkness. Peter stared tensely at the massive doors, watched streams of vapour curling langurously from the holes circling the combination.

He began to count. “Five! Four! Three! Two...”

He snapped his fingers. The vault doors buckled; a puff of smoke shot upward.

“I wish I could have got the sound,” Angela said.

“There was very little,” Peter said. “Just an innocent sort of thump, as a matter of fact.”

The figures raced back to the vault doors. The younger Peter bent over the combination dial, his body a carving in competence. He twirled and fiddled; then with a silent cry of triumph, he pulled at the doors.

They swung open. The four men dashed into the vault.

Angela cried, “Bravo!”

The four men reappeared in what seemed a twinkling. They carried valises so stuffed with banknotes they couldn’t be strapped shut: in their hands were more banknotes, thick wads of then, with satisfyingly long rows of zeros after the numerals.

Angela stretched sensuously. There was a dull, sluggish flush in her cheeks, a glaze of sweet agony in her eyes. “Mother of God, look at the money,” she said. “Look at it, Francois. Look what miracles Peter can perform.”

The four men filled the screen. They held packets of banknotes aloft, and their grins were wide and merry.

Peter inspected his image critically, but with an over-all sense of satisfaction; he stood behind Bendell and the Irishman, not hogging the limelight, so to speak, letting them have their share of the applause.

That was gracious of him, he thought, since all they did was hit their marks like well-schooled actors. Holding up the money in that fashion was a callow gesture, but on the other hand his smile was modest and his manner nearly apologetic, disclaiming, as it were, complete credit for the triumphant success of their venture. Francois turned off the projector and threw back the curtains. Peter blinked at the sunlight, re-orienting himself in time; he had been out of focus for a moment, drifting in a blur between past and present.

“What are you thinking of, Peter?”

She would never understand, Peter knew, so he only smiled and shook his head. Francois took a can of film from the projector and went into the bedroom. Peter was thinking fondly of his friends. They had come through, too; they were intact. Free to face whatever it pleased them to call the violet fields of peace. The Irishman in the North Counties mounting his devious, quixotic raids against the British. And Bendell, in Liege, with his flower shops, creating worlds of colour and fragrance to replace those which had been destroyed for him in the war.

Canalli enjoyed at last a young and loving wife, a villa ascreech with babies, and fishing boats with purple sails and holds full of sardines.

God bless them, he thought; they had all come through. There was a welling in his eyes and breast; he decided indulgently, and with some satisfaction, that he was just a sentimental ass, breaking goblets at the hearth to the memory of absent friends.

“Peter, I would hate to send that film to the police. I would hate to have to, I mean.”

A wave of shock went through him. “Don’t say things like that. Do you realise what would happen? In twenty-four hours Interpol would have its hand on the Irishman. On Bendell and Canalli.”

“And on you, Peter.”

“Well, yes. There’s that, too, I suppose Francois came out of the bedroom, locked the door and dropped the key in his pocket. “I wouldn’t get any ideas about taking it away from me,” he said. “I am armed.”

“Now let’s get down to business,” Angela said. “Unless you agree to help us, Peter, that film goes to the Interpol offices in Madrid. Tonight.”

Peter studied the situation and its ramifications with care. Then he said thoughtfully, “My answer is still no. You’re both frightened of something. I can smell it. I imagine the danger is quite real, and quite immediate, since you’re planning something quite desperate to escape from it. But sending me to prison won’t solve your problems, will it?”

“No, it won’t.”

“It would probably give you a certain vindictive satisfaction, but you’d still be in danger, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Well then. I think I’ll be on my way, Angela. If you point the finger at me, I shall point the finger at you. Then whoever you fear, or whatever you fear, will know pretty well where to find you.”

“You see, Francois? I told you he was clever “And dangerous,” Francois said, nodding gravely.

“There’s one other thing,” Angela said.

Peter noted with resignation the glitter of excitement in her eyes, the herringbone pattern of ski-tracks her fingernails were making on her creamy knee-caps. More aces, he thought wearily.

“Yes?”

“You’d have a hard job proving I was involved in the job at the Banco Commerciale. I was using a forged passport. Technically I never left Paris. But that’s beside the point.

Listen carefully: If you refuse to help us, we can’t make you. But if you refuse, we will have to go to the Irishman. Or to Canalli or Bendell.”

“I wish you all the luck in the world,” he said dryly. “They are competent mechanics. But without enough imagination among them to open a box of cracker-jacks.”

“But they will try.”

“No. They’re not fools, Angela.”

She smiled at him. “But they loved you, Peter, and were grateful to you. When I tell them what I intend to do with the film, they won’t think of themselves, but only of you. They will do anything I ask, regardless of the risk, to keep you safe and free.”

The case ace, he thought bitterly; for what she said was literally true. They were staunch, loyal friends; and to such stout-hearted atavisms, loyalty and friendship were not mere words, but joyous frenzies which charged their lives with meaning and excitement.

“They love you, Peter. They would die to save you.”

“And you’d even use that?”

“Make no mistake about it, Peter. I most certainly will.”

Francois said: “Your refusal may well sign death warrants for your old comrades.”

“And you’ll go to prison, in any case,” Angela said. “For I won’t let you off, Peter. I’ll still send the film to the police.”

Well, I didn’t come through after all, Peter thought, with mild wonder.

There had been an interlude, a moment of grace, which he had confused with a terminal dispensation. Now he was trapped again, jailed by fears and loyalties. I’ve even lost the philosophic view, he thought gloomily, and somehow this was the unkindest cut of all. The most unkindest cut... “Isn’t there any other alternative?” he asked Angela. “I could try to raise money for you. Or maybe we could straighten out your difficulties peacefully. Robbing banks is a damned drastic business, you know.”

Angela and Francois smiled and shook their heads.

“Very well,” Peter said, accepting the inevitable. “I’ll do what you wish. However, let’s get a few things straight. If the job is theoretically possible, I’D give it a try. If not, I won’t. Is that clear?”

“You’ll find a way,” Angela said.

“All right. One other thing. I’m to be in complete charge. One doesn’t rob banks by the democratic process. I will choose the means; the time; whatever outside assistance I feel is necessary. Agreed?”

“Yes, of course,” Angela said. “That’s precisely what we want you to do.”

“One other thing,” Peter said. “Now, in my presence, I want you to cover the latches on that reel of film with candle wax.” He slipped off a signet ring and gave it to Angela. “Then seal it with this.”

Angela smiled. “How trusting you are. But I understand.”

When this was done, he said: “Now what is it you want me to steal?”

Angela told him and Peter turned quite pale.