On pleasant mornings Peter Churchman enjoyed swimming in the piscina at the foot of his garden. It was a charming little pool, enclosed by oleanders and a bathhouse crimson with bougainvillaea, but it had been constructed, oddly enough, without a drain; when it was necessary to change the water, Peter’s maids, and some of their friends from nearby villas, kicked off their alpargatas, put on old uniforms, jumped into the pool, and emptied it with buckets.

It was tedious work, but the girls made a holiday of it, splashing about the pool as busily as wrens in a bird bath; and when they were finished they scrubbed the sides and bottom clean with coarse tufts of esparto grass which they twisted from the slopes of the mountain behind the villa.

After all this it took the pool three days to fill. Once upon a time Peter had found this mildly annoying, but that was before his conversion to the philosophical view; after that significant event he had come easily and naturally to the conclusion that a temporarily inoperative swimming pool was a light cross indeed to carry through life.

Most men acquire the philosophical view with a deliberate intellectual effort, or because they have no other choice. Not so with Peter. One morning he had waked with the thought — brilliant and final as a lightning bolt that he had wasted far too much time worrying about things that were never going to happen to him.

All his life all his adult life, at any rate Peter had dreaded only three things: going to prison; losing his hair; losing his keen physical interest in women. Now it seemed fairly obvious that he had escaped and would continue to escape these inhibiting disasters. He had come through that was his phrase for it. He had come through the battle intact.

Of prison, there was no longer any threat at all. And not only had he kept his hair, but it remained black as pitch, except for the silver wings at his temples, and these Peter rather liked. And of the last dread worry, he could snap his fingers at that too, for he was at the moment more ardently and heartily in love than ever before in his life.

With the realisation that he had come through, Peter relaxed, and life became an undiluted joy. He knew that he had not got a big truth by the tail. To understand that one’s fears are groundless may be comforting; but to act on that information was exhilarating. It was a little truth, a little knowledge, but it brought great peace to Peter Churchman.

Rather self-consciously, he began to keep a journal. The first entry read simply: If a man has no goals in life, he can usually find good roads to travel.

Peter was not sure that this was philosophy. But he understood what it meant in relation to himself, and that was what mattered. As the happy peaceful days went by, he began searching for more glitterings of truth. When he found one he brought it back to his journal like a magpie. He never discovered a great diamond of truth, only the ones that were like bits and pieces of coloured glass. But these served their purpose, and in time they provided him many rosy windows from which to look out upon the world. They gave him a picture of things which coincided quite marvellously with his new philosophy.

They enabled him, for instance, to consider with tolerance, if not relish, his astonishing conversation with Grace at dinner the previous night.

At the memory of it Peter dived into the pool without removing his bathrobe.

She had said: “I know you hate surprises. But I must tell you. I have three children.”

Sensibly Peter had put down his fork; otherwise he might have put it in his eye.

“Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me before?”

“While you were making up your mind about me, it didn’t seem fair. To the children, that is.”

“But how about me! Did you think about being fair to me?”

“Oh, Peter. They’re such dears.”

“Now please listen and please try to understand. I don’t like children. It’s not because I’m selfish or insensitive. It’s just a glandular reaction. It’s the same way I feel about sauerkraut or Martinis.”

“That’s very strange.”

“Come on. Lots of people don’t like children.”

“No, I meant about the sauerkraut. Did you ever try it with caraway seeds?”

“Grace! This is serious. Why did you decide to tell me now? On this particular night?”

“Well, my hand was forced, so to speak. My husband wants me to come back to him. That’s why I went to Paris last month.”

“Oh, does he! Tired of his garret and his silly paintings and prostitutes. Now he wants to get back to the fireside, back to all your blue chips.”

She had shaken her finger at him, a tiny gesture of admonition; even in his agitation he had found it endearing.

“No. Guy is very rich. But he has principles. That’s why he wouldn’t give me alimony.”

“He’s a principled tightwad, I’d say.”

“You don’t understand. He feels alimony is demeaning. He doesn’t think a woman should be financially penalised for remarrying. He gave me a million dollars when I left him.”

“Oh. Where are your children?”

“They just arrived this morning. They were in Venice with my mother.”

“I didn’t even know you had a mother.”

“You might have presumed that much.”

“Now please, Grace.” After a long moment he had said: “Darling, let’s not spoil things. Your children, your little dears, do they, well, chatter a lot?”

She had smiled radiantly, “Oh, I do love you, Peter.”

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.”

Antonio Gonzalez y’Najera, the policeman, accepted Peter’s cheque with a gratified smile.

“You’re most generous, Peter. Are you ill?”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Oh. Forgive me.” Antonio laughed apologetically. “It was an unfortunate implication. Totally accidental. No. The glass of whisky at your elbow prompted my question. Are you coming down with a cold?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“I was sure of it. I couldn’t imagine you drinking whisky this early in the day. You’re pale, too.”

“I didn’t sleep well last night.”

The policeman chuckled sympathetically and adjusted his plump frame to a more comfortable position in the chair beside Peter’s desk. “It’s going around the village. I had an ache in my back this morning. And a heaviness behind my forehead. You find that a whisky helps?”

“Oh, yes.” Peter called for Mario. Whisky was provided for the policeman.

“Ah, it seems better already.”

“Mario, leave the bottle.”

The policeman’s mood became expansive. “The procession of the Virgins at San Fermin will be a glorious sight. Think of it. Centuries of precious stones and metals to blind the eyes of tourists. Are you going up to Pamplona for the fiesta?”

“Well, I’m not sure. Another touch?”

“If you’ll join me. I think it’s helping.” He looked judicious. “Yes, definitely. Thank you. But you must go to Pamplona.”

“If I must, I must,” Peter said sighing.

“You’d better have another drink. You sound hollow. You need a holiday. I promise you this: the treasures that will adorn the Virgins of Spain at Pamplona have no equals anywhere in the world. Think of it! Precious stones and metals which haven’t been displayed in public for centuries. The Contessa of Altamira’s Net and Trident of diamonds, for instance. Locked away in Seville since the time of Phillip the Second. And just think! The Silver Slippers of Saint Peter will grace the feet of the Virgin of Cordoba. The Duke of Bourbon-Parma is lending the Ropes of Pearls to the Virgin from Granada. And the Blue Tears of Santa Eulalia. The Lacrimi Christi will sparkle at the breast of Madrid’s Virgin. The Golden Oars have been promised by the House of Navarre. Barcelona is sending the Evening Stars and the Golden Bulls of the Popes of Avignon. Just a bit more, Peter. No. seriously. Only a drop. Then there will be the Diamond Flutes of Carlos...”

Dear God, Peter thought; the splendour of the images evoked by the policeman made him dizzy. His soul swooned as he heard in fancy the lids of all the treasure chests in Spain slowly creaking open; as he saw through the cobwebs of time the shimmering glories of a nation’s art and faith and history. The bullion of the conquistadors; the jewels of mighty monarchs; the masterworks of artisans down the centuries all of it collected in one place at one time, all of it glowing and blazing from the statues of the Virgins at Pamplona.

The policeman was chanting on like a herald at a ball. “Isabella’s coronet of diamonds; Ferdinand’s Sighs of Barbara; the Marques de Santander’s ruby and emerald Crown of Thorns; the platinum spark plugs from Hispano-Suiza; the—”

“What!”

“The platinum spark plugs? Oh yes. Industry is participating, too. But they lack the baubles the old families collected over the years. So they’re contributing in kind, you might say. Platinum spark plugs from Hispano-Suiza. Gold wine goblets with precious gems from the Fundador brandy people.”

This seemed to remind him of something; he looked in mild wonder at his empty glass. Peter filled it.

“Oh, thank you.” The policeman sighed and crossed his booted feet at the ankles. “I find it all very confusing, Peter.” He sipped his drink. “Once there was a nice division of activity between the north and south of Spain. We sold the tourists — as it were gypsies, bandits, romance, tall tales.” He laughed softly. “Ah, yes... maidens fleeing from storm devils. Their little nipples pinched by the hot figures of ogres riding the west wind. It went over nicely with tourists. The north, on the other hand, sold good plumbing, comfortable hotels, and shops full of handbags and brass candlesticks. And that went over nicely too. But now the north wants to borrow our poverty and mix it up with their coal mines and real estate.”

Peter’s head was beginning to ache.

“Peter, let me give you a recipe for a tourist boom. Only one thing is necessary. Comfortable seats from which visitors may examine the edifying old virtues of hunger and poverty. That is the only reason the administration of Pamplona has invited our little peasant Virgin to the Fiesta. Amidst the splendour of the grand Virgins, poor little Santa Maria with her cracked eyeball and broken fingers will provide the touch of poverty which is essential to the contentment of tourists. They must have someone to pity; someone to patronise. That is all we are providing. I ache with the shame of it, Peter.”

The maids had been sniffling about the same thing this morning, Peter recalled; Santa Maria had nothing to wear to the ball. Only seed pearls and tarnished bracelets.

Peter’s phone rang. It was Grace.

“You didn’t come by last night, Peter. Are you sulking?”

“No, of course not.”

“Not about my children? Or the other thing?”

“No.”

“Then why did you stand me up?”

“I had a cold. I went to bed.”

“How very prudent of you!”

The phone clicked in his ear.

The policeman had not stopped talking. “Of course they won’t admit it. They discussed the security regulations with me quite gravely. Just as if our poor Virgin owned anything worth stealing.” He laughed and poured himself Scotch. “This might interest you, Peter. All the treasures will be kept in one bank. And that bank was chosen by lot. Interesting? Guess what bank they chose?”

“Antonio, I don’t think you should tell me.”

The policeman looked blank. “Why not?”

“Obviously it’s a matter of security.”

“Ha, ha. You don’t want to be tempted, eh?” The policeman laughed heartily; Peter’s headache grew worse. “No, I trust you, Peter. The treasures will be kept in the vaults of the Banco de Bilbao. In all seriousness, that is a secret. But it doesn’t matter. There is no point to robbing banks in Spain.”

“You’re quite sure of that?”

“Oh, yes. Remember when those Greeks stole the money from the Banco de Navarre? The Guardia Civil apprehended them on the road to Algeciras. They formed a semi-circle about the car, machine-gunned the occupants to death. Fortunately, they were indeed the culprits. Examples of that sort, plus the fact that the garrotte is used in capital crimes, encourages criminals to take a prudent view of things. They can rob and steal with great confidence in other countries. But they stay out of Spain. Look at Aristide Broualt, for example. One of the most formidable thieves to ever operate in Europe. Correct?”

“Well, I suppose so. But there was something vulgar about him, I felt.”

“Notifying the police in advance, that sort of thing? Well, perhaps you’re right. But he was enormously clever. And yet, he never tried his tricks in Spain. Nor did the one the papers dubbed the Ace of Diamonds.”

“Frankly, Antonio, as a policeman, didn’t you find him rather tiresome? Take that playing card and stiletto he always left at the scene of the crime. With gryphons drawn on it! Trademarks are childish, to start with. But theatrical ones are downright embarrassing.”

“Yes, I agree. But the custom is an ancient one. Perhaps he was an old man. But young or old, he kept out of Spain. And so did Christopher Page, the Englishman. They were wise, Peter. Jimmy Fingers, Karl Maganer, and the one they called the Count of Soho they were supreme in their line of work, but they all stayed out of Spain.”

“Supreme? That’s an interesting point. Would you say, for instance, they were more accomplished than the American, Stuart Carmichael?”

“Oh, definitely, Peter. Definitely.”

“Then how about the Black Dove?”

“The Black Dove?” The policeman frowned and shook his head slowly.

“The Black Dove? I don’t recall that one. Was he a man or a woman?”

“You must remember, Antonio. Think, for heaven’s sake.”

“I have just a vague memory.”

“The Banco Commerciale in Lisbon. The Credit Lyonnais in Paris. The Nationale in Rome. To name only a few.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Antonio said. “I remember now.”

“I should rather think you would.”

“Yes, the Black Dove. A clever one. But again, Peter, he never set foot in Spain. But this is idle talk. No intelligent person would bother stealing the jewels from the Virgins.”

“Why do you say ‘bother’?”

“Because they are priceless; therefore worthless.”

That was neatly put, Peter thought with a touch of envy. He might have used it in his journal. Things beyond value have no value. Or something like that. But the policeman’s was better. The jewels were priceless; therefore worthless. He wondered if Angela had considered that.

Antonio stood with care. “I must be going.” He looked through his pockets. “By the way, I found your parking summons. Lucky thing, eh?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Peter, you’re pale. You don’t look well. I’d have a drink, if I were you.”

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.

“How did you get in here?”

“I told the desk clerk I was a friend of yours. He said that made us friends, since you and he are friends. We all have passion, he said, and let me in. But please don’t try to change the subject. Why were you going on that way in French?”

“As a matter of fact, I was expecting someone else.”

“Yes. Tri-nitro whatever it was. Pouf. Finis! I guess you were.”

She smiled uncertainly. “Peter, what’s wrong? You’re different, somehow. You’ve changed.”

And so had she, Peter realised sadly. He had always thought of her in images and metaphors. Silver trees, golden bonfires, stately clippers.

Now in this transparent and cruelly realistic northern air, she seemed less mysterious, less a creature of magic and enchantment; she was human, after all, lovely beyond words to be sure, but weighable and measurable now, an entity composed of readily ascertainable details.

She wore a dress the colour of cocoa, a short coat of natural wool, and narrow black boots with tops of brown fur which fitted snugly about her fine ankles. There was a smudge of dust on her cheek. A tendril of fine hair had escaped a sleek coiffure to prance on top of her head like a tiny golden sea-horse. She must have come straight from the train, he thought with a pang of sympathy. She would probably love a bath and a nap. Somehow details he had never noticed before made her even more precious and dear in his eyes.

“Peter, you can’t go ahead with this business,” she said quietly.

“Dear, I’ve got to.”

“But it’s insane. It’s worse. It’s stupid and sentimental. When you told me about it at first, it sounded sweet and splendid. Like listening to a dear old uncle reading fairy tales before a cosy fire. But it won’t work, Peter. There’s no place for romantic gestures outside of books. I want you to be practical. To be sensible.”

Yes, he thought, she was real enough now, no doubt of it. Sensible. Practical. But what had happened to the bonfires and cellos? Where had the enchantment gone? And yet, he thought, it probably wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t deliberate, at any rate. She must have been lulled to sleep, as he had been, by insidious and deceptive southern breezes.

He remembered what Antonio, the policeman, had told him about the north and south of Spain. It made a sad kind of sense now. The south sold gypsies and romance, ogres riding the west winds. While the north sold the things of the real world good hotels and electricity, shops full of handbags and brass candlesticks. In the south, dreams of innocence and passion were understood and accepted as fancies borne on the African trades. But here in the north they were neither understood nor accepted; they were not sensible, not practical. But where, Peter wondered unhappily, did passion and innocence exist? In the needle of a compass? Or in the beat of a heart?

“Please listen to me, Peter. Please.” He saw the tremor of her lips, the fear in her lovely eyes, and the way her hands were twisting together at her breast, and he thought wistfully of tall, silver trees, of stately clipper ships. How he missed them now!

“Yes?”

“I’ve got enough money for both of us. In twenty-four hours we could be half-way around the world. In Melbourne, Tokyo, or anywhere you like. Please come away with me, Peter.”

“I can’t. It just wouldn’t work.”

“Do you think this business will work? You’re all alone, Peter. With no one to help you. You’ll be caught and sent to prison, or you’ll be shot and killed. Don’t you realise that?”

“Yes, I suppose I do. But I can’t help it.”

“And I can’t help caring about you. That’s all I do care about, Peter.”

“I wish my commitments were so simple,” he said with a sigh.

“I am selfish and mean. You are loyal and pure. Is that what you’re telling me?”

He said quietly: “You know I’m not taking a high moral stand. As you suggested, I’m trying to be practical. If I ran off with you and left my friends to hang, I’d hardly be the man you think you’re in love with. I’m not sure who I’d be then. The change might even be an improvement. But you wouldn’t have what you wanted, and neither would I. You’d have a nice sensible coward; and I’d have a woman who wanted a nice sensible coward. Neither of us would care for that. After a bit, we’d have difficulty looking at one another. Don’t you see it wouldn’t work?”

Unexpectedly she smiled and said, “Of course. You’re absolutely right, Peter. You couldn’t possibly come away with me. I see that now. So I’ll have to stay with you. It’s that simple.”

“Don’t talk like a fool!”

“But you’ve got no one else to trust. Your old friends aren’t at your side. And Angela and Francois will sell you out the minute the job is done. They’ll have to throw you to the police to protect themselves. Don’t you realise that?”

“Of course. I’m not a complete idiot. But I’ll have something to say about that when the time comes.”

“But you can’t watch both of them. Please, Peter.” She came closer to him and put her hands on his shoulders. There was a strange challenge in her smile, exciting lights in her splendid eyes. “Let me help you.”

“Now you’re talking like an idiot. You women pride yourselves on being realists. At bottom you’re all as frivolous as tinkers.” He pulled her hands down from his shoulders. He was quite angry. “This isn’t a game we’re playing. I’m not a knight in armour. I’m a thief. What I’m going to do what I must do is dangerous and wrong. Legally and morally. Will you get that into your silly head?”

“What’s so immoral about it? What good are all those jewels doing strung about the necks of plaster statues?” There was a flash of mutinous tears in her eyes. “When families are cold and children are hungry? How can stealing them be morally wrong? You won’t be depriving a single human being of comfort or solace.”

He sighed. “That’s very glib. If a man looks at a beautiful statue of the Virgin and says a prayer, who are we to measure what comfort and solace that may bring to him?”

“I can measure it. It would probably fit in a thimble, with lots of room left over.”

“I’m not that omniscient, my dear.” There was a touch of lofty admonition in his tone, and, sensing it, Peter resolved not to be presumptuous, regardless of provocation. “I am a sinner,” he continued more equably. “You are not. And I’ve never paid for my sins. That’s the difference between us.”

“Oh, how smug you are! It’s the ultimate vanity, Peter, to accuse everyone else in the world of innocence. Because you equate it with naivety and stupidity.”

“I’m sorry. But I do not.”

“Yes, you do. You think some special cachet attachés itself to sinners. While the mark of the booby is stamped on the innocent. Well, thank you very much, but I’m not a booby.” He was confused and stirred by her emotion, her closeness to him; the hot tears in her eyes melted the steel of his resolution. The drums and bugles were sounding once more; the tiny golden sea-horse on top of her head seemed to be prancing to the challenge of the music. He prayed for strength.

“Peter, please let me help you,” she said, and as she whispered the words, the lights in the room coated her long full lips with a patina of shimmering silver.

“No, no, no!” he said. “The only way you can help is by leaving me alone.”

She studied his face and eyes. Then she nodded and turned slowly to the door. “All right, Peter, I’ll go, if that’s what you want.” She sighed and straightened her shoulders. “I have a confession to make. It doesn’t matter in the least now, but I’m not pregnant.”

“Oh? Is that all right? I mean, you’re not disappointed or anything?”

She smiled quietly. “You’re such a good man. Who else would think of such a thing now? It makes me feel rather small. Because I lied to you. I wasn’t pregnant, darling.”

“But you went to Paris and saw your husband. You said—”

She interrupted him. “No, I saw my lawyer. About some odds and ends of business. My husband’s been dead four years. This is all very difficult, Peter. I told you he was alive and wanted me back because I didn’t want you to feel responsible for me. If you wanted to throw me over, I didn’t want you having conscience pangs about it.” She sighed again. “You were upset about my children, and I realised I hadn’t been fair to you. I wanted to give you, well an out.”

“I’m rather surprised at your estimate of me. Had I previously behaved in a fashion that led you to anticipate shrieks of prudish revulsion at what is, after all, a fairly natural condition?”

“You’re spacing your words, Peter. You do it when you’re upset.”

“Damn it, why did you tell me this now?”

She turned quickly to him, her eyes bright with hope, “I thought it might make a difference. About helping you, I mean. I am, in fact, a perfectly proper widow with three adorably well-mannered children. I’m not a divorcee with shadowy ex-husbands and lovers. Don’t you see the difference? It’s such a perfect cover. I could come up here next week with my children and keep an eye on Francois and Angela. I could run errands for you, and help you with your plans. And no one would ever suspect me.”

“God Almighty!” he cried explosively. “Didn’t you hear me? Do you still think I’m trying to steal the plays of the Vassar volleyball team? You must be out of your mind! You want to help me?” He caught her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “All right. Find me cracksmen dynamiters, human flies, judo experts. Get me Aristide Broualt! Christopher Page! Stuart Carmichael! Or Jimmy Fingers or even the Ace of Diamonds or the Count of Soho!”

“The Ace of Diamonds? The Count of Soho? What are you talking about?”

“You wouldn’t understand if I spelled it out letter by letter. It doesn’t matter. They are thieves. Geniuses, artists, virtuosos of crime. That’s what I need. Not your proper widow’s weeds and adorably well-mannered children.”

“But they’re all I have to offer you! How can you be so unfeeling?”

“It’s not difficult at all, since it’s my neck that’s on the block.” He picked up her purse and gloves and thrust them into her hands. “Now, will you do me two favours?”

“You’re going to ask me to leave,” she said miserably “And you’ll have the poor grace to consider that a favour. What else do you want, Peter?”

“I’d like you to say good-bye without rancour, without tears, without hysterics. And go out that door without looking back.”

“You’re so stubborn, Peter. You’ve made up your mind and nothing will change it. You can’t think clearly any more.”

“There is nothing left to think about,” he said.

“If you weren’t such a fool, you’d think about why I lied to you. And you’d wonder that I was able to. But you’re not even curious. You’re not only unfeeling and insensitive, you’re rigid, and that’s the worst possible drawback in your line of work.”

“My work is running a bar. My cross is robbing banks. Will you please say good-bye now?”

“You’re hateful.”

Peter walked to the windows and stood with his back to her, his shoulders squared, arms folded, staring out at the winking lights of the old Basque town.

He was ready for this moment, quite ready for it. “Good-bye, Grace,” he said quietly. But ready as he was, he was still surprised by the sharp edge of the words, surprised at the way they hurt his throat.

“Oh, good-bye, you bastard,” she said.

Peter raised his eyebrows. That wasn’t like her, he thought sadly. He heard the doorknob turn; the hinges creak; the tap of her heels.

On the morning of his return from Pamplona, Peter arranged a meeting with Angela and Francois at their hotel. He took Phillip along with him. At first Francois was as tense as a cat facing a mastiff. But after several cautious questions he relaxed and accepted Phillip with a relieved smile.

“So you weren’t in Algeria at all?”

“No. My unit was in Lyons.”

“You were lucky. In Algeria you never could tell who’d give you a knife in the back the enemy or your own comrades. Of course, you knew about the revolts there, the OAS, that sort of thing?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t my concern. I had a good job in the arms depot, and a reasonable commanding officer. Since I wasn’t a professional soldier, it meant nothing to me that the generals in Algeria were squabbling among themselves.”

Phillip was doing quite well, Peter decided; he sat with his huge hands folded in his lap, his eyes fixed neutrally on the shining sea beyond the terrace, composed and at ease.

Francois smiled at him. “They didn’t fool you with their talk of glory and patriotism, I can see.” He gave the big sergeant a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I’m glad to find you’re intelligent. A man chooses well or badly, that’s all there is to it. One choice makes a man a hero; the other makes him a traitor. Loyalty and honour are accidents since the verdict is delivered after the choice is made.” Francois smiled at Peter. “You don’t agree with me, I know. You believe in noble gestures. Loyalty to old comrades, regardless of risk or danger.”

The glance that Phillip flicked at Francois’s back was as swift and murderous as a flung knife. Peter noted it with alarm. He strolled past Phillip and gave him a small, warning headshake.

“Ah, you look troubled,” Francois said complacently. “What does that mean? That you’re not sure? That you have doubts about loyalty? About honour?”

“Francois, you bore me greatly.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“Yes. You have a rash of conscience, and you can’t stop scratching it.” Peter hoped desperately to create a climate of emotional turbulence; he didn’t want to give Francois and Angela the opportunity to inspect Phillip with detachment. He didn’t know whether Angela had spotted that revealing flare of anger in Phillip’s eyes; she was reclining on the lounge, wearing a white bikini that was not much larger than the jewelled sun-glasses which concealed her eyes. Peter couldn’t tell what she was looking at, but he knew from experience that she was a precise judge of nuance and atmosphere.

“Peter, why are you trying to make Francois angry?”

“I came here to discuss business. Not to listen to tiresome justifications of the rat act.”

“But you’re seldom so rude, darling.”

“He feels he is indispensable,” Francois said angrily. “We’ll see how important he is when the job is over.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Francois, shut up! You too, Peter. Let’s get down to work.”

“Very well,” Peter said. He had brought the films of San Fermin; the projector and screen were already in place. “Phillip, will you draw the drapes?”

“Yes, sir,” said Phillip, springing to his feet.

The room became dark. Peter snapped on the machine. They all settled back and watched the flamboyant crowds in the Plaza de Castillo; the huge Cabezudas bobbing and turning high above them; fighting bulls tearing through the barricaded streets.

Peter froze the action at the square in front of the Ayunta — when to... “Let me tell you what happens in Pamplona each morning of the fiesta,” he said. “At the stroke of six a bomb is exploded near the river. That means the bulls have left the corral. When they form an encierro and start running, another bomb explodes. We will synchronise our blasting with those explosions.”

Angela’s eyes shone like a cat’s in the darkness. “Oh, Peter, how clever you are!”

“Yes. The sound of our blasting will be completely drowned out by the roar of the bombs. We have twenty-six feet of stone and brick to get through. I estimate our progress at four feet a day; which means that on Sunday morning, the seventh and last day of the fiesta, we will reach the vaults of the bank.” He walked to the screen and pointed to a passageway at one side of the square. “Now listen carefully. This leads to the basement of the warehouse adjoining the Banco de Bilbao. Each morning Francois and I will set off two charges in that basement. On the second one, the bulls will be running. Our job is to get back into the square, and clear out as fast as we can. We’ll have about seventy seconds; we will need every one of them.”

Francois swallowed with evident difficulty; the sound was quite harsh in the silence.

“Yes, Francois? What is it?”

“Good God! What about the bulls? They’ll be on top of us.”

“Yes, but that’s the charm of it. The bulls are pure gold as far as we’re concerned. Every eye will be on them. No one will notice us.”

“But that’s insane. Why not wait till they’ve gone by?”

“Because it won’t work. The instant the bulls charge from the square, policemen and workers spring up. To handle the crowds and remove the barricades. We’d be spotted leaving the basement, or coming down the passageway.”

“But what in God’s name is to prevent our being gored? Or killed?”

“For my part I intend to run like the devil. If you think up anything cleverer, let me know. But, Francois, since my hide is just as vulnerable as yours, I’ve studied the possibilities very carefully. If our timing is precise, and no one panics, there’s an excellent chance of bringing it off. Phillip, you can open the drapes now.”

Sunlight splashed into the rooms. The white oval of the sea beyond the terrace was like the eye of a giant staring up at the sky.

“Now we come to your part, Angela. I want you to get up on Phillip’s shoulders, and stand there till I tell you to get down.”

“Are you serious?”

“Please do as I say. We have an enormous lot to do, and damn little time.”

Phillip spread his legs wide, crouched slightly and gave Angela a hand.

She put a foot against his thigh and swung up on to his shoulders, as easily and gracefully as if she were mounting a horse. Phillip cupped his hands behind her knees to brace her swaying figure. When he straightened to his full height, she gasped nervously.

“You’re all right,” Peter said. “Phillip, move about now. Skip and dance a bit.” He glanced at his watch. Let me know when you’re tired.”

“Very well, sir.”

Angela shrieked as Phillip commenced to caper about the room with an air of elephantine gravity. She clutched at her bra and hissed questions at Peter.

“What’s this for? What’re you trying to prove?”

“Never mind. I’ll explain later.”

The telephone rang and Francois answered it.

“It’s for you, Peter. Your bar-keep, Mario.”

Peter experienced a quick stir of hope and excitement. He had called Grace’s villa three times this morning, but she hadn’t been in. The maids had not been helpful; in fact, they seemed to have no clear idea of where she was, or when she might be back. All they knew was that she had not returned from Pamplona. This had added to Peter’s confusion and apprehension. He was still shaken to the depths by the astounding implications of that slim little knife with the Ace of Diamonds attached to it. If it meant what he thought it did, how could he ever trust his judgment again? Or regard the world as anything but a crazy house of mirrors? But what else could that knife mean? He recalled the spiteful hiss as it whizzed past his ear. The metallic thunk as it struck the wall. And how it quivered there like a tuning fork, inches from his eyes. Had she tried to hit him? Or miss him?

And where is she now? That was the most maddening thing of all.

He snatched the phone from Francois. “Mario? Did she call?”

“No, no. But Mr. Shahari is here. You said you wanted to talk to him.”

“You’re sure Grace didn’t call?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

He sighed. “Okay. Put Mr. Shahari on.”

“Good morning, Mr. Churchman. What can I do for you today. Some money to change perhaps?”

“When are you returning to Gibraltar?”

“This afternoon.”

“All right, I’d like you to do me a favour. I need a set of walkie-talkies. You can get them at Purdy’s, I think.”

“You wish me to buy them for you?”

“Yes. I’ll be over to Gibraltar to pick them up tomorrow or the day after. I need a first-rate set, Mr. Shahari.”

“The Japanese make a very good walkie-talkie. With a smart carrying case, imitation alligator leather.”

“No. No Japanese. Zeiss or Audioflex. Don’t economise Mr. Shahari.”

“Is there anything else?”

Peter hesitated. He didn’t care to mention what else he needed, not on an open telephone line. “Yes, there are several other items,” he said.

“But I think I’d better make a list of them. Can you wait in my office for a bit?”

“Of course. But perhaps you will do me a favour, Mr. Churchman. You know the fat American named Morgan?”

“Oh yes.”

“He tells people he is going to kill me in Pamplona. It had to do with his religion. Or philosophy. I’m not sure which. But it is very upsetting.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much, Mr. Shahari. I’ll have a talk with him. Morgan’s harmless. Last month he wanted to kill all the fishermen. He feels they’re poisoning the world with iodine. Before that he tried to start a children’s crusade to liberate Moscow. He thinks it belongs to Belgium.”

“Belgium?” Mr. Shahari’s voice rose slightly. “France may have a claim. But Belgium? He must be crazy.”

“Yes. So stop worrying. If you’d like a coffee or brandy while you’re waiting, just tell Mario. I’ll be along shortly.”

Peter put the phone down and turned his attention to Phillip and Angela. Tiny blisters of perspiration stood out on the Frenchman’s forehead, but Angela seemed over her first queasiness and was now balancing herself with considerable skill.

“Well, Phillip, how do you feel?”

“I could go on for a while, sir. But there’s an ache starting in my shoulders.”

Peter glanced at his watch. This area of his timetable would be tight and chancey, too, he realised. He made a mental note to add Metercal and Rye-Krisp to the list of things he needed from Gibraltar.

“All right, that will be enough. Come along, Phillip.”

Angela slipped down from the Frenchman’s shoulders and smiled at Peter.

“It’s too bad you have to rush away. But why not let Phillip stay with us for lunch? After all, we should get to know each other a bit better.”

“I’m sorry, but we have work to do.”

“Wouldn’t you like to stay, Phillip?”

“Well, yes. But work is work, no?”

“Peter, don’t you want us to know Phillip any better?”

She smiled but he noticed that she was drawing a fingernail slowly across the back of her small hand, ploughing a thin white furrow in the deeply tanned skin. He couldn’t bluff; she held the aces, of course.

He knew what she was up to. She wanted a line on Phillip, wanted to get her claws into him and scratch away at his secrets. But he realised it wouldn’t be wise to refuse her a chance at him. That would only make her more curious. All he could hope was that the sergeant was discreet and nimble.

Angela read his expression and smiled a victor’s smile. She hooked an arm companionably through Phillip’s and looked up at him with innocently masked eyes. “We’ll have a good talk, won’t we! Francois, ask them to send up some wine. We’ll order lunch later.”

Peter went away with heavy misgivings.

The sound of the engine trembled on the night air, diminishing and fading as the car followed the curving road down the mountains to the coastal highway. When the sound died away and only the wind stirred the silence, Peter sighed unhappily, for he felt very weary then, and very much alone.

“Oh, you’re such a stubborn man,” Grace said. “Worse than that, you’re wilful and selfish. You don’t care a bit about your old friends. Or about me. How could you send them away, Peter?”

“Do you imagine it was easy?” He couldn’t keep a trace of bitterness from his voice. “Don’t you realise how much I’d like them with me? And how much I need them?”

Grace touched her eye with a handkerchief. “When I found Mr. Bendell in Liege, he was overjoyed at the chance to help you. But he felt you’d balk at using Canalli. That’s the only reason we didn’t send for him. They didn’t dream you’d turn them down, Peter.”

It had not been easy, he thought sadly. He had told Bendell and the Irishman that there was no place for them in his plans, and they had had to take his word for it. But the Irishman, his eyes bright and hard as diamonds, had said, “Just one question, lad. Is the little bitch forcing you into this? Has that black hearted harpy got something on you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Peter!”

“Grace, keep out of this.”

“What is it, lad? Give us a straight answer, for the love of Mary. Has that rotten God-blasted bitch, Angela, got you where the hairs are short?”

“No.”

Bendell had sighed and said: “Peter, my instincts tell me you are being noble.”

“You should know me better than that.”

“I do know you, Peter. I know you are generous and loyal beyond the boundaries of simple sanity. But as it was in the past, so it shall be now. You led and the rest of us followed. If you truly don’t need us, Peter, we will go. Our presence here would only be dangerous to you.”

“I truly don’t need you, old friends.”

They had sighed and raised their glasses to him in a last salute.

Now they were gone. Even the sound of the car had died away in the windy mountains.

Grace walked to the bar at the end of the long living-room, and there was a suggestion of defiance in the decisive tap of her high heels on the cold marble floor. “I have a good notion to get drunk.” She wore a black suede dress and black nylons, and her body seemed to merge with the shadows; in Peter’s fancy, her bright face shone through the gloom like a glorious star mounted on a pedestal of exquisitely wrought ebony. “I should have told them the truth,” she said, splashing whisky recklessly into a cut-glass tumbler. “Yes. I should have told them about Angela and the film. And that you’re risking your life to keep them safe and free.”

“I’m very grateful you didn’t.”

“It was cruel not to. How do you imagine they’ll feel when they learn the truth? When they pick up a newspaper one morning and find that you’ve been shot and killed? Or are in prison?”

“Damn it, they’re not going to learn the truth. Stop worrying about me. I should think you’d have plenty to do just worrying about yourself?”

“What do you mean by that?”

Peter took the Ace of Diamonds from his pocket. It was quite soggy from his dunking in the lily pond; the gryphon’s head was streaked and blurred almost beyond recognition. “Let’s talk about you now,” he said. “I became a thief for what may have been a ridiculous reason, but my motives were serious and honourable. What excuse did you have?”

“I didn’t have any excuse. I didn’t need one.”

“There. That’s something to worry about.”

“Oh! What a moral snob you are! You look at me in disdain because I didn’t have a nice, sentimental justification for stealing things. Supposing I told you I accidentally set off a landslide that wiped out a convent? And that I stole money so the nuns could rebuild it? Would that make you feel better?”

“Grace! Is that true?”

“Of course not, you silly man. I don’t boast about what I did. But I don’t apologise for it.”

“Then you are simply an amoral criminal. I don’t see anything cute or funny about that.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so unhappy about it. Does it really mean that much to you?”

Peter slumped into a sofa and put his sodden shoes up on a coffee table. “Yes,” he said gloomily. “It means everything.”

Unexpectedly her mood changed; she smiled gently and tremulously, and sat beside him. She kissed his cheek and put her head against his shoulder. “Do you know why I love you so much? It’s because you care about my soul. You’d like it to be as fair as my body, wouldn’t you?”

She turned her head and kissed the corner of his mouth. “As fresh and fragrant as a bowl of spring roses. I’d do anything to please you, Peter. But I can’t do anything about my soul. I mean, I can’t get at it with a pail and scrub brush. Would you like to hear the story of my life?”

“Would it be the truth?”

“I suppose you have a right to be beastly. I did lie to you once. But I won’t now. My father died when I was a little girl. My mother remarried a few years later. He was a jolly little man with waxed moustaches and cheeks like apples. I loved him very much. Paul travelled a lot and when he came home he always brought me presents. Combs, mirrors, hair bows boxes of candy, dresses with lots of petticoats. When I learned, much later, of course, that he was a thief, it didn’t really make any difference to me. Paul never hurt anyone in his life. He would have fainted away at the notion of carrying a knife or a gun. And he only stole from the rich, of course.”

“That’s because the rich have the money. Robin Hood figured that out, too.”

She smiled and tilted her head to one side. “Now you sound more like yourself, darling. Anyway, Paul got old and couldn’t work, and we became poor. There were various uncles and aunts living with us by then, and the pinch was uncomfortable. It was very hard on Paul! He sat in the garden sighing over the past, and planning jobs just to keep busy, the way some people do crossword puzzles. The plans were so clever it seemed a pity not to use them. So I used them. It seemed quite normal, like carrying on the family business.”

“So you all lived in luxury once again?”

“Well, we were comfortable at least.”

“Grace, this is terrible. This flip, casual tone, this total lack of remorse, is ghastly.”

She sighed. “I told you I couldn’t do anything about my soul.”

“All right then, why did you give it up?”

“It was because of Debby. When she was two-and-a-half or three, she told me she wanted to be a fireman. No, I’m quite serious. It made me think. You see, I had decided that there was something hereditary about what I did. Some compulsion that I wasn’t responsible for. Naturally, I thought Debby and the other children would grow up with the same well, proclivities. But here was Debby, a mere babe, striking out in a totally different direction.” Peter sighed with relief. “So you realised that what you were doing was wrong.”

“No. I realised that stealing wasn’t inevitable. I had enough money, so I gave it up.”

“And you made no attempt to make amends? You have no remorse for what you did?”

“No. I guess not. Actually, I never thought about it very much.” She put her hands on his cheeks, and turned his head to make him meet her eyes. “It’s not important now, Peter,” she said softly and urgently.

“All that matters is that you stay alive and stay free. Please take me in your arms, and love me as I love you. And say you’ll let me help you in Pamplona.”

“No. Absolutely no.”

“You think I’m not good enough. Is that it?”

“In a way you won’t understand, yes.”

“Oh, you brute!” She leaped to her feet, hands clenching spasmodically, lambent sparks of anger flashing from her splendid eyes.

It was marvelous to see; Peter was as entranced as if he were witnessing an electrical storm exploding over black, heaving seas.

“I’m sick of your lofty moralising,” she said furiously. “You patronise me because I was a common, ordinary thief. Because I didn’t excuse my crimes by pretending I had some mystical partnership with God. Well, I’ll show you, Peter Churchman. I may not have a lily-white soul; but I’ve got ten lily-white fingers that are just as clever as yours. If you won’t let me help, I’ll do the job on my own. And here’s what you’ll find when you open that vault in the Banco de Bilbao.”

She plucked the Ace of Diamonds from his hand and waved it defiantly in his face. “Something to press in your souvenir book. My calling card.”

Peter was shaken, not by her threats, but by her passion. With her slim strong legs spread wide, and the anger blazing purely in her eyes, she was like a creature struck from the ice and rock of mythology, proud, indomitable, fantastic.

“You are wonderful,” he said simply. “Absolutely wonderful.”

“Then why won’t you let me help you?”

“I love you too much. And secondly, I don’t need you.”

“Oh, you are cruel. You melt my heart with one word and break it with the next.”

And suddenly, for the first time since he had known her, there was weariness and defeat in the proud line of her shoulders. She turned quickly away, but not before he saw the bright flash of tears in her eyes. Peter wished desperately that he could find words that might give her some measure of hope or comfort, but he realised that anything he said would only ring with a hollow and hurtful banality. He turned to the door.

“Peter?”

Yes?”

She looked steadily at him. “Will you promise me one thing?”

“Yes?”

“If you need me, if you really need me, will you promise to let me help you?”

The adverb she had used made it less difficult for him to lie; for he knew he could coat the word ‘really’ with many slippery philosophical meanings. “Yes, you have my promise, dear.”

Perhaps she believed him, perhaps she didn’t; her eyes and face, calm with hurt, told him nothing. He sighed and went away.

Peter stared intently at the shining tips of massive horns. The horns swung searchingly from side to side, sunlight dancing on their black and ivory shadings.

“Toro?” Peter cleared his throat. “Toro?”

“No, no, no, Peter. You sound as if you’re coaxing a kitten to take its milk.” Don Miguel stamped a booted foot on the ground.

“Toro! Huh! Toro! Like that, Peter. Toro. You don’t crook your finger and say, “Nice Toro, come here, little Toro.”

Peter stood on hard-packed sand in the middle of the bullring at Malaga, holding a heart-shaped, heart-coloured piece of flannel in his hands, and facing sleek, murderous horns mounted on the front of a wheelbarrow.

“Try again,” Don Miguel said, nodding at the boy who stood by the wheelbarrow. “And Peter. Don’t jerk the mulcta away from the horns. Think of a sail going taut on a long jib. Filling slowly and powerfully. Think of your wrists as that jib, holding and controlling the mulcta as it swells with the horns of the bull.”

“Well, yes,” Peter said.

The circular stone tiers in the plaza were empty. It was a hot and dusty morning, and the sun on the yellow sand hurt his eyes.

Perspiration blistered his forehead, and his shirt was plastered damply to his back and shoulders.

The youngster raised the handles of the wheelbarrow and waggled the big horns at Peter.

“Toro!” Peter said. Then he said, “Ouch.”

“Rest a minute.” Don Miguel stood against the barrera a smiling old man with hair that was still black, and eyes that were bright as live coals in his lean, tough face. His features were coarse and weathered, as if they had been hacked from a rock that had faced the storms of the world from a mountain-top. Don Miguel, who was still called the Sword of Malaga by the Press, wore a black suit, a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned grey hat, and brown leather boots. Around his neck hung a goatskin of wine. In his mouth was a thin, green-flecked cigar. He unslung the bota and offered it to Peter. “Take it, You need it.”

“Thank you.”

Peter raised the goatskin above his head, opened his mouth, and pressed the bag until the air was gone from it and a jet of purple wine shot out and struck the back of his dry throat with a satisfying splat. He swallowed three mouthfuls of wine and handed the bota to Don Miguel.

The old man said, “Peter, there is eternal springtime in your heart, of course. But the green days and warm nights were bought by the silver at your temples.” He regarded Peter with kindly amusement. “This is nonsense. Why do you want to know about the bulls?”

“I’m going to Pamplona tomorrow.”

“Ah, and you want to run in front of the bulls during the fiesta?”

“That’s it.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell me? It’s the simplest thing in the world. You don’t need to bother with the cape and mulcta. In any event, Peter, you’d be arrested if you tried to use them in the streets. It’s against the law. The bulls learn too quickly. But listen, what you do is this: Find a place in the front of the crowd. Take to your heels when you hear the first bomb. You can’t stop for a nap, but if you run fast you’ll be safe in the bullring well before the bulls.”

“Don Miguel, I intend to run with the suicideros.”

“Then you must be crazy.”

“I can’t explain. But I must do it.”

“You mean once?”

“No, every day.”

“Your troubles are so great that death is preferable?”

“No. Running will keep me alive.”

Don Miguel looked at him thoughtfully. “We had better be more serious then. Listen, and I’ll tell some things you probably already know. The trick is to remember them when you’re facing a bull. When they run with the oxen, they aren’t dangerous. As bullfighters say, they are on tracks.” Don Miguel smiled. “Tales of youthful bravado are a bore, I realise. The bulls become larger with every year that passes. But let me tell you what we used to do at San Fermin. To start with, we drank all night. At dawn we managed it in one fashion or another to reach the Estefeta. Maids from our villas spread linen tablecloths in the street, set out china and plate, and served our breakfast. But not coffee and bread and butter! It was a feast. Cocido, roast pigs, porrones of wine. You know the porrones? They’re like this goatskin, only made of glass. You tip them up and open your mouth and swallow until you can’t hold any more. Well then we sat in the streets and ate and drank. The bombs would sound and the bulls would start running. But we continued eating and drinking. We never moved.” The old man laughed. “There are pictures of this in my villa, I’m not making it up. We sat in the street and let the bulls run over us. Some of us were knocked over, but the bulls seemed glad to get away from us. Maybe they knew we were crazy. That is what it’s like when they run with oxen.”

He drank more wine. Peter did too.

“But a bull alone is different, Peter. Remember this. Sometimes a bull will trip and fall. The encierro pounds away down the streets. And the bull that is left alone now looks for something to kill. If this happens, you must stand still. If you move, he will charge. He may charge anyway, of course. Listen. I remember when bull-breeders gave banquets in their private bullrings. We sat at a long table in the middle of the arena. After many courses and many bottles of wine, a trumpet would sound, a toril gate would swing open, and out would trot an uninvited guest.” Don Miguel smiled nostalgically. “Yes, a fighting bull. It was good to be quite drunk, then, or to have been born without nerves. The bull would circle the table, looking and waiting for someone to move. It was very difficult to hold a glass an inch from your lips and stare at his horns. And do you know what happened to the first man who lost his nerve and bolted for the barrera?”

“No.”

Don Miguel laughed heartily. “He had to pay for the banquet. Yes, he had to pay for everything. When are you leaving for Pamplona?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Go with God, my friend. He will take care of you. If I were younger...” Don Miguel’s voice trailed off. He looked thoughtfully at the tips of his boots. “Of course, God, Himself, is hardly a child any more.”

“What do you mean?”

Don Miguel smiled warmly and gave Peter a pat on the shoulder. “It was nothing, my friend. Nothing but the irreverent rambling of an old man. Good-bye, Peter.”

At four o’clock in the morning Peter and Francois walked quickly through the dark streets of Pamplona. It was seventh July, the day of San Fermin, and the city was like a huge bow drawn to the breaking point; trembling and eager to release its gathered energies.

Every hotel and pension in the town was packed to the walls; every table in every restaurant in the city had been booked solid for weeks.

In two hours the bombs would sound, the bulls would break for the streets, and the fiesta would explode into life; it didn’t start or commence in any normal or predictable fashion, Peter remembered, at one second it wasn’t; the next second it was a sudden, roaring fact.

They turned into the Calle de la Estefeta and walked towards the plaza that spread in a semi-circle about the building of the Ayuntamiento.

Francois wore a dark suit. Peter was dressed in a heavy brown sweater and grey slacks. They both carried suitcases.

On their way to the plaza they passed labourers, a policeman, and a group of seemingly bewildered young Danes also carrying suitcases.

There were nods, smiles, salutes. Peter and Francois turned off the Estefeta and were alone once again, swinging on briskly through the darkness.

When they reached the plaza, Francois put down his suitcase and studied his watch. Peter went into the narrow passageway that led to the warehouse behind the bank, and knelt before the clusters of iron grille work covering the basement windows. It was quieter and darker in the passageway, with a chill bite in the damp air. He opened his suitcase and removed a transistor-powered chain-saw, which glittered dully in the gloom. It was ten inches long, and looked as if it had been designed for children, but its fine teeth were capable of gnawing through anything but processed steel plate.

The grille work inclined towards the wall of the building at a forty-five degree angle. Peter sliced it from its frame in a single piece, and smeared the shiny cuts with black grease. The grille work angled to the wall as it was, could be replaced in its frame as neatly and firmly as a lid on a pot. Peter set it aside and drew a line on the bottom of a window-pane with a glass cutter. He covered this with transparent tape, and made three more incisions on the top and sides of the glass. When he gently prodded the pane with his fingertip, it fell open like a trap door, hinged by the strip of transparent tape. Peter put a hand through the window, found the catch and released it. He then replaced the pane of glass and secured it firmly with three more strips of tape. It would have required a close examination to reveal that the window had been tampered with. The work had taken sixty-five seconds.

Boots rang in the plaza. Someone hailed Francois. Peter froze against the wall.

“Yes, yes, I do need a room,” he heard Francois say, in a much too hearty voice.

Peter crept up the passage and peered into the plaza. Francois was talking to a policeman.

“In that case, I’ll take you to my brother’s home,” the policeman said. “It’s only a cot, but you’re lucky to find anything now. And it’s not expensive.”

“But I’m waiting for friends.”

“Here? At this hour?”

“They’re driving up from Madrid.”

“Oh. Didn’t you come into the plaza with someone else? A tall man with a suitcase?”

“A tall man?” Francois laughed pointlessly. “Yes. He’s gone through. He’s got a girl in town.”

“Lucky fellow.”

The policeman went away, his boots ringing hollowly on the cobblestones. When the sound faded to a murmur, Francois wheeled and ducked into the passage alongside Peter. He was breathing hard; sweat beaded his forehead.

“Come on,” Peter said, moving off into the darkness...

Peter had anticipated everything but the intensity of the noise. He had imagined the look of barricaded streets, the press of the crowd, and, with ghastly clarity, the thrusting, seeking horns of the bulls.

But he hadn’t imagined a clamour like the howling of a storm, limitless and infinite. Steadily and powerfully, the roaring of the crowd grew in volume, while beneath it, like the bass of a great orchestra, the pounding hooves of the bulls shook the earth.

The sound beat on him like flails, numbing and splintering his thoughts. There was a scream in his ears.

“I can’t do it.”

Francois crouched against the wall of the passageway and shook his head at Peter. The words seemed to have torn his mouth; it looked like a ragged hole punched into his straining features.

“You’ve got to!”

“No, no, no.”

Peter struck him across the face.

“There are no free rides,” he said. Then he hit him again, using the back of his hand this time, and the impact of the blow bloodied the Frenchman’s lips and drove him to his knees. Peter hauled Francois up, unlatched the barricade, opened it and booted him into the street.

Francois screamed and ran. Peter leaped after him, the door of the barricade swinging shut with a crash that was lost in the crescendoing roar of the crowd.

The small plaza was like the eye of a storm, an uneasy vacuum surrounded by turbulence and noise. Every window overlooking it was packed with screaming faces. Every eye was turned to the street leading up from the river.

The suicideros were running now. Only a half-dozen still danced nervously about the plaza, eyes rolling back and sideways in their heads to watch for the bulls. Above the rhythmic chanting and bellowing the sound of hooves came on the air like a rumble of artillery fire.

The last of the runners were beautiful in their fear; there seemed a holiness in their terror, some sanctification of the spirit in this willing and ritualistic acceptance of dangers that no sane or prudent man would expose himself to; their smiles were straining and ghastly, but their eyes seemed brightened by the prospects of grace and honour.

Everyone was shouting. The first oxen came into sight, their splayed hooves slapping and banging and slipping on the cobblestones. Then the bulls appeared and all the runners fled from the plaza.

Peter ran as he might in a nightmare. The harder he tried, the less progress he seemed to make; the air was like a physical barrier against his heaving chest, so dense and heavy that it seemed to take all his strength to force his way through it. His feet thudded ponderously, as if they were encased in lead. The street narrowed as it angled into the Estefeta, and the screams of the crowd hammered at the walls of the buildings like a cyclone trapped in a wind tunnel. From balconies and windows, thousands of white, disembodied faces floated above Peter like dangerously inflated balloons. There were thin faces, fat faces, wide faces, and long faces, all with black holes in the middle of them that seemed to be twisting and writhing in agony. Peter’s ribs were like red-hot bars caging his straining lungs. He had a horrid image of an ankle giving way, a pounding heel coming down solidly on an over-ripe banana peel.

A young man in a white shirt and a red handkerchief about his neck shot past Peter. He looked frantically over his shoulder, his dark eyes full of wild lights. Then he screamed in transports of exquisite terror, and bolted on up the street.

But Peter was not alone. To his left, coming on steadily and imperturbably, were the massive horns of the lead oxen. And behind them the bulls.

A hand gripped his shoulder.

“Are you trying to be killed?”

Don Miguel, the Sword of Malaga, ran evenly alongside Peter, keeping abreast of him with the light, skipping strides of a torero. The people on the balconies recognised the old man and screamed at him.

“Slow down,” he said to Peter.

The bulls were going past them like a freight train. There was a reek of dung and sweat, spurts of dust, and the rattle and ring of their hooves on the paving stones. Peter saw the hairy nostrils and small dull eyes, lashing tails and a froth of sweat on thick pads of shoulder muscle.

“Let them go by. Slow down.”

They stopped running. Peter put both hands to his heaving sides and watched the bulls pounding up the street with the oxen.

“Amigo, where did you come from?” Peter gulped down air and shook his head; he couldn’t speak.

“I was watching for you. I waited until the last second. Where were you standing?”

“Across the plaza, near the barricades.”

“It’s funny I didn’t see you. Listen, if you wait until the last, try to get behind the bulls. You can’t trot along with them as if they were cows. It’s very dangerous.”

Men on the balcony began to shout at them.

Don Miguel looked away quickly. The lines in his tough old face seemed to sharpen; his eyes grew brighter. He said: “Stand very still, Peter.”

A towering black and white bull was trotting back along the street. A newspaper blew under its nose. The bull chopped at it viciously. It sniffed the gutters and looked up at the shouting people in the balconies.

“Stand very quietly.”

Peter didn’t need the old torero’s injunction; every joint in his body suddenly seemed to have acquired a thick, immobilising sheath of ice.

He prayed for the crowd to be silent; that was almost the worst of it, the hysterical sense-numbing noise.

The bull was twenty feet away when it noticed the two human targets standing motionless in the street. It raised its head to stare at them, and the movement caused a crest of muscle to rise steeply in its shoulders. Then it came forward in quick stops and starts, pawing delicately at the paving stones, feinting right and left with big, murderous horns, as if trying to determine whether these tall, post like objects could be frightened or startled into action.

“Very still now,” Don Miguel said, without moving his lips.

The bull stopped five feet away, and sniffed the ground. They formed a tableau under the screaming crowds, the men, the animal, the noise itself, all linked together in a pattern so volatile that it seemed ready to explode at any instant of its own interior tensions. It was a foretaste of what must be the temporal texture of eternity, Peter thought with therapeutic irrelevance; seconds that were like years, minutes that were like centuries.

Someone raised a first-floor window and flapped a bed sheet into the street.

The bull wheeled away from them and charged it.

Don Miguel pulled Peter along the street, then froze him with the pressure of his hand. The bull turned from the limp, unresisting, unsatisfactory sheet, and looked back at them.

“Stand very still.”

Another sheet flapped temptingly from a window farther up the street.

The bull went for it at a hard gallop, ripped it free with one savage chop, and continued up the street with the big white sheet flapping and trailing beneath its churning hooves.

Don Miguel smiled at the cheering people in the balconies.

“It’s like old times,” he said and wiped his forehead. “Peter, you have a story to bore children with in years to come.”

“What the devil are you doing here in Pamplona?”

“Let’s go and drink some wine. It’s not too early to start lying about the size of those horns.”

“Answer my question.”

Don Miguel shrugged apologetically. “Well, there’s an old Spanish proverb that goes this way: It is better to eat dry bread in the sunlight, than to join a feast in darkness.”

“That isn’t old, it isn’t Spanish, and it isn’t proverbial,” Peter said.

“Very few foreigners would understand that. Come along, Peter, it’s time for some wine.”

“Why won’t you answer my question?”

The old man scratched his ear. “All right. I came here to help you.”

“You’re a fool.”

“You see? That’s why I didn’t give you an answer. A man who can’t afford friends is too poor to have enemies. And a Spaniard without foes is like a bull without horns. That isn’t old or Spanish or proverbial either. But think about it, anyway. Now. Will you take some wine with me?”

Peter sighed helplessly.

They went off down the street with their arms about one another’s shoulders... One night later in the week, Peter met with a carpenter in a draughty shed near the river.

“I did my best, senior but the time was short.”

“I think you’ve done a fine job.”

“Thank you. But if there were more time I would put a sharper light in his eyes. And more of the devil in his smile. But the nose and cheeks are good. And the uniform is correct. Black, with the silver trimming on the coat and hat. It’s the style of Phillip the Second, you know. Now. You see those curls on his wig? Where they come down over his left temple? Well, just behind the lowest curl is a little lever that makes the other thing work. You can hardly see it, eh, senior The Cabezuda was propped against a wall of the shed, its fresh paint sparkling in the light of the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Under comically arched brows, its great black eyes were fixed fiercely at a point about six feet above Peter’s head. The pink cheeks were bigger than pumpkins. A splayed nose hung suspended over ruby-red lips which were stretched wide in a gleefully ferocious smile. The tricorn hat, austerely formal in its trimmings of black and silver, was pulled down raffishly over one eye. A drum hung from a strap around the neck, the sticks secured to the rim by loops of tasselled green cord. From the shoulders, folds of dark cloth dropped to the ground. The hems were bound with red flannel, on which sequins glittered in cabalistic patterns.

“Look!” The carpenter raised the folds of cloth and showed Peter the single four-by-four which supported the frame of the Cabezuda. Attached to this post, at right angles to the ground, was a yoke padded with leather.

“Watch!” The carpenter crouched and fitted his head through the yoke.

When he stood erect the Cabezuda rose another two feet in the air.

Peter stared appraisingly at its eyes. They were now at least eight feet above his own.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Perfect.”

He gave the happy artisan a bonus for his industry, and sent him off smiling.

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.

Grace’s voice sounded suddenly in his ear, a tense, metallic whisper.

“Get ready, Peter. They’re opening the gate. The bulls are running.”

Peter gripped the handle of the plunger, and looked at Bendell and the Irishman. “Here we go, lads.”

“Now, Peter! Now.”

Peter rammed the plunger home, and two explosions shook the air, their echoes blending and converging instantly in one great blast; the first roared over their heads like long freight trains rumbling towards the sky, while the second, compact and contained, sounded deep within the shaft they were driving through the wall to the bank. A jet of smoke and dust shot into the basement. Splinters of rock whistled and whined about their ears.

The Irishman and Bendell, carrying short pickaxes, ran through the eddying layers of smoke, and disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel.

Francois and Peter followed with a tool kit and valises. Another explosion sounded above the city, as the bulls began their last race through the barricaded streets. In the narrow shaft, they could hear the muffled sound of their hooves, the distant roaring of the crowds.

The Irishman’s pick rang against crumbling brick and stone.

“Pay dirt, lad,” he called back to Peter.

They pulled aside the last bricks with their hands, chopped through la things and plaster, and crawled, one by one, into the dark basement of the bank. Peter stood perfectly still, a hand on the Irishman’s shoulders, and cut the blackness around him with the beam of his flashlight. They were in the records storage area, a vast, low-ceilinged chamber which ran parallel to the ancient boiler room and cellars on the ground floor of the bank. Wooden file cabinets stood in rows higher than their heads, and the walls were shelved and lined with musty ledgers and lock-boxes bound with metal strips.

Peter could taste the dryness on the air; it was as if the very act of their breathing had stirred dust motes lying undisturbed for decades.

The silence was complete. Peter examined it in layers, letting his ears test first the quiet of the storage area, then the adjoining cellars and boiler rooms, and finally the vault floor above their heads.

The only sound he heard was Francois’s erratic breathing. Peter squeezed the Irishman’s shoulders, and moved off swiftly towards the front of the bank, following the bright, narrow path traced by his flashlight. The door sealing the storage area was tall and massive, patterned with squares of deeply carved wood. It was very old, and so was its lock, and Bendell solved the problems of its tumblers in seconds with a thin screwdriver wrapped in a handkerchief. Peter let the door swing slowly open of its own weight, and peered through a crack into the foyer of the bank.

The foyer extended the full width of the building, abutting directly on to the street, its tall arched windows and doors laced with grille work and covered now with drawn green shades. The side walls of smooth, veined marble were flanked by tubs of dark green plants, strange and exotic in the gloomy darkness, and they gave off an earthy, verdant odour that was jarringly alive after the dry, dead air of the records room.

From the middle of the foyer a broad marble staircase rose to the second floor of the bank, eighteen worn steps with brass handrails on either side of them.

On the sidewalk, in front of the massive double doors, stood a detail of police; Peter could see their figures silhouetted against the long green shades.

Peter opened the door enough to slip through it. With an eye on the double doors at the entrance of the bank, he ran at a half-crouch to the foot of the stairs. He sat on the first step, a valise and tool kit in his lap, squeezed himself close to the hand-railing, and went up the stairs backward, easing himself from one step to the next, like a child who hadn’t learned to walk, but keeping his eyes fixed all the while on the silhouetted figures of the police in the street. Francois came after him, and then Bendell and the Irishman, and there was no sound at all but the rough whisper of heavy trousers on cold marble.

On the second floor, safe from view, Peter stopped again to test the silence. Nothing moved, nothing stirred, except dust motes dancing in the dim light. There were faint traffic noises, and the distant noise of the fiesta from the street, but the air around them was as still and quiet as that in a tomb.

The second floor of the bank was vast and dim. The murky sunlight that filtered through the green shades on the windows coated everything with a translucent gloss; the rows of empty desks and ancient typewriters, the shining marble flooring and the great steel door of the vault, all shimmered with pale marine illuminations.

In the heavy, oppressive silence, an old-fashioned wall clock ticked solemnly and sturdily, its pendulum swinging with a sense of inevitability behind a glass door brightened with golden lettering advertising an insurance company. Peter flicked a glance at his Patek-Phillipe. The wall clock was slow, by almost forty-five seconds.

“Let’s hit it,” he said.

They hurried to the vault and commenced work with an apparently effortless precision and economy. Peter flipped open the two valises, while Bendell spread a long and narrow strip of chamois-cloth, arranging drills and bits and braces in the order they might need them, his hands moving as deftly and precisely as those of a surgeon at an operating table. The diamond teeth that ringed the cutter bar gleamed in the dim light. Peter ran his fingertips over them appraisingly, and studied the massive door of the vault.

“It’s a tricky brute,” he said quietly to the Irishman. “If you smash the main tumbler links, they trip the auxiliaries.”

The Irishman nodded. “True, lad. And if you smash those auxiliary bastards, they set off the emergency system.”

“You must work backward,” Bendell said. “First the emergencies. Then the auxiliaries. The main tumbler links last.”

“Don’t teach your grandfather how to suck eggs,” the Irishman said, with a hard grin. He rubbed his hands together for a few seconds, and picked up a punch and drill. “How much time left, Peter?”

“One hour and forty-five minutes.”

“It won’t be a milk run, lad. Let’s get cracking.”

“Hold it one second.” Peter turned to Francois. “Let’s have it. This is as far as we go without it.”

“But of course.” Francois opened his jacket, removed the can of film from under his arm, and gave it to Peter with an ironical little smile.

“I’m satisfied with our bargain. Why shouldn’t I be?”

Peter inspected the impress of his ring in the candle wax that smoothly sealed the locks and catches on the can of film.

“Okay, Paddy, hit it,” he said, and put the film in his tool kit.

The Irishman began drilling. Peter went quickly through the gloomy night to the front windows of the bank. He moved a shade a half-inch with his fingertip, and peered out into an empty street shining with thin sunlight. This was the business district of the old town, and its buildings were sturdy and respectable, with barred windows and brass name-plates studded to the walls beside their doorways.

Twelve feet below Peter on the sidewalk in front of the bank was a detail of six policemen. Since the beginning of the fiesta, there was no minute of the day or night when the doors of the bank were left unguarded; a round-the-clock security was maintained by severe, alert officers with holstered automatics in their belts, and whistles hanging on short chains from the epaulets of their tunics.

This was an area of the operation Peter had never been satisfied with, although he knew from observation that at this time of the morning the sunlight on the panes of glass silvered them like mirrors. In addition, the heavy squares of iron grille work on the windows would provide a shield for what he must do now; but he was still gambling recklessly on the strength of all the slender threads of chance. The fly buzzing about a policeman’s ear, or the sudden crick in the neck, that could cause a man to turn suddenly and look directly up at the window Peter was working on.

Peter drew a deep breath, and held half of it, steadying himself as he would if he were about to squeeze off a shot on a target range. Then he opened the tool kit and picked up his glass cutter. He moved the shade, slipped his hand behind it, and made a swift, precise incision on the bottom of a pane of glass. After waiting a full minute, he covered the cut with transparent tape. One of the policemen looked along the street, his eyes roving about alertly. Peter let the shade swing gently back into place, an instant before the policeman turned and glanced up at the windows of the bank. This Peter didn’t like; there was literally no defence against intuition. He knew the man hadn’t heard or seen anything to rouse his suspicions. But nevertheless, his hackles were up.

Peter waited several minutes before peering out again, and then he cursed softly, for he had almost missed an opportunity to finish the job in complete safety. An old man, who was obviously drunk, had fallen in the gutter, and several of the policemen were assisting him to his feet, while the others watched their efforts with indulgent smiles. But even so, Peter was able to make two more incisions, along the sides of the pane, before the policemen returned to their posts in front of the bank. He was forced to wait fifteen more minutes before making the last cut at the top of the glass. In the middle of the pane he pasted an inch-long strip of tape, with one half of it sticking up in the air. This would serve as a door handle; when he pulled on it the pane would fall backward into his hand, hinged by the transparent tape along the bottom edge of the glass.

Peter closed his tool kit and stood perfectly still for a moment. Then he looked at his hands. They had not quite stopped trembling.

The Irishman drilled four holes around the combination knob, lining them up at the cardinal compass points. Into these he inserted spring clamps which locked the diamond cutter-bar tightly against the surface of the vault door. Bendell screwed a short steel handle into the outer ring of the cutting rig.

“What’s the time, Peter?” the Irishman said sharply. He had removed his jacket, and the back of his shirt was dark with perspiration. A tangle of thick black hair fell over his forehead. “Forty-eight minutes,” Peter said. He was studying the notes he had copied from documents in the Museum of Archives, analysing certain measurements in relationship to the swinging needle of the compass he held in his hand.

“The emergency system’s had it,” the Irishman said. “But, lad, it’s still a horse race.”

Strain lined all their faces. Tension had seemingly charged and compressed the air; it was as if they were working under a bell, squeezed and cramped together, isolated from the world. There was a dry smell of dust, and steel shavings, and old documents around them, and another scent, acrid and sweet as jasmine, which told Peter that sweat was popping out all over Francois’s body, coarsening the fragrance of his cologne.

Peter looked steadily at Bendell and the Irishman. “We’re going to come through, lads. Trust me.” He infused them with his own hard confidence, which was more glandular than realistic, for he believed they would come through, not because it was possible, but simply because they must. The Irishman drew a deep breath, gripped the handle on the rim of the cutter-bar, and threw his weight against it... Peter went swiftly through the dark basement of the bank, following the slender beam of his flashlight. He checked his compass, followed a wall to its intersection with another, and then dropped to his knees beside a manhole cover that was secured by a screw lock with a ten-inch bar running through it. He spun the bar until the clamps came loose, raised the manhole lid and climbed down an iron ladder into the storm drains that twisted under the bank towards the river.

Something ran between his feet, claws ticking on slimy stones. Peter flicked his light about and the long slender beam leaped along the drain, flashing on drops of moisture beading the curving walls, brightening the dark rivulet of water running through the trough in the floor of the tunnel. The air was oppressively damp and cold, fetid with the smell of moss and sunless earth. In the springtime, he knew from what he read at the museum, the drains were deep with swiftly running water from the melting snows in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

Now they were almost dry; the trickle in the bottom of the drain was hardly enough to dampen the old stones.

Peter followed the drain for perhaps a hundred yards, occasionally stopping to check his notes and compass. Within another fifty yards, the drain began to narrow; his head scraped against the rounded ceiling, and he went on at an awkward crouch, the beam of his torch describing an ever smaller arc between the compressing walls. At last he was forced to get on his knees and crawl, tucking the flashlight under his belt. After a dozen more yards the tunnel angled sharply right, and ran down to connect with another main drain. Light gleamed at the end of the tube which linked the two mains.

Peter flattened himself on his stomach and wormed his way down the connecting link for several yards, to make absolutely certain it was possible. He was wider in the shoulders than the Irishman and Francois, and he knew they could make it to the next main without any great difficulty.

The force of gravity was in his favour going down the slanting tube.

But it worked against him when he tried to back out; pushing himself uphill turned out to be nearly impossible, for the confines of the link prevented him from getting a reliable leverage with his hands and feet.

And there were cracks and ridges in the old stones which painfully scratched his knees and elbows, and impeded his progress, such as it was, by snagging his belt buckle, his flashlight, the buttons on his coat.

For a bleak moment he thought he might not make it. But he got out at last, and when he was free once more, his breath came harshly and raggedly, the sound grating against the damp walls. He had no love of stifling enclosures, and no affection at all for the creatures who had shared the tunnel with him, gaunt sewer rats whose claws made liquid, scratching noises on the slimy stones, and whose eyes were red and bold in the gloom beyond the range of his flashlight.

Peter backed out of the tunnel, stood when it widened, and ran along the drain to the ladder that led up to the basement of the bank. Time was now the destroyer; and the ticking of his watch seemed as fateful and ominous as the ticking of a bomb... The muscles in the Irishman’s arms stood out rigidly. He was breathing hard, grunting as he turned the cutter-bar a fraction of an inch at a time, grinding fine diamond teeth deep into the steel of the vault. Bendell stood beside him, an appraising frown on his plump face.

“You should be close to the tumbler links.”

“I should be in a pub on Grafton Street. How’s the time, Peter?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Good God!”

“Don’t worry, we’re on schedule,” Peter said. “But listen: When the links break, you and Bendell will leave. I checked the route. It’s clear. The second drain will take you out to the river a mile from town. Head for Biarritz and home, without wasting a second.”

“And what about us?” Francois asked Peter.

“We stay and finish the job. We tie up the loose ends that can hang us.”

“Very well.” Francois shrugged, but there was a shine of sweat on his forehead, and the tic at the corner of his mouth was pulling rhythmically at his lips... At the front windows of the bank, Peter moved a shade with his fingertip, and looked into the street. There was more traffic now: old women in dark shawls hurrying to Mass or market; tourists taking pictures in the clear fresh sunlight; a stream of merrymakers with drums and goatskins of wine on their way to the Plaza del Castillo. The police detail stood at attention, waiting for the relief which would appear at the stroke of eight o’clock.

This fact determined Peter’s choice of time; in that split second of orderly commotion, when sergeants were barking commands, and tourists were taking pictures of the marching police, he had noticed a vacuum of security in which his plans would function with a minimal risk of detection.

He was preparing to let the shade fall back into place, when he saw a sight that made his mouth go dry.

The Cabezuda was coming along the street towards the bank, rocking from side to side, its staring eyes towering high above the heads of the crowd. Children laughed at it. Adults shouted good-humoured insults at the huge, comically splayed nose, the Gaming puffed-out cheeks. “Good God!” Peter said softly, and looked at his watch. They were three minutes early! What in hell had gone wrong? He cursed Angela, damning her piggishness, for that was the only explanation that occurred to him that she couldn’t wait a last precious minute to get her hands on the diamonds. Peter ran back to the vault. They would need a miracle now he knew, for the Cabezuda wouldn’t be allowed to loiter in front of the bank.

The Irishman’s face was a damp, straining mask, and under pale skin the muscles in his arms were bunched like knotted ropes. “They’re here,” Peter said. “We can’t make it!”

Francois looked as if he had been struck a heavy blow at the base of the skull. He shook his head weakly. “No, no, they can’t be here yet. It’s not time.”

Peter leaped to help the Irishman. Together they fought to turn the ring of diamond teeth against layered steel that had been forged to resist fires and explosions, to withstand anything but direct hits by bombs. Time became stretched and attenuated, until it seemed there was no time at all, but only the pain in their arms, the salty sweat in their eyes, the harsh noise of their breathing. And at last, there was an eternal interval, in which they hung their combined weight on the bar, hands slippery and weakening steadily, and it was then Peter realised that the great vault would not give way to their strength and prayers, that it had won and they had lost.

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.

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 cafés 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 cafés, cheerfully attentive to half-filled tables. No fire-bulls exploded in the streets, no rockets or drums shook the air, and no lines 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 Café Kutz looking out across the dark expanse of the Plaza del Castillo.

“But you must, Peter. You must. Don’t get off the track. She knew Angela didn’t intend to play fair. Those were her exact words. Grace has very strict notions about fair play, you see.”

“Against all the evidence to the contrary, I’m trying to believe that too.”

But no matter how hard he tried, Peter could not believe; he could not even pretend to believe; and there was no logic yet devised or conceived that could brace his spinning thoughts.

For it had not been Angela who had arrived three minutes early at the bank; it had been Grace!

“Fair play means everything to her,” Morgan said, nodding judiciously. “That’s why she ordered the Cabezuda made. That’s why she made me carry it to the bank. Before Angela got there.”

Peter shook his head helplessly. He couldn’t speak.

“I’m quite strong, you know,” Morgan said with a sigh. “It caused a great deal of trouble in schools. Because I had an aversion to things. They used to get at me.” He smiled gently; happy lights sparkled in his eyes. “Then I had to break them up. I broke up the boiler in a school once. It kept making popping noises at me. But that’s all over. It’s people now. Lawyers, heretics, that sort of thing. So cheer up. She did it all for you, Peter.”

The majestic ingenuity of her betrayal, had left Peter without a reed of hope to cling to.

“Then where is she?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Where are the diamonds?”

Morgan frowned and tapped his forehead: “She was a deep one. Do you remember Quince?”

“No.”

“Grace rather puts me in mind of old Quince. Deep sorts. Afraid of things causing rows. You would have liked Quince. He lives in Wales. Do you think we could find him?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t give a damn.”

“That doesn’t sound like you, Peter. I thought you might want to look up Quince.”

“I want Grace. I want to know, once and for all, how great and blind a fool I’ve been.”

Had it all been a charade? Had she been using him from the very start? Was nothing true and real? And where in the name of God was she now? Seated in the first-class cabin of a jet thundering towards Melbourne or Lima? Warming the stewardess with a radiant smile? While one slim hand rested lightly on a valise filled with diamonds?

Peter knew that he, too, must now start thinking in terms of jet aeroplanes and distant places. For in the morning, ten hours from now, the doors of the Banco de Bilbao would be opened, and, within minutes, rockets would go screaming up from every police bureau in Europe. The chase would be on!

Angela and Phillip had long since gone their separate ways. She had accepted Francois’s death realistically. And so had Phillip, although the nature of that death had caused him to muse with grim satisfaction on the infinite complexity of God’s justice.

Peter had talked to Angela before she left Pamplona. She had been bitter but philosophical about the loss of the diamonds, and the loss of her hold on him; but Peter knew her far too well to be reassured by this seemingly stoic acceptance of defeat. Inside she was roiling. He had sensed there was only one thing Angela couldn’t abide that he might escape the destruction she and Francois had planned for him.

The sword of her vengeance hung over him by a single, silken thread, but he didn’t have the heart to care one way or the other; he longed for only two things, which now seemed hopelessly incompatible Grace and truth.

“Please tell me everything one more time,” he said to Morgan.

“Yes, but remember to stay on the track. Don’t go plunging off. Well then. She knew Angela wouldn’t play fair. I’ve mentioned that, I think. So she ordered a Cabezuda from the same chap who made yours. A twin, so to speak. Now then. Do you remember the log-chopping contests? Well, she arranged for one of those Basques to carry the Cabezuda.”

Dear God, Peter thought, more black mystery. “You didn’t tell me that before,” he said.

“Didn’t!” Morgan frowned faintly. “Odd. Well, in any case, she decided to let me help. Fair play again, you see. I’d mistaken you for a lawyer, and caused all sorts of trouble, so she gave me a chance to make it all right again.”

Peter sighed. “Did she happen to mention aeroplane schedules? Or whether she might need a parka where she was going? Or just a bikini and sun lotion?”

“No, but there is one other thing. She said this would be a bit of a shock to you. She asked me to explain it very gently. Fair play again, you’ll notice.”

Peter sighed again. “Well, the sentiment does her credit, I guess.”

A stout, uniformed figure came hurrying across the plaza. Antonio, the policeman, mounted the steps of the terrace, his short legs churning with a sense of urgency. He sank breathlessly into a chair at Peter’s table, removed his hat and fanned his flushed face.

“Antonio! Are you all right?”

“Yes. No.”

“What’s the matter?”

Antonio tried to smile, but the effort only emphasised the anxiety in his eyes. He drew a deep breath and said: “Peter, this is probably a joke. Maybe we can have a good laugh about it later.” He took an envelope from the inner breast pocket of his tunic, and Peter sighed faintly as he recognised the writing on it. Antonio removed several sheets of folded stationery from the envelope, shook them open with fluttering fingers.

“Of course, I know this is all nonsense,” he said, smiling nervously at Peter. “Sheer nonsense. Forgive me for seeming to take it so seriously, but I must have your assurance.” He stopped and drew another deep breath. “This note was left at my hotel several hours ago. I just received it. There is no signature, of course. People who make such reckless charges seldom have the courage to sign their names to them. But we must discuss it, Peter. Purely as a matter of routine. You understand, of course.”

“Of course,” Peter said, and waited for Angela’s sword to fall.

Antonio put on his glasses and studied the sheets of paper. Then he shrugged. “This is ridiculous. It says that you bought blasting equipment at the Terremoto Construction Company in Malaga last week. Which would be a simple matter to check. It also says that you acquired certain tools and equipment from Mr. Shahari in Gibraltar, and smuggled them into Spain. With the help of a tinker, whose name isn’t given. A convenient oversight. Well, here’s the last of it. Whoever wrote this irresponsible drivel claims you blasted open the vault of the Banco de Bilbao this morning.” Antonio laughed.

“Yes. That’s what it says. And that you stole the Flutes of Carlos. And the Net and Trident which adorned the Virgin of Seville. I’m embarrassed to repeat such absurdities. But I must, Peter. For only one reason: to hear your denial.”

Peter stared at the back of his hands.

Antonio’s smile became uncertain; then it faded slowly from his lips.

After a moment, he said: “Now I must ask you a question, Peter.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Is any of this true?”

“It’s all true, I regret to say Antonio looked away and blinked his eyes. “I am a policeman, but I find that I don’t care whether it’s true or not. Strange, eh?”

“We were friends.”

“We are friends.” Antonio blew his nose. “I can’t judge you. But you realise what I must do, Peter. I must ask you to come with me to the Administration of Police.”

“I understand.”

The policeman’s eyes were sad. “We can walk across the square like old friends taking a stroll after dinner. Chatting about something that happened when we were young. Something amusing, eh?”

“Yes. Do you remember the time when the burro got drunk in my bar?”

“Yes, yes. That was very funny. He butted the priest, didn’t he?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you ready then?”

Peter nodded and climbed slowly to his feet.

“It’s only a short walk,” Antonio said.

A distant drumbeat sounded on the air, and a single flute drew a lovely looping line through the clear mild night. At the opposite end of the plaza there were strange flashes of light, and faint cheers that rose towards the sky like jubilant prayers.

Antonio put a hand on Peter’s arm. “Shall we go?”

A lighter hand touched Peter’s other arm. “Oh, darling, I’m so terribly sorry,” Grace said.

Peter closed his eyes. He knew this was a hallucination, a sensory malfunction engineered by his subconscious. But it gave him the strength he needed. In his mind there was a vision of Grace at his side, her head golden against the night, her eyes luminous with tenderness and love. And in this curious trance, he believed a lie, believed that everything had worked itself out serenely; they had nothing to fear any more, nothing to do but love one another for the rest of their lives. And Peter realised that as long as he kept his eyes shut, he was safe from harm; as long as her dear face blazed radiantly in his thoughts, he was free for all time, intact and invulnerable.

The cheering was louder now, but the drum and bugle soared triumphantly above it. There was a stir in the great square.

“Darling, please look at me.”

Peter opened his eyes. Grace stood beside him, her head golden against the night, a tender, anxious smile on her lips. “Where the hell have you been?” he said sharply.

She raised her voice to make herself heard above the cheering. “Please don’t be angry.”

“Why did you run out on me? And why in God’s name did you come back? We’re finished. Angela’s blown the whistle!”

“Please, my darling, I hated worrying you. But I had to do it this way. When the guards were gone for dinner. When she was all alone. It was our only chance.”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“Look. There.”

Peter turned and blinked his eyes. “Good God,” he said shakily.

From the balconies ringing the square, floodlights crisscrossed in blindingly brilliant patterns. On the terraces of the cafés, people stood clapping and cheering.

The small statue of the Virgin of Santa Maria was making a last triumphant tour of the Plaza del Castillo. She swayed rhythmically with the lurching strides of the smiling men who supported the float, her blank, girlish eyes shining in the glare of the floodlights.

In her slender rigid arms glistened the Trident of Diamonds. The golden mesh of the Net of Diamonds was pinned to her smooth plaster brow like a wedding veil. And at her feet blazed the diamond Flutes of Carlos. The wild flowers scattered about the float, the poppies and daisies, the fragile blue iris, glowed softly in the radiant reflections of the gems.

Antonio moved like a sleepwalker to the edge of the terrace, his mouth hanging open, his eyes going blankly from the figure of the Virgin to the sheets of writing paper in his hand.

“It was our only chance,” Grace said quietly.

“It won’t work, darling.”

“It must. You wanted to give yourself up. I knew that. But you can’t.”

Peter blinked again, for he had noticed something else about the Virgin; a diamond tiara sparkled on her head; a lovely little crown he had last seen shining like a corona above Grace’s golden hair.

“Why did you give it to her?”

“I don’t know. It was a way of getting at my soul, I think. With a pail and brush. It’s so strange, Peter. It may have worked. I feel wonderful. It’s like a miracle.”

“Oh quite,” Morgan said, heaving himself to his feet and nodding approvingly at the approaching figure of the Virgin. “A miracle, no doubt of it.”

The word trembled on the air. A priest standing nearby crossed himself, far from casually. Waiters exchanged glances.

“Yes, yes,” Antonio said, but he seemed quite agitated as he looked at Peter. “Did you do this because.” He stopped and started over again.

“Peter, did you take my cynical attitude seriously? Did you think our poor little Santa Maria would be humbled and slighted because He shook his head helplessly. “What I’m trying to say is this: Did you steal these things, borrow them, that is, so that our Virgin might enjoy this one moment of glory?”

Morgan smiled ominously at him. “Don’t get off the track. Don’t let the engine of faith plunge—” He frowned at Peter. “Where did it plunge?”

“Into the gorge of error.”

“Quite. Keep that in mind,” Morgan said. “It’s a miracle, no question about it. I should hate to meet a heretic in Spain, of all places.”

“I share your view. Naturally.” Antonio blew out his cheeks. “Why should I be stubborn? I have the option of believing my friend is a thief, or believing in the power of Almighty God to work miracles. Why should I refuse to believe what’s before my eyes?”

They were all insane, Peter thought sadly. For this would never work... The waiters had passed out rolls of streamers, and opened fresh boxes of confetti. And soon these were sparkling and flashing through the air, twisting about the figure of the Virgin, falling in serpentine loops on the carpet of wild flowers at her feet.

“We must contribute in our own fashion,” Antonio said, and ripped Angela’s letter into three, roughly equal sections. He gave one to Grace, another to Peter, and kept a section for himself. This he proceeded to tear into bits. At last he had a handful of paper scraps, decorated gaily but improbably with meaningless fragments of Angela’s handwriting.

He cheered and threw them into the air.

“How pretty!” Grace delicately ripped her section of the letter into pieces, and let the wind sweep them off the palm of her hand.

Insane, Peter thought wearily. Insane.

“What are you waiting for, darling?”

Peter looked at Antonio. “There are still some practical considerations,” he said.

“Yes?”

“The open vault in the bank, for instance.”

Antonio shrugged. “They will blame it on the good thief, Saint Dismus.

Or a good thief. It hardly matters. Peter, nothing has been stolen.”

“But listen to me. Don’t you realise that—”

Antonio interrupted him. “Peter, the north of Spain wanted a bit of our southern mystery and romance to mingle with their excellent hotels and practical plumbing. Well, we have obliged them. How they adjust to it is no concern of ours.”

St. Dismus, the good thief, Peter thought, and smiled as he remembered the last line of an old poem, “—a thief to the end, who, with his last breath, stole Paradise.”

He had spoken aloud, and Morgan nodded, and said: “As it were.”

Peter tore the last of Angela’s letter into bits, and let them drop to the ground at his feet. Then he put an arm around Grace, and they walked into the plaza with Morgan and Antonio, to join the crowd following the sparkling figure of the Virgin into the night.

Grace put her cheek against his arm, and smiled up at him, and Peter knew that he had come through once again, but finally and forever this time.

“Darling, the tiara isn’t really valuable. The diamonds are paste. Do you suppose that matters?”

“Well, no. The gesture is what counts, I should think.”

“Oh, Peter, you’re such a solid man.”

He held her closer and they went smiling through the beams of the floodlights, under a sky that was as soft and dark as the wings of a black dove.