CHAPTER TWELVE

    

    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.

    

***

    

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    All he could do was scream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    "Drive on! Drive on!"

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

    "A last point if you please."

    "No! No!"

    "Very well, I have tried-"

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

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

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

    "One moment," Carlos said.

    "Yes?"

    Carlos frowned uncertainly at Peter. "Senor Churchman?"

    "Why, yes."

    "We've met before, I think."

    "Oh yes, so we did."

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

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

    Carlos sighed and waved the cab on.