And that hadn’t deterred the rats for long... Peter followed the light of his torch back along the tunnel, and up to the basement of the bank.
His capacity for irony was sufficient to allow him to appreciate, if not to relish, the appropriateness of Francois’s fate. But he couldn’t manage a philosophical shrug at the punch line of this bitter joke. For now he was trapped just as helplessly as the Frenchman had been.
Francois’s betrayal had worked out quite neatly, although not in the manner he had intended it to. He had planned to destroy Peter Churchman, and he had managed it by blocking the only route to freedom with his dead body.
There was still the other exit, the shaft they had blasted from the basement of the adjoining warehouse. But this offered little hope now.
It was eleven in the morning, and the plaza and sidewalks in front of the passageway would be clogged with traffic and pedestrians. But Peter made a reconnaissance anyway, crawling through the shaft and peering cautiously from the window into the passageway. His estimate of conditions had been conservative, he saw: Not only were there crowds surging by, but at the juncture of the passageway and the street, stood a broad-shouldered policeman, his back to Peter, his eyes flicking alertly over the people and traffic passing before him. He was fifteen feet from Peter, and despite the fact that he rocked slowly from side to side on his stout boots, he gave the impression of being rooted to the spot as a tree in the ground.
Peter waited hopefully for him to leave. If the policeman went away, he might try to open the window, remove the grille work and climb into the passageway, taking the long, long chance that no one would notice him crawling out of the basement in broad daylight.
But after fifteen minutes he decided it was no use. Peter returned to the second floor of the bank, and sat wearily at a desk near the open vault. Don’t quit, he thought. As long as you can think, there’s a chance. But he found he didn’t really believe this. He felt he had never been a player in this game, but only a pawn. And so what was there to think about? He opened drawers and looked at paper clips and rubber bands and pencils. At ledgers, notebooks, files. He drummed his fingers on the desk, frowning at inkwells, calendars, a telephone, a spike fluttering with flimsy papers.
Suddenly he sat up straighten He rubbed his hands together nervously and picked up the phone. In his ear the operator’s voice sounded, small and crisp: “Digame?”
Peter let out his breath and replaced the receiver in its cradle. He had an electrical link to the outside world But how could he use it?
He stood and paced in front of the desk, frowning at the phone. In his career, he realised, he had departed the scenes of crimes by a variety of means: fast cars, aeroplanes, a tractor on one occasion, a helicopter on another, and in Venice, this was by speedboat.
But he had never had an occasion to use the most conventional method of all, and he wondered if this were the time to chalk up a first. He decided it had to be. Peter said a hasty prayer, which he realised he could expect no results from, and picked up the telephone. When the operator answered, he said: “If you please, I’d like to order a taxi. Yes... now let me tell you where I’ll be standing...”
The cab driver was a plump, middle-aged philosopher who relished arguments with Authority, not because he believed he might ever win one, but because he believed he served a useful function in keeping Authority awake and on its toes. What he feared was a drowsy Authority, for he believed that the somnolent exercise of power created excesses; orders given with yawns, surveillance through sleepy eyes, and the like.
And so, for the third time, he said to the policeman: “My dispatcher directed me here. I don’t drive about whimsically.”
Horns sounded behind him. He had stopped at the intersection of the passageway and the street.
The policeman, whose name was Carlos, blew his whistle and waved an arm. “You’re blocking traffic. Drive on.”
“Permit me to make one point. Think of the client who ordered this taxi. Think of my dispatcher. And think of me, please. I am not a free agent. I am an instrument serving the orderly—”
“Drive on! Drive on!”
“—needs of transport in our city,” Carlos blew his whistle. The stalled traffic raised a clamour that soared in dizzying blasts above the plaza.
“A last point if you please.”
“No! No!”
“Very well, I have tried—”
Peter tapped Carlos on the shoulder. “Excuse me, please.”
Carlos turned and blinked at him. “Yes, of course.”
Peter climbed into the cab and gave the driver the name of his hotel.
“One moment,” Carlos said.
“Yes?”
Carlos frowned uncertainly at Peter. “Senor Churchman?”
“Why, yes.”
“We’ve met before, I think.”
“Oh yes, so we did.”
Horns honked. The driver sighed. “May I proceed?”
“No. One moment.” Carlos scratched his ear and looked down the passageway, studying its blank walls and barred windows. Senor Churchman had emerged from this passageway, which was quite literally impossible. As Carlos pondered the puzzle, his fingers trembled for a pencil and notebook, and the official phrases to describe the incident began to march in orderly sequence through his mind. But then he recalled that Senor Churchman had earned the right to wear the Order of the Blue Star. And he recalled too, with a pang of self-pity, the icy smile of the superior who had lectured him with such exquisite sarcasm on the distinction between the calls of duty and the calls of nature.
Carlos sighed and waved the cab on.
Chapter thirteen
The watering trucks had gone and the breezes in the Plaza del Castillo were fragrant with the clean smell of damp earth and flowers. Lights from the 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.