Сидни Шелдон – The Sands of Time (страница 3)
Ricardo Mellado stared up at him. ‘No!’
‘I’m sorry. The orders were given by the Prime Minister himself.’
The priest placed his hand on the prisoner’s head and intoned: ‘
Ricardo Mellado said, ‘I have sinned greatly in thought, word and deed, and I repent all my sins with all my heart.’
The guard listening outside the cell thought to himself:
The priest was finished.
The priest moved to the cell door and the guard unlocked it, then stepped back, keeping his gun aimed at the prisoner. When the door was locked again, the guard moved to the adjoining cell and opened the door.
‘He’s all yours, Father.’
The priest stepped into the second cell. The man inside had also been badly beaten. The priest looked at him a long moment. ‘What is your name, my son?’
‘Felix Carpio.’ He was a husky, bearded man with a fresh, livid scar on his cheek that the beard failed to conceal. ‘I’m not afraid to die, Father.’
‘That is well, my son. In the end none of us is spared.’
As the priest began to hear Carpio’s confession, waves of distant sound, at first muffled, then growing louder, began to reverberate through the building. It was the thunder of pounding hoofs and the screams of the running mob. The guard listened, startled. The sounds were rapidly moving closer.
‘You’d better hurry, Father. Something peculiar is happening outside.’
‘I’m finished.’
The guard quickly unlocked the cell door. The priest stepped out into the corridor and the guard locked the door behind him. There was the sound of a loud crash from the front of the prison. The guard turned to peer out the narrow, barred window.
‘What the hell was that noise?’
The priest said, ‘It sounded as though someone wishes an audience with us. May I borrow that?’
‘Borrow what?’
‘Your weapon,
As the priest spoke, he stepped close to the guard. He silently removed the top of the large cross that hung around his neck, revealing a long, wicked-looking stiletto. In one lightning move he plunged the knife into the guard’s chest.
‘You see, my son,’ Jaime Miró said, as he pulled the sub-machine-gun from the dying guard’s hands, ‘God and I decided that you no longer have need of this weapon.’
The guard slumped to the cement floor. Jaime Miró took the keys from the body and swiftly opened the two cell doors. The sounds from the street were getting louder.
‘Let’s move,’ Jaime commanded.
Ricardo Mellado picked up the machine gun. ‘You make a damned good priest. You almost convinced me.’ He tried to smile with his swollen mouth.
‘They really worked you two over, didn’t they? Don’t worry. They’ll pay for it.’
Jaime Miró put his arms around the two men and helped them down the corridor.
‘What happened to Zamora?’
‘The guards beat him to death. We could hear his screams. They took him off to the infirmary and said he died of a heart attack.’
Ahead of them was a locked iron door.
‘Wait here,’ Jaime Miró said.
He approached the door and said to the guard on the other side, ‘I’m finished here.’
The guard unlocked the door. ‘You’d better hurry, Father. There’s some kind of disturbance going on out –’ He never finished his sentence. As Jaime’s knife went into him, blood welled out of the guard’s mouth.
Jaime motioned to the two men. ‘Come on.’
Felix Carpio picked up the guard’s gun, and they started downstairs. The scene outside was chaos. The police were running around frantically trying to see what was happening and to deal with the crowds of screaming people in the courtyard who were scrambling to escape the maddened bulls. One of the bulls had charged into the front of the building, smashing the stone entrance. Another was tearing into the body of a uniformed guard on the ground. The red truck was in the courtyard, its motor running. In the confusion, the three men went almost unnoticed. Those who did see them were too busy saving themselves to do anything about them.
Without a word, Jaime and his men jumped into the back of the truck and it sped off, scattering frantic pedestrians through the crowded streets. The
Jaime stared in dismay at the stunning spectacle. ‘It wasn’t planned for it to happen this way!’ he exclaimed. He stared helplessly at the carnage that was being wreaked, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight.
The truck reached the outskirts of Pamplona and headed south, leaving behind the noise and confusion of the rioting.
‘Where are we going, Jaime?’ Ricardo Mellado asked.
‘There’s a safe house outside Torré. We’ll stay there until dark and then move on.’
Felix Carpio was wincing with pain.
Jaime Miró watched him, his face filled with compassion. ‘We’ll be there soon, my friend,’ he said gently.
He was unable to get the terrible scene at Pamplona out of his mind.
Thirty minutes later they approached the little village of Torré, and skirted it to drive to an isolated house in the mountains above the village. Jaime Miró helped the two men out of the back of the red truck.
‘You’ll be picked up at midnight,’ the driver said.
‘Have them bring a doctor,’ Jaime replied. ‘And get rid of the truck.’
The three of them entered the house. It was a farmhouse, simple and comfortable, with a fireplace in the living room and a beamed ceiling. There was a note on the table. Jaime Miró read it and smiled at the welcoming phrase:
Ricardo Mellado said, ‘There are no words to thank you, my friend. Here’s to you.’
Jaime raised his glass. ‘Here’s to freedom.’
There was the sudden chirp of a canary in a cage. Jaime Miró walked over to it, and he watched its wild fluttering for a moment. Then he opened the cage, gently lifted the bird out and carried it to an open window.
‘Fly away,
Madrid
Prime Minister Leopoldo Martinez was in a rage. He was a small, bespectacled man, and his whole body shook as he talked. ‘Jaime Miró must be stopped,’ he cried. His voice was high and shrill. ‘Do you understand me?’ He glared at the half dozen men gathered in the room. ‘We’re looking for one terrorist, and the whole army and police force are unable to find him.’
The meeting was taking place at Moncloa Palace, where the Prime Minister lived and worked, five kilometres from the centre of Madrid, on the Carretera de Galicia, a highway with no identifying signs. The building itself was green brick, with wrought iron balconies, green window shades, and guard towers at each corner.
It was a hot, dry day, and through the windows, as far as the eye could see, columns of heat waves rose like battalions of ghostly soldiers.
‘Yesterday Miró turned Pamplona into a battleground.’ Martinez slammed a fist down on his desk. ‘He murdered two prison guards and smuggled two of his terrorists out of prison. Many innocent people were killed by the bulls he let loose.’
For a moment no one said anything.
When the Prime Minister had taken office, he had declared, smugly, ‘My first act will be to put a stop to these separatist groups. Madrid is the great unifier. It transforms Andalusians, Basques, Catalans and Galicians into Spaniards.’
He had been unduly optimistic. The fiercely independent Basques had other ideas, and the wave of bombings, bank robberies and demonstrations by terrorists of the ETA organization, Euzkadi ta Azkatasuna, had continued unabated.
The man at Martinez’s right said quietly, ‘I’ll find him.’
The speaker was Colonel Ramón Acoca, head of the GOE, the