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THE SANDS OF TIME
Sidney Sheldon
To Frances Gordon, with love
My special thanks go to Alice Fisher, whose assistance in helping me research this novel was invaluable.
"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life
"The dead do not need to rise."
"They are a part of the earth now and the earth can never
be conquered for the earth endures forever, it will outlive
all systems of tyra
and no men entered earth more honorably than those who died
in Spain, have already achieved immortality."
Ernest Hemingway
CHAPTER ONE
Pamplona, Spain 1976
If the plan goes wrong, we will all die. He went over it again in his mind for the last time, probing, testing, searching for flaws. He could find none. The plan was daring, and it called for careful, split-second timing. If it worked, it would be a spectacular feat, worthy of the great El Cid.
If it failed…
Well, the time for worrying is past, Jaime Miró thought philosophically. It's time for action. Jaime Miró was a legend, a hero to the Basque people and anathema to the Spanish government. He was six feet tall, with a strong, intelligent face, a muscular body, and brooding dark eyes. Witnesses tended to describe him as taller than he was, darker than he was, fiercer than he was. He was a complex man, a realist who understood the enormous odds against him, a romantic ready to die for what he believed in.
Pamplona was a town gone mad. It was the final morning of the ru
The tourists packed the cafes and hotels, watching the noisy, colorful parades of papier-mache gigantes, and listening to the music of the marching bands. Members of the parade wore violet cloaks, with hoods of either green, garnet, or gold. Flowing through the streets, the processions looked like rivers of rainbows. Exploding firecrackers ru
The crowd had come to attend the evening bullfights, but the most spectacular event was the encierro—the early-morning ru
From midnight until six A.M., the visitors stayed awake, drinking and singing and making love, too excited to sleep. Those who would be participating in the ru
What followed was an unforgettable spectacle. First came the sound. It started as a faint, distant ripple on the wind, almost imperceptible, and then it grew louder and louder until it became an explosion of pounding hooves, and suddenly bursting into view appeared six oxen and six enormous bulls. Each weighing fifteen hundred pounds, they charged down the Calle Santo Domingo like deadly express trains. Inside the wooden barricades that had been placed at each intersecting street corner were hundreds of eager, nervous young men who intended to prove their bravery by facing the maddened animals.
The bulls raced down from the far end of the street, past the Calle Estrafeta and the Calle de Javier, past farmacias and clothing stores and fruit markets, toward the Plaza de Hemingway, and there were cries of «Ole» from the frenzied crowd. As the animals charged nearer, there was a mad scramble to escape the sharp horns and lethal hooves. The sudden reality of approaching death made some of the participants ran for the safety of doorways and fire escapes. These men were taunted by shouts of "Cobardon!" — coward. The few who stumbled and fell in the path of the bulls were quickly hauled to safety.
A small boy and his grandfather were standing behind the barricades, both breathless with the excitement of the spectacle taking place only a few feet from them.
"Look at them!" the old man exclaimed. "Magnifico!"
The little boy shuddered. "Tengo miedo, Abuelo. I'm afraid."
The old man put his arm around the boy. "Si, Manolo. It is frightening. But wonderful, too. I once ran with the bulls. There's nothing like it. You test yourself against death, and it makes you feel like a man."
As a rule, it took two minutes for the animals to gallop the nine hundred yards along the Calle Santo Domingo to the arena, and the moment the bulls were safely in the corral, a third rocket was sent into the air. On this day, the third rocket did not go off, for an incident occurred that had never before happened in Pamplona's four-hundred-year history of the ru
As the animals raced down the narrow street, half a dozen men dressed in the colorful costumes of the feria shifted the wooden barricades, and the bulls found themselves forced off the restricted street and turned loose into the heart of the city. What had a moment before been a happy celebration instantly turned into a nightmare. The frenzied beasts charged into the stu
A bright red truck suddenly appeared in the path of the bulls, and they turned and charged toward it, down the Calle de Estrella, the street that led to the cárcel—Pamplona'sprison.
The cárcel is a forbidding-looking two-story stone building with heavily barred windows. There are turrets at each of its four corners, and the red-and-yellow Spanish flag flies over its door. A stone gate leads to a small courtyard. The second floor of the building consists of a row of cells that holds prisoners condemned to die. Inside the prison, a heavy set guard in the uniform of the Policiía Armada was leading a priest garbed in plain black robes along the second-floor corridor. The policeman carried a submachine gun.