The Sands of Time by Sidney Sheldon
The Sands of Time by Sidney Sheldon
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 running of the bulls, the Fiesta de San Fermín, the annual celebration held from July 7 to July 14. Thirty thousand visitors had swarmed into the city from all over the world. Some had come merely to watch the dangerous bull-running spectacle, others to prove their manhood by taking part in it, running in front of the charging beasts. All the hotel rooms had long since been reserved, and university students from Navarre had bedded down in doorways, bank lobbies, automobiles, the public square, and even the streets and sidewalks of the town.
The tourists packed the cafés and hotels, watching the noisy, colorful parades of papier-mâché 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 running along the poles and wires of the tramways added to the noise and general confusion.
The crowd had come to attend the evening bullfights, but the most spectacular event was the encierro—the early-morning running of the bulls that would fight later in the day.
The previous night, at ten minutes before midnight in the darkened streets of the lower part of town, the bulls had been driven from the corrales de gas, the reception pens, to run across the river over a bridge to the corral at the bottom of Calle Santo Domingo, where they were kept for the night. On this morning they would be turned loose to run along the narrow Calle Santo Domingo, penned in the street by wooden barricades at each corner. When they reached the end of the street they would run into the corrals at the Plaza de Hemingway, where they would be held until the afternoon bullfight.
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 running of the bulls wore the red scarves of San Fermín around their throats.
At a quarter to six in the morning, bands started to circulate through the streets, playing the stirring music of Navarre. At seven o’clock sharp, a rocket flew into the air to signal that the gates of the corral had been opened. The crowd was filled with feverish anticipation. Moments later a second rocket went up to warn the town that the bulls were running.
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 Laestrafeta and the Calle de Javier, past farmacias and clothing stores and fruit markets, toward the Plaza de Hemingway, and there were cries of “Olé” 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 run 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.