No question of hanging around at Deloifre's. He went his way, I went mine. No contact with Armando. I went straight to the garage, where I helped carry away the lathe and the five or six bottles of gas that were lying about. At six o'clock the telephone rang and a mysterious voice said, "Frenchmen, get out, all of you. Each in a different direction. Only B.L. must stay in the garage. You get it?"

"Who's that?"

He hung up.

Dressed as a woman and driven in a jeep by a former officer of the French Resistance, I made my way out of Caracas with no trouble at all and reached Rio Chico, about a hundred and twentyfive miles away on the coast. I was going to stay there for a couple of months with this ex-captain and his wife and a couple of friends from Bordeaux.

B.L. was arrested. No torture: only a stiff, thoroughgoing but correct interrogation. When I heard that, I decided the Gallegos and Betancourt régime was not as wicked as they said; at least not in this case. Deloifre took refuge that same night in the Nicaraguan embassy.

As for me, I was still full of confidence in life, and a week later the ex-captain and I were driving the RIo Chico Public Works Department's truck. Through a friend we'd got ourselves taken on by the municipality. We made twenty-one bolIvars a day between us, and on that we lived, all five of us.

This road-construction life lasted two months, long enough for the storm raised by our plot to die down in Caracas and for the police to turn their minds to the reports about a new one that was cooking. Very wisely they concentrated on the present and left the past to itself. I asked nothing better, because I had made up my mind not to let myself be dragged into another job of that kind. For the moment, by far the best thing to do was to live here quietly with my friends, drawing no attention to myself.

In the late afternoon I often went fishing, to add to our daily rations. That evening I had hauled out a huge _robalo_, a kind of big sea bream, and I was sitting on the beach, scaling it in no particular hurry and admiring the wonderful sunset. A red sky means hope, Papi! And in spite of all the flops I had had since I was let out, I began to laugh. Yes, hope must make me live and win: and it was going to do just that. But exactly when was success going to come along? Let's have a look at things, Papi: let's add up the results of two years of freedom.

I wasn't broke, but I didn't have much: three thousand bolivars at the outside, the sum total of two years on the loose.

What had happened during this time?

One: the heap of gold at El Callao. No point in brooding over that: it was something you gave up voluntarily so the ex-cons there could go living in peace. You regret it? No. Okay, then forget the ton of gold.

Two: craps at the diamond mines. You nearly got yourself killed twenty times for ten thousand dollars you never cashed in on. Jojo died in your place: you came out alive. Without a cent, true enough; but what a terrific adventure! You'll never forget all those nights, keyed up to the breaking point, the gamblers' faces under the carbide lamp, the unmoved Jojo. Nothing to regret there either.

Three: the tunnel under the bank. Not the same thing at all; there really was no luck about that job. Still, for three months you lived at full blast twenty-four hours a day. Even if you got no more out of it than that, you don't have to be sorry for yourself. Do you realize that for three months on end, even in your dreams, you felt you were a millionaire with never a doubt about getting your hands on the dough? Doesn't that mean anything? Of course, just a trifle more luck might have given you a fortune; but on the other hand you might have been much more unlucky. Suppose the tunnel had caved in while you were at the far end? You'd have died like a rat or they would have caught you like a fox in its earth.

Four: what about the pawnshop and its refrigerators? No complaints, except for the Public Works Department of that damnable country.

Five: the plot. Frankly, you were never really wholehearted about that business. These political jobs and those bombs that might kill anybody-it's not your line. What it really comes to is that you were taken in first by the sales pitch of two very nice guys and then by the promise of being able to carry out your plan. But your heart wasn't in it, because you never felt it was quite legit to attack the government that had let you out.

Still, on the credit side you had four months of fun with the musketeers, their wives and the kid; and you aren't likely to forget those days full of the joy of life.

Conclusion: You were unjustly imprisoned for fourteen years and almost all your youth was stolen from you. But you've been free the last two years, and in those two years you've had countless experiences and terrific adventures. You've had wonderful love; you've known men of every kind who've given you their friendship-men you've risked your life with; and after all this, do you still keep moaning? You're broke, or nearly broke? What does that matter? Poverty's not a difficult disease to cure. So glory be to God, Papil You're fit, which is the really important thing.

Let's wipe it all out and begin again, gentlemen. The chips are down! Make your last bets-this is it! Banco lost, banco again: banco again and again and again. Banco right along the line. But let your whole being thrill and quiver, singing a song of hope that one day you'll hear, "Nine on the nose! Rake it in, Monsieur Papillon! You've won!"

The sun was almost touching the horizon. Red in the evening, that meant hope. The breeze had freshened, and with a calmer mind I stood up, happy to be free and alive; my feet sank in the wet sand as I went back toward the house, where they were waiting for what I had caught for the evening meal. As I walked back, I gave myself over to all the colors, the countless touches of light and shade playing on the crests of the little waves stretching out forever. They stirred me so deeply, what with my remembering past dangers overcome, that I couldn't help thinking of their creator, of God. "Good night, Big Guy, good night! In spite of all these flops, I still thank You for having given me such a beautiful day full of sun and freedom and, to finish it off, this marvelous sunset!"

One day, when I was making a quick trip to Caracas, a friend introduced me to a former Paris model who was looking for someone to help her in a new hotel she had just opened at Maracaibo. I very willingly accepted the job of being her man Friday. She was called Laurence; I think she had come to Caracas to show a collection, and then decided to settle in Venezuela. Six hundred miles lay between Caracas and Maracaibo, and that suited me fine; it was always possible the police might reopen their inquiries into our coup d'etat.

A friend gave me a lift, and after fourteen hours' driving I had my first sight of Lake Maracaibo-they call it a lake, although in fact it is a huge lagoon nearly a hundred miles long and sixty wide at the broadest point, and it is joined to the sea by a channel about eight miles across. Maracaibo lies to the north, on the west bank of the channel, which is now linked to the east bank by a bridge. In those days, though, if you came from Caracas, you had to cross on a ferry.

This lake was really extraordinary, dotted with thousands of derricks. It looked like a huge forest stretching away out of sight, a forest whose trees, all exactly lined up, allowed you to see as far as the horizon. But these trees were oil wells, and each oil well had an enormous pendulum that went to and fro all day and all night, never stopping, perpetually pumping up the black gold from the bowels of the earth.

A ferry ran nonstop between the end of the Caracas road and Maracaibo, carrying cars, passengers and goods. During the crossing I hurried from one side to the other, absolutely fascinated by the iron pylons rising from the lake; and as I stared at them I thought that twelve hundred miles from here, down at the far end of the country in Venezuelan Guiana, the Good Lord had stuffed the ground with diamonds, gold, iron, nickel, manganese, bauxite, uranium and all the rest, while here He had filled it with oil, the motor of the world-with such enormous quantities of oil that these thousands of pumps could suck away day and night without ever sucking it dry. Venezuela, you've got no call to blame the Lord!