‘We’re in a hurry and my name is not Nicolo Tracchia.’ As Tracchia engaged gear he went on: ‘We should have no trouble with the Customs and police at the Col de Tende. The word won’t be out for hours yet. It’s quite possible that they haven’t discovered that Mary is missing yet. Besides, they’ve no idea where we’re heading. No reason why they should notify border police. But by the time we reach the Swiss frontier we may be in trouble.’
‘So?’
‘Two hours in Cuneo. We’ll switch cars, leave the Aston in the garage and take the Peugeot. Pack some more clothes for ourselves, pick up our other passports and identification papers, then call in Erita and our photographer friend. Within the hour Erita will have turned our Mary into a blonde and very shortly afterwards our friend will have a nice shiny British passport for her. Then we drive up to Switzerland. If the word is out, then the border boys will be on the alert. Well, as alert as those cretins can be in the middle of the night. But they’ll be looking for an Aston Martin with one man and a brunette inside – that’s assuming our friends back in Vignolles have managed to put two and two together, which I very much doubt. But they won’t be looking for two men and blonde in a Peugeot, with passports carrying completely different names.’
Tracchia was now driving the car close to its limits and he had almost to shout to make himself heard. The Aston Martin is a magnificent machine but not particularly renowned for the quietness of its engine: there were carping critics who occasionally maintained that the engines for the David Brown tractor division found their way into the wrong machines. Ferrari and Lamborghini owners had been known to describe it as the fastest lorry in Europe. Tracchia said: ‘You sound very sure of yourself, Jake.’
‘I am.’
Tracchia glanced at the girl by his side. ‘And Mary here? God knows we’re no angels but I don’t want any harm to come to her.’
‘No harm. I told her I don’t make war on women and I’ll keep my word on that. She’s our safe conduct if the police come after us.’
‘Or Johnny Harlow?’
‘Or Harlow. When we get to Zurich, each of us will go to the bank in turns, cash and transfer money while the others keeps her as hostage. Then we fly out into the wild blue yonder,’
‘You expect trouble in Zurich?’
‘None. We haven’t even been arrested far less convicted so our Zurich friends won’t open up. Besides, we’re under different names and with numbered accounts.’
‘The wild blue yonder? With teleprinted copies of our photographs at every airport in the world?’
‘Only the major ones on scheduled flights. Lots of minor airfields around. There’s a private flight division in Kloten airport and I have a pilot friend there. He’ll file a flight plan for Geneva which will mean that we don’t have to pass customs. We’ll land somewhere quite a way from Switzerland. He can always claim that he was hi-jacked. Ten thousand Swiss francs should fit it.’
‘You think of everything, don’t you, Jake?’ There was genuine admiration in Tracchia’s voice.
‘I try.’ Jacobson, uncharacteristically, sounded almost complacent. ‘I try.’
The red Ferrari was drawn up outside the chalet in Vignolles. MacAlpine held his sobbing wife in his arms but he was not looking as happy as he might have done in the circumstances. Dunnet approached Harlow.
‘How do you feel, boy?’
‘Bloody well exhausted.’
‘I’ve bad news, Johnny. Jacobson’s gone.’
‘He can wait. I’ll get him.’
‘There’s more to it than that, Johnny.’
‘What?’
‘He’s taken Mary with him.’
Harlow stood immobile, his drawn and weary face without expression. He said: ‘Does James know?’
‘I’ve just told him. And I think he’s just telling his wife.’ He handed a note to Harlow. ‘I found this in Mary’s bathroom.’
Harlow looked at it. ‘“Jacobson is taking me to Cuneo.”’ Without even a pause he said: ‘I’ll go now.’
‘You can’t, man! You’re totally exhausted. You said so yourself.’
‘Not any more. Come with me?’
Dunnet accepted the inevitable. ‘You stop me. But I’ve no gun.’
‘Guns we have,’ Rory said. He produced four as proof of his assertion.
‘We?’ Harlow said. ‘You’re not coming.’
‘I would remind you, Mr Harlow,’ Rory said with some asperity, ‘that I saved your life twice tonight. All good things come in threes. I have the right.’
Harlow nodded. ‘You have the right.’
MacAlpine and his wife were staring numbly at them. The expressions on their faces were an extraordinary combination of happiness and a broken bewilderment.
MacAlpine said, tears in his eyes: ‘Alexis has told me everything. I’ll never be able to thank you, I’ll never be able to forgive myself and the rest of my life will be too short for the apologies I have to make to you. You destroyed your career, ruined yourself, to bring my Marie back.’
‘Ruined me?’ Harlow said calmly. ‘Nonsense. There’s another season coming up.’ He smiled without mirth. ‘And there’ll be a fair bit of the top-flight opposition missing.’ He smiled again, this time encouragingly. ‘I’ll bring Mary back. With your help, James. Everybody knows you. You know everybody and you’re a millionaire. There’s only one way from here to Cuneo. Phone someone, preferably some big trucking firm in Nice. Offer them £10,000 to block the French end of the Col de Tende. My passport’s gone. You understand?’
‘I’ve a friend in Nice who would do it for nothing. But what’s the use, Johnny? It’s a job for the police.’
‘No. And I’m not thinking about the continental habit of first of all riddling wanted cars and then asking the dead bodies questions. What I –’
‘Johnny, whether you or the police get to them first makes no difference. I know now that you know everything, have known for a long time. Those are the two men who will bring me down.’
Harlow said mildly: ‘There’s a third man, James. Willi Neubauer. But he’ll never talk. Admission to kidnapping would bring him another ten years in prison. You weren’t listening to me, James. Phone Nice. Phone Nice now. All I said was that I would bring Mary back.’
MacAlpine and his wife stood together, listening to the howl of the Ferrari engine die away in the distance. In what was almost a whisper, Marie MacAlpine said: ‘What did that mean, James? “All I said is that I would bring Mary back.”’
‘I’ve got to phone Nice and at once. Then the biggest drink the château can offer, a small dinner then bed. There’s nothing more we can do now.’ He paused, then went on almost sadly: ‘I have my limitations. I do not operate in Johnny Harlow’s class.’
‘What did he mean, James?’
‘What he said.’ MacAlpine tightened his arm around his wife’s shoulder. ‘He brought you back, didn’t he? He’ll bring our Mary back. Don’t you know they’re in love?’
‘What did he mean, James?’
MacAlpine said in a dead voice: ‘He meant that neither of us would ever see Jacobson and Tracchia again.’
The nightmare journey to the Col de Tende, a journey that would live in the minds of Dunnet and Rory for ever, was conducted, with only one exception, in absolute conversational silence, partially because Harlow was completely concentrated on the job on hand, partially because both Dunnet and Rory had been reduced to a state pretty close to abject terror. Harlow was not only driving the Ferrari to its limits – in the opinions of his two passengers he was driving it far beyond its limits. As they drove along the autoroute between Cannes and Nice, Dunnet looked at the speedometer. It read 260 kph – something over 160 miles per hour.
He said: ‘May I say something?’
For a flicker of a second Harlow glanced at him. ‘But of course.’
‘Jesus Christ Almighty. Superstar, if you want. The best driver in the world, like enough the best driver who’s ever lived. But in all bloody hel
l – ’
‘Language,’ Harlow said mildly. ‘My young future brother-in-law is sitting behind us.’
‘This is the way you earn a living?’
‘Well, yes.’ While the seat-belted Dunnet clung in desperate apprehension to any available hand-hold, Harlow braked, changed down, and with all four wheels in a screaming slide and at just under a hundred miles an hour, rounded a corner that few other drivers, however competent, would have attempted at seventy. ‘But you must admit it’s better than working.’
‘Jesus!’ Dunnet lapsed into a semi-stunned silence and closed his eyes like a man in prayer. Very probably he was.
The N204, the road between Nice and La Giandola, where it links up with the road from Ventimiglia, is a very winding one, with some spectacular hairpins and rising in places to over three thousand feet, but Harlow treated it all as if he were driving along the autoroute. Presently, both Dunnet and Rory had their eyes closed: it could have been exhaustion but, more likely, they didn’t want to see what was going on.
The road was entirely empty. They crossed over the Col de Braus, went through Sospel at a ludicrously illegal speed, passed through the Col de Brouis and reached La Giandola without having met a single car, which was perhaps just as well for the nerves of any driver who might have been coming the other way. Then they went north through Saorge, Fontan and finally the township of Tende itself. It was just beyond Tende that Dunnet stirred and opened his eyes.
He said: ‘Am I still alive?’
‘I think so.’
Dunnet rubbed his eyes. ‘What was that you just said about your brother-in-law?’
‘“Just” was a long time ago.’ Harlow pondered. ‘Looks as if someone has to look after the MacAlpine family. I might as well make it official.’
‘You secretive so-and-so. Engaged?’
‘Well, no. I haven’t asked her yet. And I have news for you, Alexis. You’re going to drive this car back to Vignolles while I sleep the sleep of the just. In the back seat. With Mary.’
‘You haven’t even asked her yet and you’re certain you’re going to get her back.’ Dunnet looked at Harlow in disbelief and shook his head. ‘You, Johnny Harlow, are the most arrogant human being I’ve ever known.’
‘Don’t you knock my future brother-in-law, Mr Dunnet,’ Rory said sleepily from the back. ‘By the way, Mr Harlow, if I am going to be your brother-in-law, can I call you Johnny?’
Harlow smiled. ‘You can call me anything you like. Just as long as it’s said in a tone of proper respect.’
‘Yes, Mr Harlow. Johnny, I mean.’ Suddenly his voice was no longer sleepy. ‘Do you see what I see?’
Ahead of them were the headlights of a car negotiating the vicious hairpins of the lower end of the Col de Tende.
‘I’ve been seeing it for quite some time. Tracchia.’
Dunnet looked at him. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Two things.’ Harlow dropped two gears as he approached the first hairpin. ‘There aren’t half a dozen people in Europe who can drive a car the way that car is being driven.’ He dropped another gear and slid round the hairpin with all the calm relaxation of a man sitting in a pew in a church. ‘Show an art expert fifty different paintings, and he’ll immediately tell you who the artist is. I’m not talking about anything so wildly different as Rembrandt and Renoir. The same school of painters. I can recognize the driving technique of any Grand Prix driver in the world. After all, there are fewer Grand Prix drivers than there are painters. Traccia has the habit of braking slightly early for a corner then accelerating quickly through it.’ He threw the Ferrari, tyres shrieking in protest, round the next corner. ‘That’s Tracchia.’
It was indeed Tracchia. Seated beside him, Jacobson was peering anxiously through the rear window. He said: ‘There’s someone coming up behind.’
‘It’s a public road. Anyone can use it.’
‘Believe me, Nikki, this is not just anyone.’
In the Ferrari, Harlow said: ‘I think we better get ready.’ He pressed a button and the windows slid down. Then he reached for his gun and placed it beside him. ‘And I’ll be greatly obliged if neither of you shoot Mary.’
Dunnet said: ‘I just hope to hell that tunnel’s blocked.’ He brought out his own gun.
The tunnel was indeed blocked, completely and solidly blocked. A very large furniture van was jammed diagonally and apparently immovably into its mouth.
The Aston Martin rounded the last hairpin. Tracchia swore bitterly and braked the car to a halt. Both men gazed apprehensively through the rear window. Mary looked too, though with hope, not fear.
Jacobson said: ‘Don’t tell me that damned truck jammed there is sheer coincidence. Turn the car, Nikki. God, there they are!’
The Ferrari came sliding round the last corner and accelerated towards them. Tracchia tried desperately to turn his car, a maneuver made more difficult when Harlow, braking heavily, rammed his Ferrari into the side of the Aston. Jacobson had his gun out and was firing at apparent random.
‘Jacobson,’ Harlow said urgently. ‘Not Tracchia. You’ll kill Mary.’
Both men leaned out of their windows and fired just as their windscreen smashed and starred. Jacobson ducked low for safety but he ducked too late. He screamed in agony as two bullets lodged in his left shoulder. In the confusion and noise Mary opened the door and jumped out as quickly as her crippled leg would permit her. Neither man, for the moment, even noticed that she was gone.
Tracchia, only the top of his head visible above the windscreen, eventually managed to wrench his car round and clear then accelerated desperately away. Four seconds later, with Dunnet having practically dragged Mary inside, the Ferrari was in pursuit. Harlow, apparently oblivious to the inflicted cuts, had already smashed his fist through the shattered windscreen. Dunnet completed the work with the butt of his pistol.
Not once, but several times, Mary cried out in fear as Harlow took the Ferrari down through the hairpins of the Col de Tende. Rory had his arm round his sister and although he did not voice his fear he was plainly just as terrified as Mary was. Dunnet, firing his gun through the empty space where the windscreen had been, didn’t look particularly happy either. Harlow’s face was still, implacable. To an observer, it must have appeared that the car was being driven by a maniac, but Harlow was in complete control. To the accompaniment of the sound of tortured tyres and engine bellowing in the lower gears, he descended the Col as no one had ever done before and, assuredly, no one would ever do again. By the sixth hairpin he was only a matter of feet behind the Aston.
‘Stop shooting,’ Harlow shouted. He had to shout to make himself heard above the sound of an engine at maximum revolutions in bottom gear.
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s not final enough.’
The Aston, now only a car’s length ahead, slid desperately round a right-hand hairpin bend. Harlow, instead of braking, accelerated, spun the wheel viciously to the right and the car slid half-way round the corner on all four screaming, skidding tyres, at right-angles to its line of travel only a second previously, apparently completely out of control. But Harlow had judged matters to a hair-raising degree of nicety: the side of the Ferrari smashed fairly and squarely into that of the Aston. The Ferrari, already practically stopped, rebounded into the middle of the curve. The Aston, moving diagonally now and hopelessly unmanageable, slid out towards the edge. Beyond the edge there was a drop of six hundred feet into the darkened and unseen depths of a ravine below.
Harlow was out of the stopped Ferrari just before the teetering Aston vanished over the side. He was followed almost immediately by the others. They peered over the edge of the road.
The Aston, descending with apparently incredible slowness, turned slowly over and over as it fell. It disappeared into the depths and the darkness of the ravine. There was a brief thunderclap of sound and a great gout of brilliant orange flame that seemed to reach half-way up to where they stood. Then there was only the silence and the darknes
s.
On the road above, all four stood quiet and still, like people in a trance, then Mary, shuddering, buried her face in Harlow’s shoulder. He put his arm around her and continued to gaze down, unseeingly as it seemed, into the hidden depths of the ravine.
The Way to Dusty Death Page 18
