The Way to Dusty Death

by Alistair MacLean

  Suddenly, incredibly, Harlow’s brake lights went out and the Coronado swerved violently outwards as if Harlow had decided he could overtake the car in front before Jethou could overtake him. If that had been his inexplicable intention then it had been the most foolhardy of his life, for he had taken his car directly into the path of Isaac Jethou who, on that straight, could not have been travelling at less than 180 miles an hour and who, in the fraction of the second available to him, had never even the most remote shadow of a chance to take the only braking or avoiding action that could have saved him.

  At the moment of impact, Jethou’s front wheel struck squarely into the side of Harlow’s front wheel. For Harlow, the consequences of the collision were, in all conscience, serious enough for it sent his car into an uncontrollable spin, but for Jethou they were disastrous. Even above the cacophonous clamour of engines under maximum revolutions and the screeching of locked tyres on the tarmac, the bursting of Jethou’s front tyre was heard as a rifle shot and from that instant Jethou was a dead man. His Ferrari, wholly out of control and now no more than a mindless mechanical monster bent on its own destruction, smashed into and caromed off the nearside safety barrier and, already belching gouts of red flame and black oily smoke, careered wildly across the track to strike the far side barrier, rear end first, at a speed of still over a hundred miles an hour. The Ferrari, spinning wildly, slid down the track for about two hundred yards, turned over twice and came to rest on all four wrecked wheels, Jethou still trapped in the cockpit but even then almost certainly dead. It was then that the red flames turned to white.

  That Harlow had been directly responsible for Jethou’s death was beyond dispute but Harlow, with eleven Grand Prix wins behind him in seventeen months was, by definition and on his record, the best driver in the world and one simply does not indict the best driver in the world. It is not the done thing. The whole tragic affair was attributed to the race-track equivalent of an act of God and the curtain was discreetly lowered to indicate the end of the act.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The French, even at their most relaxed and unemotional, are little given to hiding their feelings and the packed crowd at Clermont-Ferrand that day, which was notably unrelaxed and highly emotional, was in no mood to depart from their Latin norm. As Harlow, head bowed, trudged rather than walked along the side of the Coronado pits, they became very vocal indeed. Their booing, hissing, cat-calling and just plain shouts of anger, accompanied by much Gallic waving of clenched fists, was as threatening as it was frightening. Not only was it an ugly scene, it was one that looked as if it would only require one single flash-point to trigger off a near riot, to convert their vengeful emotions towards Johnny Harlow into physical action against him and this, it was clear, was the apprehension that was uppermost in the minds of the police, for they moved in close to afford Harlow such protection as he might require. It was equally clear from the expressions on their faces that the police did not relish their task, and from the way they averted their faces from Harlow that they sympathized with their countrymen’s feelings.

  A few paces behind Harlow, flanked by Dunnet and MacAlpine, walked another man who clearly shared the opinions of police and spectators. Angrily twirling his racing helmet by its strap, he was clad in racing overalls identical to those that Harlow was wearing: Nicolo Tracchia was, in fact, the No. 2 driver in the Coronado racing team. Tracchia was almost outrageously handsome, with dark curling hair, a gleaming perfection of teeth that no dentifrice manufacturer would ever dare use as an advertisement and a suntan that would have turned a life-guard pale green. That he wasn’t looking particularly happy at that moment was directly attributable to the fact that he was scowling heavily: the legendary Tracchia scowl was a memorable thing of wonder, in constant use and held in differing degrees of respect, awe and downright fear but never ignored. Tracchia had a low opinion of his fellow-man and regarded the majority of people, and this with particular reference to his fellow Grand Prix drivers, as retarded adolescents.

  Understandably, he operated in a limited social circle. What made matters worse for Tracchia was his realization that, brilliant driver though he was, he was fractionally less good than Harlow, and even this was exacerbated by the knowledge that, no matter how long or desperately he tried, he would never quite close that fractional gap. When he spoke now to MacAlpine he made no effort to lower his voice which in the circumstances mattered not at all for Harlow could not possibly have heard him above the baying of the crowd: but it was quite clear that Tracchia would not have lowered his voice no matter what the circumstances.

  ‘An act of God!’ The bitter incredulity in the voice was wholly genuine. ‘Jesus Christ! Did you hear what those cretins called it? An act of God! An act of murder, I call it.’

  ‘No, lad, no.’ MacAlpine put his hand on Tracchia’s shoulder, only to have it angrily shrugged off. MacAlpine sighed. ‘At the very outside, manslaughter. And not even that. You know yourself how many Grand Prix drivers have died in the past four years because their cars went wild.’

  ‘Wild! Wild!’ Tracchia, at a momentary and most uncharacteristic loss for words, gazed heavenwards in silent appeal. ‘Good God, Mac, we all saw it on the screen. We saw it five times. He took his foot off the brake and pulled out straight in front of Jethou. An act of God! Sure, sure, sure. It’s an act of God because he’s won eleven Grand Prix in seventeen months, because he won last year’s championship and looks as if he’s going to do the same this year.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know damn well what I mean. Take him off the tracks and you might as well take us all off the tracks. He’s the champion, isn’t he? If he’s that bad, then what the hell must the rest of us be like? We know that’s not the case, but will the public? Will they hell. God knows that there are already too many people, and damned influential people as well, agitating that Grand Prix racing should be banned throughout the world, and too many countries just begging for a good excuse to get out. This would be the excuse of a lifetime. We need our Johnny Harlows, don’t we, Mac? Even though they do go around killing people.’

  ‘I thought he was your friend, Nikki?’

  ‘Sure, Mac. Sure he’s my friend. So was Jethou.’

  There was no reply for MacAlpine to make to this so he made none. Tracchia appeared to have said his say, for he fell silent and got back to his scowling. In silence and in safety – the police escort had been steadily increasing – the four men reached the Coronado pits. Without a glance at or word to anyone Harlow made for the little shelter at the rear of the pits. In their turn nobody – Jacobson and his two mechanics were there also – made any attempt either to speak to or stop him, nor did any among them do even as much as trouble to exchange significant glances: the starkly obvious requires no emphasis. Jacobson ignored him entirely and came up to MacAlpine. The chief mechanic – and he was one of acknowledged genius – was a lean, tall and strongly built man. He had a dark and deeply lined face that looked as if it hadn’t smiled for a long time and wasn’t about to make an exception in this case either.

  He said: ‘Harlow’s clear, of course.’

  ‘Of course? I don’t understand.’

  ‘I have to tell you? Indict Harlow and you set the sport back ten years. Too many millions tied up in it to allow that to happen. Isn’t there now, Mr MacAlpine?’

  MacAlpine looked at him reflectively, not answering, glanced briefly at the still scowling Tracchia, turned away and walked across to Harlow’s battered and fire-blistered Coronado which was by that time back on all four wheels. He examined it leisurely, almost contemplatively, stooped over the cockpit, turned the steering wheel which offered no resistance to his hand, then straightened.

  He said: ‘Well, now. I wonder.’

  Jacobson looked at him coldly. His eyes, expressing displeasure, could be as formidable and intimidating as Tracchia’s scowl. He said: ‘I prepared that car, Mr MacAlpine.’

  MacAlpine’s shoulders rose and fell in a long m
oment of silence.

  ‘I know, Jacobson, I know. I also know you’re the best in the business. I also know that you’ve been too long in it to talk nonsense. Any car can go. How long?’

  ‘You want me to start now?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Four hours.’ Jacobson was curt, offence given and taken. ‘Six at the most.’

  MacAlpine nodded, took Dunnet by the arm, prepared to walk away, then halted. Tracchia and Rory were together talking in low indistinct voices but their words didn’t have to be understood, the rigid hostility in their expressions as they looked at Harlow and his bottle of brandy inside the hut were eloquent enough. MacAlpine, his hand still on Dunnet’s arm, moved away and sighed again.

  ‘Johnny’s not making too many friends today, is he?’

  ‘He hasn’t been for far too many days. And I think that here’s another friend that he’s about not to make.’

  ‘Oh Jesus.’ Sighs seemed to be becoming second nature to MacAlpine. ‘Neubauer does seem to have something on his mind.’

  The figure in sky-blue racing overalls striding towards the pits did indeed seem to have something on his mind. Neubauer was tall, very blond and completely Nordic in appearance although he was in fact Austrian. The No. 1 driver for team Cagliari – he had the word Cagliari emblazoned across the chest of his overalls – his consistent brilliance on the Grand Prix tracks had made him the acknowledged crown prince of racing and Harlow’s eventual and inevitable successor. Like Tracchia, he was a cool, distant man wholly incapable of standing fools at any price, far less gladly. Like Tracchia, his friends and intimates were restricted to a very small group indeed: it was a matter for neither wonder nor speculation that those two men, the most unforgiving of rivals on the race-tracks were, off-duty, close friends.

  Neubauer, with compressed lips and cold pale-blue eyes glittering, was clearly a very angry man and his humour wasn’t improved when MacAlpine moved his massive bulk to block his way. Neubauer had no option other than to stop: big man though he was MacAlpine was very much bigger. When he spoke it was with his teeth clamped together.

  ‘Out of my way.’

  MacAlpine looked at him in mild surprise.

  ‘You said what?’

  ‘Sorry, Mr MacAlpine. Where’s that bastard Harlow?’

  ‘Leave him be. He’s not well.’

  ‘And Jethou is, I suppose? I don’t know who the hell or what the hell Harlow is or is supposed to be and I don’t care. Why should that maniac get off scot-free? He is a maniac. You know it. We all know it. He forced me off the road twice today, that could just as well have been me burnt to death as Jethou. I’m giving you warning, Mr MacAlpine. I’m going to call a meeting of the GPDA and have him banned from the circuits.’

  ‘You’re the last person who can afford to do that, Willi.’ MacAlpine put his hands on Neubauer’s shoulders. ‘The last person who can afford to put the finger on Johnny. If Harlow goes, who’s the next champion?’

  Neubauer stared at him. Some of the fury left his face and he stared at MacAlpine in almost bewildered disbelief. When his voice came it was low, almost an uncertain whisper. ‘You think I would do it for that, Mr MacAlpine?’

  ‘No, Willi, I don’t. I’m just pointing out that most others would.’

  There was a long pause during which what was left of Neubauer’s anger died away. He said quietly: ‘He’s a killer. He’ll kill again.’ Gently, he removed MacAlpine’s hands, turned and left the pits. Thoughtfully, worriedly Dunnet watched him leave.

  ‘He could be right, James. Sure, sure, he’s won five Grand Prix in a row but ever since his brother was killed in the Spanish Grand Prix – well, you know.’

  ‘Five Grand Prix under his belt and you’re trying to tell me that his nerve is gone?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s gone. I just don’t know. All I know is that the safest driver on the circuits has become so reckless and dangerous, so suicidally competitive if you like, that the other drivers are just plain scared of him. As far as they are concerned, the freedom of the road is his, they’d rather live than dispute a yard of track with him. That’s why he keeps on winning.’

  MacAlpine regarded Dunnet closely and shook his head in unease. He, MacAlpine, and not Dunnet, was the acknowledged expert, but MacAlpine held Dunnet and his opinions in the highest regard. Dunnet was an extraordinarily shrewd, intelligent and able person. He was a journalist by profession, and a highly competent one, who had switched from being a political analyst to a sports commentator for the admittedly unarguable reason that there is no topic on earth so irretrievably dull as politics. The acute penetration and remarkable powers of observation and analysis that had made him so formidable a figure on the Westminster scene he had transferred easily and successfully to the race-tracks of the world. A regular correspondent for a British national daily and two motoring magazines, one British, one American – although he did a remarkable amount of freelance work on the side – he had rapidly established himself as one of the very few really outstanding motor racing journalists in the world. To do this in the space of just over two years had been a quite outstanding achievement by any standard. So successful had he been, indeed, that he had incurred the envy and displeasure, not to say the outright wrath, of a considerable number of his less gifted peers.

  Nor was their minimal regard for him in any way heightened by what they sourly regarded as the limpet-like persistency with which he had attached himself to the Coronado team on an almost permanent basis. Not that there were any laws, written or unwritten, about this sort of behaviour, for no independent journalist had ever done this sort of thing before. Now that it had been done it was, his fellow-writers said, a thing that simply was not done. It was his job, they maintained and complained, to write in a fair and unbiased fashion on all the cars and all the drivers in the Grand Prix field and their resentment remained undiminished when he pointed out to them, reasonably and with unchallengeable accuracy, that this was precisely what he did. What really grieved them, of course, was that he had the inside track on the Coronado team, then the fastest burgeoning and most glamorous race company in the business: and it would have been difficult to deny that the number of off-track articles he had written partly about the team but primarily about Harlow would have made up a pretty fair-size volume. Nor had matters been helped by the existence of a book on which he had collaborated with Harlow.

  MacAlpine said: ‘I’m afraid you’re right, Alexis. Which means that I know you’re right but I don’t even want to admit it to myself. He’s just terrifying the living daylights out of everyone. And out of me. And now this.’

  They looked across the pits to where Harlow was sitting on a bench just outside the shelter. Uncaring whether he was observed or not, he half-filled a glass from a rapidly diminishing brandy bottle. One did not have to have eyesight to know that the hands were still shaking: diminishing though the protesting roar of the crowd still was, it was still sufficient to make normal conversation difficult: nevertheless, the castanet rattle of glass against glass could be clearly heard. Harlow took a quick gulp from his glass then sat there with both elbows on his knees and stared, unblinkingly and without expression, at the wrecked remains of his car.

  Dunnet said: ‘And only two months ago he’d never touched the hard stuff in his life. What are you going to do, James?’

  ‘Now?’ MacAlpine smiled faintly. ‘I’m going to see Mary. I think by this time they might let me in to see her.’ He glanced briefly, his face seemingly impassive, around the pits, at Harlow lifting his glass again, at the red-haired Rafferty twins looking almost as unhappy as Dunnet, and at Jacobson, Tracchia and Rory wearing uniform scowls and directing them in uniform directions, sighed for the last time, turned and walked heavily away.

  Mary MacAlpine was twenty-two years old, pale complexioned despite the many hours she spent in the sun, with big brown eyes, gleamingly brushed black hair as dark as night and the most bewitching smile that ever graced a Grand Prix racing tr
ack: she did not intend that the smile should be bewitching, she just couldn’t help it. Everyone in the team, even the taciturn and terrible-tempered Jacobson, was in love with her in one way or another, not to mention a quite remarkable number of other people who were not in the team: this Mary recognized and accepted with commendable aplomb, although without either amusement or condescension: condescension was quite alien to her nature. In any event, she viewed the regard that others had for her as only the natural reciprocal of the regard she had for them: despite her quick no-nonsense mind, Mary MacAlpine was in many ways still very young.

  Lying in bed in that spotless, soullessly antiseptic hospital room that night, Mary MacAlpine looked younger than ever. She also looked, as she unquestionably was, very ill. The natural paleness had turned to pallor and the big brown eyes which she opened only briefly and reluctantly, were dulled with pain. This same pain was reflected in MacAlpine’s eyes as he looked down at his daughter, at the heavily splinted and bandaged left leg lying on top of the sheet. MacAlpine stooped and kissed his daughter on the forehead.

  He said: ‘Sleep well, darling. Good night.’

  She tried to smile. ‘With all the pills they’ve given me? Yes, I think I will. And Daddy.’

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘It wasn’t Johnny’s fault. I know it wasn’t. It was his car. I know it was.’

  ‘We’re finding that out. Jacobson is taking the car down.’

  ‘You’ll see. Will you ask Johnny to come and see me?’

  ‘Not tonight, darling. I’m afraid he’s not too well.’

  ‘He – he hasn’t been – ’

  ‘No, no. Shock.’ MacAlpine smiled, ‘He’s been fed the same pills as yourself.’

  ‘Johnny Harlow? In shock? I don’t believe it. Three near-fatal crashes and he never once – ’

  ‘He saw you, my darling.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘I’ll be around later tonight.’