The Way to Dusty Death

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘It’ll do him no harm,’ Tracchia said. ‘And it certainly won’t do us any either.’ Neubauer’s prophecy was confirmed in remarkably short order.

  Harlow closed the door behind him and looked down at the prostrate figure of Dunnet who, although he had been duly and efficiently doctored, had a face that looked as if it had emerged from a major road accident within the past few minutes. Allowing for the areas covered by bruises and a variety of plasters, there was, in all conscience, little enough of his face to be seen, just a nose double its usual size, a completely-closed rainbow-coloured right eye and stitches on the forehead and upper lip, but sufficient to lend credence to his recent life and hard times. Harlow clucked his tongue in the usual sympathetic if rather perfunctory fashion, took two silent steps towards the door and jerked it open. Rory literally fell into the room and measured his length on the splendid marble tiles of the Villa-Hotel Cessni.

  Wordlessly, Harlow bent over him, wound his fingers in Rory’s thick black curling hair and hauled him to his feet. Rory had no words either, just a piercing heartfelt scream of agony. Still without speaking, Harlow transferred his grip to Rory’s ear, marched him along the corridor to MacAlpine’s room, knocked and went inside, dragging Rory with him: tears of pain rolled down the unhappy Rory’s face. MacAlpine, lying on top of his bed, propped himself up on one elbow: his outrage that his only son should be so cruelly mishandled was clearly outweighed by the fact that it was Harlow who was doing the mishandling.

  Harlow said: ‘I know I’m not very much in the grace and favour line with Coronado at the moment. I also know he is your son. But the next time I find this spying young tramp eavesdropping outside the door of a room I’m in I’ll well and truly clobber him.’

  MacAlpine looked at Harlow, then at Rory, then back to Harlow. ‘I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.’ The voice was flat and singularly lacking in conviction.

  ‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not.’ Harlow’s anger had gone, he’d slipped on his old mask of indifference. ‘But I know you would believe Alexis Dunnet. Go and ask him. I was with him in his room when I opened the door a bit unexpectedly for our young friend here. He had been leaning so heavily against it that he fell flat to the floor. I helped him up. By his hair. That’s why there’s tears in his eyes.’

  MacAlpine looked at Rory in a less than paternal fashion. ‘Is this true?’

  Rory wiped his sleeve across his eyes, concentrated sullenly on the examination of the toes of his shoes and prudently said nothing.

  ‘Leave him to me, Johnny.’ MacAlpine didn’t look particularly angry or upset, just very very tired. ‘My apologies if I seemed to doubt you – I didn’t.’

  Harlow nodded, left, returned to Dunnet’s room, closed and locked the door then, as Dunnet watched in silence, proceeded to search the room thoroughly. A few minutes later, apparently still not satisfied, he moved into the adjacent bathroom, turned a tap and the shower on to maximum then went out, leaving the door wide open behind him. It is difficult for even the most sensitive microphone to pick up with any degree of clarity the sound of human voices against a background of running water.

  Without any by-your-leave, he searched through the outer clothing that Dunnet had been wearing. He replaced the clothing and looked at Dunnet’s torn shirt and the white band that a wrist watch had left on a sun-tanned wrist.

  ‘Has it occurred to you, Alexis,’ Harlow said, ‘that some of your activities are causing displeasure in certain quarters and that they are trying to discourage you?’

  ‘Funny. Bloody funny.’ Dunnet’s voice was, understandably, so thick and slurred that in his case the use of any anti-microphone devices was almost wholly superfluous. ‘Why didn’t they discourage me permanently?’

  ‘Only a fool kills unnecessarily. We are not up against fools. However, who knows, one day? Well, now. Wallet, loose change, watch, cuff-links, even your half-dozen fountain pens and car keys – all gone. Looks like a pretty professional roll job, doesn’t it?’

  ‘The hell with that.’ Dunnet spat blood into a handful of tissue. ‘What matters is that the cassette is gone.’

  Harlow hesitated then cleared his throat in a diffident fashion.

  ‘Well, let’s say that a cassette is missing.’

  The only really viable feature in Dunnet’s face was his unblemished right eye: this, after a momentary puzzlement, he used most effectively to glower at Harlow with the maximum of suspicion.

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  Harlow gazed into the middle distance.

  ‘Well, Alexis, I do feel a little bit apologetic about this, but the cassette that matters is in the hotel safe. The one our friends now have – the one I gave to you – was a plant.’

  Dunnet, with what little could be seen of his sadly battered face slowly darkening in anger, tried to sit up: gently but firmly Harlow pushed him down again.

  Harlow said: ‘Now, now, Alexis, don’t do yourself an injury. Another one, I mean. They were on to me and I had to put myself in the clear or I was finished – although God knows I never expected them to do this to you.’ He paused. ‘I’m in the clear now.’

  ‘You’d better be sure of that, my boy.’ Dunnet had subsided but his anger hadn’t.

  ‘I’m sure. When they develop that film spool they’ll find it contains micro photos – about a hundred – of line drawings of a prototype gas turbine engine. They’ll conclude I’m as much a criminal as they are, but as my business is industrial espionage, there can be no possible conflict of interests. They’ll lose interest in me.’

  Dunnet looked at him balefully. ‘Clever bastard, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I am, rather.’ He went to the door, opened it and turned round. ‘Especially, it seems, when it is at other people’s expense.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In the Coronado pits on the following afternoon a heavily panting MacAlpine and a still sadly battered Dunnet argued in low and urgent tones. The faces of both men were marked with worry.

  MacAlpine made no attempt to conceal the savagery he felt inside him. He said: ‘But the bottle’s empty, man. Drained to the last drop. I’ve just checked. Jesus, I can’t just let him go out there and kill another man.’

  ‘If you stop him you’ll have to explain why to the press. It’ll be a sensation, the international sporting scandal of the last decade. It’ll kill Johnny. Professionally, I mean.’

  ‘Better have him killed professionally than have him kill another driver for real.’

  Dunnet said: ‘Give him two laps. If he’s in the lead, then let him go. He can’t kill anyone in that position. If not, flag him in. We’ll cook up something for the press. Anyway, remember what he did yesterday with the same skinful inside him?’

  ‘Yesterday he was lucky. Today – ’

  ‘Today it’s too late.’

  Even at a distance of several hundred feet the sound of twenty-four Grand Prix racing engines accelerating away from the starting grid was startling, almost shattering, both in its unexpectedness and ear-cringing fury of sound. MacAlpine and Dunnet looked at each other and shrugged simultaneously. There seemed to be no other comment or reaction to meet the case.

  The first driver past the pits, already pulling fractionally clear of Nicolo Tracchia, was Harlow in his lime-green Coronado. MacAlpine turned to Dunnet and said heavily: ‘One swallow does not make a summer.’

  Eight laps later MacAlpine was beginning to question his ornithological expertise. He was looking slightly dazed while Dunnet was indulging in considerable eyebrow-lifting, Jacobson’s expression was not one indicative of any marked internal pleasure while Rory was positively scowling although manfully trying not to. Only Mary expressed her true emotion and that without inhibition. She looked positively radiant.

  ‘Three lap records gone,’ she said incredulously. ‘Three lap records in eight laps.’

  By the end of the ninth lap the emotions of those in the Coronado pits, as registered by their facial expr
essions, had radically altered. Jacobson and Rory were, with difficulty, refraining from looking cheerful. Mary was chewing anxiously on her pencil. MacAlpine looked thunderous but the thunder was overlaid by deep anxiety.

  ‘Forty seconds overdue!’ he said. ‘Forty seconds! All the field’s gone past and he’s not even in sight. What in God’s name could have happened to him?’

  Dunnet said: ‘Shall I phone the track-marshals’ checkpoints?’

  MacAlpine nodded and Dunnet began to make calls. The first two yielded no information and he was about to make a third when Harlow’s Coronado appeared and drew into the pits. The engine note of the Coronado sounded perfectly healthy in every way, which was more than could be said for Harlow when he had climbed out of his car and removed his helmet and goggles. His eyes were glazed, and bloodshot. He looked at them for a moment then spread his hands: the tremor in them was unmistakable.

  ‘Sorry. Had to pull up about a mile out. Double vision. Could hardly see where I was going. Come to that, I still can’t.’

  ‘Get changed.’ The bleak harshness in MacAlpine’s voice startled the listeners. ‘I’m taking you to hospital.’

  Harlow hesitated, made as if to speak, shrugged, turned and walked away. Dunnet said in a low voice: ‘You’re not taking him to the course doctor?’

  ‘I’m taking him to see a friend of mine. An optometrist of note but many other things besides. All I want him to do is a little job for me, a job I couldn’t get done in privacy and secrecy on the track.’

  Dunnet said quietly, almost sadly: ‘A blood sample?’

  ‘Just one positive blood sample.’

  ‘And that will be the end of the road for Grand Prix’s superstar?’

  ‘The end of the road.’

  For a person who might well have good reason for believing he had reached the end of his professional career Harlow, as he sat relaxed in his chair in a hospital corridor, seemed singularly unperturbed. Most unusually for him he was smoking a cigarette, the hand holding the cigarette as steady as if it had been carved from marble. Harlow gazed thoughtfully at the door at the far end of the corridor. Behind that door MacAlpine, his face registering a combination of disbelief and consternation, looked at the man seated across the desk from him, a benign and elderly bearded doctor in shirt sleeves.

  MacAlpine said: ‘Impossible. Quite impossible. You mean to tell me there is no alcohol in his blood?’

  ‘Impossible or not, I mean what I say. An experienced colleague has just carried out a double-check. He has no more alcohol in his blood than you would find in that of a life-long abstainer.’

  MacAlpine shook his head. ‘Impossible,’ he repeated. ‘Look, Professor, I have proof – ’

  ‘To us long-suffering doctors nothing is impossible. The speed with which different individuals metabolize alcohol varies beyond belief. With an obviously extremely fit young man like your friend outside – ’

  ‘But his eyes! You saw his eyes. Bleary, bloodshot – ’

  ‘There could be half a dozen reasons for that.’

  ‘And the double vision?’

  ‘His eyes seem normal enough. How well he is seeing it’s hard to say yet. There exists always the possibility that the eyes themselves are sound enough but that some damage may have been done to an optical nerve.’ The doctor stood up. ‘A spot check is not enough. I’d need a series of tests, a battery of tests. Unfortunately, not now – I’m already overdue at the theatre. Could he come along about seven this evening?’

  MacAlpine said he could, expressed his thanks and left. As he approached Harlow, he looked at the cigarette in his hand, then at Harlow, then back at the cigarette but said nothing. Still in silence, the two men left the hospital, got into MacAlpine’s Aston and drove back in the direction of Monza.

  Harlow broke the silence. He said mildly: ‘As the principal concerned, don’t you think you should tell me what the doctor said?’

  MacAlpine said shortly: ‘He’s not sure. He wants to carry out a series of tests. The first is at seven o’clock tonight.’

  Still mildly, Harlow said: ‘I hardly think that will be necessary.’

  MacAlpine glanced at him in brief speculation. ‘And what’s that meant to mean?’

  ‘There’s a lay-by half a kilometre ahead. Pull in, please. There’s something I want to say.’

  At seven o’clock that evening, the hour when Harlow was supposed to be in hospital, Dunnet sat in MacAlpine’s hotel room. The atmosphere was funereal. Both men had large glasses of scotch in their hands.

  Dunnet said: ‘Jesus! Just like that? He said his nerve was gone, he knew he was finished and could he break his contract?’

  ‘Just like that. No more beating about the bush, he said. No more kidding – especially kidding himself. God knows what it cost the poor devil to say so.’

  ‘And the scotch?’

  MacAlpine sampled his own and sighed heavily, more in sadness than weariness. ‘Quite humorous about it, really. Says he detests the damned stuff and is thankful for a reason never to touch it again.’

  It was Dunnet’s turn to have recourse to his scotch. ‘And what’s going to happen to your poor devil now? Mind you, James, I’m not overlooking what this has cost you – you’ve lost the best driver in the world. But right now I’m more concerned about Johnny.’

  ‘Me, too. But what to do? What to do?’

  The man who was the subject of all this concern was displaying a remarkable amount of unconcern. For a man who was the central figure in the greatest fall from grace in the history of motor racing, Johnny Harlow seemed most extraordinarily cheerful. As he adjusted his tie before the mirror in his room he whistled, albeit slightly tunelessly, to himself, breaking off occasionally to smile at some private thought. He shrugged into his jacket, left his room, went down to the lobby, took an orangeade from the bar and sat down at a nearby table. Before he was even able to sip his drink Mary came and sat beside him. She took one of his hands in both of hers.

  ‘Johnny!’ she said. ‘Oh, Johnny!’

  ‘Harlow gazed at her with sorrowful eyes.

  She went on: ‘Daddy just told me. Oh, Johnny, what are we going to do?’

  ‘We?’

  She gazed at him for long seconds without speaking, looked away and said: ‘To lose my two best friends in one day.’ There were no tears in her eyes but there were tears in her voice.

  ‘Your two – what do you mean?’

  ‘I thought you knew.’ Now the tears were trickling down her cheeks. ‘Henry’s got bad heart trouble. He has to go.’

  ‘Henry? Dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ Harlow squeezed her hands and gazed off into the middle distance. ‘Poor old Henry. I wonder what will happen to him?’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right.’ She sniffed. ‘Daddy’s keeping him on in Marseilles.’

  ‘Ah. Then it’s probably all for the best – Henry was getting past it anyway.’

  Harlow remained thoughtful for some seconds, apparently lost in deep thought, then clasped Mary’s hands with his free one. He said: ‘Mary, I love you. Hang on, will you? Back in a couple of minutes.’

  One minute later Harlow was in MacAlpine’s room. Dunnet was there and he had the appearance of a man who was with difficulty keeping his anger under control. MacAlpine was clearly highly distressed. He shook his head many times.

  He said: ‘Not at any price. Not under any circumstances. No, no, no. It’s just not on. One day the world champion, the next trundling a lumbering transporter all over the place. Why, man, you’d be the laughing stock of Europe.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Harlow’s voice was quiet, without bitterness. ‘But not half as much a laughing stock as I’d be if people knew the real reason for my retiral, Mr MacAlpine.’

  ‘Mr MacAlpine? Mr MacAlpine? I’m always James to you, my boy. Always have been.’

  ‘Not any more, sir. You could explain about my so-called double vision, say that I’ve been retained as a specialist adviser. What more natural? Besides, you do need a transpor
ter driver.’

  MacAlpine shook his head in slow and complete finality. ‘Johnny Harlow will never drive any transporter of mine and that’s the end of it.’

  MacAlpine covered his face with his hands. Harlow looked at Dunnet who jerked his head towards the door. Harlow nodded and left the room.

  Dunnet let some seconds pass in silence, then he said, picking his words carefully and without emotion: ‘And that’s the end of me. I’ll say goodbye to you, then, James MacAlpine. I’ve enjoyed every minute of my assignment. Except for the last minute.’

  MacAlpine removed his hands, slowly lifted his head and stared at Dunnet in wonderment. He said: ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I mean this. Isn’t it obvious? I value my health too much to stay around and feel sick every time I think of what you’ve done. That boy lives for motor racing, it’s the only thing he knows and now he has no place left in the world to go. And I would remind you, James MacAlpine, that in the space of four short years the Coronado has been hauled up from the depths of near obscurity and made into the most successful and respected Grand Prix racing car in the world through one thing and one thing only – the incomparable driving genius of that boy to whom you have just shown the door. Not you, James, not you. Johnny Harlow made Coronado. But you can’t afford to be associated with failure, he’s no use to you any more so you drop him into the discard. I hope you sleep well tonight, Mr MacAlpine. You should do. You have every reason to be proud of yourself.’

  Dunnet turned to leave. MacAlpine, with tears in his eyes, spoke softly. ‘Alexis.’

  Dunnet turned.

  MacAlpine said: ‘If you ever speak to me like that again I’ll break your blasted neck. I’m tired, I’m dead tired, and I want to sleep before dinner. Go tell him he can have any bloody job he likes on the Coronado – mine, if he so cares.’

  Dunnet said: ‘I’ve been bloody rude. Please accept my apologies. And thank you very much, James.’