by Robert Ryan
‘Looks better than I remembered,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘It’ll be perfect. Thank you, Ragno, I appreciate it.’
‘No problema. At least this looks like a real bike.’
I saw him glance at the shrouded motorcycle and asked, ‘What is that?’
His mouth crumpled. ‘That is the future.’ He jerked at a corner of the material and the sheet snapped off. I didn’t say anything. ‘Go on,’ he prompted. ‘Say what you are thinking.’
‘That’s a Guzzi?’
He let out a long heartfelt sigh. ‘It’s called the Dingo. Appropriate, eh?’
It was some sort of scooter/light bike hybrid, and next to it, the CrossCountry glowed like the statue of David or the Mona Lisa.
‘But,’ I spluttered, ‘what about the Vs?’ The big V engine was what you bought a Guzzi for. Anything else, you might as well get a Vespa or Lambretta.
Ragno shrugged. ‘Same thing is happening here as in England.’
‘The Japanese?’
He shook his head. ‘Well, we have to blame someone. Tell me—why do people buy motorbikes?’
I shrugged. ‘Freedom, speed, excitement …’
‘No. No, we think that because that is what we like, but really it’s because they’re cheap. People buy them because they are cheap to buy and cheap to run. So, now they have money, they want cars. A little Fiat Topolino perhaps, to take the family, or perhaps a Ford. So much better, easier than a sidecar.’
I nodded. It made sense. ‘So we are blaming our bikes, when—’
‘The market will shrink. Bound to. Those who love bikes will always buy bikes. Those who have them because they can’t afford anything else … Tell your father—get into cars.’
‘But this?’ I indicated the Dingo.
He winked. ‘Oh, don’t worry. Guzzi will make big bikes again. Just not as many as we have in the past. This is like Rolls-Royce making a Mini. Stupid. I can’t look at it.’ He pulled the cover over the scooter again. ‘So shall we put some petrol in your steel beauty and see where that oil is coming from and get you on your way?’
‘Thanks, Ragno.’
He slapped me on the back. ‘Always a pleasure to help Jack Kirby.’ There was a pause and I considered asking him about that night when the Lib went down, but I knew what he would say—that he was just a kid who knew nothing. I let the moment pass.
Ragno fetched a drip tray and a box of tools and hunched down beside the CrossCountry. ‘Tell me something, Jack.’
‘If I can.’
‘After we spoke at the TT, I heard people say you had raced there before the war.’
‘Yes.’
‘You never told me.’
‘I told you I had raced.’
‘But the TT …’
I didn’t bother mentioning that when I met him, he didn’t know a TT from a tea dance. He can only have discovered the mythology surrounding the event after the war.
‘I looked you up,’ he went on. ‘I found your post-war races, but nothing before.’
‘I was there, Ragno. I’m your original Ghost Rider.’
He stopped undoing a hexagonal bolt. ‘You want to explain that?’
I didn’t. I was impatient to get away, but it seemed rude not to, so I told him.
Twenty-Four
I TOLD RAGNO ABOUT the race, but I found it hard, at first, to recapture the feeling, to get inside the skin of the young lad who was hammering round the mountain course of the Isle of Man in 1939. Yet as I spoke, the words slowly led me back there, until I could feel the wind on my face, the tightness of the goggles.
My voice fell into the rhythm of the road, and I was back accelerating down the dip of Bray Hill for the fifth time, feeling the front wheel go light on the bumps where the road junctions meet the course, my teeth chattering from the vibration. Then I was up the incline to the brow, where I opened the throttle and felt the bike hang in the air.
I leaned forward as the motorcycle thumped down then gripped the tarred road surface, and accelerated towards the left-hander at Selborne. It was a messy execution, and butterflies flooded my stomach.
The field had thinned by this time—accidents, refuelling cock-ups, mechanical failure. Settle down, I told myself. It was the next to last lap, fuel load well down—the bike must have shed 50 pounds in weight since the pit stop. I knew this was my best chance at getting into the record books.
I took her down to the right-hander, making sure the bike didn’t drift to the left too much, where the wheels could be snatched from under me by the camber and the ruts. I remember, sometimes I wished I carried a little more weight, more bulk on my skinny young body, to help heave the machine. ‘It’ll come,’ my father used to say, ‘all too quickly, and then you’ll wish you had a little less of it. For the moment,’ he said, ‘you’ll just have to make do with ordinary, everyday skill.’
Full throttle, holding on as the bike juddered over the uneven road surface. Just a touch of adverse camber, correct for it, and past 80 mph. Hedges, the odd road sign, manhole covers, gutter gratings, access roads, sandbags, hay bales, all zipped by, only half-registered at that speed.
And then we were at Quarterbridge, one of the worst bends on the circuit. If a rider wasn’t careful here, he’d end up sliding through on his arse. Down to first, then up and out, pouring the power back on. I felt the back wheel struggle for traction, find it, and then I was ready for the change down for Braddan Bridge, all the way to second.
I was at Union Mills and there was a rider behind me, at my shoulder, but I wasn’t worried about that. I was alone out there, just me and the machine and a road that was trying to kill me. It had claimed many others in the past; there would be more in the future.
Away from the Railway Inn, accelerating again, smiling as the engine revved smoothly, and I could sense I was drawing away from the challenger, pulling up the long climb to Ballahutchin. Perfect. Don’t get cocky, I reminded myself.
Greeba Bridge—brake, brake, change down, two gears, then back on the gas before another rapid deceleration down to second for Ballacraine. I was sweating now, steaming in the leathers. Bang. A crash as the suspension bottomed on Doran’s and the pipes sparked in protest as they were dragged along the blacktop. Damn. Fortunately, the lack of fuel on board meant it was just a glancing blow. I was lucky that time.
Laurel Bank loomed, the raw rockface waiting to take the head off any careless rider. Down to second, then ready for the left and right. Throw the bike, but not too much. My dad always said it was the kind of feel pilots had to have when they were juddering on the edge of a stall, acutely aware of where that fine line was. I could certainly do that in the cockpit. I just hoped I could here. Nine miles gone of the fifth lap.
As I talked through the race to Ragno, a quarter of a century later I could still feel the glow of pleasure at the delicate waltz I took at Black Dub before the swing into Glen Helen, and the fluttering in the stomach as I crossed the thin trickle of a stream and opened her up at Barregarrow, the spectators flashing by inches from me, a blur of smiles and cheers and waves. Then I was at the Mitre Hotel and there was another knot of onlookers, and the bike was flowing now through the bends, but I knew I would have to drop anchor for Ballaugh Bridge. Keep her straight and true for the jump.
Into Quarry Bends and Sulby Bridge, both of which have proved disastrous for many a rider. I cranked the bike over, getting my knee down, the unforgiving road surface humming a grain of sand’s thickness from flesh and bone; the nervousness was there again, but fleeting, and it disappeared as I straightened. Seventeen miles had gone.
Now I was ready for Ramsey. I took the School House in third and remembered to breathe, to calm everything down. You took this section slow, watching for the town’s lethal gutters and gratings. I picked up a signal from the team at Ramsey—a large W-8, showing that Woods was in the lead by eight seconds. I wasn’t racing against Woods, though. I was racing against myself.
Now the Gooseneck, and Je
sus that was a sly one, a hairpin going uphill; you had to come right down to first, and make sure you kept the line. There was Julie at the bend, where it was slow enough for her to be seen, holding up my unofficial time for the previous lap. Twenty-five minutes and three seconds. Not good enough, boy. Ever since Daniell bust the twenty-five-minute barrier, it had become the marker, the line you had to cross to be taken seriously as a contender. Julie looked magnificent, the breeze tugging at her floral dress, the blonde hair coaxed into cascading curls.
There was no mist hanging around, clear skies and no excuse for not going for it. More power on the Mountain Mile, where I got a chance to let my aching arms relax. Too much, perhaps. The wind caught me just as I came up for Mountain Box. I was already nearly on the grass, lining up for the turn, when I felt the big gust buffet me, pushing me across towards the fence. I cursed in language that would have earned me a clip round the ear from Dad, but I got her back on line.
I twisted on the power and risked a glance down at the speedo needle, swinging over to one-fifteen, one-twenty as I streaked on down towards Craig-Ny-Baa, my cheeks and lips stretched backwards by the slipstream. Twenty-five minutes or bust, I told myself over and over again.
It’d be sub twenty-five, or I’d die trying.
Ragno, satisfied he had found the leak from an ill-seated gasket, straightened it and applied a dob of sealant to be on the safe side, before reassembling the crankcase. He looked up and said: ‘Did you make it?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. I broke it, came in under twenty-five minutes by half a second.’
‘But?’
‘But I was too young.’ Impatient to do the race, not willing to wait another year, I’d persuaded Dad to enter me when I was still seventeen. Or as I told him, seventeen and almost three-quarters.
‘The age limit was?’
‘Eighteen.’ How they found out, I never knew, but my effort was scrubbed from the rolls. Even then, the TT was getting a reputation as a fast way to a coffin. They knew if it was discovered they were letting in under-age riders, there would be an outcry. So my time was buried, struck from the books. I was banned for a couple of years, and Kirby Motorcycles was fined. Only people like Geoff Davison remembered it now. And my father. But, by God, I’d done it.
‘So as far as the official history is concerned, it never happened?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Tough. An unsung hero—is that what you say?’
‘Yes. Story of my life. By the time my ban was lifted, the war was here.’
‘I know that part,’ he said with a grin. He stood and wiped his hands as he indicated the CrossCountry. ‘That should be fine. Ready to ride. Where are you taking her?’
‘Milan,’ I said. ‘See a man about a dog.’
Ragno looked puzzled. ‘What kind of dog?’
‘That,’ I assured him, ‘will be my first question.’
‘A reliquary is a receptacle for keeping religious relics in. The bones of saints, the hair of Christ, that sort of thing.’
Professore Gianlorenzo Borromini was examining the three torn pages that the SISDe man had given me. He was head of Art History at Catholic University in Milan and also one of the founders of the skydiving club. He was around my age, but athletic and dynamic. He worked from the Palazzo Lanzone, just south of the Museo Archeologico. His office, which I expected to be overflowing with dusty tomes and unattributed El Grecos, was clean, simple and furnished with sleek modern furniture in light wood and steel, with modern art—well, blocks of solid colour that I guessed would pass as modern art—rather than Old Masters on the walls. I had trouble taking my eyes off a sculpture next to his desk, an assemblage of mirrors that reflected themselves.
‘Michelangelo Pistoletto,’ he explained, catching my glance. ‘A Structure for Measuring Infinity. You know his work?’
‘No.’
‘You will,’ he said with absolute certainty.
I switched back to the matters at hand. ‘And the comb?’
‘Used to prepare the priest for Mass. Combing the priest’s hair became common in the fourth century, and stayed that way for a thousand years or more. The Greeks still do it, I believe. The flask may well have held the wine. Except it is a very beautiful example, because it still has this gold cross, like a necklace, around it. Usually they were separated a long time ago.’
He turned over the pages I had given him. ‘So, these are three small auction houses. London, Zurich and New York. Not your Sotheby’s.’
‘You can tell?’
He waved an arm, indicating down the hall. ‘I can show you hundreds of similar catalogues in the archives, Jack. The thing is, although not top-flight houses, this is where the real bargain-hunter would go.’
‘Or the man trying to keep a low profile.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Perhaps. Is this a new sideline now we are to lose our club?’
‘No. Someone gave them to me, with no explanation.’
‘All three items are medieval. And they are generic, rather than specific. You know what I am saying?’
‘That nobody could prove you didn’t own them?’
‘Precisely. You try and sell a Rembrandt, or a Bellini, the chances are someone will know its provenance, its history: when it last came on the market, where it has been for the last hundred years, or at least when it was last seen. But these, the chances of them being previously catalogued specifically are slim. Of course, there are forgeries of such things, but given the reserves, I suspect the sellers sincerely believe them to be genuine.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’
‘Without seeing the actual pieces? Not really.’
I got up and shook his hand. ‘Thank you, Professor.’
‘Any time, Jack. We should talk about a new airfield.’
‘We will. For next year. I promise.’
I turned to go and he said, ‘I … well, there is one thing. So obvious to me, but …’ He put his fingers together in a pyramid.
‘What?’
‘Well, the enamel on the reliquary suggests it was made in Ravenna. Perhaps the twelfth century. The scene carved onto the ivory of the liturgical comb is the martyrdom of Saint Justina of Padua. Justina was a Christian martyr who died under the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Maximian. The shape of the cross around the flask is also distinctive. All three, they are Italian artefacts, Jack, taken from Italian churches.’
I smiled. ‘Yes. Thanks, Professor. I think I had guessed that.’
I walked down the steps of the Istituto d’Arte and hesitated for a few moments before putting my helmet on. I wore it in the cities even though it wasn’t yet the law. I’d been in the country long enough to know it wasn’t worth the risk of getting brain damage from some driver who was too busy checking that his new sunglasses looked cool to notice a mere bike rider. As I fastened the chinstrap, I went over what I had discovered. So what did we have? Three pictures of medieval works of art that Zopatti had suggested were somehow tied in with the partisans. Very resourceful, he had said.
Europe was still awash with stolen and confiscated artworks, even ones from looted churches, although their routing was usually through Switzerland or Spain or Portugal—the big repositories where the Nazis shipped their booty.
Zopatti was suggesting that it wasn’t only the Germans who had their hands in the collection box. Well, he certainly had my attention, which is what he intended. The bastard also had my plane, so I was going to have to talk to him and find out what garden path he was leading me up.
I had just checked the oil leak had stopped, kicked the CrossCountry into life and moved into the traffic when, with a backward glance—the bike had no mirrors—I spotted Gutbucket stepping out of a black Lancia and heading for the Palazzo I had just left. The Lancia pulled away from the kerb and took a position fifteen feet to the rear of me. I could guess who was behind the wheel; I’d been followed by the men who stole my pistol.
Twenty-Five
I HEADED NORTH
, THE National Science Museum on my left, the castle ahead, a Lancia Flaminia with tinted windows some way behind. It was a big car, hard to manoeuvre in the swarms of buzzing scooters, but I didn’t try anything stupid like attempting to outrun it as the road curved right and opened out into the Piazza Sant’ Ambrogio with its beautiful church and the monastery that housed the archaeological museum just ahead to the right. They hardly registered; I was in no mood for sightseeing. I had to make a decision, and fast.
Why were they following me? If they wanted another slice of me, they knew where I was staying. No, they had to be interested in where I was going. Which meant they either wanted my new bike, or the pages I had shown to the Prof. I didn’t want them to have either.
The traffic on the Corso Magenta would be heavy—coaches and hire cars and taxis, all trying to get close to the re-built Santa Maria delle Grazie for a glimpse of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper which had, fortunately, been painted in the only part of the church to survive an Allied bomb in 1943.
I revved the bike and weaved into the scooter pack, wondering whether I should make a left or a right, when the lights changed to red. I was too far away to jump them, so I made do with looping around the outside of the other riders and between two saloons to get near the front for a decent getaway.
I leaned over and checked the situation behind in the wing mirror of one of the cars bracketing me. The Lancia Flaminia isn’t an easy car to miss, but even so, it seemed inordinately large in the frame. It was close.
Ahead of me, there was the usual parp of impatient horns at those who hadn’t roared away from the lights as if they were in a time trial. I watched the twin streams approach each other from left and right and clicked down on the gear lever into first. My left hand holding the clutch began to ache. I took the revs up and let my fingers open.
The power snatched in and I caught it and let it drive the back wheel. No spin, no wheelies, just a nice smooth curve of torque. I felt my elbow clip a mirror as it pulled me forward, but ignored it. I was committed now. Horns started bleating at me even before I had made it onto the junction. I was about to give them something worthwhile to protest at.