might well have left the astonished onlookers with the impression that he had mistaken the forecourt of the Villa- Hotel Cessni for the Monza circuit.
MacAlpine was still running when he arrived at the Coronado pits: there he encountered Dunnet who was just leaving them. MacAlpine was panting heavily. He said: ‘Where’s that young bastard Harlow?’
Dunnet did not reply at once. He seemed more concerned with shaking his head slowly from side to side.
‘God’s sake, man, where’s that drunken layabout?’ MacAlpine’s voice was almost a shout. ‘He mustn’t be allowed anywhere near that damned track.’
‘There’s a lot of other drivers in Monza who would agree with you.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘It means that that drunken layabout has just broken the lap record by two point one seconds.’
Dunnet continued to shake his head in continued disbelief. ‘Bloody well incredible.’
‘Two point one! Two point one! Two point one!’ It was MacAlpine’s turn to take up the head-shaking. Impossible. A margin like that? Impossible.’
‘Ask the time-keepers. He did it twice.’
‘Jesus!’
‘You don’t seem as pleased as you might, James.’
‘Pleased. I’m bloody well terrified. Sure, sure, he’s still the best driver in the world-except in actual competition when his nerve goes. But it wasn’t driving skill that took him around in that time. It was Dutch courage. Sheer bloody suicidal Dutch courage.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘He’d a half-bottle of scotch inside him, Alexis.’
Dunnet stared at him. He said at length, ‘I don’t believe k. I can’t believe it He may have driven like a bat out of hell but he also drove like an angel. Half a bottle of scotch? He’d have killed himself.’
‘Perhaps it’s as well there was no one else on the track at the time. He’d have killed them, maybe.’
‘But — but a whole half-bottle!’
‘Want to come and have a look in the cistern in his bathroom?’
‘No, no. You think I’d ever question your word? It’s just that I can’t understand it.’
‘Nor can I, nor can I. And where is our world champion at the moment?’
‘Left the track. Says he’s through for the day. Says he’s got the pole position for tomorrow and if anyone takes it from him he’ll just come back and take it away from them again. He’s in an uppish sort of mood today, is our Johnny.’
‘And he never used to talk that way. That’s not uppishness, Alexis, it’s sheer bloody euphoria dancing on clouds of seventy proof. God Almighty, do I have a problem or do I have a problem.’
‘You have a problem, James.’
On the afternoon of that same Saturday MacAlpine, had he been in a certain rather shabby little side street in Monza, might well have had justification for thinking that his problems were being doubly or trebly compounded. Two highly undistinguished little cafes faced each other across the narrow street. They had in common the same peeling paint facade, hanging reed curtains, chequered cloth-covered sidewalk tables and bare, functional and splendidly uninspired interiors.
And both of them, as was so common in cafes of this type, featured high-backed booths facing end-on to the street.
Sitting well back from the window in such a booth on the southern and shaded side of the street were Neubauer and Tracchia with untouched drinks in front of them. The drinks were untouched because neither man was interested in them. Their entire interest was concentrated upon the cafe opposite where, close up to the window and clearly in view, Harlow and Dunnet, glasses in their hands, could be seen engaged in what appeared to be earnest discussion across their booth table.
Neubauer said: ‘Well, now that we’ve followed them here, Nikki, what do we do now? I mean, you can’t lip- read, can you?’
We wait and see? We play it by ear? T wish to God T could lip-read, Willi. And I’d also like to know why those two have suddenly become so friendly — though they hardly ever speak nowadays in public. And why did they have to come to a little back street like this to talk? We know that Harlow is up to something very funny indeed — the back of my neck still feels half-broken, I could hardly get my damned helmet on today. And if he and Dunnet are so thick then they’re both up to the same funny thing. But Dunnet’s only a journalist. What can a journalist and a has- been driver be up to?’
‘Has-been? Did you see his times this morning?’
‘Has-been I said and has-been I meant. You’ll see — he’ll crack tomorrow just as he’s cracked in the last four GPs.’
‘Yes. Another strange.thing. Why is he so good in practice and such a failure in the races themselves?’
‘No question. It’s common knowledge that Harlow’s pretty close to being an alcoholic — I’d say he already is one. All right, so he can drive one fast lap, maybe three. But in an eighty-lap Grand Prix — how can you expect an alco to have the stamina, the reactions, the nerve to last the pace? He’ll crack.’ He looked away from the other cafe and took a morose sip of his drink. ‘God, what wouldn’t I give to be sitting in the next booth to those two.’
Tracchia laid a hand on Neubauer’s forearm. ‘Maybe that won’t be necessary, Willi. Maybe we’ve just found a pair of ears to do our listening for us. Look!’
Neubauer looked. With what appeared to be a considerable degree of stealth and secrecy Rory MacAlpine was edging his way into the booth next to the one occupied by Harlow and Dunnet.
He was carrying a coloured drink in his hand. When he sat it was with his back to Harlow: physically, they couldn’t have been more than a foot apart. Rory adopted a very upright posture, both his back and the back of his head pressed hard against the partition: he was, clearly, listening very intently indeed. He had about him the look of one who was planning a career either as a master spy or a double agent. Without question he had a rare talent for observing — and listening — without being observed.
Neubauer said: ‘What do you think young MacAlpine is up to?’
‘Here and now?’ Tracchia spread his hands. ‘Anything. The one thing that you can be sure of is that he intends no good to Harlow. I should think he is just trying to get anything he can on Harlow. Just anything. He’s a determined young devil — and he hates Harlow. I must say I wouldn’t care very much myself to be in his black books.’
‘So we have an ally, Nikki, yes?’
‘I see no reason why not. Let’s think up a nice little story to tell him.’ He peered across the street. ‘Young Rory doesn’t seem too pleased about something.’
Rory wasn’t. His expression held mixed feelings of vexation, exasperation and perplexity: because of the high back of the booth and the background noise level created by the other patrons of the cafe, he could catch only snatches of the conversation from the next booth.
Matters weren’t helped for Rory by the fact that Harlow and Dunnet were carrying on this conversation in very low tones indeed. Both of them had tall clear drinks in front of them, both drinks with ice and lemon in them: only one held gin. Dunnet looked consideringly at the tiny film cassette he was cradling in the palm of his hand then slipped it into a safe inside pocket.
‘Photographs of code? You’re sure?’
‘Code for sure. Perhaps even along with some abstruse foreign language. I’m afraid I’m no expert on those matters.’
‘No more than I am. But we have people who are experts. And the Coronado transporter.
You’re sure about that too?’
‘No question.’
‘So we’ve been nursing a viper to our own bosom — if that’s the phrase I’m looking for.’
‘It is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it?’
‘And no question about Henry having any finger in the pie?’
‘Henry?’ Harlow shook his head positively.
‘Even though, as driver, he’s the only person who’s with the transporter on every trip it makes?’
‘Even though.’
