Chameleon, Page 2

  It was the beginning of the most successful relationship in racing history. Noviliano and Marza and the Aquila 333, a revolutionary automobile with heated baffles on the rear deck to "boil the air" for stability, a cutback design, and a unique alcohol jet-injection fuel system that gave the car a fifty-mile range on everything else on the track, reducing its pit stops by at least a third.

  It was a bitch, make no mistake, and Marza drove it like he was part of the frame. Nobody could touch him, and he was absolutely fearless, a man who scorned death. In an interview he once said, "I have seen death, two, three times, sitting on the fence waving at me. I say, 'Fuck you, man, not yet. You don't get Marza this time.' I think, If you are afraid of death, you should maybe be a cashier. This is not your game."

  When he met her, he was still on the way back up, and they were saying he would quit or be dead in a year, and besides, she was only twenty and how could he hope to keep her when every male between puberty and senility wanted her?

  Marza and the Aquila 333 made racing history, and the car was to spawn one of the most exciting automobile ventures in modern times.

  The faster her star rose, the faster he drove. For every hit film she made, he took another checkered flag. There was no competition between them. He delighted in her success and she saw in Marza what few others were ever permitted to see, a champion in every way, who loved her and respected her and treated her as a friend and a lover, not as a movie star. Others were intimidated by her beauty and her success. "Intimidation" was a word he did not know. It was not part of his vocabulary. For Marza, intimidation was unthinkable.

  And she adored him for it.

  He drove with frightening skill, a man possessed, until Milena finally asked him to quit. He was rich beyond all dreams. There was nothing else for him to prove. And besides, Noviliano wanted him to work on a new idea, a new car that would have speed and grace and drive like a champion with a remarkable jet-injection engine that would triple normal gas mileage. Not a racing car, but a street car employing all the commercially practical aspects of the racer. Marza's job was to test it and test it and test it until it was perfect.

  The car was to be called the Aquila Milena because, as the Professor—the great Di Fiere, its designer—said, the car was like a rare and beautiful woman. It was a tribute to Marza, having the car named after the thing he loved most in life. And what a car it was—it just might revolutionize the industry. The patent on the injection system alone could make them all millionaires again.

  So he quit racing. And she quit acting. He found the perfect place for their new home, a knoll outside Malcontenta, on the edge of Laguna Veneta, overlooking her beloved Venezia, and he built a Greek villa for her, just twenty miles from the factory at Padua.

  Turning his head, he gazed through the arched doorway, beyond the terrace and across the lagoon, toward Venezia, watching the sun edge from behind the church spire and slowly bathe the room with a translucent red glow. The best time of day for him. Always had been. He felt good. Today would be the perfect day to test the Milena. After all, he was taking its namesake to Monte Carlo for New Year's Eve. Running the initial test would be his New Year's present to himself.

  She moved beside him, rolling over on her back; the satin sheet fell away and she lay sleeping before him, naked. He marveled at her body, as he always had, longed for it again, but dawn was definitely not her time of day. A chill draft swept through the doors, moving the lace drapes in slow motion, as though they were underwater. He pulled the sheet gently back over her so she would not get cold.

  Ten years she had given him, and there was not a moment he was sorry for. "Grazie," he said softly. "Tante grazie."

  He leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek, and then, after one final look at the blazing sunrise, went in to take a shower and dress. And before he left he went back and leaned over her and kissed her once more on the cheek and she opened one eye and smiled up at him and said, in her imperfect English, "Doan drive too fass."

  II

  When Falmouth was first assigned the job by his section chief, he made a list. It took him several days. First he wrote out his objectives, then he broke the job down into segments: on one side of the paper he listed the segments in chronological order; on the other side he listed the same segments in the order of the risk involved, starting with the high risk first. Then he very carefully edited them, combining both lists into what he felt was the safest and best way to execute the assignment.

  They had provided excellent intelligence reports. Everything he had asked for. Plans of the car. A detailed map of the plant showing all the security positions. Photographs of the track itself. M.O. sheets on Marza, Noviliano, Di Fiere and the three relief drivers, sheets which emphasized their personal as well as their work habits. And a rundown on the town of Padua: picturesque, highly provincial, known not only for the Aquila Motor Works but also for the basilica of Sant' Antonio and the Giotto frescoes, which attracted visitors from all over the world.

  That was good. A tourist place. And there would be pilgrimages there, to start the New Year right. Much easier to operate, and it provided good opportunity for a cover.

  It had taken them a month to put all that together. He planned the operation in Paris, in a small tourist hotel on the rue Fresnel, just below the rue de Longchamp and half a block from the river. It was near the heart of things but still quiet. He converted the flat into a private war room, with maps on the walls, train and plane schedules, photographs of the principals, plans of the car and the factory and the town.

  He began by studying his road maps and transportation schedules. Falmouth put first priority on getting in and out of a place. Like any good intelligence agent, he put self-preservation on top of the list. After that he would concentrate on the job itself.

  From Paris he could fly to Nice, then take the night train along the coast and across to Milan. There he would get a car and drive to Padua, a distance of perhaps one hundred and twenty-five miles.

  Getting out would be more ticklish. Once the job was done, he would have to move fast without attracting too much attention. He would drive to Verona, take the train north through Trento and the Brenner Pass to Innsbruck and from there to Munich. Then he would fly back to Paris.

  The only risky part would be the drive from Padua to Verona. But that was only forty-five miles, an easy hour's drive. Hell, it would be an hour before the shock wore off, and if the job went the way he planned, nobody would be looking for him anyway.

  He fed it all into the computer in his head, letting it simmer, revising the list each night, then memorizing it and destroying the written copy, and starting his emendations in the morning. Each time he revised the list, he memorized it and then destroyed it. Falmouth had been in the business a long time; he did not make mistakes.

  It took ten days to devise what he felt was the perfect plan.

  The toughest part of the job was getting to the car; plant security at Padua was impossible. Oh, it could be done, but the risk factor was high. There had to be a better way. He sat for hours studying the blueprints of the factory, then poring over the plans of the car itself, examining every part of the machine and the list of subcontractors.

  And suddenly there it was, the perfect answer. An elaborate electronic computer system had been devised for the test runs. Instruments built into the dashboard would immediately provide digital readouts on every key part of the automobile, with the same readings transmitted to a board in the control tower at the track. Memory for the system was contained in a mini-computer the size of a small stereo tape deck located between the firewall of the car and the cockpit. At the press of a button, the digital readout would reveal speed which could instantly be converted into miles per gallon, miles elapsed, average speed per mile, gallons remaining, oil pressure, even stress on certain parts of the car, like the suspension system, the transmission and the front and rear axles.

  It was a sophisticated system but not particularly revolutionary. Gen
eral Motors had offered similar digital readout computers on its larger cars for more than a year. This computer was being modified to provide specific information on the Aquila Milena and was subcontracted to a small electronics specialist in Marseilles. There was little security in Marseilles. Nothing the firm was doing was a secret. It was relatively easy to get a schematic of the General Motors system from a dealer in Paris. For weeks, Falmouth pored over these plans until he knew the system perfectly.

  The memory was contained on wafer-thin boards eight inches high and thirty inches long. Each of these boards contained dozens of electronic chips no larger than a fingernail. Now Falmouth put his knowledge of explosives to use. He designed and then made a series of tiny C-4 bombs, of what the French call plastique, which were no larger than the head of a match and flat and could be attached to the memory boards, and dabbed with paint. He interconnected the explosives by thin wires to the wires leading to the digital counter. He made up several long strands of wire containing a very thin phosphorus fuse that would run from the mini-computer to the gas tank and to the sensors in the roll bar and tie rods of the front axle. They were set to explode when the speedometer hit 90 miles an hour. At that speed the tie rods, which kept the front wheels in line, would be blown apart and the car would go out of control. The gas tank, too, would go a second or two later.

  It took Falmouth more than a month to get the explosives ready. It was dangerous business, even for an expert like him. But getting into the small factory and planting the bombs on the memory boards was a piece of cake. He flew into Marseilles on the evening plane; shortly after midnight he picked the lock on a skylight, lowered himself into the plant and found the boards, lined up neatly in the testing room. The check slips told him what he needed to know: all of them had been approved and were ready for delivery but one, and it was not critical to his operation.

  It took him hours to complete the job. He left the plant at a few minutes before five and returned on the morning flight back to Paris.

  So far, so good.

  He settled down to refine the overall plan. He had three more weeks. He grew a mustache and had his hair restyled, but he did not like it. Not long enough. He bought a shaggy black wig to cover his red hair, and the night before he left, he dyed the mustache black. He chose only casual clothes, the kind a free-lance photographer would wear: a pair of tan corduroy slacks, a white turtleneck sweater, a suede jacket, and hiking shoes with platforms and interior soles that added almost two inches to his normal five-eleven.

  He was feeling good, very good, the morning he left.

  When he arrived at the terminal in Milan, Falmouth went straight to the American Express office. A young gigolo in a formless jacket, with a narrow tie hanging from his open collar, peered at him through aviator sunglasses and said, "Si?"

  Falmouth smiled, his casual, boyish, photographer's smile. "Buon giorno, signore. Scusi, c'è una lettera per me, Harry Spettro?"

  The creep sighed and said in a bored voice, "Un momento," pulled open a drawer and leafed leisurely through the letters.

  He looked up at Falmouth. "S-p-e-t-t-r-o?"

  "Six."

  "Identificazione, per favore."

  Falmouth produced a fake driver's license and passport. The young man's eyes flicked back and forth between the picture in the passport and Falmouth. Satisfied, he nodded and handed the letter to him.

  "Mille grazie," Falmouth said with a grin and, under his breath, added, "You little prick."

  "Prego," the kid said—Don't mention it.

  He went outside and tore open the envelope. Inside was a key and a brief message: "Locker 7541."

  He found the locker, took the heavy, flat leather case that was inside and placed it in his own suitcase and then went to the men's room, where he checked the contents of the case. Everything he needed was there, including the car keys and another simple message: "Black Fiat 224, license XZ 592, terminal parking lot, row 7, section 2, ticket under spare tire." So far, it had gone well. He drove straight to Padua and checked into a small hotel.

  It took him several days, longer than he had planned, to find a vacant room with a clear view of the ten-kilometer concrete test rink. He had almost decided to abandon the project until after New Year's when he spotted the house from a pub. It sat up on a rise, back from the road, a three-story building facing due east.

  High enough and aimed right. Now all he had to do was arrange to get a room on the backside. That was tougher than he thought. It was finally arranged only after some heated negotiations with the woman who owned the place, a fiery Italian widow who at first slammed the door in his face, then threatened to call the police if he persisted. But when he told her that he was there to photograph the basilica for Paris-Match, and that the local hotels were full, and then offered her what must easily have been ten times what such a room normally would rent for, she finally relented.

  Her son was skiing in Austria for the holidays. Perhaps his room would be suitable. But she demanded quiet—no radio after nine o'clock and no visitors. She was a good Catholic and would not have the neighbors talking.

  The location was perfect, less than a mile from the track with a completely unobstructed view, and although the room was fairly small, it was comfortable and clean, its walls covered with photographs of skiers, skiing posters, maps of famous ski runs, and patches from famous resorts. The son was more than an aficionado, he was a fanatic.

  A dormer window faced the track. That was good, Falmouth thought. It would be almost impossible for anyone to see him from the street and it provided a small shelf to work from. He locked the door and immediately went to work.

  The case he had brought from Milan contained a Bausch & Lomb Discoverer telescope with a 15× to 60× constant focus zoom lens and a minimum field of forty feet at a thousand yards. It weighed less than six pounds with the tripod and was only seventeen and a half inches long.

  The rifle was even more impressive. He had never seen one quite like it. It was nothing more than a barrel and firing chamber with a skeletonized aluminum stock, and it was thirty-three inches long, including the flash suppressor and silencer. The tripod was also aluminum. It was fitted with a laser scope he knew to be pinpoint accurate up to fifteen hundred yards. A five-shot clip dropped down below the firing chamber, fully loaded with 7.62-mm. steelpoint explosive shells. The whole rig didn't weigh more than ten pounds.

  Hair-trigger. The heat from his finger almost popped it.

  Neat. Everything he had asked for, plus a little bonus. The rifle was strictly for backup. If the C-4 explosives didn't work, he would have to make the shot—and what a shot it would be. Six hundred yards at an automobile moving 90 miles an hour on a ninety-degree path.

  Sure, Falmouth.

  He laughed to himself and shook his head. What the hell, it was strictly insurance anyway.

  He set up the tripod and zeroed it and zoomed in on the entrance gate to the track. He could read the hinges on the gate, a helluva scope. He set up the rifle beside it, calibrated its scope and sighted it, and watched it change focus as he slid his aim up the track.

  Beautiful.

  I hope to God I don't have to use it.

  Now all he had to do was wait.

  III

  The office was empty when Marza arrived. It was a little after seven and the staff usually did not arrive until eight. He made a pot of coffee and checked the weather. Then he went to his office and changed into his racing gear: cotton long johns; a black fire-resistant jump suit with a red slash down one sleeve and the number 333 in blazing red across the back and the Aquila patch over his heart with the single word "UNO" under it; white sweat socks and Adidas jogging shoes. He stuffed a pair of pigskin racing gloves in the knee pocket of the jump suit. And when he was ready he walked down the hall from his office to the private door to the garage and went inside.

  The odor was an aphrodisiac to Marza. It wasn't the smell of gasoline and alcohol and engine oil, it was what they represented, and he sto
od in the dark for a minute or two, his mind gliding back in time. There had been a lot of great days in his life and he savored the fact that today would definitely be another one. Finally he turned the lights on.

  The car sat alone in the middle of the garage. It was spotless, waxed like a mirror, and absolutely stunning, a low-slung sedan that was a masterpiece of styling, an aerodynamic marvel, its hood tapered and louvered, the top swept back, to avoid what Di Fiere called the aspetto di carro funebre, the look of the hearse, and the lines rolling gently back from the front fenders to the Ferrari-type rear deck. Di Fiere had not tried to improve on that. "One does not improve on perfection, one accepts it," he said.

  The instrument panel was filled literally from door to door with electronic gadgets. That would be Di Fiere's job, operating the various control buttons which would give the observation tower's mirror computer an instant readout of the car's performance, one which would be printed simultaneously on a paper tape.

  It gleamed like a jewel, even under the fluorescent lights, its jet-black coat disturbed only by the two thin bright-red racing stripes down either side because those were Marza's colors and this car would be his someday and because ultimately he would be the one who would say, "It is ready," and they would go the market and find out just how good they were.

  Marza walked slowly around the car and swept his hand lightly over the roof, patted it affectionately and whispered, "Va bene, signora, siamo soli—lei, io e il Professore. Facciamogli vedere qualche cosa!"—Okay, lady, it's just you and me and the Professor going to be out there, let's show them something!

  Then he went out into the brisk, clear, cold morning. There was just a breath of wind and that pleased Marza. In an hour or so, there would be none at all. Conditions were perfect. He rubbed his hands together and then started what had become a ritual. He walked the track, just as he had walked Le Mans and Raintree and Monza before every race, looking for cracks in the pavement, slick spots, picking up pebbles and branches and throwing them over the inside wall. The ten-kilometer walk usually took him about an hour. Marza didn't like surprises.