Chameleon, Page 3

  Signora Forti, Falmouth's temporary landlady, awakened him at seven o'clock with coffee and a roll, the least she could do for what he was paying.

  "Grazie. Scusi, non sono vestito," he said, apologizing for not being dressed, and holding the door just wide enough to take the tray.

  He put on pants and a T-shirt and then took the telescope and rifle out of the closet, setting them up on the tape marks he had laid out on the dormer sill. He put a tablet of graph paper and a small pocket calculator beside the scope. He had already calculated and programmed the distance between two marks on the back stretch of the track going into the far turn. By simply punching the calculator when the car passed the first mark, and then hitting it when it passed the second mark, he'd get the calculator to read out the exact speed. If the car topped 90 and nothing happened, he would have to do the shot. He took a sip of coffee and casually loosened the set screw on the rifle tripod and sighted through it.

  He switched to the scope and zoomed up to full power, saw the familiar black jump suit with the splash of red on the sleeve. He could even read the word under the Aquila patch: "UNO."

  And the face—that dark, intense face with the granite-hard jaw and the unruly shock of black hair—Marza!

  According to latest information, Marza would be in Monte Carlo with his wife until after the New Year. The first few tests were to be done by the relief drivers. Falmouth's hand began to tremble slightly as he realized that he was about to kill Marza—the idol of every woman, the hero of every daydreaming schoolboy, the fantasy of every man in Italy. Marza was a national hero—no, he was an international hero. Someday there would be statues of him in town squares. Everywhere he went, crowds gathered to see him, touch him, to chant: "Marza, Uno ... Marza, Uno..."

  This wasn't part of the deal. This was definitely not part of the deal.

  What was it Jack Hawkins kept saying in Bridge on the River Kwai? "There's always the unexpected."

  Jesus, was that a parable! After twenty years in the business he should have known it was going too well. Anyway, the car was programmed for destruction, and that was bloody goddamnwell that. But if the C-4 failed, if he had to take the shot, that was different. It was a tough enough shot, and with Marza behind the wheel...

  He lit a cigarette and watched the racing king walk briskly all the way around the long track. And when Marza was through and had gone back into the factory, Falmouth dismounted the rifle. That was it. If the bombs failed, Marza would walk away from it.

  Hell, Marza was one of his heroes, for God's sake. He was not about to kill him with a gun. In fact, after twenty years in the business, he was hoping that, for once, for just this once, he would fail.

  IV

  Giuseppe di Fiere, who had so masterfully designed the Aquila 333 and the Milena, arrived at seven-fifty, his white hair tangled from the wind. Di Fiere was seventy-one years old and he drove his modified Aquila Formula One with the top down, rain, shine or snow, every day, the eighteen miles from his casa di campagna to the factory.

  He had never been a driver. It was a failed dream, and it had died hard. He had started racing motorbikes when he was fourteen. By the time he was sixteen he was already making a name for himself. Then one Sunday afternoon on a dirt track at Vincenzion, coming out of the esses, he lost it. He could feel the bike going out from under him and he was down before he could react, his right leg trapped under the rear wheel, the bike, its engine still growling as it skittered crazily along the hard-packed track, dragging him along for fifty yards, grinding the leg into a formless, boneless mass before it began tumbling over and disintegrating insanely around him.

  The doctors in the field tent took off the leg just below the knee, what there was left of it.

  It had cost him his leg and his taste for driving, but not his love of racing, that was a part of his psyche, a blood dream, and so he did the next best thing, he began designing race cars. He studied engineering, became a mechanic for a while, studied aerodynamics and worked in the design department of the de Havilland airplane factory in England. While still in his twenties, he knew every nut and bolt and design element on every winning automobile ever made. He scoured Europe for old relics and began restoring them. Before he designed his first successful car at the age of thirty-four, he was already an automotive genius.

  And his cars won. He designed for the best—Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche. Now he had gone full circle with the greatest of them all, Noviliano.

  Marza was very special to Di Fiere. Perhaps he saw in Marza the son he never had or the driver he never was. Whatever. He agonized every time Marza was on the track, suffered every injury with him, vicariously won every time Marza won. He had educated Marza as a father would a son. For three years he had shared with Marza—and with nobody else, not even with the padrone, Noviliano himself —every agonizing detail, every heartbreak, every breakthrough, every triumph and failure in his pursuit of the perfect car. When he described it, even before it was committed to paper, it was as if he were talking about the woman he loved, describing her temperaments, her joys, her displeasures. He even told Marza how to talk to her, out there on the track, so she would obey him and perform properly.

  It was his fantasy come true: to have the resources of the finest automobile maker in the world to build his baby, and the best driver to test it. And because they were both passionate men, Marza understood the old man and knew that this car was no bitch, no flashy tramp; this car was a lady—elegant, beautiful, the perfect champion. So Di Fiere had named it Milena, after the one thing Marza loved more than racing.

  Noviliano arrived last, and predictably so. He was a man of tradition, disciplined and habitual. He arrived at the factory, six days a week, at precisely nine o'clock, a large man, almost six-five, his weight wavering around three hundred pounds. Yet everything about him was impeccable. He wore an impeccable blue three-piece suit, with an impeccable red carnation in the lapel, and an impeccable white shirt with the perfect blue-and-red Countess Mara tie. His steel-gray hair and beard were trimmed impeccably. Nobody had ever seen Noviliano in anything less formal, or his hair mussed or his tie pulled down.

  Elegance was Noviliano's trademark. He was the perfect playboy, and was, in his own way, as good an advertisement for his cars as was Marza.

  He was carrying a wine cooler in one hand and three champagne goblets in the other. He didn't say a word, he just came in, put the bucket on a workbench, took the bottle of Dom Pérignon from it and popped the cork. He filled each of the glasses, handed one to Marza and the other to the Professor. A hint of a smile played at the corners of his lips but it was almost obscured by his beard.

  Marza turned to the Professor. "Did you see that, signore? Hunh? I think it was a smile. Yes, by God, it was definitely a smile. The great padrone has finally smiled." Laughing, he raised his glass. The three goblets chimed as they tapped.

  "Salute," Noviliano said, "e grazie."

  Marza and Di Fiere each took a sip and put their glasses back on the workbench.

  "I'll be watching from the control booth," Noviliano said.

  He slapped Marza on the back and kissed Di Fiere on the cheek, then the two men got in the car and buckled up. Marza turned on the ignition and cranked it up and pulled the stick down into "D," and the Milena rolled smoothly out onto the track.

  "What do you say, Professor?" Marza asked.

  The old man leaned back, smiling with great contentment. "Ready. Finally ready."

  Marza dropped it into the "1" position and started off."We'll take her around once just to get warmed up," he told the tower.

  The Milena moved out smoothly, the green lights on the digital reader changing constantly as the Professor punched buttons, checking speed, mileage, engine heat, stress. Marza took it around the track at 35 miles an hour. The engine had been broken in on the bench and it cruised quietly, responding instantly to Marza's commands. He let go of the wheel for a moment, marveling at its stability, then did the back stretch of the track, drivin
g with one finger on the wheel. He jiggled the wheel, felt the car respond, stopped and felt it settle back almost instantly.

  "It drives itself," he said.

  The Professor smiled. "Grazie."

  They started the tests. The car performed magnificently-twisting through the slaloms at 35, 40 and 45. Marza was amazed at the stability of the passenger sedan. Di Fiere had made the conversion from racing car to street car with immaculate precision, losing as little as possible in the transition. The Professor was keeping a running tab on the mileage, and the car was averaging better than 60 m.p.g., dropping off to 45 or 46 when accelerating. On the straights at 50, the digital counter zipped up to 70.

  "Buonissimo," he said with great satisfaction as he continued to push buttons and carry on an almost whispered conversation with the tape recorder, making suggestions which he would later evaluate when he listened to the tapes. He noted a tremor in the front suspension at 40 m.p.h. which he attributed to a slight overbalance for torque; he suggested increasing the alcohol mixture in the injection system to increase the mileage three or four m.p.g.; he made note of a whistle in the window of the right door, which developed at about 52 m.p.h.

  Occasionally it was Marza who threw in an observation: "We should think about softening the springs on her, they're too tight now. She rides a little too hard."

  But mostly he drove and talked to the car under his breath and silently reveled in the fact that he was the first person to drive a car which might someday be driven by millions of people.

  Then he felt the Milena was ready to show some stuff. "I'm a little bored with this," he told the tower, "we're going to try some accelerations."

  "Good, let's see what she's got!" Di Fiere said.

  V

  Falmouth was glued to the superscope, his fingers punching the "Start" and "Stop" buttons as the Milena passed the markers, his eyes flicking from the eyepiece to the calculator, checking the speed. It had gone as high as 40 once, then dropped back down.

  Jesus, isn't he ever going to let it out? he thought.

  Then he thought, Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll just do some preliminaries and save the fast tests for someone else.

  Sure.

  This is Marza, remember, the fastest driver in the world. He's going to open it up. Before he's finished today he's going to have that son of a bitch wide open.

  The car pulled to a stop at the far end of the track, pointed toward Falmouth. It suddenly took off, pulling out smoothly. It passed Falmouth's markers and he checked the speed.

  35.

  Okay, he's into acceleration tests. That would have been zero to 30.

  He's getting restless.

  Falmouth watched the car move around the track to the start. It slowed to a stop again. Maybe this time, Falmouth thought. Maybe now he'll go for it, push it on up there, over 85 m.p.h.

  Falmouth was chain-smoking now and there was a thin line of sweat high on his forehead, along his hairline.

  The car moved out again. This time Marza did zero to 40. Then he seemed to pick up speed going around the near curve. Falmouth checked it out on the back-stretch markers. He was doing 65 and seemed to be picking up speed as he approached the far curve.

  Marza drove the Milena through the far curve of the track at 70 miles an hour, and it felt as if he were driving on the flats.

  "Fantastico!" he exclaimed, pulling into the straight. "Let's goose her up a little—what do you say, Professor?"

  Di Fiere beamed. "You bet! Let's pinch the lady's ass, shall we? Slowly, now—don't force her!"

  Marza raised an eyebrow, as if to say, "Are you telling me how to drive a car?" and when the Professor pulled his head down into his shoulders in embarrassment and said "Scusi," Marza laughed and assured him, "No offense, my friend, it's the excitement."

  Di Fiere stared at the digital readout as Marza began to let the Milena loose, watching it climb fast by tenths of a mile.

  75.5.

  80.

  80.6.

  82.

  85.

  85.7.

  88.

  89.

  On the front stretch, Falmouth had checked it out at 62.8, watched it zap through the near turn without even dropping a tenth of a mile an hour, and then zoom into the back stretch.

  Now he watched as the digital readout climbed over 80.

  Good God, he's going for it.

  The back stretch swept under Marza and Di Fiere as the car moved out, climbing steadily without faltering, the digital reader flicking faster and faster.

  82 ... 85 ... 87 ...

  Falmouth's mouth turned to cotton as his fingers nimbly punched away at the calculator. Sweat dribbled down the side of his face and, annoyed, he swept it away with the back of his hand.

  89.9.

  "È stupendo!" Marza yelled.

  They hit 90 and the C-4 went off on order.

  When it exploded, the main force of the blast was directed down toward the ground, lifting the front of the car and instantly separating the tie rods that held the wheels in line. They popped apart like brittle sticks. The wheels went haywire. At the same time, the phosphorus wire fuse sizzled straight back along the frame toward the gas tank.

  Marza was heading into the turn, leaning with the car, his arms extended almost straight out in a classic driving position, when he felt the blast in front of his feet. The fire wall shattered and a hot burst of gas rushed into the cockpit. A moment later the wheel was wrenched from his hands. The car went wildly out of control as he grabbed frantically for the steering wheel and tried to get it back. It swerved, ripping into the inside wall of the turn at about forty-five degrees, and the left front side of the car shattered. The fenders peeled back with the agonized scream of tearing metal. The engine was torn from its mounts and the air bags under the dash whooshed full and jammed Marza and the Professor into their seats.

  The car careened off the wall and a moment later the gas tanks exploded. The Milena was catapulted across the track toward the other wall when Marza felt the rear blow out, felt the sudden ghastly rush of heat and then the flames boiling through the back seat, enveloping both him and Di Fiere, and then the air bags burst.

  The old man screamed once as the fire rushed into his nose and mouth and scorched his lungs. Then he was dead.

  For Marza, it seemed to take forever, although it was no more than a second or two. As the car spun crazily across the track he saw his old enemy, that grinning, obscene apparition he had seen so many times before and shunned, sitting on the wall straight ahead of him, wrapped in flames, motioning to him, drawing him on, and as the car crashed headlong into the wall, Death opened his arms and the driver rushed to his embrace.

  VI

  Falmouth did not relax until the train was out of Verona station and well on its way north toward the Alps.

  His heart was rapping at his ribs and his shirt was damp with sweat when he found his compartment and sat down. He leaned back, closed his eyes and hummed to himself, slowing everything down. He clocked off the list in his head, making sure it had gone right.

  He was certain no one had seen him leave the house. The drive to Verona had gone off smoothly; he hadn't even seen a policeman. He parked the car and checked the case in a locker, from which, he assumed, somebody had already claimed it. He looked at his watch.

  Hell, by now someone in Verona was probably melting down the barrel.

  He felt the train lurch under him. As it moved out of the station he went into the bathroom, took off the wig, combed his red hair and shaved off the mustache. Then he burned the wig, driver's license and passport issued to Harry Spettro and flushed them down. By the time the conductor tapped on the door, he was Anthony Falmouth again.

  The ticket man, a short paunchy little fellow in his sixties with watery eyes, took his papers. "You are inglese?" he said in a hushed, quivering voice.

  "Si," Falmouth replied.

  "And have you heard our tragic news?"

  Falmouth did not want to hear it. Du
mbly, he shook his head.

  "Marza is dead. Our great champion. The greatest sportsman in Italy since Novalari. Numero Uno e morto."

  A chill moved up Falmouth's back. He said, "I'm very sorry." Then, after a moment, he added, "And how did he die?"

  The conductor punched several holes in his ticket and then said, rather proudly, "In a car, of course," and went on.

  When the conductor was gone, Falmouth sagged. It all went out of him and suddenly he was drained and overcome with sadness and he felt tears beginning to sting the corners of his eyes.

  Hell, he said to himself, I'm getting too old for this kind of shit.

  2

  HARRY LANSDALE PAUSED while making his customary rounds, leaning against the bulkhead of the towering Henry Thoreau and staring grimly through the porthole at the deck of the largest oil rig in the world. He had seen storms before, in every part of the world, but this one, this one was going to be a killer.

  It was nearing midnight, and the sea was running—3° to —4° Celsius and dropping. A harsh Arctic wind had been moaning down from the Beaufort Sea and across the barren grounds north of the Brooks Range since the night before. The temperature was still falling, the sea continuing to grow colder as the sun cast its gray, persistent dusk across the frigid north Alaska wastelands. The wind cried forlornly through the stub pines and grasslands, and the white foxes, foraging for lemmings, lamented their skimpy hunt with mournful dirges to the constant twilight. Chunks of ice were beginning to appear, drifting down from the Arctic Ocean into the Chukchi Sea, where the misting whitecaps tossed them about like wafers.