Eye of the Cobra (21 page)

Now he stared at her drawings again, lost in thought.

He felt as if he were walking on a tightrope. Everything was perfect - but it could so easily disintegrate. He had devoted himself to his work, but it wasn’t enough. Sometimes, like now, he felt very empty. He was tired of the one-night stands, the fleeting relationships.

There was a fire of passion burning in Suzie, he could feel it. He envied Wyatt.

Bruce put his hand on Mickey’s shoulder. ‘You’re tired. Go home. You’ll feel better tomorrow.’

When Bruce had gone Mickey sat staring at the wall for a while. Then he picked up the drawing
of a sports car and studied it.

Gradually, with a huge effort of willpower, he removed the image of Suzie von Falkenhyn from his mind. In his hand the drawing-pencil began to weave its magic.

In the woods behind the circuit, the massive silver-bodied truck drew quietly to a halt. Two men, dressed in black tracksuits, came out of a side-door. They were both armed with silenced weapons. They fanned out into the undergrowth and assumed a silent vigil.

After a few moments the driver stepped out, similarly dressed. He moved towards the old air-raid shelter and opened the big doors quietly. Inside it was deathly still and there was a strong smell of damp. He switched on the light and looked across at the container of Carvalho tyres that stood in the centre of the concrete floor. He went outside and flashed his torch twice.

The rear doors of the truck opened and a fork-lift truck emerged from the back on a platform. The silence of the night was broken by a sound like the air brakes on a big lorry, and the fork-lift truck was lowered to ground level. The driver stepped up into the driving-seat and operated the controls to lift out a large container, identical to the one in the old air
raid shelter.

In the space of five minutes he exchanged the containers and then gestured for his men to return to the truck.

The blond-haired driver pulled out a cigarette as he drove away, taking the silver petrol-lighter from his top pocket and lighting up. His green eyes flashed in the light of the flame.

It was all going perfectly.

Jack Phelps watched the morning sun rise above the horizon as he floated in his pool, staring through the transparent panels. Steam rose up lazily from the surface of the pool, while outside everything was shrouded in a blanket of white snow.

Testing in Kyalami. He couldn’t have chosen a better location himself.

Wyatt was driving the Shadow. The circuit shimmered in the heat-haze. Beyond the watery image he could see a distant line of low hills.

This was a high point for all of them, the culmination of all the work they’d put in together as a team. Everyone had been in a holiday mood when they’d arrived at Jan Smuts airport, but the moment they got to the circuit the tension had returned.

He thought about the Shadow coming out of the container into the warm sunshine, and how it had felt to know he’d be driving her. That had been yesterday.

He was feeling a lot more comfortable now than he had been during the first few laps, and the new rubber gave him marginally more grip in the corners. He had analysed exactly those areas of the track where he could go slightly faster, and knock another second off his lap time.

There was the crackle of static in his headphones, then he heard de Villiers’ voice, loud and clear. ‘One minute, nine- point-o-two seconds. That’s equal to the lap record. Good driving . . . but not quite good enough. Remember, you’ll be faster when the ambient temperature goes down this afternoon.’

So he’d touched the record. But he wasn’t taking enough chances - wasn’t pushing himself hard enough. He was going to have to drive even faster.

The sunlight caught the visor on his helmet. He moved off the main straight and into the first corner. He braked late, taking a tighter line, going through faster. He kept cool. The Shadow had held. He would take each corner this way.

Through the next bend he almost lost control, but then he was through. He was learning a lot more about the Shadow, understanding her capabilities at the edge - the minute com
munications that she fed to his body through silent movements.

The esses passed quickly by, characterised by the pull on his neck of the G-forces. He was vaguely aware that someone was speaking in his headphones, but he wasn’t listening. He was concentrating on the next curve, coming up hellishly fast. He resisted the instinctive urge to back off, and somehow the car still held. His body was battered, his neck stiff with tension.

He came out into the main straight. The Shadow rocketed forward, the engine an electrifying scream. The power kept on coming. He was in a trance, he felt he could go even faster.

The pits came and went in a blur. The disembodied voice in the headphones was screaming, and the words broke through into his consciousness.

‘Fire! Fire!’

He touched the brakes. Then he felt the heat behind him, smelt the burning and the hot petrol.

He kept the terror under control. It would be over in less than a second if the tanks caught. He’d only done ten laps, so the tanks were full.

The brakes were dead. He overrode the automatic box and changed down, angling the car into the concrete, knowing that the seconds spelt the borderline between life and death.

He screamed as he felt the burning on his back. He tried to activate the fire-extinguisher and the oxygen as the smoke burnt his lungs.

Nothing happened.

Oh my God, please no.

He was spinning, smashing into concrete, his body yanked hard against the harness.

Then he was still, and screaming.

He sensed the marshals moving in, the smell of the foam, his harness being unbuckled, the steering-wheel coming off. Then he was pulled out.

The burning became pain and he rolled on the concrete, grabbing the legs of one of the marshals.

The coolness hit him as the marshal squirted the foam over him. He breathed slowly, feeling like death. Then he staggered to his feet.

He was all right.

The Shadow exploded before his eyes, blowing over two of the marshals who were desperately trying to put out the blaze. Bruce and Mickey pulled up in the pace car.

Wyatt dropped to his knees as the burning pain hit him again, and Bruce held him as the surgeon and ambulance men arrived.

‘Wyatt, for God’s sake
, stop moving!’

The doctor was taking out a syringe. He didn’t even feel the jab, just the sudden calmness. There was Suzie’s face, the
dojo,
his mother, and then his father screaming as the car went over the edge of the cliff.

Debbie held Suzie as she vomited again. Up to now she had always thought of Suzie as someone who was in control. She was a woman who had taken on challenges that would make most men afraid - the story of her climb with Wyatt years ago had somehow got around the office. But Debbie knew now that Suzie was also human, and that she was desperately in love with Wyatt. Her eyes were red from crying.

The director of the circuit came over, a big man with brown hair and a weather-beaten face, Doug Gibson. They’d had dinner with him the previous evening. He took Suzie’s shoulders in his big hands.

‘Calm down. He’s all right, nothing serious. I’ll take you to the hospital.’

Suzie felt stron
ger as she got into the Mercedes-Benz and they drove through the flat grasslands towards Johannesburg. Doug looked across at her, glad to see she was regaining control. He knew she was a tough lady.

‘I didn’t realise how close you were . . .’
he said.

‘He feeds off the danger. He lives for it. I understand that.’ Suzie’s voice was high and taut. ‘But it’s the fear of losing him. I can’t deal with that.’

Doug gripped the wheel tighter. He would never tell her how close it had been.

Bruce examined the burnt-out wreck closely.

‘The fire-extinguishers didn’t work, nor did the oxygen.’

Mickey was ashen-faced. ‘I’ll make sure they bluidy work the next time!’

Bruce grimaced. ‘There almost wasn’t a next time.’

‘He was pushing her to the limit. The cooling-system couldn’t handle it.’

Bruce felt the sweat dripping from his face. It had been too damned close.

‘We’ll have to talk carefully to Ricardo. He’s still recovering from his accident of over a year ago. He’s going to freeze up if he thinks the Shadow is dangerous.’

The press meeting was called in the control tower at Kyalami. Over seventy-five reporters and TV cameramen were there. Suzie was supervising the PR function for Calibre-Shensu, but she’d hired a veteran motor-racing journalist and PR man, Don Morrison, to deal directly with the press. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Graham Hill, and was very British. He touched his nose and then his moustache as he took the podium. The room went silent.

‘I am sorry that our first press conference should be taking place in this atmosphere. I must tell you that the hospital has informed us that Wyatt Chase has serious burns. At this stage, the prognosis is that he’ll be out of action for a month. Naturally, that means he won’t be competing in the first race of the season.

‘We’ll resume testing tomorrow with our second car, with the former world champion, Ricardo Sartori in the driver’s seat.’

As Don spoke he caught sight of a striking woman with auburn hair in the front row. What, he asked himself, was Vanessa Tyson doing at a motor-racing event? He sensed trouble.

‘Bruce de Villiers would now like to explain the cause of the accident,’ he concluded.

Bruce stepped forward and stared hard at his audience. He didn’t like this sort of thing, but he knew it was the life-blood of the business. Phelps wouldn’t be pleased about the accident, and it was his responsibility to make sure it wasn’t blown out of proportion by the press.

‘Today’s accident was caused by the Shadow’s Shensu V12 engine overheating,’ he said. ‘Wyatt was driving the machine harder than ever before. He knocked three seconds off the current lap record.’

There was a stunned silence. It was an incredible achieve
ment, and Bruce had calculated on its having just this effect. His attitude was always to try and make a victory out of a disaster. He moved on quickly.

‘We now realise that we’ll have to make certain modifica
tions to the cooling-system which will overcome the problem.’ Don tried to pull Bruce down as he saw Vanessa Tyson rise to her feet. Tall and buxom, she definitely had presence. The man next to her was focusing his video-camera on Bruce, and Don caught sight of the WWTN emblem on the side.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Not now.’

‘Mr de Villiers,’ Vanessa Tyson said in her crisp London accent, ‘I have a quote here from an interview you gave a year ago at McCabe:
Drivers are much like engines. Every once in a while they blow up. I’ve had people who’ve died on the track, but that’s something one has to live with. Hard, but true.
’

Bruce was seething as he listened. ‘You are quoting me out of context.’

‘You failed to mention that the fire-extinguisher and the oxygen supply systems in the Shadow failed to operate.’ Vanessa Tyson paused for a moment before delivering her punch line. ‘If Wyatt Chase had died, would that have been “out of context”?’

Don tried to catch Bruce’s attention, to persuade him to get off the podium, but Bruce was concentrati
ng too hard on the Tyson woman.

‘He knew the risks he was taking,’ he said.

‘What, that the machine was dangerous? That the safety equipment wasn’t working?’

‘No. But he knew the risks he was taking.’

‘So that you could have greater publicity? You’re on record as saying you’re going to win the driver’s and the constructor’s championship, whatever the cost. Is that cost measured in body-bags and cancer cases?’

Bruce was furious. ‘Motor-racing is dangerous - that’s the attraction.’

‘Yes, and you and your sponsors make big money out of it. You and Jack Phelps will just bury as many people as it takes to get you to the top!’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got a bloody cheek coming in here with that sort of sanctimonious crap!’

Don Morrison got up. He had to get Bruce off the podium.

Vanessa Tyson smiled softly.

‘Ah. Here comes Don, the protective PR man. Am I getting a little close to the bone, Mr de Villiers? Isn’t it about time someone asked why millions and millions of dollars are spent each year on a sport that is as mindless as bullfighting?

‘You need deaths, don’t you, Mr de Villiers? You need casualties to attract attention and keep sponsors interested.’

Ignoring Don Morrison’s desperate gesticulations, Bruce squared his shoulders.

‘I don’t know what point you’re trying to make. Everyone is here of their own free will.’

Vanessa gave de Villiers an icy smile.