The Race by Clive Cussler (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

“What happened?” Marco murmured, softly as he continued to appraise the monoplane’s battered wing. “Your husband missed, but by not as much as we had hoped. That bloody .45-70 nearly blew my head off.”

“I knew we should have used blanks. Changing the sights was too risky.”

“Harry Frost was too smart for blanks. I told you that already. He’d have felt a lesser recoil, heard a lesser report. It had to be a real bullet. But I underestimated how canny he is. He sensed something was wrong with the sights in one shot. So bloody sharp that he compensated for the gun firing high on the second shot. Next I knew, I was flying off the cliff.”

“I saw.”

“Was I convincing?” Marco asked with another, almost imperceptible wink.

“I thought you were dead—Oh, my darling.” It was all she could do to keep from hugging and kissing him.

A smile twitched his whiskers. “So did I. I fell on the ledge, like I was supposed to, but I passed out. It was dark when I woke. I was freezing. My head was splitting. I couldn’t move my arm. All I knew was, I was still alive, and by some miracle Harry hadn’t found me for the coup de grâce.”

“That was because he knew I saw him shoot you. He ran.”

“Just as we planned.”

“But you weren’t supposed to die. Or even be hurt.”

Marco shrugged. “A minor detail. Nonetheless, the plan worked. Sort of. Harry’s on the run. Unfortunately, he’s overplaying his part—he should have been caught and locked up by now, or shot dead. But you have a wonderful aeroplano in the race, just as we planned.”

“What about you, Marco?”

Marco didn’t seem to hear her. He said, “You will win the greatest race in the world.”

“Win? I’m a day behind already, and it just started.”

“You will win. I will see that you win. Don’t you worry. No one will stay ahead of you.”

He sounded so sure, she thought. How could he be so sure? “But what about you, Marco?”

Again, he didn’t seem to hear her question, saying, “And you have a suitor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every one at Belmont Park said that Preston Whiteway has fallen in love with you.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s just a crush.”

“He had your marriage annulled.”

“I didn’t ask him to. He just went ahead and did it.”

“You were supposed to charm him into buying you an aeroplane. But when you ask, ‘What about you, Marco?’ you seem to have already answered your own question.”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t sound like there is anyplace in your scheme for Marco.”

“It’s not my scheme. I just wanted your aeroplane. Like we planned.”

“You got more than we originally planned.”

Josephine felt hot tears spring to her eyes. “Marco, you can’t believe that I would prefer Whiteway to you.”

“How can I blame you? You thought I was dead. He is rich. I am a poor aeroplane inventor.”

“He could never replace you,” she protested. “And now that you’re back, we can—”

“What?” Marco asked bleakly. “Be together? How long would Whiteway let you fly my monoplano if he saw you with me?”

“Is that why you pretended you were dead?”

“I pretended I was dead for several important reasons. One, I was badly injured. If I stayed in North River, Harry would have killed me in my hospital bed.”

“But how—”

“I rode a freight train to Canada. A kind farm family took me in and nursed me all winter. When I learned that you were with Whiteway and in the race and that Harry was still free, I decided to tag along, in disguise, keeping an eye on things, before miraculously walking out of the woods as Marco, as we planned.”

“When will you?”

“After you win.”

“Why wait so long?”

“I just told you, Whiteway would be as jealous of me as Harry. Maybe not as violent, but angry enough to cut you off and take his aeroplane. He does own it, doesn’t he? Or did he give you the title?”

“No. He owns it.”

“Too bad you didn’t ask for the title.”

She hung her head. “I didn’t know how I could. He’s paying for everything. Even my clothes.”

“The rich are often kind, never generous.”

“I don’t know how long I can bear looking at you and pretending you’re not you.”

“Concentrate on my hairy disguise.”

“But your eyes, your lips . . .” She pictured him as he had looked, his sleek black hair, noble forehead, elegant mustache, deep-set dark eyes.

“Lips do not bear thinking about until you win the race,” he said. “Drive my airplane. Win the race. And don’t forget, when you win the race, Josephine, America’s Sweetheart of the Air will be a made woman with heaps of money. And Marco, the inventor of the winning Celere Monoplano, will be a made man, with Italian Army contracts to build hundreds of aeroplanes.”

“What has it been like for you to look at me all this time?”

“What is it like? Like it has always been from the first day I set eyes on you. Like an ocean of joy that fills my heart. Now, let’s get your machine fixed.”

ISAAC BELL TRIED TO SLEEP in a blanket roll under the monoplane, but his mind kept seizing on Harry Frost’s strange statement. Suddenly he sat up, galvanized by an entirely different and even stranger thought. He had been struck by his aeroplane’s resilience—and grateful for it saving his life—even before Andy Moser’s admiring remark that Di Vecchio “built ’em to last.”

Bell pulled on his boots and ran to the rail-yard dispatch shack, where they had a telegraph. The peculiar strength of the American Eagle stemmed from multiple braces and redundant control links. Not only had its inventor used all the best materials, he had anticipated structural failure and designed to prevent catastrophe.

Such an inventor who built to last did not seem to be the sort of man to kill himself over a bankruptcy. Such a man, Bell thought, would rise above failure, seeing a bankruptcy as nothing worse than a temporary setback.

“Van Dorn,” he told the New