American Racer

Dust Jacket

AMERICAN RACER

Dakota Franklin

• Dakota Franklin WINS Best Action/Adventure at Best Independent EBook Awards

• Dakota Franklin's series RUTHLESS TO WIN has already won awards and enthusiastic reviews for fascinating characters and rivetting action. The six volumes already published in the series — LE MANS a novel, REQUIEM AT MONZA, TROUBLESHOOTER, NASCAR FIRST, QUEEN OF INDY and RACING JUSTICE — have all been international bestsellers.

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I thought the characters were great. I was swept along...a cracking good read.

— Joo's Book Reviews

I thoroughly enjoyed this book — in fact, I started reading it again straight after I'd finished it.

— L. Rumbold

A wonderful story full of action and remarkable detail. — Boyd S Drew

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AMERICAN RACER

by Dakota Franklin

Bobby Solara, an Indycar champion new to Formula One, new to Armitage Grand Prix Racing, is determined to make his way to the top honorably. Honorably to his team leader Ugo Jenssens, honorably to his employer Jack Armitage, honorably to his wife Yvonne, who is leaving him, honorably to his new love Louisa, honorably to his new friends Ollie and Taki, honorably for the sake of his daughter Vicky.

But when the Japanese betting syndicate abducts his child and her mother to force Bobby to betray everyone so that he can be champion rather than Ugo, the real Bobby surfaces.

And the real Bobby is not a man you want to mess with. Ever.

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"Yes, I know, I sneer at the psychopaths I compete against on tracks. But I just hide my own nature better under a veneer of cool intelligence and urbane good manners. Attack my child or my women, and I will kill you. Slowly. And my sleep will not be delayed one minute by your demise."

— Bobby Solara in AMERICAN RACER by Dakota Franklin

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RUTHLESS TO WIN

Series Editor: André Jute

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AMERICAN RACER

Dakota Franklin

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CoolMain Press

AMERICAN RACER

by Dakota Franklin

Copyright © 2014 Dakota Franklin

The author has asserted her moral right.

Published by CoolMain Press 2014

http://www.coolmainpress.com

info@coolmainpress.com

RUTHLESS TO WIN Series Editor: André Jute

Associate Editor: Lisa Penington

Cover Photo: L-0-L-A (Loredana Bejerita)

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

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AMERICAN RACER

Dakota Franklin

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"This isn’t just a thousand to one shot.

This is a professional blood sport.

It can happen to you.

And then it can happen to you again."

—from Harry Kleiner’s film Le Mans

Daddy

I never expected it. I should have, but didn’t.

The last race of the season. The places set. Even if I passed the two drivers in front of me and won, I would still be third in the championship. My drive for next year was cut and contracted. There was nothing to prove.

I cruised in the tailpipes of the car in front. Though I paid attention to my driving, I knew that if I looked up, across the last corner I would see the grand marshal on his stand readying the checkered flag to wave us in.

Of course I wouldn’t raise my eyes to look. At racing speeds, so close to the car in front, it would be suicide.

My eye caught something in the mirror. Then I saw it in my peripheral vision.

The fourth car nosed up on the inside as I approached the apex of the corner.

‘Damnit, Daddy!’ I said aloud.

I tightened my line hard. For a moment I thought he would contest the corner with me, then he fell back, clipping his front wing on my rear wheel to avoid driving over the curb into the gravel.

Over my head the checkered flag waved me in. Behind me the crippled car held its fourth position.

Behind him, in my mirrors, I could see cars sliding into the gravel over the piece of split-off wing.

When I came around on the victory lap I counted five cars in the gravel, several million dollars’ worth of damage.

None of it made any difference to the final standings for the year.

It runs in the blood

I didn’t see my father to speak to until I sat down opposite him in the deep leather seat of the plane his sponsor provides to save him the bother of flying commercial.

‘Damnit, Daddy, that was unnecessary.’

He turned his pale blue eyes on me. Very un-Italian, those eyes. But the rest of him fits. Olive skin that always looks like a millionaire’s tan, thick, curly black hair brushed straight back, just graying at the temples at 53. He is a handsome man even if he is cold as ice.

‘One races to win, Bobby,’ he said calmly.

‘It would have changed nothing!’

The flight attendant closed the door of the jet, checked that our safety belts were fastened. We took off. Too much noise to talk. We leveled off. We shook our heads at the offer of refreshments.

My father looked frankly at the attendant’s legs until she sat down in her own seat out of earshot.

This one is for you, Mama, I promised myself.

‘Then why didn’t you let me pass?’ my father asked.

‘One races to win, Daddy.’

He nodded. ‘You weren’t, Bobby. You were cruising. You could have taken Lex and maybe Artie too.’

‘What for? You’re second in the championship, I’m third. A win today would change nothing for either of us.’

‘Then you weren’t racing to win.’

‘What the hell are you still trying to prove, Daddy?’

He regarded me for a long time.

But it was a valid question. There is nothing he has not won. He was a Can-Am champion and a Grand Prix champion and a NASCAR champion through my childhood. He won at Daytona more times than any other man. He is a king at Indianapolis. He took several places at Le Mans and a win too. He is rich. Women love him. His children are successful. His wife, my mother, is beautiful and has stuck with him through all his betrayals.

‘I’m setting you an example, Bobby.’

‘What? Risking your life and everyone else’s for nothing?’

‘These last couple of years I’ve been wondering if it runs in the blood.’

My mouth hung open. Last year I was second in the championship. This year I am third. Nobody gave me those results on a platter. I wrested them from the hard men in the other cars, including my father. In both years I was the second-highest earning American racer. You guessed it, next to Daddy.

‘Close your mouth,’ my father said. ‘We don’t have any idiots in our family.’

I closed my mouth and kept it closed. You can’t win with my father, even when you beat him on the road.

At the airport the California media held us up. We made like the perfect father and son driving team, even if we drive for different teams. We smiled a lot and mentioned our respective sponsors as often as opportunity offered.

A stretch Lincoln waited outside to waft us home. Courtesy of Daddy’s sponsor.

Home is a vineyard in the Napa Valley. It is a working vineyard, run by my older brother Giacopo, called Jackie.

By the way, I’m Roberto Solara, called Bobby.

Home is also a family compound. There is a big square lawn with trees from around the world that cost a lot of money to water. Around it stands three houses, a little suburb in the center of the vineyard. The grand one is Daddy and Mama’s, the two slightly less grand ones are Jackie’s and mine.

I visit ‘my’ house occasionally even though I make a point of living in New York with my wife and child. But this was a special occasion. Tonight Mama would celebrate her 50th birthday and I would say good-bye.

The car dropped me in front of my house and drove on with Daddy. Many cars were parked around the square already. It would be a big party.

In the living room a teddy bear with a mangled ear lay in front of the television but there was no one in the house except the maid sent over by Mama to do for us. I showered and changed into black tie.

On the bed in our bedroom lay a large gift-wrapped box. Yvonne, fearing I would forget, bought a present for my mother. I felt no resentment. I missed both Yvonne’s birthday and our wedding anniversary earlier in the year; they fell on racing days.

I took a small gift-wrapped box from my bag and picked up the big one from the bed as well.

At the big house I walked through congratulations and backslapping, smiling and pretending I remembered people. I found Mama where I knew she would be, at the far end of the pool, standing at the balustrade on an artificial little hill overlooking the Valley. In the daytime it is a monotonously dull view, relieved only by the backdrop of mountains. At deep dusk, like now, it is romantic.

I hugged and kissed her. She is a tall dark-haired woman, no longer slender but still very beautiful. ‘An extra gift from Yvonne,’ I said, giving her the large parcel.

But her eyes were on the smaller parcel in my hand. ‘Bobby! You remembered.’

I gave her the small parcel. ‘Open it.’

She fingered the pearls, then held them out to me and turned around. I fitted them around her neck and kissed her cheek.

‘I do love you, Mama.’

She hugged me. ‘You’ll make me cry, Bobby. Ruin my make-up.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘We’d better circulate before your father comes looking for us.’

We walked arm-in-arm around the pool to enter the throng of strangers.

When Mama was detained by well-wishers, I went to find my daughter. In the nursery in Jackie’s house his three children played on all fours on the floor with her.

‘Daddy, daddy!’ She ran to me. I swung her high. ‘Mummy wouldn’t let me watch you race on the television.’

‘It’s boring, darling Vicky. Just men driving round and round. How was your flight from New York?’

‘I sicked up over the lady in the funny hat.’

‘I bet she laughed over that.’

‘Only while Mummy looked.’

My wife Yvonne came. ‘Ah, I thought I’d find you here, Bobby. Bedtime, sweetheart.’

‘Oh, Daddy just got here!’

‘I’ll read you a story.’

‘Little Red Riding Hood!’

I sat with her until she fell asleep. Jackie’s older daughter came in. ‘I’ll stay with her, Bobby. You go back to the party.’

At the party I joined Yvonne. She is a short girl, slender and intense when she is talking about politics, as now, trying to explain the forthcoming election from a NY Democrat’s viewpoint to a group of California Republicans. They were politely interested but I knew they understood not a word.

Californians are different from the rest of America. If we split off into the Pacific, California by itself would still be the fourth richest nation in the world and per capita higher still on the food chain.

‘Forgive Yvonne,’ I said to them, ‘she really does know some truly poor people.’

‘Go away, Bobby. I’m making converts here.’

In her dreams. But Yvonne will try with her last breath.

I circulated and then, as I always do, drifted to the edge of the party. I separated myself with my plate and my bottle of sparkling water to stand by the balustrade on the rise at the far end of the pool, my favorite spot in my father’s house.

After a while Jackie came. He carried a glass of his own wine.

‘How’s the vintage?’

‘Good.’ He offered me his glass.

I took a small sip. ‘Excellent. You charge high for this quality?’

‘That’s the family’s reserve. What we sell is nearly as good, though.’

I took another small sip and savored it in my mouth before returning the glass to him. ‘You’ve done wonders here. I can remember the vinegar when we first came.’ I was 13 when we moved here from Miami, fifteen years ago, just old enough to be allowed a mouthful of unwatered wine from Mama’s glass.

‘Daddy’s a lot of help on the marketing side.’

‘If only he wouldn’t interfere in the wine making.’

Jackie nodded in the gloom. I switched off the lights this side of the pool when I arrived. ‘Nothing will ever be good enough for him.’

‘I got a blast of it today. The blood runs thin.’

‘Your grandfather landed at Ellis Island without a dime in his pocket, and our family made good.’

‘You sound just like him. I know you don’t give that nonsense to your own kids. They’re too nice for it.’

‘I want to talk to you about that. Now’s not the time but you’re leaving early in the morning.’

‘Kids?’

‘Our futures, really. Daddy has been writing his will.’

‘He didn’t have one before? In his profession?’

‘You have a will?’

‘Sure. A bit to Mama, something towards the education of my favorite nephew and nieces, a few gifts for the rest of the family. The biggest part split between Yvonne and Vicky.’

‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. You have a career. You’re building a nest egg. I’m essentially a vineyard manager for Daddy.’

‘Eh? I thought the vineyard comes to you when Daddy—’

‘This is embarrassing, Bobby. Daddy is leaving the vineyard to the two of us.’

‘That’s a spiteful thing to do. I know nothing about wine making. It will divide us. I don’t want it. I’ll tell him.’

‘No, don’t do that. I don’t want him to know I spoke to you. Who knows how he’ll react?’

‘How about a letter saying you can have my share?’

‘A letter is not necessary, Bobby. All I want is an understanding, to keep me here. Otherwise I must go out and find my own way to look after my children.’

It occurred to me for the first time that Jackie, who until now seemed so content with his meaningful, fulfilling life on his vineyard with his fine family, envied me for breaking away from Daddy.

In his eyes probably successfully. But I would not burden him with my problems now.

‘I’ll give you a legally binding letter anyway, Jackie.’ I toasted him with my bottle of sparkling water.

‘I don’t want to deprive you of anything,’ Jackie said. ‘What I have in mind is an agreement that I can buy out your share at market value.’

‘The market value will be what you created by your sweat.’

We stood side by side silently for a while.

‘You know,’ Jackie said, ‘other brothers fight. Daddy did at least one thing right as a parent. He unified us, against him.’

‘There’s that,’ I agreed. Sad, really, I thought. And then, thinking of my own marital problems, ‘At least we have Mama.’

A waiter came to us. ‘Mr Solara’s compliments and would you gentlemen care to rejoin the party?’

When I reached home, I found Yvonne sitting downstairs. ‘Sit down for a bit, Bobby.’

‘All right. Is this what I fear?’ I sat down next to her on the couch.

‘I’m sorry.’

I shall race in Europe, all over the world, for at least a year. Yvonne will not come with me.

‘You know, if it is just your job,’ I said, ‘the Armitage people can fix you up with a visiting scholarship at the London School of Economics. They offered.’

‘It’s over between us, Bobby. You know it and I know it. All it ever was, was sex. We mistook it for love.’

I nodded. It was true. ‘We have Vicky.’

‘We shall come to hate each other. She will notice. Let’s do this the easy way while we’re still friends.’ She took my hand. ‘You can see her whenever you want.’

‘Thank you for not saying, Whenever you can.’ I am away from home a lot, testing and racing. New York is not exactly the center of the auto racing world. Nowhere is, really, except for the Europeans, many of whose teams operate out of the South of England, where I too would be based for the next year.

She chuckled. ‘I saw a lawyer. He was extremely disappointed when I said you are a good father.’

‘But not a good enough husband.’

‘I never said that. You’re a good husband too. You will be an even better husband to a woman you love.’

‘Is there someone?’

She shook her head. ‘I want space in my life for there to be someone and not feel I am betraying a good man.’

‘What else did your lawyer say?’

‘That you’re rich and I can get a big settlement.’ Her wicked smile said otherwise.

I was silent for a moment. Divorce is not supposed to be this painless. ‘Tell me what you want.’

‘Nothing, Bobby. It would help if you could put something towards Vicky’s education.’

‘You’re true to your feminist principles?’ I couldn’t help smiling.

She grinned and squeezed my hand.

‘You can’t live in the Manhattan apartment on your salary.’ She is an assistant professor of politics at Columbia, at the start of a glittering academic career, but it will be years, if ever, before she earns enough to live on Central Park. ‘I don’t want Vicky to live in some inexpensive, dangerous neighborhood. Keep the apartment. I’ll settle enough on Vicky to see that she never wants.’

‘You’re sounding like your father, Bobby.’

‘Sorry.’ I took her hand back. ‘I’ve never done this before.’

‘I’ve been looking at jobs on green campuses.’ She stood and pulled me up. ‘Why don’t I let my lawyer send you a letter and see if you agree?’

‘Why not.’

‘Let’s enjoy the good sex while we can.’

I hugged her to my shoulder as we walked up the stairs. In a way, I was relieved. I saw this coming for a while. I was let off very lightly for my failures as a husband and a father.

As a man, really. I try hard to be more like Jackie than like Daddy but in the soul of every successful auto racer lurks a core of ice.

I could have lost my child altogether.

‘You know what, Yvonne?’

‘Tell me.’

‘It wasn’t a mistake to marry you at all.’

‘A learning experience?’

‘Something like that.’

Sex with Yvonne was as good as ever. We were parting friends.

In the morning I flew to New York with Yvonne and Vicky. We parted at the airport with a kiss and a joke. Even for little Vicky partings are routine; she didn’t cry. I flew on to London.

Over mid-Atlantic it occurred to me that all my bridges were alight behind me.

But I felt no sense of loss. I gave up half a rich vineyard to keep a brother. I gave up half an empty if pleasant marriage to keep my friend and my child. I shall always have Mama. I never had Daddy.

It was a good time to make a new start.

Number Two

I felt like telling the impertinent snot to call me ‘Mr Solara’ but instead said mildly, ‘Would you repeat the question please? I don’t quite believe I heard right.’

‘Sure, Bobby,’ the unkempt reporter said cockily. ‘You won the Indy 500 when you were 22. The next year you were Indycar champion. Now you’re 28 and in all that time you’ve never been higher than second in an American championship. What makes you think you can drive in grand prix, the fastest and most demanding racing in the world?’

Kate Ferguson put her hand restrainingly on my wrist. She is a brisk fortyish woman in a tweed skirt and a cardigan, head of PR for Armitage Racing, my new employers.

I sat between Kate and Adam Boyle, the Finance and Commercial Director of the corporation. He approaches sixty, sports a big paunch and a cigar in search of a submarine to sink. He looks like Father Christmas until you look past the smile into his eyes, which weigh you coolly.

Before I could answer, Adam said, ‘If your insurance is paid up, we’ll be happy to put you in an identical car to Mr Solara’s—and see who comes out of corner one alive.’

The auto journalists laughed. The tabloid reporters did not as much as smile.

The tabloid troublemaker ignored the taunt. ‘So, in short, you are being paid many millions because your daddy was once champion?’

I counted to three and smiled pleasantly at him. ‘You must admit he was a great champion.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Oh, put a sock in it,’ a journalist in a blazer and striped tie said. ‘Mr Solara, there is a serious question—’

‘Call me Bobby.’

‘Bobby. Right. I’m Oliver Pullman. Ollie.’

‘I read your column, even in the States.’

‘Thank you. The serious question is this: Will a serious racer like you take orders to drive second fiddle to the champion, Ugo Jenssens?’

‘A racing team is exactly that, a team. Only one driver can be champion. If we compete destructively within our team, we open the way for a driver from a more disciplined team to be champion. In addition, the points towards the constructors’ championship are always important. As you know, the points of both drivers count for the constructors’ championship.’

‘Would you then describe yourself as a disciplined driver?’

‘I most certainly would.’

‘So you admit you’re a second-class driver?’ It was the tabloid creep again.

‘Not at all. But, as you yourself observed, this is my first season in grands prix. If I stormed in and said I will win, you’d damn me as an arrogant American.’

‘His kind will damn you for something anyway,’ Adam said, not bothering to lower his voice, ignoring the pained expression on Kate’s face.

‘Your father is known as a far more exciting driver than you,’ another journalist said, his tone neutral despite the bite of his words.

‘So he is. He’s a gambler. I’m a calculator. I’ve never broken a single bone, nor spilt a single drop of blood. My father has broken all of his, some several times. I’m sorry not to provide more excitement for you fellows.’

Afterwards I sat in the back of Adam’s BMW. He waved a cigar humidor from the bar at me. I shook my head. He waved a decanter. I shook my head. He didn’t really expect me to accept either. He poured ginger ale into a champagne flute for me, then opened a bottle of red wine to pour a glass for Kate.

‘In future, Adam, serve the ladies first. I don’t insist on star treatment.’ I knew him a little, from sitting in for an hour while he negotiated my contract with my manager. He would not object to blunt speaking.

‘Noted. Does you credit.’ He toasted me with his whisky. ‘Welcome.’

‘The hyenas thought otherwise.’ I picked up the bottle of wine from its holder. ‘May I?’ Corton, a legendary red wine. I poured a small amount into a wineglass and put my nose to it. I took a tiny sip and rolled it around my mouth. I swallowed it bit by bit. ‘Beautiful.’

‘Our tabloids are not very responsible,’ Kate said mildly from the front seat next to Adam’s driver.

‘What’s the penalty for hitting a journalist?’ Auto racing is a vehicle for publicity. My contract stipulates that I should cooperate with the press, with penalties for failure.

‘Ten thousand pounds, about fifteen thousand dollars,’ Adam said promptly. ‘Though I would have let you off this once for hitting that little turd.’

‘You did well with Ollie Pullman,’ Kate said. ‘That’s what counts.’ She held up her glass to me. ‘The serious writers take their tone from him.’

I put the wineglass back in the holder and took my ginger ale again. I raised my glass to them. ‘Faux champagne.’

They delivered me to a large house behind a wall on the outskirts of Woking. Fully grown trees. Terraces. A household staff comprising a housekeeper and a cook. A car and a live-in driver. I am not permitted to drive myself on any public road. My contract forbids it.

Kate stayed in the car while Adam introduced me to the staff.

Back on the stone steps at the front door, he said, ‘Your wife decided to stay in New York?’

‘It’s over. Amicably.’

‘We can assign a secretary.’

‘No thanks. I’ll find a woman or she’ll find me. No offense but I’m not into whores.’

‘Discretion, Bobby. You saw the hyenas circling.’

‘I understand.’

When I came down from choosing a bedroom and unpacking my single bag, I walked about the house and garden for a while, then ate the light lunch the housekeeper put in front of me.

After lunch I caught up on my sleep. I played the grand piano in the equally grand drawing room for an hour. Mama plays the piano. Jackie and I each learned an instrument too, Jackie the cello and I the violin. But the violin is an instrument one has to keep up with so as an engineering student at Stanford I started playing the piano at parties. Jackie insisted on going to Juilliard in New York, much to Daddy’s disgust. He wasn’t quite good enough for a career in music but he still plays with semi-professional groups in the Bay area and gains much pleasure from it.

When I married Yvonne I took up playing the classics again but on the piano. It relaxes me.

Housekeeper and cook discussed dinner with me. They showed me a book Mama wrote a few years back of my family’s favorite recipes. Loose sheets in a binder were additional ‘Recipes Mr Boyle’s office sent away for to your mother.’ I was impressed.

While they cooked dinner, I worked out in the gym, then swam in the totally enclosed pool, a weird experience with freezing English sleet falling on the glass over my head.

I called Vicky and chatted for twenty minutes about her day in the kindergarten, her toys, what her mother would not let her watch on television.

In the evening I sat in a comfortable chair before the big screen in the study and ran a few of the several hundred neatly labeled tapes on the shelves, studying the driving the style of Ugo Jenssens, whose number two I shall be for a year. He is very fast and very smooth, utterly fearless. So are all his competitors.

From their aggressive driving, I could see that Daddy would love them.

Ugo

In the morning Barry, half chauffeur, half minder, drove me to what he calls ‘the works’. The Armitage plant consists of two large white two-story buildings set well back behind a serious security fence in a tidy industrial estate. At the gate Barry identified me to the gate men who came to look at me through the lowered window.

‘Charlie takes security very seriously,’ Barry said in apology. He is well into his fifties, a wide-shouldered six-footer who still keeps a trim waist.

‘It’s all right, Barry. I understand.’ A grand prix team, no matter how good its drivers, wins because it builds technically superior cars. That makes the theft of racing technology an industry. (It’s not like NASCAR and the Indy Racing League in the States at all: those are off the shelf, stock car series, with standardized chasses and engines, whereas each team on the Formula One grid builds an individual car and races it with an individual engine.)

‘The left-hand building is the Cartwright-Armitage head office,’ Barry explained as we drove towards the right-hand building. ‘That’s the sports-racing division. This is Armitage, the grand prix division.’ He slotted the car into a parking space.

On an open space people milled around a couple of buses and several minivans.

‘You ride with Jack,’ Barry said, taking my shoulder bag out of the back seat. ‘I’ll take you over.’

I reached for the bag.

‘I’ll see to it, Bobby. It doesn’t ride with you.’

We passed behind a lanky young man with a clipboard. ‘That’s Carey Richards, of the operations staff,’ Barry said to me. ‘Hey, Carey! Here’s Bobby Solara.’

‘Thanks. He rides with Jack. Hi, Bobby.’

‘Hi, Carey.’

Ugo Jenssens stood on tiptoe to kiss a taller woman with high cheekbones and masses of curly golden-brown hair. Him I recognized even from behind. She is Helga Baer, the number three executive in the sports-racing division. A blonde woman, not yet thirty, beautiful in a square cut sort of classical way, kissed Ugo’s cheek in passing. Mallory, who won Le Mans last year. She is the number two executive at Cartwright-Armitage, next to Charlie Cartwright himself.

‘Two such women,’ an anorak in a bunch of anoraks said. ‘I’d give my arm.’

‘With a wife like Linda, Vic, why are you even looking at other women?’ Mallory said and walked on towards her office.

I marked Vic as the other mechanics laughed at him. He is the foreman of mechanics under the chief mechanic.

I knew all these people without introductions because Adam left a book with me containing photographs of all the staff with their brief biographies.

‘Thanks, Barry,’ Jack Armitage said from inside the minivan as the driver brought me to the door. ‘Climb in, Bobby.’

I never met him before but it would be impossible for a racer not to know who Jack Armitage is and what he looks like. His drivers have won more drivers’ championships, and his cars more constructors’ championships, than anyone else on earth. He’s past his middle fifties, an aquiline man in a wheelchair, his face lined by the pain of his broken back.

‘How’d you do, Sir Jack.’ He was knighted last year for his services to racing, an honor Daddy thought long overdue.

‘Just Jack. We don’t stand on formalities.’ He shook my hand. ‘Sit over there. Piero Agnelli, our technical director.’

Piero is only my age. He is nearly my height but thinner. A narrow face. Black hair brushed straight back. At 22 he was grand prix champion and immediately retired. He worked in the design department at McLaren for a few years, then joined Armitage.

He made a slight bow from the waist and shook my hand. ‘Welcome to Armitage, Bobby. I’m very happy to have a trained engineer with us.’

I knew Charlie Cartwright too when he climbed in. Any racer would. He won Le Mans behind the wheel of his own cars three times in a row and twice more with other drivers at the wheel. A living legend, he is listed in Adam’s file as operations director. According to my manager, Jack and Adam gave Charlie a division of his own to build sports racers on condition that he remains operations director of the grand prix division.

‘Hello. I’m Charlie Cartwright.’

‘Bobby Solara. It’s an honor.’

He pushes forty and looks a bit like Kevin Costner with a few extra pounds. I mean non-descript.

‘Come on, Ugo, you’ll wear Helga out,’ Charlie shouted out of the door.

Helga broke away from Ugo and walked briskly towards her office.

Ugo threw himself into the minivan and into his seat. He is a muscular type quite a bit shorter than me, handsome in a boyish way. He wears T-shirts and bomber-style leather jackets over jeans. He has muscles to display in short sleeves and rippling under his T-shirt.

‘Yo, Bobby,’ he said to me. ‘They showed me your picture. I’m heartbroken,’ he said to Jack. ‘Why can’t I come tomorrow? Bobby can drive for me.’

Carey Richards said, ‘You can go,’ and slid the door closed.

We drove out of the gate. Minivans and buses swung in behind us.

‘You ever been in love?’ Ugo asked me when everyone ignored his question to Jack.

‘I thought I was.’

‘Hmm. I liked being a teenager until I was almost thirty. Being an adult is almost too painful.’ He put out his hand. ‘Are you