Clive Cussler: The Race

Her second terrible thought was harder to bear. Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin would probably have won if Marco hadn’t caused damage to his Curtiss Pusher.

That night in Willcox, Arizona Territory, having stopped in Lordsburg only long enough for gas and oil, Josephine overheard Marion tell Isaac Bell, “Whiteway is pleased as punch.”

“He’s gotten what he wanted,” Isaac replied. “A neck and neck flying race between America’s plucky Sweetheart of the Air and a union man on a slow machine.”

EUSTACE WEED’S WORST NIGHTMARE came true in Tucson. The race was held up by a ferocious sandstorm that half buried the machines. After they got them dug out and cleaned up, Andy Moser gave him the afternoon off to shoot pool downtown. There, Eustace encountered a Yaqui Indian, who tried to take his money shooting eight-ball. The Indian was good, very good indeed, and it took Eustace Weed most of the afternoon to take the Yaqui’s money and that of his friends, who were laying side bets that the Tucson Indian would beat the kid from Chicago. When Eustace left the pool hall at suppertime, the Yaqui named him “the Chicago Kid,” and he felt like he was on top of the world until a fellow waiting on the sidewalk said, “You’re on, kid.”

“What do you mean?”

“Still got what we gave you in Chicago?”

“What?”

“Did you lose it?”

“No.”

“Let me see it.”

Reluctantly, Eustace Weed produced the little leather sack. The guy shook out the copper tube, inspected that the seals were intact, and handed it back. “We’ll be touch. . soon.”

Eustace Weed said, “Do you understand what this will do to a flying machine?”

“You tell me.”

“It’s not like your motor quitting in your auto. He’s up in the sky.”

“That makes sense, it being a flying machine.”

“Water in the gas will stop a motor dead. If that happens when he’s way high up, the driver might be able to volplane down safely. Might. But if his motor stops dead when he’s lower down, his machine will smash, and he will die.”

“Do you understand what will happen to Daisy Ramsey if you don’t do what you’re told?”

Eustace Weed could not meet the guy’s eye. He looked down. “Yes.”

“Enough said.”

Eustace Weed said nothing.

“Understand?”

“I understand.”

“TEXAS” WALT HATFIELD showed up suddenly on a thundery morning in Yuma, Arizona Territory. The town sat on the banks of the recently dammed Colorado River. Across the wide water lay California. The racers were itching to make Palm Springs by nightfall. But it was thunderstorm season in California, and the locals advised waiting a few hours for the risk of lightning strikes and torrential rains to diminish. The machines were tied down under canvas, and the support trains were still in the rail yard.

“Does Mr. Van Dorn know you’re here?” Bell asked, knowing the Texan’s penchant for bulling off on his own.

“The range boss ordered me to hightail it here and report in person.”

“You have something on Frost?”

Texas Walt shoved his J.B. back on this head. “Ran down his Thomas Flyer outside of Tuscon. How the heck he drove it that far, I don’t know. But neither hide nor hair of him or his boys. I had a strong inkling they caught a train. Found out yesterday they rode out in style, having reserved a stateroom on the Limited.”

“Which way?”

“California.”

“So why did Mr. Van Dorn send you here?”

Texas Walt grinned, a blaze of startling white teeth in a stern countenance as sun-browned as a saddle. “’Cause he had every reason to. Isaac, old son, wait ’til you clap eyes on who I brung with me.”

“There’s only two men I want to clap eyes on: Harry Frost. Or Marco Celere, back from the dead.”

“Damn! You are always one step ahead. How in heck did you know?”

“Know what?”

“I brung Marco Celere.”

“Alive?”

“Darned tootin’, alive. Got him from some Southern Pacific rail dicks I’m acquainted with. They caught a hobo hopping off a freight who swore up, down, and sideways that he’s part of the air race. Claimed to know Josephine personally and demanded to see the Van Dorn detectives guarding her. As that information is not printed in the newspapers, the boys believed him enough to wire me.”

“Where is he?”

“Got him right in the cookhouse. The man’s starving.”

Isaac Bell charged into the galley car and saw a ragged stranger, forking eggs and bacon off a plate with one hand and stuffing bread in his mouth with the other. He had greasy black hair, parted by a red scar that traveled from his brow across the crown of his skull, another red scar on his forearm, and intensely bright eyes.

“Are you Marco Celere?”

“That is my name, sir,” he replied, speaking with an Italian accent somewhat heavier than Danielle Di Vecchio’s though not as difficult to understand as Josephine had led Bell to believe. “Where is Josephine?”

“Where have you been?”

Celere smiled. “I wish I could answer that.”

“You’re going to have to answer that before I let you within a mile of Josephine. Who are you?”

“I am Marco Celere. I came awake two weeks ago in Canada. I had no idea who I was or how I got there. Then, gradually, my memory returned. In tiny bits. A trickle to start, then a flood. I remember my aeroplanes first. Then I saw a newspaper account about the Whiteway Cup Air Race. In it, I read, I have not only one but two machines, my heavy biplane and my swift monoplano , and suddenly it all came back.”

“Where in Canada?”

“A farm. To the south of Montreal.”

“Any idea how you got there?”

“I do not honestly know. The people who saved me found me by the train tracks. They assumed that I rode on a freight train.”

“What people?”

“A kindly farm family. They nursed me through winter into spring before I began to remember.”

Challenging the man who Danielle had called a thief and a confidence man, who had changed his name from Prestogiacomo to Celere while fleeing his past, and who James Dashwood suspected might have murdered Danielle’s father in San Francisco and disguised the crime as a suicide, Bell kept peppering him with questions.

“Any idea how you happened to get amnesia?”

“I know precisely how.” Celere ran his fingers along the scar on his scalp. “I was hunting with Harry Frost. He shot me.”

“What brings you to the Arizona Territory?”

“I have come to help Josephine win the race in my flying machine. May I see her, please?”

Bell asked, “When did you last read a newspaper?”

“I saw a scrap of one last week in the Kansas City yards.”

“Are you aware that your heavy biplane smashed?”

“No! Can it be fixed?”

“It ran into a mountain.”

“That is most disturbing. What of the driver?”

“What you would expect.”

Celere put down his fork. “That is terrible. I am so sorry. I hope it was not the fault of the machine.”

“The machine was as worn out as the rest of them. It’s a long race.”

“But a magnificent challenge,” said Celere.

“I should also warn you,” said Bell, watching his eyes closely, “that Josephine has remarried.”

Celere surprised him. He would have thought Celere would be troubled to learn that his girlfriend had married. Instead, he said, “Wonderful! I am so happy for her! But what of her marriage to Frost?”

“Annulled.”

“Good. That is only right. He was a terrible husband to her. To whom has she been married?”

“Preston Whiteway.”

Celere clapped his hands in delight. “Ah! Perfect!”