Felix Francis - Triple Crown

Was I looking for America?

No, I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. True, I was enjoying the challenge of working undercover again, but my life seemed to be drifting by.

During my time with the army in Afghanistan I’d felt there was a purpose, a goal, even if that goal now appeared somewhat blurred since the British forces had pulled out and everything had started to return to how it was before.

Then, when I joined the BHA, I believed I had enlisted in a righteous crusade to weed out corruption and wrongdoing. I was the standard bearer — prepared to do almost anything in the fight for justice. But, over the years, the shine on my shield had dulled as I became increasingly snowed under with procedures and paperwork.

Even my love life was in tatters.

At twenty-three, and as the youngest captain in the Intelligence Corps, I had felt like a sexual god, an Adonis, with a string of gorgeous young women hanging on my every word and deed. Between operational tours overseas, I had fully satisfied my desires, running up a reputation as a bit of a Casanova.

But, aged twenty-six, I had bucked the trend of my army colleagues by abandoning the exploits of the past, leaving the service and settling down with a steady girlfriend.

I hadn’t regretted either at the time, happy to have some stability in my life while leaving behind the fear and danger of an intelligence officer in war-torn Afghanistan. Among other things, my role had been to determine if the locals in Helmand Province were on our side or not, without getting myself killed in the process.

However, recently, I had begun to crave once more the ‘high’ generated when terror grips one’s stomach and adrenalin surges through the body.

On the lover front, things had also gone somewhat pear-shaped. More than a year ago now, the steady girlfriend had left me for another man who had a ‘safer’ job, the irony being that my own work had been getting less dangerous.

I’d had one serious romance since then, with Henrietta, but it hadn’t worked out.

So here I was, thirty-three years old, single and rudderless.

This American sojourn had been a distraction and I was delighted to be able to extend it. It meant I didn’t have to face the realities of my future for a while longer yet.

The truck continued on its steady way southwestward on the interstate highways while I checked the horses.

All of them seemed to be taking the journey in their stride. Fire Point in particular was unperturbed by the noise of the engine and the continuous swaying of the vehicle. But he’d been used to flying so this was a ‘walk in the park’.

After a couple of hours, we pulled over into a rest area east of Philadelphia to give the driver a meal break, and us a chance to stretch our legs.

‘Leave the horses on board,’ Keith said. ‘It’s more than my life’s worth to have Fire Point loose on the highway. They’ll be fine until we get to Pimlico.’

We went over to the rest-area café and Keith paid for the four of us to have a burger each with fries.

‘Mr Raworth said food only,’ he explained. ‘Buy your own soda if you want one. The driver has to have a half-hour break, so be back at the vehicle in good time. I’ll eat mine while keeping an eye on the horses.’

He went out and walked back towards the truck while the three of us sat down at one of the Formica-topped tables.

‘Want a drink?’ I said to Maria.

She glanced at Diego. ‘Water,’ she said.

I collected three cups of water from the cooler in the corner and put them on a table.

I could tell that Diego didn’t like me doing him any favours. He moved away, without his cup of water, and sat at a different table, on his own.

Maria sighed. ‘Diego very difficult today. He not stop telling me to be good girl all way from Belmont. I very tired of him.’

‘Join me down the back,’ I said.

What was I saying? Was I mad?

‘Good,’ Maria said, and gave me one of her flashing smiles. ‘I do that.’

In the end, it didn’t work out quite as we had planned.

When Diego saw Maria climbing in with the horses, he immediately went in there with her.

Fine, I thought, I’ll ride up front in the cab.

Keith also went into the trailer to be near to Fire Point.

I had spent much of the last two hours staring at Diego’s bag, stacked as it was in the trailer along with Maria’s, Keith’s and mine. I had even been through it while Keith had been asleep, without finding anything incriminating. At one point I had seriously thought of throwing it out of a window to pay him back for kicking me but I had managed to resist the temptation, not least because it may have caused an accident.

Diego might not be so considerate with mine, so I picked up my canvas holdall from the trailer and took it with me to the driver’s cab, chucking it onto the spare seat.

We set off again.

‘God, I’m glad to get rid of those other two,’ said the driver. ‘They’ve not stopped jabbering at each other in Spanish since we left Belmont Park. It has nearly driven me nuts.’

I wished he wouldn’t mention nuts.

Mine still ached dreadfully.

We stopped again briefly just outside Baltimore in order to team up with four motorcycles and two squad cars from the city police department, who traditionally escort the Kentucky Derby winner the last few miles to Pimlico Race Course for the Preakness.

It was not so much about ensuring the horse’s safe arrival as getting the event shown on the local TV news channels.

Marketing the race was the key.

It was hoped that in excess of 130,000 spectators would cram into the racecourse on Saturday to watch the big race, and that that one day would bankroll the track for the rest of the year.

With only twenty-eight racing days per year, compared to eighty or more at each of Churchill Downs and Belmont Park, Pimlico had become rather the poor relation of the Triple Crown venues. But it had a proud history, being the first of the three tracks to open in 1870.

The first running of the Preakness Stakes predated the inaugural Kentucky Derby by two years, with the first Belmont Stakes held at Belmont Park being some thirty years after that.

Several TV crews filmed our arrival and there was quite a crowd waiting, as the horse transport pulled up close to the Stakes Barn, which was situated behind the grandstand in a corner of the racecourse site. I did my best to keep out of camera shot, especially face-on. I had no wish to be recognised, not least by any of the FACSA team who might happen to see the transmission. After all, Baltimore was only some forty miles from the FACSA offices in Arlington.

I had been cultivating my beard now for almost two weeks and the growth was reasonably substantial, but it was always the eyes that would give me away. Consequently, I pulled the grubby LA Dodgers baseball cap lower, so the peak cast a deep shadow over my eyes in the afternoon sunshine.

The media lost interest as soon as Fire Point had walked the thirty yards from the trailer to Stall 40 in the Preakness Barn, the traditional Pimlico home of the Kentucky Derby winner.

Above and to the right of the door was a plaque showing the sixteen previous winners of the Preakness who had been accommodated in that particular stall, including the great sire Northern Dancer and Triple Crown champions Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed.

In truth, it was rather a basic space about twelve feet square with off-white walls and a dirt floor, no different from any of the other stalls in the barn. But traditions are traditions, even if some Derby-winning trainers have recently flouted the convention because they think that Stall 40 is too noisy.