He put an arm round her shoulders.
‘Laugh at you? With you, yes. At you, never.’
‘Come back to me, Johnny.’
‘I’ll always come back to you, Mary.’
What? What did you say, Johnny?’
‘A slip of the tongue.’ He squeezed her shoulders, pecked her briskly on the cheek and strode off into the gathering darkness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The giant Coronado transporter, its vast silhouette outlined by at least a score of lights on the sides and back, not to mention its four powerful headlamps, rumbled through the darkness and along the almost wholly deserted roads at a speed which would not have found very much favour with the Italian police speed patrols, had there been any such around that night which, fortunately, there weren’t.
Harlow had elected to take the autostrada across to Turin then turned south to Cuneo and was now approaching the Col de Tende, that fearsome mountain pass with the tunnel at the top which marks the boundary between Italy and France. Even in an ordinary car, in daylight and in good dry driving conditions, it calls for the closest of care and attention: the steepness of the ascent and descent and the seemingly endless series of murderous hairpin bends on both sides of the tunnel make it as dangerous and difficult a pass as any in Europe, But to drive a huge transporter, at the limit of its adhesion and road-holding in rain that was now beginning to fall quite heavily, was an experience that was hazardous to a degree.
For some, it was plainly not only hazardous but harrowing to a degree. The red-haired twin mechanics, one curled up in the bucket seat beside Harlow, the other stretched out on the narrow bunk behind the front seats, though quite exhausted were clearly never more wide awake in their lives. Not to put too fine a point on it, they were frankly terrified, either staring in horror at each other or closing their eyes as they slid and swayed wildly on each successive hairpin bend. And if they did leave the road it wouldn’t be just to bump across the surrounding terrain: it would be, to fall a , very long way indeed and their chances-