It was indeed Tracchia. Seated beside him, Jacobson was peering anxiously through the rear window. He said: there’s someone coming up behind.’ ‘It’s a public road. Anyone can use it.’ ‘Believe me, Nikki, this is not just anyone.’ In the Ferrari, Harlow said: ‘I think we better get ready.’ He pressed a button and the windows slid down. Then he reached for his gun and placed it beside him. ‘And I’ll be greatly obliged if neither of you shoot Mary.’
Dunnet said : ‘I just hope to hell that tunnel’s blocked.’ He brought out his own gun.
The tunnel was indeed blocked, completely and solidly blocked. A very large furniture van was jammed diagonally and apparently immovably into its mouth.
The Aston Martin rounded the last hairpin. Tracchia swore bitterly and braked the car to a halt. Both men gazed apprehensively through the rear window. Mary looked too, though with hope, not fear.
Jacobson said: ‘Don’t tell me that damned truck jammed there is sheer coincidence. Turn the car, Nikki. God, there they are!’
The Ferrari came sliding round the last corner and accelerated towards them. Tracchia tried desperately to turn his car, a manoeuvre made more difficult when Harlow, braking heavily, rammed his Ferrari into the side of the Aston. Jacobson had his gun out and was firing at apparent random.
‘Jacobson,’ Harlow said urgently. ‘Not Tracchia. You’ll kill Mary.’
Both men leaned out of their windows and fired just as -their windscreen smashed and starred. Jacobson ducked low for safety but he ducked too late. He screamed in agony as two bullets lodged in his left shoulder. In the confusion and noise Mary opened the door and jumped out as quickly as her crippled leg would permit her. Neither man, for the moment, even ‘noticed that she was gone.
Tracchia, only the top of his head visible above the windscreen, eventually managed to wrench his car round and clear then accelerated desperately away. Four seconds later, with Dunnet having practically dragged Mary inside, the Ferrari was in pursuit. Harlow, apparently oblivious to the inflicted cuts, had already smashed his fist through the shattered windscreen. .Dunnet completed the work with the butt of his pistol.
Not once, but several times, Mary cried out in fear as Harlow took the Ferrari down through the hairpins of the Col de Tende. Rory had his arm round his sister and although he did not voice his fear he was plainly just as terrified as Mary was. Dunnet, firing his gun through the empty space where the windscreen had been, didn’t look particularly happy either. Harlow’s face was still, implacable. To an observer, it must have appeared that the car was being driven by a maniac, but Harlow was in complete control. To the accompaniment of the sound of tortured tyres and engine bellowing in the lower gears, he descended the Cool as no one had ever done before and, assuredly, no one would ever do again. By the sixth hairpin he was only a matter of feet behind the Aston.
‘Stop shooting,’ Harlow shouted. He had to shout to make himself heard above the sound of an engine at maximum revolutions in bottom gear.
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s not final enough.’
The Aston, now only a car’s length ahead, slid desperately round a right-hand hairpin bend. Harlow, instead of braking, accelerated, spun the wheel viciously to the right and the car slid half-way round the corner on all four screaming, skidding tyres,. at right-angles to its line of travel only a second previously, apparently completely out of control. But Harlow had judged matters to a hair-raising degree of nicety: the side of the Ferrari smashed fairly and squarely into that of the Aston. The Ferrari, already practically stopped, rebounded into the middle of the curve. The Aston, moving diagonally now and hopelessly unmanageable, slid out towards the edge. Beyond the edge there was a drop of six hundred feet into the darkened and unseen depths of a ravine below.
Harlow was out of the stopped Ferrari just before the teetering Aston vanished over the side. He was followed almost immediately by the others. They peered over the edge of the road.
The Aston, descending with apparently incredible slowness, turned slowly over and over as it fell. It disappeared into the depths and the darkness of the ravine. There was a brief thunderclap of sound and a great gout of brilliant orange flame that seemed to reach half-way up to where they stood. Then there was only the silence and the darkness.
On the road above, all four stood quiet and still, like people in a trance, then Mary, shuddering, buried her face in Harlow’s shoulder. He put his arm around her and continued to gaze down, unseeingly as it seemed, into the hidden depths of the ravine.