The Romanov succession

The German hadn’t much steering room and couldn’t accelerate yet; it gave Felix time to oil through the gap and then he clutched, revved it in neutral just enough to run the engine up without breaking into a powerless slide: popped the clutch again into fourth and surged ahead of the Mercedes’s massive grille.

The Hispano-Suiza’s driver was Enzione, the Italian, and Felix had a glimpse of the approving grin on his face before the Bugatti’s power took him ahead of the Italian. The big Mercedes kept pace within a meter of his rear fender all the way down the straightaway but he lost the Mercedes on the far turn and then he had just four cars ahead of him-three Germans and the French D8S Delage.

One of the Germans rolled off to the shoulder into the pit for tires and on the eighty-first lap the Delage broke down on the lap turn, braking into the ambulance driveway. Felix had only the two Mercedes ahead of him and he was crowding the green one by the eighty-seventh lap.

He had fuel to finish the race without another pit stop; he was not so certain of the tires. But the red Mercedes was a good twenty lengths ahead of the green one and so there was no question in Felix’s mind about stopping for tires. The four tires could be changed in thirty-four seconds but with only twelve laps left that would cost him the race.

And if the Bugatti’s tires were thin so were the Germans’: they were carrying more weight on theirs and none of them had been into the pits for anything but fuel since the fortieth lap.

There had been some talk around the pits this morning about the Fuehrer’s direct personal interest in this race, which was the first contest outside Nazi-occupied territory in which the newly modified 540Ks had been entered. Enzione had said casually, “They’ll do anything for a win you know. Anything. I suspect it will cost them unspeakably if they don’t take the cup.”

“Then they’re too tense,” Felix had replied, “and tense drivers make, mistakes.”

“Don’t count on that too much. Streicher particularly-Streicher can be something less than a gentleman.”

Felix knew that; he’d raced Georg Streicher for years. He knew most of Streicher’s bag of dirty tricks and he’d heard the brown-shirted veteran’s cries of German invincibility.

To beat Streicher he first had to get past Erich Franke, whom he didn’t know so well: he’d run on the same tracks with Franke a few times but that had been more than a year ago when Franke had still been a second-string driver getting his apprenticeship done on obsolete cars, running respectably fourth and sixth and sometimes third in cars which in other hands wouldn’t have made the first half of the field. You knew he was very good but you never worried about him because he was running inferior machinery. Now they had trusted him with a 540K and Felix had the feeling Franke would have been another half-lap ahead if it weren’t for Streicher’s intimidating presence out front. The Germans didn’t realize that habit of command and subordination was a weakness on the motor track.

He wished he knew Franke better now; wished he had paid more attention to Franke’s repertoire in the past. Franke had won at Molsheim this season, taken a second (to Streicher) at Montlhery Autodrome and another second (to Von Brauchitsch) at the Targa Florio; they were all races in which Felix hadn’t been entered and he regretted that now.

Streicher was good of course: at one time he’d been the very best. But he was not as good as he had been. He needed a little help to win now. That was what Franke was there for: to provide interference for those who tried to get near Streicher.

On the eighty-ninth lap Felix made his bid against Franke, coming out of the turn on the inside and bolting ahead. This time there was no competing car to clutter up the inside rail; there was all the room in the world and Felix used the Bugatti’s superior cornering balance to move ahead. They had lapped the field now and the red Mercedes ahead of him-Streicher-was nosing into the rear of the pack, shouldering the Invicta aside.

Halfway down the straightaway he glanced in the mirror and saw Erich Franke on his rump. Hardly a handspan separated the two cars. He kept his foot to the floor and rushed toward the lap turn.

The Alfa Romeo whined past both of them at reckless speed approaching the turn but Felix paid that no attention; the Alfa was still a lap behind and the driver was only trying to prove something to himself; he had no chance to win unless all the leaders dropped out.