Chapter 2: Enrique Hernandez

“I see you’ve become reacquainted already,” uncle Ian said with an amused glint in his eyes while a naked Sofia served us drinks.

“Did you seriously want to make her wear that uniform, just because of me?” I asked him.

“Matt, everyone and his dog knows you’re spoken for, and none of us want to be the reason that you end up in the dog house on your first day in Germany.”

I snorted with amusement. “Uncle Ian, from what you and dad told me, I’ll soon be surrounded by women with no fashion sense. Do you think Jenny will force them all to get dressed when I’m around?”

“Now that I think of it,” he replied with a chuckle. “Okay, looks like everything’s fine back here. We’ll have our first intermediate stop in about two hours.”

He returned to the cockpit, once he was convinced that we were all set.

The flight had largely been uneventful. We had spent the night in a hotel in Reykjavik, Iceland. Unfortunately, the walls had not exactly been the types you find in a cloister, so it hadn’t taken too keen a sense of hearing to know that uncle Ian and Sofia had not spent the entire night sleeping.

The flight from Iceland to Cologne in Germany was the last leg and we arrived at around ten in the morning.

“Well, he’s your problem now,” uncle Ian said with a chuckle that was shared by a man who looked like he was wrestling bears for fun. That guy had arms bigger than my legs.

“Hi Matt, I’m Mark,” he said and I hesitantly accepted his handshake, prepared to have my hand crushed in a vise-like grip, but the gesture was in fact quite soft. He seemed to read my mind.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a brute,” he said with a smile. “You’ll meet Femke soon enough. If you see her legs, you’ll understand why I need those muscles. Massaging her legs after a race is a job for the Incredible Hulk.”

“Nice RV you have there,” I said, looking at the vehicle he had arrived in. I helped him get my suitcases out of the plane’s cargo compartment.

“Yep, that’s yours and Jenny’s,” he said, effortlessly shoving the heavy suitcases into the RVs loading bay.

“Just for us?” I asked, astonished about that piece of news.

“We also have a bigger one,” he explained. “But we thought the two of you might prefer a bit of privacy.”

“I think I’m gonna like it here,” I said as he closed the luggage bay.

Well, I had heard about the famed Autobahn before, but nothing had prepared me for the real thing. This RV was, although ostensibly the smaller of two they owned, quite big and heavy. That was why we mostly used the right lane, overtaking the odd semitrailer truck here and there. But the cars on the left-most of three lanes - holy shit!

Contrary to the myths told in Americaland, quite a bit of the Autobahn was actually speed limited, but as soon as we entered stretches without a speed limit, we were overtaken by Mercs, Audis and Porsches at the speed of kaboom. Mark at the wheel seemed to be used to being hit by a shock wave whenever a missile on four wheel blasted past us. Calmly he corrected the resulting jerking movements of our vehicle that had all the aerodynamic properties of a very large brick.

“So, how are we going about keeping my arrival a secret?” I asked Mark. “Am I to hide somewhere?”

“Yup, you will be hiding, but in plain sight,” Mark said with a chuckle. “Jenny stays with Nadja’s team in the hotel tonight, which means you get to meet the rest of us today. Tomorrow you’ll work with Jenny’s team. So the only thing you’ll have to manage is keeping your face hidden until the race is over.”

“That’s a tall order, but it would allow me to be right in the thick of it,” I pondered.

“Jenny’s team boss will visit us in the evening. You can thresh out the details with him.”

My heart started pounding so hard it was almost painful. We were just turning into a paddock space, right next to the much bigger, but otherwise similar RV that Mark had described. However our best-laid plans to keep my arrival secret seemed to collapse immediately, because I saw Jenny standing there. In my mind hundreds of scenarios had played out what our first ever meeting would be like. Right now, however, I just went rigid as a board.