‘Without being proactive,’ Straker replied, ‘and I mean invasive — I really don’t know. We have no power to interview them, nor any power to eavesdrop. We have no intercept rights — no entitlement to search premises.’
‘So there’s nothing more you can do to prove it’s them — or be sure of stopping them?’ said Backhouse almost with a catch in his voice. ‘We’ve just got to sit back and take this?’
Straker saw the race engineer’s face say it all. He suddenly felt the man’s anguish.
Was now the time? Straker asked himself. He thought of Sabatino — of Cunzer — of Ptarmigan — even the $750 million sponsorship that was at stake. Straker seemed to come to a decision. Leaning in, he whispered close to the man’s ear — for several seconds.
Straker pulled back to study Backhouse’s expression.
He was baffled.
Backhouse’s face was suddenly impossible to read.
Straker turned in shortly afterwards, his mind in turmoil. Knowing he was so preoccupied, he was anxious about falling asleep in case he suffered an episode. Every time he felt he might be dropping off, he jolted himself awake in anticipation of suffering one of his flashbacks. It began to be wearying. The only thing keeping him sane was the thought of being responsible for keeping someone else safe.
Finally overcome by tiredness — towards two o’clock in the morning — he eventually succumbed to sleep. Even so, he woke at four, starting himself awake again to find every light in his room still burning brightly. With a heart-felt growl of frustration he took solace in the only way he knew how while in this frame of mind. Climbing into his running kit, he let himself out of the family-run hotel, setting off on a purging run through the darkness. A chill in the air was welcome. Its edge served as a refreshing distraction.
Running straight up a long drag from the valley bottom, Straker used the pain and exertion to try and clear his head. Only after a prolonged stint of anaerobic respiration, and the resultant muscle burn searing his concentration, did he start to calm himself down. As he ran along the dirt track of a long woodland ride, he began to turn the sabotage incidents over in his mind, along with that monstrous reaction from MacRae.
What the hell was going on there?
Straker quickly realized that trying to fathom all that out would have to come later. For now, he had to focus on the more immediate issue: how to protect Ptarmigan and Sabatino from further sabotage of their performance — let alone safety — here in Spa. Clearly, the FIA or MacRae weren’t going to be of any help. He had to think of something else.
Straker ran on. Dawn broke and the first sunlight struck the tops of the mountains.
After a long uphill drag of a solid mile through the forest, he reached a bend in the road. There, a gap in the trees gave him a superb view out over Malmedy and the valley below. Breathing deeply to aid his recovery, he thought through the sabotage again and made a decision. There might be a way of buying some protection — for today, at least.
Monza, in two weeks’ time, would be another bridge to be crossed at a later date.
Race day of the Belgian Grand Prix rolled on. The sun was shining, and there was a light breeze. Track temperatures were around twenty degrees Celsius.
In spite of the clear danger of sabotage, and her fury at MacRae’s bizarre outburst, Sabatino was adamant she was going to race.
By half-past one the cars were on the grid and the pit straight was chock-a-block with mechanics, the ubiquitous pit lizards holding the drivers’ name boards, other team members, hoards of media, and showboating celebrities inauthentically professing years of interest in Formula One.
Straker escorted Sabatino from the garage in her turquoise suit, he carrying her fire-retardant balaclava and helmet. Immaculately turned out — her short nut-brown hair was freshly clean, in place, and shining — she didn’t need to wear make-up to show that she’d made an effort, not least as her mood had changed. Her brown eyes behind the black-rimmed glasses were sparkling. Straker inferred she’d managed to harness her anger at the FIA reaction into positive energy and self-belief, once again.
Or was it the idea Straker had put to her?
They ducked through the pit wall onto the track. Her car, in P14, was way down to their left. Instead, she turned right, along the start/finish straight towards the front of the grid. Straker struggled to keep up as she strode between the mass of bodies, cars, mechanics and trolleys. Sabatino made her way up to the leading Massarella car, driven by Simi Luciano, in P3.
‘Hey, Eugene,’ Straker heard her say as she barged into the Massarella clique standing in front of their car and caught the team boss by surprise.
Van Der Vaal glowered at the interruption.
‘I know what you’re up to,’ she said with a smile. Slowly, and entirely at her own pace, she pulled three pieces of paper from inside her turquoise racing suit, unfolded them and held them up against her chest so he could see them. ‘This page shows my data link carrier wave and telemetry up to my incident at Les Combes yesterday,’ she said pointing with a finger. ‘This is a photograph of Barrantes activating some form of zapper at exactly the same time. And this picture shows my rain light coming on — indicating the engine limiter being activated — at over two hundred miles an hour. Look at the time code on all the pictures, Eugene.’ Then with throwaway levity she added: ‘I know exactly what you’re up to.’
Despite his irritation at the interruption, Eugene Van Der Vaal couldn’t help looking down at the images. But then he pulled an amused but dismissive expression. ‘More of your fantasies — to make up for being only a woman, my dear?’ he said, clearly softening his Afrikaans accent. ‘You know, male drivers don’t need these sorts of excuses when they make such a rookie mistake.’
Straker saw her smile in return, completely unfazed by the patronizing tone. Her face then hardened. ‘I know that you, Eugene, and Massarella, limited my engine.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, young lady.’
A mechanic tried to squeeze past two TV crews doing an interview with Luciano and inadvertently bumped into Straker, knocking him slightly off balance. Holding Sabatino’s helmet didn’t help his centre of gravity. Stepping quickly out to the side to steady himself, he tried desperately not to put his foot down on the Massarella’s front wing. As Straker looked down to place his feet, though, he saw something that took him completely by surprise.
On either side of the Massarella’s black nosecone, he saw a shape he recognized almost instantly — identical to the distinctive airflow surfaces he had been shown by Ptarmigan’s aerodynamicist and seen tested in the wind tunnel in Shenington, and which were now on Sabatino’s car. Weren’t they their Fibonacci Blades? How the hell had they got there? Straker couldn’t believe it. He almost shivered at the breach of trust by their infernal traitor. Regaining his balance, he turned back to the exchange.
‘I heard you went running off to San Marino,’ Van Der Vaal was saying. ‘He threw your whingeing out as inconclusive.’
Sabatino, stretching herself up, moved in just a little closer to the Afrikaner, which induced a look of awkwardness on the South African’s face for the first time. ‘You’ve put me down to fourteenth place. I’ve got nothing to lose today. So, Eugene,’ she said as she folded up her pages, and put them back in a pocket, ‘how many cars do you want to lose in this race, eh? One? … Both?’
For a fleeting moment there was a glimmer of hesitation. Straker sensed that Van Der Vaal didn’t quite know whether she was being serious.