‘Any trouble from you, Eugene, and I take your cars off. Capiche?’
Straker was engrossed; he even forgot the work of the rogue insider for a moment. He watched this electric encounter, his eyes flicking from one to the other. Then he saw Sabatino attempt to throw Van Der Vaal off balance again. Slowly, gently, she stretched up and leant in even closer to the Massarella team boss. Equally slowly, she raised a hand and placed it on his arm. Van Der Vaal’s look of hesitation returned. Sabatino, well aware of the effect her closeness and touch was having on him, deliberately held her position and stance well within his personal space.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ growled the Afrikaner, but with less commitment as he ever so slightly tried to lean back away from her.
‘If you can make something look like driver error, my friend, so can I,’ she said and, in a surprisingly sensual way, started stroking Van Der Vaal’s wrist with the backs of her fingers. ‘Have a good race, Eugene,’ she said, and, turning round, walked calmly away.
Straker could hardly keep the smile off his face. ‘That was superb,’ he breathed.
‘Felt good,’ she said returning his smile. ‘You’re sure throwing this at them won’t blow your spy game — won’t damage your chances of catching them next time?’
‘For future races, maybe. But not today. With no help from MacRae, or spine from San Marino, there’s not much more we can do. It has its risks, and it’s not what we would’ve done for choice. But what else is left to us? Shocking Massarella — even half as well as that — must surely throw them off balance.’
As they walked back down the grid, Sabatino turned her head to look up at him. Straker met her eye. For perhaps a minute or two, all the baggage he was cursed to carry around with him was banished from his thoughts. The spunk of this woman was a real distraction. For a moment he had a feeling of liberation. Straker could not help but smile thinking about her tour de force. ‘You’ve got balls, Miss Sabatino, I’ll give you that.’
Reaching her car in their disappointing P14 on the grid, his mind was returned to the here and now. Straker wanted to throw a second punch at their suspected saboteurs. In the light of the high-speed incident the day before, he had been considering the Trifecta, Benbecular, Michael Lyons connection — particularly that man’s meeting over breakfast, which Straker had witnessed, in Leamington Spa. He thought: how could that, now, not be connected? Handing over to Sabatino her helmet and balaclava, Straker pulled his phone out of his pocket and made a point of drawing her attention to it. In her earshot, he dialled the number Treadwell had found for him. It rang.
‘Hello?’ said Straker. ‘Is that Mr Barnett?’
‘Yes,’ came the voice on the other end.
‘Mr Jeremy Barnett?’
‘Yes,’ came a terse confirmation.
‘Mr Jeremy Barnett from Benbecular Engines?’
‘Yes,’ but this time with a hint of irritation.
‘Glad to have got you, Mr Barnett. Olly Wragg, here — I’m calling you from Sabotage Digest…’
Straker let his words sink in for a few seconds.
‘Who? What?’
‘Olly Wragg … Sabotage Digest? We’re doing a feature on the sabotage you’ve masterminded against Ptarmigan for the Massarella Formula One team. We loved what you did for them in Spa. That whole remote engine limiter disruption thing — it’s brilliant. We’re wondering whether you’d be prepared to do an interview with us.’
‘Who the hell is this?’
‘We’re doing a double-page spread,’ Straker went on. ‘We’ve got all the telemetry, and a photo of Adi Barrantes at the very moment he activated your system. It’s all quite ingenious on your part. We’re very impressed … we want to give you full credit. Would you care to give us a quote at all?’
Straker moved the phone slightly away from his ear and smiled at Sabatino. ‘D’you know what? He swore … and rang off.’
‘No kidding,’ she smiled mischievously back. ‘That ought to have put the wind up him.’
‘I’d love to be on the call, now, between Barnett and whoever he talks to at Massarella.’
Sabatino, once again, took Straker by surprise. Walking up to him, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. ‘It feels good to be hitting back at last. Now, piss off. I’ve got a Grand Prix to win.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Sabatino sat in the cockpit of her Ptarmigan, fully six rows back from the front of the grid, and tried to shut out all thoughts of missed opportunities, missed positions, and what might have been. It could have been galling to think about where her performance should have put her that weekend. But for the intervention by Adi Barrantes, she could so easily have been on pole. By quite a margin.
Her altercation with Van Der Vaal, though, was proving to be cathartic. She found herself able to focus on what was coming. Instead of jobbing backwards, she focused on the machine immediately around her, the track, and the cars in front of her. She focused on what she saw. A race. Forty-four laps of motor racing round her favourite circuit in a car that she knew to be point-nine faster than any of the others on the grid.
Psyching herself up, she blipped the engine several times, breathed deeply, and checked in with Backhouse.
She was ready — she was in the zone.
Straker heard that short exchange through his headsets in the motor home headquarters truck. He was now also able to “see” it.
In front of him, this time, Straker had numerous screens set up. He had a split TV shot of the forward on-board views from the two Massarellas — showing both drivers’ hands and their steering wheels.
Another screen was segmented into four boxes, each a separate display, resembling an oscilloscope. These four showed the carrier wave of their different radio frequencies. The top one was Sabatino’s original voice radio. The next one down showed her second radio. The next box indicated the Ptarmigan’s original data link frequency, while the last box at the bottom of the screen showed the new parallel channel also carrying the engine data.
On any transmission, now, the display for the frequency in question would change colour from black to orange, helping to catch his eye. Through this form of monitoring, Straker could instantly “see” any traffic across their radio networks, particularly on the carrier wave. He was pleased. Even that brief radio exchange between Backhouse and Sabatino showed the system to be working. If the saboteurs tried to hit any of their frequencies, now, Straker would know immediately they were active and presenting a threat, allowing him instantly to trigger preventative measures.
The view of the grid changed from chaos to regimented order in a matter of seconds. All extraneous personnel hurried off, leaving only the neat pair of parallel lines — the cars — out on the track.
Their roar began.
Moments later, the two Ferraris on the front row moved off on the formation lap round the 4.4 mile circuit. The slighted lower-placed cars followed on, growling their readiness to challenge those up at the front.
Within minutes, the parade lap complete, the grid re-formed.
Behind the two Ferraris on the front row was Simi Luciano in the Massarella. Against Sabatino’s 50 points for the Championship, Luciano was lying third on 40. Paddy Aston, lying second overall with 44 points, held P5 in the Lambourn.
One red light came on.
The engines’ roar increased.
The second, third and fourth lights lit up.
Sabatino checked her steering wheel one last time. She steadied her breathing.