Fuck.
His heart still pounded. Angrily, he threw back the covers, and became aware of the dampness of the sheets. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed to stand up, he felt the cooling effect from even that limited movement — confirmation that he was covered in sweat. As he stood up, cold beads of moisture rolled down his temples, chest, onto his flanks from under his arms, and into the small of his back.
Still in the dark, Straker walked across the large high-ceilinged room, making for the tall curtains, and heaved them apart. Fiddling with the ornate Charles III latches and handle, he opened the heavy glass-panelled double doors, and let himself out onto the balcony.
The night air was surprisingly warm — much warmer than the air conditioning inside had been. A gentle breeze blew into his face and across his chest, coming off the vast dark void of the Mediterranean, which stretched away into the night beyond the darkened roofs of Monte-Carlo below him. Fiercely gripping the wrought-iron railings of the balcony with both hands, Straker continued to breathe deeply, trying to calm himself down.
The principality was quiet. Sound asleep.
Lights, mainly on the outside of buildings and along the streets, were burning — the more distant ones seeming to flicker in the humidity. Traffic could be heard, but was so slight he could even hear individual cars in different directions at the same time. Gradually, his heart rate and breathing began to slow.
Straker knew comrades had returned from active tours with limbs and faculties missing, and continued to suffer physical disability and pain. He knew he was lucky. Even so, his experiences and subsequent trauma had not been without their painful consequences. They had cost him his career — even his marriage.
Civvy Street should have signified a new beginning, particularly his recruitment by Quartech. Working for its Competition Intelligence and Security team looked like filling a large part of the gap left after resigning his commission in the Royal Marines. His new role was certainly stimulating — it demanded imagination, intelligence, resourcefulness, persistence and the taking of calculated risks. Contributing further to this sense of recovery, Straker’s first assignment for Dominic Quartano — salvaging a multi-billion-pound weapons contract with a Middle Eastern state — had been a triumph. So, fuck it, why the regression now? Why tonight?
Standing on the balcony overlooking dark and sleeping Monte-Carlo, he tried to make sense of the episode. In therapy, he had been encouraged not to see each episode as a flashback to the original emotional scarring — but to see any such reversion being triggered by more recent troubles. Straker went through his encounters, conversations, experiences and feelings of the previous day, as he had been taught.
What, then, had caused this?
He could only conclude one thing.
This relapse had to have been tripped subconsciously by the mention, yesterday, of someone’s name.
Charlotte — “Charlie” — Grant.
FIVE
Straker found it impossible to get back to sleep that morning. Rarely, if ever after such an episode, could he do so. He knew that, invariably, his only solace under this torment was to purge his soul through the pain of physical exertion. At half-past four in the morning he found himself — like so many times before — out in the darkness, trying to run off the disturbance in solitude. This time, it just happened to be along the streets and across the hillsides of Monte-Carlo.
As they went, this attack had been a bad one. Despite the energy expended in his two-hour run, its effects completely suppressed his appetite.
Not having any interest in breakfast, Straker dragged himself down to the harbour, still fighting to regain his composure — barely even noticing the Riviera paradise all around him.
As arranged, Backhouse was waiting for him at the main entrance to the paddock. Engagement with the race engineer was Straker’s first proper distraction following the episode.
Walking along the waterfront on the western side of the harbour, they passed down the line of the teams’ massive and jaw-droppingly expensive motor homes and mobile headquarters. Ptarmigan’s own — an articulated eighteen wheeler with extendable sides and smoked-glass windows — was dressed overall in the team’s brilliant turquoise livery.
Punching a code into the security key pad, its door hissed open; Backhouse led Straker up and into Ptarmigan’s mobile command centre — equipped as high-tech as a moveable platform could allow. The team set-up was impressive. Straker was relieved it was all so engrossing. His mood began to change significantly for the first time that morning.
Everything in the motor home was striking — it was decked out in rosewood, chrome and glass, with pale turquoise-coloured leather seating, edged with navy blue piping. Down one side, a row of eight turquoise-liveried team members sat at a bench-like desk that ran the full length of the truck. Each member wore a set of Ptarmigan-branded headphones and sat at a console, with a keyboard and bank of plasma screens in front and above them. It looked to Straker like a — small-scale — cross between Mission Control and a City dealing floor. A meeting table ran down the other side of the truck, surrounded by a curved bench.
‘Let me introduce you to Oliver Treadwell, Ptarmigan’s Strategy Director, who’ll run through what’s going on,’ Backhouse said. Treadwell was in his thirties, slightly shorter than Straker’s six two, and had a mop of blond hair. Straker moved forward to shake hands.
‘For the race on Sunday, we have the prat perch — our command centre — on the pit wall,’ said the Strategy Director in a noticeable Australian burr. ‘But this set-up, in here, is our eyes and ears on the track and pit lane in the build-up to the race. We collect all the data and information we need to decide our drivers’ race strategy — the number of pit stops, what kind of tyres to use, and when.’
Straker’s eyes ran over the array of screens. CCTV pictures from the Ptarmigan cars were displayed, along with various digital channels from the sport’s commercial rights holder.
‘These guys here,’ Treadwell indicated, bracketing them with outstretched arms, ‘are watching all the telemetry from both our cars on these screens. We can measure, remotely via on-board sensors, upwards of two hundred and fifty aspects of the car — temperature, pressures, loading, etc. — and all this real-time data can be called up instantly via our touch-screen menu system.’
‘So who’s that?’ asked Straker, pointing to a face shown on a video conferencing screen with whom one of the team was clearly conversing.
‘That’s the factory back at Shenington, in Oxfordshire. All the data we collect is simultaneously fired back there and fed into a simulator. We then extrapolate all the discernable trends on the cars while they’re racing to see what effects they could have. Those findings, too, help us adjust our strategies and, hopefully, afford us better reliability and performance.’
Treadwell used his arms again. ‘These two guys are monitoring the weather. Rain’s our biggest concern, although we’re hopefully looking okay this weekend. Even so, atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed all have a huge influence on the workings of the cars. So, we monitor the weather closely and adjust our set-up accordingly.
‘And here,’ said Treadwell walking further down the row of consoles to the far end, ‘is our Intel headquarters. All the teams keep an eye on what the other teams are up to. These guys are trying to work out the strategies — number of pit stops — the other teams will adopt for the race, while over here,’ he said pointing with splayed fingers at a bank of recorders, ‘we aim to collect every bit of VT footage of all the other cars and their crews — filmed by ourselves or captured from the official broadcaster, whether external or on-board. We then collate, scrutinize and analyse everything we can. Assessments will be made of any unexpected components — or actions by drivers or crews — that we notice, any of which might give away an innovation they might have made. We also record the engine noise of every car for analysis, and listen for anything unusual. And then, when we do come across something interesting, we brief our director of the relevant aspect — engines, gearbox, brakes, fuel, tyres, aerodynamics, pit crew, strategy — showing them what we’ve found.’