Driven (15 page)

S
traker was anxious to push on with the analysis. ‘Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that we’re not wrong and that this
was
induced – that there
was
an external force. How could it have been brought about?’

After a pause, Treadwell offered: ‘Some sort of timing device?’

‘If we’re convinced the time and place of the intervention are significant,’ said Sabatino with a shake of her head, ‘they’d have to be sure of hitting me at
exactly
the right moment. A pre-set timer could never ensure that.’

‘How else could someone interfere with the running of a car, then?’ asked Straker. ‘What about remotely – by some sort of radio signal?’

Sabatino frowned. ‘How could we even know whether that happened, this long after the incident?’

‘By keeping our eyes open for clues,’ replied Straker. ‘Let’s start by looking at all the radio traffic with the car – not just the intercom, but the telemetry and data channels as well?’

These reports were quickly printed off.

Treadwell laid them out on the table a few minutes later. Picking out the relevant time sheets, Backhouse said: ‘Here’s the data link carrier wave. Normal, up to 1.36.52.09.’

Straker took the page and studied the squiggly line – resembling the seismic measurement of an earthquake. He peered at the printout for some time. ‘There does seem to be some disturbance in the carrier wave,’ he observed. ‘Was that because of the incident, or was that disturbance the
cause
of it? Could interfering with the data carrier wave have thrown the engine management system?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Treadwell firmly. ‘Every F1 car would grind to a halt every time a local taxi firm radioed its base, or someone in
a nearby town ordered a pizza. Our radio nets are protected using specialized frequency ranges and electronic filters. Any disturbance you’ve found,’ he said pointing at the data sheet in front of Straker, ‘would not have been enough to affect the EMS.’

Straker nodded his acceptance of Treadwell’s answer, but somewhat half-heartedly, as he continued to peer closely at the graph. ‘You know, there is
definitely
interference in that carrier wave – over and above the trauma – at the key moment. It’s faint. But it
is
there,’ and he spun the page round to show the engineers. ‘Can we, at least, see if there were any other examples of radio interference like that at any other time today?’

Backhouse responded readily to the request. The pages, just produced, were split up and divvied out.

After several minutes thumbing through the printouts, each person in turn declared not. ‘It appears, then, that the only interference we experienced all day was at 1.36.52.09,’ Backhouse concluded.

‘It cannot, then, be a coincidence,’ declared Straker. ‘It means that there was an unidentified radio transmission, of some kind, at the
very
moment the fuel injection system shut down and the car lost control.’

Sabatino said. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘That the disruption of your fuel system might have been triggered by a radio signal. If we could track down that unknown transmission – and find its source – we
might
find the cause of the intervention.’

‘This is good, isn’t it?’ said Sabatino. ‘You can do that – you did that, finding the guy using a radio in Monaco.’

‘I did, but that was knowing the threat we faced in advance. Here, in Spa, we had no idea we’d be facing anything like this, so, obviously, we haven’t deployed the relevant surveillance kit.’

‘So you can’t catch these people?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘How do you do it, then?’ she asked.

‘We’ll have to look for
other
clues.’

Sabatino pulled a face, indicating a lack of belief. ‘Like what?’

Straker leant forward. ‘Have we got a map of the circuit?’

Backhouse looked a little nonplussed by the apparent non sequitur. After consultation with another screen or two, and the whirring of a printer, a map was produced on a sheet of A3. Straker pored over it, looking at the topography around Les Combes.

‘Something to help with our process of elimination,’ Straker explained, ‘is that all radio signals need line-of-sight to work. Unless they’re rebroadcast – picked up and sent on through another transceiver – radio signals don’t bend; they can’t change direction or go round corners. They also don’t work over a hill or well through buildings. That’s helpful, here, in narrowing our search down, as there’s chunky topography around Les Combes. It means that our unknown radio signal could not have come from the pit lane or paddock – there’s far too much real estate in between. Not only that, the interference in the carrier wave is very faint – I’d say it could only have come from a low-power, local transmission.’ Straker ran his finger round the contours; then, picking up a highlighter pen, he traced out a pink line across the map which ended up taking on the shape of a kidney. ‘Because of the undulating ground, such a weak radio signal could only have come from somewhere within this boundary,’ he said. ‘The area does include plenty of woodland, up on the hillside above the track. Perfectly possible for someone to have secreted themselves and activated it from up there.’

‘How big is the kit needed to do something like this?’ asked Sabatino.

‘For that weak a signal, not huge. Easily fit in a rucksack.’

‘So it could even have come from someone among the spectators?’

‘How many spectators would there have been inside this area?’

‘Quite a few,’ said Treadwell, ‘on the outside of the Kemmel Straight before Les Combes, along here,’ and pointed to the relevant section of the map with his finger.

‘I’ll check with Spa security and ask for their CCTV footage,’ said Straker. ‘Did
we
record any footage of the spectators on that bank, either from an on-board shot or from the main broadcaster?’

‘We’ll have a look,’ said Treadwell.

‘In the meantime,’ said Straker looking at the faces around the table, ‘we need to think this through. Could this kind of incident happen again?
Will
it happen again? Are we vulnerable to another attack in the race tomorrow?’

Sabatino’s expression hardly faltered at the suggestions. ‘Whoever did this is still out there. It
has
to be a possibility.’

Straker nodded. ‘What do you normally do when you have a safety issue like this?’

Sabatino smiled lasciviously. ‘We’re all virgins, on this one, Colonel.’

Treadwell answered in clear Australian: ‘We’d probably go to the Race Director.’

‘Would you expect him to deal with it, or would he take it higher within the FIA?’

‘Definitely higher.’

‘But with our level of proof,’ added Backhouse, ‘if it did go any higher, it wouldn’t help us much. You heard San Marino’s response to the radio jamming in Monaco?’

‘We’ve got to try – somehow – to corroborate our assertions, then. Okay,’ said Straker, looking at his watch. ‘It’s three-thirty. Let’s pull together any footage we have of that part of the circuit to suss out the lie of spectators near that corner. While you’re getting on with that, I’ll go and talk to my friend about the woodland area around Les Combes.’

M
aurice Beauregard, the circuit’s head of security, was troubled to hear of another possible sabotage incident, and immediately came up trumps. In double-quick time he recruited a sizeable search party of police sniffer dogs from two local stations. A dozen or so Belgian Malinois were soon deployed across the hillsides to scour the wooded areas Straker was concerned about – hoping to find spoor to indicate the earlier presence of or even the position used by a concealed radio operator.

Although buoyed by such substantial help to his investigation, Straker couldn’t add much more once the search had started, so accepted a lift back to the security manager’s office.

There, he asked Beauregard whether he was prepared to download all the circuit’s CCTV recordings onto DVDs. Having seen Sabatino’s high-speed incident, the security man was ready to help. He told Straker he would have them delivered round the moment they were ready.

S
traker returned to the Ptarmigan headquarters truck. ‘I’ve got the area around Les Combes being searched by police sniffer dogs,’ he reported to the team.

Sabatino looked genuinely impressed.

‘How have we got on with pulling together the footage around the corner – that we recorded?’ he asked.

‘Pretty well.’

‘Let’s start with that.’

Backhouse fired up a laptop to view what they had. ‘This one,’ he explained, ‘is on-board with Remy – looking forward, approaching Les Combes.’ As they played it, they were badly distracted from scanning the spectators – having to relive the horror of those fearful moments and seeing something of what Sabatino must have experienced as the picture violently swung about.

‘How the hell did you hold that together?’ said Treadwell. ‘Also, it was really lucky you didn’t hit that car alongside.’

‘Hang on,’ said Sabatino hitting the pause button. ‘That’s right. There
was
a car alongside, coasting home on the inside of the racing line.’

‘A Massarella, by the looks of things,’ said Straker, backing up the clip. ‘Have we got anything to check the spectators from on-board that car?’

‘Hang on. Yes, here we go – facing both backward and forward.’

They started with the rearward footage.

It showed a shot over and through the rear wing of the Massarella
as it cruised slowly on an in-lap up the Kemmel Straight, along the channel-like passage through the trees. Looming in the distance, and closing up fast, came – head-on – the brilliant-turquoise shape of Sabatino’s Ptarmigan as she hurtled up the hill towards the car-borne camera. In a matter of moments, it had shot past, out of the picture to the right.

‘Okay, there were some spectators visible there, but they’re too far in the distance to be studied properly. What about the
forward
view from the Massarella?’ prompted Straker.

They found that segment on another disc, from further back along the Kemmel Straight.

This showed the front end of the black Massarella, as it slowly approached the corner on the inside of the circuit, with the back of Adi Barrantes’s helmet – in the sky-blue and white of the Argentine flag – occupying the top right of the screen. One hand could be seen on the steering wheel.

A moment later the stricken Ptarmigan flashed into the left-hand side of the shot, already snaking violently as it hurtled past, off the track, heading to bounce over the kerbstones. Once again, spotting for spectators on the left-hand bank was not easy, given the distraction of the out-of-control car.

‘Wow, it still doesn’t lose any of its drama,’ said Treadwell.

Straker frowned. ‘We’ve got poor sight of the spectators before the incident – backwards from the Massarella – and very little after the incident – forward from the Massarella, let alone anything of the crowds
level
with Remy at the exact moment of the incident. Is there any shot that shows the crowd directly opposite the crash site?’

‘Afraid not.’

A
few minutes later there was a knock on the door of the motor home. One of Beauregard’s people was standing there with a box of DVDs. Taking delivery, Straker immediately searched the collection to support their scan of the spectators. He found CCTV material that might work. It was shot from a gantry halfway down the Kemmel
Straight directly opposite the bank of spectators, pointing across the circuit from the inside, outwards and towards Les Combes.

‘Okay, let’s see if we can study the crowds from this angle,’ said Straker.

They started to run it. ‘This looks promising,’ offered Sabatino.

But instead of studying the clear shot of the spectators on the bank overlooking the track, their eyes were, inextricably, drawn to the fishtailing Ptarmigan again, its violent changes of direction appearing even more disturbing when seen from above and behind.

Straker asked them to run through the clip again, this time in slow motion. As it ran, they stopped the video and zoomed in on a couple of potential suspects among the crowds, but it was clear they all looked completely disinterested in the drama on the circuit below them.

‘There are several hundred people on the grass there, but none of them really sparks suspicion.’

‘Agreed.’

To make sure, they ran through the footage a third time, this time frame by frame.

After a few minutes, two of the Ptarmigan team suddenly emitted grunts simultaneously. ‘Hang on, wait a second! What was that?’

Treadwell tapped the space bar on the computer. ‘We haven’t seen that before.’

‘Seen what?’ asked Straker.

‘Back it up, back it up!’

The footage was run again. Sabatino peered at the screen. ‘There – stop!’

She clearly wasn’t looking at the spectators.

The screen was frozen. It was a grainy image. Focus was poor, but the two cars could be seen – as blurs – side by side. Something eye-catching stood out against the grainy shapes in the image: a bright red light on the back of Sabatino’s car.

‘Well blow me!’ said Treadwell. ‘Blink and you’d miss that.’

‘Miss what?’ asked Straker.

‘Her light’s come on.’

Straker looked puzzled. ‘Don’t lights come on when you brake?’

Sabatino almost bawled: ‘
Hell
no! F1 cars don’t even
have
brake lights. That’s a high-intensity rain light – comes on when the visibility closes in.’

‘A fog light?’

‘Sort of – activated by a humidity and moisture sensor which … wait a second, that doesn’t make any sense. It was sunny and dry all afternoon.
But
,’ said Sabatino raising her voice – as if a realization was striking, ‘our cars also activate that rain light automatically with
the engine limiter
when we’re forced to slow down – to go slower than eighty kilometres an hour in the pit lane!’

Treadwell, Backhouse and Sabatino all looked at each other. ‘Fuck, does that mean the engine limiter cut in?’