Driven (20 page)

‘Very nearly.’

‘Don’t you dare. Not yet, at any rate.’

R
eaching her hotel room in Park Lane, she turned on the light, kicked the door shut behind them and approached him directly, kissing him firmly on the mouth. Her body, pushed in hard against his, was already inducing a strong response. Straker found her predatory approach erotic and intoxicating.

Kissing him, Sabatino started unbuttoning his shirt and, within a
few moments, was at his belt and trouser buttons. With a hand into his fly, and a gentle cupping and circling of her hand and fingers, Straker felt a shock wave run through him. She was electrifying.

Pushing him back on the bed, and kneeling astride him, she finished removing his clothes and then lifted her top over her head, revealing her slim taut figure. Unclipping her bra – passing both hands behind her back which served to project her chest – Straker was treated to the sight of her round, hand-sized breasts. No effects of gravity or the surgeon’s knife were anywhere to be seen.

Leaning down, she kissed him hard on the mouth and, without lifting herself off him, deftly removed her jeans and knickers. This was amazing. Straker had never been so passive and yet so aroused.

Sabatino grabbed both Straker’s wrists, and pinned his arms above his head. He was lying spread eagled with this writhing, spirited, energetic and beautiful woman on top of him.

She continued to pleasure them both with the rhythmic action of her hips. That continued for a time, her knowing exactly how far to excite him before slowing up and letting him subside. She came three times in the process.

Starting again, she felt Straker’s movements intensify. Very quickly, she lifted herself up and off him – and took him further by surprise. She grabbed the end of him between thumb and forefinger and squeezed him hard. ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said firmly. ‘The Colonel hasn’t finished his duty … not by a long shot.’

It worked.

He laughed out loud, at her directness, her control – and the clear knowledge of what she wanted, and how.

What a woman. Not then, but afterwards, he was given to mulling whether she was this confident and direct because she lived the high-octane life of a racing driver, or whether she was a racing driver because she was naturally this self-assured.

In the end he concluded he didn’t give a stuff.

Thankfully, she was what she was and was magnificent for it.

T
he next morning, following an even more energetic “round four”, Straker shared an expansive breakfast with Sabatino, served off a crisp white linen tablecloth in her room in the Dorchester. Just after eight, he left her to walk to the office.

There was suddenly a different feel to his world. Halfway across Mayfair, Straker felt himself to be better. It wasn’t simply the endorphins of last night, powerful though they were – nor was it just the intimacy with another human being, which he had been without for so long. Straker felt his buoyancy was more profound than that. Several strands of his new life seemed to be helping distance him from his troubles. There was the role at Quartech. His status with Quartano, particularly after the Buhran assignment. His involvement in the spectacular world of Formula One. And now, after last night, a closeness to one of the most fascinating women he could imagine. What might this closeness to Sabatino end up meaning? he wondered. Straker’s mind only knew positive thoughts that morning – a sensation he had not experienced for a very long time.

Irritating him – as it broke his reverie – was the ring of his phone. But seeing who it was, he relaxed – feeling this incursion to be a part of his new-found optimism. ‘Karen? How’s it going?’

‘Pretty well, I think, Matt. I’ve got something for you.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘You asked me to look for any connections between Van Der Vaal … Massarella … Obrenovich and Joss MacRae?’

‘Yes…’

‘Were you aware that in March – just gone – MacRae sold a thirty-three per cent stake in Motor Racing Promotions Limited – for a mix of cash, equity and convertible prefs?’

‘Interesting,’ said Straker recovering some of his buoyancy. ‘No. I didn’t know that. For what sort of money?’

‘Around £500 million.’

‘Christ. To who? Hang on, if that’s the case why doesn’t everybody know about this?’

‘Because,’ said Karen knowingly, ‘nobody does. I couldn’t find a single article on it. I talked to our bank in Zurich. It’s all been done completely hush-hush. The stake was bought by a Lichtenstein Anstalt.’

Straker exhaled audibly. ‘That’s, surely, why nobody knows about it, then – but, by the same token, neither can we. A corporate shield’ll stop
us
from knowing who’s behind it, too. Sod it – that’s a tantalizing dead end.’

Karen chuckled teasingly. ‘There are no shareholders listed, no. But I
have
done some digging.’

She paused for effect.

‘There
was
a director named … just one.’

Straker stayed silent.

‘I assumed he would be one of those professional company secretary – trustee – director – types?’ Karen went on. ‘I made some further enquiries around Vaduz. And that’s when I struck gold.’

‘How?’

‘This guy’s only ever named with the interests of one other client.’

‘
Who?
’

‘A Swiss oil company … Helveticoil.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘You probably won’t have. But you
will
have heard of its owner.’

‘Who’s that?’

She paused again. ‘None other than … Avel … Obrenovich!’

‘Shit – no!’

There was silence on the phone.

‘Matt?’

‘Karen, that’s brilliant work. You might just have blown this whole thing wide open.’

S
traker continued his march to the office, buoyed up once more. Before he had the chance to think through the ramifications of Karen’s discoveries, his phone went again. This time it was Oliver Treadwell.

‘How soon can you get up to the Ptarmigan factory?’ he asked.

Straker heard an edge to the Strategy Director’s voice. ‘As soon as you like. Why? What’s happened?’

‘We’ve found the cause of Helli’s crash.’

Straker sensed the answer was sinister. ‘What was it?’

‘It would be better to show you – in person. I should warn you, though … it’s not good news.’

J
ust under two hours later, having hammered his Honda Civic up the M40, Straker was standing in the loading bay of the Ptarmigan factory. Treadwell led him over to a temporary workbench, set up for the purposes of the investigation. Straker still had no inkling of what was coming.

Treadwell had laid out two component fragments from Cunzer’s car on the work surface. ‘This is what we’ve found,’ he said gravely.

On the table were two things. Straker understood one of them to be a wishbone – a V-shaped boomerang-looking component made of carbon fibre, part of the car’s suspension. The other, he would hazard a guess, was a section of exhaust.

‘This is what we believe caused Helli’s crash,’ said Treadwell seriously, lifting up the V-shaped component. ‘These wishbones are made of carbon fibre – a lightweight, strong material. But it has a drawback…’

‘… it won’t take the thread of a screw,’ offered Straker, remembering his tour with Andy Backhouse.

‘Precisely – the stuff just crumbles. The only way to fix it to other components and materials, therefore, is glue.’

‘Okay.’

‘So on the wishbones – to fix the V-shaped spars at either end – we fit metal lugs, or flexures. These flexures are then used to bolt the wishbone to the wheel assembly at one end, and to the chassis mount on the other.’

‘And the flexures are held to the spars by the glue?’

‘Except that here, on Helli’s car, the glue on the chassis flexure of the wishbone has failed.’

‘Does it do that?’

Treadwell’s face looked even blacker. ‘Not normally, no. In any case, this was no wear-and-tear failure.’

It was Straker’s turn to look grave. ‘Why? What’s happened to it?’

‘It’s been melted.’

‘What do you mean –
been
– melted?’

Treadwell placed the wishbone back down on the table top and picked up the other component lying on the workbench. ‘On our cars,’ he said, ‘the exhaust system runs very close to the chassis-mounting of the lower rear wishbones. We can do that because we heavily insulate the exhaust with a special silicon-based polymer – as you see, here,’ he said pointing to the lagging around the pipe.

Straker leaned in and studied the casing. But then he spotted something else. And leant in closer.

There seemed to be a tiny, ragged-edged hole through the metal tubing and insulation. ‘What’s that?’ he asked. ‘That’s not machine made?’

Treadwell’s face told him he had hit the mark. ‘It isn’t,’ said the Strategy Director. ‘It’s not meant to be there.’

Straker frowned. ‘What’re the consequences of that hole? You talked about the wishbone first – I’m guessing there’s some kind of cause and effect here?’

Treadwell nodded at Straker’s quick thinking. ‘That hole, even that small, could have, over time, released heat – enough heat, given its precise location, to melt the carbon fibre glue. Hot gas had been escaping from the exhaust – straight onto the metal flexure on the end of the wishbone.’

Straker ducked his head down to look at the hole in the exhaust pipe again, and even rubbed a finger over it. His mind was already whirring with the inevitable question: ‘Okay, Ollie,’ he said. ‘How did that hole come about?’

Treadwell now looked like he was in mourning. ‘We’ve never had a failure in that exhaust system. Not one. That’s not to say we couldn’t – but we haven’t yet. In any case, a natural failure wouldn’t happen right there – it’s not subjected to that much heat- or pressure loading.’

‘So you’re saying it didn’t just give out – you’re saying it was
made
?’

Treadwell nodded.

‘
Deliberately?
’

Treadwell nodded again.

‘We’re working on determining how it was made – but that hole, in that exact location, is utterly suspicious.’

Straker straightened up. ‘Let’s suppose someone
did
make this hole. What could they have expected to happen because of it?’

‘One thing – and one thing only. Suspension failure. Melting that glue would inevitably degrade the wishbone. That wishbone giving out would completely degrade the rear axle. Any rear axle failure would collapse the back end, rendering the car undriveable.’

‘And what would be the consequences?’

‘Depends on the speed the car was going at the moment it failed. At high speed – as in Monaco – we saw the results all too clearly.’

‘You think that’s what the saboteurs were going for?’

Treadwell shook his head. ‘Possibly, if they’re psychotic. To do us straightforward competitive harm, they didn’t need it to fail quite so spectacularly. Even at a slow speed, suspension failure would still degrade the car completely. We’d have been significantly inconvenienced – because of the time and work it would take to replace it. It would have
easily
disrupted Qualifying or our race, had the car survived that long. So – no – I don’t think they minded, really, when it gave out. Any amount of use – even over several sessions – would have taken its toll on the glue, and, certainly over the course of a race weekend, would have provided enough cumulative heat to degrade it to the point of failure at some point.’

Both men fell silent as the malice behind all this sunk in.

‘These bastards are up to more than just interfering with our electronics,’ said Straker almost to himself.

‘And, again, it’s clever, Matt,’ said Treadwell. ‘This interference was so small and hidden we’d be unlikely to see it – as, indeed, we didn’t during Andy’s checks in Monaco. And, a broken suspension could be so easily dismissed as mechanical failure or driver error – especially with the unforgiving bumps, barriers and kerbstones in
Monte-Carlo. Who wouldn’t suspect a young driver like Helli of hitting something around that circuit over the course of a weekend? As a way of attacking us – without immediately arousing suspicion – this sabotage, along with the radio jamming, is fiendishly clever.’

‘We should be in no doubt, then,’ said Straker as a conclusion. ‘These people are deadly serious about wanting to do us harm.’

S
traker felt this new evidence intensely. He had to get outside, to take some fresh air. Needing to be alone, he stood on the terrace to the north of the factory, and looked out over the rolling Oxfordshire countryside – trying to calm himself down. Even the soothing breeze and hazy summer sunshine had little effect on him.

Straker was motivated, anyway, by his professional duty to complete this assignment – and honour the responsibility he had been given to counter the sabotage risk to Ptarmigan. But now, he clearly had to defend the team against a very real life-threatening danger. And that, in the light of his intimacy with Sabatino, prompted a powerful urge in him to defend her personally. How dare these people be out to threaten the life of anyone, let alone someone he was close to.

Straker wanted to fight back – to retaliate in some way. He was angry that these people, whoever they were, were able to do all that they were doing with impunity. Even so, he fought to rationalize his response, very aware that it was largely driven by emotion, which he fought to control. That emotional tussle, though, ended up helping him. It prompted him to think of ways to fire a shot back at these arseholes, even if it might be indirectly.

An idea he had been toying with finally took hold.

Going back inside, he found the Strategy Director in his office. ‘Ollie, have you and Tahm thought any more about the switch away from Trifecta?’

‘Yes,’ replied Treadwell, clearly not happy with the idea.

‘I take it, then, we’re transferring to Cohens,’ Straker concluded. ‘Have we told Trifecta?’

‘Not yet.’

Straker offered him a sideways smile. ‘Let me, would you?’ he said with a clear edge to his voice.

Treadwell looked a little surprised. ‘Why, who are you going to tell?’

‘Someone whose resultant discomfort might do us some good.’

A
n hour later Straker had managed to photograph the wishbone, the hole in the exhaust system, and download his pictures to a Ptarmigan iPad – along with a sequence of photographs of Helli Cunzer’s spectacular crash in Monaco, including the horrific moment when his car was completely engulfed in flame. Driving away from the factory in his Honda, Straker headed for Leamington Spa.

He drove onto the now-familiar industrial estate and pulled up a discreet distance away from, but with a clear view of, the main entrance of Trifecta Systems. He was instantly relieved. The Peugeot he hoped to see was parked out front. His quarry, therefore, ought to be inside. Straker killed the engine.

He readied himself to wait.

He willed his quarry to emerge.

Nothing happened for quite a while. A stream of people came and went from the office building, more exiting it with the onset of lunchtime. None of them, though – as far as Straker could tell – was his man.

Suddenly Straker sat up.

There he was.

Michael Lyons – balding, middle-aged, and slightly overweight, wearing an ill-fitting suit – appeared through the glass front doors of the Trifecta building. Straker immediately felt relieved again – not only that he had spotted his man, but also that Lyons was alone and didn’t seem to be walking with any degree of urgency or purpose. Nor was he carrying anything – briefcase, laptop, files – so it didn’t look like he was heading off to an appointment.

He watched Michael Lyons walk through the business park. Straker climbed out of his car and, after a considered interval, started to follow him on foot.

Straker was able to keep up.

From a distance, he kept Lyons in view.

The man ambled down a narrow footpath out of the complex, and turned left at the far end. Straker needed to jog briefly to maintain visual contact. Lyons – and then Straker – soon emerged onto a street with shops, bustling with shoppers. Looking left, Straker caught sight of his man – some way along the pavement – as he disappeared into a watering hole.

Straker quickened down the street to follow him inside.

It turned out to be a chichi bar occupying a redundant branch office, hived off by a high street bank. Straker entered in time to see Lyons make his way across the crowded room, between groups of chattering people, towards a free table and set of chairs against the back wall.

Straker picked his moment to pounce.

Moving swiftly across the room himself, he headed towards Lyons’s table. In one movement, Straker pulled out the opposite chair, dropped himself onto it, and said: ‘Michael, you should take a look at this,’ swinging the iPad round to face him. ‘After you jammed Sabatino’s radio in Monte-Carlo, and that psychotic crash you caused in Spa, this is the latest evidence of your sabotage – damage to Helli Cunzer’s exhaust and wishbone, and the cause of
his
crash in Monaco.’

Such an invasion of space was so unexpected – and so rapid. Moreover, a stranger had addressed Lyons directly by name. Then he was confronted with the series of images, the latter ones showing Cunzer’s horrific crash, the wreckage of his car, and an arresting one of the fireball that engulfed him. Lyons was completely thrown. The man looked up, an expression of concerned bemusement on his face. ‘Who the fuck
are
you?’ he spluttered.

‘Someone who knows precisely what you and your scumbag friends are up to. You don’t have to be part of this, you know, Michael. Jamming may just be a bit of technical fun, even if it is still a violation of decency. But threatening lives is something very different. Always remember this,’ he said tapping the frame of the iPad
on the table, ‘we can prove, now, that you’ve all got form. If you and your
friends
do go on to cause a death,’ said Straker with considerable menace, ‘it … will … be … murder. You will be named as an accessory. Do you understand? Do the right thing, man – shop these arseholes, before it’s too late … too late – for you.’

Lyons’s equilibrium started to return, fuelled by a growing sense of intrusion at this confrontation. He tried to smile, but did so lamely. ‘You quite clearly don’t have the faintest idea of who you’re dealing with.’

Straker paused, saying nothing – deliberately for effect; he simply looked the other man straight in the eye. ‘The real question, Michael,’ he said, his voice quietening significantly, ‘is: do you?’

Straker paused again.

‘Do you
trust
them, Michael? Have you thought about that? Have you thought about what they might do – the moment they think you know too much? Have you ever thought they might even be setting you up as the fall guy?’

Straker was pleased.

The unexpected angle of this last comment clearly threw Lyons anew. ‘Here’s what I’m going to do, Michael: I’m going to give you a week – to do the decent thing and expose these people. If I’ve not heard from you by then, Ptarmigan is going to sack Trifecta – and we are going to cite your unethical conduct as the reason. You know, Apartment 5 at 25 Rue des Princes?’

Lyons suddenly looked genuinely startled.

‘We will make it perfectly clear that it was you – Michael – that lost Trifecta its business with us. You will then have to tell your scumbag friends that you lost
them
their opportunity to do Ptarmigan any more harm.’

Straker stared intently into the man’s face. ‘You’ve got a week to put this right,’ he said, placing a business card with his contact details down on the table. Standing up, Straker retrieved his iPad, and walked out of the bar.

M
aking his way back to the Ptarmigan factory, Straker turned this ploy over in his mind. Had he even gone far enough? Should he not have terminated the link with Trifecta, then and there? Straker was soon smiling, though, pleased with what he had done. His gambit – and deadline – had to put Lyons under some sort of pressure.

Straker was thinking all this through as he rounded the corner at the bottom of the Edgehill escarpment, when his attention was jolted away. Dropping a gear to start up the long climb, he heard a soul-wrenching growl of protest from his Honda engine. It got worse – before the thing packed up completely, and ground to a halt. Straker tried to restart the engine, but it wouldn’t even turn over. Nothing.

On a blind corner, he was stranded on a slope – fully in the road. Twisting quickly round, concerned about traffic hitting him from behind, he flicked the car out of gear, let it start rolling backwards down the hill and, once freewheeling under gravity, applied a little left-hand-down. With enough momentum, the car soon bumped up off the road, and completely onto the grass verge. There, close in against the hedge, Straker applied the handbrake.

Half an hour later Treadwell arrived to pick him up. There was a blast of Australian piss-taking over the state of Straker’s car. ‘I’ll get Morgans of Kineton to recover it. Probably far more humane to take it straight to the crusher – save everybody’s time.’

They abandoned the Honda on the side of the road, and drove back to the factory. ‘How did you get on with Trifecta?’ Treadwell asked.

Straker explained his tactics and relayed the conversation.

‘Oh to be a fly on the wall when Lyons has to fess up to that lot.’

Straker, though, wasn’t smiling. ‘We will have tweaked the tail of the tiger, all right. And they
won’t
like it. They’re bound to lash out. We have to be ready, Ollie, for whatever they throw at us next.’