Driven (37 page)

San Marino hesitated, switching his attention from Van Der Vaal back to Brogan.

‘In that case, Mr President,’ Brogan went on, retaking the floor, ‘I would like to demonstrate to the Council that this encouragement to pass on ASD technology is by no means an isolated incident from the Massarella Team. Indeed, it is entirely consistent with a programme of intervention levelled by Massarella at Ptarmigan throughout this season. May I ask you to turn to Tab 15 of our revised statement of facts, which shows my client’s new evidence. Which is substantial. I should explain, Mr President, that Ptarmigan’s feeling of injustice over Massarella’s conduct, and their lack of disclosure in this case, was so strong it prompted my client to take significant legal action. Ptarmigan applied to the British High Court – under the UK’s Civil Procedure Act 1997 – for powers to search premises and to seize documents from two parties involved with Massarella’s activities. On the strength of Ptarmigan’s case, the Court granted permission. Tab 15 shows some of the records seized from the premises of Trifecta Systems and Mr Michael Lyons, formerly of the same, under the powers of the Search Order issued by the High Court.’

Some Council members looked clearly surprised by the extent of the legal processes Ptarmigan had invoked.

Brogan kept talking, though, almost as if he were chairing the meeting. ‘In here, Mr President, you will now see batches of emails – between Mr Lyons and Mr Van Der Vaal. Extraordinarily, news is shared between the two men of the sabotage incidents since alleged by Ptarmigan. The first batch of emails relates to the jamming device placed in Ms Sabatino’s helmet before Monaco – which interfered with a potentially race-winning transmission at the time of the safety car. The second set of emails discusses the sabotage of Helli Cunzer’s exhaust in Monte-Carlo, intended to degrade his suspension – which it did at high speed, causing that horrific crash which nearly killed him. And the third batch refers to the device used by Adi Barrantes to remotely activate Ms Sabatino’s engine limiter in Spa, which caused her to suffer that terrifying high-speed loss of control in the second round of Qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix.’

Brogan stopped.

He sensed he had delivered quite a punch. There was a lot for the Council to absorb.

The room fell silent.

The news was sinking in.

Straker felt they might be approaching the crunch point in their arguments – and he did not want Van Der Vaal to have any room to wriggle out of this. None. Above all, he wanted Van Der Vaal to pay for having lied.

As the Council members were getting over their shock of this new evidence, Straker pulled a pre-prepared piece of paper from the top pocket of his suit, and slid it across the highly polished antique table to Brogan. Brogan picked it up and opened it. It said:

Call Andy Backhouse and ask him about the sabotage of Ptarmigan, NOW!
It was was followed by a number.

Brogan was clearly taken aback. Forgetting the decorum of the meeting for a moment, he turned to Straker and said aloud: ‘What? Are you
serious
?’

‘Absolutely, Oscar.
Call
him,’ Straker said with unequivocal conviction.

Sounds of their exchange attracted some attention from around the table.

‘Mr President?’ said Brogan to the meeting, more easily heard now that a number of people had turned towards him. ‘Ptarmigan would like to call a witness.’

San Marino, distracted from the animated chatter among his Council members, said: ‘Er, who would that be, Mr Brogan?’

‘Mr Andy Backhouse, sir.’

San Marino looked considerably put out. ‘Now? But we’ve not made any arrangements to have anyone here.’

Straker did not want this to stall. Catching Brogan’s eye, he stuck his thumb and little finger out from a clenched fist, lifted it to his ear, and urged him to make the call.

‘We can get him on the phone. We have a number for him, Mr President,’ at which point Brogan looked at Straker for guidance. ‘I gather he’s available,’ said the lawyer with interrogative intonation. Straker nodded his confirmation.

San Marino looked around the room to his Council colleagues as if to seek their approval. This meeting had been taken completely by surprise already. Either they were too shocked to object, or were simply too hooked on hearing the next unexpected twist.

There was no dissent.

‘What are you doing calling one of my members of staff?’ blasted Van Der Vaal.

‘Do you object, Eugene?’ asked San Marino quite sternly, given the other man’s tone. ‘This Council
does
want to get to the truth.’

For the first time Van Der Vaal looked like he didn’t quite know what to do next. ‘What the hell. He’ll back me up anyway. Call him – call my mother, if you want.’

San Marino reached out again for the desk telephone in front of him and pulled it a little closer. Brogan read out the number, which San Marino tapped into the phone.

It was soon heard ringing over the loudspeaker.

Straker turned to look at Sabatino. Her face reflected complete
bemusement and then serious concern. It seemed to ask: ‘What the hell?’

The phone was answered. ‘Hello, Andy Backhouse,’ said the Brummie voice.

‘Mr Backhouse, Bo San Marino, here.’

‘Good morning, Mr President.’

‘Andy, I’m calling you from a special hearing of the World Motor Sport Council – looking into allegations of industrial espionage by the Ptarmigan Formula One Team.’

‘Okay.’

‘We have a quorum of thirteen of our members, as well as other dignitaries present. We have members of Ptarmigan and a representation from the Massarella Team here. We would like to ask you some questions. But first, are you comfortable with the significance of this – and do you recognize the authority of this meeting?’

‘Of course, Mr President.’

‘Thank you, Andy. Go ahead then, please, Mr Brogan.’

‘Mr Backhouse, Oscar Brogan – counsel for Ptarmigan F1 – here,’ he said casting an eye down at Straker’s note: ‘I would like to ask you about the sabotage of Ptarmigan,’ after which he looked across at Straker. He received a nod of reassurance.

‘Certainly, sir. Has the Council been made aware of the various instances?’ Backhouse asked.

‘It has,’ confirmed Brogan.

‘Okay, then. Mr President, up until Spa, I was Remy Sabatino’s race engineer. I feel personally responsible every time a driver gets into the cockpit of one of my cars and takes to the track. Travelling at two hundred miles an hour is dangerous enough. Add the combative dimension of cars racing wheel to wheel – a matter of inches apart – and the risks are multiplied. Sending a driver and car out knowing that someone was trying to thwart them – possibly even to try and cause them to lose control, as happened to Helli Cunzer in Monaco and Remy Sabatino in Spa – meant the responsibility was too much. I couldn’t take it.’

The room was completely attentive listening to the dismembered voice over the loudspeaker.

‘Hang on a minute, Backhouse. If you thought that Massarella were the perpetrators of this sabotage – as you alleged in Spa – why and how could you possibly leave Ptarmigan and go and join
them
? That’s ridiculous. It makes absolutely no sense, at all.’

‘That was a a question from Mr MacRae, Andy, the commercial rights holder,’ offered San Marino.

‘Thank you, Mr President. I’d recognize Mr MacRae’s voice all right. It was actually
his
reaction to that high-speed sabotage in Spa – when we met him and yourself afterwards, Mr President – that convinced me there was something deeply unpleasant going on.’

Suddenly the room exploded. At the tone of the remark? Its personal nature? Its implications? Straker couldn’t decide which.

San Marino called the meeting to order. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Backhouse,’ he said with a strongly disapproving tone in his voice. ‘What
exactly
are you insinuating?’

‘Mr President, the sabotage Ptarmigan reported to the FIA – to you in Monaco and to you and Mr MacRae in Spa – warranted far greater concern and action than it was granted. I fully accepted your assertion at the time, Mr President, that our evidence was tenuous. But when Mr MacRae said,’ and here it sounded like Backhouse was reading:
“This is a business. Billions of dollars are at stake, and many thousands of jobs. The last thing Formula One needs, right now, is another scandal”
, I couldn’t believe it. Ptarmigan needed to get to the bottom of the hideously dangerous sabotage it was suffering, but we were getting
no
help from the authorities. In the meantime, Remy Sabatino’s life was clearly being put in danger. But no one would listen. We were helpless. There was nothing we could do about it. It was then that Colonel Straker came up with a plan.’

The room fell silent.

All eyes immediately turned on Straker.

San Marino also looked Straker straight in the eye. ‘What plan was that?’ he asked sternly.

Straker stayed silent.

In his stead, Backhouse replied: ‘That I was to resign from Ptarmigan – and
defect
to Massarella. I was to rejoin Massarella; as I had been with the team for a number of years a while back, there was a logical fit there. Colonel Straker hoped that they might see recruiting me as a bit of a coup, hopefully even seeing me as a valuable asset. Once on the inside, he wanted me to try and gain their confidence. As it happened, that came more easily than we hoped – best illustrated by Mr Van Der Vaal’s gloating and flaunting of me as part of the Massarella team in Monza and Shanghai. He clearly revelled in
winning
me away from Ptarmigan. That enabled Colonel Straker’s plan to start working: I was to try and learn what I could about what was behind this extraordinary sabotage, from the other side – from inside the team we suspected of being the perpetrators.’

San Marino’s study of Straker’s face became almost chilling.

Straker held his stare, remaining impassive. While still maintaining eye contact with the President, Straker turned his head, indicating that this revelation might mean something significant to another person at that table. San Marino read the clue and followed it, looking away and turning his attention towards Van Der Vaal.

The Afrikaner looked fit to burst.

His face had reddened. The blood vessels stood proud in his neck, while the muscles in Van Der Vaal’s shoulders, arms and fists were clearly clenched.

Backhouse continued: ‘Mr President, once in with Massarella, I was told by Mr Van Der Vaal that Ptarmigan – particularly the arrival of Dominic Quartano on the scene – had ruined Mr Van Der Vaal’s long-term ambition to succeed Bernie Ecclestone as the Tsar of Formula One. Massarella’s attracting sponsorship by Obrenovich Oil & Gas, and the financial clout it brought, was to have been the launch pad for Van Der Vaal to mount a bid to be the new Tsar. To conceal his intentions, though, he wanted to stay on as a team boss for as long as possible – until his path to the top job was clear. So he did a deal with Joss MacRae. He offered to invest many of the
oligarch’s millions in his Motor Racing Promotions company – in order to carve up the commercial side of the sport between them. That included taking stakes in key businesses within the sport, such as Trifecta Systems. The more I heard and pieced together – with snippets here and there from conversations with Mr Van Der Vaal – the more I was able to confirm Colonel Straker’s earlier findings and deductions.

‘Mr President,’ Backhouse said, ‘Eugene then told me something deeply disturbing. He told me about his policy of
rectification
– which all began after Ptarmigan was hailed for its marketing genius. Media and public applause for Ptarmigan really got up Eugene’s nose. As we all well know, our hiring Remy Sabatino – the first serious female racing driver – exploded in the press. There was another massive press explosion when Ptarmigan started discussions with Mandarin Telecom, about a sponsorship deal valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Both of these developments really irritated Mr Van Der Vaal. Eugene, in a fit of anger one night, told me how he detested all the attention of the sport swinging to Ptarmigan – away from himself and Joss MacRae. Those two men had clearly wanted that sort of publicity for themselves – let alone the Mandarin sponsorship money, which they also believed should have been going in their direction. Why else would MacRae have taken such an extraordinary position on Remy’s high-speed sabotage in Spa, unless there was a conflict of interest somewhere – and that there was something else going on?’

San Marino, for all his patrician dignity and bearing, was clearly affected by this unexpected news. Surprisingly softly, he asked: ‘What was this policy of
rectification
?’

‘Sabotage, Mr President,’ came the reply from Backhouse over the loudspeaker. ‘Van Der Vaal’s sabotage of Ptarmigan was very carefully planned out – and to be done completely invisibly. Deviously. It was clever – under the radar, like the radio jamming in Monaco. Or concealed as malfunctions, such as Helli Cunzer’s suspension failure. Or simply actions that could be so easily dismissed as driver
error, such as Mr MacRae did so emphatically with Remy’s high-speed loss of control in Spa.

‘Van Der Vaal’s ultimate blow, though,’ Backhouse went on, ‘was particularly devious. It was to accuse Ptarmigan of industrial espionage. After the FIA, under a predecessor of yours, Mr President, fined an F1 team $100 million in the 2007 Spygate case, Van Der Vaal confessed to me over a beer in Singapore that his plan had been to inflict a similar fine on Ptarmigan. His ruse was simple. He aimed to get Ptarmigan to adopt some identifiable piece of Massarella’s proprietary technology. It didn’t really matter what – anything would do. The moment that happened, an accusation of industrial espionage could follow, which would inevitably land Ptarmigan in front of the World Motor Sport Council. Once there, Ptarmigan could be indicted and preferably hit with a similarly crippling fine – or at the very least be fatally stigmatized by such damaging accusations against its integrity. In other words, Massarella’s accusation and the inevitable bad press stemming from it would knock Ptarmigan – and more importantly Dominic Quartano and his financial and marketing genius – out of Formula One.’