Crash, p.12
CRASH, page 12
Straker climbed out and looked around the area before walking to the doors of the motor home. They hissed open as he and McMahon approached.
Straker was still impressed by this mobile control room, even though it was just as he remembered it from the season before: its inside was decked out in rosewood, chrome and glass, with pale turquoise-coloured leather seating, all edged with navy blue piping. Its finish was a powerful statement of style and quality. It had a different feel, though, when not in operation. Its row of eight workstations, set out down the full length of the truck on the right-hand side, made less of an impression. None of the plasma screens were on and, without the operators, it was oddly quiet. A meeting table ran down the other side of the truck, surrounded by a curved bench.
Sitting round this was a group of people including Andy Backhouse, normally Sabatino's race engineer.
‘Matt, thank God you’re here,’ said the middle-aged, dark-haired Brummie with obvious affection. Stepping forward, he took Straker by surprise; the hardened race engineer even gave him a hug. ‘I fear we’re going to need even more of your magic this time.’
‘Detecting and hunting down a saboteur might be one thing,’ replied Straker, ‘but this is something very different … Something far more troubling.’
Uncharacteristically, Backhouse didn’t come back with a quip; to Straker, the race engineer wasn’t anything like his usual self.
Straker introduced Sandy McMahon. In turn, Backhouse introduced them to the six Ptarmigan members in the mobile headquarters. Last to be presented was Ptarmigan's number two driver, Yegor Baryshnikov.
‘You won’t have met Yegor, of course,’ said Backhouse in his Birmingham accent. ‘After Helli left us at the end of last season – following all that crap with Massarella – a seat opened up for Yegor to come and join us from a hugely successful season in GP2. Before that, he was with an IndyCar team in the US.’
Straker shook hands with the tall, slim Russian driver; he was keen to form a view of him. Baryshnikov was a little older than the usual new recruit to Formula One, being in his late twenties.
‘Nice to meet too,’ said Baryshnikov.
Despite his grammar, Straker was distracted; he had heard numerous stories – from different people – about the Russian's arrogance and self-confidence.
‘How's Remy?’ asked Straker as everyone was invited to sit at the long meeting table.
‘Still pretty groggy, we gather,’ replied Backhouse.
‘Anyone been to see her yet?’
Backhouse shook his head. ‘We’ve been advised not to by the hospital. Until she's stronger.’
Once they were all seated, Straker brought them all up to date: ‘Sandy McMahon is a lawyer, based here in Moscow. Mr Q has instructed her firm to help us with this case. As a first step, we’ve been to see Tahm.’
‘How is he?’
‘Not well. We’ve also just been to a press conference at the Ministry of Justice, where they announced the appointment of a federal prosecutor.’
‘Who is appointed?’ asked Baryshnikov.
‘Léon Gazdanov – the prosecutor general.’
‘That's fuck,’ said the driver. ‘Everyone in Russia know him. He's ego. Wants to make big name.’
Whatever time Baryshnikov had spent in America, thought Straker, it hadn’t improved his accent or syntax.
‘We’re going to have to work extra hard to counter him – to defend ourselves – then,’ said Straker. ‘Particularly as we’ve only got four weeks to the trial.’
Everyone's expression around the table changed for the worse.
‘Can I suggest we get straight on with discussing what we need to do? Sandy, can you tell us what we are up against? What does Gazdanov need to prove in court to succeed with a charge of corporate manslaughter?’
Without hesitation, she said: ‘It's a new charge in Russian law. There is no precedent. The courts have no prior conception of what culpability should look like. For us, this is a negative; in effect, it gives Gazdanov a licence to build any case he wants.’
Baryshnikov butted in: ‘And he going to wins.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Backhouse asked.
‘Russian people get revenge. Must have revenge. Too many people die.’
‘There's meant to be a legal process involved, Yegor,’ said Straker; with his eyes still on Baryshnikov he turned to McMahon and asked: ‘What does Gazdanov have to prove then, Sandy, from a legal point of view?’
McMahon now also looked at Baryshnikov with some concern. ‘He has to show that there was negligence. He needs to prove that, with Ptarmigan's full knowledge, things were done – or were not done – which knowingly affected the safety of the car, and which led directly to the accident. Things, in this case, would include any malfunction in design, maintenance, repairs, checks, etc. Gazdanov should not find this easy, particularly if he's relying on a Russian expert to investigate the crash.’
‘How wrong with Russian expert?’ countered Baryshnikov. ‘Don’t need brains of monkey to know fault. Thirty dead.’
‘The law still requires a proper legal argument, Mr Baryshnikov,’ said McMahon firmly. ‘Mr Gazdanov will have to prove what happened … with evidence.’
‘And what about fault? Blame? Ptarmigan must not – run away from – blame.’
‘What blame is that, Yegor?’ asked Backhouse. ‘This was nothing more than a racing incident, for Christ sakes. This was a Formula One fact of life.’
Baryshnikov grunted and shook his head. ‘Ptarmigan have to face fact,’ he snapped. ‘We all know. Remy took risk – big risk – going round outside of corner. Everyone know track there dirty. Marbles. Grip, very bad. Knew danger. Knew danger.’
‘That's total crap, Yegor,’ retorted Backhouse. ‘What lap were you on, six? On a brand-new circuit! There were piss all marbles out there. And I don’t like the insinuation, my friend. Some of us were none too chuffed with the bollocks you pulled in Canada against Remy. Don’t try anything like that again here, yeah? Sure you want to win – but win fair.’
‘Canada not bollocks,’ he said his face reddening. ‘I – there – sabotaged. This – here – different. Russians of Moscow – dead. Ptarmigan – she – got to face horror of blame. She try to cuts corner. Again. She already done it before. Montreal – she criticize by FIA for doing it.’
Backhouse replied with a phoney chuckle: ‘Well, I guess, Yegor, that means we won’t be putting you on the stand in the trial.’
The Russian began to look agitated.
Baryshnikov stated: ‘Ptarmigan must put up hand.’ Then, to everyone's amazement, the Russian climbed to his feet, walked down the room, pressed the button, dropped down the steps, and left the motor home.
TWENTY-THREE
There was an awkward silence as the door hissed shut behind him. No one had expected anything like that. Backhouse, now looking a little sheepish, said defensively: ‘Teammates are known to have tricky relationships, but this is the worst case of teammate-itis I’ve ever seen.’
‘We can’t believe that reaction is entirely driven by competitiveness, can we?’ offered Straker.
‘You don’t know Yegor Baryshnikov,’ replied Backhouse.
Straker looked unconvinced.
McMahon said: ‘He's Russian – the first Russian driver – at the first Moscow Grand Prix. Expectations here have been ramped for him in F1. And now there's a national catastrophe, given all the more prominence because of the publicity surrounding him; he could well be feeling the public reaction very personally … and taking it badly.’
Straker exhaled. ‘Possibly. But I don’t like his vibe – he’d better keep his thoughts to himself. We do not want a loose cannon.’
Several heads were nodding.
‘While Andy was being somewhat flippant,’ Straker went on, casting a mildly admonitory glance at Backhouse, ‘I share the concern of putting Baryshnikov in the witness box.’
McMahon stepped in: ‘Why don’t I have a chat with him? Use the cover of calling it a legal briefing, to try and calm him down?’
Straker nodded. ‘Good idea. Let's set that up as soon as possible, please? We don’t want him brooding on this for too long, God forbid discussing any of those opinions with other people.’
Backhouse agreed and indicated to one of the team, who turned directly away to call Baryshnikov on his phone.
Straker wanted to bring the meeting back on track. ‘With Yegor's claims of blame, and the trial apparently a foregone conclusion, there's all the more reason to prepare our defence properly. Sandy, you were saying that Gazdanov would find it difficult to prove negligence.’
‘I did, but we never take anything for granted in court, even when we have a cast-iron case. Things can always come up, get blown out of proportion, become a distraction – anything can affect a judgment. But,’ she continued, ‘when a case is not black and white, the trick for any prosecutor is to try and create doubt. If there is no silver bullet, the prosecution is highly likely to blow up other issues – however small – to colour the defendant in a bad light. None of these kinds of issues would probably amount to anything on their own, but put them all together and they can be presented as an insight into the defendant's background, ethical standards or attitude. If done deviously enough, they can make it impossible for the jury to dismiss the actual charge out of hand.’
‘Guilt by insinuation?’ said Straker.
‘And Ms Sabatino will not be well served in this trial by having a disciplinary strike against her with the FIA from her last race. Gazdanov will be all over that, without question.’
‘How do we guard against this guilt by association thing?’ asked Backhouse. ‘How do we defend ourselves against it?’
‘Brandeis's advice, we hope, is little more than common sense: preparation for trial has to be thorough. We need to go through every incident that Gazdanov could cite where Ptarmigan – or Ms Sabatino – has been found to have breached a rule or regulation. We need to explain what each offence involved, what it meant, and why it didn’t really matter. We need to be able to demonstrate how robust the Ptarmigan management systems are in respect of compliance with the FIA rules, the design process of the cars, the testing procedures, safety procedures, and for monitoring and processing feedback. Any slippage, in any of these, and Gazdanov will smell blood. He will go after every flaw and failure – dissect each one – and make each one out to sound heinous. He will then use them, banging on about the sloppiness of the team, expecting everyone to see that with such sloppiness of course the cars were unsafe, that Ptarmigan was cutting corners for financial gain, that it was taking reckless risks, and that – of course – any accident can be traced straight back to Ptarmigan's cavalier attitude and negligence.’
It was hardly surprising the mood of the team deteriorated. Straker was aware that morale would need to be high if they were going to face up to the gloomy prospect of this trial, not least in motivating the team in the effort needed to prepare for it.
Retaking the floor, Straker thanked McMahon for her explanations and declared that their fightback was starting right now.
‘First,’ he said, ‘we’re going to need to put together a basic description of our cars, their capacity, speed characteristics, how they work, the engineering involved, the dangers involved in producing such machines, the safety measures we have built in to them, and a catalogue of our track record vis-à-vis safety.
‘Second, we need a full history of Formula One – the accidents that have occurred, what has been done to prevent them, why there are so few these days, the nature of their causes and what, when they do occur, should be the consequences to drivers and spectators.
‘Third, we’re going to need a full description both technical – and tactical – of what was involved in that corner, what the risks were, what Remy was attempting, what could’ve happened, what did happen, and why. We also need to hammer the point that this was completely unconnected with the incident in Montreal.
‘Fourth, we need a full analysis – effectively frame by frame – of what happened to Remy's car, why it didn’t perform as it should have, and how such underperformance caused the crash; we will also need to show how the car's behaviour during the impact and crash caused the injuries.
‘Fifth, to counter every tactic Sandy expects the prosecution might use, we need to trawl through instances where Ptarmigan's compliance has underperformed and infringed the rules, we’ve made a mistake, suffered an FIA intervention, been reprimanded, been fned or been charged with a crime. We need to show how Ptarmigan responded to each of these shortcomings and demonstrate the grown-up processes the team instigated to prevent a recurrence.’
‘Focusing on things like our “mistakes”, “shortcomings” and “underperformance” is all incredibly negative,’ Backhouse replied. ‘You make it sound like we were to blame. We should not make this overcomplicated. This was a racing incident. Pure and simple … It was one of those things.’
Straker replied. ‘I’m not assuming any blame at all; I just want to be sure that we get our retaliation in first. If, as Sandy says, guilt by insinuation is the likely direction of attack, let's pre-empt everything Gazdanov could possibly throw at us. If we do all that analysis, we ought to be able to undermine if not rebut any such accusation.’
‘How soon can we get access to Sabatino's car?’ asked the race engineer.
‘We won’t,’ said McMahon.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It's been impounded by the police. The court's going to appoint its own expert to investigate the wreckage.’
‘How on earth do we do our own assessment, then – put together credible conclusions – if we can’t see the damn car?’
‘We have all our telemetry stored in here,’ Straker replied indicating with a nod of his head the row of blank monitors down the long side of the motor home. ‘We’ll have to base our observations on that. We can also study the video footage we’ll have captured of the accident. That ought to give us a pretty good idea of what went wrong. If we can find out what did happen, we can then try and work out why.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Throughout the day the blanket of cloud over Moscow had been descending. Internal lights were needed in the Ptarmigan motor home, still parked out on its own at the Zhar-ptitsa Autodrom circuit. Activity in the mobile command centre was now frenetic. All the seats down the right-hand side were occupied, and most of the screens were lit. The team was busy building its body of data to try and prove how well-suited the Ptarmigan cars had been to the Zhar-ptitsa circuit. One group of Ptarmigan staff was collating all the telemetry on the car, not just during the race but throughout the preceding practice sessions. Another was studying the telemetry immediately around the crash. A third group was reviewing all the VT footage of the crash, taken from any angle: in the age of multiple on-board cameras, there was considerable coverage garnered from each of the leaders’ cars: Yegor Baryshnikov, Remy Sabatino, and Simi Luciano – the three drivers at the front of the race.
While this research was being gathered, Sandy McMahon sat at the end of the meeting table; working at a laptop, she was preparing the basic frameworks for the legal documents – witness statements and evidence – that they would be submitting to the court.
Straker picked up his phone and, to be sure of his privacy, went through into the private cabin at the front of the motor home. Breathing deeply, he made ready to call Dominic Quartano.
The telephone number pulsed out. Jean, the tycoon's indispensable PA, answered the call: ‘Mr Quartano's been waiting to hear from you, Matt,’ she said. ‘He's asked that Stacey Krall be on the call when you speak. Can I ask you to wait while I get her on the line?’
‘Of course,’ replied Straker, genuinely pleased that Quartech's in-house counsel would be involved. He liked Krall as a feisty operator; he would also appreciate her assessment of his findings as well as hearing her stress-test his conclusions thus far.
Seconds later Jean was back on the line. Krall was now in tow. ‘I’ll put you both through,’ said the PA and the line went silent.
‘Matt,’ came Quartano's well-rounded baritone. ‘I’ve been waiting to hear what you’ve found. I assume you’ve made contact with Brandeis Gertner?’
‘Sandy McMahon picked me up at the airport. She's been with me since I arrived.’
Krall asked: ‘Is she any good?’
‘Too early to say. We’ll know soon enough: we’ve had some hefty developments even since I got here.’
‘Such as?’
‘We went to see Tahm, in the cells under the Moscow Police HQ. He's in a dreadful state. His arrest and treatment since have affected him badly. We were granted no privacy; worse, we were supervized by a policeman throughout the meeting.’
‘What?’ blurted Krall. ‘Didn’t they know McMahon was his lawyer?’
‘Oh, yes, but it got worse than that. Every time we come across indelicacies like that, she declares resignedly: “This is Russia!”’
‘Holy crap,’ said Krall.
‘We’ve applied for bail, for Tahm and Remy, but I’m told we should have no expectation of it being granted.’
Quartano retorted: ‘Why ever not?’
‘Public opinion. In the light of the accident, it's toxic. While I was in the police station, I was even goaded by a policeman for merely being associated with the deaths.’
‘You’ve got to do whatever it takes to get Tahm out of jail.’
‘Of course, but I should warn you that Sandy's written bail off as impossible.’
‘Poor man,’ said the tycoon. ‘Presumably getting him out will depend on matters elsewhere; what are the other developments?’
‘We had a press conference sprung on us by the Ministry of Justice. Not even Brandeis had been informed, even though the authorities categorically know they are Ptarmigan's representative. That conference gave us several surprise developments. One is the altitude this incident has gone up the food chain of government: the minister of justice, himself, hosted the conference. Second, the minister has appointed the prosecutor general to take on this case.’
