‘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.’
Maurice 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.
Straker 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 o
n 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?’
There was a buzz around the table.
Straker sensed they might be getting somewhere at last. Stepping back in to the discussion, he said: ‘Okay, good, but we need to be robust here. Could that light have been activated by the jolt – would that have been enough to light it up? If not, were the light’s sensors working properly? Can we see if the light came on at any other time today? Can we see whether the engine limiter was – or wasn’t – working properly, and then can we see whether the limiter system was indeed activated at that critical moment?’
Treadwell nodded. ‘That’s logical, and disciplined, thinking, Matt. We’ll get all the relevant data and check everything out.’
Production of the reports was delegated to different team members around the table, all of whom got up and went straight to work.
Straker was distracted from the bustling activity around the motor home by his ringing phone. It was Maurice Beauregard. He sounded disappointed. The sniffer dogs had completed their sweep of the area around Les Combes but had not found anything in the woods on the hillside above that part of the circuit. Although a dead end, Straker was far from disappointed. He was confident the dogs would have found something had there been a presence in the woods above the track. A sizeable area of ground could now reasonably be eliminated as the possible location of his unknown radio signal. He thanked the Belgian profusely – both for the police search and also for the CCTV footage.
Ten minutes later the findings of the research into the engine limiter were ready to be presented to the team.
‘The engine sensors were fine,’ confirmed Backhouse. ‘Coolant, camshaft, oxygen. The rain light didn’t come on because of faulty sensors.’
‘I can confirm the light didn’t come on because of the jolt or vibration of the incident,’ reported Treadwell.
‘Its illumination was linked directly to the engine limiter,’ declared Sabatino. ‘And, yes, the engine limiter was active for the duration of the incident – but had not been triggered by me.’
Straker sensed an agreement around the meeting room table. ‘So we are confident to conclude, then, that the engine limiter was on, but not activated by us – either deliberately or by accident?’
‘Absolutely,’ stated Backhouse.
‘And if the engine limiter was activated – out on the track – at that speed, we’d expect the effects to be as they occurred?’
Backhouse and Sabatino nodded repeatedly. ‘Almost identical. Having found this,’ he said, ‘the incident now makes much more sense.’
‘Okay,’ said Straker, ‘good. This is a clear step forward. But, if this was none of our doing, we need to establish how we think the engine limiter was activated.’
Straker was surprised by the ensuing silence in the room.
‘We don’t know?’ he offered as rhetorical confirmation. He paused to be sure. ‘In that case, does when the engine limiter was activated tell us anything? Can we identify the exact time, please?’
A page was consulted. ‘1.36.52.09.’
‘And, just remind me, what was the time coding for the radio interference on the data link carrier wave?’
‘1.36.52.09.’
‘They’re identical!’ exclaimed Sabatino.
Straker, holding up his hand, said: ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions – correlation is not causation. Before we discovered this engine limiter dimension, we had been looking at interference in the carrier wave, possibly from an unknown radio signal,’ he said. ‘Let’s try and close the circle, then: could the engine limiter have been activated by a radio signal?’
‘Fuck a duck,’ responded Treadwell. ‘How can we not, now, see a link between the activation of the limiter and the unknown radio signal?’
Straker saw the same feeling reflected in the expressions around the motor home. ‘Okay, if this logic is holding up,’ he said, ‘we’re back to looking for that radio source. So far, though, we haven’t got anywhere with it coming from the spectators – and we’re pretty sure of that, having gone through some comprehensive footage from the CCTV camera. And, I’ve just heard from the Belgian police – who have drawn a blank with their sniffer dogs – that there was no sign of anything in the woodland above the circuit. Neither of these help directly, but they are reasonable eliminations. We need, then, to look for the next possibility for the source of that transmission.’ Straker pointed at the image on the laptop. ‘There’s a car – bang next to the incident. Could the radio signal have come from that?’
There was further buzz around the table.
‘Can we take another look at the on-board footage of the Massarella?’ Straker asked.
The laptop was pulled back into position. Backhouse hit the play button. They saw the forward-looking view from above the driver’s helmet again. The clip showed the turquoise Ptarmigan shooting past and swerving violently, heading towards the corner of Les Combes.
‘Play it again, this time in as slow a motion as possible,’ said Straker.
The footage was rerun.
The picture showed Barrantes, with his right hand on the wheel. Then, with a tilt of the helmet to the left, the driver looked like he was checking the track behind him through his left-hand mirror.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Straker forcibly.
‘What?’ replied Backhouse.
‘Didn’t you see that?’
‘See what?’
‘Run it back.’
The footage jumped back by ten seconds and played again. It showed the familiar helmet tilt. A second later, the driver started raising his left hand, at which point Straker quickly leaned in and tapped the pause button with his finger.
‘What?’
‘What?’
‘There,’ said Straker, pointing at the exact spot on the screen. ‘Barrantes has got something taped to his glove.’
‘What – where?’
They all peered at the freeze-frame image.
‘What the hell … well spotted, Matt! What is that?’
Tre
adwell prompted the computer to zoom in. ‘Looks like some sort of fob – like a car alarm.’
The image was then nudged forward, one frame at a time.
‘And it looks like he’s squeezing it,’ said Sabatino. ‘With his thumb. Could that be some kind of zapper?’
‘Mark the time code. What’s the exact time he squeezes it?’ asked Straker.
Treadwell read it out as he wrote it down: ‘1.36.51.99.’
Sabatino sighed audibly: ‘Barrantes’s action happened ten one hundredths of a second before my engine crashed. Matt, you’ve sussed it.’
Straker shook his head. ‘Not yet. Let’s be thorough,’ and then said, in a way that acknowledged he was repeating himself: ‘Let’s not jump to any conclusions. We have no idea what that fob thing is for. All we have is the coincidence of two actions, but no proof of a connection. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.’
Sabatino pulled a what-the-fuck-does-that-mean smile. ‘Matt, the right word here is coincidence,’ she countered. ‘That’s cause and effect, right there. We have proof of a button being actively pressed, on what looks like a fob – an item that has no place on an F1 car. We have proof of a radio signal – which you called the unknown radio – and which you spotted from a burst of interference in the data carrier wave. We’ve discovered an indication that my rain light was activated, which we have verified was not because of any fault in the sensors – but because it’s linked to my pit lane engine limiter which, at the critical moment, had been activated, but not by a malfunction or by me.’
‘I agree,’ said Treadwell, emphatically. ‘There’s a line of best fit, here; these discoveries clearly point to some kind of remote activation of Remy’s engine limiter.’
Straker was anxious that he – they – be sure. A lot of credibility would be riding on this.
‘Oh come on, Matt,’ said Sabatino, ‘it’s far too coincidental to be dismissed.’
Straker finally nodded. He really could not dismiss their deductions.
‘Holy shit,’ said Backhouse.
‘It’s Massarella, then. It’s Massarella doing this. The sons of fucking bitches.’
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