One red light, mounted in the gantry above the start line, came on.
The second red light.
The roar came and went as drivers revved their engines at different times, each going through their own starting ritual. It was like the discordant tuning of instruments before a theatrical performance: the same sense of expectation fuelled the heart rates of those looking on.
The third red light.
The roar intensified, becoming more constant – higher pitched – higher and higher up the rev counter. The noise was reverberating out across Moscow.
The fourth red light.
Everyone's breathing quickened slightly. Everything was about to happen. They were about to see the unleashing of phenomenal power, energy and the force of 15,000 horsepower.
The fifth light was now burning.
The crescendo peaked and plateaued.
A primeval scream of intent.
All the five lights burned. It seemed for an age. Then:
Lights out – they were all out.
Go!
The race was on!
Noise translated into movement.
All twenty-two cars of the Formula One grid accelerated forward. Tyres spun, tyres held; the cars, almost in grid formation, hurtled off their marks, screaming up their gears, gaining speed with every yard travelled.
Baryshnikov, from pole – to the left and therefore the clean side of the track – got a cracking start, his Ptarmigan's power translating directly into forward momentum. As soon as he was sure of his grip and rate of acceleration, though, he moved dominantly across to his right – to put his stamp on the rest of the field.
Remy Sabatino, on the front row of the grid in P2, was only just back from the leader, but on the dirty side – not cleaned by the succession of practice laps and pre-race warm-up races. Even so she got away well. But so did Simi Luciano in the Massarella who, although one row back in P3, was on the left side and so did have the advantage of the cleaner surface. Finding better connection with the road, he was very quickly gaining on Sabatino, down her left-hand side.
Then everything closed up.
Baryshnikov was cutting further right, well into Sabatino's field of view.
The black, foreboding shape of the third-placed Massarella was pulling up, directly along Sabatino's left flank.
She was getting boxed in.
They were only a matter of feet apart as they headed into the right-hand corner of Turn One. Baryshnikov struck early for his right to the line, swinging even further right – directly across Saba-tino's path. He had the space and the claim to do so. Luciano, never one to miss an opportunity, intimidatingly held his line only inches away to Sabatino's left – not giving her any space – taunting her to brake earlier than she would want.
But she was having none of it.
Into the slow corner – at 90 miles an hour, within touching distance of the cars to the front and to the side – Sabatino resolutely held her ground.
In, through, and round they ran – all emerging on the far side of Turn One, unscathed. Baryshnikov, capitalizing on the clear air and track through the corner, was already pulling away. Sabatino had retained P2 but couldn’t take anything for granted. A gap opened up between her and her teammate in front, while the one behind – to Luciano – had closed right up to a matter of tenths.
Accelerating into the Gorbachev Straight, Sabatino could almost feel Luciano's Massarella immediately behind her. Buckling down, she worked to establish the rhythm of her car, now that her principal disadvantage relative to the other Ptarmigan and the Massarella had been removed: at the very start of the race she had been forced to cope with the dirty side of the track. Now that the cars were all line astern – with an equal right to the racing line – Sabatino's disadvantage was gone. All of them were now entitled to use the clean part of the circuit, and so she had every expectation of this being far more of a straight fight from here on.
She was already in flat-out pursuit of Yegor Baryshnikov in the other Ptarmigan.
Sabatino was set on nothing less than retribution.
She was out for revenge.
EIGHT
There was a big sky. It always seemed big above the Solent. This expanse of dark blue, almost the shade of sapphire, was broken by the faintest wisps of a high white cloud. One unnatural shape spoiled the sky scape: a lone vapour trail from a transatlantic airliner scored the heavens at high altitude, as it headed out to the west.
To each side of the Solent, headlands and promontories reached down to the water's edge. In the summer haze, only the crest lines of each landmass gave them any shape. Otherwise they appeared like the broad, indistinct strokes of dilute purple watercolour.
Sea, between the south coast of England and the Isle of Wight, stretched away into a bright mist – down towards the Needles – while a high sun created a diamond-like sparkle across the surface of the water.
Dominic Quartano was not oblivious to the escapism of his surroundings, but he wasn’t there to savour them. He may have been standing on the quarterdeck of his 300-foot 1930s yacht, The Melita, but this chairman and chief executive of Quartech International, the defence business he had founded forty years earlier, was there to do what he loved best: to court a deal.
Quartano was hosting several high-ranking guests. His guest of honour was HRH King Harmeini Al-Buhrani, ruler of Buhran – the Middle Eastern Gulf state and the world's second largest oil producer. Accompanying the king was a sizeable retinue, which included that kingdom's chief of the defence staff, seven senior officers, Buhran's high commissioner to the Court of St James's and three military attachés. To Quartech International, the Buhrani Defence Force already represented a commercial relationship worth in excess of $2 billion dollars a year.
Dominic Quartano had laid on a weekend of special entertainment for his principal guest. The previous day he had taken a box for Glorious Goodwood, the race meeting held up on the Sussex Downs; from it, the king had been able to watch a filly of his win the Nassau Stakes. Quartano had then flown his party in one of the firm's helicopters – a civilian variant of Quartech's hugely successful military Aztec – across to the Isle of Wight for a dinner attended by 200 guests at the Royal Yacht Squadron. Overnight, the king had stayed aboard The Melita – giving Quartano a chance to talk privately with him over breakfast, which they had taken al fresco on the quarterdeck. Mid-morning, they were joined by the rest of the Buhrani contingent, ready for the final day of Cowes Week. Rounding off this weekend of hospitality, Quartano was hosting a lunch for fifty in the yacht's stateroom which would be attended by a number of dignitaries including the British foreign secretary, the chief of the defence staff, the president of the Board of Trade and four of HMG's most senior Whitehall mandarins. Over the course of two days, Quartano would have paid tribute to the Bedouin king's passion for horses, Bhuran's history as a seafaring nation as well as fully honouring the country's centuries-long strategic alliance with Britain.
The Melita was lying at anchor directly in line with the RYS, offering those on board a perfect platform from which to watch the regatta. Spread out across the water – towards the mouth of the Beaulieu River on the Hampshire coast – was a flotilla of white sails: the much-anticipated finals of the Flying Fifteens. Explosions of colour sporadically caught the eye on the downwind leg as boats hoisted spinnakers, which, in the hands of such experienced crews, seemed to appear and disappear in the blink of an eye.
Dominic Quartano appeared completely relaxed in this setting. His clothes were utterly fitting for any of the most prestigious sailing centres – from Monaco to Martha's Vineyard. They suggested casual, save that the quality, style, and cost of them were anything but: his dark glasses – top-of-the-range Ray-Bans – were his only concession to “off the peg”. His blue checked shirt, white chinos and loafers were all hand-made by the best-known names in Jermyn Street. Such clothes may superficially have reflected Quartano's at-oneness with such gentrified nautical settings, but it was his heavily lined, lived-in Mediterranean face, piercing blue eyes and mane of silver hair that gave him the presence of someone completely at ease in the social glamour of these places. His charisma, though, wasn’t created by anything as trifling as his clothes or his appearance; it stemmed entirely from an air of command. As the founder, owner, and controller of a £50 billion defence business, there were few circumstances anywhere in the world in which Dominic Quartano was likely to be fazed in anyone's company, however exalted their status.
Standing at the guardrail, Quartano pointed out an incident between two boats aggressively rounding the windward mark. He offered the king a powerful pair of binoculars. His guest, seeing for himself, watched the committee boat approach and adjudicate the incident before the Flying Fifteens in question were summarily ruled free to continue.
