The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour had icing-sugar white walls, the ubiquitous gold-leaf covered onion-shaped dome, four smaller gold domes on their own towers in each corner, and a wealth of baroque flourishes. Apart from its ecclesiastical purposes, this was probably more of a cathedral to the spirit of the Russian people than it was to religion. Its existence, today, owed nothing to the Tsars, and nothing to the godless communists – but almost everything to people power. Built to declare Imperial Russia's gratitude for its survival against Napoleon in 1812, Stalin had ordered the cathedral to be destroyed and replaced by a Palace of the Soviets to glorify Lenin. As a fitting metaphor for communism, the ruined church was never replaced, the regime soon running out of funds. Khrushchev, the populist peasant, turned the fooded foundations of the sacred ruin into the world's largest open-air swimming pool. In the end it wasn’t imperial grandiosity or a fawed ideology that preserved this icon; it was people power. After Perestroika, a million ordinary Muscovites chipped in to build a replica of the original, resulting in the cathedral becoming more of a monument to the people of Russia than either tyranny or religion had ever managed.
Throughout the morning, additional crowds and invited attendees arrived for the service. Guests made their way up the steps into the church. Among them was a group who seemed particularly ill at ease: the public mood had rounded on Formula One – the sport being held indirectly responsible for what had happened. One of their own had been in the accident which had killed twenty-seven spectators. Far from making a show of being there, the motor racing fraternity were induced to walk inconspicuously into the church, and to be conspicuously solemn.
To Ptarmigan personnel, such feelings of awkwardness were all the more keenly felt. Tahm Nazar, the team principal, felt it right to ofer his team's sympathy to the guests. Ofering his moral support, Andy Backhouse, as one of the team's race engineers, was anxious to stand with Nazar as he did so. Before the expected start of the service, the two Ptarmigan men chose to position themselves by the main door of the church.
Nazar said to Backhouse: ‘I am keen we are visible, but do not want us to appear as any kind of receiving line or welcoming party. Any such appearance would convey entirely the wrong intention.’
Backhouse, looking apprehensive, nodded his approval.
‘By the way,’ added Nazar in his clipped Indian accent, ‘where's Yegor?’
Backhouse looked around. ‘I did ask him to be here.’
By the time the mourners were arriving there was still no sign of Ptarmigan's second driver.
Some arrivals, recognizing the Ptarmigan boss, were harsh in their remarks. One walked up to Nazar and spat straight into his face. Nazar did not waver.
At ten o’clock that morning, a large motorcade of black official-looking cars crawled into view along the cleared streets. They processed slowly, pulling up in front of the cathedral. Waiting on the steps to meet the leading car was a Russian Orthodox priest sporting a huge beard and solemn but spectacular robes and headdress. A rear door of the first limousine was opened from the outside by an SBP bodyguard. The president of Russia emerged. A respectful ripple of applause came from the crowds all around the barriers. He acknowledged this reception with a wave of a hand.
Within the motorcade were twenty-seven hearses. As they pulled up, several hysterical shrieks came from the crowds. At the same time, a more modest outpouring of grief began, spreading wider and becoming louder as an army of pall-bearers carried the cofns up the steps, each draped in the Russian fag.
Before the president followed the deceased into the cathedral, a commotion could be heard in front of the main entrance.
A number of policemen had suddenly appeared from inside the church.
Tahm Nazar and Andy Backhouse were still standing by the main doors, preparing to pay their respects to the bodies of the fallen as well as the approaching Russian president.
But that wasn’t going to happen.
Police Colonel Arseny Pudovkin, leading the police posse, marched out from inside the cathedral, stood in front of the Ptarmigan representatives and stated in a heavily accented but comprehensible English:
‘Dr Tahm Nazar, I am arresting you – as the head of the Ptarmigan Formula One Team – for the corporate manslaughter of twenty-seven Russian citizens at the Moscow Grand Prix.’
Several burly policemen moved forwards and manhandled Nazar. They slapped handcufs on him, forcing his hands behind his back. Seconds later they were frogmarching him of the threshold of the church.
Within moments of this commotion, the president broke from the priest with whom he had been walking up the steps of the cathedral and moved across to the barriers on one side – making directly for the bank of television cameras.
There, the president stated: ‘I can announce the arrest of the team principal of the Ptarmigan Formula One Team for the corporate manslaughter of our brethren. A charge of corporate manslaughter will also be made against Ms Remy Sabatino, if or when she is ft enough to stand trial. I made a vow to the Russian people,’ said the president firmly, ‘to make those responsible for our loss pay for this tragedy. I promised you an investigation into this calamity when I spoke to you on television. I declare, now, that it has started. I will hold responsible for this tragedy everyone from the direct culprits, right up to the mayor of Moscow – on whose initiative this catastrophe came to this glorious city.’
Sirens and blue flashing lights were unmissable as numerous police cars hurtled down Komsomolskiy Prospekt. They pulled into the grounds of the Yeltsin Meditsinskiy Tsentr. Climbing out of the leading car, the same police officer – Police Colonel Arseny Pudovkin – strode in through the main entrance of the hospital. There to meet him as previously arranged over the phone from police headquarters was the hospital's general manager as well as the senior medical officer responsible for the individual in question, Mr Pyotr Uglov. Pudovkin presented these two men with a folder of official papers. A court order declared that the hospital was to hold one of its patients, Remy Sabatino, under arrest as she was being formally charged with corporate manslaughter. The hospital was ordered to take on custodial responsibility while she was under their care. Pudovkin called forward four of his officers and, without any consultation, commanded them to continue on into the hospital.
Within five minutes – and standing outside the intensive care unit where Remy Sabatino was being kept in an artifcial coma – a security cordon around the injured Formula One driver had been mounted by armed police.
FIFTEEN
After the indignity of his public arrest at the cathedral, Nazar was subjected to further ignominy. A black police van – with no windows – was waiting to receive him in a side street by the church. The Ptarmigan officer was bundled into the back, and the doors slammed shut; he was granted no more grace than if he had been an animal herded into a cattle truck.
Nazar had to brace himself in the back of the van as it sped of; he was hurled about inside as it swung round several corners.
After twelve minutes it came to an abrupt stop, throwing Nazar forwards.
The rear doors were fung open, banging back hard against the sides of the van. A supervizing police major stood in the yard at the rear of the vehicle and ordered him out.
Frogmarched once again, Nazar was manoeuvred into the rear of the Moscow Police HQ of Petrovka Ulitsa. Inside, the Ptarmigan boss was jostled down a flight of stairs to an interview room, in the basement of the building.
Nazar tried to focus on how to handle this. The stakes in this accident had suddenly become alarming high. He realized he was going to need serious assistance.
An unknown officer barged into Nazar's room. Equally abruptly, he barked at the detainee, appearing to be collecting basic personal data. Nazar cooperated until the questionnaire seemed to be completed.
‘It is common courtesy,’ replied Nazar, ‘to ofer an arrestee a phone call. Please will you ask the officer in charge if I may make mine?’
The police officer left without acknowledging the request.
Nazar was left isolated for over an hour before another policeman entered Nazar's interview room. This one stayed for a matter of seconds. Nazar made the same request of a phone call to him.
But got no response.
Dominic Quartano, remaining aboard his yacht in the Solent, received news of the arrests in Moscow from a contact at the Foreign and Commonwealth Ofce. He was outraged. Asking the caller to stay on the line, Quartano dressed quickly, left his cabin and made for his office on the upper deck. Set up as a global command centre, this facility was kitted out with every data- and communication link for him to stay in immediate touch with all Quartech International's business interests wherever The Melita was in the world.
A difuse sun poured in through the large windows. Sheltered water between the Isle of Wight and the south coast of England looked remarkably calm in the early morning mist.
Turning on the bank of fat screens around his office, Quartano tuned each one to a different channel. There was no shortage of coverage. Yesterday's blanket-style broadcasts were continuing. On one of the channels Quartano saw the footage of his Formula One Team's principal being frogmarched away from the cathedral. It was a clear humiliation, making him appear to look like a common criminal. Nazar's arrest was just the sort of dramatic turn to give editors a feeling that Christmas had come early. Big business and powerful people being held to account; all this was a tabloid-minded editor's wet dream.
‘Why was that despicable show even necessary?’ seethed Quartano.
‘For effect,’ stated the Foreign Ofce caller. ‘Ptarmigan – Dr Nazar – have been deliberately humiliated … as a way of the State demonstrating its authority.’
‘What more do you know about the charges?’
