‘Looking into all that is going to be a big job. I’ll have to set up a research team to pull it all together.’
Straker nodded. ‘But,’ he said, ‘if you do bring anyone in, I want to brief them, personally. And I do not want any of them to know why they are looking.’
‘Brandeis is trustworthy,’ she said. ‘Client confidentiality is the bedrock of our profession.’
‘Do you think the authorities know Brandeis Gertner is involved in this case?’
‘Of course.’
‘How far have the authorities gone in respecting boundaries so far, Sandy?’
McMahon didn’t answer.
‘I’d rather be careful, then – and keep all our key information and conclusions on a very close hold. “This is Russia” could easily apply to the authorities’ respect for your staff.’
THIRTY-SIX
Their car descended into an underground car park. They were now beneath the Imperatorskaya Tower in the business area of Presnensky District, to the west of Moscow. Heaving himself out from the rear seat, Straker was led across the well-lit concrete to the lifts. He and McMahon rode up through the building to the Brandeis Gertner offices, hosted on the top five floors.
‘We’d better get you to the sickbay,’ McMahon suggested as she took another look at Straker.
‘I want to see the room you’ve got for us as our command centre first.’
Reluctantly McMahon relented.
Walking out onto their destination floor, Straker found a well-appointed – but not ostentatious – reception and meeting area. Its decor would have been recognizable in any cosmopolitan business centre anywhere in the world. A male receptionist emerged from behind an elegant desk and led them down a wide corridor to the conference room, which had been set aside for Ptarmigan at the far end.
Inside it, Straker was struck by two of its features. One was its size – easily ten metres long and six or seven metres wide, with a substantial boardroom-style table down its length. The second was the plate-glass window occupying the entirety of the long outside wall. From twenty floors up, it offered an exceptional view to the east, out over Moscow. Straker could see the meandering Moskva River curve its way into the distance, passing the sinister shapes of the Kremlin in the middle distance.
‘What other facilities do you need?’ McMahon asked.
‘A number of phones, and several access points to the computer mainframe. A bank of printers would be also useful.’
‘Okay.’
‘The sooner the guys get set up and start analyzing the telemetry on Remy's car, the better.’
‘All that will be arranged. And, through here,’ said McMahon leading Straker to one of the short ends of the conference room, ‘we have a smaller adjoining space – for your HQ – for privacy and for sensitive stuff.’
This was an unremarkable room, although it had a central circular table and a smaller plate-glass window set in its smaller outside wall.
‘This is good – can it be locked?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and, removing the pair of keys from the door, peeled one off and gave it to Straker. ‘I’ll keep the other.’
‘Are those the only two?’
‘I’ll make sure they are.’
‘Could we have a couple of computer links set up in here too, as well as a large display board mounted against that wall – so it can’t be seen from next door? A collection of stationery would also be good.’
McMahon picked up the landline phone and passed Straker's logistical requirements on to her PA. Hanging up, she said: ‘Now let's get you to the doctor.’
The doctor assessed Straker's injuries, pronouncing them painful but minor. He strapped Straker's left wrist and shoulder. There was not much he could do for his other injury which he diagnosed as a couple of broken ribs. Straker was given some hefty painkillers, which, he was told, should keep the discomfort at bay.
Forty minutes on and Straker was back in the conference room. Andy Backhouse was supervizing six Ptarmigan team members now arranged around the boardroom table, each set up with a keyboard and computer screen. A bank of printers had been set up towards one end of the table, several of which were busy printing pages off. Straker presumed the collation of the Ptarmigan telemetry data had begun.
‘This is excellent,’ he offered to McMahon. ‘Thank you for getting this up and running so quickly.’
‘We’re having to juggle some of our in-house links to the UK,’ she explained. ‘Ptarmigan's bandwidth demands are pretty high, as you suggested. We should have a dedicated high-speed data connection to Shenington operational within the hour. And in here,’ she said leading him off towards the smaller HQ room, ‘we have the other things you asked for.’
Straker was pleased. Mounted directly onto the side wall – hidden from the conference room next door – was now a three-metre wide whiteboard. Computer access had been made available through two work stations set up on the small table. There was also a mass of new pens and paper carefully laid out.
Picking up a large black felt-tip pen from the collection of stationery, Straker walked across to the whiteboard and wrote four headings across the top, dividing the board into quarters: PTARMIGAN | CAUSES OF CRASH | BARYSHNIKOV | ZHAR-PTITSA AUTODROM.
McMahon said: ‘I’ve called a meeting of my research team looking into the Autodrom for half an hour's time, if you’d like to brief them?’
Straker said: ‘Good, but not in the Ptarmigan rooms, please. In the meantime, I’ll check in with my office – to see where we are on Baryshnikov's phone, email and text records.’
Karen, as normal, had exceeded Straker's expectations. His assistant had prepared the spreadsheet as discussed but had also sourced a copy of Baryshnikov's personnel file, sent across from Ptarmigan's headquarters in Oxfordshire. Straker delved straight into the telecoms data – keen to see what sort of information was available.
Volume-wise, the number of calls and texts Baryshnikov had made was not excessive – possibly four- or five thousand over the previous six months. Straker cast an eye down the incoming and outgoing calls. He quickly noticed significant duplication. Using Excel's Sort Data function, he ranked the numbers – so duplicates would form vertical blocks in one of the columns. He was mildly encouraged. This showed there were far fewer unique numbers than it had seemed when they were all jumbled up; Straker estimated there to be about eight- or nine hundred in all. Sorting the data this way also drew attention to several unfamiliar country dialling codes.
There was one prefix that he was keen to check on. Via Google, he looked up the international dialling code for Russia. Going back to his column of sorted numbers he saw a sizeable block of a hundred or so starting with its +7 country code.
Drafting a reply email to Karen in London, Straker asked the Competition Intelligence and Security team to research these. He wanted to identify each of the callers and the called, if possible. First off, he suggested they Google them all – to eliminate obviously disinterested commercial operations such as hotels, restaurants, airlines, shops – a process that might also, if they were lucky, even identify some institutional numbers. For the remaining unknown ones, he asked that each number be called directly to question their identities. Straker pressed Send.
He then wrote up some notes for the research he wanted into the Zhar-ptitsa Autodrom. By the time he had finished, McMahon was back in the command centre.
