Straker felt the need for caffeine and reached for his coffee. ‘How does any of that affect the Grand Prix?’ he asked.
‘Because I wasn’t prepared to sit by and watch all that happen,’ said Obrenovich. ‘I wanted to do something, politically, to address the corruption of the Russian state.’
Straker's hand stopped halfway to his mouth. ‘What?’
‘My way of being politically active has been to contribute sizeable sums of money to fund opposition politicians. I wanted to see Russia save itself from an inevitable slide back into a Tsarist/Stalinist dictatorship.’
‘I’m with Colonel Straker here, Avel,’ said San Marino. ‘How is that relevant to the crash at Turn Eleven?’
‘Because,’ replied Obrenovich, ‘Formula One, in Russia, took on a massive political significance. The idea of hosting the first Grand Prix there for a hundred years was a matter of huge pride to the Russian people. The president latched on to this mood, and sought to make political hay out of it. Except that, very quickly, the event became seriously at risk of being tainted.’
‘How come?’ asked San Marino.
‘In the same way the Sochi Winter Olympics had been tainted,’ answered Obrenovich, ‘by corruption. With those Games, the backhanders, the cosy deals, the theft of state funds all occurred on a vast scale. The Sochi Winter Olympics are rumoured to have cost $51 billion. Did you – or anyone – see $51 billion worth of facilities or competition infrastructure at the time of those Olympics? So where did all that money go? When it was suggested that a Grand Prix might be held in the same place, no one doubted for a moment that it wouldn’t be taken advantage of in the same way.’
Pokrovsky's findings about the former president of the Russian Automobile Federation opposing the Grand Prix going to Sochi were beginning to echo in Straker's head.
‘For these reasons,’ Obrenovich went on, ‘Feodor Olyshenko – the RAF president – was adamant that any Russian Grand Prix should be a worthy tribute to the sport as well as to Russian integrity. That was why, throughout his leadership of the Federation, he was against the race going down there.’
And there it was, thought Straker. ‘No wonder, then, that Olyshenko's objection saw him in a head-on collision with the president,’ he volunteered. ‘Sochi was widely known as the president's baby.’
‘It was,’ said Obrenovich, ‘except that this clash took on much more significance, because of Formula One. There were plenty of others nervous of the Grand Prix going to Sochi – Arno Ravilious of Motor Racing Promotions, for one,’ said Obrenovich. ‘When news got out that he had had an informal discussion with Baryshnikov and Olyshenko – about the race going elsewhere, somewhere other than Sochi – nothing less than a political earthquake occurred in Russia.’
‘You’re saying that Formula One interfered in Russian politics?’ said San Marino.
‘Not wittingly, Bo,’ answered Obrenovich, ‘but the moment Yegor came back with the possibility of an alternative Grand Prix venue to Sochi, other things started to happen. The pivotal one being that Moscow mayor, Oksana Pavlova, saw a huge political opportunity.’
‘From a Grand Prix?’ asked San Marino disbelievingly.
‘Oh yes,’ said Obrenovich firmly. ‘Bo, if you are a young country, the prestige that can attach to hosting a Grand Prix is colossal. Mayor Pavlova definitely thought so. The mayor of Moscow is very obviously two things. One, she is a liberal democrat who hates the despotic developments in Russia under Putin and which have worsened under Tarkovsky. Two, Mayor Pavlova is highly competent as a politician, which means that she is highly ambitious.’
Straker finally managed to drink some of his coffee.
‘Mayor Pavlova latched onto the idea of a Moscow Grand Prix for a whole range of reasons. She saw that it would be a coup to host it in Moscow, the nation's capital. It would show the country that her mayoralty was capable of winning a world-class event to the city. It would enhance Pavlova's reputation as a doer. And, most significantly to Pavlova, winning the Grand Prix – away from Sochi, stealing it out from under the nose of the Russian president – would be a big power play in national politics, clearly bolstering her standing as a serious political player.’
San Marino looked at him: ‘Avel, you can’t be serious?’
Obrenovich looked defiant. ‘Why ever not?’
‘A Grand Prix cannot carry that much significance,’ countered the FIA president.
‘In Europe, Bo – and the thirty-odd possible circuits to host Grands Prix around the continent – the considerations for hosting a Grand Prix are principally commercial. In Russia, the prestige of hosting this race took on a far more potent dimension.’
Straker might have been ready to accept some elements of Obrenovich's analysis, but vast gaps remained in his understanding. He said: ‘I still don’t see how we get from that sort of power play – to thirty-four dead spectators at the trackside.’
FIFTY-THREE
‘Once again, colonel, you go straight to the root of the issue.’ Obrenovich took another sip of coffee. As he replaced the cup he said: ‘I, too, am anti-corruption – anti-despotism. I was against Vladimir Putin, I was against his cosy duumvirate with Dmitry Medvedev, and I was against Tarkovsky's stitched-up succession to the presidency. I am against Tarkovsky's ever-closed administration – and I am against his clampdown on the media, public assembly and free speech.’
All this time, Straker was desperately trying to gauge Obrenovich's sincerity.
The Russian declared: ‘I wanted to take action against this political malaise. As a consequence, I became the largest supporter of the opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov. Gratifyingly, Boris showed himself to be highly effective – and started attracting some serious support. The moment he gained traction in the 2011 election campaign, though, he found himself banned from appearing on TV. Election officials refused to register his Popular Freedom Party. Then the State – in other words the Kremlin – levelled allegations of fraud against him. Finally, Nemtsov was assassinated.
‘After that, my life was changed – catastrophically. It kicked off with harassment. My house was frequently broken into, even though nothing was taken; it was the State's way of saying: “Look how we can invade your space and yet there's nothing you can do about it.” They loved getting in, taking phones off the hook – leaving little mementoes. For some reason, leaving windows open was one of their favourites. Then came their policy of demonstrativnaya slezhka – demonstrative pursuit; they would follow me everywhere – very obviously – as a clear form of harassment and intimidation.’
Straker suddenly realized he would have to rethink another aspect of his investigation: specifically his observations of the surveillance they’d endured back in Moscow.
‘This intimidation was constantly ratcheted up,’ said Obrenovich. ‘My commercial activities in Russia were, then – and have been since – constantly investigated; they suffer unending interventions: raids by balaclava-wearing tax inspectors from the FSB's Economic Security Directorate are the Kremlin's favourite. Such harassment has caused me severe financial losses. Finally, I started receiving death threats to the extent that I had to get my family out of the country.
‘But that was exactly the kind of political oppression I was trying to put a stop to. So I was not deterred. If anything, having been driven into exile, it spurred me on. But I had a problem. Which politician could I back after Nemtsov was murdered? There weren’t that many around offering too much promise.
‘It soon became clear that the politician most worthy of any attention was Oksana Pavlova, the mayor of Moscow. So I decided to step up. Since Nemtsov's assassination, I have been bankrolling her entire political operation. To me, she is the only viable challenger to President Tarkovsky.
‘I saw the City of Moscow winning the Russian Grand Prix as the starting gun for Pavlova to become a national political contender,’ said Obrenovich. ‘With my F1 connections, I saw a material opportunity to use a Moscow Grand Prix as a platform to launch Mayor Pavlova – not just here in Russia, but as a world figure. I wanted her to be seen internationally as a new leader the West could believe in – a person through whom the world could believe in Russia again. A politician – a leader in waiting – ready to take over as president of Russia. At this moment, gentlemen, Oksana Pavlova is Russian democracy's last best hope.’
Straker found himself sighing as another piece of all this was making a little more sense. Under his breath, he said: ‘The Zhar-ptitsa, no less?’
Obrenovich smiled, acknowledging the connection Straker had just made. ‘So, I put Russia's leading racing driver, Yegor Baryshnikov, up to calling for a Moscow Grand Prix. I paid for his open letter, advocating it, to be advertised all over Russia. I convened and fronted the meetings with Arno Ravilious at Motor Racing Promotions Limited to negotiate the award of the race to Moscow. I put up the money to fund the bid and then to finance the development of the Grand Prix circuit. I also managed Mayor Pavlova's PR around the Moscow Grand Prix, so that it would maximize the political impact for her.’
While Obrenovich was talking, it brought to mind something that had been bugging Straker since their dramatic intervention to halt Sabatino's interrogation by the police in the hospital. That baf-fling question put to her by one of those police officers:
When did you agree to the rally with the mayor?
Straker wondered if that was how all this fitted together? Did that association begin to explain why the State was coming down so hard on Ptarmigan?
Straker, though, had to make further connections. ‘You didn’t explain how “politics” prompted you to remove the directors of Moscow 100.’
‘I didn’t remove them,’ said Obrenovich sharply, reaching unhurriedly for a croissant from a basket on the table.
