FIFTY-FIVE
‘What do you mean you were tailed from the airport?’ McMahon asked incredulously when they met in Ptarmigan's Brandeis HQ. ‘You said you were followed from here to your hotel on the way to Finland, but gave them the slip. How did they know to follow you from the airport when you came back? How did they know where you’d gone – or when or if you were even coming back?’
‘A flag must have been put on my passport.’
‘Who the hell by? The government?’
‘I’m not sure,’ answered Straker.
‘Oh my God,’ said McMahon.’
‘Maybe if I tell you what I learned in Finland, you might get to understand what we’re really up against here …’
Straker relayed the format of his meeting with San Marino to McMahon and Backhouse.
‘Avel Obrenovich?’ exclaimed Backhouse. ‘What the fuck was he doing there?’
‘Exactly what I thought, at first. I was so pissed off with San Marino – thinking he’d betrayed my confidence – not least as we had Obrenovich down as our principal suspect behind the crash.’
‘But?’ asked McMahon.
‘I don’t believe he was the cause of it … at least not directly.’
Backhouse looked unconvinced.
‘Indirectly, then?’ asked McMahon. ‘How could he be indirectly involved?’
Straker explained the relationship between Obrenovich and the president and the switch of the Grand Prix to Moscow.
‘So Obrenovich thinks all this was instigated by Vadim Kondra-tiev?’ asked McMahon.
Straker nodded.
Backhouse looked at McMahon. ‘Is that serious?’
‘Kondratiev is the disease that blights Russia,’ McMahon said. ‘Corruption infects every dimension of this country. He is our route to another Stalin.’
‘He's that bad?’
‘He's worse. He's wrapped himself in respectability and altruism – in the clothes of civic government. He has a reputation for being ruthless – vicious, a man verging on the perverted tastes of a … Joseph Mobutu. People are arrested without charge. There are rumours of torture, administered by him – personally – late at night beneath the cells of Butyrka Prison. People have been known to disappear without trace.’
‘Jesus,’ exhaled Backhouse. ‘This is what we’re up against? This is completely hopeless?’ Backhouse looked seriously agitated. ‘We’re up against a bent government – and caught up in the middle of its actions to destroy one of its political opponents. And we’re facing a bent show trial.’
At this point, to Backhouse's dismay, Straker was smiling.
‘Fuck it, Straker,’ barked the race engineer, ‘what the hell is there to smile about now?’
Straker declared: ‘Every opponent has a weakness.’
‘Yeah, right – and we don’t?’
‘Of course we do, but we haven’t even tried looking for the weaknesses in our opponent yet – because we’ve only just worked out who he is. I agree with you, though: if we try and fight this head on, we will be crushed.’
‘From everything you’ve said,’ Backhouse replied, ‘we’ll be crushed any which way.’
‘My approach to tackle this,’ said Straker, gently ignoring the race engineer, ‘will come from my favourite adage of Sun Tzu's.’
Backhouse's eyes widened. ‘Son who?’
‘The ancient Chinese military strategist,’ replied Straker. ‘Sun Tzu established one of the greatest military doctrines of all time. A bit of it includes: “If your enemy is in superior strength, evade him. Attack him where he is unprepared … appear where you are not expected.”’
‘How is … that … of any relevance to us when we are trying to take on the whole of the Russian State?’
‘Let me show you my thought processes here,’ Straker answered. ‘Having the impending trial, particularly one elevated up to the Supreme Court, is a good thing – as it will give us a very public platform on which to fight our case.’
‘Even if it's to be conducted in a corrupted state of “legal nihilism”?’
Straker nodded. ‘Public opinion can be drawn to it – and turned by it. Let's start, then, with thinking about where our opponent might be weak. Public opinion can still be influenced, particularly if the trial process is visibly distorted. How about I put it this way: let's imagine that the State were to lose one part of its case or argument. Which one would weaken it the most?’
‘The thirty-four deaths?’ said Backhouse flippantly.
‘Without question,’ Straker agreed. ‘Without them, there would clearly be no case to answer at all. But if they can’t be removed, we could still change one significant thing in relation to them, couldn’t we?’
Backhouse looked completely incredulous. ‘What's that, then?’
‘The blame for them,’ said Straker.
‘But you’re forgetting we have no access to the evidence needed to prove those deaths were caused by someone else.’
