“They were never as good as the Fonar offers,” I said in my defense.
“Fonar’s offers were to keep you as the number two! Steve used money to squash any possibility that you could become one of the greats, and he did it because it was in his interest. You don’t do that to a friend you love.”
“I’m the best domestique in the circuit. What we’ve achieved together has already made history,” I responded, offended. It was a weak argument, but it was compensated by my genuine indignation. We’d never discussed the subject so explicitly. My personal relationship with Steve had been a taboo subject between us until now.
“But you’re not the best domestique in the circuit. You’re the best climber in the circuit! Lombard and Bernard have spent months with their calculations and their models.” Bernard was Lombard’s only child, and a computer programmer. Although the two men were present in each other’s lives, their relationship was more formal than affectionate. It was only in the past few years, and thanks to the programs Bernard had designed to analyze my performance, that father and son finally had something in common. Fiona continued: “If you competed protected by eight racers, the way Steve does, not to mention the state-of-the-art technology to which he’s given priority, your time would be between three and five minutes better than his, depending on the kind of mountains you have to race through that year.”
“Lombard and Bernard’s programs, they’re just obsessions, pyrotechnics.”
“No, they’re not. I’ve watched your technique and your numbers for years. Your progress as a cyclist has been better than Steve’s, but that’s buried because of the roles you play on the team. You’ve bettered your time trials when Steve hasn’t been able to advance on the mountain. Pound for pound, you’ve become a better racer than him. At least admit it, even if you don’t have the guts to do anything about it.”
She said this as a challenge, with a furious expression and her arms akimbo. I’d never seen her like this. I wondered how much of this passion had to do with her love for me and how much with her resentment toward Steve.
Suddenly I felt the weight of the day’s exhaustion. All I wanted was to get to my room, drop in bed, and forget about all these conspiracies and betrayals. Life was a lot simpler when it was just about making my teammate a champion. Maybe Fiona was right, and I’d spent years taking refuge in that complacent version of myself.
I started toward the door but realized I could not leave things like this. Fiona was now sitting on the couch in the front part of her living space, eating her salmon and salad, which was not allowed on my diet at that hour of the night. I approached her with the intention of saying goodbye with a long hug that might dismiss some of the demons that had been released. But I never got close enough to touch her. An explosion shook the trailer and a gale of heat hit my back. I wound up on the floor, dazed at Fiona’s feet. When the smoke cleared I noticed a huge opening at the far end of the trailer, where flames were beginning to consume it. I looked for Fiona, who was still frozen on the couch. She saw the panicked question in my eyes and shook her head. Neither one of us was hurt.
“Let’s get out of here, this could explode!” I shouted; my ears felt clogged.
“Whatever was going to explode has already exploded—that was the gas tank,” she said as she took a couple of tentative steps to grab a fire extinguisher from the wall. When the first cops arrived on the scene just a few minutes later, the only thing left was a smoking hole and an unserviceable trailer.
It took us two hours to get back to my room, after the medical checkup and a rigorous interrogation by the local authorities. Miraculously, we’d both escaped without a scratch. The commissioner assured me he’d have an expert go over everything and come up with an explanation for the explosion, but he anticipated the conclusion: Although it had been unsuccessful, I’d become the target of the ninth attack by the killer of the Tour de France.
In spite of my team’s rules against it, that night Fiona stayed in my room. She fell asleep caressing me while in my mind I added and deleted names from my list of suspects. I was fuming; not only was the attack personal, but Fiona could have been hurt or worse. I told myself any reconsideration of my podium potential had to take a backseat. The real priority was to find the killers before they attacked again. And yet, the last image that crossed my mind before I got lost in dreams was, of course, the general classification. I’d never been among the top six in the Tour de France before.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION: STAGE 9
RANK
RIDER
TIME
NOTES
1 STEVE PANATA (USA/FONAR) 31:34:12 My job is to make sure he continues to wear the jersey.
2
RICK SAGAL (PORTUGAL/FONTANA)
:58
No threat from Sagal, he’ll lose on the mountain.
3
PHIL CUNNINHAM (UK/SAJONTRIP)
1:04
He’s good on the time trials, but not a threat.
4
MARTIN DENNIS (NETHERLANDS/COMPASS)
1:26
A roller, he’ll lose on the mountain.
5
ALESSIO MATOSAS (ITALY/LAVEZZA)
1:42
This one is dangerous, and a suspect.
6 MARC MOREAU (FRANCE/FONAR) +1:47 Even if it doesn’t last, nothing wrong with being in the top ten.
7
MILENKO PANIUK (CZECH/RABONET)
2:05
He’ll be a threat on the mountain.
8
ÓSCAR CUADRADO (COLOMBIA/MOVISTAR)
2:22
He doesn’t have a team left.
9
PABLO MEDEL (SPAIN/BALEARES)
2:35
Dangerous, unpredictable.
10
LUIS DURÁN (SPAIN/IMAGINE)
3:01
No team.
Stage 10
Tarbes—La Pierre Saint-Martin, 167 km.
His personality may leave something to be desired, but there’s no doubt Giraud is effective. Yesterday, when the whole circus around the Tour was taking advantage of the day off to travel from Britain to the Pyrenees, Giraud came to get me very early and had me fly to Toulouse in a small rented plane. I arrived several hours before the rest of the team at the little hotel on the outskirts of Pau, where we would be staying for the next few nights. The goal? To keep me away from reporters wanting me to make a statement about the trailer explosion.
Our DS’s mission was to make Steve a champion, and no assassination attempt, no reporter or cop was going to keep me from doing what I needed to do on the mountain stages that would begin today. After all, that’s why they’d brought me here: to be Steve’s shield during the seven stages in which the other climbers would attack him.
I was sorry to leave Fiona alone with the media, although at least she didn’t have sponsors to worry about. She could spit out a couple of sentences and then lock herself up in the UCI’s mobile office until the storm passed. Still, to abandon her the day she’d lost what was essentially her home, at least during the racing season, left me with a guilty feeling.
I had woken up with a sore throat from the fire. I gargled some water, convinced I’d spit soot into the sink. Those damn pyromaniacs had
at least been kind enough to attack on the eve of a day off.
In spite of everything, I enjoyed getting away from the Tour for a few hours. The isolation of the hotel provided a temporary haven. That’s no small thing: The harassment of thousands of fans and the scrutiny of the cameras can be as draining as racing three thousand kilometers. I wondered what Steve did to relieve this pressure that, in his case, was exponentially greater than my own. He was now part of the rarified celebrity circuit chased by the paparazzi. His adventures with models and actresses were obsessively covered by the magazines that kept up with that kind of thing.
Calmed by my solitude, I decided to leave the hotel to sit under an old oak and imagine what life would have been like if I hadn’t crossed paths with a bicycle. The oversized green leaves and their thick veins, reborn each spring and indifferent to whoever won or lost the Tour, put things in perspective. My father had died almost two years ago and I’d inherited his cabin at the foot of the Alps. On his deathbed, he made me promise that one day I’d move back to live there as he did, and his father before him. I agreed to his wish without the slightest intention of complying and with an urgent desire to get away from that decrepit and selfish man agonizing in a provincial hospital. But now, as I watched the swaying of the leaves at the foot of a different mountain, I told myself that a bucolic and placid life could have its charms. I imagined myself on a terrace overlooking those beautiful Alpine valleys, wearing a plaid flannel shirt and holding a huge mug of coffee in my hand. I later realized that was actually a childhood memory I’d kept of my father. If I ever lived there, I’d just be a shadow of Colonel Moreau.
No, the bike was my life, my way of facing the world, and whatever I did for the next thirty years would be a result of the first thirty, which I’d spent pedaling. I’d much rather grow old like Lombard, dedicated to his passion, than like my father, committed to cultivating his own bitterness.
I abandoned my Alpine daydreams and returned to the present and my beloved Pyrenees. What would happen if I gave in to Fiona and Lombard’s desire and attacked Steve and my own team on the mountain? Was there a real possibility I could snatch the yellow jersey from him? I wasn’t sure I could do it, even if I decided to. And the minute I went for it, I’d be a pariah, more alone during the competition than poor Óscar Cuadrado. If I was successful, was I willing to live with the pressure of the paparazzi and the constant media exposure, the astronomical expectations for the next race? I considered the enormous interests at play.
I was reminded that, because of those interests, there was a killer loose among us who had made an attempt on my life just a few hours before. I sat up, suddenly terrified that the thirty future years I’d been contemplating could be reduced to thirty minutes. I was alone and vulnerable on the edge of a wooded area. If the killer decided to try again, I’d made it easy for him. I quickly returned to my room.
That night, I texted Fiona to invite her to come and stay with me. My sudden disappearance must have upset her, because she said she felt tired after driving Lombard’s trailer all day and that she would crash there until she found something better.
The next day, Giraud kept a solid barricade around me. He ordered that food, a soigneur, and a stationary bike be brought up to my room in the early hours. The idea was that the media wouldn’t see me until I got off the team bus a few seconds before the regulatory signing in in Tarbes, the small town from which the next stage would depart. Later, a second stationary bike was brought up to my room with Steve behind it. After a day off, the coaches wanted us to loosen our knotted muscles.
“I told you they were coming for you!” he exclaimed as he came through the door. Then he hugged me tightly.
“It was just a defective gas tank,” I said, freeing myself uncomfortably from his greeting. I realized that, in spite of the thousands of hours we’d spent together, our physical contact was usually minimal: brief and spontaneous hugs to celebrate a win and routine hugs on our birthdays.
“Defective, my ass,” Steve said. “I’m going to ask my bodyguards to protect you as well from now on, at least until the end of the Tour.” He climbed on one of the bikes and started his warm-up routine.
“It wasn’t an attack,” I said, mounting my own bike. “Fiona told me she was about to change the gas tank, that it had needed repairs for a long time. Luckily, it was practically empty.” I wasn’t lying. That’s the explanation she gave the police after the incident. It was the same thing she’d said to the reporters in the morning when they caught her on her way to the UCI bus she used as her office. Truth be told, I didn’t know what to think. It seemed too much to attribute a ninth violent incident to a mere accident. But I didn’t want to feed Steve’s panic, much less be in the constant company of one of his thugs. I wondered what the rest of the cyclists were thinking. Would they continue to believe that all these tragedies were nothing more than bad luck, or did they now realize there was something else afoot?
“Do you think it’s Paniuk’s people? Or Matosas’s? That guy is desperate to win a second Tour before retiring,” said Steve, as if he were reading my mind.
“They’ll have to strike in the Pyrenees if they want another chance,” I said, trying to deflect the conversation toward the kind of attack we were more used to: one on a bike.
“Seven stages on the mountain, three in the Pyrenees and four in the Alps. The rest is a piece of cake. But this year, the ascents are tougher than the four times I won,” said Steve as we pedaled, staring at the deer-and-forest wallpaper that threatened to peel off the wall. “Not even the organizers want me to win this year,” he added, worried.
I was about to say something when, after two quick raps on the door, Lombard burst in.
“Hannibal, you don’t know how sorry I am,” he said as a greeting. “It’s my fault. Fiona had asked me to help her with the trailer maintenance, but the Tour overwhelmed us.”
Lombard looked devastated, as if he really were responsible for the explosion. And yet, as soon as he registered Steve’s presence, his expression changed. He hadn’t expected to see him in my room at that hour. He greeted him with a nod, said something about catching me before the start of the race, and left the same way he’d come in.
“That old man gets crazier by the minute, bro. When are you going to get rid of him? He’s a distraction.”
“That old man is who got me started in this. Anyway, now you heard it: The gas tank was damaged, so forget about sticking me with one of your bodyguards, because it’s not going to happen. Now, that would really be a distraction.”
We turned to strategy for the next stage. Steve was nervous. It was the first day on the high mountain. Even though the steepest peaks were programmed for the following days, today we’d face the imposing incline at La Pierre Saint-Martin, after more than four hours of racing. The last fifteen kilometers were going to be brutal, long ramps with gradients of more than ten percent, the kind of incline that forces a car to go up in first gear and a cyclist to give up his kidney.
The first 150 kilometers went by quickly and without incident. A few second-tier teams without a chance of winning took advantage of the long stretch to try aggressive and prolonged breakaways. Grudgingly, the peloton sped up so as not to allow those who had tried to flee too much distance. We would have preferred to not get so worn down before hitting the tough test that awaited us at the end.
Although fatigued, the core of the group arrived whole at the foot of the long slope, but as soon as the ascent at La Pierre Saint-Martin began, racers began falling off. We were waiting for a sudden move from Matosas but instead got a concentrated attack from all three of our principal rivals—that is, the three that were left after the killer’s purge. The domestiques for Matosas, Paniuk, and Medel sped up their rhythm from the very beginning of the incline, taking turns leading. It didn’t look like an improvised strategy. Those sons of bitches were playing us—all three teams were colluding!
About halfway up the climb, only about a dozen of us were left. Three kilometers before the finish line, there were just five: Steve, his three rivals, and me.
Now without escorts, Matosas, Paniuk, and Medel did the same thing their assistants had done: They operated as a team. Over and over, the triad tried to get rid of us by pushing us into the crosswinds with devious moves on one side or another of the road. But on each occasion, I responded to the attacks by climbing up on the wheel of the last of them. I was afraid Steve would be unable to stay behind me during these changes in direction and speed, but the last reserves of his energy kept him just a few centimeters from my wheel. He pedaled without paying attention to any of the other racers, concentrating only on not losing the benefits of my slipstream: He knew I would take care of the rest.
It wasn’t easy: In theory, kicking off is more demanding for whoever is at the front of the peloton than for someone who is two or three positions back; that person is well protected and can simply follow behind the other’s wheel. It’s just that the body doesn’t react like that. The rider who speeds up abruptly to break away knows he has to make an extra effort and prepares for it; two or three seconds later, the rider behind finds himself obliged to transmit an urgent message—“Make a big effort!”—to his body that he may not be in condition to respond to. By then, the rider who has broken away has gained three or four meters, the benefit of the slipstream vanishes and the gap is much more difficult to close.
It seemed as if Matosas, Paniuk, and Medel had agreed to some sort of sign, because every two or three turns whoever was in the front would begin an attack and the other two would quickly follow. Luckily, I reacted immediately each time and was able to neutralize their moves. In that moment, fury was the best fuel. Steve was in a kind of trance and responded automatically to my improvisations, as if an invisible spoke linked his front wheel with my back wheel.
The Black Jersey Page 8