During the ride to the starting line, I went over what I knew about the five mechanics, trying to figure out which of them was most likely to be the guilty party. I started with Basset, a shy guy from the UK. There was also Marciel, whom we called “the Dandy” because of his expensive taste in clothes and accessories. Jordi, the Catalan, had barely been with us two years. Although not from southern Italy, Adriano was a compatriot of Matosas and his crew. And Joseph had five kids and a demanding wife. When you looked at them as suspects, not one was entirely without motive.
But what also came to mind was scene after scene of the family we had become, the jokes only we understood, the weaknesses we confided in one another, the shared joy when we won, the way we licked our wounds together at the end of a disastrous day.
To look for a killer in that group was really too painful, especially when we exited the bus and climbed onto the bikes, perfectly readied in a row by Basset, the Dandy, Jordi, Adriano, and Joseph in spite of the worry and lack of sleep still evident on their faces.
A few seconds before the start of the race, the Tour’s grand baron, Sam Jitrik, went on TV to say the rumors coming from the press were nothing more than malicious lies, irresponsible and in bad taste. Already on our bikes, the racers watched the screen the sponsors had installed at the starting line as Jitrik’s finger sculpted his phrases in the air. “Dozens of men have lost their lives during the history of the Tour and hundreds more have been broken in their desire to conquer these peaks with nothing more than a fragile bike and a brave heart. It’s the essence of our sport. Tragedy is a by-product of our passion; to look for guilty parties is equivalent to insulting the valor of our athletes. Let them go to battle once more against the mountain ranges and hope the gods are generous to our heroes today.”
Today we would not, in fact, be going to battle against any mountain, although Jitrik would never let geography destroy such a perfect phrase. He scurried into the lead car and started the race.
“He’s a murderer,” I heard Radek say; he’d pulled up to my side as we took off behind the car. I wanted to ask him who he was referring to. Did he actually know something, or was this just another one of his invectives against the organizers? I would have also liked to thank him for the gesture the day before. I tried to catch his eye, but he was already lost in the mêlée at the beginning of the race.
Once more, I experienced the relief that starting the race offered my tormented mind. Having to concentrate for the next four or five hours on the peloton’s demands was the only thing that could make me forget about the killer. Steve came up on my wheel and the rest of the team surrounded us. I located Matosas and his people and directed our tiny float in their direction.
After the high mountains, which are tough on climbers and torturous for everyone else, the transitional stages are the days when most of the teams angle for a massive finish that allows their sprinters to explode. The teams that lack sprinters try early breakaways with the hope of getting a decisive lead and holding on to it to win the stage. For some racers, it’s their only chance of getting fifteen minutes of glory during the Tour.
Fonar’s transitional strategy is simple: to avoid escapes that might put the yellow jersey at risk. In theory, it was the same plan our rivals—Matosas, Paniuk, Medel—would follow. Yesterday’s enemies would transform into today’s allies to speed up the peloton and prevent any runaway from becoming a threat. We only let go racers whose position in the general classification didn’t present a risk to our leaders, and even in those cases, we’d try to limit the distance they could get ahead on the road. Most of the time, the peloton would reabsorb them before they reached their goal.
That’s what we were expecting. But what happened was something that had never been seen before in the history of the Tour. About thirty kilometers from the finish line, just as we were coming into the tiny town of La Baraque, our three rival teams took over the front. My alarms went off and I screamed to the other Fonar racers to wheel up to them. I didn’t understand their strategy, but I knew a town’s narrow streets were not the best place to get trapped. Only four of us could even get close to the front, although it didn’t do much good. More than a dozen of Paniuk’s and Medel’s domestiques wrapped around us and bottlenecked our exits as Matosas’s whole team jumped ahead, accompanied by two T-shirts of different colors: Paniuk’s and Medel’s.
The move was as astute as it was perverse. They wanted to give Steve a final blow before he’d recovered from his injuries. The eleven runaways garnered an advantage of several minutes before we could get out of the mousetrap in La Baraque, and even then it wasn’t easy to break through the siege fomented by Paniuk’s and Medel’s domestiques.
When I finally broke the blockade, the battle seemed lost. It would take a few more minutes to get a group together to go after the breakaways. Half our teammates were scattered throughout the peloton, and their attempts to catch up with us were impeded by our rivals. I assumed the other teams wouldn’t help; none of them had any contenders for the yellow jersey, so exerting the energy necessary to go on a chase would just mean losing the stage. The only one beyond recovery in the standings after this maneuver was Steve Panata.
We’d try our damndest, but I assumed we weren’t any competition for the eleven who got away. The way our rivals had orchestrated the division of tasks was not coincidental. Matosas’s squad was the fastest of the three against the clock; adding Paniuk and Medel made them as quick as a bullet. We’d be lucky if we managed to keep them from increasing the distance between us. Added to the five-minute disadvantage with which we’d started the stage, the Tour’s fortunes seemed to favor the three who got away.
Then something strange happened. I assumed Fonar would be the only team trying to get ahead of the peloton and got ready to lead the effort. But, to my surprise, other teams began to pass ahead of us, and I silently cursed them because I thought they too were trying to take advantage of Steve’s weakness. Soon I realized the entire peloton was overtaking us, and once more, it was Radek who shook me up.
“Let’s go get those sons of bitches!” he shouted as he passed. “You guys, take it easy,” he added, taking a quick glance at Steve.
What happened next was one of the most poignant moments in the history of the Tour de France. One hundred and fifty racers giving their all, legs and lungs, to stop a few assholes from getting away. Team after team took turns in the front and pedaled without mercy to pull the peloton up to its limit. Within minutes, we were transformed into a powerful missile hurled in search of the escapees.
The way Matosas and company had exploited Steve’s accident had not gone down well with the rest of the racers. Though often violated, there’s an unwritten rule that calls for not taking advantage of malevolent acts on the road, especially if the victim is the race leader. Our colleagues had taken note of Steve’s courageous remounting yesterday afternoon.
When the peloton works together, it’s a high-powered train, running over everything in its path. The avenging spirit that had come over the pack seemed to breathe life into the racers. Nothing feels better to a group than the sense that they’re righting a wrong.
Grateful, I tried to cooperate with the effort by taking a turn near the front. I started to go up the line, but when Radek saw me, he courteously waved me to the back of the peloton. Apparently, they wanted to do us the whole favor: to neutralize the treasonous attack and help us compensate for the wasted energy the day before in the Pyrenees. I accepted the invitation and pulled Fonar to the rear.
“It’s a trap, and if they bottleneck us again, we’re fucked,” thundered Giraud on our earphones. “Move up to the lead.”
“It’s not a trap,” I responded.
“Let them pull, but you have to be on alert,” he said, ignoring my comment. “And if they ease up on the pace, we’ll get loose and attack. We need to catch up with the breakaways.”
“We n
eed to rest,” I protested, looking over at Steve, who listened without speaking,“and it’s being offered to us.”
“Don’t be naïve, Marc. Attack,” shouted our DS.
After a long silence I said, “Giraud, there’s such a thing as decency and you have to know how to recognize it when it presents itself.” As I’ve said, pedaling helps bring oxygen to my brain.
“Luckily, I’m the directeur sportif,” said Giraud, livid. “Attack, goddamnit.”
I looked over at the rest of my Fonar teammates, who had heard every word of our dialogue without participating. They returned my gaze, waiting for a response. Years of conditioning makes racers respond to the instructions of their DSs without a peep, unless you’re Lance Armstrong. But my teammates were as moved as I was by the solidarity of our colleagues. Like me, they considered it disrespectful to ignore the courtesy and show distrust by advancing to the front. Plus, all of us, except Giraud, knew Steve was not ready to make the chase. He was up on my wheel concentrating on the simple but incredibly tough task of compelling one pedal forward at a time, ignoring everything else, including the dialogue he had just heard.
So I did the only thing a racer can’t do while on the road, according to his coach: I took my earphone out. I knew it could mean getting kicked out the next day. But I didn’t have the desire or energy to keep arguing with Giraud. I could always say the gadget had come loose, although I knew it would be useless. The always-present TV cameras had captured the moment when my hand went up to disconnect it.
I kept riding, lost in thought, wondering if these would be the last kilometers of the Tour for me this year. I turned to see how Steve was doing; if he didn’t recover, these would be the last for him as well. At that precise moment, without taking his eyes off my back wheel, he disconnected his earphone with an almost distracted gesture, as if he were scratching his ear. Nothing in his face gave away that he’d come out of his trance.
Subtle, but effective. I could be expelled from the team, but Steve never, and much less given what happened next. One by one, each of the members of Fonar did the same thing. I couldn’t keep from smiling. Without trying to, I’d provoked a rebellion that would probably cause Giraud to be fired at the end of the competition. Even if the TV cameras hadn’t caught all nine racers rebelling, they would soon realize all our earphones were just dangling useless.
Whatever the results of the chase and the final rankings of the stage, it would be the Fonar uprising that would be the talk of the day in the world of cycling. And, once again, without wanting to—well, almost—I’d been the protagonist. Maybe Steve was not so wrong when he called me the Forrest Gump of the Tour. I just hoped I wouldn’t still be playing that role when the killer decided to attack again.
Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t even realize what was going on until Guido pointed up the long stretch still before us. The escapees were about five hundred meters ahead. We still had eight kilometers to the finish line. We’d caught up with them thanks to my colleagues’ savage efforts. I looked around and made sure everyone understood the profound debt we owed. What should have been an easy day for everyone had turned into a punitive stage with enormous sacrifices in service of righting a wrong. It was impossible that there could be a killer in that group of professionals. I wanted more than ever to believe he was among that little group of backstabbers riding up front.
We reached the three frontrunners kilometers before the finish line without any song and dance or smugness, except for Radek, who looked them in the eye provocatively, trying to start a fight.
On the team bus, Giraud didn’t say a word about what happened. But the subject was like a pink rhinoceros we pretended not to see. From two seats away I could make out our DS’s huge belly going up and down as he flared his nostrils. When we got to the hotel, on the outskirts of Rodez, I waited for Giraud to get off before exiting myself. The last thing I needed was to run into my resentful coach. I didn’t wait long enough.
“You son of a bitch,” he said into my ear as he pulled roughly on my neck just outside the bus. “If I do nothing else in my life, I’ll make sure you never win a race, even if I have to throw you off the bike myself.”
I started to reply, but it was clear his words were not meant to launch a conversation. He stormed away huffing and puffing.
His threat left me shaking. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t like I’d won so many races before either. I didn’t need his help to lose the next ones. Still, it’s not easy to be cool when a guy who weighs a hundred pounds more than you leaves bruises on your neck and promises to punish you forever and ever.
Two hours later I told Fiona what had happened at the foot of the bus.
“You just killed his career,” she said, with her usual implacable common sense.
“It wasn’t on purpose. What he ordered us to do was crazy; the rest of the peloton would have thought we were total assholes.”
“I know. You did the right thing,” she said, lazily caressing my cheek with her knuckles, which were softer than the calloused palms of her hands. “Now I love you a little more.”
That last part surprised me. Fiona could be physically very affectionate, especially when she was sleepy, but she rarely said anything florid and honeyed.
“Tomorrow, I’ll start without the earphone,” I joked, blushing a little and pulled up closer to her, a gesture based more in gratitude than flirtation. That anyone can love me still strikes me as an undeserved privilege. There was an hour before dinner. A quick look around the room made it clear we had gotten the short end of the hotel lottery today. The bed had a sunken mattress, the curtains had never been washed, and the shower had stains of dubious origins. Even Hitchcock would have rejected it for his films.
“Favre was right when he told you Fonar had been thinking about firing Giraud at the end of the season. I confirmed it. That’s why he has such an obsession with winning this Tour; he thinks it could help them change their minds.” Fiona had closed the tiny and unexpected romantic opening and returned to her usual analytical tone. “But even if they hadn’t changed their minds, he assumed the other teams would compete among themselves to contract him. Now with that kind of defiance among his racers, anyone would think twice. So, yes, he thinks you screwed him over.”
“The truth is I wouldn’t be the least bit bothered if I never saw his face on the circuit again. If he ends up with another team, I’m always going to be afraid of suffering some kind of bullshit on the road. I swear to you, he would get revenge; he would make sure I never won another race in my life.”
“Well, you have the best revenge within your reach…,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked, falling right into her trap.
“To win the Tour while you’re still under his command!” she responded, elated.
I laughed along with her as if it were a good joke, although I knew she was deadly serious. So long as I had some chance at the podium, she would not drop that line. Since I didn’t know what to say, I tried to hug her, a strategy that generally proved effective in my prior relationships; once more I discovered not everything worked with Fiona. She tolerated my arms the way a child accepts a hug from a relative wearing too much perfume. Then she pushed them aside with a serious look on her face, but I changed the subject before she had a chance to say anything.
“Do you know what’s going on with Lombard? I haven’t seen him today.” The last few hours had been so intense I hadn’t had a chance to talk with my old friend, although I couldn’t ignore the troublemaking public statements he had given to Libération. I needed to make sure he didn’t do that again.
“He’s around somewhere,” she said vaguely. “They’re not letting him get anywhere near you,” she added in a whisper.
“Did Giraud ban him from the Fonar hotels? As a question of security or something like that?” I said, trying to rationalize the situation.
“I
t wasn’t Giraud,” she said. “It was Steve.”
“What? What do you mean, Steve?”
She just shook her head.
A few minutes later, after Fiona left, I sent Lombard a text telling him I wanted to meet that night. It wouldn’t be easy, because I couldn’t set foot outside without being surrounded by press or fans. And that’s not even taking into account that I shouldn’t have been wandering alone while there was a killer on the loose.
At dinner, we were like a soccer team that, having been down zero to four, manages to come back and only lose three to four. The last few kilometers of this stage, when the peloton had ridden at such a fury to catch up with our rivals, had become the stuff of legend. But all it really meant was our rivals hadn’t improved their lead. When we got up the next day, we’d still be the same five minutes behind Matosas with which we’d begun. In sum, it had been an epic effort just to stay where we were. Now we concentrated on putting food in our mouths with as few words as necessary. There wasn’t much enthusiasm but there also wasn’t much sorrow. Exhaustion, more than anything else.
A little while later, I snuck out the back door, headed for the hotel parking lot, but as soon as I set foot outside, two of Steve’s thuggish bodyguards came up and clung to me like dandruff.
“Easy, boys, I’m only going to the bus. I need a warm bath before going to sleep. The hotel shower has enough germs to supply a biological war.” They silently followed me the ten meters to our enormous team vehicle.
I’d sent Axel a message asking him to let Lombard into the bus, since Axel was responsible for cleaning the vehicle at the end of the day, and he was also the only assistant whom I trusted. I don’t know if he understood that this favor could cost him his job, but he did it without hesitation. The intimacy you develop with someone who works on your naked body for ninety minutes a day over several years isn’t something even most lovers have. Axel knew my muscles and tendons the way a violinist knows his instrument.
The Black Jersey Page 14