There were so many problems with the plan, but one rendered all the others moot. For at least a week, Zach Berman hadn’t been at Nano.
CHAPTER 28
A little more than two hours after Pia started her early day’s work, it was after four o’clock in the afternoon more than five thousand miles away in Milan. Zach Berman sat at his computer in his room at the Four Seasons Hotel, going over progress reports emailed to him on the various projects that were running at his company, particularly the microbivores program, which was closest to his heart. He was pleased with what he read, and it made him eager to get back. But he couldn’t go just yet. The Giro d’Italia, one of Europe’s top cycle races outside of the Tour de France, was about to start. It was his reason for being in Italy, but Berman had no interest in anyone making that connection.
A week earlier, almost immediately after his conversation with Pia, Berman flew in his Gulfstream to Milan, where he had met up with yet more Chinese dignitaries. At least he wasn’t meeting any new people: this delegation was made up of individuals he had encountered over the last two years in Boulder or in China, and Whitney Jones had coached him for hours on their names and personal interests and government jobs. Such information made it far easier to converse with these people and avoid the painful stretches of silence he’d endured in his early encounters with them. Raising capital wasn’t his favorite job, particularly with the Chinese, because their bureaucratic mind-set was contrary to his value system. In fact, he freely admitted he hated dealing with them, save for the rare few who had an entrepreneurial streak, however suppressed. Yet on the world stage the big money was in China. That was the long and short of it.
One man Berman now saw regularly and who was easier to deal with than most of the others was Yan, who insisted on being called Jimmy. Jimmy spoke excellent English and was apparently a man of some status in the bewilderingly complex government hierarchy. Jimmy was actually good company, Berman had been happy to find, and it was really to meet him that Berman had come to Milan. Jimmy was a cosmopolitan man who had studied for a time at Stanford, so he was able to converse with Berman about American matters in American English. He wore a Western-style suit and sported a better haircut than the other officials Berman had met. How old he was, Berman didn’t know, although he suspected Jimmy was younger than he, and in good physical shape, as compared with the other Chinese bureaucrats Berman had to spend time with.
Berman knew Jimmy was very smart. Politics was a particular area of interest, and he quizzed Berman closely about recent American presidential elections. He seemed amused by the process. How did Americans know if the people they supported would make good leaders? he wondered. To Jimmy it all seemed absurdly random, more of a popularity contest. Berman’s response was that was the way democracy worked. “The people pick the person they think will make the best leader,” Berman said. “The people?” Jimmy asked enigmatically, and left it at that.
Berman knew the drill with the Chinese, and he was calm and confident when he spoke to them as a group. He’d picked up a few words of Mandarin, and it always amused his guests when he tried a new phrase, even if he almost always mangled it.
After several days of acclimating in Milan, Berman, Jimmy, and two more of the senior Chinese bureaucrats, together with a translator, had visited their investments as they were training. The cycle team was doing sprints around the track in an indoor velodrome, cycling impossibly fast and close together, it had seemed to Berman. The last thing he wanted at that stage was a serious crash. The five visitors had stood at the back of the arena, trying not to stand out too much. The main coach from the team had expected them and walked over when it was appropriate.
“Welcome to Milan. I am Victor Klaastens, team coach. Nice to meet you all.” The man had a heavy Dutch accent.
“Ah, Mr. Klaastens, I’m glad you’re here,” Berman had said.
“Where else would I be but with my team?”
“Indeed. So how is everything going? I’m sure our visitors would like to hear from you.”
The translator had struggled to keep up, and that was okay with Berman. He’d wished he could have talked to the coach in private before the meeting with the Chinese delegation, but it had not been possible. Klaastens was stocky, in his mid-fifties, and definitely had been around the block a few times, with a protuberant beer gut that proclaimed as much. The team’s bright blue, red, and green warm-up suit looked decidedly out of place on him.
“Everything is good,” Klaastens had responded. “Though I’m not happy to have to talk through a translator. And there’s no need to translate that.” He looked at the young woman who interrupted her translation to bow her head hurriedly.
Berman had looked at Jimmy but gave no indication that he was perturbed at what Klaastens had said. Berman wanted everything to go smoothly. Jimmy had seemed to be taking it all in stride. The English of the two other men was iffy.
“This is how sport is these days,” the coach continued. “I’m a Dutch coach on a cycling team from Azerbaijan who these Chinese gentlemen show up to watch, and they have a well-off American with them whose name I don’t know. Ignore that, too, miss.”
“‘Well-off American.’ I’ve been called many things…. I’m merely an observer,” said Berman.
“I don’t really care who you are. Maybe it’s for the best I don’t know. I’m happy with the situation,” said Klaastens. “Even if I have to accept some riders at the last minute who I can’t even converse with, since all they speak is Chinese. We’re a poor cycle team from a poor country. Why Azerbaijan needs a cycling team, I don’t know that, either, but Kazakhstan has one, and they wanted one, too. Which was very lucky for me, because I was out of a job. When I heard we would have our whole season taken care of, I was even more happy. Someone told me that the government got money from outside and they’re very happy to take the credit for having a successful team. What it meant for me was no more chasing down cell phone providers in Belgium for ten thousand euros of sponsorship. That kind of thing is not fun for a man, particularly given my age and experience.”
“So how are the new men doing?” Berman had asked to try to steer Klaastens’s conversation into a more neutral arena.
“They are doing very well.” The coach looked closely at Berman as he spoke. “Extremely well. Maybe a little too well.”
“If they are performing beyond your expectations, I don’t think that should be a problem. The reverse, in fact.”
“The fact is, they are so good, they make our team leader nervous. I don’t know how much you know about our sport, but when a team’s leader is entering a race with anxiety, it is not good. The leader is a little past his best, I know, but he has a following in France, and our team wants to win a stage at the Tour in July. No one thought anything when I put these two guys in the pack because, to be frank, you and I could have got a place on the team. But these guys are fast, and strong. And no one knows who they are.”
“They have been training in China. I heard about them by chance when I was in China on business. I ride myself, I have always been interested in team cycling, so I made some introductions. If these guys are good, then, well… good. This is the first time they are in international competition.”
“It shows. They never talk to anyone and they have their own doctors.”
“Chinese people are suspicious of Western medics. There is a lot of herbal medicine, all perfectly tested and legal, that they use. And these two guys have never been outside of China. Even being in Italy makes them nervous. I’ve been through this all before with the team president.”