“I know you have,” Klaastens had said. “But I know more about cycling than he does. What is that phrase in America? I’ve forgotten more about it than he knows. Is that right?”
“Very good.”
“Okay. I’m asking for my own benefit. I need to be prepared if one of these guys wins a stage in this race.”
“You think there is the chance of them winning?” If either of these guys wins a stage, I’d be surprised, Berman had thought. Both riders knew the consequences of performing too well too soon. The consequences not only for themselves, but also for their extended families in China. Having heard how fast the two men were, Berman had worried that they had seemed to have stretched their legs too much already, despite instructions to the contrary.
“Probably not. We see a lot of guys who look great in training but flame out and fail on the road. Perhaps they’re like that.”
“Perhaps.”
“Okay. I am not worried, as I said. They passed the drug and blood doping tests we administered several times over, the same one that the race uses. And you tell me everything is fine. So it is fine. I hear there are more than seven hundred million cyclists in China. At least two of them have to be good, right? I found that number on the Internet, and I like it. If anyone from the media asks, which they will, that’s what I’m going to say. Two from seven hundred million. That should quiet most skeptics.”
The translator had talked for a good minute after Klaastens finished, and Zhu, one of the Chinese delegation, had responded with a few agitated words.
“Is everything okay?” Berman had asked the translator. But it was Jimmy who had replied. “He’s just wondering if everything is okay. He says this man here is very serious.”
“Yes, please assure him that everything is fine. Our friend here is very eminent in the world of cycling. He is just expressing some personal opinions. He likes to talk, as you can see. But everything is perfectly fine.”
Berman then had steered Klaastens away from the group. “I don’t want them to think you are not grateful for their support,” Berman had said when they were just beyond earshot.
“I am grateful,” Klaastens had insisted. “But they’re not officially supporting us, you see? It’s the anonymous part that is strange to me. You usually can’t stop sponsors from putting logos on everything that moves. So I appreciate it from that angle, but really I don’t know who these guys are any more than I know you.”
“I assure you, when the time comes, they will come out in the open, and I will, too. These are all early steps. They don’t want to be embarrassed if the men fail. Failure is very bad in their culture, particularly on the world stage. That’s why there is all this intrigue. But your contact was correct. The funding for the team came from a third party and was funneled through the Azeri government. Ultimately the connection is through oil.”
“Oil?”
“It is widely known that the Chinese are interested in cornering the market for raw materials in general.”
Klaastens had shrugged and nodded. Having heard that information, he had become Berman’s accomplice of sorts. Ultimately he didn’t care about the details in that he valued his job more than he cared about the answers to any questions he had. Klaastens figured he had enough deniability should anything untoward happen. The two walked back to the Chinese men and Klaastens addressed the translator.
“Please assure the gentlemen that our team is very grateful for their support for the whole team, and we look forward to a long and fruitful partnership. We just want reassurance that their riders will continue to be team players. Although a lot of people don’t know it, cycling is, in the final analysis, a team sport.”
“Well put,” Berman had said, who then had taken his leave before Klaastens put on a demonstration of the prowess and speed of the team, particularly the two new Chinese riders.
At the desk in the Four Seasons, Berman finished up his emails. He looked at his watch and wondered if he had time for one more dish of fried gnocchi. He found he loved the food in Milan, especially at the cheaper restaurants. His new favorite dish was beyond delicious, but healthwise they weren’t such a good idea. Berman wouldn’t dream of eating such a thing at home, which made them so much more alluring.
These had been a fun few days. He found that Milan had an exciting nightlife, which he had avidly taken in, with Jimmy as a surprisingly knowledgeable guide. He found certain venues in which there was a seemingly endless chain of attractive women from Eastern Europe, particularly the Czech Republic and Hungary. As a result, he was looking forward to a long sleep on the way home.
With Jimmy, he’d visited the team a few more times in training after that first visit. He reminded the doctors who worked with the riders that they should be sure to follow the protocols they had established. Security was paramount. Never carry anything yourself — use the couriers. And remember, the riders couldn’t win. They should be consistently fast, but always ride in support of the team leader. It was likely, especially on this year’s course, that they would be much stronger than the leader, but at all costs they had to hold back, even if they felt strong enough to sprint ahead. The idea was just to introduce their presence, no more at this stage.
There would be ample opportunity down the road for heroics. After all, as far as the Chinese were concerned, that was what this was all about.
CHAPTER 29
Zach Berman felt he was just about over his latest bout of jet lag. No matter how much sleep he got on a flight, no matter how diligent he was about taking his melatonin supplements, which he was convinced helped, and not sleeping during daylight on his return to Colorado, he was always knocked off center a little for a few days after flying home.
He had been back in Boulder by the time the first stage of the Giro d’Italia — a short time trial — was held on Saturday. The next day there was a longer stage, more than two hundred kilometers. Berman followed the team’s progress on the Internet. He was pleased to see the Azerbaijani team’s riders had performed decently without being embarrassingly bad or improbably good. Although Berman had no control over the team leader’s performance, he was pleased to see he lay in thirtieth place overall; his Chinese riders finished each day in the middle of the peloton, the main group of supporting riders, which was just as it should be. Berman was looking forward to being back in Milan on the twenty-seventh for the end of the race, even if he had to travel there via China. But the long trip would be well worth it if the latest training results were replicated over the course of the next couple of weeks.
On Sunday Berman had forced himself to pay another painful visit to his mother at the Valley Springs Assisted Living home in Louisville. Each time he went, he thought he detected a tangible decline in his mother’s capabilities. On this occasion, she was just a little more belligerent toward him, and just a little less capable of completing a coherent sentence. The inexorable decay was frightening, not for his mother, as he had given up any hope of stemming her disease, but for himself.
He felt his going there was like those juvenile-offender programs in which at-risk teens are sent to a hard adult jail in the hope that they’ll be scared straight. Except Berman was trying to make sure he worked even harder to make sure his Nano team had the funds to make progress with the science. His ability to comprehend the technical aspects of the program had long ago been left behind by the advances his scientists were making, but he kept on top of it the best he could. What Berman could do was ensure he secured the money.