A few meters away, Paniuk pedaled furiously, also completely consumed by his earphones. There was no need to speculate about what he was listening to: We all knew about the Czech’s passion for metal and could hear the thundering noise with which he was punishing his eardrums. Of all the climbers, he was the one who might fare best during the day’s trial. His time-trial stats weren’t bad, and he had a good chance of getting distance from the other mountain specialists. I approached him in my detective mode, trying to think of the best way to start a casual conversation that could lead to an important revelation. I couldn’t think of anything, so I just stood there two meters behind him. Even at that distance I got a sniff of the aromatic cloud around him. Paniuk was an extravagant guy: Who else would think to drench himself in cologne to race through the countryside? Although, on second thought, who among us wasn’t extravagant, given we were all dedicated to this absurd profession? Just today, like on all racing days, I had covered my body in cornstarch with the hope of postponing the corrosive effect of my own perspiration.
I looked around and saw that one of the bikes next to the resentful Viktor Radek was open. I climbed on immediately.
“How’s it going, Viktor? How is the Tour treating you?” I was trying to feel him out. As is the case with a lot of Poles, he was fluent in French.
“Bad, like everyone else. The Tour doesn’t treat anyone well,” he responded, sour. “Well, except for your pal,” he said after a pause, although I pretended I didn’t hear him. Radek’s curly blond hair was quite a distraction, not only because it was wildly untamed, but because he didn’t even try to comb it in the mornings. Among his many superstitions, and these weren’t few, he considered seeing himself in the mirror before he got on a bike to be bad luck. He looked like a scarecrow trying to walk. A very ill-humored scarecrow.
“Steve isn’t happy either; they’ve stuck us with more high mountain stages this year.”
Radek didn’t respond. I shouldn’t have given him a counterargument if I wanted to see the depth of his rancor; I should have been on his side and let him vent his resentment. He was a strange guy, and not just because of his physique.
“But you’re right: More than sixty people have dropped out so far, and this is supposed to be the easy part. The Tour is too demanding,” I went on, as if there hadn’t been two minutes of silence after his response.
“Easy part? It’s a crime to have us go over those rock gardens on the first stages. I’d like to see Jitrik pedal over those wet and sandy rocks in those tiny towns they make us go through. And all so the Tour can make fifty thousand from each town. I got out of the first two scrambles by pure luck.”
“And now, this thing with Fleming. Inexplicable…”
“Not so inexplicable when you consider the pressures we’re under. You never know what kind of struggle Fleming was going through to make that kind of decision. They had disqualified Santamaría that morning for doping. We all knew he was clean.”
I listened to him while watching his face, which was now flushed with indignation. If Radek was the killer, then he was a better actor than cyclist. There wasn’t the slightest trace of guilt or embarrassment; he was stewing in pure hatred. A quick glimpse at his skinny arms also made me question if he could force somebody underwater against their will. If the Englishman had been drowned by a solitary killer, it didn’t seem likely it was Radek.
A few minutes later, the organizers asked Radek to the exit platform. The racers took off with two minutes between them to avoid running into each other. Steve would be the second to last, because he was second in the general classification, and I would take off six competitors ahead of him, as was determined by my ninth place. It was still a little under an hour before I’d be called. I stuck my earphones in my ears and surrendered to the vallenato I used to warm up.
I rotated my legs at a moderate rhythm as I edited my list of possible guilty parties. I moved Radek to the bottom, but I didn’t completely eliminate him.
“Poor guy, his soul is tormented,” said my old mentor Colonel Lombard as he greeted me by patting my back; his gaze followed Radek until he disappeared.
“Colonel, you scared me. Don’t do that,” I said, jumping off the bike.
“I’ve always greeted you the same way,” he responded, surprised too.
Yes, but now there’s a killer on the loose, I thought, although I didn’t say it aloud. Lombard had retired from the military six years before and had made following my career his life’s purpose, at least during the racing season. He had the resources, the time, and the relationships to win a place in the sprawling troupe that followed the cyclists. At first, his warm but obsessive presence had made me uncomfortable, but I ended up getting used to and being grateful for it. He was on top of all the advancements and technology in medicine and sports, and he followed my performance even more intensely than Fonar did. More than once, I adjusted my racing strategies and exercise programs based on his suggestions.
In time, the rest of the circuit had adopted him as part of the scene. He got his first accreditation as a consultant for Bimeo, the head of security on the Tour, so powerful and terrifying that he only required one name. And in the past few years, he’d become inseparable from Fiona, who ended up giving him a second accreditation as an inspector for something related to protocols and procedures. He used the two accreditations interchangeably to move like a fish in water up and down the competition. Lombard and Fiona were bonded because of their complete commitment to the cycling world, but that relationship grew into something like that of a father and daughter. Needless to say, they shared a conviction that I needed to free myself of Steve.
On this occasion, I was doubly grateful to Lombard. He had moved mountains to make sure Fonar gave me the same equipment my teammate had had the year before. Today, my clothes and bike were valued at more than half a million euros. The research in the development of Steve’s new helmet alone had cost $250,000, an investment the manufacturer would recover as soon as they launched the prototype of what I was wearing into the market.
“The general standings are still very compact. If you manage one of your best times, you could be among the top five. And if that’s where you’re at when you get to the mountain, the rest is easy: champion or, at least, top three.”
“Lower your voice,” I said, looking around to make sure no one had heard us. A conversation like that between a domestique and his mentor was even more of a sacrilege than two cardinals speculating about how they’d look dressed in white and offering mass in St. Peter’s Square.
“We already ran the races on the model, and only seven or eight cyclists can better your time trials. And it will help a lot that there are two hills on today’s course,” he insisted, whispering in my ear this time. Even though I couldn’t see his mouth, I could swear he was salivating.
I worried we looked like two conspirators exchanging secrets—the cardinals discussing poison this time. Later, I realized no one was paying attention to us, but the clandestine meetings with the commissioner and now these intrigues with Lombard were making me paranoid. What he was talking about didn’t have the slightest chance of becoming reality. My role as a domestique condemned me to finish the Tour after the first twenty racers no matter what kind of efforts Lombard put in. Still, Lombard’s attentions were touching.
But that day he wasn’t wrong. I finished the time trials with the sixth best time, 58 seconds behind Steve. Matosas also managed to sneak in with one of the ten best times. It was becoming clear the Italian would do whatever was necessary to enter Paris first.
That same night I discovered that could include killing me.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Fiona said after the race, not turning around from grilling a salmon fillet in her little kitchen.
A few weeks before, she’d given me the key to her trailer, but I sensed she already regretted it. I knew she loved me; h
ow could it be any other way after sharing this crazy life of ours for two years? Still, I knew she guarded her privacy and her space ferociously.
“Something kept me,” I responded, contemplating the possibility of telling her about my new detective duties, but I decided to keep her out of it, at least for the moment. “Giraud was so euphoric after Steve’s win he dragged out his speech before dinner.”
“And he didn’t say anything about your ranking? Last year Steve beat you by more than three minutes and you were in fifteenth place; now you’re in sixth. You’re the racer with the greatest improvement on the time trials. That bastard really didn’t say anything?”
“Nope,” I said as I went up to her, kissed her on the neck, and pulled her back against me. I was surprised to feel her tremble when I touched her sturdy body. I remembered we were off the next day, and I toyed with the idea of breaking the vow of chastity we subscribed to on the Tour.
“Son of a bitch. As far as Fonar is concerned, there’s only Steve,” she said gesticulating. I looked sadly at the silhouette through her thin Japanese robe. It was quite clear to me it would not be coming off tonight. Fiona got angry very rarely, but when she did, her anger could last for hours.
“Steve was happier than me about my sixth place. He celebrated like it was his own win,” I protested.
“That’s because he sees it as a win for him! He is so self-involved, he thinks you’ve gotten better at the time trials thanks to him, as if his talent radiated onto whoever was closest,” she said.
I considered that if there was any possibility of getting that robe off tonight, defending Steve was probably not the best strategy. Still, I couldn’t help it. She was being unfair to my friend.
“You’re looking at it all wrong. You should’ve seen him yesterday. He was beside himself when he found out about Fleming’s death. I’d never seen him like that before.”
“I don’t understand that reaction. They’d never been friends,” she said, as if she knew everything about my colleagues. “And let’s not be naïve: Unless there’s some sort of catastrophe, Fleming’s death essentially eliminates Stark. Steve and Giraud have the way cleared so they can be crowned in Paris. They don’t have any rivals left.”
“Well, there’s Matosas, Paniuk, and Medel. All three are better climbers than Steve. They might get their chance on the Alps.”
“You’re the best climber! With your help, Steve can neutralize them,” she said emphatically, finally looking at me for the first time that night. And then, in a very low whisper, she added: “In fact, you’re the only one who can beat Panata.”
As she had done so many times before, Fiona said the words I didn’t dare articulate. A long silence followed her bombshell. My first reaction was to refuse to let the bomb go off. My loyalty to Steve was deeply ingrained. But instead of brushing aside Fiona’s comment, my brain went straight to her use of a particular word. She didn’t like Steve but she’d always called him by his first name. That she was now referring to him by his last name struck me as odd and vaguely threatening.
I was again led to wonder what the devil had happened between them, an inquiry I couldn’t force myself to make for fear of what I might find out, and that, to be fair, they didn’t seem willing to reveal to me. Fiona had been the chief mechanic for the Fonar team six years ago when Steve and I were both leaders. Like many others on the circuit before him, my friend tried to seduce her. She wasn’t the only woman in our professional circle: There were soigneurs, nutritionists, doctors. Not many, but some. There was no question that she was the best mechanic in a trade that had up until then been exclusively male, and that made for an undeniable fascination among the racers. Her inaccessibility, her grease-stained hands, her large, unconfined breasts under her jumpsuit, her red hair, those green eyes and that surly expression they often held—in short, a strange and attractive amalgam had turned her into impossible prey for the wolf pack. And there was no greater alpha male than Steve Panata.
My friend tried every possible angle during the twenty months Fiona worked for our team. It must’ve become an obsession because I’d never seen him abuse his star power like that. He demanded personal checkups of his bike in order to force her to spend time alone with him. He’d make unannounced visits to her trailer at night. And he asked her to go with him to Munich in the off-season to supervise the new carbon components for his frame that a sponsor was designing. Something happened between them, or didn’t happen, because at the end of the season, Fiona resigned from the team and left without saying a word. When she worked at Fonar, Fiona and I had two or three long conversations, but we were never intimate. I had long ceased being shy around women, but it was also clear this Irish Athena was way out of my league. And I imagine my close proximity to Steve made it impossible for her to relax in my presence.
Yet, months later, out of the blue, she sent me a message describing a meticulous program to adjust my posture, pedal, and bike seat to compensate for a difference of five millimeters in longitude between my left side and my right. This turned into a regular exchange of messages that slowly became more personal even after she took an inspector’s job with UCI.
Two springs ago, on our way back from Catalonia, she knocked on my door one night and, after a brief greeting, stretched out on my bed, a bold and needy look in her eyes. In the following months, the visits became routine whenever our schedules allowed us to be in the same place, even if it was just to sleep holding each other. That inexpressive daytime Fiona disappeared at night. She would nestle close to me, touch me tenderly, and whisper sweet, senseless words.
I should say that my prestige in the circuit grew exponentially as soon as my relationship with Fiona was found out. For months, all my colleagues treated me with the kind of respect that only winning the Spanish Vuelta or the Italian Giro might have earned. All, that is, except Steve.
When he learned Fiona was in my life, something began to break in the nearly symbiotic relationship we’d shared for so long. In those first few days I caught him staring at me on more than one occasion, as if he was looking for something he might have missed. I imagined he was trying to figure out the reasons she’d chosen me. But that was a mystery to me as well.
He must not have found anything to justify her preference, so he figured it was some kind of revenge on Fiona’s part: Getting involved with me not only showed her disdain but sowed the seeds of a discord that could threaten and affect his racing performance.
That’s when he decided to destroy Fiona and bring me back around to his cause. At least that’s my interpretation of the campaign he directed toward me and against her. He insisted on including me in some of his more lucrative publicity commercials, went overboard in his gratitude toward me in all his interviews, and introduced me to one attractive international jet-setting female friend after another. I suspect, based on a few troubling things I heard, that at the same time he tried to make Fiona’s life impossible in the biking world, spreading damaging rumors, both personal and professional, that hurt me to remember.
Eventually, though, he realized the relationship between Fiona and me was here to stay, and he modified his attitude. Still, he seemed vaguely offended, as if he’d been a victim of some kind of betrayal on my part, even though he kept up appearances and didn’t change anything obvious about the professional and personal codes we’d built up over the years. It was clear to me that his heretofore inexhaustible self-confidence had been shaken, especially because the hurt came from such an unexpected and mortifying place—his supposedly unconditional friend and domestique.
That’s when he began to pay more attention to the demands of his agents and to devote more time to his agenda of celebrity events. He launched his courtship with Stevlana and erased Fiona and anything having to do with her from his life. I should note that during this period his obsession for training never diminished and he was never careless about the everyday physical discipline
necessary, given the tough parameters this life demands. Nor did we modify in any way the work routine that had made us the most successful tandem in the professional circuit.
For her part, Fiona simply ignored Steve. First his hostility and then his absolute disdain. She treated him as one more variable in my life, without conceding him any more consideration than she would the weather or the kind of bike I was riding.
Or, at least, that’s what I’d always thought. Just now, when she said I could “beat Panata,” I realized that for the past few months Fiona had been weaving the most effective campaign conceivable against Steve: to convince me I was a better cyclist than him.
“Steve has an almost-two-minute lead, and to get over that I’d have to betray him on the mountain. Anyway, Giraud would never let me break away without dragging Steve with me. My own team would hunt me down.”
“Not if you do it at the right moment.”
I thought about Alpe d’Huez and the last long, steep twenty kilometers we’d race on Stage 20, one day before we reached Paris. Technically, Fiona was right. If the rest of the Fonar team was exhausted at the start of the slope, and if it was just our champion and me, I could rid myself of Steve a few kilometers before the finish line and try to overtake the lead he’d have over me in the standings. I imagined my friend’s surprised expression when I stood on the pedals and left him alone and paralyzed on a ramp with a ten percent incline.
“But I’m not going to do it,” I said. “No win could justify a betrayal of that magnitude.”
“It’s you who’s been betrayed, Mojito,” said Fiona, exasperated. “I can understand that eleven years ago you accepted he was the leader and you were the domestique.” She chewed on the last word as if it were nauseating. “The decision was made by the Ventoux directors and you were an unknown with few options at that moment. Three or four years later, any one of the intermediate teams would have been delighted to have you as a leader; I know you’ve had several offers in the last few years.”
The Black Jersey Page 7
