The Black Jersey
Page 30
But: “Steve is doing worse,” said Bernard. “His heart rate is hitting the ceiling and he’s barely going nineteen kilometers per hour. You’re going twenty-one; he won’t catch you. But you need to get up to twenty-four at least. Let’s go, Marc. You still got some more in you, I can see it from your stats.” Apparently the colonel’s son was watching the data transmitted from the power meters on our bikes in real time.
The information was a dose of adrenaline. It wasn’t just about what I could win, it was about what Steve could lose. I clung to the possibility that he would be the one to suffer the bonk. I saw myself zipped up in yellow again, and I climbed on the pedals after Paniuk. The crowd bellowed with excitement.
“That’s right, Marc, you have to pass the Czech to come in first. We’re going to need the ten-second bonus. We’re still forty-nine seconds from Steve, and there are twelve hundred meters to the finish line.”
According to Bernard’s equations, 24 kilometers per hour was enough for the stopwatch to somehow end up making me champion. But, since the mountains of Medellín, I had been chasing someone’s back, and I was sick of it. I set my sights on some point between Paniuk’s shoulder blades and followed him, a greyhound after a hare. I passed him eight hundred meters before the finish line. When I looked at my power meter, I saw I was rolling at 25 per hour. I had done it. I would be champion.
The audience seemed to think the same thing, because the path, now protected by fences, had become a channel flanked by thousands of blue flags, as if the churning water had broken free and was running over the banks.
It was strange to hear nothing from Bernard in the past few minutes, and I supposed he was having audio problems. The last thing I’d heard from him was “nineteen seconds,” the distance Steve was still ahead of me in the rankings. But that had been three hundred meters ago. The difference was probably no more than 10 seconds at that moment, and I still had five hundred meters to go. I would get a 10-second bonus for coming in first place, and he would get 4 for third. That would put me another 6 ahead. I judged I’d have no problem eating up the rest of the difference, and I shot toward the finish line with everything I had.
When I crossed the 400-meter line, I finally heard Bernard’s voice. I could feel his fear when he declared “thirteen seconds.” It took me a moment to understand the consequences. Steve had recovered and was still ahead of me in the rankings. He was defending his advantage tooth and nail.
“He increased his speed to twenty-three kilometers, he’s breaking away,” said Bernard, and I noticed a hint of admiration behind his surprise.
I should have known. Behind me came the possessed teenager able to go without sleep several nights in a row in order not to lose at PlayStation. The furious rage provoked by being passed by his own domestique had topped off his empty tank.
“It won’t be enough at this speed, Marc; you need to go twenty-eight and even then it’s in the hands of the gods,” said Bernard, rapidly calculating.
For a moment, the idea that Bernard was lying to me just to ensure a wider margin of victory crossed my mind. It’s common for coaches to distort the data to draw an extra effort out of their racers on the last few meters. But the fear in Bernard’s voice sounded real.
I wrung out all I had left, but the damn speedometer didn’t climb over 26. I remembered my teacher Carmen and I thought about Fiona, trying to call on the energy I didn’t have. Even though I was about to hit the wall, I couldn’t cut off the seconds I needed. “Thirteen, twelve, eleven,” announced Bernard with painful slowness. When I passed the 100-meter mark, Steve was an estimated eleven seconds ahead of me in the battle for the jersey. I thought of Lombard’s suffering, and my mother, tortured until her death by my indifference.
I took the last curve and shot straight down, feeling my thighs and tendons shattering. I couldn’t even raise my arms in triumph when I crossed the finish line. When I lowered my head, I saw the monitor showed 34 kilometers per hour. I stopped as best I could, but only Axel from the Fonar team helped hold me up.
The audience gave in to their own delirium, captivated by the end of the curse: Finally, a Frenchman might wear the yellow jersey in Paris, although I knew the second half of the battle was only just starting. Bernard confirmed it.
“Bravo, Marc, great effort.” His tone in my earbuds was more resignation than enthusiasm. Axel handed me my cellphone and I called him immediately.
“How does it look?” I asked Bernard, blurting out the words through my panting, still bent over, although my eyes didn’t leave the huge screen that showed Steve passing the curves I’d just navigated. A stopwatch added up the seconds that had passed since I crossed the finish line.
“It all depends on Steve. But the bastard’s climbing fast.”
“And the bonus?” I said, trying to cling to hope anywhere. I barely noticed Paniuk crossing the line and the TV didn’t pay him much attention either. The eyes of the world were fixed on Steve, glued to his recovery, and it was clear he knew it. He was feeding on the admiration and even the hostility of the crowd, which he cut through like a hot knife through butter.
“Already included. At the pace he’s going, he’ll keep nine or ten seconds of advantage in the classification, minus the six seconds’ difference in bonus points for first and third place. He’ll take the Tour by a margin of three to five seconds.”
At the start of the stage, Steve had an advantage of 1:33. He would just have to cross the line 1:26 after me to make up for my bonus points and beat me. I saw the stopwatch on the screen advance impossibly slowly while he ate up the meters on the last curve —0:59, 0:60, 1:01, 1:02—and prepared to conquer the final stretch. He must have been hearing something from his own earbuds, because he wore a big smile on his face. Giraud had told him the jersey was his. He knew he was the winner.
I saw him approach the finish line and I decided to walk away. I didn’t want to see his defiant, mocking gaze. I knew it well. If I had the strength, I would’ve thrown a punch at the jerk behind the camera who’d projected my disappointed face on the huge screen, under Steve’s triumphant image.
Axel put his arm around my shoulders to lead me to the exit. The cloud of reporters that had previously fenced me in was now entranced by Steve’s imminent arrival.
The soigneur’s hand squeezed my shoulder and interrupted my escape. He stayed static for a second, as if watching the wind. Then I noticed it too. A cry, almost a roar, was ascending from the base of the mountain toward its peak, like an inverted avalanche. We both turned toward the finish line and understood the reason why. Matosas had surged around the curve, pushed on by an elated mob, just five or eight meters behind Steve.
Steve didn’t seem to realize what was happening, surely believing the uproar was caused by the crowd yielding to his feat. I didn’t understand why Giraud hadn’t warned him, but then I remembered that during his great wins, my teammate pulled his earbuds out before crossing the finish line so they wouldn’t appear in the photos. As if he believed the fact that he listened to someone else’s instructions made the triumph seem less praiseworthy, less his own.
I don’t know where Matosas got his second wind from, but he looked like a runaway horse, his body and bike swaying like a true sprinter, standing up on his pedals. Steve must have sensed something, or perhaps he simply saw the fans’ eyes were not on him anymore. He turned when the Italian was just a couple of meters behind him, with less than ten before the finish line. Matosas’s face was frightening, a monument to fury and desperation.
Steve imitated the sprinter’s movements and pushed his body forward like a track-and-field runner. But he had lost his momentum; they crossed together. The stopwatch stopped at 1:25.
For a few seconds the world stopped too, as if an explosion had destroyed all eardrums and imposed a strange silence. I could have sworn that everything moved in slow motion. Then the image of the photo finish froze on the
big screen. I heard a scream by my side; it was Axel. Matosas’s wheel had crossed first.
A roar began to spread among the thousands who flooded the mountain as the implications of that photo sank in. Matosas got the 4-second bonus corresponding to third place, meaning I got 10 seconds of advantage over Steve, not just 6. The Italian had made the difference with his incredible attack. The 1:33 lead with which Steve had set off that morning had become 1:23. My bro had come in 2 seconds late. I had snatched away the yellow jersey.
I remember the next hour as if through a fog. An anti-doping test, a tumultuous, improvised press conference during which I stuttered who knows what, an awards ceremony in which my fingers were unable to open the bottle of champagne that traditionally bathes everyone around the podium.
Then, trying to escape the siege of reporters, I headed for the team bus, led by Axel and still escorted by Sancho and his slender comrade. There was no sign of Giraud or anyone else from my team. When I got to the vehicle, I stopped short. I wasn’t even sure if Fonar was still my team, at least in emotional terms. The mere possibility of sitting down beside Steve, among teammates who had tried to block me an hour before, was inconceivable. A snowman on a beach in Saint Tropez would have been less out of place than me on the Fonar bus.
“Don’t even think about it,” Lombard said, taking me by the arm. “Ray will take you to the airport in Grenoble so you can get a flight to Paris.”
“Colonel! Where were you? I was looking for you at the awards ceremony. We did it! You did it!” I corrected myself. “This jersey belongs to both of us. You know that, right?”
He didn’t say a word. He hugged me tightly and I wrapped him in my arms. He had never felt so fragile. He began to shake with sobs; dozens of cameras pecked around us. For me, that was the real awards ceremony. Finally, the sound of Ray’s car horn pulled us out of the hug.
“Everything we did was worth it, Hannibal. It was worth it. Now get out of here, go with Ray.”
“There’s no point,” I responded with resignation. “I have to fly with Fonar. There’ll be no plane tickets left; the whole circus is going that way.”
“You have no idea, Hannibal. They’re talking about nothing but your yellow jersey all over France. I told Bernard to buy you a ticket at any cost so you wouldn’t have to travel with those backstabbers. The airline said they wouldn’t take your money under any circumstances, and that it would be an honor to fly you, even if they had to bump off the co-pilot.” He beamed with pride. “Now go on, get out of here.”
“What about you?”
“I need to rest awhile. I’ll see you tomorrow in Paris.”
I agreed and he said goodbye with a military salute. It was the last time I’d see him.
Traveling in Ray’s car, I thought there was a good chance I wouldn’t see anyone again ever in my life. The damn journalist took curves furiously, as if he hated existence. We were a little less than a hundred kilometers away from the Grenoble airport, half of which consisted of narrow, winding roads. While I held on as best I could with my fingers and toes during the long descent, I thought about the irony of giving the yellow jersey back to Steve due to an accident that would keep me from showing up for the final ride through Paris on the last stage, which was mostly ceremonial. A pang of fear shot through my sternum.
“Ray, when was the last time someone tried to take the yellow jersey from the leader in Paris?”
“In 1989 Greg LeMond took the jersey from Fignon on the last stage, the Versailles–Paris time trial.”
“An American and a Frenchman, that’s a bad sign,” I said in jest, but not entirely.
“But it was a time trial, you had to compete even if you didn’t want to. Don’t worry about it; these days there’s no precedent for someone trying to make up seconds in Paris. The ride is designed for the peloton to arrive together at the finish line as a single unit and for the sprinters to show their stuff in the last few meters. All you have to do is avoid an accident.” After a pause, he added, “Or some trick on the route.”
After skidding around a curve, I thought the only accident I needed to avoid was shooting into the abyss in the journalist’s old car. But he was onto something: Nothing could guarantee Steve and Protex wouldn’t attempt one final blow even before the last stage started at Sèvres, on the outskirts of Paris.
“Or off the route. Steve has already shown he prefers to attack his rivals at night. I’ll have to sleep with a chair wedged against the door of my hotel room.”
“I understand Lombard’s son reserved a room for you at the Chantelly in Paris; I think they’re getting the presidential suite ready. Anyway, you’re not in danger anymore. Steve’s not the murderer.”
“What? What do you mean? Did you find something?” Only then did I remember the message Ray had sent in which he told me not to communicate with the commissioner. With the frenzy of the race and the awards ceremony, I’d forgotten.
“My friend, the owner of the Blue Galleon, gave me the name of the woman who called him to reserve a spot for Fleming and his teammates. She was really a technical secretary from the Tour organization. I talked to her, and she said she was just following instructions.”
“From whom?”
“The tall, skinny guy in the car behind us, the one with the fat guy. They’ve been following us since we left.”
“What do you mean?” I craned my neck to see out the window. “Those are my bodyguards from Bimeo.”
“They were the ones who tricked Lampar to go alone to the highway so they could run him over.”
“And with Fiona’s trailer, to force her to park in an isolated place,” I ventured, horrified. I thought about her again. I hadn’t stopped thinking about her, somewhere in my mind, since the moment I was zipped up in the yellow jersey. I had tried to call her while they did my anti-doping test after the race, but her phone seemed to be off. I had to comfort myself by sending messages. I checked my phone in search of a response from her, but now I didn’t have service, no surprise in these infernal mountains.
“When did you talk to Fiona?” I asked. “You know where she is?”
“I saw her this morning at the start in Modane. She told me she was leaving for Dublin tonight, with a layover in Paris. Maybe it’s for the best, after what she found out.”
“What did she find out?”
“Lombard,” he said.
“What are you saying?” A sudden jolt shot through my abdomen.
“It’s all conjecture, but everything adds up in the end. Since last night, I’ve been sure that Bimeo was the key player in several of the attempts, if not all.”
“Why would Bimeo want to sabotage the tour? He’s in charge of security.”
“Two million euros. When I confirmed Bimeo’s role, Fiona told me about the colonel’s terminal illness, him selling the house, his obsession with seeing you win before he died.”
“Lombard would never sign off on a cyclist’s death.”
“I assume that wasn’t meant to happen. I’m sure it got out of hand when he involved those guys behind us.”
“If this was about making me win, the bike sabotage doesn’t fit.” I was trying to find some fissure that would let me save the colonel, although I knew the answer to my objection before I even heard it.
“The tube business came from the Italians. Matosas wasn’t lying about that; they really thought the attacks were coming from Fonar and they wanted to respond in the same way.”
“That’s why Lombard came to my room so worried they would do something to me. He was afraid the Italians would retaliate,” I ventured.
“I bet the tall man who tried to sabotage the brakes on Lavezza’s bus wasn’t the German, but the bigger Bimeo guy.”
“You’re right. He could’ve done the job for fun,” I added, and shared the dark story of the former prison cook Favre had told me.
“Maybe they’re watching out for their money; I doubt the colonel has handed it all over yet. They’ll be charging until I get the trophy in Paris, I suppose.”
Only then, when I said it, did I understand the magnitude of Ray’s revelation. People had died and several of my teammates had been injured in order to help me win. The very fate of the Tour had been changed. I couldn’t be champion like this.
“We have to talk to Favre, to Jitrik. The Tour can’t approve this result. I can’t accept this result,” I concluded, devastated.
“You’re not to blame. You beat Steve fair and square. Let’s be realistic, the Fonar team was the strongest this year; with or without murders, Steve was the favorite at the betting houses. And you beat the favorite. Never devalue your victory.”
“That’s up to the authorities, don’t you think?”
“Do you really want Steve to take the yellow jersey? Fonar’s lawyers will jump on you as soon as something about Lombard slips out.”
“No, I don’t want that bastard to take the title,” I said, remembering the emails I’d read that morning. I thought about the agonizing but genuine way I’d beaten Steve hours earlier, in spite of my teammates’ blockade. I had caught up to him and left him behind in the stage that decided it all. Ray was right about one thing. That day, I had been better than Steve and, truthfully, I had been better throughout the Tour, except in the time trials. Then I thought about Fleming. “But it’s not just a question of bicycles; there was a murder, at least one. The police have to make those bastards pay,” I said.