“There!” Jimmy grabbed his arm and pointed, and Berman definitely saw the team’s colors, all the riders in a group in the middle of the pack as the massed ranks of riders crossed the line.
“I saw Bo,” Jimmy said. “I’m sure of it.”
Thank God, thought Berman. His rider had to finish the race, and this was only the first hurdle of many to come in the next few months. Not that finishing a race was a great obstacle in itself, but the officials in China had made it clear, there were to be no more problems or failures: certainly no injuries during public events; no more riders going down on the back roads of Boulder; and no more visits to emergency rooms in American ambulances. Berman wished he had the power to control each situation to such an extent.
“We should go down and see the team,” said Berman, who felt that their finishing the race without any disasters was a cause for modest celebration.
“As you wish,” said Jimmy. “I will go and see Liang once more before we leave.”
Liang was the rider selected to take the place of Han, who had been flown back to the United States to have his Achilles operated on out of sight of potentially curious European surgeons. Han’s injury had baffled Nano’s scientific team. They knew of such injuries to juiced-up baseball players who had added too much muscle and overtaxed their tendons, sometimes shearing them clean off the bone. But Han hadn’t been putting on bulk to hit home runs, he was leaner and built for speed and endurance. If anything, his muscles had become smaller in girth, just much more efficient and able to avoid lactic acid buildup entirely.
Doctors in both Shanghai and Boulder had spent days poring over MRIs of Han’s legs taken well before his injury when he was being considered to be a subject, but found no minute tear that might have caused the rupture, or any other structural weakness. Eventually the Chinese and American scientists agreed that his injury was an unhappy fluke. “Shit happens” was how the phlegmatic, down-home Victor Klaastens had put it, and Berman finally had to agree that it applied in this case, just as it did in the rest of life.
Jimmy had gotten Liang holed up in an apartment somewhere in Milan. Berman didn’t know where it was, he only knew that Liang had flown back to Milan in the same Chinese plane that had taken Han to Colorado, and that he was being attended to by a Chinese doctor who had spent the past two years at Nano. The Chinese were leaving nothing to chance, or leaving nothing to the Americans, which might be the same thing as far as they were concerned.
“How is Liang?” asked Berman as Jimmy got his things together.
“Liang is well. He feels strong and wants to start racing. Despite his situation, it turns out he enjoys this.”
Berman preferred not to think too much about the “situation” of the people brought in from China to be trained at Nano.
“He knows if he succeeds, he can win freedom for himself and for his family.”
Berman smiled at Jimmy.
“Of course. That is a great incentive for him.”
“Fear of failing is a better incentive, don’t you think,” said Jimmy, making a statement rather than asking a question, and Berman didn’t have an answer for him before the two split up. Berman watched Jimmy head off before he himself hustled toward the crowd grouped around the riders. He wanted to have a few words with Victor Klaastens.
36.
PIA’S APARTMENT, BOULDER, COLORADO
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2013, 6:00 A.M. (SIX AND A HALF WEEKS LATER)
Before the accident, and for most of her adult life, Pia always had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. She would read too late at night, and her sleep would frequently be interrupted by nightmares, so invariably when her alarm went off, she wasn’t rested and the temptation to grab another hour was often too much to resist. But in the weeks since she had been released from the hospital, she’d woken up at six o’clock, seven days a week, ready and eager to start her rehab work.
For Pia, being out of action was torture. Other than her slight problem in getting out of bed in the morning, she hated inactivity, as it never failed to awaken her latent sense of vulnerability. Vacations were a pointless waste of time, as far as she was concerned. They allowed too much time to think. Pia needed to have a purpose in her life, a reason to get out of her warm and cozy bed and something to keep her going though the day. And now, following the car crash, she had two.
One was that she wanted to get back to work. After being emancipated from foster care, Pia always had work. First it was getting her high school equivalency and her chores at the convent. Then it was college, and finally medical school and her brush with death. After Pia’s sojourn away from civilization, it was Nano that dominated her life for eighteen months, and even after she started to have questions about Nano and what might be going on there, she remained totally absorbed by keeping her work separate from concerns of what other people there might be up to. She was absolutely sure that what she had been doing was honorable and ethical and might even serve to help her friend Will. So she wanted to get back to work. She wanted to find out what had happened with the compatibility experiments with mice: if the results had been the same as with the roundworms—that is, if her idea of incorporating the polyethylene glycol into the microbivores’ diamondoid outer shell had continued to solve the immunological problems.
On top of that was the flagellum issue. Had the programmers looked at her idea of writing code that would cause microbivores to tumble a flagellated bacteria over and over on itself, thereby rolling up the flagellum before the bacteria were drawn into the digestion chamber?
Pia was excited to answer these questions. But there was a problem, a major problem. When she was still in the hospital after the accident, Mariel had called Pia and told her that she would not be permitted to return to Nano even for a visit until she had been completely and totally cleared by her general surgeon, the hospital physical therapy team, and her orthopedic surgeon. It had not been a discussion. In her usual harsh manner, Mariel had told her not to show up or call until she was completely over the sequelae of the accident with letters from her physicians to that effect.
Even though Pia was used to being on her own and liked it, her forced separation from Nano bothered her more than she had expected, making her realize she was not quite the introvert she thought she was. She had come to count on the minor interactions she had with other people in the course of a regular day, a circumstance that without Nano had to be fulfilled by visits to her physical therapist. Unfortunately that didn’t do the trick. In her small, ten-unit apartment building, she knew no one by name and only a couple of the other residents by sight.
Her only visitors were Paul, whom she saw regularly, and the physical therapist who came to Pia’s home until she was well enough to drive over to the gym to work out on her own. Paul had been a godsend to Pia in many ways. He had even arranged to borrow his parents’ second car for Pia to use. The VW was destroyed, and Pia wasn’t in a position where she could ask Nano for a replacement.
The second major motivation in Pia’s restricted life to get her out of bed in the morning was Berman. Whenever she was lying there, reluctant to get up, as she was that morning, she thought of him. When her broken arm ached, as it did at that moment, or her ribs hurt, or her splenectomy incision burned, she pictured Berman. Pia wanted answers from him, answers to her original questions about Nano and, more pressing to her, answers about the car accident.
Paul confirmed to Pia that in her feverish near-waking state, she had seen Zach Berman in her hospital room. It was awkward, Paul admitted, but Berman had tried to give off the air of a concerned boss coming to visit a colleague. Paul hadn’t bought it. He actually told her what he had really thought, namely that Berman was a predator and that she should stay the hell away from him.
“You mean a sexual predator?” Pia had asked.
“Of course a sexual predator.”
“Wh
at made you think that, not that I don’t believe you?” In her mind’s eye Pia could see Berman trying to force his way into her apartment.
“His attitude and his person,” Paul said with a shake of his head. “It’s too bad, because he’s a nice-looking guy.”
As Paul Caldwell suspected, Pia was totally convinced that their accident had not in fact been accidental, even though she had total traumatic amnesia about the event. What swayed her was that she knew herself: there was no way under the sun that she would simply drive off the road. In her mind, the only explanation was that the VW had been run off the road, and Pia wondered how the authorities could even suggest otherwise.
Paul told Pia that he had been interviewed, and the incident was officially described as an accident, caused in part by Pia’s excessive speed. He said the police had come to this conclusion even though he had told them, despite his own memory problems, that he vaguely recalled the involvement of another vehicle behind them just before the accident. When Pia had heard this, she insisted on talking to the officers who had interviewed Paul. But in spite of her protestations, they said there was nothing to investigate, a recommendation that was accepted all the way down the official line. They said that their examination of the mangled car revealed no suggestion that another vehicle had been involved. There were plenty of scrapes and dents but no other paint and no damage that couldn’t be explained by the multiple rollovers the car had experienced.
Still, Pia continued to believe there was a cover-up. When Pia persisted in this vein, Paul questioned that if it was true that they had been forced off the road and if it had been done by Nano, how did Nano know to come after them? They had left the hospital only minutes before. Pia didn’t have an answer to this question except to suggest that there could have been a tracking device on the car, or a spy at the hospital. With that, Paul told her she’d been watching too many movies.
George had come to visit again three weeks after she was released from the hospital, but it was very hard for him to get away from L.A., and he couldn’t stay for more than a single night. Pia had mercilessly run all her theories past George, who listened with half an ear, worried sick she was going to get herself in trouble, and he certainly agreed with Paul that she should steer clear of Berman, even though it had been Berman who had called George about the accident. George even went so far as to tell Pia that she was becoming paranoid and letting conspiracy theories dominate her life. He reminded her that it wasn’t the first time she had allowed such thoughts to get herself in trouble.
“That might be so,” Pia had agreed. “But back in New York I was ultimately right.”
“But being right in New York, and only partially right, I might add, doesn’t make you right here in Colorado. If you want my advice, I think you should just let it all go. I think you should relocate and start over because I think your prospects at Nano aren’t so good after everything you have told me.”
At that point in the conversation, Pia waited for George to tell her to come and stay with him in L.A. once she was fully recuperated, but he didn’t. She gave him credit for biting his tongue, but she knew the invitation was coming sooner or later. But moving to L.A. was not in Pia’s game plan, even if she ultimately had to give up on Nano.
More than anything, Pia was just plain frustrated. She hated the inactivity and her feeling of impotence. She couldn’t do anything when she was so feeble. So this day, as many others, after she’d given her situation some thought, she hopped straight out of bed and did a set of stretches that made her aching body feel more limber and ready for exercise. She had stopped all painkillers, other than over-the-counter anti-inflammatories as needed, and she was tackling her injuries head-on. Pia was delighted that the hard cast she had endured on her arm was coming off later in the week, to be replaced by a gauntlet version although still with the sling. Her ribs were still taped, and the hair on the very top of her head was still short from having been shaved to get the ten or so stitches needed to close a laceration.
As she showered, Pia went through a series of homemade memory tests and aced them all to prove to herself that her memory was getting better and not worse since the accident. The neurologist she’d seen had warned her that symptoms like memory loss could appear months after the accident, and warned her of depression that could follow. Pia had replied that she was too mad to be depressed, and demurred when the doctor asked what exactly she meant.
It looked like it was going to be a nice summer day today, and Pia set herself new, and higher, workout goals. Best of all, she was due to meet Paul for dinner that evening at a casual Italian place in Boulder, and Pia looked forward to working up a good appetite.
37.
COL DU GRAND COLOMBIER, FRANCE
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 2013, 2:10 P.M.
The air felt great to Zach Berman at 5,000 feet above sea level in the Jura Mountains of France. After years in Colorado, he felt very comfortable at this altitude. Weather-wise it was a beautiful, promising day, with a warm, bright sun and a faraway blue sky, and Berman’s body tingled with anticipation. This was the day when the years of hard work and sacrifice would pay off. He was confident but not overconfident, because he still had a nagging, anxious feeling that something could go wrong, as had happened over the last few months.
But that was in the past. Since that disturbing morning when he’d gotten the call that the rider Han had ruptured his Achilles tendon, Berman had enjoyed nothing but good news. Bo and Liang, the new tandem in the Azeri race team, had meshed well with the team. Through the coach, Victor Klaastens, Berman had circulated a couple of stories in the cycling trade press about these two young Chinese riders who were showing such great promise in training. By the arrangement of the government, a Chinese newspaper had interviewed the two men, and a transcript in English appeared on the Internet and had been followed up by a few Western sports outlets. The success of Chinese cycling wasn’t going to come as a complete surprise to those in the know.
And the success was coming. Berman’s scientists believed they had cracked the problem that had caused the athletes’ cardiac failures, associating it with a kind of oxygen toxicity that in turn created a hypermetabolic state, a problem that turned out to be amenable to subtle changes in dosage, actually lowering the loading dose. Ever since those changes had been incorporated into the protocol, no one had encountered any problems whatsoever. What’s more, performance levels had gone up further, adding to Berman’s sense of comfort that what had been planned for this stage of the Tour de France was about to be realized.
Liang was the stronger of the two cyclists, physically and mentally, and it was decided that he should enjoy the honor. The team was positioned so that Liang’s triumph would be a surprise but not a complete shock. He showed himself to be a good climber, and in two earlier medium-difficulty mountain stages, he had picked up points, leading the pack up major climbs, earning a good standing in the “King of the Mountains” race, a prestigious competition within the larger Tour itself.
At each stage, Berman and Jimmy Yan had spent a little time with the team. A few days earlier, they set up a base in western Switzerland from where they could drive into France and catch up with their riders. Berman had never spent so much time with one person, and he doubted that even the most devoted married couples ate every meal together like they did, not to mention nearly all their other waking moments. Berman liked Jimmy, but he knew the man wasn’t being paid to be his friend. But now, as the two men stood amid a crowd at the top of the brutal eighteen-kilometer climb to the summit of the Col du Grand Colombier, Berman felt he could confide in Jimmy.
“I’m very nervous, Jimmy, I don’t mind admitting it. There’s so much at stake.”
“I am also nervous.”
“Really?” said Berman. It was unlike Jimmy to admit to such a weakness.
“Sure. I know what you have on the line. And I know how serious my superiors
are about seeing proof that your methods will work. They have a lot at stake as well. But you are a sincere man, so I am hoping you succeed, and when you succeed, China succeeds. It is, as you Americans say, a win-win situation.”
“Sincere?”
“You believe what you say, and it is hard to argue with that confidence. But a lot of what you promise is outside your control, so your sincerity may not always help you, as it raises expectations.”
Berman was unsure how to respond. Should he be less sincere? Or make fewer promises? Jimmy helped him out by speaking again.
“You’re sure you really want to be here, not at the finish?”
The stage finished in the small town of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, more than forty kilometers past the mountain, with another, less vigorous climb between the riders and the end.
“No, this is the spot I want to be at. If Liang is leading here, I know he’s strong enough to win the stage. This is what this race means to me, the rider struggling to the top of the mountain, on his own, fighting his pain and fatigue as much as he is taking on the other riders.”
“I know you like the sport,” said Jimmy.
“It’s a metaphor for me,” said Berman. “I’m a competitive guy.” A moment later a cheer went up from the crowd as the people pressed forward.
“They are coming,” said Jimmy.
The police were now fighting to contain the crowd so that they could keep the road open. In the next instant a police car summited the peak with siren blaring, then another car, then a car from the Azeri team and a motorbike with a cameraman facing backward, training his camera practically in the rider’s face. Berman strained to see through the flags—he saw the rider being patted on the back and heard the cheering for the leader. It was Liang, he was leading the stage! Berman had been following the race online, so he knew what was happening, but he needed to see it for himself. It was sweet victory.