“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?”