“Essentially yes. We trained a cyclist, and he won a stage at the Tour de France. But the higher-ups were more specific. The goal was for a Chinese national to win an international race at a major championship. As chance would have it, the jogger you came across will be running in the marathon at the World Athletics Championships, which start on Friday.”

“In London.”

“In London.”

“So is that where we are?” asked Pia. “In London?”

Berman’s facial expression gave nothing away.

“But you’re cheating and your runner will be found out.”

“I don’t think so. None of the doping tests will detect something as inert as a diamondoid surfaced nanorobot. Even if the authorities decided to do blood counts, with the low concentrations we use, it would be rare indeed for one to be seen. My feeling is that the Chinese runner will win, hopefully not by too large a margin, and I know he has been advised as such. And once this guy wins his race, Nano is out of sports. No doubt someone will figure out eventually what respirocytes do for athletes, and eventually there will be tests, but the Chinese and I will have moved on. I don’t care, and the faction in the government that decided upon these tests will have their proof. And what’s more, they’ll have the glory that comes with athletic achievement on the world stage.

“The Chinese government doesn’t just want to dominate economically, they want sporting success as well as proof their system of government is superior to the rest of the world’s. In that regard they’re as bad as the Soviets and the East Germans in the Cold War era, when they would do anything to beat the U.S.A. to a gold medal. I’m sure it also has something to do with the Chinese government wanting to erase the three hundred or so years of humiliation the country suffered under colonialism.”

Sports meant nothing to Pia, but she could understand the significance of what Berman was talking about. It sounded so trite. She clearly understood the flaw. It was a classic attempt on Berman’s part to justify means by supposedly honorable ends. All the time he talked, she couldn’t get the image of the bodies in the tanks out of her head. Berman was willing to sacrifice people, to experiment on humans to reach his goals.

“So you’re doing all this for the Chinese in order to get their money.”

“Investment. To get their investment, so that it can be applied to the microbivores project, yes.”

“And to what end? I mean, is this to speed up the process, investigating microbivores? How much time do you estimate this kind of investment will save? Two years? Five years?”