There were two things Luka appreciated about the cataclysmic racers.
1. Someone had to be last on the scoreboard. Their slothy times ensured it wasn’t Luka.
2. The longer it took for them to drag their wheels through the desert, the longer Luka got to sit on his Arsch in the Baghdad checkpoint—guzzling mineral water, making ashes of cigarettes, and watching March 20’s sun drift up through latticed windows.
In many ways, days off were nice: sleeping in, taking showers to wash off the stink, eating actual food, using toilet facilities that weren’t just a hasty dig in the side of a dune. Today, though, Luka didn’t want to stay still. It wasn’t because of his time on the scoreboard. (LUKA LÖWE, 5 DAYS, 12 HOURS, 2 MINUTES, 46 SECONDS. Eleven seconds behind Katsuo. Ten seconds ahead of Felix Adele.) It wasn’t because Katsuo’s stare was fixed back on him. Nor was it because his at-rest muscles were undergoing lactic acid mutiny.
It was because of Adele.
He wanted to talk more, but they couldn’t do that here. At least, not the way they did in the desert. There were too many ears around, and whenever Adele spoke, it was with a boy’s voice from a girl’s throat: strange, husky.
Luka couldn’t even really look at Adele without giving something away. His Reichssender interview was more distracted than most, because he could see Adele past the ends of Fritz Naumann’s wiry hair, making a snowman out of the leftover mushed chickpeas on her plate. The sight (almost) made him smile, and not in the propaganda grimace/cameras are watching kind of way. This was an I feel happy and my mouth wants to show it reflex. One Luka had spent his entire childhood learning to iron out.
Don’t show emotion. Don’t you ever show emotion. Kurt Löwe’s own voice had been flat when he said this, colder than the Christmas Eve snow falling around them. I won’t have any son of mine being weak.
When Adele caught his eye, she smashed the sculpture with her fork and jerked her head to the camera. Don’t waste Fritz Naumann’s precious film! He imagined her saying this in her real voice, complemented with a laugh and a puff of smoke. It made quelling his smile that much harder.
What the hell was happening to him?
Luka was not weak, but it took all his strength to tamp down the edges of his mouth. He used thoughts of his father like nails. When Luka stared into the camera, he imagined Kurt Löwe watching the clip on the television—blue eyes as detached as the rest of his face.
Smile: deceased.
The Reichssender team usually spent twice as much time on Luka’s footage as they did on any of the other German racers’, asking questions that Felix Wolfe and Georg Rust were never expected to answer.
“Victor Löwe”—the interviewer cleared his throat—“I think many of our young female viewers are wondering, is there a sweetheart cheering you on back in Hamburg?”
This question. Luka was surprised they hadn’t asked it sooner. Last year it had popped up at nearly every checkpoint, as if Luka’s answer would change if they worded their query differently.
“I…” He looked at Adele’s eyes over Herr Naumann’s shoulder. A blue so different from his father’s stare. Voidless, holding a spark that set Luka’s whole insides ablaze.
Don’t smile!
The interviewer scrambled to save Luka’s silence. “Or perhaps there’s a fräulein in Germania?”
“No.” Luka shook his head. “There’s no sweetheart.”
It wasn’t the sweethearts that held his interest.
The interviewer was knee-deep into his next question when Yokuto strode into the main room, the whole of him patched in bandages. His face was furious through quilt-work gauze. He must’ve been in crippling pain, but this didn’t stop him from stepping straight up to Tsuda Katsuo’s table. The Japanese victor stood, unquailed by the few centimeters of height that Kobi Yokuto had on him. He did not flinch when Yokuto started yelling—a string of words bound together with a spray of spit.
Had the cameras not been on and the officials not watching, knives would’ve been drawn. Yokuto’s hands thrashed through the air, pointing at Katsuo and then waving at a first-year racer. Oguri Iwao, fifteen, seventh place. Sporting not one but two black eyes. Luka hadn’t made much of the injuries when the boy walked in. Bumps and scrapes were the Axis Tour’s signature, but now it was clear the road had nothing to do with Iwao’s wounds.
No. The first-year standing beside Katsuo had taken a beating.… His bruises were fresh, darkened just enough to match the shouts from two nights ago. Was he the saboteur in the sabotage gone south?
Probably, Luka thought as he watched the drama unfold. Katsuo did not return the yells. The Japanese victor just shook his head, his own hand held out to keep Watabe Takeo from snapping out his blade.
Kobi Yokuto reached into his jacket and drew out a small amber vial. Luka knew it on sight, if only because he had two very similar ones tucked inside the lining of his own jacket.
Drugs. There was no telling what kind. The liquid in Yokuto’s hand could’ve been soporifics—meant to knock a racer flat for hours. Or it might be a poison too weak to kill, but strong enough to turn a stomach inside out for days.
Words kept flying. The rapid Japanese was beyond Luka’s understanding, but a good deal could be inferred from the boys’ motions. If the drugs belonged to Yokuto, he wouldn’t be flashing them around so brazenly. Iwao winced at the sight of the vial—an expression so pained that Luka bet the first-year was its true owner. He must’ve been caught before he could empty the contents into Yokuto’s canteens. That would explain the fine-pulp beating.
It would also explain Yokuto’s sudden road rage, why he went for the pass on such a treacherous road. Katsuo had gotten under his skin—was still under it—judging by the way the boy smashed the vial to the floor.
Scores of tiny pieces glimmered by Katsuo’s boot. Sleep or sickness spread out between the floor tiles, now useless. The victor smirked.
Yokuto spit at the floor and turned away.
For a long minute no one spoke. Fritz Naumann switched off his camera. Katsuo, Takeo, and Iwao sat down in unison. Adele smashed her fork into her chickpeas one final time. A servant came to sweep the glass from the floor.
Luka frowned.
The flat tire he had expected. It fit Katsuo’s modus operandi perfectly. But sending a first-year to drug a racer who was technically in third place, eating Katsuo’s dust? That was a wrench in the predictable, throwing off everything Luka thought he knew about his competition.
The long game was changing.
Was Luka the hunter? Or the hunted?
For the first time since he mounted his bike in Germania’s Olympiastadion, Luka was not sure.