Stomach flu. That’s how the official reports labeled Victor Tsuda Katsuo’s sudden onset of vomiting. To his credit, the Japanese victor tried to get back on his bike as the Kaiten drew into port, but dry heaves kept wracking his body with a violence that almost made Luka feel guilty.
Almost.
Today—April 2, 1955—it was hard to feel anything but triumphant. Luka’s name was first on the scoreboard, his lifelong dream just a day’s drive away. His tire pressure was full, and his engine ran flawlessly. The spring sun had nowhere to hide. Cherry blossoms covered trees and roads alike—strewn across the pavement in the fashion of confetti, as if nature itself were cheering him on.
This was, for all intents and purposes, a victory lap. Takeo, Iwao, Hans Muller, and the other middlemen didn’t even try to maneuver for first. Their fight was with each other now, determining third, fourth, fifth. (As if it mattered!) The few cataclysmic racers left were just happy to reach the finish line. Most of them weren’t really racing anymore, stopping for snacks and nature’s call and any other minor discomfort.
Luka kept driving forward—hour after hour—until all the others fell away. Well, not all the others. Adele—his equal, his match—rode by his side. Once they got to the outskirts of Tokyo, he’d have to pull out all the stops, lose her to the horizon like the others. Crossing the finish line at the Imperial Palace was something Luka had to do alone.
As much as Luka was racing to this end, he also dreaded it. Adele had only been in his life for… what? Three weeks? Now the thought of spending an entire year apart loomed. Twelve months of waiting, fifty-two weeks without her wit, 365 days without her touch. Luka didn’t even want to count the hours.
But the hours were counting down regardless. He and Adele had spent five and a half on the road already—driving out of the morning, past lunch, through Osaka’s fervent crowds, back into a blossoming countryside. It was a long, wonderful stretch of nothing. No Reichssender cameras, no Sieg heils, no other racers. Just Luka and Adele and the road.
Adele spurred her Zündapp forward. The gestures of her free hand told Luka she meant to pull over, take a break. Would he join her for one last moment together? Would he park his motorcycle next to hers, under the whisper and wave of the cherry trees?
As if these were even questions…
Luka’s healing hand twinged as he pumped the brakes, guided his bike off the road into drifts of cherry blossoms at the end of their short life cycle. Both engines cut off. Luka dismounted his bike and removed his helmet, savoring the scene. Falling flowers and a sky scrubbed the purest blue—sights he’d never slowed enough to see before.
Even in this landscape, Adele Valerie Wolfe stood out. Luka’s eyes went straight to her: the stretch of her calves, the shine of her hair as she removed her helmet, the faintest hint of curves beneath her riding gear.
How had he ever seen Felix there? It seemed impossible now that Adele was anything other than herself: inimitable fräulein. A girl worth waiting for.
Adele’s eyes met his. A smile burst from her lips.
Luka grinned back. “You wanted to stop and smell the sakura?”
“They are pretty.” She reached to an overhanging bough, snapped off the nearest blossom, and sniffed it. “Not much of a smell, though.”
The petals brushed her lips, and Luka couldn’t care less what it did or didn’t smell like. Would he ever stop wanting to kiss her?
Adele blew at the petals, letting them join the blossoms at her feet. “You got any of that jerky left? All I have are protein bars.”
He did. Luka turned and unbuckled the closest pannier. Inside was a hasty mess of food and camping equipment. It’d take a bit of rummaging to find the jerky.…
“I could use a little extra fuel before Tokyo,” Adele was saying.
Tokyo. The end he both desired and feared was close. In less than four hours Luka would be rolling through the Imperial Palace gate, camera lenses catching his triumphant image, sending it half a world over, so Kurt Löwe could see his son as he was: double victor. Hero of the Third Reich. Tough as leather, hard as steel. Worthy.
The crowd in Luka’s imagination roared in time to the footsteps behind him: Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg—
CRACK!
Everything went sharp. Pain bright. Luka’s world turned sideways. Reality and dream alike, falling, falling. Pink sky, blue blossoms, black leather, black…
BLACK.
When Luka’s eyes fluttered open, all black was gone. The pink was still there, smearing into blue. Nothing was sharp anymore. His thoughts scattered and blurred and the sun was so verdammt bright! Beaming through his retinas, into his head, exploding out the back of his skull, leaving an exit wound that felt roughly the size of an apple.
His hand migrated to the pain, not stopping soon enough. The back of his skull was wet, screaming against his touch. Luka screamed back, obscenities even he was usually loathe to say.
A new color: red. Blood covered his fingertips.
He’d been attacked.
They’d been attacked.
Luka tried to stand, but his entire body revolted, stomach first. He found himself on his hands and knees: acid scraping his throat, breakfast splattering his knuckles.
Adele! Where is Adele? He swung his throbbing head to the side, expecting to see her splayed out in the blossoms, sticky with blood of her own.
She wasn’t there.
Luka looked to the other side, his vision barely keeping up.
No Adele.
He was about to call out when he realized what he was looking at: scores upon scores of crushed cherry blossoms formed a path back to the road. A path the exact width of a Zündapp’s tire. Adele’s motorcycle had disappeared, too.…
“Adele,” Luka croaked, but there was no one to hear him. He crouched over sticky petals, trying not to vomit again. Adele’s absence—what it meant—was all around. Luka’s skull flinched and cracked, trying not to believe the undeniable truth.
No one’s untouchable.
He’d been played.
Kisses, cigarettes, brown jacket confessions… Adele had found Luka’s every string, plucked him like a fiddle. She’d known parts of him he’d never shared with anyone, and now she was gone.
To make matters worse, the sun was lower than he’d last seen it. Low enough to tell Luka that his ten-minute lead was as busted as the back of his head. Luka’s 1955 Axis Tour was over, and he was not the victor of victors. He was not tough or hard or worthy.
Just bleeding.
A breeze rattled the branches. It sounded like his father’s sneer: See? Weak.
For a long time Luka sat, listening to creaking bark, waiting for the world to stop spinning. There were plenty of expletives he wanted to voice, but couldn’t. This was a hurt beyond words. Beyond pain, even. His head throbbed, but all he could feel was the crater in his chest. Luka’s heart wasn’t broken. No—it had been carved out, stolen. His whole being gaped with its absence.
He needed a cigarette.
The last pack with the last few smokes—the ones he’d been saving for the finish line—was still squirreled away in his pannier. Luka dug it out and tapped it against his wrist. Only one cigarette tumbled out. Strange…
It wasn’t a cigarette. Luka realized, but a piece of paper that had been scrolled tight. His fingers trembled when he unrolled it, discovered the words written within:
There’s always something more.
Luka stared at the script. His hands shook, harder and harder, until the letters blurred together and the paper tumbled into blood-stained blossoms.
He didn’t bother picking it up.