LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      The $10 million estate of Lance Armstrong’s dreams is hidden behind a tall, cream-colored wall of Texas limestone and a solid steel gate. Visitors pull into a circular driveway beneath a grand oak tree whose branches stretch toward a 7,806-square-foot Spanish colonial mansion.

      The tree itself speaks of Armstrong’s famous will. It once was on the other side of the property, fifty yards west of this house. Armstrong wanted it at the front steps. The transplantation cost $200,000. His close friends joke that Armstrong, who is agnostic, engineered the project to prove he didn’t need God to move heaven and earth.

      For nearly a decade, Lance Armstrong and I have had a contentious relationship. Seven years have passed since his agent, Bill Stapleton, first threatened to sue me. Back then, I was just one of the many reporters Armstrong had tried to manipulate, charm or bully. Filing lawsuits against writers who dared challenge his fairy-tale story was his quick-and-easy way of convincing people that writing critically about him wasn’t worth it. Over the years, he came to consider me an enemy, one of the many he and his handlers had to keep an eye on.

      Only now, after he has fallen, have we agreed to something approaching a truce. Though he’d deny it, I know that he has chosen to sit down with me because he thinks he might be able to control the direction of my book. No chance, I’ve told him. After multiple criminal and civil investigations into whether Armstrong orchestrated a sophisticated doping

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