Heartland (31 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Heartland
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“Ask Belgrano. He knows everything.”
“Belgrano …” Lydia started, but then it hit her in a blinding flash. Jesus. Belgrano and Perés had been working together to take over Vance-Ehrhardt when the revolution came. They had used the Russians, but then doublecrossed them. All the killing would not stop. Her parents were dead, and they meant to finish by killing Kenneth and then her.
“Bastard!” she yelled. She pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped, but the shell didn't fire.
Perés laughed and started to bring his weapon up.
Without hesitation, Lydia leaped at the man. Only in the last instant did he realize what was about to happen, and he fired wildly, the shots ricocheting off the floor, as Lydia slammed into his chest with every ounce of her strength. Perés was driven backward, through the open elevator doors. Lydia tried to jump back, but he reached out and grabbed her arm. She could feel the bottom going out from under her as she tumbled into the shaft with him.
“Kenneth,” she cried, “Kenneth,” over and over, as she and Perés fell to the bottom.
 
Colonel Vadim Leonid Turalin stood at the third-floor window of the Lubyanka prison looking down at the preparations in the courtyard. He wore a pair of heavy gray woolen trousers and an open-necked cotton shirt. He shivered. It looked cold outside. A thin drizzle fell from a leaden sky, and the tall lights on the walls threw long shafts of yellow that glinted off the wet slickers of the men standing around the canvas-covered truck.
Actually it was old fashioned and somewhat melodramatic, he thought, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. If they had given him a choice, he certainly would have put a pistol to his own head and accomplished the task with a lot less fuss.
He sighed deeply.
The fool Dybrovik had been the key to his own undoing. Dybrovik had known what he was doing in the grain business, and, surprisingly, he had handled himself brilliantly, in the end, with the bankers of Geneva. All the money—all the Soviet money—had been neatly transferred into a numbered account in Turalin's name.
The fool had made it look as if Turalin were stealing the money. And the Internal Affairs Directorate had believed it.
It had all come down to a matter of control, Turalin thought. He had made a tactical error with Dybrovik's wife. Perhaps it would have been better to have controlled the nagging woman, rather than killing her. But at the time it seemed to be clear. The control of Dybrovik had been keyed to his wife, with whom he had a somewhat complex relationship of love and hate. She had been his wife as well as his domineering mother. And he had deeply resented her absolute control over him, while at the same time finding comfort in it.
Again Turalin sighed deeply. Could have beens. But it didn't really matter. He had won after all. The American corn crop was ruined, the Soviet wheat and corn crops mammoth. It was all going to work.
He turned away from the window as a key grated in the lock. The heavy steel door opened and Brezhnev's aide, Anatoli Andreyevich Shumayev, stooped as he came in, a sad expression on his face. He closed the door behind him, and Turalin could hear the guard turning the lock again.
“Good morning, Vadim Leonid,” the large man said. He looked around the small cell, then pulled a wooden chair away from the table and sat down. He lit himself a cigarette, taking his time about it.
“You have come to gloat, comrade?” Turalin asked. He really didn't care. The man was an incredible fool. Fortunately, the Soviet Union would survive despite him and his kind.
Shumayev shook his head. “No, my friend, merely to pick up the pieces. We have to know where we stand,
you know. Policy and all that. Brezhnev meets with the American President in a couple of weeks. And he is very angry. He thought that since you and I had an understanding, perhaps I could talk some sense into you.”
Turalin had to laugh at the pompous fool. And yet Shumayev was sitting there, and he, Turalin, was waiting here to be escorted outside in the rain, to be stood up against the wall and shot to death.
“They called you ‘the little man,'” Shumayev said.
Turalin raised his right eyebrow. “You've seen the intercepts, listened to the tapes.”
Shumayev nodded. “We've seen it all.”
“Then what do you want with me?”
Shumayev looked disdainfully around the room. “I personally don't want a thing from you—you disgusting
little man
—but Comrade Secretary would like an explanation.”
They were locked in here. Turalin had heard the key. It would take the guards several long seconds to make it in, even if they were watching, or even if they were alerted immediately. A lot of damage could be done in that time.
But he held himself in check. Just for a minute or two more.
“What have you to offer me, you disgusting
obese
fool? My life?”
Shumayev stiffened. Turalin had heard that he was sensitive about his weight.
“Let's just say, a more perfect aim by your executioners, to eliminate any suffering.”
Turalin laughed. “And in return, what do you want? Specifically.”
“Comrade Party Secretary tells me that there were
three operational phases to your scheme. The first was a surplus of grain. Our farmers, I am told, will provide that, mostly in wheat. The second was a surplus of Western currencies. From what I have learned, you managed somehow to amass more than one billion American dollars. In itself quite a feat. And third, you wanted to manipulate the world market for vast personal gain.”
“You have an understanding of what I was trying to do,” Turalin lied.
“I submit to you, Comrade Turalin, that the facts, as we have come to know them yesterday and today, simply do not support the third phase of your scheme.”
“I see,” Turalin said noncomittally.
“What Comrade Brezhnev would like, then, is a clear explanation.”
Turalin laughed again. He moved over to the table and stubbed out his cigarette.
“Don't be a fool,” Shumayev hissed. “In less than five minutes you will be marched out of here and executed. Have you no concern for the welfare of your country?”
“None,” Turalin snapped. His hands shot out and grabbed Shumayev by the throat. The man's eyes bulged; almost instantly his face began to turn purple.
Actually, it didn't matter one whit whether or not the entire world knew of the ultimate plan. One part of Turalin's demented mind understood that. Turalin didn't care.
Shumayev was beating on Turalin with his fists. In an effort to avoid the blows, Turalin lost his balance, and both men fell to the floor.
Bormett had done what he was supposed to do. Although
Turalin had heard nothing since the initial green light, he could envision the damage being done out there. Once the BTP-12 had been sprayed on the field, on any field, there was nothing that would stop its rapid spread. Across an entire continent.
Someone was at the door, and Turalin could hear the lock turning, but Shumayev's face was almost blue-black now and his tongue protruded grotesquely from his mouth.
The corn crop across America was composed of half a dozen hybrid varieties. BTP-12 attacked them all. A natural strain would have been immune, but not the hybrids.
Someone was shouting behind him, and then there was a thunderclap in his head, and everything began to go dark.
But that didn't matter, either. He had won. After all, he had won.
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!
 
—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
 
 
It was a few minutes after three in the morning, and Michael McCandless was dead tired. His eyes felt as if there was sand in the sockets, and his mouth tasted like a dirty old sock. He had come down to TELEMETRY AND ANALYSIS around ten last night. Now he sat at one of the monitor consoles, sipping coffee as he looked across at the satellite display maps.
The tracking chart showed that SPEC-IV was coming up over Novosibirsk. Something new had been added to the display. Infrared and heat-sensing equipment aboard the satellite, hundreds of miles above the Soviet farms, had been switched on. Vast areas of farmlands showed up bright pink, the cooler mountains in dark blue.
“Heat,” the chief analyst, Joe DiRenzo, had explained when they first began noticing a change. “Certain forms of root rot, stem rust, and other crop disorders produce abnormal amounts of heat. We're picking it up as pink.”
That had been one week ago. Then the pink areas had been confined to a small corner of the Ust-Urt Plateau. But all through the week they had spread, like some insidious monster creeping across the land.
“No chance of a mistake here, Joe?” McCandless had asked hopefully.
“I'm afraid not. We showed Williams the heat traces.
He was the one who came up with the enhancement idea. We took the heat readings of normal crops and compared them, in the computer, with what we're coming up with over central Europe. There is no mistake.”
“The temperature difference has to be minute,” McCandless argued, even though he knew he was beating a dead horse. But he felt he owed the President an explanation.
“In each plant, yes, the temperature rise is minute,” DiRenzo said. “But cumulatively, over tens and hundreds of thousands of square miles, our instruments can easily detect it.”
All week they had watched the pink spread, until there could be no doubt in anyone's mind that they were witnessing a complete failure of the Soviet wheat crop.
Coincidence? McCandless wondered. There had been no operation by the Central Intelligence Agency to damage the Soviet crop, he was one hundred percent sure of that. He and General Lycoming had told the President so, as well.
“But how about a Chinese operation? Or a British deal? Or some other independent?” The President had asked yesterday. “Christ, this could end up in a war.”
Gene Wilson, who was head of the Department of Agriculture at the University of Illinois, and who had worked on government analysis projects in the past, had sat forward. They were in the Cabinet room. “From the information I'd been given—if it's accurate—I'd say their problems were foreseeable.”
“Could you be more specific, Gene?” the President had asked. He had looked very old; all used up. Everyone in the room had been concerned that he would have
a heart attack in the middle of all this.
“Inadequate soil preparation, for one. And a general lack of chemical pesticides and blight inhibitors,” Wilson said. He looked around, taking the pipe out of his mouth. “They may have had the hybrid seed, and certainly they have the land. But they simply have not committed the money they need for proper chemical farming.”
“Then you suspect their entire crop will fail?” Lundgren had broken in, incredulously.
Wilson had turned to him. “Hard to say, Curtis. But if I had to give an educated guess, I'd have to say yes. A major portion of the Soviet wheat crop will fail, and a lot of the corn as well.”
He had leaned forward for emphasis. “It's not like our problem, one of an airborne bacterial organism spreading on the wind. With the Soviets it's simply lack of pesticides. A lack of treatment across the board is producing similar results across the board.”
Everyone in the room was silent for a long time, all eyes on the President, who finally nodded. “We're going to have to come up with a solution, of course,” he said.
“We have the money,” McCandless said. “We can buy the grain.”
“Where?” the President asked. “We have to keep our wheat to start to compensate for the failure of our corn.”
“That's a question better asked of someone like Newman,” Lundgren suggested. Everyone looked at him. “After all, he was right in the middle of all this from the beginning. He was the one dealing with the Russians.”
“He is a grain merchant,” McCandless said hopefully.
“One of the best,” Lundgren said.
“That may be true, gentlemen,” the President said, “but where the hell is he going to get the grain?”
The Newman Company 707 touched down for a landing at Washington's National Airport, its golden flanks and red twin-eagle logo on the tail flashing in the sun. Near the end of the runway, the pilot expertly turned the big plane around and brought it down the taxiway toward the business aviation terminal.
Newman had spent the past week and a half talking to agronomists and plant pathologists, and reading everything he could lay his hands on. During the flight east, he brooded about the grim picture he had built up.
The disease that killed Bormett's corn was, as Newman had suspected, caused by a bacterium that the scientists were still working to identify. Much hinged on their findings. All cornfields throughout the Heartland were being burned, but the bacterium—depending on the strain—might be one that could survive for a fairly
long time in the soil. Chemical controls would help, but they waited upon identification of the disease. It might be several years before the land was again healthy for corn.
In the meantime, the nation's seedsmen would be working at top speed with university researchers to develop new, resistant hybrids. That, too, could take time.
States outside the Corn Belt grew corn, but only enough for their own needs; they would not be able to supply the large feedlots, where corn and silage constituted the main diet of beef cattle. Dairy cows, too, depended on stored feeds for ninety percent of their nutrition, and a large portion of that was corn. All would try to bring their cattle through the winter on hay, and next year ranchers could put some cattle to pasture—if they were lucky enough to live in an area that provided good pasturage. The value of beef cattle would, of course, be reduced by the inability to feed them the twenty to twenty-five pounds of grain a day they usually received during the last hundred days before slaughter.
There was no question that herds were going to have to be drastically reduced. Beef would be abundant briefly as both beef and dairy herds were decimated, but then it might all but disappear from the table.
Killing off the herds was also going to mean a serious decrease in such items as milk, butter, and cheese. Newman knew that the United States sat on mountains of dairy surplus, as did the European Common Market. But the mere anticipation of the loss of so many cows would cause prices to soar. And even the surpluses wouldn't last for the several years it might take to purify the fields, develop new hybrids, and bring in a corn crop
that would make it safe to begin to rebuild the herds.
Ninety to a hundred percent of the ration of hogs was made up of corn; that's why the corn-producing states were the primary hog-producing states. Experiments with substitutes for corn in hog production had not, thus far, proved commercially feasible.
The feed given to chickens was 2/3 to 3/4 corn, because corn constitutes such a cheap, complete source of energy, protein, and fiber. There had been discussions of the need to work on soybean-type substitutes, but very little had been done in that area so far.
The American way of life was going to be very different for a long time to come.
The intercom chimed, and Newman, who had flown alone except for the crew, picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
“There's quite a crowd by the terminal building, Mr. Newman, just as you suspected there might be. Would you like us to call a police escort?”
Newman looked out the window, but he could only see the edge of the crowd. “How many out there?”
“Maybe fifty or sixty. There are a lot of cameras and lights. Most of them look like television people.”
“Don't call the police,” Newman said, resigning himself to the battering he was going to get. It had been the same at the airport in Duluth. “Can you see if Hansen is out there?” John Hansen was the company attorney.
“Yes, sir, he is. He called from inside after we touched down. He's there with the car.”
“Fine,” Newman said. They had come to a halt, and he unbuckled his seatbelt and rose.
Jacob came from the galley and helped Newman with his coat, then went forward and popped the main hatch.
A set of boarding steps had been pushed up.
Newman grabbed his briefcase. “Thanks, Jacob,” he said.
“I'll have your bags sent over immediately, sir,” the steward said. “And, good luck, sir.”
Newman stepped off the plane.
A reporter at the foot of the stairs shouted up, “What are you going to tell the Senate subcommittee in the morning, Mr. Newman?”
Newman started down as John Hansen pushed through the crowd. He was an older man, with gray hair and wide, honest eyes. He wasn't smiling.
“Mr. Newman, can you tell us where we're going to buy corn to replace the crops that have already been lost?”
Newman looked at the man who held a microphone out. Behind him was his cameraman. “No, I can't.”
“Will you tell the subcommittee?” another reporter asked.
Newman shook his head. “No,” he said.
“I have a car around the side,” Hansen said in his ear, but the reporter was persistent.
“Why not, Mr. Newman?”
Newman had been edging forward, away from the boarding steps, and he stopped, now and faced the newspeople. “Simply because there is no corn available worldwide to replace the corn we have lost.”
“How about our wheat, sir?” another reporter asked.
Newman turned to her. “What about our wheat?”
“It's all right. Can't it be used to replace corn?” “No,” Newman said. “We can make bread with it, but it cannot be used effectively to feed cattle or pigs.”
“You're saying there will be a meat shortage?”
“Meat,” Newman said, “along with milk, cheese—all dairy products.”
Hansen took Newman's arm and forcibly hauled him away from the journalists who were screaming out questions, and hurried him around the building to the attorney's chauffeured limousine. The reporters were right on their heels, and only stopped shouting when the driver finally pulled away.
“Jesus,” Hansen said, breathing a sigh of relief.
Newman didn't really care. He had felt a sense of unreality since last week in Iowa. None of this could or should be happening.
“We have less than twenty-four hours to get ready for the hearing. I hope you realize that, Kenneth,” Hansen was saying. “Between Sam Lucas and a few of the others from Abex and Duluth, I've managed to put together an organizational chart for your business interests that should hold them at bay. At least until we can figure out a way to back out of our subsidiary committments without causing any more waves.”
Newman was staring out the window, not really listening. It did not matter what he told the Senate subcommittee tomorrow, because nothing would alter the facts, among them that Lydia was dead.
He had found out about her death yesterday. The revolution was over. Argentina had a new government. The fighting had all but stopped, although the farm-fields on the pampas were still burning. The farmers had set them on fire.
Francisco Belgrano, Vance-Ehrhardt's private secretary and now apparently the head of the conglomerate, had telexed Abex in New York, asking about grain
supplies. And he had included in his telex that Lydia's body had been found at police headquarters. She had evidently died in an elevator accident. Capitan Perés had died in the same accident.
“Are you listening to what I'm trying to tell you, Kenneth?” Hansen asked.
Newman turned to him, and shook his head. “Not a word, John, but it doesn't matter any longer. I'll answer any questions the Senate puts to me.”
Hansen looked at him for a long moment. Then he shook his head, too. “You do realize, of course, that if you do such a thing, you definitely will be leaving yourself open for criminal prosecution.”
“The administration knows most of it already,” Newman said. Lundgren had told him as much last week in Iowa. They had met at the Sheraton in Des Moines where they had watched, from Newman's eighth-floor room, the burning of the fields to the west around Adel. It had seemed like the end of the world.
“You're not above the law, you know. You can't just deal with whomever you like, whenever you like,” Lundgren had said.
Newman had turned tiredly to him. “What difference does that make now? Or do you think I had something to do with that?” He pointed toward the reddened sky.
“Right up to your ears, Newman. You were with Dybrovik when he was killed in Athens.”
“The FBI was watching me?”
“The CIA,” Lundgren said defensively. “Why was Dybrovik murdered? What did he do?”
“I don't know.”
“Did he have something to do with Bormett?”
“He knew about him. But I don't think Dybrovik was
a part of it. He was just a grain man. Nothing more.”
“A Russian grain man with a Swiss bank account. A little unusual, wouldn't you say?”
Newman said nothing.
“Sooner or later, it will all have to come out,” Lundgren said. “We know that you met with Dybrovik in Geneva a couple of months ago. And we know that you've set up quite a network of subsidiaries, although we haven't got it all unraveled yet. And we know that you were selling the Russians a lot more than one million tons of corn. We know for a fact that you committed for at least five times that in futures. And I have a feeling that's just the tip of the iceberg. What we don't know, yet, is how all of this fits together.”
Newman was surprised at the extent of Lundgren's knowledge, but then the man had the help of the FBI and CIA.
“I don't know if it all does fit together,” Newman had said. “So if you are looking to me for answers, don't.”
Lundgren had looked from the western sky to Newman and back, and he finally shook his head. He was angry. “I'm meeting with the governor in a few minutes. You wouldn't care to come along and help out, would you?”
“There's nothing I can do right now. But when you are ready to ask me some serious questions, and ready for the answers, I'll be there.”
The subpoena had come thirty-six hours ago, and Newman had ordered Hansen not to seek a delay.
There were a few reporters at the Watergate when they pulled up. “Do you want to go around to the back?” Hansen asked, but Newman shook his head.
“I'll see you in the morning, John.”
“I thought you'd come over for drinks and dinner tonight,” Hansen said.
“Not tonight.”
Hansen touched his arm. “I'm sorry about Lydia. We all are, Kenneth, but unless you pull yourself together, you may very well lose your business.”
“Maybe that would be for the best,” Newman said. “See you in the morning.”
“There's a message for you at the desk, sir,” the doorman said.
Newman nodded, then crossed the lobby and stopped at the desk.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Newman,” the building security manager said. “You had a call on your personal service.” He handed Newman a slip of paper.
It was from Janice. She had telephoned about two hours ago.
Kenneth,
I'd like to see you this evening. Am here in Washington at the airport Marriott. Please call.
Janice
He took the elevator up to his apartment, then telephoned the Marriott. Janice answered immediately.
“It's me. Just got your note,” Newman said.
“I'd like to see you tonight.”
“I'm tired, Janice. Tomorrow is going to be a trying day.”
“I'm sorry about Lydia,” she said hesitantly.
“Where did you hear about it?”
“Sam Lucas. He told me. I
am
an employee, remember?”
Newman's entire body ached. He could see Lydia standing in her office telling him to leave. He would never forget that scene.
“I'd like to talk to you before your hearing tomorrow morning,” she was saying.
“There's nothing left to be said,” he snapped.
“I want to apologize … for the things I said when we were in Iowa. I … didn't mean them.”
“Leave me alone …”
“Goddamn it, Kenneth, let me help,” Janice shouted.
“Christ,” Newman said, under his breath.
“Kenneth?”
“Can you take a cab over here, or do you want me to send a car?” Newman said.
“I'll take a cab. Be there in ten minutes flat!”
Newman slowly put the phone down, wondering just what the hell he was doing. But then he thought back to another scene with Lydia … this one on an airplane on their honeymoon. He had stared at the stewardess, and Lydia had asked him if he didn't prefer a simpler woman. He had told her no, at the time. But he had been lying. To himself, as well as her.

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