Heartland

“Something damned funny is going on,” Curtis Lundgren said. He and Michael McCandless were having drinks in a dark corner of one of the Watergate lounges.

“Why would I lie to you, Curt?”

Lundgren waved his cigarette vaguely. “Oh, I believe you, all right. You’d have no reason to make up a bull-shit story like that. But among other things, it’s damned funny the President never passed your report on to me. Damned funny.”

“It may just have slipped his mind.”

“I doubt it. But that’s not all,” Lundgren said. He leaned forward, and his voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “I know it won’t come as any great revelation to you, Michael, but the fact of the matter is; neither of us is very well liked at the White House.”

McCandless started to object, but Lundgren held him off.

“The only reason I’ve still got my job is that the old man doesn’t want to rock the boat at just this moment. He and Wellerman have got something cooking, and they’re too busy right now to bother with people like us.”

McCandless just looked at Lundgren. He had gotten the same impression himself, except that he included his own boss, the DCI, in the presidential circle. Something definitely was up, but no one was talking about it.

“This is going to become a political bombshell in the fall. I tried to tell that to the President.”

“Don’t I know it,” Lundgren said. “If the Russians harvest all the grain you say they’ve planted, our farmers will go down the tubes… literally down the tubes.”

“The latest SPEC–IV satellite data show the crops are coming up. The weather over there has been holding so far, despite predictions to the contrary. Another couple of months or so, and even a hard, early winter won’t put too big a dent in their harvests.”

“But the Russians are buying more grain, you do know that.”

McCandless nodded. “I read the President’s announcement. But it’s only in small amounts. Probably just to cover themselves in case they do have trouble getting the grain out of the fields.”

“That’s just it. I think they may be up to something else. Do you know what Exportkhleb is?”

McCandless shook his head.

“It’s the Soviet grain-trading bureau. Any grain bought or sold by the Russians goes through Exportkhleb. If it’s a big deal, it goes through one Delos Fedor Dybrovik.”

McCandless nodded. What was the man getting at?

“Dybrovik has been seen in and out of Geneva. And whenever that man is on the move, it usually means something very big is in the wind. But so far there’s been nothing — and I mean absolutely nothing. Except for Kenneth Newman.”

It was another unfamiliar name to McCandless, and he said so.

“They call him the Marauder. A silly title actually, but from what I know of him he’s definitely earned it. He’s an independent grain dealer. Works mostly out of Duluth, Minnesota, but he has offices in New York and, it’s rumored, blind subsidiaries in damned near every major city in the world.”

“He’s big.”

“Not as big as a McMillan of Cargill, let’s say, or a Louis Dreyfus.”

McCandless sat forward at those names. “Wait a minute,” he said.

Lundgren smiled, the grin feral. “I’ve struck a nerve, perhaps?”

“Cargill’s New Orleans elevator center exploded. Arson. A hundred forty people killed.”

Lundgren nodded, still grinning.

“And Louis Dreyfus — one of their chief executives was assassinated in France.”

Again Lundgren nodded. “Then there’s Vance-Ehrhardt in Buenos Aires.”

“Jorge Vance-Ehrhardt and his wife were just kidnapped! It was on the wire Friday,” McCandless said, stunned. He looked up. “But what about Newman? Has something happened to him as well?”

“He’s dealt with Dybrovik before. And Thursday — just hours before Vance-Ehrhardt was snatched — Newman came to see me, asking about Soviet crop projections.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“Not a thing. He wouldn’t play ball with me. I was willing to trade him information, but he was Mr. Innocence.”

“You think he has something to do with Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, and Vance-Ehrhardt?”

“Who knows, Michael, who knows? The man is certainly capable of it,” Lundgren said. Again he sat forward. He lowered his voice. “What I need is a big favor from you. I think, between the two of us, we can give the President something he cannot ignore.”

“Go ahead,” McCandless said cautiously.

“I want Newman. I want to know what he’s up to. I want to know if there is any connection at the moment between him and Dybrovik.”

McCandless nodded. “It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Another interesting little tidbit. You’ll never guess who Newman is married to.”

McCandless couldn’t.

“Lydia Vance-Ehrhardt.”

“The same family?”

Lundgren nodded, and then laughed out loud. “The same.”

15

Throughout this period Kenneth Newman would remember the feeling of fatalism that had come to him with the kidnapping of Jorge and Margarita Vance-Ehrhardt. It was a time of high drama and great emotion which was made somehow unreal by the curious sensation that he was an observer at a particularly bad play.

The actors were there in front of him, moving through their carefully prepared stage directions, voicing their patiently written lines. And no matter what he did or didn’t do, he would not affect the certain outcome by one whit.

The sensation was doubly curious because it was complete. Not only was he an observer, but he as an observer was acutely conscious that he had his own life as well; that at any moment he could simply get up from his seat and walk out into the real world. His own real world.

A strong sense of interest (there were those who called it perversity) made him want to stay to the end. The actors, after all, had their own lives beyond the drama of the stage, and he wanted to stick around long enough to discover what they were, and perhaps help the performers through their post-production blues.

It was a few minutes before eleven on the morning of July 12 when the car carrying Newman from the Vance-Ehrhardt estate raced through Buenos Aires and came to a halt in front of the Federal District Police Headquarters.

Humphrey, one of Newman’s bodyguards, leaped out of the car as Evans got out on the other side. Both of them scanned the street before Humphrey opened the door for Newman, who got out and strode across the wide sidewalk and into the building.

Two armed guards flanked a young, uniformed man seated at a reception desk. He looked up as Newman’s heels echoed loudly on the marble floor of the very busy ground floor.

“Senor?” the young man asked pleasantly. The guards had stiffened to attention when they realized Newman, an obvious foreigner, had brought two armed men into the building with him.

“I have an appointment with Capitán Perés,” Newman said.

“Your name, señor, por favor.”

“Kenneth Newman.”

The young man picked up the telephone, spoke in rapid Spanish, and then nodded up at one of the policemen. “Escort Senor Newman upstairs.”

Telling his men to wait in the lobby, Newman followed the policeman to a private elevator around the corner. On the fifth floor another burly, dark-skinned armed guard took over, escorting him down a wide corridor to an office that looked out toward the Plaza del Congreso, behind which the Argentine government met.

It was a large room dominated by an immense leather-topped desk, behind which sat one of the most obese men Newman had ever seen. The fat hung on him in huge folds, and his face was so grossly bloated that his eyes and mouth were little more than indentations. He got ponderously to his feet and moved like a battleship around the desk, extending his massive paw.

“Señor Newman, I am so very pleased to meet you at last. I am Reynaldo Perés, captain of police.” The man’s voice was gentle, belying his great size.

Newman shook his hand. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I know how busy you must be.”

“Yes, it is a horrible tragedy, for which I feel personally responsible.” He motioned for Newman to have a seat, then went back behind his desk and sank into his chair.

“How so?”

“I had spoken at great length with Senor Vance-Ehrhardt, begging him to increase his security measures. A perimeter fence with infrared monitoring devices could have saved him.”

“Then you should hold yourself blameless.”

Captain Perés smiled. “Very generous of you, sir, and yet I cannot help but feel responsible. It was up to me to make certain that the Montoneros were kept under control. Even now we are rounding up known members.” The big man sighed deeply. “But, alas, it is like closing the barn door after the horses have fled, as you say.”

“Has any contact been made? Or any ransom demands?” Newman asked.

“None, but contact will come. And let me assure you, we will find and punish them. But before they are put on trial, we will find out who ordered and engineered this cowardly attack.”

Newman felt a cold wind. “You don’t believe it was simply an act of terrorism, then?”

Perés held his silence for a moment. His eyes narrowed. “We will know better when a ransom demand is finally made. But certain factors have been brought to my attention.”

“Anything I can help with?” Newman asked. “I was a friend of the Vance-Ehrhardt family.”

“Was, Señor Newman?”

Newman had the distinct impression Perés was playing some kind of game with him. “As you probably know, I am married to Jorge’s daughter, Lydia. As you also probably know, the family did not exactly approve of the marriage.”

Perés nodded sagely, as if Newman had just given him the theory of the world in twenty-five words or less. “Isn’t it also true, Señor Newman, that you worked for the Vance-Ehrhardts for some years? Were in fact a student and then a close personal friend of Jorge himself?”

“Yes, that is true.”

“Is it also not true that when you opened your own business, you… shall we say… persuaded a number of Vance-Ehrhardt’s business associates to come along with you?”

Newman smiled. “It is a fact of doing business, captain. I did not steal them away, I merely offered them better deals. The decision was theirs.”

“Is kidnapping also a way of doing business?”

Newman wasn’t really surprised at the question. He had felt it coming from the moment he walked into the room. “It was I who requested this meeting, Captain Perés.”

“Clever, perhaps?”

“Concerned that I might be able to offer some help.”

Perés sat forward in his chair, his hands folded together on the desk. “I would be most interested to hear what you might have to say.”

“In the United States last week, an arsonist destroyed a major grain-elevator complex owned by the Cargill Company. In France a couple of days later, Gérard Louis Dreyfus, the head of a very large grain-trading house, was assassinated.”

“Interesting,” Perés said. “And you are suggesting now that Vance-Ehrhardt’s kidnapping is part of some worldwide plot?”

“It is possible.”

“Who has the most to gain from all this activity?”

“I do,” Newman said. “That is to say, my company does.”

Perés seemed to contemplate that for a few seconds. “It is why you have brought bodyguards with you?”

“They were my wife’s idea,” Newman said. “And now, on reflection, I expect she was prudent in hiring them.”

“I see,” Perés drew the words out, studying his hands. He looked up, a hard glint in his eyes. “Why is it you truly requested this interview with me, Senor Newman? As I have said, I am a busy man.”

“I sincerely would like to help my wife’s family.”

“Then return to the United States. Take your wife with you, if she will go, and leave us to our troubles. We neither need nor want you here.”

Perés got to his feet and came around his desk as Newman got up. “I would like you gone by this time tomorrow. I am sure the family will understand — those of them who care, that is.”

“What…?” Newman began.

“Goodbye, Senor Newman,” Perés said firmly.

Taking the elevator back down to the first floor, Newman was wondering what Perés had meant. If she will go? And he wondered why the man hadn’t pressed him about the Cargill and Louis Dreyfus business. Lost in thought, he did not notice the frank looks of animosity he elicited as he crossed the lobby and headed out the door, but he noticed his bodyguards falling in behind him and wished the hell they were someplace else right now. Even Duluth.

“Where to now, Mr. Newman?” Humphrey asked.

Newman looked up. “Home,” he said. “I mean, the Vance-Ehrhardt estate.”

It took an hour to drive back out to the estate, and Newman was lost in thought for the entire trip.

Perés was one of the most powerful men in the city of Buenos Aires, and among the most influential men in the federal government. “Buenos Aires and its surroundings belong to Reynaldo Perés,” he had heard one of Lydia’s uncles say. The Vance-Ehrhardt family was well known here. So what did Perés know about Lydia that Newman didn’t?

At the Vance-Ehrhardt access road, the car was met by half a dozen armed men, standing around two cars and a jeep.

“Do you know any of these people, Mr. Newman?” Evans asked as they approached.

Newman sat forward, looking out as they pulled up. One of them was Simon Vance-Ehrhardt, Lydia’s uncle. He had never seen the others.

“I know the one in the safari jacket. He’s a Vance-Ehrhardt.”

“I don’t like this, sir.”

“We’ll just see what they want,” Newman said. As he started to get out, Simon and two of the others, their rifles raised, came toward the car.

Newman’s bodyguards reached for their guns, but Newman held them back.

“Turn around and get the hell out of here,” Simon Vance-Ehrhardt snarled, stopping a few feet away.

“I’ve come for Lydia,” Newman said. He didn’t like the looks of this at all. Simon’s jaw was tight, and the cords stood out on his neck.

“Leave while you are still able!”

“Not without my wife, Simon.”

The man raised his rifle higher and flipped the safety off. Instantly, Evans and Humphrey had their weapons out, safeties off.

Simon laughed. “Two against six. Not very good odds.”

“No. So you will either kill me now, or let me see Lydia.”

“Bastard,” Simon hissed. “She is not here.”

“Where is she?” Newman demanded.

“Gone.”

“Where?”

“Into the city.”

“The office?”

Simon nodded.

Newman stared at him for several long seconds. “Whatever you think about me, Simon, you’re wrong. You are all dreadfully wrong. I wanted to beat Jorge at business, but not like this. I’ve come here to help.”

“I am rapidly losing what little control I possess, you gringo son of a whore. Leave now while you are still able.”

Newman shook his head in sadness. Ten years ago Simon had been one of his favorites.

“Where are my things?”

“Lydia had them sent to the Royale. You have a room there, for tonight.”

“Simon…”

“Go, Newman. Never come back. It is my last warning.”

Newman closed the car door, and his driver spun around on the road and headed back to the highway.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, I think you should go home. They don’t like Americans here as it is, and you especially.”

“I’ll release you from your contract and put you on a plane this evening.”

“No, sir, we couldn’t do that. But I’m telling you that we cannot guarantee your safety against these people. It’s their country. They’d have the protection of the police if it came to a shootout.”

“We’ll leave in the morning,” Newman said. “For now, take me to the Vance-Ehrhardt Building downtown.”

The Vance-Ehrhardt Building was just off the Plaza San Martin, the upper floors enjoying a panoramic view of the city to the south and west, and to the north and east the vast harbor and the Rio de la Plata.

No one stopped them as they took the elevator to the tenth floor. There, at the open door to her father’s office, Lydia was waiting, wearing a severely cut business suit. Half a dozen Vance-Ehrhardt executives were waiting in the reception area, and they all looked up, hard expressions in their eyes.

“In here Kenneth,” she said. “Your muscle can wait for you. We’ll just be a minute or two. I’m very busy at the moment.”

Newman’s heart flipped over. There was no warmth at all in the way she looked at him. He could have been a perfect stranger. He knew she was affected by the kidnapping of her parents, but he hadn’t expected this. Christ, everyone was blaming him.

“We’re leaving in the morning,” he said, entering the office with her.

Lydia closed the door, and Newman tried to draw her to him, but she brushed his hands away and sat down behind her father’s desk.

“That is a good idea, Kenneth,” she said. “I think Buenos Aires might be dangerous for you at this moment.”

“And for you,” Newman said, approaching the desk.

She looked up at him, her face devoid of any expression, and she shook her head. “I cannot leave,” she said. “I have a business to run here.”

“You’re my wife.”

“You are my competitor! Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, and now my parents. You have the most to gain in all this, Kenneth. You!”

“That doesn’t mean I engineered this, for Christ’s sake!”

“No, it doesn’t, but I’m sure if we talked to your pal Dybrovik, we might come a little closer to who did.”

Newman took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he tried to block the heavy sadness that threatened to well up.

“The Russians would have no reason to do all this. They’d never get another grain contract.”

“Perhaps not, but perhaps Dybrovik is not working independently. Perhaps he’s being directed.”

“By whom? And to what end?”

“I honestly don’t know yet, Kenneth, but I intend finding out.”

“And then what?”

“And then I will stop whatever it is you and they are doing.”

“You can’t do this, Lydia. If you want, I’ll stay here and help.”

“You have your own business to run.”

“Together we can operate both.”

“A merger?”

Newman shook his head. “No. Paul can run my operation, and I can help you here until your parents are released.”

“Do you expect they will be released?”

“Yes. As soon as whatever ransom demand they make is met.”

“You still don’t understand, do you?” There was a glint of tears in her eyes. “You stupid, naive fool.”

“Understand what, Lydia?” Newman asked.

“Even if there is no connection between the kidnapping of my parents and the Cargill and Louis Dreyfus things, the Montoneros never return hostages. Never!”

“Then let me help find them quickly.”

“Get out of here. Go back to the States and take care of your own business. Leave me here. Don’t you see? I no longer want you.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Get out of here!” Lydia screamed, jumping up. “Get out of here, you bastard! Get out!”

Newman stepped back, staggered by her intensity. The door behind him crashed open. Several of the Vance-Ehrhardt executives burst into the office, along with Newman’s two bodyguards.

“Get him out of here,” Lydia yelled. “And don’t let him back in the building. If he tries, I want him shot.”

Newman sidestepped the others, and his bodyguards moved between them.

“I’m not giving up on you, Lydia,” he said. “If I can’t help here, I will do what I can outside the office. You are my wife.”

One of the executives, an older man, spoke with passion: “Leave, Mr. Newman, or I will personally see to it that you are shot.”

Lydia had come around the desk, a sneer on her lips. “If I were you, I’d run back to Duluth as fast as I could, in order to save my business. As of this moment, Vance-Ehrhardt is coming after you.”

16

The Royale was a brand-new, twenty-story hotel downtown on the Avenida Córdoba, and Newman’s reception was obsequious. The reservation had been made by a Vance-Ehrhardt, which made Newman a VIP, so there was absolutely no trouble coming up with an adjoining room for his two “business associates.”

His clothing, which had been sent over from the estate, had been carefully hung in his suite, and the hotel had provided chilled champagne, fresh flowers, and a basket of fruit.

It was all very unreal without Lydia.

The bodyguards made a quick inspection before they would allow Newman to come in; when they were satisfied, they went into the next room, leaving the connecting door open.

“If there is anything at all we can do for you, Mr. Newman, please do not hesitate to ask,” the assistant manager said.

“I may not be leaving tomorrow, so hold this suite open for me.” A moment later the door closed and he was alone.

From the window he could see the Vance-Ehrhardt Building rising above the park, and he could envision Lydia there, her sleeves rolled up, a wisp of her blonde hair hanging over her forehead as she worked to keep the Vance-Ehrhardt conglomerate afloat.

Somewhere within the city, her father was being held hostage — that is, if he was still alive. The police had been told by informers that a helicopter had brought the Vance-Ehrhardts and their captors inland, where they were seen entering a van. The van had been found on a narrow street in the villa miseria, and now the police, aided by federal troops, were searching the area, shack by shack in hopes of flushing the kidnappers out.

His relationship with Lydia depended in large measure on how successful they would be, how quickly her parents could be returned. Once her father was back at the helm, Newman had little doubt that Lydia would return to him.

Despite the fact that his love for her tended to hamper his clear thinking, he could understand her loyalty. For more than a hundred years the family and the business had grown and prospered together. The business was the family. Now, in this crisis, Lydia could not turn her back on her upbringing. Her husband, and even mourning for her parents, came second to protecting the business.

Newman regretted Lydia’s knowledge of his business arrangement with Dybrovik. But when he had told her about it, he had never dreamed that a situation like this would occur. But what she did with the information was another matter entirely. A worrisome matter.

The telephone rang, and Newman turned away from his musings at the window to answer it.

“Mr. Newman, this is the hotel operator. I have a Mr. Saratt from the United States who wishes to speak with you. Will you accept the call?”

“Yes, put him on,” Newman said.

“Kenneth, is that you?” Saratt’s voice sounded hollow and very distant.

“Yes, it is, Paul, and I’m glad you called.”

“How is everything down there? I thought you were staying at the Vance-Ehrhardt estate.”

“They kicked me out, but it’s a long story.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to tell me all about it; you’re going to have to come back here immediately.”

Alarms began jangling along Newman’s nerves. “What is it, Paul?”

“TradeCon has just shown an incoming transfer of a very substantial amount. And I mean substantial.”

“Is he intending to go after the futures market already?”

“I would assume so, but it came out of the clear blue sky, without a word from him.”

What the hell was Dybrovik doing now? If it was merely a routine transfer of funds for grain already shipped, it would be one thing. But Saratt did not use “substantial” lightly.

“How much, Paul?”

“You sitting down?”

“Close to it.”

“Five hundred million.”

“Swiss francs?”

“Dollars.”

“Jesus.” Newman sank down on the edge of the chair. “He’s serious.”

“Very,” Saratt said dryly. “So what do we do now?”

The big question. With that kind of money, Dybrovik apparently wanted all the futures bought on a cash basis, not on margin. Nearly unheard of. But complicating the affair was Lydia. She would be moving very soon either to establish a link with the Russians or to snap up all the corn futures as she could get her hands on. Fortunately, he had not told her the extent of the deal; otherwise she would have completely swallowed them up.

“Buy,” Newman said. It was the only answer.

“How much?” Saratt asked, excitement in his voice.

“Every bushel you can get your hands on.”

“Cash?”

“Cash, if need be, but take everything on margin you can get your hands on. We’ll save the cash reserves.”

“In case he tries something funny?”

“Exactly.” The biggest complication of all was the likelihood that someone else would find out. A half-billion dollars was not moved about without attracting a lot of attention. Someone would be watching them now, and watching them very closely.

“When are you and Lydia coming home?”

“Lydia’s staying here. She’s taken over the business until her father is returned.”

“I’m sorry,” Saratt said after a slight pause. “Has there been any word yet?”

“None. But they want me out of Buenos Aires.”

“Maybe it’d be for the best, Kenneth. I don’t think Argentina is a particularly safe place for you to be at the moment.”

“I agree. But I want you to stay there and do what you can with the Chicago market.”

“How about you?”

“I’m going to Geneva to find out what the hell is going on.”

“When?”

“Probably first thing in the morning, depending upon what happens or doesn’t happen down here.”

Again Saratt hesitated a moment. “Be careful, Kenneth.”

“I will,” Newman said. “I’ll call from Geneva.”

“Be careful,” Saratt said one last time, and he hung up.

Newman was about to go back to the window when Evans came in from the adjoining room, a concerned look on his face. He went directly to the television set and switched it on.

“You’d better see this, sir,” he said. “It just started a minute or so ago.”

“Vance-Ehrhardt?” Newman asked.

Evans nodded. “It was a recording of the old man’s voice, from what I understood, along with a ransom demand.”

A picture came on, and the sound came up. A serious-faced announcer seated behind a desk was saying something in Spanish about the continuing police efforts, under the capable leadership of Reynaldo Perés. Then the photograph of Jorge Vance-Ehrhardt filled the screen, and his familiar voice began speaking. It sounded raspy, as if he was very tired, or perhaps on some sort of drug.

“Peoples of Argentina, I have done you wrong. My company has done you a terrible injustice. It is a thing that can never be completely forgiven. But my generous captors have shown me a way to make up for my crimes. This act will, of course, in no way expunge my evil, nor do I beg now for forgiveness, or even mercy.”

It wasn’t Jorge speaking, or at least it wasn’t the man Newman had known for years. Whatever they had done to him made him sound lifeless, wooden. And he was obviously reading from a prepared script, because he never talked that way.

“I instruct my directors to use one hundred million dollars of Company funds, in U.S. currency, to purchase gold on the open market. Half of that gold shall be spent to purchase food, medical supplies, and farm equipment for our peasants on the pampas. Those glorious, toiling workers, from whom I have profited by grinding their bodies into the dust of the earth, shall be rewarded.

“The second half of the gold must be deposited in the account of the Argentine Liberation Army at the National Bank of Libya in Tripoli. The money will be used to finance Argentine freedom fighters, who will very soon be coming to liberate our homeland from the oppressive yoke of imperialism.”

Newman grabbed the phone. When the operator came on the line, he had her place a call to Duluth. While he was waiting for it to go through, he watched the television.

“I am sorry for my sins,” Vance-Ehrhardt was saying. “And even though I am a criminal in the eyes of my people, I will be allowed to return to my home and my loved ones if the simple demands I have stated are met within seventy-two hours.”

Vance-Ehrhardt’s photograph was replaced on the screen by Captain Perés standing outside the police building. He was surrounded by reporters.

“What is being done at this moment, sir?” one of the newsmen asked.

“We are doing everything within our power to track down and apprehend these reprehensible criminals,” Perés said with a flourish. “Although I cannot, for natters of security, disclose the exact progress of our case, I can assure you that we are close, very close ndeed, to making an arrest….”

“I have your party on the line, Mr. Newman,” the hotel operator said.

Newman turned away from the television. “Paul?”

“It’s me,” Saratt said. “The Vance-Ehrhardt thing is on the TV. CBS has picked it up.”

“I want you to be on the lookout for a Vance-Ehrhardt mass purchase,” Newman said, and he could hear Saratt catching his breath.

“That’s shitty business, Kenneth, if you’re planning what I think you are.”

“I want them blocked, Paul. At every avenue, I want them outbid.”

“Kicking them when they’re down? What the hell is happening to you down there?”

On the television Perés was still talking with the newspeople. “Listen to what I have to tell you, without comment. And when I’m finished, I want you to get to work immediately.”

“I understand.”

“In Washington, Lundgren wouldn’t give me a thing.”

“I figured as much.”

“However, Lydia also went to Grainex for the information.”

“I hope you’re not going to tell me what I think you’re going to tell me.”

“I told her, Paul. Not everything. Not the extent of the deal, but I told her.”

“Jesus, hell, and Christ!” Saratt shouted in frustration.

“She’s calling the shots now. I want her blocked.”

“It may be too late.”

“I don’t think so. We have the available funds now, and Vance-Ehrhardt is going to be cash poor if they meet the ransom demands.”

“And if we get caught short?”

“Buy it all on margin. They don’t care as long as we can deliver.”

“You’re putting us way the hell out on a limb, Kenneth!”

Newman laughed. “Haven’t we always lived dangerously?”

“I’ll do what I can from this end,” Saratt said.

Newman hung up. Perés seemed to look directly at him from the television screen, a feral grin on his lips.

“There are a number of curious elements to this business — international elements — that we are vigorously working on. And I promise you that we will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to return the Vance-Ehrhardts to their loved ones, and to the nation.”

The newscaster was back, and behind him was an aerial photograph of the Vance-Ehrhardt estate, with arrows pointing to the routes the terrorists had apparently used to gain entry and return to the airstrip.

“Mr. Newman,” Evans said, and Newman looked away from the television. “We’re leaving in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Very good, sir. I spoke with Mr. Coatsworth, and he suggested in the strongest of terms that, until you leave the country, you not move from the hotel nor allow any visitors up here.”

“I can’t guarantee any of that, but we will be leaving.”

“Back to the States?”

“Geneva, Switzerland.”

“Very good, sir,” the man said, and the doorbell chimed. He immediately pulled out his automatic, flipping the safety off and levering a round in the chamber.

Humphrey stuck his head in the doorway, his gun in hand. “Are you expecting anyone, sir?”

Newman shook his head.

“Then please stand back,” he said, and he motioned for his partner to go to the door.

The doorbell rang again. “Kenneth?” a woman’s voice said from out in the corridor. It was Lydia.

“It’s my wife,” Newman said, starting forward. “Let her in.”

Evans motioned him back. “Just a moment, sir.” He went to the door and opened it slightly.

“Is my husband here?” Lydia demanded.

“Are you alone, ma’am?”

“Open this goddamned door, I have to see him!” Lydia shouted.

The bodyguard glanced back at Newman, who nodded, and he opened the door. She stormed in.

“Get out. I want to be alone with my husband.”

Newman nodded. His bodyguards went back into their own room and reluctantly shut the door.

“You have to get out of Buenos Aires immediately, Kenneth,” she said.

“I’m leaving in the morning,” he said, staring at her. She was beautiful, and he ached at the thought of her, and what they were doing to each other.

“No, you must leave now. I’ve telephoned Jacob to have your plane ready for you. By the time you get out to the airport, the crew will be waiting.”

“I’m sorry about your father…” Newman began.

“Goddamn it, Kenneth, listen to me! You have to leave.”

“Why?”

Lydia glanced toward the door to the other room and lowered her voice. “Perés doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going on, but he thinks that you’re behind it somehow.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Of course not,” she said. “But Perés does, and he’s going to make you his scapegoat.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Ever since the Malvinas fight, the government has been insane to find some way in which to strike back at Americans. You’re here now, and a perfect target.”

“I’m going to be arrested?”

“He’s going to have you assassinated.”

“He’d never get away with it.”

“He’ll get away with anything he wants right now. The mood of my people is very bad.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Don’t be a fool. I have to stay here until my parents are released. Until this entire mess is cleaned up.”

Newman, at that moment, saw a side to Lydia he didn’t particularly care for. It didn’t seem to matter to her if her parents were released alive or killed; all that mattered was clearing up the mess so that business could be brought back to normal.

“Simon can take over,” Newman said.

“Simon is an old fool,” Lydia snapped. “I want you out of here this evening.”

“And if I don’t go? If I remain here to help? Or wait for you?”

Her left eyebrow rose. “Then Vance-Ehrhardt will crush the Newman Company, and there will be little if anything for you to return to, if you survive.”

“Lydia…” Newman started toward her, but she cut him off with an imperious toss of her head.

“Stay or go, Kenneth, I don’t really give a damn. Stay, and you probably will be assassinated. Go, and at least you will have a fighting chance to save your business.”

She turned on her heel and left the room before Newman could stop her, leaving him with the feeling that he hadn’t really tried with her. The Lydia Vance-Ehrhardt who had just left wasn’t the woman he had married. Or was she?

It was dark when Newman and his bodyguards went down to the basement garage where they met Jacob, the steward from Newman’s aircraft, standing by a blue Ford LTD. The man was obviously frightened.

“There have been police around the airport all afternoon,” he said.

“Did they say anything to you?”

“No, sir, they just sit there and watch. We’re cleared to leave as soon as you’re on board.”

“If it’s true that Perés is going to try for you, it may happen out at the airport,” Evans said.

“I don’t think so,” Newman said. “His uniformed officers won’t do it. He’ll have someone else pull the trigger, so that he can make a big show of going after the killer. If I can get out to the airport, in plain sight of his men, they’ll have to let me go.”

“We can’t take this car, then,” Jacob said, gesturing toward the LTD. “They know that I’ve come to pick you up. And they’ll recognize the car you’ve been using.”

“We’ll have to borrow another one,” Newman said, looking around the nearly full garage. “How are you gentlemen at hot wiring?”

The bodyguards smiled. Within five minutes they had found an unlocked Mercedes sedan and started the engine.

Newman and Jacob climbed in the back and ducked down so that they would not be visible from outside. They got away from the hotel without incident.

“Anyone following us yet?” Newman asked.

“No, sir,” Humphrey said, and Newman and Jacob sat up.

“We’ll be all right until this car is discovered missing,” Newman said, looking out the rear window. “As soon as it’s called to the police, Perés will know what happened.”

“That’ll take time. We’ll be at the airport within a half-hour,” Humphrey said.

They passed the Vance-Ehrhardt Building in the heavy evening traffic, and Newman looked up at it. Lydia was up there working. He had the gut feeling that he would never see her again. Once this was over, their marriage would be finished. And behind it all was Dybrovik.

No one stopped them or followed them, and within half an hour they were beside the Newman Company aircraft parked at the business aviation terminal.

There were several police cars parked alongside the building, with half a dozen officers on the rooftop observation platform.

Newman hurried up the boarding stairs, the engines coming to life even before he was strapped down. Jacob closed and dogged the hatch, and they headed out the taxiway. Within five minutes they were airborne, the city lights of Buenos Aires falling behind them. Lydia was down there girding the Vance-Ehrhardt empire for battle, while her parents were held captive and other desperate men spun out their own plans.

17

Newman arrived at the Banque de Genève a few minutes after two on Thursday, without an appointment.

It had rained all week in Geneva, and the mood of the city was dark, almost as if the Swiss somehow understood that they were a party to a world food war, much as they were a party to the oil war with their management of Arab petrodollars. The dollar figures in the grain trade were not as large as in the oil market. Oil money regularly came in denominations in the billions, but the overall effect (although there were very few who understood it) was greater. A bushel of wheat or corn, in the last analysis, had a greater bearing on the well-being of the human race than a barrel of oil.

The mood of the city suited Newman so well, however, that he hadn’t even noticed the offhand surliness of the airport attendants, or the unusual reserve of the desk manager at the Hotel Beau Rivage.

The bank was housed in a nondescript, four-story yellow-brick building, with barred windows and a small brass plaque at the front door the only signs that it was not merely an apartment house. Just within the door was a small vestibule that smelled of varnish and fresh paste wax, its polished brass coathooks gleaming in the gray light from a line of frosted-glass windows above.

Straight ahead, down a short, high-ceilinged hallway, was a wooden door with a brass plaque marked PRIVATE; to the left an open doorway led into a very small reception room, which was equipped with a tiny desk and a staid-looking man in morning clothes and gold pince-nez. He looked up as Newman came in.

“I would like a word with Monsieur Montillier,” Newman said.

The receptionist sniffed disapprovingly. “I am dreadfully afraid that would be impossible, unless, of course, you have an appointment, Mr….”

“Tell him it is Mr. Kenneth Newman. I am a principal officer of TradeCon, Limited.”

He stared down at the receptionist until the man got slowly to his feet.

“If you will be so kind as to wait for just a moment, I will see if Monsieur Montillier is available,” the receptionist said ponderously as he left through the door behind his desk.

Within less than a minute the man was back. He ushered Newman through the door, down a very narrow corridor, and up a half-flight of stairs to a large office at the rear of the building. It was furnished with a Louis XIV desk, ornately carved and gilded, a matching armoire, and several glass-fronted bookcases. A massive globe of the world on heavy wooden gimbals was set in front of a tall leaded-glass window.

Armand Montillier, the managing director of the bank, was a small, dapper man, dressed like the receptionist in a dark coat, pin-striped trousers, wing-collared shirt, and black French cravat. His hair was totally white, as was his narrow goatee, which made him look for all the world like a Swiss version of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Colonel Sanders.

A dangerous illusion, Newman thought as Montillier rose, extending his hand across the desk. The man controlled billions of dollars in deposits.

“Mr. Newman, so good of you to stop by to see us,” he said, his voice soft, his English Oxford.

Newman shook his hand. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.” There were a couple of Renoirs on the walls, each with its own ceiling-mounted spotlight. The books within the ornate cases were all leather bound, stamped in gold, and probably rare editions. A Persian carpet covered a large portion of the highly polished wood floor.

Montillier smiled. “For a valued client my door is always open. May I offer you some coffee, perhaps a little wine or cognac?”

“Cognac would be nice, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all, I assure you,” Montillier said, and he poured them both a drink. “And now, if you would like to have a seat, we may commence whatever business has brought you here,” the banker said, again smiling. “Although I suspect it may have something to do with the Eurobank transfer of funds to your TradeCon account.”

Newman sat down and took a delicate sip of the fine brandy.

“I would like to see the status of my account, with daily balance tabulations for the past thirty days.”

“Of course,” Montillier said. He picked up his telephone and said something into it so softly that Newman could not hear him. “Those figures will be here momentarily. Is there something amiss, perhaps, something you would wish to change?”

“No,” Newman said. “On the contrary, I continue to be pleased with the services of your fine institution.”

Montillier nodded. “Then you wish, perhaps, investment advice?”

Newman sat forward. “What I wish most for is discretion, monsieur. Absolute discretion.”

Montillier reacted as if Newman had slapped him in the face. The color left his cheeks, and it seemed for a moment as if he was having difficulty catching his breath.

The door opened, and the receptionist entered and laid a buff-colored folder on the desk, then turned and left, giving no indication that he had noticed anything wrong with Montillier.

“I am wounded, monsieur…” Montillier began, but Newman interrupted him.

“If I may see my daily balances?”

The banker held Newman’s gaze a moment or two longer, then picked up the file, opened it, scanned the figures, and passed it across.

“If, in any way, you have been dissatisfied with our services, I would be more than happy to.look into your specific complaints.”

“On the contrary,” Newman said, looking over the tabulations. “I am, and I continue to be, very happy with our arrangement here, as I have already said.” The daily balances in the TradeCon account had risen from a start of slightly more than $350,000 to an average high of around $20 million, until two days ago. Then a Eurobank transfer of funds totaling $507 million had come in from a numbered account.

Newman closed the file and laid it back on the desk, then took a drink of his cognac. There had been no mistake. The money was there. The numbered account was Dybrovik’s, or rather a blind account of Exportkhleb’s; Newman had recognized the number.

“You are familiar with my business dealings, monsieur,” Newman began. “And I trust that you are satisfied that I am indeed a legitimate businessman.”

“Again I am wounded, Newman. There has never been the slightest question as to your integrity where it concerns Swiss law — for that is what we are talking about here — and I shall confine myself to that issue and no other.”

Swiss laws were very harsh; their most stringent federal statutes dealt with the area of secrecy. For any bank employee or officer to divulge the status of even the smallest account to anyone — absolutely anyone, including government representatives — was punishable not only by instant dismissal, but by fines of $10,000 and more, and imprisonment for as long as twenty years.

“That is comforting, monsieur, but no less than I expected,” Newman said. “There could be a problem in the future. I want to make you aware of it.”

“I am at your complete disposal.”

“Very soon there will be a great deal of activity within the TradeCon account. The Eurobank transfer is only the beginning.”

“I see,” Montillier said, clasping his hands in front of him on the desk. “Please continue.”

“This activity will take the form of numerous and often quite large transfers of funds, many of which will be from outside Switzerland. Your discretion, monsieur, has never been in question in my mind. However, there are those who pride themselves on a certain ability to deduce active business arrangements merely from the frequency of fund transfers.”

Montillier smiled thinly. “I understand perfectly, Mr. Newman. Let me assure you that each and every payment to, or debit from, your account will be handled on a highly personal basis. No matter the number or the frequency. The sheer act of transfer shall be kept as confidential as the actual status of your account, or indeed its very existence.”

Newman finished his cognac and set the glass down. “Then my business here today is concluded.” He got to his feet, and the banker followed suit.

Newman had no illusions about Swiss law, or any other law for that matter. When the stakes became high enough, some would be willing to bend or break the rules. Swiss law was inviolate only in Switzerland. If a man — Montillier, perhaps — was willing to abandon his position here in Switzerland, say for something in Buenos Aires, he could do it, providing he was not intercepted before leaving this country.

All Newman had done today — the only thing he had hoped to do, besides making absolutely sure the Eurobank transfer had actually occurred — was to put Montillier on notice that TradeCon would be watched, and watched very closely, for any irregularities. If anything should come up, Newman had told Montillier in effect that he would go straight to the Swiss authorities.

“I am so happy that you spoke with me about a matter of such concern to you. Again let me assure you that you may have the utmost confidence with us.”

“I do,” Newman said. They shook hands.

Back downstairs, the receptionist showed him out the door. It was still raining.

It was late, nearly ten o’clock in the evening, and still misty, when Newman drove his rented car off the lakeshore highway just past Coppet and stopped at the beginning of the narrow gravel driveway. Behind him, the headlights of the second car bounced up the road and swung directly on him as he got out and walked back.

Evans cranked down his window. “What is this place, Mr. Newman?”

“This is as far as you go. About a hundred yards farther up is the house.”

“We’ll follow you.”

“No, you won’t,” Newman said. “I won’t be long. A half-hour at the most. Probably less. The place is crawling with security people.”

The two bodyguards looked at each other. “You’re making it very difficult for us to do our job, sir.”

“Can’t be helped,” Newman said. “Turn your car around and wait here.”

“What if someone comes?”

“Stop them, find out who they are, and let them pass.”

“A half-hour?”

“Probably less,” Newman said. He went back to his car, continued down the driveway, and stopped in front of the house Dybrovik was using as his headquarters.

There were several Mercedes, a Citroën, and a couple of small Ford Cortinas parked out front and around the side. The house was lit up like a Christmas tree.

As Newman pulled up, a heavily built man in a dark suit came down from the porch. He frisked Newman the moment he stepped out of the car.

Newman wondered how the Russians were getting away with something like this. It would not be possible in the States, but then the Swiss had a habit of turning a blind eye to anything that was financial in nature.

“He is waiting inside for you,” the man said, his English guttural.

Dybrovik, his shirt sleeves rolled up, came into the main hallway, clutching a thick sheaf of papers. He was not smiling.

“What brings you out here tonight?” he asked.

Newman had called earlier to make the appointment. Dybrovik had hesitated before agreeing.

“We have to talk.”

“Is something wrong? There is not enough money? You are having trouble with purchases or shipping?”

“We have to talk. In private, Dybrovik. No microphones, no listeners.”

Dybrovik looked at him as if he were speaking nonsense. “Don’t cause me such worry, Kenneth. If there is a problem, tell it to me straight out, and let’s see if we cannot come up with a solution.”

Newman said nothing.

Dybrovik began to squirm. “Everything we do here, Kenneth, is being recorded. Even now our conversation is on tape. Please, you cannot do this to me… to our arrangement. Is it not profitable, as I promised?”

Newman jerked his head toward the front door. Dybrovik’s gaze flickered that way, and he nodded.

“I wanted to make sure that you will continue transferring funds into my TradeCon account.”

“We have passed more than five hundred million dollars over.”

“The amount of grain we are purchasing will amount to four times that, probably more by the time we are finished.”

“And you have come here seeking assurances?” Dybrovik asked. He laughed. “Is that all?”

“Basically.”

“You have them. You have my personal word.”

Newman again nodded toward the front door.

“And now I must return to my work. As you know, Soviet ports alone can handle less than fifty million tons of grain per year. We are working very hard at this moment to set up alternate receiving centers and storage areas. It is not easy. But let me walk you to your car.”

“I was getting nervous,” Newman said.

“Very uncharacteristic of you.”

“The numbers are much bigger than anything we’ve handled before.”

They stepped out onto the porch. The burly character who had frisked Newman emerged from the shadows and said something to Dybrovik in rapid Russian.

Dybrovik shook his head and said something in return. The guard glowered at Newman, then disappeared in the shadows again.

“You have a car waiting for you out by the highway?”

“Bodyguards,” Newman said. They stepped down off the porch and walked around the front of his car. “Can we be heard out here?” he whispered.

“No,” Dybrovik said, “but we are being watched.”

Newman glanced back up at the house. He was certain he saw a movement, in one of the upper windows, but then it was gone.

“What is so mysterious that we have to take this risk?” Dybrovik was smiling and nodding his head, as if Newman was telling him a joke.

“I want to know what the hell is going on,” Newman hissed.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Dybrovik said, smiling but sounding alarmed.

“First Cargill in New Orleans, then Louis Dreyfus in Paris, and now Vance-Ehrhardt in Buenos Aires.”

Dybrovik looked sharply at him. “You think that my government has had something to do with those things?”

“It’s goddamned suspicious. You and I are doing business, the biggest business in the history of grain trading, and my company benefits the most from those disasters.”

“Newman, my old friend, I assure you we had nothing to do with those heinous acts. I was going to convey my sympathies to your wife.” Dybrovik looked back at the house.

“I wonder what would happen to you if I kept the money you have already transferred into the TradeCon account and didn’t ship the grain.”

Dybrovik stepped back a pace, as if Newman were a demented, dangerous animal. “You would never again receive a grain commission from anyone. Your name and your business would be ruined. And we would recover our money through the International Court at the Hague.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But that is exactly what I intend doing if it comes out that your government was in any way responsible for Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, or Vance-Ehrhardt.”

“I have already told you…”

“I know what you told me,” Newman said sharply. “What I’m telling you is that you had better make damned sure that some overzealous KGB colonel or general hasn’t decided to help things along by eliminating my competition. My own government would support me in this. I think you know that.”

Dybrovik seemed genuinely pained. “Are you sorry now that you have become involved with this deal?”

“Not yet,” Newman said. “But I am concerned.”

Someone came out of the house. “Delos Fedor?” he called from the porch.

“My assistant.” Dybrovik turned around. “What is it?”

“There is a telephone call for you. Urgent.”

“I am coming,” Dybrovik called, then turned back. “What can I say that will assure you, Kenneth?”

“Give me your word that, to your knowledge, there is no plot.”

Dybrovik nodded.

“Delos Fedor, the telephone,” his assistant shouted.

“And give me your word that if you should find out something, you will let me know.”

Dybrovik smiled. “I could never give you my assurances on that, Kenneth. We are partners in a grain-trading deal. Business associates, not countrymen.”

It was the answer Newman had hoped for, because it was truthful. He patted Dybrovik on the arm. “For now, nothing will be changed, then. We are purchasing corn futures.”

“On margin,” Dybrovik said. “I was led to understand that the purchases would be made on a cash basis.”

“How I run my business is my concern,” Newman said harshly. “You keep the money coming, and I’ll continue purchasing corn.”

“And yet you question me?”

“When it comes to assassination and kidnapping, yes,” Newman said. He climbed into his car, and when he had the engine started, he and Dybrovik looked into each other’s eyes for several long seconds.

“My wife has taken over the Vance-Ehrhardt conglomerate until her father is returned.”

“I am very sorry for you, my old friend.”

“She has gotten wind of the fact that you are up to something. Someone apparently spotted you here in Geneva.”

“Will she come here to try and deal with me?”

“Perhaps not she herself, but I expect she will be sending someone.”

“I shall tell them nothing.”

“Thank you,” Newman said. “Say hello to your wife for me.”

Dybrovik flinched, but he nodded, and Newman left.

18

Delos Fedor Dybrovik was what his wife used to call a deep thinker. And lately, over the past few weeks, he had been doing a lot of that. As long as he was able to keep a distance between himself and the little man, he could manage his perspective, to a degree. He could think of the little man in more realistic, less frightening terms. A bureaucrat. Someone who had the ear of the Party. Probably held a rank, almost certainly KGB. Someone who could wipe out all record of Dybrovik’s past transgressions.

In Geneva, at arm’s length from the little man, he had toyed with the idea of running to the United States. But he knew that, once he was there, he would not be happy. He’d miss his life at home. Besides, he still wanted to continue with the largest grain deal in the history of the trade. Even though it was becoming tainted in his mind. Even though he was filled with doubts about exactly what the little man was up to. A Great Grain Robbery was one thing, but Newman’s questions last week about Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, and Vance-Ehrhardt had brought other, darker fears to mind. Assassination and violence. But to what end?

Entering the Ministry of Transportation Building in Moscow this warm Friday afternoon, with more fear in his heart than he had ever imagined he could bear, and with the intention of finding out what was going on, Dybrovik had to wonder if he wasn’t experiencing the very last days of his life. He had almost convinced himself that the little man had killed Larissa, for no other reason than to insure cooperation. If he felt he was being betrayed, wouldn’t he kill again?

He had been back from Geneva twice since the grain purchase had begun, and that was to raid the home staff for additional help. The little man had come up after office hours, each time, for a status report, had praised Dybrovik, then had left as quietly as he had come. Dybrovik was certain that the little man would be back again this time for an update, and he was going to have to keep his head while he lied to him. Given enough time, he’d be able to pave the way to make his lies more creditable. At least long enough for him to find out what was going on — and then get out, if need be.

It had taken a week after the meeting with Newman for him to get up the courage to return to Moscow and do what he knew he had to do. During that time he had set up some insurance for himself, as well as devised the ostensible reasons for his return: the necessity of coming up with sufficient grain-handling capacity to manage the amount of corn that would begin arriving in October aboard Newman subsidiary ships. Storage facilities would have to be secured or built, and a distribution network arranged to handle the massive influx.

All in all, it was a gargantuan problem that Exportkhleb could no longer ignore, although it was not within the bureau’s actual purview. The State Ministry of Transportation handled that aspect, but Dybrovik felt that a case could be made for his putting out feelers.

But he was skating on thin ice. The little man had told him point blank that there would be no deviation from the buy order. One hundred million tons of corn. Bought in total secrecy. “Merely buy it, Delos Fedor. The rest will be up to me.”

Newman feared that Exportkhleb would end up holding massive amounts of grain, while much of the world suffered shortages that the United States could not fill. Exportkhleb would then step in with its grain, selling it at a premium. Newman would be caught in the middle then, as a traitor to his own country, with nowhere to turn.

Dybrovik’s fear, on the other hand, was that something much more sinister was under way. If the major corn merchants, such as Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and Vance-Ehrhardt — and, in the end, Newman — were ruined, were put out of business, and if the Soviet Union owned major stockpiles of corn, there would be serious trouble for the U.S. if something happened to its own supplies. He had to find out.

He had spent most of the morning alone in his Prospekt apartment, finishing paperwork and thinking about his wife. From time to time his eyes strayed to the bathroom door. Although he felt remorse, it was not an all-consuming passion, because her death — the way he had seen her hanging there — was not fully real to him. He could not allow it to be. Surely Larissa would be back soon.

Just before noon he had gone directly to his office, where he had been stopped five times by various staffers who renewed their condolences on the death of his wife, told him he was doing a tremendous job, and asked if he had brought back any American cigarettes or Swiss beer.

The buy from Newman had been compartmentalized. The staff in Geneva knew that they were purchasing huge amounts of grain from a seemingly endless list of minor brokers. But the Moscow staff had no knowledge of the extent of the deal. The regular staff, that is.

At 1:30, Mikhail Andreyev, the bureau’s market analyst, had come in with the latest world grain price projections, which showed rice steady, wheat and soybeans up eight and nine cents a bushel, and corn up to $6.05 American, nearly fifty cents above normal.

“Maybe our latest small corn buys are having an effect on the market, but we can’t attribute much more than a few pennies to our movements,” Andreyev, a shuffling old man, said. There was an odd expression in his eyes.

Dybrovik tried to concentrate on what the old man was saying, but it was difficult.

“Cargill and Louis Dreyfus certainly are having a more significant effect on the market, but it is still too early to tell what the Vance-Ehrhardt kidnapping has done.”

“You think it will affect the market as well?”

“Certainly the spot market, depending upon what the kidnappers’ demands are, and how fast Vance-Ehrhardt is returned. If he is returned at all.”

Half an hour later, Boris Stepanovich Gordik, Exportkhleb’s assistant director, popped in with the proud announcement that the Thai rice market had been cornered and that U.S. rice would be shunted through their agents in Hong Kong in sufficient quantities for Exportkhleb to pick up at least a few thousand tons.

“Bits and pieces, Delos Fedor, but we should be able to cover our needs now without undue strain.”

“You have done a really excellent job in my absence. You should go to Hong Kong to supervise the buy. Don’t you think so?” Dybrovik asked.

Gordik puffed up, his face lit with a huge grin. “I believe the buy would certainly go much more smoothly if I were there to oversee it.”

“Then you may leave early next week.”

“Will you be remaining here, or are you going to return to Geneva?”

“Unfortunately, I’ll be returning within the week, but the staff will be able to handle anything that comes up. Comrade Shalnev will be here as well.”

Gordik looked over his shoulder, then came a little closer and started to speak, but Dybrovik cut him off.

“Enjoy Hong Kong, and give my regards to your wife.”

Gordik stepped back. Everyone in the bureau hated and feared Shalnev, who had instituted a new Office of Doctrinal Compliance. Three people had already lost their jobs because of his meddling. He was a ruthless, tight-lipped bastard whom you couldn’t talk to. Only Dybrovik knew that Shalnev was in the bureau at the little man’s behest. It was Shalnev who was handling the large Western currency transfers to Exportkhleb’s Eurobank account, without a single person knowing about it, bypassing the bureau’s own banking section completely.

Gordik was an ass, but Dybrovik liked and trusted him. He was honest and steady, and had an excellent grasp of the international grain market. Dybrovik did not want the man getting himself in trouble now because of his loose tongue.

“Thanks,” Gordik said, understanding what Dybrovik had done for him.

Dybrovik went down the hall to Shalnev’s domain next to the computer center. The man was a short, stocky bulldog, with thick, greasy hair and bulbous Ukrainian lips. He always seemed to be drooling.

“Delos Fedor, welcome back,” the man boomed. He grabbed Dybrovik in a bear hug, kissed him on the lips, and then released him. “Things are going well, from what I hear,” he said softly.

“Very well, Comrade Shalnev.”

Shalnev laughed. “You have forgotten what I told you. We are friends here. Good friends, you and I.”

Dybrovik said, “Newman came to me for assurances.”

“I listened to the tape. He is no fool, but he is acting like one. He is up to something.”

“I gave him my assurances.”

“He has five hundred million dollars of our money. We in return have less than one-tenth that in grain.”

“The remainder is in futures. Corn that has not been harvested yet.”

“Which he is buying on margin,” Shalnev rumbled, his earlier open good humor gone.

“It is a routine way of doing business, Yuri Pavlovich, but he has become suspicious because of recent happenings.”

“So have I,” Shalnev said ominously. “It is your task to see that this goes smoothly.”

“It has so far, although corn is up.”

Shalnev licked his lips, a chilly expression in his eyes. “Why have you returned? Your work is not finished there.”

“No, it isn’t. But Newman has returned to the United States, and I have a bureau to run. The Americans will be expecting a trade delegation within the month to work out details now that their stupid grain embargo has been lifted. We must be ready for it, lest suspicion fall our way.”

Shalnev was not a grainman, so he had to take Dybrovik at face value. “When will you go back?”

“Soon,” Dybrovik said. “Within a week.”

“Before you leave, I will need your fund-transfer expectations.”

“You’ll have them, along with the shipping schedules through the fall and again for the spring. I don’t know about the winter…” Dybrovik let it trail off, as if he were thinking to himself.

Shalnev picked up on it. “I will need the tonnage projections as soon as you have them.”

Back in his own office Dybrovik closed his door, lit a Marlboro, and poured himself a stiff shot of Scotch with shaking hands. Shalnev needed the tonnage projections? It meant he was involved not only with banking, but with shipping as well. To what extent was the little man controlling transportation? If the corn was being bought for Russian use — which meant that the surpluses would be nonexistent, that there would be a corn shortfall — then a distribution network of huge proportions would be abuilding. If the promised surpluses materialized, then this was another Great Grain Robbery, and no special distribution network would be needed, for the corn would not actually be shipped into Russia. Finally, suppose the surpluses materialized, but the little man planned to stockpile the American grain for some reason. In that case, the Newman subsidiary ships would bring their loads to a few ports where massive storage facilities would be ready.

Dybrovik wanted to know. He had to know.

He telephoned Vladimir Valentin Vostrikov, who was head of interbureau liaison for the Ministry of Transportation.

“Good afternoon, Vladi.”

“Delos, my old friend, how are you? I didn’t know that you were back in town.”

They had often worked together.

“I just returned last night.”

“Listen, we were sorry about Larissa. It came as a big shock. I didn’t hear until last week.”

“Thank you, Vladi. Work is helping, believe me. Which is why I telephoned. I would like to talk with you this afternoon. We may be facing some problems soon.”

“Yes, big things are on the wind, Delos, but not to talk about, if you know what I mean.”

Why not, Dybrovik wondered. Had the little man gotten to him as well? He took his shot. “I have spoken with Shalnev about this.”

“I see,” Vostrikov said, his tone suddenly guarded. “Three o’clock, then.”

Before he left Exportkhleb, Dybrovik gathered up tonnage projections by dates and amounts for all the grain that would — or would not — be coming into Soviet ports over the next twelve months. The corn buy had been spread over dozens of shipping companies, arriving throughout the year. Vostrikov would of course see right through the scheme, understanding that Exportkhleb was purchasing a mammoth amount of corn, and probably from the United States. But Dybrovik had his argument ready: Since the grain was to be shipped to the Soviet Union, then he had to make sure they would be able to handle it as and when it came.

But, as he entered the Ministry of Transportation Building a few minutes before three, he knew he was taking a great risk by snooping around. If the little man found out about this meeting, he might not accept Dybrovik’s explanation. Merely buy it, Delos Fedor. The rest will be up to me.

The security guard called Vostrikov to come down, and a couple of minutes later he showed up with a visitor’s pass which he clipped on Dybrovik’s lapel. He said nothing until they were riding up to the fourth floor in the ancient elevator.

“I don’t mind telling you, I don’t like this. Not any of it. And now you show up, wanting to talk. What is happening, Delos?”

“I was hoping you would tell me. You said big things were happening. What did you mean?”

“I was shooting off my mouth to an old friend,” Vostrikov said sadly.

Vostrikov’s office was a tiny room with a large map of European Russia tacked on the wall. Vostrikov took off his jacket and tossed it aside. He poured them both a vodka, then waved vaguely toward a chair as he went to the window and looked outside. It was a lovely, sunny day.

“What can happen on such a day as this?” he asked rhetorically. He tossed back his drink, then turned and poured himself another, offering more to Dybrovik, who shook his head.

“What’s wrong, Vladi? Why the long face?”

Vostrikov looked at him, drank his second vodka, and poured another.

“I got to thinking after you called me, you know. About Shalnev. And I asked myself, how does my old friend from Exportkhleb know the name Yuri Pavlovich Shalnev? So I called Comrade Shalnev downstairs in his office, just to ask him. He was not there, in banking. So then you know what cute thing I did?”

Dybrovik had been quite sure that Shalnev was the little man’s watchdog over this entire operation, but hearing that he had an office here was startling. It proved the connection. Vostrikov was involved as well. He wondered what hold the little man had on him.

“I called Exportkhleb on a whim. Not to talk to you. No, I asked to speak with Comrade Shalnev. And of course you know he was there. I tell you, Delos, I was so frightened that I hung up the telephone without giving my name. I just hope to hell my telephone has not been monitored. I have been sitting here in fear and shame.”

Fear and shame? The little man’s hold was evidently powerful. And his orders explicit: secrecy would be maintained at all costs. He had an excuse for being here, but poor Vostrikov had none for calling Shalnev at Exportkhleb.

“Please leave, Delos. Go now, before more damage is done.”

Dybrovik forced a smile. “What damage, Vladi? You speak as if there is some dark, nefarious plot underfoot here. I have come merely to discuss the transportation of the year’s grain with you. There will be more than usual. Much more.”

Vostrikov nodded. “I know it all too well. We have been getting ready for months. Quietly. No one around here really knows what’s happening. Except for me.” He tossed back his drink and immediately poured himself another, this time not bothering to offer Dybrovik more.

“It’ll be the largest gathering of railroad cars in our history, Delos. By September all the grain will be moving. But you know all that. You know Shalnev. You must know the rest. Right, Delos?”

Dybrovik was about to correct him, to tell him that Newman’s grain wouldn’t begin coming until October, and it would be shipped throughout the year, not finishing until late spring or early next summer. But again something held him back.

“Where the ships will be found to get rid of it all, I couldn’t begin to tell you. But the grain will be there, ready to ship.”

The grain will be there, ready to ship. What the hell did that mean?

Vostrikov had turned away with his vodka and was once again staring out the window across at Lennin’s mausoleum as Dybrovik got to his feet.

He had come here seeking answers, and he had found them. Only they were answers of a far different sort than he had expected. A far different sort.

19

The United States Department of Agriculture was housed in a large, traditional building between Jefferson Drive and C Street. Its columns and windows faced the Mall, southeast of the White House. Newman and Paul Saratt had arrived in Washington just an hour ago and had taken a cab over, sending Jacob along to the Newman Company apartment in the Watergate with their bags. At the north portico of the great building, they paid the cabby and mounted the stairs to the main floor, then took an elevator upstairs. On the way up Newman reflected on all that had happened since Dybrovik’s call had been routed to him through Abex, and tried to put it into some understandable order. Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, and Vance-Ehrhardt. All direct strikes against the grain industry. He wondered if he shouldn’t include his wife’s defection as a blow against himself. But if the other events had indeed been engineered by one hand (as he suspected), then Lydia’s refusal to return home came only as a serendipitous benefit to the plotter. Lydia’s people were hitting some of the spot markets, and there had been a minor drive for corn out of Milwaukee, but the Newman Company had been there first, and Vance-Ehrhardt’s efforts were mostly ineffective for the moment. He was certain that Lydia had sent someone to speak with Dybrovik, but her mission had evidently failed, because the Russians continued to play ball.

“Upstairs, the reception area was very large, and tastelessly decorated with a lot of chrome-and-glass furniture. The receptionist was a youngish woman who seemed to match the place. Even her green eyeshadow was the same shade as the cushions on the furniture.

“Mr. Newman and Mr. Saratt to see Secretary Lundgren,” Saratt said.

“We have been expecting you,” the receptionist said in a syrupy voice. She picked up the telephone and pushed one of the buttons. “Mr. Stansfield, they’ve just arrived, sir,” she said. “Certainly.” She hung up and smiled. “Mr. Stansfield will be right with you gentlemen.”

It was a new name to Newman. He gave Saratt a questioning look, but Saratt shook his head.

A moment later, a thin, mawkish-looking man appeared and bustled directly up to them, holding his hand out as he came.

“Aubert Stansfield, Undersecretary for Foreign Agricultural Trade,” he said in a reedy voice.

“Secretary Lundgren phoned last night. Here we are,” Newman said tersely.

Stansfield was taken back by Newman’s obvious coldness, but he recovered smoothly. “If you will just come with me, the Secretary is waiting for you.”

Curtis Lundgren was a small man, a full head shorter than Newman. Everything about his face suggested a supercilious attitude, from his round nose to eyes made owlish by thick glasses, to the seemingly permanent sneer on his lips. His hair was thinning although there was no gray in it, and Newman strongly suspected he used hair tint. He was dressed, as usual, in a plain blue suit, with a white shirt and conservative tie. He got to his feet and came around his mammoth desk when they walked in.

“Kenneth,” he said with a soft politician’s voice, “I’m glad you could come on such short notice. I’ve been worried for both of us for the past few days. We just had to talk.”

“You know my vice-president in charge of operations, Paul Saratt?”

The two men shook hands. “I’ve heard your name. Weren’t you with Cargill at one time?”

“Continental,” Saratt said. “Years ago.”

“Good company.”

“Among the better.”

Newman and Saratt followed Lundgren over to the grouping of chairs.

“Would you like me to sit in on this, Mr. Secretary?” Stansfield asked.

“By all means, Aubert,” Lundgren said expansively. “We’ll be dealing on your turf, so to speak.”

They all sat down, and there was an awkward silence. Newman was damned if he was going to help them out of it. He and Paul had discussed the meaning behind Lundgren’s summons to Washington, and they had both reached the same conclusions. The man had somehow gotten wind of the fact that the Newman Company was dealing with the Russians. How much he knew about the deal, however, was going to be the crucial factor, along with where and how he had gotten his information.

Two walls held bookcases filled mostly with law-books, but on the other walls were enlarged photographs of various military aircraft, including a squadron of B-52’s in formation flight. A curious choice for the Secretary of Agriculture, Newman thought. In fact, they could almost be in the office of the Secretary of Defense, except for the Farm Bureau magazines stacked in three neat piles on the coffee table in front of them.

“A hobby of mine,” Lundgren said, seeing Newman look at the photographs.

“I am a very busy man, Mr. Secretary, if you could get to the point,” Newman said.

The remark stung, and Lundgren bridled. “You’ve jumped the gun, and it has us worried here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Soviet grain-trade agreement, what else?”

Newman sat forward. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”

Lundgren smiled. “Come on now, Kenneth. You were seen by two different reliable people in Geneva on two different occasions.”

“The department is spying on me? Is that what you’ve called me in to tell me?”

“Get off your high horse, Newman,” Lundgren snapped. “You’re well known within the trade. You were spotted in Geneva, that’s all.”

“So what?”

“Dybrovik has set up some kind of operation near Coppet. The Swiss won’t tell us a thing, and we can’t get close enough to it to find out much.”

“Newman and Dybrovik in the same city — therefore they are dealing?”

“Are you denying it?”

“I’m just trying to figure out how you think,” Newman said. “Have my licenses been approved?”

“Coincidentally, they have,” Lundgren said, and Stansfield opened a file folder and passed the documents across to the Secretary. “Now that the embargo has been lifted, the Newman company is authorized to ship seven hundred fifty thousand tons of grain to the Soviet Union.” He handed the documents across to Saratt.

Newman laughed. “We’ve already shipped a bit more than one million tons, including soybeans, barley, rice, and wheat.”

“I see,” Lundgren said, sitting back. “Without licenses.”

“That’s right. The embargo has been lifted, and you’re not going to set yourself up here in Washington as the paymaster, telling each company how much grain it can or can’t ship, doling out the tonnage to those who please you. We don’t do business that way.”

“We do now.”

“No.”

“Are you threatening me?” Lundgren asked. “I could have all your licenses.”

“The Mexican government has already asked that I set up my business in Mexico City. I’m giving it serious thought.”

“If you will permit me to interrupt, gentlemen?” Stansfield asked. Lundgren glared at him, but said nothing. “There have been… how shall I put it… some very strange indications on the foreign market over the past few weeks.”

Now it comes, Newman thought.

“Secretary Lundgren brought it to my attention the day after the Cargill elevator explosion. He wondered what effect the disaster might have on our European trade. I expected there might be some slight agitation — at least a slight bit — that Cargill might not be able to fulfill its obligations. So I went looking.”

“What did you find?” Newman asked.

“Not a thing. That is to say, none of my foreign contacts seemed the least bit worried at first. Your company picked up some of the slack from Duluth-Superior, and Louis Dreyfus managed the rest.”

“We certainly didn’t pick up any slack after Gérard was assassinated,” Saratt said.

“We found no indications of it,” Stansfield said. “But what we found curious were the bodyguards you hired. Can you explain that?”

“It was my wife’s idea. She felt I might need the protection. I no longer have them.”

“Then came the Vance-Ehrhardt kidnapping,” Stansfield continued. “And Mr. Newman, please, pass my condolences on to your wife. I hope that everything works out well.”

Newman nodded. The bastards had been spying on him, or at least around him. “What has all this to do with the Newman Company? If you could just come to the point.”

“I’m coming to it, sir,” Stansfield said, but Lundgren cut in.

“Coincidental to those happenings, Dybrovik shows up in Geneva, you do too, and within weeks the corn market begins to show signs of meddling.”

“Are you accusing me of market manipulation?”

“I’m accusing you of nothing,” Lundgren snapped. “I wanted to talk to you to clear the air.”

“Of what? Clear the air of what?”

“Misunderstanding. Your license to deal with the Soviet government will be extended to one million tons, no more. So you are finished trading with them. I’m doing that much for you in return for your providing me with information about Dybrovik, and what the man is up to.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Newman said. “And even if I did, it would be none of your business.”

“Foreign relations are this administration’s business!” Lundgren exploded.

“I think this meeting is concluded.” Newman and Saratt got to their feet.

“Not so fast,” Lundgren said, jumping up. “You were here before asking about Soviet crop projections. Can you explain that?”

“It was common knowledge that the President was lifting the grain embargo. I wanted some indication of the depth of trade.”

Lundgren was obviously unconvinced, and it was clear that he was controlling his anger only through great effort. “The Newman Company has shipped all the grain it is going to ship to the Soviet Union. Should we find out that you have violated this order, you will be prosecuted. Have I made myself clear?”

Newman looked at the man in disgust. “The day that this government, or any other government, regulates the grain trade to the extent it regulates nearly everything else will be the day the world’s food chain will snap. And that’s not merely my opinion, Lundgren. Ask Bunge or Cargill or Continental or any of the others; they’ll tell you the same.”

“When it comes to dealing with a foreign power inimical to the United States, every aspect of trade becomes this administration’s business. Every aspect, Mr. Newman.”

“God help us if Congress ever gives you the power to make it so,” Newman said.

“And God save us from profiteers like you,” Lundgren said furiously.

Newman wanted to punch the bastard in the face, but he held himself in check. Instead, he and Saratt turned and left the office.

“What the hell is the matter with you, Kenneth?” Saratt asked as the elevator doors slid closed.

“The son of a bitch has been spying on us.”

“So what? If he could have proved anything, he wouldn’t have called us in; he would have done whatever he wanted to do. We’re just going to have to be careful with Dybrovik, that’s all.”

“What do you think Lundgren and his crowd are going to do when it gets out?”

“It’s not going to get out,” Saratt said. “At least not our part in it. Are you having second thoughts?”

“I’ve been having second thoughts since day one, Paul. But it was either us or someone else. And so far Dybrovik has been true to his word. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

They stepped off the elevator and headed toward the main doors, only to see Stansfield rush around a corner and cross the lobby to them. He had apparently taken the stairs down; he was out of breath.

“If I could have a word with you, Mr. Newman,” he said.

“Did Lundgren send you down?” Newman asked.

“No, sir. I’d be fired if he knew I was here.”

Newman believed him. “What is it?”

“You are dealing with the Soviets,” Stansfield said, and when Saratt started to object, he held him off. “Hear me out, please. We know that you are dealing with the Soviets, we just don’t know exactly how, although I can guess. And if I’m right, then you must know that the Soviets are planning on a massive corn crop. I mean really massive. The biggest in their history. It’s no less than a major agrarian reform.”

“How do you know that?” Newman asked. He had been afraid of just that; he was afraid again.

“Satellite data. Which is one more thing I should not be telling you.”

“Why do you come to me?”

“Because I think you believe in what you’re doing, and I think you’re an honorable man. If the Russians are up to something, which we believe they are, I wouldn’t want your company to be their tool.”

Newman and Saratt looked at each other. “Why didn’t Lundgren tell us this?” Newman asked.

“I don’t know, sir. I truly do not know,” Stansfield said, and he looked over his shoulder. “I have to get back. I just wanted to make sure I caught you before you left the city.”

“Thank you,” Newman said.

“Are you dealing with the Russians, sir?” the man asked.

Newman just smiled at him.

In their taxi, heading across town to the Watergate, neither man trusted himself to speak, each lost in his own dour thoughts.

Saratt finally broke the silence. “If Stansfield is telling the truth…”

Newman nodded. “We’ll have to find out, but I have a feeling he is.”

“So what’s next?”

“We’re going to have to put it to Dybrovik.”

Saratt looked at him in disbelief. “You don’t mean to tell me that we’re going to go through with this. That you’re even considering continuing?”

“You’re damned right I am, Paul. We’re going to keep on buying futures with Soviet money. We’re not shipping much corn now; the big shipments won’t start until October.”

“And if it is a market manipulation?”

“We’ll have the futures, not the Russians. At low prices. We’ll sell on the open market.”

“The Russians would howl.”

“I don’t think so. They’d have too much explaining to do. They’d be happy to get their money back.”

Saratt fell silent again. He was still bothered.

“What’s eating you, Paul?” Newman asked.

“There’s more to this than Stansfield has told us. I’m convinced of it. Dybrovik is just too smart to try and pull another Grain Robbery. He’d have to know we’d find out sooner or later.”

Newman shrugged. He was remembering the look on Dybrovik’s face the last time they had met. The man had been holding something back. He had been frightened.

“Let’s get a telex off to him in Geneva. I want a meeting on neutral ground.”

“Athens?”

“Anywhere, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to lay it all out for him and see what he does.”

“I think we should just back out of it, Kenneth, and leave well enough alone.”

“I won’t quit. We’ll hang on a bit longer, at least until I meet with him. Maybe we can come up with some kind of a holding agreement. If worse comes to worst, we’ll sell him the futures but ship the grain to an intermediate, neutral port until we find out what the hell is really going on.”

The telephone was ringing when they got to the apartment, and Newman answered it as Saratt poured them each a drink.

It was a person-to-person call to Kenneth Newman from Lydia Newman. He took it in the bedroom.

“Lydia! God, it’s good to hear from you,” Newman said, when the connection was made.

“I talked with Coatsworth from Tri-States Security, and he told me that you had canceled your security contract,” Lydia said in a rush. There was something wrong. “He’s sending someone down from New York. They’ll be there sometime this afternoon. Stay where you are until then. Someone is trying to kill you, do you understand?”

“No, I don’t, Lydia. What the hell are you saying? Who’s going to try to kill me, and why?”

The doorbell rang again. “Hold on,” Saratt shouted.

“You’re in danger, Kenneth, please believe me. It’s Perés, he’s been crazy ever since you managed to get away.”

“You say Perés is going to have me killed?”

“No, not him—because of him!”

“I don’t understand…”

“I can’t talk any longer. I must go. Please be careful, darling. Please!”

“Lydia?” Newman shouted, but the connection was broken.

From the living room came a tremendous explosion. Glass flew everywhere and the lights went out.

“Paul?” Newman shouted, tearing open the bedroom door and leaping into the living room.

Flames were eating at a huge hole in the wall where the door used to be. Bits and pieces of tattered flesh and clothing were spread all over the floor.

20

Lying back on the dilapidated davenport in his apartment, Dybrovik could, without moving his head more than an inch or two, see the kitchen to the right, the front door in the vestibule to the left, and straight ahead, the window overlooking the darkness that was coming to the city.

Yesterday, after speaking with Vostrikov at the Ministry of Transportation, he had come home, fixed himself a supper of boiled potatoes, onions, and fish, and then drunk himself into a stupor.

This morning he had awakened late and tried to telephone Gordik at the bureau to tell him that he had work to do at home, and would not be in until much later. But there had been no answer. Only belatedly, after he had hung up the phone, did he realize it was Saturday and no one would be at the office unless there was a special assignment.

He had taken a shower and begun to get dressed when it dawned on him that there was nowhere for him to go. Ordinarily he would have gone to his office anyway, but now he felt there was no need for it. He was burned up. Expended. His talk with Vostrikov had done all that. In one fell swoop he had used up his one and only chance — the little man — and now he was done.

Vostrikov had a big mouth, and he was running scared. He had already tried to contact Shalnev at the bureau, and that would surely have tipped off the little man that something was going on. Someone was meddling.

“It’s the end,” he told himself at one point, holding the vodka bottle straight out away from him and addressing it as if it were a mirror and he could see his image in it.

He drank most of the morning, falling asleep again for a few hours. At about two o’clock he roused himself enough to get dressed and walked the few blocks to the government liquor store, where he purchased more vodka. The Foreign Exchange Store was closed on Saturdays, so he could not get Scotch or more American cigarettes, but that didn’t matter either, he kept telling himself. He had been born a Russian, he would die a Russian.

It was market day, and the Prospekt was busy with traffic as well as pedestrians of all sizes, shapes, colors, and ages. But he had been on his guard ever since meeting the little man, so he spotted the two men behind him. He took them to be either civil police or KGB officers. They were following him. Just as they had been following him for the past five weeks. They’d never let him go. They’d hound him to the ends of the earth. Only he was going to fool them all, including the little man. He wasn’t going to run. He was going to return to his own little private hole and wait for them to show up.

Back in the apartment, he took off his coat and tossed it aside, then opened a fresh bottle of vodka and poured himself a stiff drink. He went to the window and looked down at the street. The two men who had followed him were climbing into a black Zil, which pulled out into the street and took off.

Was he imagining it all? He continued to stare down at the street where the car had been. Hadn’t he seen the men around the building before? Wasn’t it possible that they were tenants in this very building, and so had a legitimate right to be hanging around?

He drank his vodka, poured himself another, and then laid his head back on the couch.

He was in Montreal again, with Susanne. They were climbing the stairs to her flat in Outremont. They had been out dining and dancing. It was dark then. She switched on the lights when they came in; he went around turning them all off. She came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel, and he gently slipped it off, releasing her lovely breasts and exposing the delicate tuft of pubic hair. “Delos,” she breathed into his ear. “Take me right here. On the floor.” And he did.

Thinking of it now made him ache for her.

He turned and looked at the bathroom door. It was tightly closed. Not like the evening he had come home to find the little man waiting for him. The door had been ajar that time.

He set his glass down and walked unsteadily to the door. For several seconds he could not bring himself to touch the doorknob, let alone open the door. But finally he mustered the courage and did it.

The bathroom was empty, of course; he released a sigh of relief and laughed. What had he expected? Larissa had died weeks ago. Her body had been cut down by the ambulance attendants, he had received a document — death by suicide — and her body had been cremated. Her clothes and pitifully few belongings he had given to the woman downstairs, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing left in the apartment to remind him of her. Except her aura. Her spirit. Whatever.

He could sense her presence here in the bathroom. He could almost see her hanging from the light fixture. He could almost smell her musky odor and feel her body next to his in the bed. He could almost hear her speaking to him. Calling from some unutterably vast distance. “Delos,” she was calling. “Delos. It was he who killed me.”

Insanity, he told himself, firmly closing the bathroom door. It was pressure that had created such feelings. Pressure and too much drink.

He poured another drink and threw himself down on the couch.

Newman was worried about Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and Vance-Ehrhardt; on the other hand, the little man was worried about secrecy. Newman was direct and straightforward. The little man was devious and insinuating. Newman was harsh, however, the little man gentle. Newman was a businessman, the little man a KGB officer.

He turned that thought over in his mind as he absently reached out for his glass, drained it, and poured still another drink.

Newman had warned him against an overzealous KGB officer. But the Americans were always warning against dark plots of one sort or another.

In the beginning the project had been exciting; the only worry was that it wasn’t really true. That there would not be the funds the little man had promised to do the sweeping things he wanted done.

But the money was there. Shalnev was making sure of that.

He held his vodka glass up and looked at the bathroom door through the clear liquor. Larissa. What would you have advised?

Dybrovik felt totally alone. Not only was there no one here to comfort him, there was no one to talk to. No one to turn to. No one in this city whom he could trust.

It would be so easy, he thought lying back on the davenport, to let go and trust his fate to the little man. Even now. But he just could not. There would be no grain shortfall this year, there would be a surplus. So why one hundred million tons of corn? What were they going to do with it? And where had the money come from? The Central Committee? Did the Party know of this? Did it approve?

“You think too much,” Larissa would have said. But now she was dead. He finally understood it in his bones. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She was dead. Murdered. He had always known it, ever since his first conversation with the little man; he had simply not allowed himself to think about it.

He got up from the couch and staggered into the kitchen. Larissa had died. Here. Would he be next? From a drawer he pulled out a large butcher knife and held it up in front of his face.

He had never. killed a man before. The thought had never even crossed his mind. But he could hear Larissa now, calling to him for help. And he could see Newman standing by is car in front of the house at Coppet, warning him. And he could see the fright on Vostrikov’s face.

Someone knocked at the door, and Dybrovik spun around, almost losing his balance. The little man had come for him! It was no longer a matter of speculation. The end was now!

He moved out of the kitchen and into the living room where he paused in front of the couch, his eyes never straying from the door.

The knock came again, much louder now, more insistent. “Dybrovik? Are you in there?”

Through his vodka-numbed brain, he could not identify the voice, although it sounded familiar. In his mind he could see the little man sitting across the room in the corner. His voice had been soft. Scolding. Like a mother speaking to her naughty child.

He stepped closer to the door, unconsciously bringing the butcher knife higher.

The little man had killed Larissa. The thought consumed his brain, and with it came the consuming resolve to avenge her death and so put an end to the terrible things that were happening. Cargill. Louis Dreyfus. Vance-Ehrhardt. And now him?

“I know you’re in there,” the voice called again, and Dybrovik stiffened, tightening his grip on the knife.

Of course he knows I am in here. His people watched me go out and then come back. They knew I was here, and they reported to him.

Dybrovik slipped the lock with his left hand while holding the butcher knife over his head with his right, and then stepped back.

“Come on,” he said, the words slurred.

The door opened. “That’s better,” Shalnev said, stepping across the threshold at the same moment Dybrovik brought the butcher knife down with every ounce of his strength.

The blade deflected off Shalnev’s collarbone, then buried itself deeply in the man’s neck, severing the carotid artery.

Shalnev lurched powerfully backward. Dybrovik lost his grip on the handle.

“Shalnev,” Dybrovik whispered in abject horror.

Shalnev’s eyes were rolling as he stumbled farther out into the hall, clawing at the knife jutting obscenely from his jacket collar.

A slight bubbling sound emerged from Shalnev’s mouth, and then his knees buckled. His eyes rolled up into his skull, and he fell on the floor dead, a look of surprise on his face.

It was still early, only a few minutes after ten in the evening, when Vladimer Valentin Vostrikov answered the telephone in his apartment.

“There has been an accident, Comrade Vostrikov,” a voice at the other end said.

“Who is this? What accident?”

Vostrikov’s wife and daughter looked up, concern in their eyes.

“You are needed at the ministry, comrade. It is an emergency. Please hurry.”

“Who is this calling?”

“Everyone is being telephoned, comrade. I am only following orders. It is terrible. We are all needed. Please hurry.”

“I don’t know who this is, but I certainly will report this to the authorities,” Vostrikov said with more courage than he felt. His wife had gotten up and she stood by his side, her hands to her mouth. He had not told her about what had happened with that bastard Dybrovik, but she had guessed something was wrong

“It is assassination. Director Lysenko. There can be no civil police. You must understand, I am under orders. We all are under orders. You must come at once.” The caller hung up.

“Assassination? What are you talking about? Who has been assassinated…?” Vostrikov sputtered, but then he realized he was speaking to a dead phone.

“What is it, Vladi?” his wife asked, her eyes wide.

“I don’t know. They want me at the ministry.”

“Who has been assassinated?”

“I don’t know.”

“It is trouble for us. I can feel it. I knew something would happen by the way you came home. You have drunk entirely too much tonight. You can’t go to your office this way. The others — Comrade Lysenko — will see you this way and know what you have been doing.”

“Keep your peace, woman,” Vostrikov roared. He pushed past her, went into the bedroom, and grabbed his jacket from the closet. If there was trouble at the ministry, and they wanted him — Vladimir Valentin — then he would comply. Who was he to question such a telephone call in the night?”

His wife had followed him into the bedroom, and she was wailing and screeching that their lives were ended, that he was a foolish, foolish man who had surely done something to bring shame and exile down on their heads.

He brushed her aside and without a backward glance left his apartment, hurrying downstairs and out into the mild evening.

By God, it was easy to put two and two together. Some insane person had assassinated Director Lysenko, and now they needed the staff gathered to find out who had done it, and further, to plan for Monday. After all, even without a director, the ministry would have to continue. There was so much to be done.

Thank heavens the subways were still running. Otherwise he’d have to walk, and it was more than two miles.

At the end of the block, as he started across the dark street, an automobile turned the corner a block away and headed toward him. He was halfway across the street when he decided that he could not make it ahead of the oncoming car, so he stopped to wait for it to pass.

He could not see much of the car, just the headlights bearing down on him, so he turned his eyes away from the glare.

He was still worrying about the work of the ministry when the car struck him, hurling his body upward to crash through a second-story window.

Dybrovik paused about two blocks from the bureau and lit a cigarette, turning sideways as if to block the wind. He studied the street and sidewalk behind him, but there was no one. He had not been followed. They didn’t know. Yet.

His passport and travel documents, along with a small amount of German marks and British pounds — general disbursement funds under his direct control — were back in his office. The timing would be tight, but if he could get out of the city tonight by train to Leningrad, and from there to Vyborg and into Finland, he would be free. They would not think to look for him in that direction. They’d expect him to try to hide in Moscow or foolishly attempt to get on a flight to Geneva.

He inhaled the smoke deeply into his lungs, then started walking again as he exhaled through his nostrils.

But what the hell had Shalnev wanted? Somehow Shalnev must have connected him with Vostrikov’s telephone call.

Had it gotten back to the little man? Had Shalnev like a dutiful little puppy immediately reported his concerns? Had he recorded in a log somewhere that he was going to Dybrovik’s apartment? Was there a record? Or did Shalnev enjoy a certain autonomy of movement? Maybe he had merely come to pay a social visit.

The building that housed Exportkhleb was dark. Dybrovik went around the block to a side entrance, where he unlocked the door with his own key. Inside, he leaned against the door and tried to catch his breath. Shalnev’s body had been so damned heavy, and it had leaked blood all the way into his bathroom. It had taken more than an hour to clean the hallway, and then the living room, so that someone would have to come all the way into his bathroom, and then pull back the shower cunain, to find the body.

He shuddered as he went down the wide corridor and hurried up to the third floor.

At the door to his office he paused again, Shalnev’s image in his mind’s eye. Whatever the man had expected, he definitely had not expected to die this night. There had been a look not of terror or pain on his face, rather a look of complete surprise.

Inside, Dybrovik crossed the trading floor and went into his office. He flipped on the light.

“Good evening, Delos Fedor,” the little man said from his seat in the corner.

21

William Bormett left the house a few minutes before 7:00 A.M., went across to the barn for his old, battered pickup truck, and headed out to the east five thousand.

He was frightened. Catherine had seen it in his eyes. Ever since Moscow, his days had been dark and his nights ominous, but the worst part of all had been facing his wife. Every time he looked into her eyes, he had the urge to tell her what had happened, tell her what they were making him do. But he could not. Courage, he tried to tell himself over and over again, would see him through the mess. But each time he tried to tell her, his insides would quiver and his knees get weak.

Overwork, he had told her instead; that, and concern now that the harvest wasn’t too far off. Storage bins had to be completely emptied, the last remnants of the grain sold on the spot market to the local elevators. The dryers on the old Emporium farms had to be overhauled now that they were switching to natural gas. And he’d have to get down to Des Moines to speak with Lon Harvey at the employment office about his seasonal help.

“You’ll manage, Will, you always do,” Catherine had said this morning, her voice soft, her eyes innocent.

She knew that something was wrong. She knew! Christ, maybe he talked in his sleep.

Above the farmyard the road turned into nothing more than a heavily rutted track through a narrow stand of oak and box elder, where they went squirrel hunting, before merging, on the far side of the hill, with the access road from the highway.

He stopped at the crest and looked out across the largest of his fields. The corn was already topping twelve feet, the tassels waving in the breeze another eighteen inches above that. The ear size and moisture content were definitely up to standard, and there had been very little damage from corn borers or other pests this season. The county extension agency forecast a bumper crop. And Bormett was frightened.

In the distance, beyond his fields, he could see the highway that came up from Des Moines, the link with the outside world over which his entire crop would flow to the railhead.

“A small favor, that is all,” the little man had said, perched on the edge of the desk in Moscow, holding out the photographs. What in God’s name had he gotten himself into? “Go home. Go back to work. You will be contacted with instructions.”

The trip home had gone by in a blur, and so had his little chat with Secretary Lundgren, who was pleased at how much Bormett had evidently learned on the trip. “Go home and get back to work, Mr. Bormett,” Lundgren had said at the end, and it had severely startled Bormett that his words had so nearly echoed those of the little man in Moscow.

A white truck came into view out on the highway, slowing for the access road. Bormett stiffened.

The contact had come ten days after he and Catherine returned home. His nerves had finally begun to settle down, and way at the back of his mind he had begun to entertain the slight hope that everything that had happened to him in Moscow was nothing more than a bad dream. He was home now; they wouldn’t dare try anything here in Iowa.

Several times each week, year round, farm-equipment and chemical salesmen would show up with their catalogs and their pitches, and Bormett never refused to see them. Many of his farm innovations had come from such salesmen; they represented companies that were deep into agricultural research.

“Allied Farm Chemicals, Inc., New Orleans, Louisiana,” the man’s card read. It was a company new to Bormett, and he said so to the tall, husky salesman.

“Yes, sir, we’re brand new in the agricultural business. Started out as a chemical research company and we just began hitting on some new pesticides and blight inhibitors that seemed to be so much better than the competition we just had to market them.” The salesman had a southern accent, and he was very jolly. He had the look of success about him. Bormett liked that. Too many of the drummers who called on him were on their last legs, fighting for anything they could get, and they’d tell any lie for just one sale.

“I took the liberty of looking over your fields, sir,” the salesman began as they went into Bormett’s study.

“What’d you say your name was?” Bormett asked. It wasn’t on the card.

“Bud’s the name. I want to tell you that you’ve got some of the finest acres to corn out there that I’ve seen in my born days. Lovely. Really good, and I want to help you keep them that way.” He pulled out a thick looseleaf notebook from his briefcase and laid it down on the desk in front of Bormett.

“CeptCat 1-3-4 is what you’ll be needing, sir. A combination blight inhibitor and pesticide.” The salesman flipped the notebook open to a full-color photograph of Raya lying on the bed nude, her legs spread, while he stood over her, his trousers and underwear off, taking off his shirt.

Bormett gasped, and looked over his shoulder toward the study door. It was open. Catherine was just down the hall in the kitchen.

“For an operation this size, I’d say you’ll be needing fifteen thousand gallons,” the salesman continued as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.

He flipped the page to a photograph of Bormett lying on his back, his eyes half closed. Raya, curled up between his legs, had him in her mouth. There was a half-smile on his lips.

“Oh, God,” he said under his breath.

“If you order today, you will get a generous discount, Mr. Bormett, and we can have your chemical out here first thing in the morning.” The salesman flipped the notebook closed.

“Seven o’clock,” Bormett said. “The tank farm on the east five thousand. The access road is just off Highway 6.”

“I know the road, sir,” Bud said. “It works best as an evening spray, with a sixty-to-one mixture, a gallon of concentrate per acre, as I said.” He got to his feet and smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Bormett. Thanks very much.”

And now the truck was here. Bormett drove down to where the tanks clustered at the edge of the fields. Some of the tanks were marked anhydrous ammonia, a common fertilizer, while others had no labels other than numbers, and were used to mix whatever pesticide needed spraying.

Bud was driving the truck, and he had a huge grin on his face as he stepped down from the cab. “Which tank do you want this in, sir?” he asked.

“I can’t do this,” Bormett said, looking the man in the eye.

The salesman’s expression didn’t change. “Sure enough,” he said, and he turned to climb back into his truck. “The package to your wife will be delivered at the same time it’ll be sent to the Des Moines Register and to Secretary of Agriculture Lundgren. I’m sure they’ll understand when you explain to them what happened.”

“Wait,” Bormett shouted. He wanted to grab the man and throttle him. He wanted to pound his head into the ground.

The salesman turned back. “Yes, sir?”

“You son of a bitch,” Bormett said.

The salesman stepped forward, his grin fading. “You will be watched. Every moment of the day and night. We will expect you to do what you are told. Immedidately. Beginning this evening.”

Bormett stepped back.

“What tank shall I fill?”

Bormett motioned toward the largest of his mixing tanks, then turned and went back to his pickup truck and climbed in behind the wheel.

The salesman was pulling a hose from the truck over to the mixing tank as Bormett started his pickup, turned around, and headed back the way he had come.

At the top of the hill, he stopped again and looked down toward the tank farm. The truck was still there, its hose snaked over to the tank.

He put the truck in gear, went over the crest of the hill, and desperately tried to think of some way out of his dilemma. But there was no way. No way at all, for him.

There was little doubt in Bormett’s mind about the chemical they had sent. It wasn’t a simple pesticide. He knew that. It contained something that would most likely attack his corn, either killing it outright or seriously stunting it. The question was, why had they picked on his farm? Why did they want to ruin his crop?

He could see the stage at the university in Moscow, with the students arranged out in front of him and the newspaper correspondent Kedrov next to him. They were arguing hybrids.

Our only salvation against certain worldwide famine is varietal planting, Kedrov had said.

But surely the ruin of one farm, even a farm so large as this one, would not prove Kedrov’s position that the use of hybrids was inviting disaster. Surely such an act would be little more than an embarrassment.

So what then? What else were Kedrov and the little man trying to prove? Whatever it was had evidently been planned for some time. They had selected him as their guest, and had set up his talks with the State Department and the Department of Agriculture. Oh, they had set him up all the way, making sure that he would be receptive to Raya, making sure that Catherine would be too tired to go to the party that night. God in heaven, they had set him up, and like a randy old fool he had fallen hook, line, and sinker for the oldest gambit in the world.

He parked his truck in front of the barn and sat there a moment, his large hands tightly gripping the wheel.

Yesterday, after the salesman had left, Bormett had telephoned Bob Hodges over at the county extension office and asked him if he had heard of the chemical CeptCat 1-3-4. Hodges had been enthusiastic.

“Sure thing, Mr. Bormett. It’s one hell of a fine pesticide. Has a built-in blight inhibitor, and best of all it’s moisture resistant for those first critical eight or ten hours. Are you thinking of using it?”

“I heard something about it, thought I might give it a try.”

“It’s on the expensive side, from what I understand, but the FDA and USDA both give it a fine recommendation. I’ve got the circulars on it. Want to see them?”

“You might as well mail them out,” Bormett had said, but of course it didn’t make any difference what the circulars said. The chemical that he’d have to spray on his fields tonight might or might not be CeptCat 1-3-4, and, if it was, almost anything could have been added to it.

But why? He kept coming back to the same question. Why had they selected him?

He finally got out of the truck and went over to the operations office attached to the big machine building. Inside, Cindy Horton, the farm secretary and girl Friday, had just poured herself a cup of coffee and was sitting down at her littered desk. She was in her early fifties and grossly overweight. But she had a lovely face. She looked up and smiled.

“Good morning, Will…” she started, but she let it trail off, a look of concern coming over her features.

“What’s wrong, Cindy? Cat got your tongue this morning?” he asked.

“I was just going to ask you the same thing. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

He forced a smile. “You tell me the same thing every year about this time, and every year I tell you that I always worry around harvest time.”

She nodded, but said nothing. She and her husband Joseph, who was the general field foreman, had worked for the farm for nearly twenty years, she running the scheduling, payroll, and maintenance programs, and Joseph handling the machinery and every aspect of the field work. Between the two of them, they knew the farm as well as, if not better than, anyone, Bormett included.

“Where’s Joseph?” Bormett asked. He was going to have to be more careful in the future; Catherine used to tell him that he wore his heart on his sleeve.

“In the combine shed. There’s some trouble with the impellers on number seven.”

“I’ve got to talk to him. We have some pesticide to lay down.”

“Do you want to schedule it?”

Bormett nodded. “Let’s do the east field tonight, if Smitty can get free. We can do the north tomorrow, the south on Friday, and the west in a couple of hours Saturday.”

“Albert’s crew is free as well,” Cindy said, looking at the scheduling board. “He could work on the west and south fields all day tomorrow.”

“Has to be evening. We’re spraying CeptCat. Start about four I’d say. But don’t go beyond ten.”

She nodded. “Have we got it in stock?”

“In the main mixing tank on the east field. Sixty to one. But I’ll set that up with Joseph.”

“Are you sure everything is okay, Will?” she asked.

He forced another smile. “You’re getting to be quite a nag. Think I’ll have to talk to Joseph about you one of these days.

“Get out of here, William Bormett, or I’ll tell Catherine you’ve been flirting with me again.”

He left the office and went around the building over to the combine shed where they kept their ten corn harvesters. His knees felt a little shaky, and his mouth was sour.

Joseph Horton stood atop one of the combines, wiping his hands with a greasy rag.

“You have it fixed yet?” Bormett called up to him.

“I’m going to have to run in to John Deere this afternoon. We’ve got a gear-box problem.” Horton stuffed the rag in the back pocket of his coveralls and climbed down.

“How about the others?” Bormett asked.

“They’re looking pretty good. Four is going to have to be scrapped at the end of this season. W’e’ve just had a hell of a time with it, and I sure don’t want a repeat of last year.”

Bormett was only half-listening to him now. Another thought had suddenly come to him. It wouldn’t really do much good, but at least he’d know what was in the mixing tank.

“I’m going into town this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll order the parts. I have another job for you.”

Albert Straub, one of the shift foremen, came in. “Cindy says we’ve got some spraying to do,” he said as he joined Bormett and Horton.

“That’s right,” Bormett said. “Starting this afternoon.” He turned back to Horton. “We just got the chemical this morning. I’ll want it in the fields no later than Saturday evening. It’s a late-afternoon blight inhibitor and pesticide. CeptCat 1-3-4.”

Horton’s face lit up. “Charlie Parker was talking about it last week. I didn’t think you’d be ordering it, though.”

“Well, it’s here, and I want it out, starting with the east field this afternoon. Cindy is scheduling the crew right now.”

“What brought all this up, Will?” Horton asked reasonably.

Bormett started to flare up. His nerves were on the raw edge, but he held himself in check. “It’s a little experiment. I think we might be able to coax out another two, maybe two and a half percent in our yield.”

Horton had a strange look on his face, but he nodded. “Sure thing, Will,” he said. “I’ll get the gear-box number for you. I already called Stew. Said he had it in stock.”

For most of the morning Bormett lost himself in work, overhauling the dryers on the old Emporium farm across the highway. It wasn’t until a few minutes before eleven that he came back to the farmyard. He parked behind the main chemical-storage shed, away from the house.

Inside the shed, his heart pounding, he quickly gathered up half a dozen nearly empty pesticide and fertilizer containers, and took them out to his pickup truck. He then rinsed out an old plastic gallon milk container and put it on the truck as well. Driving around to the other side of the farmyard, he stopped at the combine shed for the old gear box, then went on to the office. Cindy was eating her lunch alone.

“I’m going into Des Moines with the gear box from number seven. Tell Joseph that I’ll be back around suppertime. I’ll come out to see how the spraying is going. Oh, and tell Katy that I went into town.”

“I’ve got the crew scheduled. We can double up tomorrow after all, if you want, and finish before Saturday.”

“Sounds okay to me,” Bormett said.

Instead of heading over to the highway, he drove down to the tank farm and pulled up by the main mixing tank. He took the empty gallon jug and went around to the tank’s inspection valve, where he carefully filled it and replaced the cap.

The chemical smelled like rotten eggs and made Bormett’s eyes water. Whatever it was, he would know within a few days. The university agricultural laboratories in Des Moines would analyze it. The chemical would already have been sprayed on the fields. And it would be too late to do anything about it. But at least he would know.

22

The apartment was small and very dirty, and nothing like what Juan Carlos had expected. For nearly three stinking weeks they had remained here alone, out of contact except for Maria Soleres, the old landlady downstairs, and therefore totally out of touch with what was happening just outside their doorway.

He sat by the window looking down at the tiny rear courtyard filled with trash, holding his knees up to his chest and slowly rocking back and forth.

There had been food and some wine here when he and the others had first arrived with Vance-Ehrhardt and his wife, but within a couple of days it was gone, and the landlady began bringing their meals twice a day. But no wine.

By the sixth day there was no one left except Juan Carlos, Teva, and of course the prisoners. “You will hold them here until your instructions come,” Maria Soleres had told them that day. “They won’t give you any trouble. Just keep them tied up.”

“We are supposed to be on our way to Tripoli,” Juan Carlos had protested.

“I don’t know about that,” the snaggletoothed woman had creaked. “I only know that you are to remain here. You cannot leave them alone. You must remain here. Those are your instructions.”

“Then bring us wine.”

The old woman had laughed. “No wine. You will get drunk and make a mistake. Perhaps you will shoot your guns, and Perés will be here.” She had laughed again, turned, and left.

In the second week it had seemed as if Teva were recovering from her wounds, but then in the tenth night she had had a relapse, and Juan Carlos had begun to fear that she would die.

There will come a time when you are alone, and are expected to hold a position. The words of his instructor had come back to him.

“Then you must be strong,” Juan Carlos had mumbled out loud. “Then you must think of your brothers and sisters in the revolution, and you must be strong for them.”

That night, when the landlady had come with their supper, Juan Carlos had made her promise she would bring some medicine for Teva. “She will die without medicine,” he said. “And if that happens, I will kill the other two, and then come down and kill you.”

Within two hours, she had returned with bandages, antiseptic ointment, and penicillin tablets.

At first, Teva’s condition had remained unchanged, but then on the thirteenth day her fever had broken, and she had woken up, demanding food, although she was still disoriented and somewhat delirious.

“Juan,” she called his name weakly now. He looked away from the window, but he did not get up.

On the very first day, they had made the long tape recording. The little man had written the speech, and Vance-Ehrhardt had dutifully recited it as soon as Juan Carlos had placed a gun to his wife’s head.

In a way it had been a bitter disappointment that he and Teva were not immediately going to Tripoli, yet in another way it was exciting that they were to remain to see the entire thing through.

At least it had seemed that way at first. But now, he shook his head in despair. But now, each day was nothing. Each day his anger rose, his frustration deepened, and his fear solidified that they would never leave this apartment alive.

“Juan,” Teva cried again. Her voice was weak and hoarse. Although her fever had left her, she didn’t seem to regain her strength, nor did the wound in her shoulder want to heal. It was still very tender to the touch, inflamed and draining. He had to pick her up and take her in to the toilet several times a day, and he supposed that was what she was calling him for now. But she would just have to wait this time.

Then there were Vance-Ehrhardt and his whore of a wife. They had both been subdued at first, especially whenever a gun was held to the woman’s head.

But they too had been losing strength. It was the food, Juan Carlos figured; even he no longer felt strong. Now they merely lay in their bed all day and all night, barely moving, even when food was brought to them.

Juan Carlos had kept them tied up until three days ago, when the woman had gotten sick and puked all over herself. Then he had untied them both and ordered Vance-Ehrhardt to clean up his wife’s mess. Since then he had let them remain untied. They were too weak to give trouble.

“Juan, please help me,” Teva cried pitifully, and Juan Carlos finally got up and went into her room.

A stench assailed his nostrils the moment he entered, and he realized with a sinking stomach that she had soiled the bed.

“I am sorry,” she cried, the tears coming to her eyes. “Oh, God, Juan, I am sorry, but I could not help it. I am so weak.”

Juan Carlos could feel tears coming to his eyes too, as he looked down at the pathetic creature on the bare mattress. She was dressed only in a bra and panties, despite the cold; her other clothing was too filthy to wear. And now the mattress was soiled, and he could see where her wound had leaked again, leaving a large, dark stain on the bandages.

In Libya, out on the hot, clean desert, their instructor had taught them to lie for hours without moving, no matter the conditions.

If a snake comes to lie down beside you, then you know you have blended with nature, and your enemies will not see you. Remember that.

But this was not Libya, nor was it the hot desert.

“Please help me, Juan,” Teva cried.

“Uno momento, querida,” he said tenderly, and he turned and went into the bathroom, where he ran rusty brown water into the dirty clawfoot tub. He skipped off his clothes and quickly washed them in the tub, wrung them out, and hung them over the windowsill.

Nude, he went back into the odoriferous bedroom where Teva was babbling deliriously, took a deep breath, and reached over and picked her up. He carried her into the bathroom and laid her gently in the tub.

“Mi querido, Juan,” she said hoarsely, opening her eyes.

Juan Carlos took off her bra and panties, and threw them in the already clogged toilet. There was no soap, but he managed to rinse her off, nevertheless, and then pulled the plug. When the filthy water had all drained, he rinsed the tub and began filling it again with lukewarm water, the hottest it would come.

“We have them,” she said loudly at one point. “They will not get away. The ransom will come.”

‘The ransom will come.” He crawled into the bathtub with her and cradled her in his arms as they sat in tandem.

“My shoulder,” she whimpered.

He shifted to the left so that he would not be touching her shoulder. She had lost a lot of weight; her tiny breasts sagged limply and her ribs stood out. She was no longer desirable, although Juan Carlos could remember in vivid detail their lovemaking over the past months. It had been wonderful.

“When we get to Tripoli,” she mumbled, lying back against him, “we’ll go swimming on the beach. You will take me to the beach?”

“We’ll go swimming on the beach,” Juan Carlos echoed, his heart aching.

“We’re going to get out of here,” she said, stiffening in his arms. “Has he called yet?”

“He has called,” Juan Carlos lied. “We are leaving as soon as we get cleaned up and dressed.”

“We are leaving?”

“Very soon, Teva.”

Somehow she managed to turn far enough around so that she could look into his eyes. Her breath was very bad. Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. “Let’s do some fucking, Juan. Before we go. Make love to me.”

The tears were streaming from Juan Carlos’ eyes now. “Turn around,” he said gently. “I will begin.”

“From behind?” she said. “I like that.”

He put his hands on her breasts and kneaded the nipples. She arched her back slightly.

“Juan, I love you,” she said weakly. The dressing on her wound had gotten wet, and she was bleeding very hard now.

“I love you too,” he said, running his hands up from her breasts to her neck.

She bent forward and just managed to kiss his right wrist as he brought his legs up around her waist. He locked his ankles together so that she would not be able to move away from him.

“Juan,” she said.

He closed his eyes and let his fingers find her throat. He began to squeeze, gently at first because he was finding it difficult to muster the courage, but then harder.

Her body began to squirm, and then thrash, her movements very weak as he continued to squeeze harder and harder, the tears coming from his closed eyes. “Teva,” he cried. “Teva. Teva. Teva.” He chanted her name until her pitiful struggles finally ceased.

He kept squeezing for a long time, until his fingers cramped. He unlocked his legs from around her waist, and carefully eased himself up and out of the tub, gently laying her back.

Her eyes were open, bulging out of their sockets, and blood ran from her mouth where she had bitten through her tongue. The sight was not pretty, but it didn’t really matter. She was no longer Teva. Teva had died weeks ago.

He turned away from her and dried himself off, then padded into the other room, where he stood in a daze for a long time, looking at the machine guns on the floor by the couch; at the radio over which nothing came any longer; and at the remains of this morning’s meal.

Nothing had come from Vance-Ehrhardt’s message on the radio. No one had come here rejoicing with a message that they had won. The little man had sent no one. No one except Maria Soleres with food and medicine, but no wine.

So it was finished. Or at least in Juan Carlos’ mind it was finished. He no longer cared what happened. The little man had brought this down on them. The plan had been an excellent one, the kind that always attracted world attention for the cause. But with this operation there had been only slow death. The little man had not come back. He had lied to them, had left them here. It simply was not fair.

He went into the other bedroom. Vance-Ehrhardt and his wife were lying in each other’s arms. They were both awake, looking at him, Margarita’s eyes wide at the sight of his nude body.

“What is happening?” Vance-Ehrhardt asked. Although his voice was weak and ragged, there was a certain dignity in it that infuriated Juan Carlos.

Juan Carlos walked around to Vance-Ehrhardt’s side, doubled up his fist and struck the woman in the face with all of his might, knocking her unconscious. In the next instant, he clamped his fingers around Vance-Ehrhardt’s neck and squeezed.

The old man was not much stronger than Teva, and he battered Juan Carlos with his hands and feet, his struggles nearly overpowering. But he weakened rapidly, and after he lay still, Juan Carlos continued to squeeze.

When he was sure the old man was dead, he rolled him away from Margarita, who was just beginning to regain consciousness, and seized her neck, crushing her windpipe with the last of his waning strength. Then he crawled back into the living room and collapsed on the floor.

A large black spider had constructed an elaborate web between the rungs of a chair, and it waited in the corner for its unwary prey to come along. A scorpion, its deadly tail curved up over its head, started up the leg of the chair. The spider was unaware of the intruder. The scorpion was hunting.

Henri Riemé lay in his bed, bathed in sweat, watching the life-and-death drama unfolding across the room from him. It was 1:00 P.M., the height of the Libyan afternoon, and the temperature in Tripoli was 110 degrees Fahrenheit and climbing.

There had been a change of plan. Instead of flying on to Moscow from Barcelona, to where he had made his way three weeks ago, he had been instructed to return to Tripoli and await further communiques. Which he had done, with inhuman patience. But Riemé was not human, he reminded himself. He had not been human for years. He was nothing more than a killing machine. Neither content with his lot nor dissatisfied with it. Merely accepting the fact that he functioned.

Someone knocked on his door. Moving incredibly fast, he rolled off the bed, snatched his silenced automatic from beneath his pillow, levered a round into the chamber, and flipped the safety off as he knelt to the right of the door.

“Oui?” he called.

“It is the concierge, monsieur. Your message has arrived.”

Riemé recognized the voice. He rose, shifting the automatic to his left hand and unlatching the door with his right.

“Oui?” He looked into the frightened eyes of the old man.

“There are two men waiting for you downstairs. They have a car. It is time to go.”

Riemé remained motionless.

The concierge fumbled with his words for a moment, then said, “It is time by the clocktower to go, monsieur.”

Riemé nodded. The code words were correct. “Merci. Please have my bill ready, I will leave momentarily.”

“Your bill has been paid, monsieur. Shall I tell your friends you will be down soon?”

“Tell them nothing,” Riemé said, and he closed the door. He remained standing there for a long moment, until he heard the concierge leave. Then he turned and threw his few things in his suitcase, draped his jacket over his gun hand, and left the room.

He took the back stairs down, emerged into the alley, and hurried around to the street. There he saw a Citroën sedan parked at the curb, the driver behind the wheel, another man standing in the hotel doorway.

Riemé crossed the street at the corner, walked down the block until he was even with the car, then crossed directly to the driver and placed the barrel of his gun against the man’s temple.

“Who has sent you?”

The driver looked up, his eyes bulging. “It is time by the clocktower,” he squeaked.

“Where am I to go?”

“Not Moscow,” the driver said. “Your plans have been changed since Paris.”

The man by the hotel door glanced over. Seeing that something was wrong, he stepped aside and reached in his jacket.

“Tell your partner you are both dead if he pulls out his gun.”

“No, Claude! It is all right! It is he,” the driver called over. There was a lot of traffic, but no one else was paying them any attention.

Riemé nodded, and slowly the other man relaxed and took his hand away from his coat. He came over to the car.

“You gave me a fucking scare, you son of a bitch,” Claude said.

Riemé cocked the hammer of his automatic and pointed it at the man. “Monsieur?”

The man’s eyes widened, and he stepped back. “Oh, Christ, pardon me. Didn’t mean a thing, mon brave.”

Riemé said nothing.

“We have a new assignment for you. Sealed instructions. We’re to get you to the airport. You are going to Buenos Aires. There is something to be cleaned up there.”

Maria Soleres had not come at eight with their supper, and by ten-thirty Juan Carlos was very hungry. He had put Teva out of her misery, and they had planned on killing the Vance-Ehrhardts in any event, so the operation was still functional as far as he was concerned. But he could not remain here. Not like this, without food. Even the little man could not expect that from him.

Wearily Juan Carlos dragged himself over to the pile of weapons in front of the couch, picking up one of the Uzi submachine guns and two spare clips of ammunition, which he stuffed in his pockets.

If need be, he told himself, he would hijack an airplane and force the crew to take him to Libya. Colonel Qaddafi would receive him. He would be a hero of the people.

At the door he stopped to listen, but there was no sound from outside, and after a minute he opened the door.

The apartment was on the fourth floor, the landlady’s apartment on the first. There was a stairwell in the middle of the building.

He moved silently to the railing and looked over, pulling back immediately. There was someone below. On the first floor.

Again he looked over the railing, and this time he waited long enough to see that it was Maria Soleres and a dark-haired man. Talking.

Quickly, his heart hammering, Juan Carlos started down the stairs, moving on the balls of his feet so that he would make absolutely no noise.

She had not come with their dinner. Was she now speaking to the police? Telling them about the people in the apartment on the fourth floor?

At the second-floor landing, Juan Carlos moved a little closer to the rail. He could hear the words now.

“… come to help them,” the man was saying. He spoke with a French accent.

“They are all dead up there, I think,” Maria Soleres said. “I saw through the skylight. The woman is dead in the tub, and the other two are dead in the bed.”

“What about Juan Carlos? Is he dead as well?”

“He was lying on the floor in the living room without clothes. He was dead, I think.”

“Why didn’t you go in?”

“I want no further part in this. You may go up and take them away. I want no further part in it.”

“I will need your help.”

“No,” Maria Soleres said sharply. “I will call the police, if need be.”

Juan Carlos crept farther down the stairs, until he was at a spot where the stairs turned a corner, around which he would be in their view.

“No…” Maria Soleres started to say, but her voice was choked off, and sounds of struggle came up the stairs.

It served her right, Juan Carlos thought as he stepped around the corner.

The dark-haired man with the French accent looked up from the inert form of Maria Soleres, raised his gun, and fired, hitting Juan Carlos in the throat and driving him back against the wall.

Juan Carlos raised his Uzi as the Frenchman fired again, and his finger jerked on the trigger. Just before everything went dark, he saw that the Frenchman was falling backward, several red holes in his chest and stomach.

23

It was hot in Atlanta when Newman stepped off the plane and crossed the tarmac to the Ford LTD waiting in front of the terminal. Janice Wilcox, Paul’s widowed daughter, was waiting by the car.

She was a tall woman, with a pleasant face that was somewhat reminiscent of her father’s, and a trim, almost athletic body. Paul had recently bragged that his daughter, at thirty, looked more like a girl of eighteen. She wore a black dress, a small black hat, and a dark veil across her face.

“I’m sorry, Janice,” Newman said as he reached her.

She lifted her veil, and he kissed her on the cheek. “I’m glad you could come, Kenneth. I wanted to talk with you before we met the others.”

“Has there been any trouble with the arrangements, anything I can help with?”

She shook her head. “I want to know what happened there, Kenneth,” Janice said without preamble as they drove off. She was a very strong woman. A junior executive with one of the insurance companies here in Atlanta. She wasn’t giving way to hysterics now.

“There was an explosion, which was probably meant for me. Paul just happened to be there,” Newman said.

“What were you two working on?”

“I can’t say, Janice.”

She turned toward him and lifted her veil. “Is that what you told the police?”

“Yes. But I also told them that I think I know who killed him, and why.”

Janice’s complexion was pale and her eyes moist. Her lower lip was quivering at last. “I’m listening,” she said after a slight hesitation.

“It has to do with Lydia, my wife.”

“The Vance-Ehrhardt Company had him killed?”

“No,” Newman said. “While I was down there I had a run-in with the chief of the Buenos Aires police, Reynaldo Perés. Lydia warned me twice that he wanted to see me dead. Wanted to put some of the blame for her parents’ kidnapping on me.”

“That’s insanity. Isn’t it?”

Newman nodded. “I had just hung up from talking with her — she called to warn me that I would be assassinated — when the bomb went off.”

“My father was devoted to you. He spoke often of his work. How much he admired you. Said you were a man of principles. He told me once that you were the most honest man he had ever met. I told him to go out on his own. Start his own business. He had plenty of money. He had the knowledge, and certainly the talent. He could have made it. But he told me that he’d never leave you so long as you wanted him as a business associate.”

Newman was touched. He and Paul had become close friends over the years. Yet he had never known just how devoted Saratt had been. His death had been a terrible blow, made even worse by what Janice was telling him.

He reached out and touched her hand, but she jerked away as if she had been burned.

“The service is at two,” she said. “Afterward some friends and relatives will be coming to my house. But your presence isn’t necessary. I’m sure you have a lot of work to attend to. We don’t want to take up much of your time.” She didn’t have much control left.

“Stop it, Janice,” Newman said gently.

She was finally crying.

“I loved him too. He was a friend.”

“Catch his murderers, Kenneth. Catch the bastards and string them up,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Yes,” Newman said. But it would not be that easy. They’d probably never catch the real murderer, Perés, and it wasn’t likely they’d catch his henchmen who had actually placed the bomb. He, or they, were probably already back in Buenos Aires.

Paul’s remains — what the coroner had been able to reassemble — had been sent back to Atlanta for cremation. The minister who gave the sermon was evidently an old friend of the family, because he spoke in a choked voice of Paul’s childhood. There were a lot of people at the service, only a few of whom Newman recognized. Most were relatives who had visited Paul in Duluth at one time or another over the past few years.

He had been a popular man. Well liked, well respected. There were a lot of questions for Newman, who had been with him when he was killed.

“Have they caught the bastards, yet?” was the most common.

Afterwards, Newman had ridden to the house with an uncle from Buffalo who hadn’t said a word, and who refused to be drawn into a conversation.

Janice seemed genuinely pleased that Newman had come to the house, and she personally fixed him a drink and made sure he had something to eat.

“Will you be staying in Atlanta tonight?” she asked him.

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. He had been thinking about Dybrovik and the Russian deal. Paul had not had the chance to set up a meeting away from Geneva before he was killed. It was going to have to be somewhere on neutral territory… such as Athens, they had decided. He felt guilty thinking about it now.

“I’d like you to stay, Kenneth. We could have the day together tomorrow. There’s a lot I’d like to ask you about my father.”

“I’d love to, but I just don’t know. I’ll have to call my office.”

She stared at him for a long moment. The house was filled with people, most of them standing around in little groups. “You can use the phone in the study,” she said. “First door on the right, upstairs.”

Newman went upstairs to her study, which had been made over from one of the smaller bedrooms. Its windows were covered in heavy, rich drapes. There was a small, leather-topped desk and a couple of matching file cabinets. The walls were lined with books. But there were no bits and pieces of memorabilia. The study was neutral.

He sat down behind the desk, picked up the telephone, and had the operator place a person-to-person call to Sam Lucas, the manager of Abex, Ltd., in New York.

Lucas seemed excited. “Am I ever glad you called, Mr. Newman. I was getting set to call down there, and I really didn’t want to do that.”

“What have you got, Sam?”

“We just received a telex from Dybrovik himself. Wants a meeting pronto.”

“In Geneva?”

“No, that’s the odd part. The telex originated in Moscow, and that’s where he wants the meet. Immediately. Says your visa will be handled through their embassy in Washington.”

“Impossible,” Newman said without hesitation. “It’d blow everything wide open. I don’t know what the hell he’s thinking about.”

“He says the meeting is ‘most important.’ His words.”

“I’ll meet with him, but not in Moscow. Telex him we’ll meet in twenty-four hours in Athens. At the Grand Bretagne. He knows the hotel. Make the arrangements there for us yourself. Tell them we’ll require adjoining suites, and absolute confidentiality.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Sam, I want you to get a hold of Felix and tell him what’s going on. He’s going to have to cover for me in Duluth. He should be able to handle it with no problems.”

“I talked with him this morning. Secretary Lundgren wants to talk to you. Said it was urgent.”

“Tell Felix to stall him. Tell him I went to Buenos Aires or something. Anything. I’ll talk to him when I get back from Athens.”

“Will you be needing any backup?”

“I’ll keep in touch, Sam. It’s up to you and Felix to keep things running while I’m gone.”

“How’s everyone holding up down there?”

“About as well as you could expect. Janice is all right.”

“Give her my sympathies, if you would.”

“Sure,” Newman said, and Lucas hung up. Newman was just taking the phone away from his ear when he heard a second click over the line. He left the receiver on the desk, and rushed downstairs. Janice was just moving away from the hall telephone. She looked up and their eyes met. No one else noticed that anything was going on.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t say anything to anyone.” She had a defiant expression.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to know what’s going on, and you wouldn’t tell me. I’m not going to let my father’s murder slip by. I lost my mother when I was five, and my husband two years ago. I’ve been through this before.”

“If and when I find out anything, Janice — anything at all — you will be the first to know. I promise you that. But my conversation just now had nothing to do with your father’s death.”

“Do the authorities know that you’re dealing with the Russians?”

“It has nothing to do with your father’s death.”

“I want to believe you, Kenneth. God, if you only knew how I want to believe you.”

“You won’t be helping matters by—”

She cut him off. “I told you I wouldn’t discuss this with anyone, and I won’t.”

He just looked at her.

“But I’m going to hold you to your promise. When you find out who murdered my father, you will tell me.”

“I will.”

She nodded sadly.

He needed Paul now, he thought, more than he ever had. He needed to bounce his concerns off someone whom he could trust entirely. At this moment there was no one on this earth who fit that description. No one.

Newman slept on the company aircraft; his crew timed their flight so they arrived at Athens a few minutes after noon on Saturday. The telex had been sent to Exportkhleb and acknowledged within two hours. Dybrovik would be there, no later than eight this evening.

He had a light lunch and half a bottle of wine by himself at the top Grille Room of the hotel, and then went up to inspect the rooms. They were on the top floor at the front of the hotel, overlooking Syntagma Square. It was the tourist season, but tourists rarely took suites, so only one other suite in that wing of the top floor was booked. They would have privacy.

Later in the afternoon he went for a walk around the square to put his thoughts in order. So much had happened to him in the past couple of months that it was difficult for him to put it in perspective. He had gained a wife, and then lost her. He had lost his best friend. There had been killings and kidnappings, and the Cargill elevator explosion. And overriding all of that was the Russian corn buy. So mammoth a deal that it went beyond surprise or awe. The numbers were so large as to seem unreal.

Paul was dead, and Lydia was gone from him. But thinking about them sharpened his desperate need to be with someone, so he put them out of his mind, thinking instead about Dybrovik.

The man was an enigma. Paul would have said he was a con artist, and Lydia wouldn’t trust him. They’d agree that he was hiding something. Each time Newman had met with the man, he seemed just a little more desperate than the last time. Something was eating at him, and it had begun to eat at Newman.

Yet as far as the buy was concerned, everything was turning out exactly the way Dybrovik had promised it would. The Russians were taking the grain. They were providing the hard currencies with which to purchase more.

It was a straightforward corn buy. Except that the money was already in the hundreds of millions of dollars and would rise well above the two-billion mark, and the corn amounted to one-fourth the entire U.S. output.

He was torn. The Russians truly needed the grain. The Russians were playing some kind of market manipulation. The Russians were gathering a stockpile of food for a siege.

He had come around the square, opposite his hotel, where outside the American Express Building he bought a Wall Street Journal from the news vendor. He got a table at the sidewalk cafe, Papaspirou, and ordered coffee and a cognac.

It was six o’clock — two hours before Dybrovik was scheduled to show up. Newman was slightly hungry, but he decided against eating anything now. He wanted to be as sharp as he possibly could be for their meeting. There would be plenty of time to eat later.

As he sat sipping his coffee and cognac he unfolded the newspaper. There on the front page were photographs of Jorge Vance-Ehrhardt and his wife, Margarita, under the headlines:

He was stunned. Lydia had expected this. She had felt all along that her parents would never be returned alive. He, on the other hand, had thought there was a very good chance that they would come out of it.

According to the story, Vance-Ehrhardt officials, who declined to be named, had agreed to the kidnappers’ demands of one hundred million dollars in gold for themselves and for food and medicine for the peasants. But gunfire had been reported in a slum area of Buenos Aires, and when police investigated they found two gunmen and the landlady dead on the first floor, and upstairs the bodies of another terrorist and Jorge and Margarita Vance-Ehrhardt.

After he finished reading the article, Newman stared at the photographs. He could feel the fear beginning to work at his gut. Something was going on. Something that connected Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, and Vance-Ehrhardt with Paul’s death, and in all likelihood with the Soviet corn buy.

It went beyond coincidence, far beyond mere chance. For the first time in his life, Newman felt that he was not in control of the people and circumstances around him; that he was nothing more than a bystander, a spectator, an unwitting victim of some shrouded plot.

After awhile he paid his bill and went to his hotel.

“Ah, Mr. Newman,” the desk clerk said, smiling. “There is a message for you.” He handed Newman a slip of paper.

It was from Dybrovik.

Newman thanked the clerk, then took the elevator up to the top floor. The Russians were involved in all this, he was almost certain of it. It was what Dybrovik was hiding. It was what he had been so guilty about. Only now it was going to end, Newman thought. He was going to find out exactly what the hell was happening, or he’d stop all shipments and all futures buying. If they didn’t like it, they could sue him in the Hague.

In his room, he telephoned Dybrovik’s suite. The Russian answered on the first ring.

“It is Newman.”

“Are you back?”

“Yes. I’m next door. Are you ready?”

There was a slight pause. “Yes. You can come over. I am ready to talk with you.”

He sounded wooden, mechanical, as if he were talking in his sleep. “I’m going to want some answers, Dybrovik.”

“I understand.”

“The truth.”

“I understand that too, Kenneth. You can come now.”

Newman hung up, and stood there for a moment. There was something wrong with Dybrovik, something wrong with the entire setup. It didn’t seem right at all. He had the sudden urge to quietly pack his bags and get out of there. The hell with the Russians. The hell with the deal.

He turned, went out to the corridor, and knocked at the next door. Dybrovik answered it immediately, as if he had been standing just on the other side. He was sweating profusely, and his eyes were bloodshot. It looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week, or as if he were sick.

“Come in, Kenneth,” he said in the same wooden voice.

Newman came in to the vestibule. The suite was nearly a duplicate of his own rooms. Dybrovik locked and chained the door.

“Go in, Kenneth. Please,” he said, and Newman went on into the sitting room.

There was a dark, very intense-looking, small man seated in the corner by one of the windows, and he stood up, a slight smile on his face.

“Good evening, Mr. Newman. Permit me to introduce myself.”

24

“Colonel Vadim Leonid Turalin.”

“KGB?” Newman asked, just within the sitting room of Dybrovik’s suite.

The little man nodded. “Welcome to Athens, Mr. Newman.”

Newman suddenly became very conscious of his surroundings. The lights in the room were dim; the bathroom door was closed; the bedroom door was half open; the window curtains were drawn. He stepped back, but Dybrovik was there, and he turned around. “What the hell is going on here, Delos?”

“Please, Kenneth, we mean you no harm.”

“Like hell!” Newman said. He felt cornered, and he wanted to get out of there.

“He wants to explain everything to you,” Dybrovik was saying. “He wants to sit down with you — the three of us — and talk. That’s all. Honestly.”

Newman turned back. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a large figure in the half-open bedroom door, and he flinched.

“I believe it will be to your advantage to sit down and listen to what I have to say, Mr. Newman. You will probably find that I make a lot of sense. I will be able to answer a lot of questions that must be plaguing you.” Turalin paused. “Delos Fedor came to me and said that you were concerned by recent events.”

“What do you have to do with all of this?” Newman asked. Every muscle in his body was tense. Would he be able to get past Dybrovik, and then unlock and unchain the door before the goon in the bedroom got to him?

“It was I who authorized Comrade Dybrovik to purchase corn.”

“A hundred million tons of it?”

“Or more.”

“Then it is a market manipulation? But why pick on me?”

“Two questions, actually,” Turalin said, smiling. “Won’t you sit down? I’ll try to answer all your questions as fully as I can.”

Newman didn’t move.

“Please, Kenneth,” Dybrovik said sadly.

“When we are finished with our little chat, you will be free to go. No one will stop you,” Turalin said.

“If I’m not interested — if I want to leave this instant?”

Turalin just looked at him, a hard, flat expression in his eyes.

“Did your people kill Paul?”

“Paul Saratt? Your partner?” Turalin asked.

Dybrovik stepped out of the vestibule. He had a haunted look on his face. Newman glanced from Turalin to him and back. Then he nodded.

“No. We did not. It was your wife’s people.”

“Not Perés?”

“Not directly. But Perés is a very powerful man in Argentina. He has been making it very difficult there for Vance-Ehrhardt, Ltd. Even more so now that your father-in-law and his wife are dead.”

“But you knew?”

Turalin shrugged. “We could guess. So should you have.”

“Who kidnapped Vance-Ehrhardt?”

“The Montoneros,” Turalin said. “Argentina is on the verge of revolution. Perés knows it. Your wife knows it. They are both struggling for the same aims, only from different directions. Perés wants to keep the country quiet so that he can retain his power. Your wife wants to keep the peace so that she can run the Vance-Ehrhardt empire. But it cannot last.”

“How can you be so certain there will be a revolution there?” Newman asked, although he agreed with Turalin.

“The Malvinas defeat, for one. One hundred and thirty percent inflation for another. The exploitation of the pampas farmer.” Turalin shook his head. “I’m certainly not going to argue socialism versus capitalism with you, but when people become as oppressed as the Argentines have become, then something must give.”

Newman had more or less come to the same conclusions himself. They made his worry about Lydia all the more intense.

“Please sit down, Kenneth,” Dybrovik said. “You will be free to go when we are finished. He has given his word. I give you mine.”

Newman came farther into the room, and sat on the arm of the couch. Dybrovik sat heavily in one of the easy chairs opposite Turalin. He still had the sad look in his eyes.

“You asked if this was a market manipulation,” Turalin said. “It is not. If it were, we would have ordered you to purchase all the corn on margin. We would not have advanced your firm so much money. Nor would we be taking delivery of the corn we have already purchased.

“You’ve only taken eight million tons. The bulk of the corn is yet to come. Your ports can only handle forty-five or fifty million tons each year of all grain combined.”

“Our ports, Mr. Newman. Soviet ports. There are Warsaw Pact ports at our disposal.”

“I can answer your other question, Kenneth,” Dybrovik said. “It was I who selected your company for the buy.”

“Why?”

“Secrecy. When Colonel Turalin came to me with the order to purchase corn, I was told it would have to be done in total secrecy. Your company was the only one I felt could handle such a project. All the others were too large, staffed by too many people. Our secret would have gotten out.”

Dybrovik’s answer seemed well rehearsed to Newman. And although it was the answer he had expected, he found he was having a hard time believing it. Dybrovik was frightened.

“It’s not a market manipulation, and you have had nothing to do with the kidnapping of the Vance-Ehrhardts, or my partner’s death, or the death of Louis Dreyfus, or the Cargill elevator explosion.”

Turalin and Dybrovik looked at each other. “We had nothing to do with the Cargill elevator explosion, Mr. Newman,” Turalin said. He too seemed uncomfortable now.

“And the Louis Dreyfus assassination?”

“Enough!” Turalin snapped. “It is time for you to answer a few questions. You indicated to Comrade Dybrovik that you were becoming concerned. Well, so are we.”

It was so transparent. Newman wondered why this entire scene had been staged.

“We have given your firm a considerable sum of money with which to purchase grain futures. To date, what little corn you have purchased has all been on margin. Why is that?”

“Until I am convinced that this is not another Grain Robbery, I will continue to purchase on margin,” Newman said. “That is, if I continue to purchase at all.”

Turalin said something to Dybrovik in rapid Russian. Dybrovik replied tersely, and Turalin nodded. “You are still worried that it is a market manipulation such as happened in the early seventies.”

“What about Louis Dreyfus?” Newman repeated. Turalin blinked.

Dybrovik suddenly seemed very nervous. “Kenneth…” he started, but Turalin savagely cut him off.

“You had him assassinated,” Newman said. “It was your people… the KGB.”

Turalin said nothing.

“Why, for Christ’s sake?” Newman shouted.

“Kenneth, please, you have to understand that—” Dybrovik said, but again Turalin cut him off.

Newman got up. “If you kill me, your five hundred million becomes forfeit. It would be an expensive assassination.”

“You don’t understand, Mr. Newman,” Turalin said. He remained sitting on the edge of his chair, his hands together.

Again Newman had the strong impression that all this was a put-on, some sort of an act.

“Did you kill Gérard Louis Dreyfus?”

“Yes,” Turalin said softly.

“Why?”

“He found out about your deal with us, and he was moving against you.”

Newman was deeply shaken. “You didn’t think I could handle the competition, so you had it eliminated?” He glanced toward the bedroom door. The figure he had seen earlier was not there. “I’m withdrawing my company’s participation in this thing. I will deduct for the corn I have already purchased and shipped, as well as for a reasonable commission, and the remainder of the fund will be retransferred to your Eurobank account.”

“Wait,” Dybrovik shouted, jumping up.

Turalin had also gotten to his feet. Newman backed toward the vestibule. At any moment he expected the bedroom door to open and an armed man to burst out.

“We couldn’t take any chances with Louis Dreyfus. If he had ruined our deal, it would have meant… mass starvation,” Turalin said.

For several long seconds Newman wasn’t quite sure that he understood.

“It’s falling apart on us. Albania. Poland. Especially Afghanistan.”

Newman looked over his shoulder at the corridor door. It all fit together. It did make sense. They could not have gone to the American government, not without admitting defeat of their system. And yet it was all unreal. Bigger than life. What did they expect from him?

“You must believe us. We’re quite desperate for grain.”

“Why corn?”

“It’s universal,” Turalin said. “I mean, we can feed it to people as it is, it can be ground up into flour, we can make oil from it, or it can be fed to animals. There is no other grain we could have gotten in such quantities that would do so much for us.”

It all seemed a little too glib to Newman, and yet, goddamn it, it fit. It was no less than he and a great many other people in the business had been expecting for a good many years. Still, Newman didn’t believe it.

“And now I’m supposed to return home and continue working for you, knowing that you assassinated poor Louis Dreyfus?”

“We had no other choice, Kenneth,” Dybrovik said woodenly.

“Good Lord,” Newman breathed heavily.

Dybrovik suddenly turned away. He seemed all arms and legs.

“You must help us, you know,” Turalin said. “We have no where else to turn at this date, without…” he hesitated.

“Violence?”

Turalin did not reply.

Alone in his room again, Newman stood by the window looking down at the square. But he did not feel safe here. He felt like a soldier in the middle of a battlefield who had slipped inside a tent. Although he couldn’t see the war raging around him, he was right in the middle of it, and very vulnerable. It was time to run. There was no way in hell he believed anything that Turalin or Dybrovik had told him. The story was so patently foolish that he was amazed they had even tried to foist it on him.

On the other hand, he had to ask himself, what would they have said or done differently had the story been true? If there was a lack of food, they’d have to either produce it or buy it. If they had been reduced to buying it, they would have gone about it this way.

It was no longer clear to Newman what his choices were, and he realized at this moment just how dependent he had become on Paul. They had understood each other, had respected each other. And above all, they had trusted each other.

With Paul gone, and without Lydia, he was truly alone.

He crossed the room, picked up the telephone, and started to ask the hotel operator to ring the airport, but then changed his mind. This phone was possibly being monitored by Turalin’s people. Instead, he told the operator to send someone up for his bags, he was checking out.

He went downstairs. From a payphone he called the business aviation terminal, finally getting hold of Jacob, his steward, whom he instructed to ready the airport for immediate departure.

He was reasonably certain that his conversation with Jacob was safe, just as he was certain his next move would be monitored. At the bellhop station, he instructed the bell captain to have his bags sent over to the Athens Hilton.

“Is something wrong, sir?” the bell captain asked solicitously.

“Not a thing,” Newman said conspiratorially. “It is a rendezvous.”

“I understand, sir.”

If Turalin had been telling the truth, he’d allow Newman to leave without interference. If he had been lying….

Newman strode across the lobby, and outside hurried into the square, where he sat down on a stone bench. He had a clear view of a portion of the hotel lobby through the glass doors.

Several cabs came and went. A tour bus pulled up and ten or twelve couples got off and crowded into the hotel. Finally, a bellhop came out of the lobby with Newman’s two suitcases and set them down on the sidewalk.

A very tall, husky man came out of the lobby, turned to the left, and then lingered there, watching the bellhop and the bags. From time to time he looked up; the bellhop placed the bags in the back seat, spoke to the driver, and watched the cab leave.

The big man watched the cab go, and then hurried back into the hotel.

“You have them confused,” someone said from behind Newman and he spun around.

Dybrovik stood a few feet back, in the shadows of a clump of trees. He looked scared witless.

“Turalin wasn’t telling the truth, was he?” Newman asked.

Dybrovik shook his head. “No. It was mostly all lies.”

“Then it will be a market manipulation. Another Great Grain Robbery?”

“It’s not that either. It’s worse. It’s…” Dybrovik stopped in midsentence. He was staring across at the hotel.

Newman turned. The husky man who had watched the cab take his luggage was starting across the street.

“It is Danilov. He is coming for me,” Dybrovik said. He slipped farther back into the shadows, then took off running.

Newman hesitated a moment, then jumped up and started after Dybrovik. But he had waited too long. Danilov had spotted him; he shouted something and raced forward.

The park was fairly busy with tourists and lovers ambling hand in hand.

Newman made it to the other side. Dybrovik was nowhere in sight. To the left was Papaspirou; to the right, the park angled back toward a gathering of street vendors with their carts. Across the avenue was the American Express Building.

He sprinted to the right, toward the vendors. There was a small crowd of people there, and he hoped to lose himself among them.

He pushed his way through the knot of people and ordered a sweet tea from a vendor. As he dug in his pocket for money, he looked over his shoulder.

The big man emerged from the park at a run and pulled up short at the curb. Slowly he scanned the area across the street, and then looked directly toward Newman. But a moment later he turned toward the sidewalk cafe and started that way.

Newman paid for his tea, but left it there as he sprinted around the vendor and hurried down the block, then across the street and down the avenue behind the American Express Building.

He’d take a cab out to the airport and get the hell away from Athens. Turalin had been lying to him. Even if Dybrovik had not confirmed it, the man chasing them had.

It was a lie, Dybrovik had said. Turalin was lying. It was worse than a market manipulation. But what did that mean?

Newman stopped about half a block away from the square and turned around. It wouldn’t be so easy for Dybrovik to escape. He didn’t have anywhere to go, and unless he had money he was in very big trouble. Turalin evidently had some kind of powerful hold on him. And yet he risked everything to come from the hotel and tell Newman that Turalin had been lying.

Newman started back toward the square. What the hell could he do against a large, well-armed Soviet secret service agent? Probably not a lot.

Someone careened around the corner, lost his balance, and scrambled to his feet. Newman frantically looked around, then stepped into the dark doorway of a small shop.

He could hear a man running toward him, and then he passed, and Newman almost stepped out. It was Dybrovik.

A second later there was a faint popping sound, and Newman heard someone coughing twice, and then for a moment nothing.

He pushed a little farther back into the shadows of the doorway. Someone else was out there. He heard the solid slap of shoe leather on the sidewalk. A minute later Danilov passed the doorway. He was holding a gun in his right hand.

Newman peered out of the doorway. Danilov was bending over Dybrovik’s form sprawled out on the sidewalk. He raised his gun.

Newman stepped out of the doorway and, moving as quietly as he could, raced the ten or fifteen feet to where Danilov was hunched over. Clasping his hands together into one fist, he raised them high and slammed them down on the man’s neck.

Danilov went down like a felled ox, but then started up again. Newman kicked him in the head, the point of his toe connecting with the man’s temple, and he went down and stayed there.

Dybrovik’s legs were moving as though he were trying to swim underwater, and Newman knelt down beside him.

“Can you get up, Delos?” he asked.

“It’s Bormett. The Bormett farm. Iowa. Bormett. It’s the key. The farm…” Dybrovik said, then he stiffened in Newman’s arms, and slumped to the side, his eyes open, a great sigh escaping from his body. Then he was still.

Newman laid him down, then stood up. Danilov was beginning to stir. The Bormett farm. Iowa. What the hell did he mean?

Danilov began to rise, the gun in his hand. Newman stepped back, and with all of his might, all of his anger against Turalin and everything that had happened, he kicked out, connecting solidly with the man’s temple. This time, Newman didn’t think Danilov would ever get up.

25

Bormett stood at the edge of his east field, staring down the long rows of corn that marched away from him in military ranks. The sun was getting low behind the hill that stood between him and the house, leaving him very much alone. Catherine was preparing to go to church in Adel for Wednesday night choir practice, and she would not be home until after ten. When he didn’t show up at the house to say goodbye, she would worry that he was working too hard, but she’d forget about it at church. He was always like this around this time of the year.

“It’s finished,” Joseph had said to him Friday night, and Bormett remembered now that he had almost replied, “It sure is.” Of course he had said nothing of the sort; instead, he had thanked his old friend for a job well done, and they had had a couple of beers.

He stepped off the access road, into the first three windbreak rows of corn. It seemed as if he could see forever down the long, leafy green tunnel. It felt like home to him. He worked here. He hunted pheasant and rabbit here. And his existence and the pasts of his father and grandfather were tied up here. This place meant life to him, and growth, and all that was good and clean in the world.

Ten or fifteen yards into the row, he noticed the odor of rotten eggs. He stopped and fingered the large leaves. They felt substantial to him, already slightly moist from the beginning evening mist.

Five days ago this field had been sprayed. His spirits had sagged. He had waited for the fields to turn brown, for the stalks to droop, for the leaves to shrivel. But it hadn’t happened. Each evening, after he finished his regular chores, he came out here to his favorite field, to where it had all begun, and walked up and down the rows searching for signs that he had killed his life. But there was nothing. Nothing that is, but good, healthy-looking corn.

He had also waited for the university to call him with their report, but they had not done so until late this afternoon. Then he sincerely wished they hadn’t.

“Mr. Bormett? This is Dr. Murray Gray, from the University of Iowa, School of Agriculture.”

“You’ve tested my samples?”

“Yes, sir, and to tell you that we are concerned would be the understatement of the year. We’d like to come out to your farm immediately.”

“Come out to my farm? Why?” Bormett asked.

“The chemicals you gave us to test. They were all fine, normal pesticides, corn-borer poisons, rust and blight inhibitors. But one, the chemical in the milk jug. My God, Mr. Bormett, we still don’t know what it is, but it’s alive with bacterial organisms. If you sprayed that on your fields…”

Bormett’s insides were churning. “Spray on my fields?” he asked, laughing. “Good Lord, Dr. Gray, of course I didn’t spray any of those chemicals on my fields, at least not in years.”

“I don’t understand,” the professor said.

“Those were chemicals that have been lying around the farm for years. I thought I’d clean them all out and find out just what kinds of things we had back there.”

“Thank God,” Dr. Gray said. “The chemical in the milk jug. Is there more of it out there?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Bormett said, sick at heart. “It was just lying back there on a shelf with a lot of other junk.”

“I’ll destroy this, then. But you certainly gave us a fright, I can tell you that, Mr. Bormett. I was all set to call the Department of Agriculture and get your fields burned.”

“Well, I’m sure glad you didn’t do that,” Bormett had said.

“I’d still like to come out and look around, sir, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” Bormett snapped, the fright rising in him like a dark monster.

“We just want to make sure there are no other contaminated sprays.”

“I tell you that I cleaned out my chemical shed. You people got it all. The only other chemicals I have are fresh.”

“If this organism had caught hold, it would have spread like wildfire.”

“Just mind your own business, Gray, and let a man get to work.”

Looking at his corn now, he could not see what all the fuss had been about. There was nothing wrong here. Nothing at all.

He turned around and headed back toward the access road. Bacterial organisms, Dr. Gray had said. So he wasn’t out of the woods yet. But five days with nothing… well, it was heartening, that’s all he could think. It was damned heartening.

Near the end of the cornrow, Bormett stopped again to examine one of the stalks. It looked good. Healthy. The ears were already more than six inches long, and from this point on they would fill out, and grow very fast to fourteen or even eighteen inches in length.

He pulled an ear off a stalk, and immediately knew that something was wrong. Drastically wrong. The ear was soft. And very light. He could dent it with only a slight pressure from his thumb and fingers. It was rotting on the stalk.

He dropped the ear, then pulled several others from neighboring stalks. But they were all the same. Soft to the touch, and very light.

Maybe it was just as this edge of the field.

He turned and raced down the row, stumbling to a halt a hundred yards along, where he snatched four ears off as many stalks. But it was the same. The cobs felt mushy.

Oh, God. It was happening. His fields were dying.

He pulled another ear off its stalk and raced with it back out of the row, up to the access road, where he could see better in the waning light.

This ear was as soft as the others. Whatever was wrong with this one was wrong with the entire field.

He grabbed the husk and pulled it down, exposing the cob and kernels. A powerful smell of rot assailed him, and for several long seconds he stood there, staring at the terrible thing his corn had become.

Something had eaten at the corn. The kernels were blackened and rotted on the cob. Instead of beautifully even rows of kernels, there was nothing here but putrescence.

He made to throw the terrible thing down on the ground, but then he thought about Joseph and the. others. They’d be out here in the morning. They’d see it lying here in the open. They’d know what was happening.

Instead, he turned and threw the infected ear back out into the field as far as he could, a noise like a wounded animal’s cry escaping from his throat.

He stumbled back away from the field, as if it were a malevolent, living creature now, bent on destroying him.

“No,” he cried, the sound strangely weak from a man so large, and he scrambled back up into his pickup truck.

He started the engine and spun the truck around in front of the tank farm, but stalled the engine before he could start up the hill. He managed to get it started again, then raced away from the field, up the hill, over the crest, and then down the other side into the farmyard. He parked behind the big barn.

He sat there behind the wheel for a long time, trying to understand. But there was no reason for it. Kedrov and the little man had no reason to do this to him. No reason at all.

He thought about the girl, Raya, but as hard as he tried, he could feel no animosity toward her. None of this had been her fault. No doubt she had merely followed orders. If she knew what was happening, and how much it meant, she would feel guilty, he thought. But he was a foolish old man.

What had he done or said to attract the Russians to him? He had done nothing. He had done nothing. He was nothing more or less than an Iowa farmer. A successful corn farmer, but nothing more than a heartland farmer.

The United States has become the breadbasket of the world, he had told the Russians.

Was that what they had objected to? Could they have gone to such extremes out of mere envy?

He got out and started up toward the house. He could clearly see Kedrov’s sickly sweet smile as well as Dr. Lubiako’s sympathetic expression when he had introduced the farm journalist.

Well, I, for one, am worried about hybrids. I think we should move away from them.

Kedrov had not minced his words. Nor had the little man in the military uniform minced his words the next day.

“I’ve come to see you this morning because I would like to do a little horse trading with you,” the little man had said.

“What do you want?”

“I need a favor, Mr. Bormett. Not a very large favor, and certainly nothing illegal by your own country’s laws. I’m not, as you may fear, trying to recruit you to spy for the Soviet Union. But you can be of some small help to me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about an experiment that I would like you to help me with.”

“What kind of an experiment?”

“Oh, it is harmless, I assure you. Harmless. But it does require your absolute cooperation.”

Bormett said nothing. He was too frightened. He could only think of Catherine, and her reaction if she saw the photographs. It would kill her.

“Am I going to have your cooperation, Mr. Bormett?”

He had nodded. What the hell else could he do?

“Someone will be coming to see you. Follow his instructions to the letter. No questions asked. Do I make myself clear?”

Again he had nodded. The little man held all the aces.

“When you are finished, the negatives will be returned to you, and we will forget that we ever heard your name. Simple.”

The negatives would be destroyed, the photographic record of his misdeeds erased. But what of the memory? It would endure. It was something he was going to have to live with for the rest of his life. That, and the fact he had killed his fields.

The porch light was on. As Bormett mounted the front steps, he had a vision of Katy coming out and saying, I’ve seen the pictures. What have you done? Why did you do it? What were you thinking about?

Inside, the house was quiet, except for the grandfather clock out of sight in the living room. He stood just within the vestibule listening, holding his breath.

After a minute or two, he went into the kitchen and turned on the light over the electric range. He got himself a drink of water at the sink, and then took down a bottle of bourbon from a cabinet and poured a stiff shot into his water glass.

He leaned against the counter, straightening up every now and then to take a sip of his drink as he tried to think this all out.

He had done what they wanted, because it would have been impossible to live without Katy. And he was sure that the pictures would have killed her or driven her off. So he had done what they wanted. He had sprayed his fields. But now he was faced with a second, and in some respects worse, dilemma. He had killed his corn. Dr. Gray would remember his tests. He would remember warning Bormett about the bacteria in the milk jug. When it was discovered that the corn was dead, they’d blame him. There’d be no insurance, no federal aid, nothing. He wouldn’t go bankrupt, not quite, but his reputation would be destroyed. Next year, when there was a good crop, no one would bid on it. They’d be afraid of his corn.

Which meant he was ruined. How in hell could he explain to anyone what had happened? If the real reason for what he had done ever came out…. No matter the outcome, he was the loser.

He poured himself another stiff shot of bourbon, then left the kitchen and slowly trudged upstairs to his and Katy’s bedroom.

He stood in the doorway, the only light in the room from the dials of the bedside clock radio. She’d be back in a couple of hours. He’d already be in bed, and she’d crawl in next to him and snuggle up close. They’d talk for a while, until they both drifted off to sleep.

It was a comforting routine that suited both of them. But it was based on trust, which in turn was based on truth, something he had been unable to tell his wife since Moscow.

Why? he cried to himself. What in God’s name had he done?

He turned away in shame and stumbled back downstairs, where he stopped in the hallway, unable for the moment to decide what to do, or even in which direction to go.

The house itself seemed to be closing in on him. Katy was in every room. Her eyes were watching him, accusing him, and he had no defense for it, because he was guilty.

He let the glass slip from his hand and fall to the floor, where the liquor spilled on the carpet runner. Then he went outside, leaving the front door open behind him, stepped down off the porch, and headed toward the barn.

Albert Straub, one of the shift foremen, was just coming out of the lit machine shed. He waved when he spotted Bormett. Bormett didn’t see him.

Straub called, “Got the gear box in number seven.” Still Bormett did not seem to notice him. “Hey, Will,” Straub tried once again.

Bormett knew that Straub was calling to him. But he just didn’t give a damn. He went inside the barn.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Straub muttered to himself, and went back into the machine shed.

A single light shone in the back of the barn, and Bormett walked toward it, only dimly aware of the hulking machinery stored in here. There seemed to be a humming in his ears, and it was getting louder and louder.

At the back of the barn he took out his keys and unlocked a small cabinet hanging on the wall above the workbench. On the shelves inside were several bundles wrapped in oily rags. He selected one, and put it on the workbench. Then he slowly unwrapped it. It was a military .45 automatic.

The gun gleamed dully in the overhead light. He had had it for a long time. Had used it occasionally for target practice. Couldn’t hit a thing unless it was up close. But whatever one of those big 45-caliber slugs plowed into, it sure destroyed in a hurry.

A detached part of him was amazed at how calm he was as he reached up for the box of ammunition, removed the clip from the automatic, and began loading it. Amazed, because he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life.

He snapped the loaded clip in the handgrip, put the box back on the shelf, and then closed and locked the cabinet.

He could stop this right now, one part of his mind told the other. The thing to do would be to burn the fields. Get rid of the corn. Tell the truth to Katy. She’d understand. But even if she didn’t, he’d be no worse off than he was right now.

He pocketed the .45, turned away from the workbench, and went outside to where he had parked his truck.

It was only about eight-thirty. Still an hour and a half or longer before Catherine was due home.

He wanted to talk to her now. He wanted to hold her in his arms, and hear her tell him that it would be all right, that everything would turn out for the best.

For a long time the Bormetts have been farming this land, Will, and they’ll be farming it for a long time to come. So don’t let one little setback bother you so much.

“I could have stopped it. It was my fault,” he said out loud.

Katy would smile. Don’t you know, Will, that almost every bad thing that ever happens to us, we usually bring on ourselves? We’re the cause of most of our own misery.

“It shouldn’t have to be that way.”

No, it shouldn’t, but it is. You just have to live with it.

“No,” he said, holding his hands out in front of him as if to ward off a blow.

But Katy wasn’t there. After a minute he blinked and looked around. Then he turned away from the house, climbed up into his truck, started the engine, and drove off.

He went back up the hill, then down the access road to the tank farm, where he stopped and shut off the lights and engine. He laid the ignition keys on the dash.

Dusk was falling. The crickets and cicadas were singing up in the stand of trees, and he could hear the big bullfrogs coughing in the creek on the other side of the hill.

He shook his head sadly that it had to end this way, then walked along the access road, pushed his way through the windbreak rows, and trudged down among the corn, careful not to touch any of the infected ears.

They’d find his truck, and then they’d come looking for him. When they found him, they wouldn’t bother to look at the corn. Not then. Sooner or later, Albert or Joseph would be back out here, and think to check, and then they’d find out. But it would be too late. It was already too late.

He stopped about two hundred yards in, and pulled the .45 out of his pocket.

He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about Moscow, or about the photographs, or about Catherine, or about what he had seen when he had shucked the ear of corn. He didn’t want to think about anything ever again.

He levered a round into the chamber, clicked the safety off, and placed the barrel of the automatic to his temple.

“Katy,” he said calmly. He pulled the trigger.