Heartland

It was a few minutes after three in the morning, and Michael McCandless was dead tired. His eyes felt as if there was sand in the sockets, and his mouth tasted like a dirty old sock. He had come down to TELEMETRY AND ANALYSIS around ten last night. Now he sat at one of the monitor consoles, sipping coffee as he looked across at the satellite display maps.

The tracking chart showed that SPEC–IV was coming up over Novosibirsk. Something new had been added to the display. Infrared and heat-sensing equipment aboard the satellite, hundreds of miles above the Soviet farms, had been switched on. Vast areas of farmlands showed up bright pink, the cooler mountains in dark blue.

“Heat,” the chief analyst, Joe DiRenzo, had explained when they first began noticing a change. “Certain forms of root rot, stem rust, and other crop disorders produce abnormal amounts of heat. We’re picking it up as pink.”

That had been one week ago. Then the pink areas had been confined to a small corner of the Ust-Urt Plateau. But all through the week they had spread, like some insidious monster creeping across the land.

“No chance of a mistake here, Joe?” McCandless had asked hopefully.

“I’m afraid not. We showed Williams the heat traces. He was the one who came up with the enhancement idea. We took the heat readings of normal crops and compared them, in the computer, with what we’re coming up with over central Europe. There is no mistake.”

“The temperature difference has to be minute,” McCandless argued, even though he knew he was beating a dead horse. But he felt he owed the President an explanation.

“In each plant, yes, the temperature rise is minute,” DiRenzo said. “But cumulatively, over tens and hundreds of thousands of square miles, our instruments can easily detect it.”

All week they had watched the pink spread, until there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind that they were witnessing a complete failure of the Soviet wheat crop.

Coincidence? McCandless wondered. There had been no operation by the Central Intelligence Agency to damage the Soviet crop, he was one hundred percent sure of that. He and General Lycoming had told the President so, as well.

“But how about a Chinese operation? Or a British deal? Or some other independent?” The President had asked yesterday. “Christ, this could end up in a war.”

Gene Wilson, who was head of the Department of Agriculture at the University of Illinois, and who had worked on government analysis projects in the past, had sat forward. They were in the Cabinet room. “From the information I’d been given — if it’s accurate — I’d say their problems were foreseeable.”

“Could you be more specific, Gene?” the President had asked. He had looked very old; all used up. Everyone in the room had been concerned that he would have a heart attack in the middle of all this.

“Inadequate soil preparation, for one. And a general lack of chemical pesticides and blight inhibitors,” Wilson said. He looked around, taking the pipe out of his mouth. “They may have had the hybrid seed, and certainly they have the land. But they simply have not committed the money they need for proper chemical farming.”

“Then you suspect their entire crop will fail?” Lundgren had broken in, incredulously.

Wilson had turned to him. “Hard to say, Curtis. But if I had to give an educated guess, I’d have to say yes. A major portion of the Soviet wheat crop will fail, and a lot of the corn as well.”

He had leaned forward for emphasis. “It’s not like our problem, one of an airborne bacterial organism spreading on the wind. With the Soviets it’s simply lack of pesticides. A lack of treatment across the board is producing similar results across the board.”

Everyone in the room was silent for a long time, all eyes on the President, who finally nodded. “We’re going to have to come up with a solution, of course,” he said.

“We have the money,” McCandless said. “We can buy the grain.”

“Where?” the President asked. “We have to keep our wheat to start to compensate for the failure of our corn.”

“That’s a question better asked of someone like Newman,” Lundgren suggested. Everyone looked at him. “After all, he was right in the middle of all this from the beginning. He was the one dealing with the Russians.”

“He is a grain merchant,” McCandless said hopefully.

“One of the best,” Lundgren said.

“That may be true, gentlemen,” the President said, “but where the hell is he going to get the grain?”

30

The Newman Company 707 touched down for a landing at Washington’s National Airport, its golden flanks and red twin-eagle logo on the tail flashing in the sun. Near the end of the runway, the pilot expertly turned the big plane around and brought it down the taxiway toward the business aviation terminal.

Newman had spent the past week and a half talking to agronomists and plant pathologists, and reading everything he could lay his hands on. During the flight east, he brooded about the grim picture he had built up.

The disease that killed Bormett’s corn was, as Newman had suspected, caused by a bacterium that the scientists were still working to identify. Much hinged on their findings. All cornfields throughout the Heartland were being burned, but the bacterium — depending on the strain — might be one that could survive for a fairly long time in the soil. Chemical controls would help, but they waited upon identification of the disease. It might be several years before the land was again healthy for corn.

In the meantime, the nation’s seedsmen would be working at top speed with university researchers to develop new, resistant hybrids. That, too, could take time.

States outside the Corn Belt grew corn, but only enough for their own needs; they would not be able to supply the large feedlots, where corn and silage constituted the main diet of beef cattle. Dairy cows, too, depended on stored feeds for ninety percent of their nutrition, and a large portion of that was corn. All would try to bring their cattle through the winter on hay, and next year ranchers could put some cattle to pasture — if they were lucky enough to live in an area that provided good pasturage. The value of beef cattle would, of course, be reduced by the inability to feed them the twenty to twenty-five pounds of grain a day they usually received during the last hundred days before slaughter.

There was no question that herds were going to have to be drastically reduced. Beef would be abundant briefly as both beef and dairy herds were decimated, but then it might all but disappear from the table.

Killing off the herds was also going to mean a serious decrease in such items as milk, butter, and cheese. Newman knew that the United States sat on mountains of dairy surplus, as did the European Common Market. But the mere anticipation of the loss of so many cows would cause prices to soar. And even the surpluses wouldn’t last for the several years it might take to purify the fields, develop new hybrids, and bring in a corn crop that would make it safe to begin to rebuild the herds.

Ninety to a hundred percent of the ration of hogs was made up of corn; that’s why the corn-producing states were the primary hog-producing states. Experiments with substitutes for corn in hog production had not, thus far, proved commercially feasible.

The feed given to chickens was 2/3 to 3/4 corn, because corn constitutes such a cheap, complete source of energy, protein, and fiber. There had been discussions of the need to work on soybean-type substitutes, but very little had been done in that area so far.

The American way of life was going to be very different for a long time to come.

The intercom chimed, and Newman, who had flown alone except for the crew, picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

“There’s quite a crowd by the terminal building, Mr. Newman, just as you suspected there might be. Would you like us to call a police escort?”

Newman looked out the window, but he could only see the edge of the crowd. “How many out there?”

“Maybe fifty or sixty. There are a lot of cameras and lights. Most of them look like television people.”

“Don’t call the police,” Newman said, resigning himself to the battering he was going to get. It had been the same at the airport in Duluth. “Can you see if Hansen is out there?” John Hansen was the company attorney.

“Yes, sir, he is. He called from inside after we touched down. He’s there with the car.”

“Fine,” Newman said. They had come to a halt, and he unbuckled his seatbelt and rose.

Jacob came from the galley and helped Newman with his coat, then went forward and popped the main hatch. A set of boarding steps had been pushed up.

Newman grabbed his briefcase. “Thanks, Jacob,” he said.

“I’ll have your bags sent over immediately, sir,” the steward said. “And, good luck, sir.”

Newman stepped off the plane.

A reporter at the foot of the stairs shouted up, “What are you going to tell the Senate subcommittee in the morning, Mr. Newman?”

Newman started down as John Hansen pushed through the crowd. He was an older man, with gray hair and wide, honest eyes. He wasn’t smiling.

“Mr. Newman, can you tell us where we’re going to buy corn to replace the crops that have already been lost?”

Newman looked at the man who held a microphone out. Behind him was his cameraman. “No, I can’t.”

“Will you tell the subcommittee?” another reporter asked.

Newman shook his head. “No,” he said.

“I have a car around the side,” Hansen said in his ear, but the reporter was persistent.

“Why not, Mr. Newman?”

Newman had been edging forward, away from the boarding steps, and he stopped, now and faced the newspeople. “Simply because there is no corn available worldwide to replace the corn we have lost.”

“How about our wheat, sir?” another reporter asked.

Newman turned to her. “What about our wheat?”

“It’s all right. Can’t it be used to replace corn?” “No,” Newman said. “We can make bread with it, but it cannot be used effectively to feed cattle or pigs.”

“You’re saying there will be a meat shortage?”

“Meat,” Newman said, “along with milk, cheese — all dairy products.”

Hansen took Newman’s arm and forcibly hauled him away from the journalists who were screaming out questions, and hurried him around the building to the attorney’s chauffeured limousine. The reporters were right on their heels, and only stopped shouting when the driver finally pulled away.

“Jesus,” Hansen said, breathing a sigh of relief.

Newman didn’t really care. He had felt a sense of unreality since last week in Iowa. None of this could or should be happening.

“We have less than twenty-four hours to get ready for the hearing. I hope you realize that, Kenneth,” Hansen was saying. “Between Sam Lucas and a few of the others from Abex and Duluth, I’ve managed to put together an organizational chart for your business interests that should hold them at bay. At least until we can figure out a way to back out of our subsidiary committments without causing any more waves.”

Newman was staring out the window, not really listening. It did not matter what he told the Senate subcommittee tomorrow, because nothing would alter the facts, among them that Lydia was dead.

He had found out about her death yesterday. The revolution was over. Argentina had a new government. The fighting had all but stopped, although the farm-fields on the pampas were still burning. The farmers had set them on fire.

Francisco Belgrano, Vance-Ehrhardt’s private secretary and now apparently the head of the conglomerate, had telexed Abex in New York, asking about grain supplies. And he had included in his telex that Lydia’s body had been found at police headquarters. She had evidently died in an elevator accident. Capitan Perés had died in the same accident.

“Are you listening to what I’m trying to tell you, Kenneth?” Hansen asked.

Newman turned to him, and shook his head. “Not a word, John, but it doesn’t matter any longer. I’ll answer any questions the Senate puts to me.”

Hansen looked at him for a long moment. Then he shook his head, too. “You do realize, of course, that if you do such a thing, you definitely will be leaving yourself open for criminal prosecution.”

“The administration knows most of it already,” Newman said. Lundgren had told him as much last week in Iowa. They had met at the Sheraton in Des Moines where they had watched, from Newman’s eighth-floor room, the burning of the fields to the west around Adel. It had seemed like the end of the world.

“You’re not above the law, you know. You can’t just deal with whomever you like, whenever you like,” Lundgren had said.

Newman had turned tiredly to him. “What difference does that make now? Or do you think I had something to do with that?” He pointed toward the reddened sky.

“Right up to your ears, Newman. You were with Dybrovik when he was killed in Athens.”

“The FBI was watching me?”

“The CIA,” Lundgren said defensively. “Why was Dybrovik murdered? What did he do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he have something to do with Bormett?”

“He knew about him. But I don’t think Dybrovik was a part of it. He was just a grain man. Nothing more.”

“A Russian grain man with a Swiss bank account. A little unusual, wouldn’t you say?”

Newman said nothing.

“Sooner or later, it will all have to come out,” Lundgren said. “We know that you met with Dybrovik in Geneva a couple of months ago. And we know that you’ve set up quite a network of subsidiaries, although we haven’t got it all unraveled yet. And we know that you were selling the Russians a lot more than one million tons of corn. We know for a fact that you committed for at least five times that in futures. And I have a feeling that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What we don’t know, yet, is how all of this fits together.”

Newman was surprised at the extent of Lundgren’s knowledge, but then the man had the help of the FBI and CIA.

“I don’t know if it all does fit together,” Newman had said. “So if you are looking to me for answers, don’t.”

Lundgren had looked from the western sky to Newman and back, and he finally shook his head. He was angry. “I’m meeting with the governor in a few minutes. You wouldn’t care to come along and help out, would you?”

“There’s nothing I can do right now. But when you are ready to ask me some serious questions, and ready for the answers, I’ll be there.”

The subpoena had come thirty-six hours ago, and Newman had ordered Hansen not to seek a delay.

There were a few reporters at the Watergate when they pulled up. “Do you want to go around to the back?” Hansen asked, but Newman shook his head.

“I’ll see you in the morning, John.”

“I thought you’d come over for drinks and dinner tonight,” Hansen said.

“Not tonight.”

Hansen touched his arm. “I’m sorry about Lydia. We all are, Kenneth, but unless you pull yourself together, you may very well lose your business.”

“Maybe that would be for the best,” Newman said. “See you in the morning.”

“There’s a message for you at the desk, sir,” the doorman said.

Newman nodded, then crossed the lobby and stopped at the desk.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Newman,” the building security manager said. “You had a call on your personal service.” He handed Newman a slip of paper.

It was from Janice. She had telephoned about two hours ago.

He took the elevator up to his apartment, then telephoned the Marriott. Janice answered immediately.

“It’s me. Just got your note,” Newman said.

“I’d like to see you tonight.”

“I’m tired, Janice. Tomorrow is going to be a trying day.”

“I’m sorry about Lydia,” she said hesitantly.

“Where did you hear about it?”

“Sam Lucas. He told me. I am an employee, remember?”

Newman’s entire body ached. He could see Lydia standing in her office telling him to leave. He would never forget that scene.

“I’d like to talk to you before your hearing tomorrow morning,” she was saying.

“There’s nothing left to be said,” he snapped.

“I want to apologize… for the things I said when we were in Iowa. I… didn’t mean them.”

“Leave me alone…”

“Goddamn it, Kenneth, let me help,” Janice shouted.

“Christ,” Newman said, under his breath.

“Kenneth?”

“Can you take a cab over here, or do you want me to send a car?” Newman said.

“I’ll take a cab. Be there in ten minutes flat!”

Newman slowly put the phone down, wondering just what the hell he was doing. But then he thought back to another scene with Lydia… this one on an airplane on their honeymoon. He had stared at the stewardess, and Lydia had asked him if he didn’t prefer a simpler woman. He had told her no, at the time. But he had been lying. To himself, as well as her.

He took a quick shower, changed his clothes, and opened a bottle of wine. The security manager rang as he was laying out the glasses and said there was a Ms. Janice Wilcox to see him.

“Send her up,” he said, and he went to the door a minute later.

She got off the elevator, and when she saw him standing there she hesitated.

“Are you going to stand out there all night?” he asked.

Her face lit up, and she hurried up the corridor. “Oh, Kenneth.” She smiled. “I’m glad to see you.”

He didn’t know exactly what it was he was getting himself into, but it felt good, at last. Damned good.

For the rest of that busy fall and through the hectic, often grim months of winter, Newman recalled in detail those final hours preceding what came to be known as the Great Food Depression. Afterward, nothing was the same, nor would it ever be.

“We’re going to want the truth here, this morning, Mr. Newman,” Senator Abrahamson from New York said. “And if you don’t feel as if you can give that to us, then you might just as well get up and leave.”

Newman sat next to Hansen at the witness table in the crowded Senate hearing room. Janice had remained at the Watergate to watch the proceedings on television. Every few seconds a camera strobe would flash, and there was an almost constant murmur of conversation in here and out in the corridor.

Senator Abrahamson banged his gavel several times. “There will be order, or I will clear these chambers of spectators.”

The noise level dropped, and Abrahamson covered the microphone as he leaned over to talk with one of the other senators. A messenger had just come.

They seemed to argue, and a moment later the other four senators got up and came closer so that they could take part.

The noise level in the room rose even higher.

Finally Abrahamson turned forward and took his hand away from the microphone. “Mr. Newman, if you would step away from the witness table, there is someone in the private chambers who would like to consult with you before we proceed.”

Pandemonium broke loose in the room. Hansen grabbed Newman’s arm. “Stay here, Kenneth. I don’t know what’s going on, but stay here until we find out.”

Newman pulled away. “It’s all right, John. I have an idea what this may be about.”

“If you will just follow the page, Mr. Newman, he will direct you,” Abrahamson’s voice boomed.

All the reporters were talking and shouting at once, and Abrahamson was hammering his gavel.

Newman followed the page around to the back of the hearing chambers, down a short corridor, and into one of the conference rooms.

The President was there, perched on the edge of the table. Lundgren sat to his right, and to his left were two men whom Newman did not know. The page closed the door, and Lundgren made the hurried introductions.

“Bob LeMear, FBI, and Michael McCandless, CIA.”

Both men nodded in turn, but Newman said nothing. He had expected Lundgren and perhaps the CIA and FBI. But not the President of the United States.

“Let’s get quickly to the point,” the President said. “We don’t have much time.” The others nodded. “Mr. Newman, I’m going to ask for your complete cooperation. Do I have it?”

Newman barely nodded.

“Good,” the President said. “To begin with, nothing that’s said in this room will get out of here,” he said. “Do I make myself clear?”

Again Newman nodded. He knew what was coming. Or at least he felt he did.

“We need grain, Mr. Newman. Our corn shortfall will be in the range of two hundred million tons.”

“We’ve been set up, Mr. President,” Newman said. “It was a Soviet KGB plot. I’m sure the Russians are ready and able to help us out.”

The President looked directly at him. “Then you don’t know yet.”

Newman straightened up. “Know what, Mr. President?”

“About the failure of the Soviet crops, mostly wheat.”

“My God,” Newman said. “How extensive?”

“Very.”

“Then it backfired on Turalin,” Newman said. Turalin understood that his people could live on little more than wheat alone. Americans needed meat for their way of life. But Newman was also thinking now about the only other major corn producer in the word: Argentina. Her fields had been burned. Another Turalin plot?

“We want you to reorganize your company,” the President was saying.

Newman interrupted. “You don’t understand, Mr. President. With our corn gone, and the Russian wheat failed, there is no other crop in the world.”

“Argentine corn,” Lundgren started.

“The pampas farmers burned off their fields.”

“Canada?” the President asked.

“Wheat. Won’t replace our corn.”

“Europe?” McCandless asked.

“Europe can hardly feed her own people,” Newman said. “I can get bits and pieces here and there, Mr. President, but not two hundred million tons for us alone. The Soviets will need help, and so will the Argentines, as well as the countries they normally supply.”

“We’re certainly not helping the Russians,” Lundgren said, jumping up. “Christ, they brought this all on themselves.”

“We’re going to have to,” the President said calmly. The others looked at him. “Or it will lead to war.”

Newman heaved a sigh of relief. The President understood. At least one man understood.

Lundgren was clamoring about something, and the President finally turned to him, and said, “Shut up, Curtis. Just shut the hell up.”

“I…” Lundgren sputtered, but he clamped it off.

The President turned back to Newman. “Go ahead and tell Abrahamson and his bunch anything you want, except the truth. I don’t want to start a panic. When you’re finished, we’ll talk again.”

“This is going to have to be organized through the United Nations,” Newman said.

“What will be…” Lundgren started, but he shut up again when the President glared at him.

“It’s the only way we’ll be able to keep it fair.”

“Just one question,” the President said.

“Sir?”

“Is there enough food for everyone?”

“I don’t know, Mr. President. I don’t know.”