‘Supposing Protter draws a blank?’ asked Peter. ‘I mean – supposing we can’t stop it, and the crops really do get wiped out?’
‘Well, there’s another little job for you. Call Frank Edison, and check the nation’s food storage situation. Government stocks, private silos, military supplies – anything and everything. Then talk to some of the top supermarket people, and work out an estimate of how long their shelf supplies would be likely to last under crisis conditions.’
Peter jotted down a few notes. ‘You want a picture of the worst that could possibly happen?’
‘That’s right,’ said Senator Jones. ‘But don’t go scaring anybody. If they want to know why you’re asking, just tell them it’s for a federal contingency plan, in case of freakishly bad weather.’
Peter said, ‘Isn’t anyone else getting reports of this blight? I would have thought the president would have wanted a brief by now.’
‘Oh, that’s already been done,’ said the senator. ‘I sent him a personal memorandum this morning, telling him that, yes, we had problems with a new and unexpected blight in Kansas and North Dakota, but that all of our top agricultural scientists were working on it, and they were only hours away from cracking the problem wide open. I admitted there were outbreaks of blight in Iowa and Oregon and parts of Washington, but I told him that considering the humidity, they weren’t unexpected, and we didn’t anticipate a serious shortfall in output.’
‘So you’re not getting any flak from the White House?’
‘Not yet. It’ll come, but not yet.’
‘Don’t you think you ought to do something about Dr Benson? I mean – he could be talking to the newspapers now.’
‘I’ve been considering that,’ said Senator Jones. ‘I think I might send Della over to Wichita to have a quiet word with him. Tell him how important it is for scientists not to scuttle around panicking everybody. I was going over to Fall River at the week-end in any case – I can send her on ahead.’
‘And Hardesty? What about him? If he doesn’t get any response from you, he’s likely to blow the whistle.’
‘Hardesty is a professional pain in the ass,’ breathed the senator. ‘But I still want to have him as my Kansas Farmer figurehead. He’ll be good copy. The young, dedicated, second-generation wheat farmer. And if he’s been as hard hit by this blight as he says he has, he’s going to be glad of a few extra dollars. Maybe I’ll get Della to talk to him, too. She’s good at sizing people up.’
Peter was tempted to answer, ‘You can say that again, Senator,’ but he held his tongue. ‘Do you want me to call him back?’ he asked Shearson.
‘Yes, do that. Do that right away. I made a mistake once, years ago, in some political scandal you won’t even remember. I took care of all the big people but I forgot about the little people. And if you’re not careful, it’s the little people who can put you under.’
Peter wrote down two more fines of notes, and then he said, ‘Okay, Senator. I’m sorry I disturbed you. Maybe we can meet up later and I’ll put you in the picture on the food supplies.’
‘Good,’ said Shearson. ‘And for Christ’s sake keep this as quiet as you can. Until those donations have cleared the bank, we’re still running on the skyline. You understand me?’
Peter glanced at the anti-bug light beside his telephone. ‘Yes, Senator,’ he said, crisply.
Peter put down the phone, and as he did so, Karen FortunofF put her phone down, too. Within a few seconds, there was a buzz from Peter’s office, and a fight flashed on her handset.
‘Yes, Mr Kaiser?’
‘Ah, Karen. Get me my mother on the phone, will you?’
‘Now, Mr Kaiser?’
‘Now, Karen. That’s if you don’t mind.’
Karen dialled the Wellington Hotel, and waited while the dialling-tone warbled. Then she heard Peter’s mother say, ‘Mrs Kaiser’s suite. Who’s calling?’
‘It’s your son for you, Mrs Kaiser. Hold on, please.’
She put the call through to Peter’s desk, but again she clamped her hand over the mouthpiece and listened in.
‘Mother?’ she heard Peter asking.
‘What’s the matter, dear? I have Mrs Kroger here for tea.’
‘Mother, this is very important. I want you to listen, and I want you to do exactly as I tell you.’
‘Peter, dear, what on earth’s the matter? You sound quite peculiar.’
‘Listen, Mother, I sound quite peculiar because it could be that something quite peculiar is just about to happen. I’ve got wind that we could be suffering some very severe food shortages over the coming winter.’
Mrs Kaiser sounded perplexed. ‘Food shortages? What do you mean? I haven’t heard anything about food shortages. I don’t eat much anyway. I’m on a diet.’
‘Mother, I know all about your diet. But you still have to eat something. And the way these shortages are shaping up, it looks like there may be hardly anything to eat at all, except canned stuff, and frozen stuff, and maybe meat.’
‘Peter – are you sure?’
‘I wouldn’t be calling you if I wasn’t sure. Now, listen, will you, and stop asking questions. I want you to call Mr Parker at the general store in Connecticut – yes, that Mr Parker – and I want you to ask him how much he wants for all of the foodstuffs in his store. Yes, Mother, all of them. Canned foods, dried foods, flour, TV dinners, everything. The whole damned stock, except for the toys and the corn dollies and the cigarettes. Right. Then I want him to drive the whole lot up to the house at Litchfield and get the key from Mrs Lodge and store everything in the cellar. Tell him to buy a couple of new deep-freezers if he needs to. Just make sure the whole contents of that general store are tucked away in our house, that’s all.’
There was a long silence. Then Peter’s mother said, ‘Are you feeling all right, dear? You’re sure you’re not running a temperature?’
‘Mother!’ snapped Peter. ‘Will you just do what I tell you to do? It could be a matter of life or death! Your life or death!’
‘Peter, I hardly think—’
‘What you hardly think and what’s actually happening are two different things, Mother. Sixty per cent of the wheat crop in Kansas has been wiped out by disease in two days. A third of the corn and soybean crops in Iowa are going down with the same blight. We’ve got tomatoes rotting in Florida, grapes rotting in California, broccoli dying in Oregon, potatoes going mouldy in Idaho… this whole damned country’s been hit by the biggest crop failure ever.’
‘Well, dear, I’ve heard about the wheat. That was on the news today. But nobody’s said anything about tomatoes, or broccoli. I’m not particularly fond of broccoli, in any case.’
‘Mother—’ said Peter, in a bottled-up voice.
‘Oh, very well dear. I’ll call Mr Parker. I’m sure he’s going to think that I’m quite mad. Shall I tell him to make sure to stock up again, because of the shortages?’
‘Don’t tell anybody anything. The whole reason I want you to call Mr Parker is because he doesn’t know I work for Senator Jones. It’s important we don’t start a panic, otherwise everybody’s going to start stock-piling food and the shortage is going to be even worse.’
‘I see, dear. All right. Can I tell Mrs Kroger?’