“It’s the creative ones who amass the fortunes, who build the bridges, or discover the oil, or make the deals,” the old man said. “Not the plodders.”
Newman stood at his window watching the crew clear the dunnage from the holds of a ship which had come in this morning for powdered milk, as he thought about himself and tried to justify what he was doing. There had been nothing creative or artistic about his work this day. Through BanLine Shipping, Inc., his subsidiary in Savannah, he had secured three bulk-cargo vessels to carry paper to New York and then come empty down the St. Lawrence to Duluth for corn.
Through Abex in New York he had hired a fourth vessel, carrying flour to Buffalo, to take on corn for shipment to Gdynia in Poland.
From Masters & Kildare, Inc., a nationally recognized farm-survey firm (another of his subsidiaries), he had received the first reports on corn futures in this country; Blencoe, S.A., out of Brussels, had promised its international futures survey within a couple of days.
He had read a report from TradeCon, his financial holding company in Zurich, that another $11.5 million had been transferred from Eurobank in Geneva, bringing the total to well above $20 million.
He had perused masters’ reports from eleven vessels now at sea carrying corn, heading toward seven different ports within the Warsaw Pact. He had studied the constantly fluctuating rate schedules of a dozen trucking firms, two river-barge companies, and the railroad.
The Teamsters here in Duluth-Superior were filing a series of grievances with the Port Authority that if left unchecked could blossom into a wildcat strike, so Newman had dictated a letter to Robert LaBatt, the Port Authority director, outlining his concerns and suggestions.
His secretary had secured an appointment for him with Secretary of Agriculture Lundgren at 2:00 P.M. tomorrow and had arranged for the company aircraft to be ready first thing in the morning.
One hour ago he and Saratt had put their heads together to come up with a list of people who would like to see the Newman Company harmed, and in particular Kenneth Newman himself put out of commission. It was a very short list. It did not include Dybrovik or the Russians.
And now it was the end of the day. Nothing essential had been accomplished that any one of his office people could not have managed nicely, and Newman felt a vague sense of dissatisfaction with himself and his work.
Such feelings were rare for him, and he had learned that they indicated he was on the wrong track; that he was ignoring some central problem. Yet he felt somewhat foolish that he had suggested to Saratt the possibility that the Russians were girding for a war.
Stop the deal, a voice at the back of his mind had nagged. Simply pull out. The easy part had been accomplished, or nearly accomplished. Within a month Exportkhleb would have its seven or eight million tons of corn. The big difficulties would come on the futures market, when other grain merchants began realizing that a significant portion of the available world crop had already been spoken for. The waves would begin then; the repercussions would spread like the shock from a nuclear blast. Prices would go wild. Shipping firms would revise their schedules sharply upward. But by then it would be too late. The damage would have been done. And if everything had been laid out correctly, it would be impossible to trace it back to the Newman Company.
They would be safe. In fact, they would scream market manipulation as loudly as everyone else.
It did not bother Newman that he was violating U.S. antitrust and licensing laws. Food was food, and as long as it was being used ultimately to feed people, it didn’t matter to him which people were fed. His job, as he saw it, was merely the redistribution of grain to wherever it was needed, and to make a profit as and where he could.
This deal with Dybrovik was profitable, there was no doubt about that, but the profits would not be excessive. Once the market went wild later this summer, corn prices would skyrocket, but by then he would have already sold his grain at the earlier, lower prices. The market profiteers would come later. They would be the ones to scream the very loudest.
Pull out? To what end, Newman asked himself as he stared blindly out the window. If his foolish fears were in fact groundless, he’d be the man who had backed out of the largest grain deal in history.
If he was right, however, and Exportkhleb was attempting to amass a crisis stockpile of food, then Dybrovik would not be deterred by Newman’s refusal to do business. He would simply go to the other independents.
He shook himself out of his contemplations, straightened his tie, grabbed his briefcase, and went out the door.
His secretary was getting ready to leave as well, her typewriter covered. She smiled. “Have a good trip to Washington,” she said.
“Thanks. Has Paul left for the evening?”
“I believe he’s still in his office,” she said, reaching for the telephone.
“Don’t call, I’ll stop down to see him on my way out.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman said.
Newman took the elevator to the ground floor, where his two bodyguards were waiting in the reception area. They jumped up when he appeared.
“I’ll be just a minute,” he said. He went into the trading room, where worldwide grain quantities and prices were constantly monitored, the figures flashed on overhead screens. The large room was mostly in darkness now. The basic work on the Russian purchase was being done by Newman Company subsidiaries around the world so that no suspicion would fall here.
Saratt was in his office at the rear of the room, talking on the telephone. He looked up as Newman came in, said something into the phone, then hung up and got to his feet.
“Ready to call it a day?”
“Just on my way out,” Newman said. “I’ll call you as soon as I finish with Lundgren tomorrow.”
“You’re not going to get much out of him.”
“Probably not, Paul, but it’s worth a try.”
Saratt stared at him for a long moment, the expression in his eyes a mixture of concern and skepticism. “You’re still worried about Dybrovik?”
Newman nodded. He found himself at this moment unable to share with his old friend the extent of his concern. “If we could get any kind of an indication of the expected Russian corn crop, it’s help.”
“The President has signed the grain extension with the Russians.”
“That’s small stuff, and it’s in addition to what we’re selling them,” Newman said.
“Then I don’t know what you expect to get from Lundgren. If the President is convinced the Russians need only ten or fifteen million tons of grain — a big mix, including wheat — then they must believe the Russian shortfall will be normal.”
“Which would prove my point. If they only need ten or fifteen million tons, why order that as well as what Dybrovik wants us to supply?”
Saratt got up and came around his desk to where Newman stood just within the doorway. “We’ve been friends for a number of years, Kenneth. At the risk of straining that friendship, I have to tell you that you are running scared. I don’t think it’s just the grain deal with Dybrovik. There’s something else eating at you.”
“Lydia hasn’t been involved in this at all,” Newman flared.
“I didn’t mention her name, but since you did I must tell you that she—”
Newman cut him off. “Don’t say it, Paul. I told you once before that I wanted you to do whatever you thought was necessary to protect our business, but if it involved Lydia, never to mention it to me.”
“Goddamn it, can’t you see what’s happening to you?”
“I can see what’s happening to us, and I don’t like it,” Newman said harshly, and he could see that the comment had hurt his old friend.