For several long minutes, Bormett sat in bed, sipping his coffee and thinking with great shame of what he had done last night. In all his years with Katy he had never been unfaithful. Not once. Until now.
He dragged himself out of bed, showered and dressed, and went downstairs.
At the university, Dr. Lubiako was in his office waiting for him, a bright smile on his face.
“Good morning, my old friend,” he boomed jovially. “How do you feel?”
“Not well,” Bormett said, sitting down. “I would like to talk with you.”
“Of course, and I with you, but at this moment there is someone else here who would very much like to speak with you.”
Bormett started to rise.
“No, no,” Lubiako said, getting to his feet. “You stay here and use my office. I will go fetch our visitor, and you two can have a nice long talk. Afterwards, I believe you will be meeting your wife for lunch.”
Lubiako went out, and a few seconds later a little man with large dark eyes and a swarthy complexion came in, a smile on his face. He was dressed in some kind of uniform, and he carried a manila envelope.
“Good morning, Mr. Bormett,” he said.
“Good morning, Mr….” Bormett trailed off.
“My name is of no importance.” The little man perched on the edge of the desk just a foot away from Bormett. “I think I will be able to offer some assistance to you.”
Bormett had a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. Whatever it was the little man was going to tell him wasn’t going to be pleasant.
“I’ve come to see you this morning because I would like to do a little horse trading with you. I think that is the proper term.” The little man opened the manila envelope and extracted a dozen large glossy photos. He handed them to Bormett, whose heart nearly stopped.
They were pictures of him and Raya in bed. He looked ridiculous in one of the shots; he looked disgusting in some of the others.
Katy could never be allowed to see these. Never in a million years. It would be the end of their marriage. The end of everything. He glanced up. “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.”
NIGHTMARE
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
“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.”