“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.