“Kenneth!” Janice called from the road again.
Newman started back, but stopped again as he looked down the cornrow. Why target a few fields around Des Moines, Iowa? If Turalin had planned this entire thing, why stop at just a few fields?
“Christ,” Newman swore. He pulled an ear from a stalk, then bolted down the cornrow and out to the road.
A county sheriff’s car was parked just behind Newman’s. A uniformed officer stood with Janice.
“Here he comes,” the deputy said, smiling. “Why don’t you come on up here, Mr…. Newman?”
Newman came up onto the road, and crossed over to them. “Where’s the nearest telephone I can use?”
The cop was taken aback. “In Adel, I suppose…” he started. “Just what the hell were you doing out in that field?”
Janice was looking at him, wide-eyed, her gaze flickering from his eyes to the ear of corn he was holding and back.
“And what the hell are you doing with that?” the deputy asked, pointing at the corn.
Without a word, Newman yanked back the husk to expose the rotted mess.
“Jesus H. Christ,” the deputy swore.
“The entire field is like this,” Newman said. “So is the Bormett field.”
“Bormett?” the deputy snapped. “What do you know about the Bormetts?”
“This — whatever it is — originated on the Bormett fields, and unless I’m way off, it’s airborne and spreading all over the place.”
“Jesus H….” the deputy said, and he let it trail off. “Just who the hell are you?”
“I’m a grain dealer. I came out to talk with Mr. Bormett, but we heard on the radio he was dead. Committed suicide. Now, will you get me to a telephone?”
“Who’re you going to call, your lawyer?” the deputy asked. He couldn’t keep his eyes away from the infected ear of corn.
“The Secretary of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. And I suggest that you get hold of your state Department of Agriculture and the governor. These fields are going to have to be burned off. Right now, before this spreads across the entire state.”
The deputy’s lips were working, but no sound came out. He glanced from the ear of corn to Newman and then out to the fields on both sides of the road. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said again. Then he turned back. “You’d better follow me. We’ll go back to the office in Adel.”
“Right,” Newman said. He laid the infected ear on the floor, in the back seat of his car, and as soon as Janice had gotten in, he made a U-turn after the deputy and took off after the flashing red lights.
“What is it, Kenneth?” Janice said in a weak voice.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Some kind of disease. And unless they sprayed this field as well as Bormett’s, it’s airborne.”
“Bormett’s field was infected?”
“That’s right.”
She turned in her seat to look at him. “Bormett went to the Soviet Union a few weeks ago.”
Newman glanced at her. “That’s also right.”
“Colonel Turalin,” she said, and she looked out at the cornfields. “But why would he do something like this? He wanted to buy the corn. Why kill it?”
“I don’t know, Janice. I just don’t know.”
Curtis Lundgren was just leaving his office when his secretary called him back. LeMear from the FBI had telephoned ten minutes earlier with some wild story about a dead Russian in Duluth. McCandless was coming over from Langley, and they were all supposed to meet at LeMear’s office. It obviously had something to do with Newman, but LeMear had not been very clear. He had sounded very upset.
“What is it?” he asked his secretary, stopping in the doorway.
“It’s an urgent telephone call, sir,” the woman said.
“Tell whoever it is that I’ll get back to them. I’m out now.”
“It’s Mr. Newman, sir.”
“Newman?” Lundgren sputtered. “I’ll take it in my office.”
“Yes, sir,” the secretary said.
Lundgren hurried back into his office, slamming the door behind him.
“This is Lundgren, now what the hell is going on and where the hell are you, Newman?”
“Listen to me, and listen to me closely, Lundgren, we’ve got a disaster on our hands out here, unless you move damned quickly.”
“What the hell is going on?” Lundgren shouted.
“I’m calling from Adel, Iowa… just outside Des Moines. Does the name Bormett mean anything to you?”
“Bormett,” Lundgren said. “Why of course. We sent him to the Soviet Union just…” He stopped. “My God. The Russians.”
“That’s right,” Newman said. “Bormett’s cornfields are infected with some kind of a disease. We’re calling the university to send someone over here to try and identify it. Meanwhile the infection has spread to at least one field five miles away.”
“I’ll call the governor. You may need the National Guard to help burn off the fields. Where are you?”
“The sheriff’s office in Adel,” Newman said. “And listen, Lundgren. Last night in Duluth, a Russian tried to kill me. You’d better call the authorities. His body is in my garage.”
“Right,” Lundgren mumbled. “Meanwhile, sit tight. I’m coming out there.”
29
Lydia Vance-Ehrhardt-Newman stood at the twentieth-floor window of the company building in downtown Buenos Aires, watching the villas miserias burn. The flames leaped high into the night sky, and the dense black smoke blotted out the stars toward the east. In other parts of the city she could see the flash of sporadic firing as Federal District troops continued to battle the Montonero freedom fighters.
“Libertad!” was their battle cry. Lydia shook her head. The libertad banners had suddenly appeared yesterday from rooftops, out windows, in the parks, along the beaches. It had been the signal for the revolution to begin.
She had been caught at work, and although the fighting hadn’t gotten this far yet, it was coming close. Before too long, unless the federal troops got help, she and the others would be cut off here in the Vance-Ehrhardt Building.
Most of her chief executives had already left the city. Many of them had even left the country, taking boats across the Río de la Plata to Uruguay, and airplanes to Brazil and Boliva.
Even now there was a steady stream of aircraft leaving the airport southwest of the city. As long as the federal troops held that district, the planes would continue to leave. But the troops could not hold too much longer; the Montoneros were too well organized, and too well equipped, and had at least the tacit support of the army, whose lower ranks remained in their barracks.
When this was over, Lydia thought, lighting a cigarette as she watched the fighting, the new government would probably nationalize all the businesses, including Vance-Ehrhardt. But even if they didn’t do that, they’d surely meddle with the pampas farm system, which was, of course, the lifeblood of the Vance-Ehrhardt conglomerate.
There would be little or nothing remaining in Argentina for the Vance-Ehrhardts, or at least there’d be nothing until the government stabilized and its leaders realized that a company is not merely a collection of buildings and a few employees. It needed leadership, expertise, and international connections. They would call back the executives, offering them certain advantages, and business would get back to normal.
Such a thing had happened before in Argentina, and it would happen again. Lydia was not overly worried. She was confident she could get to the airport before it was too late, and equally confident that she would return one day to resurrect Vance-Erhardt. But before she left Buenos Aires she wanted the answer to one question. She would not leave without it.