“Let’s get quickly to the point,” the President said. “We don’t have much time.” The others nodded. “Mr. Newman, I’m going to ask for your complete cooperation. Do I have it?”
Newman barely nodded.
“Good,” the President said. “To begin with, nothing that’s said in this room will get out of here,” he said. “Do I make myself clear?”
Again Newman nodded. He knew what was coming. Or at least he felt he did.
“We need grain, Mr. Newman. Our corn shortfall will be in the range of two hundred million tons.”
“We’ve been set up, Mr. President,” Newman said. “It was a Soviet KGB plot. I’m sure the Russians are ready and able to help us out.”
The President looked directly at him. “Then you don’t know yet.”
Newman straightened up. “Know what, Mr. President?”
“About the failure of the Soviet crops, mostly wheat.”
“My God,” Newman said. “How extensive?”
“Very.”
“Then it backfired on Turalin,” Newman said. Turalin understood that his people could live on little more than wheat alone. Americans needed meat for their way of life. But Newman was also thinking now about the only other major corn producer in the word: Argentina. Her fields had been burned. Another Turalin plot?
“We want you to reorganize your company,” the President was saying.
Newman interrupted. “You don’t understand, Mr. President. With our corn gone, and the Russian wheat failed, there is no other crop in the world.”
“Argentine corn,” Lundgren started.
“The pampas farmers burned off their fields.”
“Canada?” the President asked.
“Wheat. Won’t replace our corn.”
“Europe?” McCandless asked.
“Europe can hardly feed her own people,” Newman said. “I can get bits and pieces here and there, Mr. President, but not two hundred million tons for us alone. The Soviets will need help, and so will the Argentines, as well as the countries they normally supply.”
“We’re certainly not helping the Russians,” Lundgren said, jumping up. “Christ, they brought this all on themselves.”
“We’re going to have to,” the President said calmly. The others looked at him. “Or it will lead to war.”
Newman heaved a sigh of relief. The President understood. At least one man understood.
Lundgren was clamoring about something, and the President finally turned to him, and said, “Shut up, Curtis. Just shut the hell up.”
“I…” Lundgren sputtered, but he clamped it off.
The President turned back to Newman. “Go ahead and tell Abrahamson and his bunch anything you want, except the truth. I don’t want to start a panic. When you’re finished, we’ll talk again.”
“This is going to have to be organized through the United Nations,” Newman said.
“What will be…” Lundgren started, but he shut up again when the President glared at him.
“It’s the only way we’ll be able to keep it fair.”
“Just one question,” the President said.
“Sir?”
“Is there enough food for everyone?”
“I don’t know, Mr. President. I don’t know.”
The great agricultural center of America, where spacious skies overarch mile upon mile of amber fields of grain.
The Russians want it. They’ll stop at nothing to get it.
This year they’ve found their weapon.
It will destroy far more than the target — unless one man can stop them.
A novel as real as today’s headlines—
As terrifying as the end of the world….
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID HAGBERG is the author of Last Come the Children (Tor Books, 1982) and, as Sean Flannery, the author of The Hollow Men, The Trinity Factor, The Kremlin Conspiracy, and Eagles Fly, among other novels.
A native of Duluth, Minnesota, David Hagberg lives with his wife on the Gulf Coast of Florida and spends as much time as possible aboard their twenty-foot sloop.