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Authors: David Hagberg

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BOOK: Heartland
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Bormett thought about that for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “When I'm meeting with the State Department people, why don't you go out on the town and buy yourself something?”
“I couldn't,” she protested.
“Of course you can,” Bormett said, crossing to the telephone. “I'll call Finney now and see if there isn't someone who could go along with you. Sort of show you around the town.”
 
Later, Catherine described that first day in Washington
as a “whirlwind,” and even William had to admit to himself that it had been interesting. He and his wife had been treated with the utmost respect and interest.
At the State Department he was told nothing more than Finney had already told him: He was an American, and as such he would be representing all American farmers. The Russians had invited him because he was the best, and they hoped to learn as much from him as they possibly could.
Catherine, with the help of Finney's wife, had bought a lovely, offwhite cocktail dress, and they had gone on to meet the Vice-President and his wife.
Although Bormett had little or no regard for the present administration, he found the Vice-President a bright, amiable man who immediately impressed him with the statement that he, the Vice-President, was nothing more than a politician, whereas Bormett and men like him were much more important.
“The farmer has always been the backbone of this nation, Mr. Bormett,” he said. “All the computer companies, steel mills, coal mines, and oil wells would be totally impossible without the basic human necessity: food. Food, which you provide us.”
It didn't really matter that nowadays most of the Bormett corn was shipped to overseas markets; he was a supplier of food to a hungry world. His farm was a shining example of American knowhow and hard work.
Near the end of that pleasant meeting, Bormett had delighted everyone by admitting to the Vice-President that he had not voted for this administration, but if it was going to try for reelection, he'd be the first at the polls with his support.
Their flight was scheduled to leave the next afternoon
at 3:00, and the Bormetts went to bed early to get a good night's sleep. In the morning William was picked up by Finney, who took him over to a private dining room in the Department of Agriculture.
Bormett took an instant dislike to Secretary Lundgren.
“You're going to have to come to the understanding early on, Mr. Bormett, that the Russians are not, nor will they ever be, capable of farming the same way you do,” Lundgren began.
“How so?” Bormett asked innocently.
Lundgren smiled superciliously. “They don't have air-conditioned tractors to ride around in, with stereo systems, two-way radios, refrigerators for cold beer.”
Bormett could feel the color coming to his cheeks. “Tractors that pull twelve-bottom plows. Two-way radios in case of a breakdown so we can get a repair crew out there on the double. No beer boxes on my machinery.”
Lundgren sniffed and dabbed his lips with his linen napkin. “They'll never have twelve-bottom plows, or fifteen-thousand-acre farms, either. Nor will they ever understand agribusiness and marketing, not in their society.”
“I'm going over to speak with farmers …” Bormett began, but Lundgren cut him off.
“I beg your pardon. You are going to Moscow to speak with professors of agriculture. Book people who probably have never even seen a farm.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the highly polished mahogany table. “You will be a cultural exchange program. We send orchestras, they send dancers. We send farmers, they send engineers. As long as we're talking, we're not
shooting. Leastwise, that's the President's foreign policy in a nutshell.”
Lundgren, as far as Bormett was concerned, was insufferable. “Tell me, Mr. Secretary, were you raised on a farm?”
Finney had been drinking coffee, and he choked, sputtering and coughing.
“As a matter of fact, no, Mr. Bormett,” the Secretary said coldly. “I was born and raised in Chicago, and I attended Northwestern University. I am an attorney.”
“I see,” Bormett said, his voice equally cold. “I'll try not to embarrass this administration either in Moscow or back home.”
“I'm happy to hear that. When you return, I'd like to meet with you again. We can talk at greater length about what you learned.”
The large house high in the hills overlooked the magnificent harbor at the head of Lake Superior in Duluth. It had suited Kenneth Newman's needs as a grainman since the day he had moved here eight years ago. And in the weeks since he had brought his new bride here, it seemed to have suited her needs as well.
When he broke away from the Vance-Ehrhardt conglomerate, he had had his choice of any city in the world in which to work. New York would have been logical, as would Geneva or Paris or even Amsterdam. Those cities were financial centers.
Instead, Newman had chosen to live in a grain port where the commodities he dealt with would be ever present.
On the North American continent, he was left with three major grain ports: New Orleans at the mouth of
the Mississippi; Minneapolis at the navigable head of the great shipping river; or Duluth-Superior, the westternmost port on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Neither the climate nor the people of New Orleans suited Newman. Besides, Cargill had a very strong foothold in that city.
Minneapolis-St. Paul would have been fine, but Cargill all but owned that city as well.
Which left Duluth-Superior. The brisk climate suited Newman. The friendly, hard-working Scandinavian population suited him. And, best of all, the northern port city suited his willingness for a good, ongoing fight.
It had been touch and go, for as many years as anyone could remember, whether it was cheaper to ship grain to the river, load it on barges, haul it down to New Orleans, and then load it aboard grain ships, or cheaper to load the grain aboard trains at or near the farms, transport it to Duluth-Superior, and use the ultramodern handling facilities there to sort, grade, and load the grain directly aboard ocean-going ships.
For years the river-barge operators and railroad managements had been stimulating the agreement—and the business—with rate-schedule wars.
Competition like that was healthy for the grain business, he reflected this morning as he stepped out of the shower. But the explosion at Cargill's giant elevators in New Orleans, and Friday's gruesome murder of Gérard Louis Dreyfus by the French LPN, were the work of fanatics.
The world press had not yet made the connection between the two events, but Newman had. And the conclusions he drew worried him.
Without Gerard, the Louis Dreyfus clan's business would take years to recover. Already there had been a noticeable slump in the French and Mediterranean markets that would deepen as currently negotiated deals began to come to fruition.
Simply put, Gérard's assassination had placed a serious crimp on the European grain market. Georges André and the others would be hard pressed to remove it.
On this continent, Cargill's mammoth New Orleans elevator complex had been bigger in size and grain-handling capabilities than even the Duluth-Superior facilities. The destruction of that elevator would not ruin the gigantic Cargill Company, but it would seriously strain the firm's abilities to deliver grain that had been ordered and, in some cases, already paid for.
Which left South America, the third largest supplier of grain. Jorge Vance-Ehrhardt. If anything happened to Lydia's father, the results within the grain industry could be nearly catastrophic.
Back in his bedroom, as Newman began to dress, the worry that had been nagging him for the past day or two came again to the forefront of his mind: The fact was that the Newman Company stood to gain the most from it all.
With his secret Russian deal, he needed all the grain, and all the ships to transport it, that he could lay his hands on.
Louis Dreyfus was all but out of the picture, so he had almost the entire European grain market to himself, along with its shipping. With Cargill's New Orleans operation nearly shut down, grain that normally would have been shipped downriver would now be brought up
to Duluth-Superior.
And, if something should happen to Vance-Ehrhardt the world would become Newman's alone … or rather, Newman's and Dybrovik's.
He knotted his tie, put on his jacket, and went downstairs.
Lydia was waiting for him with the morning newspapers in the breakfast nook overlooking Lake Superior, the Aerial Lift Bridge, and the harbor far below.
She was staring out the window at a Japanese cargo ship just coming under the bridge into the harbor, and when he entered the room, she looked up with a start.
“Good morning,” he said. He went around the table, and they kissed.
“I was just going to send Marie to make sure you had gotten out of bed,” she said, smiling. She seemed a little peaked this morning.
“Are you feeling well?” he asked, taking his seat.
Marie, their housekeeper, came in before she had a chance to answer, set a plate of toasted English muffins on the sideboard, and poured his coffee.
“Good morning, Mr. Newman,” she said. “Will you be wanting breakfast this morning?”
“Just coffee, thanks,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Lydia was staring out the window again, and Kenneth reached across to touch her hand. She looked back at him.
“What is it?” he asked. “Are you bored here?”
She managed another smile. “No.”
“I've been terribly busy these past weeks, and I can't say that it'll get much better until fall. But afterward we
can go somewhere for a month or two. Perhaps back to Monaco to finish our honeymoon.”
She squeezed his hand. “It's not that, Kenneth. When I married you, I knew that you were a busy man.” She glanced again out the window. “Besides, I can always take a plane to New York or Europe or someplace if I want to.”
“That's an excellent idea. Why don't you call up some of your friends and go on a little holiday? London would be nice. Or even Sardinia.” Newman could hear how hollow his words were, yet he could not help himself. There were too many other things on his mind at the moment.
“I might go to Buenos Aires for a few days,” she said.
“You miss your father?”
“I'm worried about him.”
Her answer startled him, because he had been worried about him, too. “Isn't he feeling well? Have you spoken with him?”
“Come off it, Kenneth, for Christ's sake. You know goddamned well why I'm concerned,” Lydia snapped, her voice rising. “First it was Cargill, then Louis Dreyfus. My father may very well be next.”
“What about me?” Newman said, instantly regretting the petty, selfish remark. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.”
“I've hired a security service for you,” Lydia said coldly. “They're here now.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“No it's not. But my father will think so, and my mother is too weak to insist he take extra precautions when he travels. I'll have to go to him and make sure
he'll be all right. Unless you don't want me to go,” she said, looking pointedly into his eyes.
“Of course you should go if you want to, but I think you'd be going for all the wrong reasons. Call him first, then make your decision. See how he feels about Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.”
“And report back to you?”
Newman said nothing.
“Who did you meet in Geneva …” she started, but then she clamped it off. “No. Don't answer that. I don't want to know.” She shook her head. “He won't tell me anything over the phone, anyway.”
“Then maybe there is nothing to it. Maybe the two incidents were just coincidence.”
Lydia's eyes widened. “You've been thinking about it as well, haven't you?”
Newman nodded. “But the Cargill elevator was out there in the open for anyone to get to, and Gérard was never one for security precautions. On the other hand, your father lives and works on his estate. He's surrounded by staff and armed guards.”
“In a country whose tradition is violence and revolution,” Lydia countered.
“Speak with him first, before you go,” Newman said. He had visions of his wife becoming caught in an assassination attempt, and it frightened him.
She lowered her head. “I'll call him later this morning,” she said. She looked up. “Will you be late again tonight?”
“I'll try not to be. But call me at work as soon as you find out anything,” Newman said. He finished his coffee, kissed Lydia, and left the room.
In his study he grabbed his briefcase, went into the
garage, and started his small Mercedes.
Out on the street, two men dressed in business suits were waiting in a gray Chevrolet sedan. When Newman passed, they pulled away from the curb and fell in behind him.
It gave him a curious sense of security, having them behind him, and yet he resented the invasion of his privacy that they represented, and at a deeper level he felt they were unnecessary. Cargill here, Louis Dreyfus in Europe. Vance-Ehrhardt in South America, if his fears were justified, would complete the triangle.
If his fears were justified, it would mean the Russians were behind it, in which case Dybrovik's mammoth grain deal was nothing more than a plot to hit at Western grain merchants—the Newman Company in particular.
But why? Dybrovik was a shrewd businessman, who had always played it straight. If he was playing some kind of game, and it got out, the Soviets would be hard-pressed in the future to secure any licenses to purchase Western grain. They would be cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Newman's office was a modern three-story building of glass and steel next to the Port Authority terminal on the waterfront. He had built it shortly after he selected Duluth-Superior as his base; his business had expanded so rapidly that the once too-large building was now bursting at the seams with employees.
The parking lot was nearly full when Newman pulled into his slot and got out of his car. The gray Chevy pulled up beside him, and the two men jumped out and hurried around to him.
“Good morning, sir,” one of them said, while the
other scanned the lines of parked cars. “I'm Evans, from Tri-States Security. And this is Humphrey.”
“I'll be in my office for the remainder of the day,” Newman said, feeling a little foolish.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Coatsworth is there now. He'll explain the procedure to you.”
Newman nodded and went into the building. The reception area had a grouping of plants and modern furniture to the right, and the receptionist and telephone operator to the left.
This morning a large man was seated on one of the couches, and when Newman came in he nodded.
“Good morning, Mr. Newman,” the receptionist, a young, good-looking woman, chirped.
“Good morning. Is Paul here yet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have him come up to my office immediately.”
“Yes, sir. And there is a Mr. Coatsworth from Tri-States Security waiting to see you.”
“Upstairs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine,” Newman said. He went up to the third floor, where Paul Saratt was waiting for him with a huge man whose steel-gray hair was cropped military-fashion.
“Good morning, Paul,” Newman said.
“Morning, Kenneth. This is Rupert Coatsworth, Tri-States Security.”
Newman shook his hand. “Lydia told me this morning.”
“There are a number of things I'll have to discuss with you this morning, Mr. Newman,” Coatsworth said, his voice deep and booming. There was a bulge beneath his left armpit, and Newman realized with a start that the man was armed.
“Can't wait?”
“No, sir.”
“You might just as well sit in on this, Paul,” Newman said. He turned to his secretary. “Hold all my calls except for Geneva, Abex, and my wife.”
“Of course, Mr. Newman,” the woman said, and the three men went into Newman's office, which overlooked the terminal. A half-dozen foreign ships were tied up and loading.
“Evidently you do not feel our services are necessary, Mr. Newman,” Coatsworth said perceptively.
“My wife does.”
“And so do I,” Saratt said. “Lydia and I discussed it yesterday.”
“I'm busy this morning, so let's get immediately to the point,” Newman said. He would go along with this, for a few weeks. At that time he'd make the decision whether or not to continue.
“First, my people will need your complete cooperation.”
“As I said, I am a busy man, and I resent intrusions.”
“My people are as unintrusive as humanly possible, given the circumstances. But if something should begin to develop, I ask that you do exactly as my people instruct you. Your life could very well depend upon that single act.”
BOOK: Heartland
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