Heartland (14 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Heartland
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“Dybrovik wants to purchase a lot of corn from us, in addition to the deal the President has already agreed to. I want to know what the Russians' actual corn shortfall is projected to be. Lundgren should have that information.”
“Won't that tip him off that you're up to something?”
“I don't think so. Officially I'm coming to him to inquire about grain licenses with the Soviets. It's information I'd have to know in order to do business with them.”
After a moment's hesitation, Lydia had said, “I could probably get that information from Grainex for you.”
Grainex was the Vance-Ehrhardt subsidiary in New York City. Like all the larger grain firms, Vance-Ehrhardt, Ltd., had its network of friendly informants within the world's grain-trading bureaus. It was one of the methods of doing business. But among the top half-dozen top companies, Vance-Ehrhardt's information-gathering capabilities were second to none.
“I couldn't ask you to do this,” Newman had said, although it was exactly what he had wanted. His deceit, even now, gave him a deep pang of guilt.
“I'll take the plane to New York while you're meeting with Lundgren.”
“I'll come up on one of the commuter flights,” Newman said.
“Between us we'll find out what's happening.”
“Are you sure you want to do this, Lydia?” he had asked a dozen times, and each time she assured him she did.
But now in the airplane, facing her, he could see that she was deeply troubled, and he was sorry that he had involved her. Their relationship was a fragile one at best, and he feared now that he had probably strained it badly.
“I should be up in New York by eight at the latest,” he said.
“I'll stay at the Plaza. We can have dinner in our room. We'll have a lot to talk about,” Lydia said with a tiny sigh.
Newman took her into his arms, and held her close for a few moments. “I'm sorry, Lydia,” he said softly.
“Don't be. You're a grain trader. I knew that when I married you. We practically grew up together. And I love you
for
it, not
despite
it.”
It was night again, cold and very damp, deep in the forests along the Paraná River. Far to the southeast was Buenos Aires, to the northeast the border with Uruguay, and ten miles to the northwest the Vance-Ehrhardt estate.
Juan Carlos crawled wearily out of his sleeping bag and pulled on his boots before he unzipped the tent flap and crawled outside.
They had been expecting to remain in position for two days. But that had stretched to eight, and it was already July 6. Unless they received their signal to begin this night, it would go into the ninth day. Juan Carlos did not know if he or any of them could stand that.
In the dim light he could see Teva and Eugenio seated around the small kerosene heater, smoking and talking. Although he could not quite hear what they were saying,
he could tell by Teva's gestures that she was excited. But then, she was always excited about something.
He relieved himself behind the tent, and he went over to them. They looked up as he approached. Teva's face was bright, and Eugenio's eyes were wide. They were smiling.
“What is it?” Juan Carlos asked.
“It came,” Teva bubbled. “We have our signal. We got it tonight.”
“The message came? You're sure?” Juan Carlos asked. His bowels suddenly felt loose.
“Just half an hour ago,” Eugenio said. “We leave tonight at ten, and strike at one.”
“Why didn't you wake me up?” Juan Carlos demanded. It was he who should have taken the message. He was the field commander here.
“Take it easy, Juan,” Teva said, reaching up for his hand and pulling him down. She gave him her half-smoked cigarette, and Eugenio poured him a cup of very black, very bitter coffee.
“We wanted to let you sleep as long as you needed to. All of us will need our strength, but especially you,” Eugenio said. He was smiling, and for just a moment Juan Carlos wondered if his old friend wasn't being sarcastic. But then the moment passed.
“It is only eight-thirty,” Teva said. “We still have an hour and a half before we have to move out. There is plenty of time.”
“The others are still asleep?” Juan Carlos asked, looking over his shoulder.
Teva nodded.
“Good. We will let them sleep for another half-hour,” Juan Carlos said, somewhat mollified. At least
he hadn't been the last to find out that this would be the night of action. He took a deep drag on the cigarette, then sipped at the coffee.
There were seven of them here, including Juan Carlos, Teva, and Eugenio, and seven aboard the river boat that would at this moment be heading up the Parana toward the Vance-Ehrhardt estate. Two complete cells. Two fighting units, dedicated selflessly to one goal: liberty for Argentines.
Juan Carlos smiled to himself as he thought about the political lectures and jargon. Classrooms and books were one thing, but this now—action in the field—was what it was really all about.
Teva and Eugenio were both looking at him when he glanced up out of his thoughts. He grinned. “It is a good thing we are doing tonight … striking a blow for liberty.”
“The fucking pigs will run in fear when we are done.” Teva spat out the words, her eyes locked suddenly into Juan Carlos'.
He knew the look, and he nodded as he stubbed out the cigarette and put his coffee down.
Without a word he and Teva got to their feet and went back to his tent, where they crawled inside. Juan Carlos zipped the flap.
Teva was breathing hard. Her nostrils flared as she pulled off her fatigue jacket and then her olive-drab T-shirt, exposing her small, firm breasts.
“Hurry, Juan,” she said urgently as he began tearing off his clothing. “Jesus and Mary, I need you. Now!”
When they were both nude, they fell into each other's arms on the sleeping bag, and she went crazy, kissing him all over his body, taking him in her mouth, running
her tongue around his testicles until he was almost ready to come.
He pushed her over on her back, and bit hard on her breasts as she held his head between her hands, and then he was inside her, penetrating deeper than ever before, her legs up very high, her knees up under his armpits.
He reached under her and grabbed her buttocks, pulling them up to meet his thrusts; faster and harder until her body went rigid, and she let out a stifled scream at the same moment he came, the pleasure coursing through him in waves that seemed as if they'd never end.
When they were finished, they lay in each other's arms, sharing a cigarette. Their coupling had always been harsh and very quick, but afterward they would be tender with each other.
“Juan,” she said, “do you ever think about dying?”
He looked at her. “All the time,” he said softly. “I know that I won't live to be an old man and have grandchildren and sit in the sun at the park.”
“That doesn't really bother me,” she said after a moment or two of reflection, “even though I know it is probably true.” She raised herself on one elbow, her breasts rising and falling as she breathed. “But if something should happen to either or both of us tonight, I want you to know that I love you.”
Juan Carlos smiled. “Nothing will happen to us, Teva, not tonight. But when it does, I want you to know that I love you, too.”
“Thank you,” she said, lying back.
 
They headed out at 10:00 P.M. sharp, after dismantling the tents and heaters, and burying them away
from the camp in the forest. They would no longer be needing them.
Each of them carried an Israeli Uzi submachine gun with its folding stock and several extra forty-round clips of ammunition, plus four F31 American fragmentation grenades. They were dressed in British commando camouflage fatigues and wore American jungle-combat boots.
Juan Carlos, carrying the two-channel radio the little man had supplied them, took the lead. Within fifteen minutes they had settled into a quiet, distance-consuming pace, roughly parallel to and a mile up from the river.
As they marched, he reviewed each step of their penetration of the Vance-Ehrhardt estate. At their second meeting, the little man had produced a scale model of the estate, pointing out the routes in and out, Jorge Vance-Ehrhardt's private quarters, and the relationship of the main house to the other buildings, the river, and the airstrip to the north.
There were armed guards on the grounds and within the main house itself, he had told them, but fourteen trained soldiers, armed with grenades and automatic weapons, would cut through them with little or no trouble.
“The difficulty in this assignment is getting to Vance-Ehrhardt without harming him,” the little man had said. “If he is killed, his value to you as a hostage will of course be ruined.”
“We're not going to let him live,” Juan Carlos had protested.
“Of course not,” the little man had replied. “But we must get him out alive in order to make the recordings
of his pleas for mercy. Afterward, when he has served his purpose, he will be disposed of.”
They had all smiled at such brilliant logic and looked forward to setting their plans into motion. That time had come at last, and Juan Carlos could feel the old combination of fear and pride marching with him.
Around 11:00 P.M., they stopped for their last cigarette and something to eat, as an airliner from Buenos Aires roared far overhead on its way north, probably to Miami.
Before too long now, Juan Carlos thought, he and Teva would be on such an airplane. Only they would be traveling to Libya, to safety, to a heroes' welcome.
He could almost taste that welcome now, the anticipation was so intense within him. Afterward, after a long vacation, they would receive more training, and they would be given another assignment. Possibly back in Argentina, but possibly in another part of the world.
“You must always remember, Juan Carlos,” his Libyan instructor had told him, “that liberty is not exclusively an Argentine word. It is the international battle cry.”
After this evening, then, he and Teva and possibly Eugenio would be joining the international fraternity of terrorists. The prospect filled Juan Carlos with a huge sense of importance.
“Are we ready?” Eugenio asked at his shoulder, and he looked up, then nodded and got to his feet.
“From this point on there will be absolutely no noise, he said to the group.”No talking, no noise whatsoever. Each of you knows his or her job. The strike begins at one o'clock A.M. By one-thirty, we should be well away, and by three-thirty back to our camp for the rendezvous
with the helicopter.”
“Libertad,”
Teva said softly after a moment of silence.
“Libertad,”
they all repeated, and Juan Carlos headed out, Teva directly behind him, Eugenio bringing up the rear.
 
It was nearly one in the morning, and although Jorgé Vance-Ehrhardt was tired, he had not been able to sleep all night. For the past hour or so, he had been sitting out on the south veranda, smoking and sipping a light red Portuguese wine.
From behind the house, away from the river, he could hear the horses in the stables snorting from time to time, and in the opposite direction, toward the forest, the occasional night hunting cry of a jungle bird.
Vance-Ehrhardt had many things on his mind this night, chief among them his daughter and her husband. His people at Grainex in New York City had telephoned this afternoon with the disturbing news that Lydia had visited their statistical crop-survey department. They had, of course, told her she would have to get authorization for any inquiries directly from her father, and all evening he had expected her to telephone. But she hadn't.
The most disturbing aspect of the entire situation was not Lydia's obvious wish to help her husband in his business by making use of her Vance-Ehrhardt birthright; it was the nature of the information she was seeking. She had asked for Soviet crop projections, especially corn.
Rumors had been flying of a large Soviet grain buy. No one, not even Grainex, had been able to verify the
rumors, nor were they able to pinpoint who was doing the buying.
But someone was active—overly active. And Lydia's visit suggested that it was Newman.
Even thinking about the ingrate raised Vance-Ehrhardt's blood pressure. Newman had stolen the Vance-Ehrhardt respect, some of its business, and finally Lydia.
He shook his head sadly. The fact of the matter was, he still liked and respected Newman. It was a terrible burden he carried.
He got tiredly to his feet. At the edge of the veranda, he leaned his weight against the marble balustrade and stared out toward the jungle, although he wasn't really looking at anything in particular. Instead, his mind had turned to another worrisome topic—violence. The explosion at Cargill's New Orleans facility and the brutal murder of Gérard Louis Dreyfus.
Both the elevator and the man had been vulnerable; both had been needlessly exposed to just that kind of risk. And yet, what kind of sick world was this in which a man and his achievements could not be safe?
Here in Argentina, everyone understood violence. It was a nation of violence, on a continent of violence. But Europe and North America were different. Supposedly more civilized.
Vance-Ehrhardt sighed deeply, then turned back into the house, passing Alberto, one of the outside guards he had put on two days ago.
“Good evening, sir,” the man said, but Vance-Ehrhardt was lost in thought and did not hear him.
Inside, he trudged upstairs to his second-floor bedroom, where he crawled into bed next to his wife, Margarita, who was sound asleep.
The Cargill elevator, the murder of Louis Dreyfus, and now Lydia's strange inquiries; all those troublesome thoughts intertwined in his mind as he tried for sleep.
Moments later, an explosion shattered the still night air, followed closely by the sound of gunfire. Vance-Ehrhardt, his heart racing, jumped up from the bed, threw on his robe, and got his loaded automatic from the nightstand.
“Jorge?” his wife cried out. “What is it?”
“Stay there,” Vance-Ehrhardt snapped, heading out the door. “No matter what happens, don't come out of this room.”
 
Juan Carlos had waited with his people at the edge of the forest until the explosion on the river had come, and seconds later he led them directly across the wide lawn.
They had expected little or no resistance from outside the house, but within the first thirty seconds Eugenio and one of the others had gone down, and the rest of them had taken refuge behind the statues that dotted the lawn.
Without hesitation, the others laid down a heavy line of fire along the front of the house, tossing the fragmentation grenades, which sprayed a huge area with deadly shrapnel. Juan Carlos switched the radio first to Channel A, which was monitored by the waiting helicopter crew, and then to B, which was being monitored by the cell on the river, and shouted the contingency code: “Helpmate one! Helpmate one!”

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