Heartland (28 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Heartland
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“In trade for what?” Newman asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know goddamned well what I mean, Janice,” he shouted. “You don't want a job with me. You want to pry into my business in the hopes it will lead to Paul's killers.”
Her lower lip was beginning to quiver. “You can't understand …”
“Oh, yes, I can!” he shouted. “But if you want your
father's murderer you're going to have to go to Buenos Aires. You're going to have to talk to my wife, and to a man named Perés, the chief of police down there. They're working hand in hand.”
“Kenneth …”
Newman was hurting. He felt as if a Mack truck had run over his brain. “You want to know about the Russians? Last week in Athens, Dybrovik, the head of Exportkhleb, was murdered by the KGB. They're probably going to be coming after me pretty soon, unless I continue to play ball with them.”
She didn't move or say a word.
“You want murders? How about one hundred and forty killed in New Orleans when the Cargill elevator blew up? Cargill, you should know, is one of my competitors. Then we have Gérard Louis Dreyfus. I met a KGB colonel who admitted he ordered Gérard's assassination. Louis Dreyfus was also one of my biggest competitors. How about Vance-Ehrhardt? Even being married to one of them didn't help. Jorge and his wife were kidnapped. They found them dead in a Buenos Aires apartment.”
Still Janice said nothing. But her eyes were wide, and she was shaking.
“They were all my competitors for a corn buy the Russians have set up with me. So why was Paul killed? It was an accident, Janice. Simple as that. The Vance-Ehrhardt family wanted me dead. They figured I was behind the kidnapping. For all I know, my own wife ordered my assassination.”
“Christ,” Janice said, and she started toward him as the telephone in the living room rang.
Newman took a deep breath, then went to answer it.
It was McCarthy from Abex.
“They're in the middle of a revolution down there, Mr. Newman! Half of Buenos Aires is in flames!”
“How'd it start? Who's behind it?”
“AP says it's the Montoneros in combination with low-level military personnel. The UPI and Reuters say it's a farmers' revolution.”
Janice had come into the living room and was watching him.
“Anything on the Vance-Ehrhardt estate, or on Lydia?”
“Not a thing, sir,” McCarthy said.
“Keep trying, then, and let me know the moment you hear anything else.”
“Yes, sir,” McCarthy said.
Newman hung up the phone and turned. Janice screamed, and the table lamp next to him exploded in a million pieces, plunging the room into darkness.
“Get down,” Newman shouted to Janice as he lunged to the right and ducked down behind an overstuffed easy chair. Another shot was fired from the window, the sound soft and springy, like the noise an airgun might make. Newman had his pistol out, the hammer cocked back.
The house suddenly was very still. Newman peered around the side of the chair toward the window. At first he couldn't see a thing, but then he thought he caught a movement.
“Kenneth,” Janice whimpered.
A third shot came from the window, and this time Kenneth caught the muzzle flash. He raised his own pistol and fired two shots, the noise deafening in the confines of the room. And then he waited, not at all sure whether he had hit his target.
The house was silent again for a moment, but then Newman heard a faint scratching sound. From outside. It was almost as if someone were digging outside the window.
“Janice? Are you all right?” he called softly.
“I'm all right. Did you get him?”
“I don't know,” Newman said, relieved. He crawled over to where Janice was crouched down by the arch from the vestibule. She was trembling. “I'm going outside to have a look.”
She grabbed him. “Oh, God, don't go out there.”
“We can't just stay in here like this. If someone heard the shots, they may have called the police. I don't want to have to answer any questions just now. Besides, I think it's possible I hit whoever it was.”
It was too dark for him to make out the expression on her face. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
“Be careful … boss,” she said.
He looked toward the window, but could see nothing except a lighter rectangle. He felt strange.
“Stay here,” he said.
In the vestibule he got to his feet and hurried around the stairs and through the kitchen to the back door.
There was no one out there, as far as he could tell, but that didn't mean much. The wide back yard led into a long line of thick hedges, and trees separating his property from the place up the hill. Half the Russian army could have been hiding in the shadows.
He didn't think there was anyone else waiting, though, and after all he had been through the gamble didn't seem to matter as much as it would have a month or two ago.
He stepped through the kitchen door and, gripping
the pistol in his right hand, tiptoed down off the porch and hurried around to the side of the house, where he pulled up short.
He could see the street from here. At the bottom of his drive, across the street, a car was parked. He could not see if anyone was inside it.
He hesitated in the shadows at the corner of the house, staring at the car, wondering what would happen when he moved out to the front, into plain view. Then he decided he was being overly cautious. If there had been more than one person out here, then more than one person would have fired. Or one would have come into the house through the back door. There had been just one killer out here.
Newman took a deep breath in an effort to clear the tightness in his chest and started up the side of the house toward the front. Sweat was beginning to form on his forehead. He was a businessman, not cut out for this kind of adventure, and he wondered why he hadn't called the police after all, and let them work it out. But what would he have told them? That he had been with a Russian in Athens who had been killed, and now he feared the KGB was after him?
The living room window was just around the corner. A dark bundle was lying in the bushes beneath it. Crouching low, Newman moved closer until he could see that it was a man. He had apparently tried to crawl away, making the noise Newman had heard in the house. But, Christ, he was dead now.
He flipped the dead man's coat open, being careful not to get any blood on his hands, and pulled out his wallet. He fumbled in his own pockets for his lighter, and when he had it lit he opened the dead man's wallet.
Inside, he could just make out the Russian and English printing on a plastic laminated card. The name was Votrin. Sigorny something. A correspondent with Tass, the Soviet news service. There was a Washington, D.C., address.
Newman flipped the lighter off. Bullshit, he thought, looking down at the man. It was a safe bet his real employer was Colonel Turalin.
KGB here. It meant they were after him. Turalin's people had killed Dybrovik, and now they meant to kill him. He turned and looked toward the car. This one must have come alone, expecting no trouble. After all he was a professional in this business. Newman was a grainman.
Newman stuffed the man's wallet back in his coat, then stood up. “Janice?” he called through the broken window.
“Kenneth? Is it … are you okay?”
“I'm all right. I'm coming around to the front door. I want you to open it for me.”
Janice stood at the open door, her eyes wide, her complexion pale. Her bottom lip was quivering again. “What happened?” she asked. Newman brushed past her into the house, and hurried down the corridor and through the side door into the garage, where he hit the door opener.
“What are you doing?” Janice asked. She had followed him.
“Upstairs in my study,” he said. “First door on the right. On my desk, you'll find my car keys. Go get them, please.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked. She was on the edge of hysteria.
“Do as I say,” Newman said firmly. “I'll explain everything in a little while.”
Hesitantly she stepped back away from the door, and then she was gone.
He hurried out of the open garage door and along the front of the house to the Russian lying in the bushes. Grabbing the heavy man beneath his armpits, he dragged him into the garage.
Some blood had leaked out across the driveway, so Newman uncoiled the hose and quickly washed the spots away.
He was replacing the hose as Janice came back to the kitchen door with the car keys. He took them from her, drove his car out of the garage, then came back inside and closed the garage door.
“Did you find whoever it was who shot at us?” Janice asked.
“Yes.” The body could not be seen from where she stood. “We have to get out of here.”
“What?” she said.
He stood looking at her. “You're going to have to trust me on this one, Janice. We've got to get the hell out of here tonight. Right now.”
She didn't say anything. But she was obviously frightened.
“I'm going upstairs to pack a few things.”
She stepped back, and he came into the house, closing and locking the door.
“Where are we going?” she asked, following him back into the vestibule.
“Wait here. I'll be right down,” he said, and he hurried up the stairs.
“Where the hell are we going?” she called up to him.
At the top he turned and looked back down at her. “Iowa,” he said.
It was about quarter to ten when Albert Straub pulled over to the shoulder, dimmed his headlights, and looked back the way he had come. He was less than two miles from his trailer in Dallas Center, but he just couldn't go on. It was as if something were pulling at him, yanking him back to the Bormett farm.
Will hadn't even seen him, although he had been standing there under the machine-shed light, as plain as day. Nor had he heard a thing. It was as if he had suddenly turned blind and deaf.
Will had been worrying around the place ever since he and Mrs. Bormett had returned from Russia. Cindy Horton had mentioned it just the other day. Said something about how Will had become snappish. It just wasn't like him.
Straub wasn't a bright man; he had never finished high school. But he did know farming, and he damned well knew Will Bormett. He'd been working on the Bormett farm almost as long as Joe and Cindy Horton. And he knew that something bad was eating at Will. The question was, would Will be needing some help?
In the distance, toward the east, there was a definite glow on the horizon over Des Moines. But back to the south, toward the farm and beyond it, there was nothing but the stars overhead, and darkness below.
Damned if he wasn't getting spooked, Straub thought. He eased his pickup truck in gear, flipped on his headlights, made a U-turn, and headed back.
Will might just have been preoccupied, but on the other hand he had never ignored a fellow before. That just wasn't the way Will did things … unless there was something really wrong.
He reached Highway 6 a few minutes later, and didn't
even slow for the stop sign as he squealed rubber around the corner. There was something wrong. Something badly wrong. The closer Straub got, the harder the feeling came down on him, almost like a crushing weight that took his breath away.
Straub pulled off the highway onto the access road that led down to the fertilizer tank farm. He'd take the east field road over the hill. It was a lot shorter.
The access road was heavily rutted, and twice his truck bottomed out on its springs. He swore out loud, but he didn't slow down.
About half a mile along, he could pick out the tanks, all clustered at the edge of the open field. Bormett's old pickup truck was parked there. Then Straub remembered. It was Wednesday night. Mrs. Bormett was at church. That meant Will had probably come out here to sort of look things over. Straub had always suspected the old man came out here on Wednesdays to hit the bottle, but he had never shared his suspicion with anyone else.
He parked alongside Bormett's truck and shone his flashlight into it. Bormett's keys were lying on the dash. That was strange.
Straub looked in the back of Will's truck. There was nothing unusual there. A couple of shovels and pitchfork, some rope, a few Lidacain mixing jugs. Nothing else.
Around the other side of Bormett's truck, Straub looked toward the cornrows. Had Will gone out there? He walked over, and there, just to the left, he could see where the first windbreak row had been disturbed. Will had gone out into the field. He was out there right now. Probably half drunk.
“Will!” Straub shouted. But there was no answer. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Will Bormett! It's me, Albert! Will Bormett!”
Still there was no answer, even though Straub was shouting loud enough to wake the devil, and he started to get spooked again.
He looked over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Will coming around one of the tanks, a whiskey bottle in his hand, wanting to know what the hell was going on. But there was nothing.
“Will?” he shouted halfheartedly. Damnation. What if something had happened to him? What if he had drunk too much and fallen down or something? Farm work was dangerous. A man could get hurt pretty bad, or killed, just like that.
Straub pushed through the first windbreak rows and headed down one of the cornrows, the dark feeling rising up harder and harder inside of him.
Anything could have happened, he told himself. “Will! Will Bormett!” he shouted again. Damn, he could be lying there with a busted back or a heart attack or something. It had happened before.
About two hundred yards into the field, Straub noticed something large and dark hunched up between cornrows to the left.
He turned that way, crashing through the cornstalks, pulling up short at the last moment, the beer he had drunk earlier this evening coming up. It was Will Bormett. He was lying on his back. Half the side of his head was gone, blood and gore were everywhere on his shirt collar and shoulders. He still held a gun in his right hand.
“Oh, Jesus,” Straub said, when he had finished
vomiting. “Oh, Jesus and Mary.” He turned and stumbled back up to the trucks. He'd have to call Joe and Cindy, 'cause sure as hell he couldn't go to Mrs. Bormett.
 
Janice did not want to be left alone, so when they stopped around 3:00 A.M., about fifty miles south of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Newman registered them as husband and wife at the Faribault Holiday Inn. He had talked for the better part of four hours, ever since they had left Duluth, telling her everything that had occurred from the moment he had been called away from his honeymoon to meet with Dybrovik outside Geneva until tonight. He spared no details, neither physical nor emotional. And at times, speaking with her, he could almost believe that it was Paul seated next to him, and they were going over the entire project to date.
She hadn't said much during the telling, except to ask a question or two now and then when she didn't understand something. When he was finished they rode in silence, thinking their own thoughts.
“We'll stop soon,” Newman had said finally. “If we get back on the road by eight, we'll reach Des Moines about noon tomorrow.”
“Lundgren is probably going to be coming after you to stop you from dealing with the Russians, and Turalin is after you to force you to continue,” she said.

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