Heartland (29 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Heartland
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“Something like that.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Find out what the hell Dybrovik was trying to tell me about the Bormett farm.”
“Somewhere in Iowa.”
“That's right.”
“I'm scared, Kenneth,” she said. “Don't leave me alone tonight.”
Inside the motel room he made sure the lock was secure, he flipped the deadbolt, and hooked the chain. If someone wanted to get in, he could; but he'd make a hell of a racket in the effort.
When Newman turned around, Janice was staring at him. “Why don't you go to bed, Janice. You look all in. Tomorrow will be a big day.”
“What if you find something on this farm? What then?”
“Depends upon what it is,” he said.
“But surely you're through dealing with the Russians?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Maybe? What the hell are you talking about, Kenneth?
Maybe?
”
“If there is starvation in the Soviet Union, I'll supply them with corn. I'm not going to let people starve to death.”
“Dybrovik said that was a lie.”
“As far as he knew. I want to make sure.”
She hesitated. “I don't understand you,” she said finally.
“No, I don't expect you do. It's the grain business.”
“Doesn't it matter whom you sell it to?”
“Not at all, as long as it's used ultimately to feed people. That's why the farmers grow it, and that's why I buy and sell it. To feed people. Simple.”
“It's not simple, Kenneth. Not when people start getting killed.”
“Your father understood.”
“My father is dead,” she flared, and went into the
bathroom and closed the door. Almost immediately Newman could hear the shower running.
The Bormett farm in Iowa is the key, Dybrovik had said. Today they would know.
They crossed into Iowa about 9:20 A.M., after stopping for breakfast outside Albert Lea. Last night in Duluth Newman had been running on adrenalin, but this morning it was hitting him like a ton of bricks that he had killed a man. It was incredible. Things like this just did not happen.
It was a beautiful morning, bright and warm, only a few puffy clouds scudding across from the west. Once in Des Moines, he figured, he would check with the state Department of Agriculture to find out where the Bormett farm was located. Even if it was on the far western side of the state, they would be able to reach it by late this afternoon.
Dybrovik thought it was important. So important that his last words had been about the place. But Newman could think of no way a single farm could have
any significant effect on Turalin's plans. It just didn't make any sense.
He tried to reason it out. The Russians wanted corn. A hundred million tons of it, or more. An unprecedented amount. Turalin claimed there would be starvation in the Soviet Union without it. Dybrovik, on the other hand, claimed that Turalin was lying.
Market manipulation was the first thought that had occurred to Newman. The Russians were purchasing corn now at low prices. When the market rose enough because of the heavy buying—and corn was already up more than seventy-five cents a bushel since spring—the Russians would resell, making a huge profit at the expense of the American consumer. Logical. But Dybrovik said it was worse than that, and he had hinted at some deep, dark plot.
“I'm sorry about last night,” Janice said, breaking into his thoughts.
He glanced over at her. She had said little or nothing ever since they had left the motel this morning.
“I'm not,” Newman said. He reached over to caress her cheek, but she pulled away.
Last night, after she had gone into the bathroom, Newman had lain down on top of the bedcovers and was just about asleep when Janice, wearing nothing, came out of the shower and crawled onto the bed with him.
“I'm frightened,” she had said in a little girl's voice. “Please hold me, Kenneth.”
They had made love, slowly, gently, as if they had been making love for years. Afterward they had fallen asleep in each other's arms.
This morning, when Newman awoke, Janice was already up and dressed, sitting in front of the TV,
smoking a cigarette.
“It's late,” she had said. “If you want to make it to Des Moines by noon, you'd better get up now.” She stubbed out her cigarette and got up. “I'll be outside.”
“Janice,” Newman had said.
“I don't want to talk about it,” she had said, and left the room.
It appeared now that she had changed her mind. And he was beginning to change his opinion of her.
“It'll never happen again, I promise you,” she said, her voice far away as she stared out her window at the passing farm fields.
“Why?”
She turned to him. “You're married, for one. I don't love you. And I'm not in the habit of engaging in casual sex.”
“I didn't think it was so casual last night.”
“Forget about it,” she snapped.
He shook his head. “No, Janice, I won't forget about it.”
“Goddamn it, Kenneth …” She stopped and took a deep breath. “If you want to know the truth, I'm embarrassed. Embarrassed and frightened.”
“That's quite a load to have to carry.”
She looked sharply at him. “Let's just forget it. Okay?”
Newman started to say something else, but then closed his mouth firmly and concentrated on his driving.
They followed the Interstate straight south, through mile after mile of fields. They were in the heartland. Corn country. As far as they could see in any direction, the tassels atop the stalks waved in the gentle late-summer
breezes. It was going to be a banner year. The weather had cooperated with just enough rain and plenty of warm, humid weather all across the Midwest. When the crops came in, they would flow outward by truck and train, by barge and ship, around the hungry world. It made Newman feel good, being a part of it.
They had been listening to the car radio all morning, and by 11:30 A.M., Janice found a Des Moines station that came in clearly. They hadn't said much to each other in the past couple of hours, and Newman was stiff from sitting in one position. They were getting low on gas.
“How about some lunch?” he asked.
“Are we far from Des Moines?”
“Twenty-five or thirty miles.”
“Let's wait until we get there, and find out where the farm is. Then we can stop.”
“Sure,” Newman said. They were coming to an exit, and he began to slow down. “I'll just pull in for some gas. I want to stretch my legs.”
Janice said nothing.
Just off the ramp was a Mobil station. He pulled up to the full-service pumps and got out, telling the attendant to fill it up. Then he went around the side and into the men's room.
He had been gone for less than three minutes when someone began honking a horn outside. He finished washing his hands and went back out. The station attendant was arguing with Janice. She was beeping the Mercedes' horn.
Newman sprinted across to them. She stopped honking when she spotted him. “Hurry up!” she shouted.
“I don't know what's going on here, mister …” the
attendant was saying, but Newman ignored him.
“What the hell is wrong?”
“Bormett,” Janice sputtered. “It's Bormett. He's dead. It was just on the radio.”
“Oh, my God,” Newman breathed. He turned back to the attendant. “That's enough gas!”
“You said fill 'er up.”
Newman grabbed the nozzle, flipped it off, and hung it up, then put the gas cap on himself. He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, threw it at the attendant, jumped in the car, and headed back onto the Interstate as fast as he could go.
“What happened?” he asked.
“His name is William Bormett. His farm is west of Des Moines, near the town of Adel. They said he was found dead last night.”
“Murdered?”
“He shot himself. They found him in his fields.”
“Cornfields?” Newman asked. “Was he a corn farmer?”
“One of the biggest in the state,” she said. But there was more, he could see it in her eyes.
“What is it, Janice? There's something else.”
She nodded. “I can't believe this is happening,” she said.
“What is it?” Newman shouted.
“Bormett and his wife … they just returned from Moscow a couple of weeks ago. He spoke about farming at a university there.”
“Turalin,” Newman said, half to himself, and suddenly he had a fair idea of what was happening, although it was so monstrous it nearly took his breath away. But it fit. It all fit.
“Turalin killed him?” Janice asked, picking up his mood.
Newman shook his head. “Unless I miss my guess, he didn't have to.”
“What are you saying, Kenneth?”
“There's a map in the glove compartment. Get it out and find out how to get to Adel.” His mind was racing far ahead. If Turalin had called Bormett to Moscow to set him up, and if he had done so, then the farmer's suicide probably meant he had done whatever it was he had been ordered to do. It gave Newman a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He hoped he was wrong. But if he was guessing right, it would already be too late to do anything about it. And then, God help them all.
There was no shortcut to Adel. The most direct route was around Des Moines on I-35, and then west on Highway 6. It was a few minutes past 12:30 P.M. when they turned onto the secondary highway. A sign said ADEL 12 MILES.
They passed through the small town of Waukee, and then a few miles beyond that the county road led up to the town of Dallas Center. They had just passed a sign that said ADEL 2 MILES when on the right, over a wide driveway, was a sign: BORMETT FARMS. Newman pulled up at the side of the road.
Cornfields stretched in every direction. The paved driveway curved around a low hill to the right, then dipped down into a hollow where there was a house and a collection of farm buildings. There were a lot of cars parked down there, and a number of people moving around.
Newman got out of the car, but he left the engine running.
“Where are you going?” Janice asked nervously. She didn't get out of the car.
“I want to look at something. Stay there,” he said. He went around the car, walked a few yards down the driveway, then stepped off the road, over the drainage ditch, and into the cornrows. Instantly he was enveloped in a dark green, cool tunnel, which smelled faintly of rotted eggs. His heart was thumping against his ribs and his stomach kept turning over.
He stopped a few yards in, and looked at the corn stalks. They looked good. Healthy. He had seen a lot of corn in his life, and this looked as good as, or better than, anything he had ever seen.
He reached up and pulled an ear off a stalk, and immediately knew something was wrong. The ear was soft, almost liquid, to the touch.
Carefully holding the stalk away from himself, he pulled down the husk, and his stomach lurched. The ear was black and rotted. It had a very bad odor. He threw it down, and backed up a couple of paces.
He pulled another ear from a different stalk and shucked it, but it was the same.
Why in God's name had Turalin wanted this?
After a moment or two, he turned and went back to the driveway, where he looked down toward the house.
Something had happened to Bormett in Moscow. Turalin had probably set him up somehow so that he could be blackmailed. Then, back at home, Bormett had done something to his fields, probably sprayed them with something. When it began to develop, and he could no longer stomach what he had done, he had shot himself.
Newman realized that he was guessing, but he didn't
think he was too far off. Somehow, though, he didn't think Turalin's plan had been merely to ruin this one farm.
Janice had gotten out of the car, and she waited as he came back. “What'd you find?”
“I don't know yet,” he said.
They got in.
“What do you mean, you don't know? What did you find?”
“Just exactly what I said,” he snapped. He drove the rest of the way into Adel in silence, and then turned north. After a few miles he stopped the car beside another cornfield.
“Why are we stopping here?” Janice asked. “Christ, can't you tell me what's going on?”
Newman looked out across the field, conscious of his beating heart, of his aching stomach, and of his shallow breath.
Janice said something else, but he didn't hear it as he got out of the car. He stepped across the drainage ditch and entered the field.
There was no reason to suspect that whatever had gone wrong with Bormett's corn had spread to his field. Bormett's fields were at least five miles away from here.
The stalks and leaves all looked good, just as they had back at the Bormett farm. But there was that faint odor of rotten eggs.
Newman stopped about ten rows in. In the distance somewhere he could hear a crow cawing, and he thought he could hear the distant thunder of a jet airplane, probably taking off from the · Des Moines airport.
He wondered whether Bormett had known all along
what was happening, or if he had found out about it just last night. Whatever the case, it must have been a terrible shock to him to see the devastated ears.
Newman reached out and touched one of the corn leaves. It felt good. Then, hesitantly, he reached out for an ear and pulled it off the stalk. It was bad. He didn't have to open it to know. But he shucked it anyway, exposing the obscene rotted mass.
He threw the ear down. Five miles, he thought, backing up. Fifty miles? Five hundred miles?
“Kenneth?” Janice called from back up on the highway.
Turalin had ruined the corn crops here in this part of Iowa. The same corn he wanted to buy. Much of this crop had, in fact, already been sold to Newman Company subsidiaries through Des Moines trading houses.
That meant Dybrovik was correct. There would be no starvation in the Soviet Union. Turalin had never wanted the corn. He wanted to ruin the Newman Company.
Newman rejected the thought. That wasn't it. That wasn't it at all. Turalin was thinking bigger than that. He wanted Newman to go on a buying spree as a cover. If everyone was watching Newman, no one would be paying attention to what the Russians were really doing. Which was growing corn … a lot of corn. A record amount of corn. Corn that the Russians would be able to sell to whoever needed it.

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