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Authors: David Hagberg

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“Large numbers,” Newman said cautiously, although his blood was beginning to race.
“Perhaps larger.”
“Meaning?”
Dybrovik took another large swallow of his drink, then set the glass down. “We want to purchase, in absolute secrecy, as much corn as you can possibly supply us.”
“What is the limit?”
“There is no limit.”
Newman carefully held himself in check. “A hundred million metric tons?”
“More, if you can get it.”
“At what price?”
Dybrovik laughed. “At the prevailing market price. But of course it must be done in secret, so your purchases will not inflate unit costs.”
“Not until later, when the information is leaked by your government,” Newman said, getting to his feet. “You'll buy on margin, drive the price up, and resell, as you did in the seventies.”
“We will purchase on margin if we can,” Dybrovik said unperturbed. “We will pay cash for the futures if need be. It is negotiable.”
“You will guarantee that the grain is for internal consumption?”
“If you are asking me, internal to the Soviet Union, I cannot answer that with any degree of certainty. If you are speaking, internal to our Warsaw Pact nations, I can give you a qualified yes.”
This was all wrong. Newman knew it; he could feel it thick in the air between him and the Russian. And yet it was food they were speaking of here. Food that would ultimately be used to feed people. Cubans in addition to Albanians? South Africans in addition to Poles? Did it matter?
“Licensing would be difficult if not impossible,” Newman said cautiously, but he could see the glimmerings of triumph on the Russian's face. More psychology, or the real thing?
“Difficult, yes, but not impossible given a proper infrastructure, which is your particular area of expertise.”
Multilevel dummy corporations, shipping companies, elevator firms, railroad cars. Newman saw every bit of it
as one large picture, and it excited the hell out of him. It could be done. But what of the moral implications? What of the international ramifications? What of the political weapon a hundred million metric tons of corn could become? It was akin to selling the entire year's output of oil from all the OPEC countries in one fell swoop.
“It's a powerful thing you ask,” Newman said, sitting down.
“It would make you a wealthy man.”
“I'm already wealthy,” Newman countered.
Dybrovik smiled, his grin feral. “You hesitate. You are afraid, perhaps, of another market manipulation? Your people called it the Great Grain Robbery. Amusing.”
“It has crossed my mind.”
Dybrovik laughed out loud. “Several dozen times in the last minute or two, no doubt. But so what, I ask you?”
“Neither I nor any other Western grain company would do business with you again.”
“I think that would not be the case, Mr. Kenneth Newman. I think not. Money, after all, is why you do what you do.”
The remark offended Newman, all the more because it was true. Like all grainmen, Newman feared and resented government meddling in what they felt was one of the last truly free international enterprises. Yet Newman personally felt a deep moral responsibility toward people. Not merely Americans, but people the world over.
“Two conditions,” he said.
Dybrovik's eyes narrowed, but he nodded.
“A ceiling is to be set on the unit price at which your government will ultimately sell its surplus grain.”
“Impossible.”
“Just outside the Warsaw Pact.”
Dybrovik went back to the sideboard and poured himself another drink. “I would have to get approval from my government before I could agree to such a condition.”
“How soon could you have an answer?”
“Within twenty-four hours.”
“That's acceptable. In any event, it will take me longer than that to begin.”
“The second condition?” Dybrovik asked.
“Much of the corn I will be selling you will be in the form of futures, naturally, but a significant portion is already dried and in storage.”
Dybrovik said nothing.
“I will want the majority of your grain moved immediately to the Soviet Union.”
“If we were to resell the corn at a later date, we would pass the cost of transportation on to the end user.”
“I assure you, there will be excessive storage charges at my end if it is not moved.”
Dybrovik turned away again. “We will accept fifty percent of the corn now in storage, and negotiate later on movement of the futures as they come in.”
“Ninety percent and negotiate on the futures within thirty days.”
“Seventy-five percent,” Dybrovik said. “And that is my top. But I will agree to on-the-spot negotiations for the futures.”
It was Newman's turn to keep silent. It was better than he had hoped for. They both understood that
storage the world over was at a premium. When the bins were full, the corn would have to be stored either in railroad cars or on the ground. Bad weather would ruin millions of dollars' worth of grain. Storage was, simply put, the biggest headache of the business. Dybrovik had agreed to shoulder the lion's share of that problem.
“Is it a deal?” Dybrovik asked.
“Contingent on your answer about the resale price.”
“You will have your answer tomorrow. But if it is a no?”
“I'll have to think about that.”
“Further negotiations would be possible, I would assume. If not, I would have to approach someone else.”
“Like Georges André?” Newman said, again getting to his feet. “I think not. They would run you around in circles, if they would deal with you at all.”
“Then your father-in-law.”
Newman smiled. “I don't think he could keep it quiet.”
“Probably not,” Dybrovik said. He finished his drink. “Where may I contact you tomorrow?”
“Through Abex, as before,” Newman said. “You mentioned that this place will become your operational headquarters?”
Dybrovik nodded. “Communications equipment will be brought in tomorrow, and my staff will be arriving by evening. But it will take a week or perhaps ten days before everything is ready at this end.”
“Very good,” Newman said. “We may have a deal, then, depending upon what your government has to say tomorrow.”
“Excellent,” Dybrovik said, and they shook hands,
which in the grain business was all the contract needed.
“And now, if you would ring your driver, I'd like to return to my hotel.”
 
Alone again, Dybrovik stood by the window in the hall, watching Newman climb into the back seat of the Citroën. A great, almost overwhelming sadness overcame him. On the one hand, he wanted very much to be a man such as Kenneth Newman. A free-wheeling spirit who was at home in all the capitals of the Western world. But he was already beginning to miss Moscow.
He laid his forehead against the cool window as the Citroen pulled away from the house, and watched its taillights disappear into the darkness.
Newman would return to Monaco, to his wedding bed. Within a few days he would be back in Duluth, Minnesota, one of the major American grain ports, at work on his deal. The deal of his life. A deal so mammoth that its international repercussions would certainly last for years … even without whatever it was the little man had in mind.
He turned away from the window finally, went back into the drawing room, poured himself a stiff shot of the Glenlivet he had been drinking most of the night, and sat down on the couch with a cigarette.
He closed his eyes. Larissa. Where was this all heading?
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two—is gone.
 
—Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
 
 
It was late, and Michael McCandless was dead tired. He had worked through the afternoon and into the evening on the latest batch of field reports on the Argentine situation. The aftermath of the Falkland Islands debacle still lingered; would for years. Some of the reports were in the form of raw data, while several large boxes contained asessment and analysis files; all of them bulky and dull.
For the last few weeks he had been expecting either the President to call, or the DCI to come down on him over the way he had handled the Soviet crop forecast. But no one had called, and nothing had been said.
On the positive side, however, neither had anyone interfered with McCandless' continuing work on what he was calling the Emerging Soviet Agrarian Threat.
The CIA'S SPEC satellites continued watching the Soviet fields, and DiRenzo continued sending up his reports. McCandless continued collating them with the others, digesting and then filing them.
The Soviet farm fields had been plowed into furrows, dragged to pull up the rocks, and finally disked and planted. Corn and wheat mostly, in a wide variety of hybrids. If the crops came to maturity, and if they were harvested, the Soviet Union would not only become food self-sufficient (something it had been unable to manage for several decades), it would have mammoth surpluses. Which would, McCandless firmly believed, have far-reaching political consequences.
But no one would listen, he thought, looking up from his Argentine reports. Hardly an hour went by when he did not think about it. Yet he knew he was getting nowhere.
He had thought about going to the President again, or at least forcing the situation to a head through General Lycoming. But in the end he had decided against it. He had alerted the White House. He had done what his job demanded of him; he had provided hard intelligence to the President. Whatever became of that intelligence was totally outside his purview.
Swiveling around in his chair, McCandless stared out his third-floor window down at the woods behind the agency complex and let his mind drift, just as the SPEC-IV satellite was at this moment drifting over the Soviet continent.
His worry was very probably moot, he told himself. Most estimates from meteorology were for an early winter … possibly too early for a decent harvest over there. If that was the case, all the acres planted would amount to naught.
Yet, as much as he wanted to comfort himself with such thoughts, he could not. It simply would not work.
In the morning, he would telephone Curtis Lundgren, the Secretary of Agriculture, and find out if the President had indeed passed the first report and photographs along. If he hadn't, McCandless decided, he would personally meet with Lundgren and lay it all out.
Meanwhile, what would happen next would be up to mother nature and the Soviet farmer.
The dying sun was just touching the western horizon, its light reflecting deep red off the upper windows of the skyscrapers in downtown Buenos Aires, when Carlos stepped out of his hovel in the
villa miseria
. He was a short man, something under five foot five, but his dark-skinned, youthful body was muscular from his constant workouts and field training.
He looked nervously to the left and right, unconsciously fingering a long scar on his side. He proudly carried his training scars from the PLO camp he had attended two years ago outside of Beirut, as well as the slightly misshapen left arm which had been broken during training in one of Colonel Qaddafi's schools for terrorists in Libya.
Behind the tin-and-cardboard shack where he had lived for the past few months, he pulled aside a filthy
piece of canvas, uncovering the only possession, besides his training, of which he was proud: a small Honda 125 motorcycle. He pushed the bike back around to the narrow dirt track at the front of the shack, kicked it to a start, and took off toward the city, several miles distant.
It was still warm, although the South American winter had officially begun. Before the cold came, however, he and the others would be long gone from here. Probably back to Libya for asylum, now that the Israelis had overrun Beirut. Perhaps even to Iran.
As Juan Carlos drove, he found that now that he was actually on his way, now that the months of planning were finally coming to an end, he was nervous. His stomach seemed empty, and the muscles at the back of his legs were tense, as if he had just run ten miles.
Their instructor in Libya had been sympathetic when he had displayed the same problems during the live-fire exercises.
“There is no shame in feeling fear, comrade. The only shame is in allowing your fear to control you.”
Juan Carlos was frightened now. At the same time he was proud of going ahead.
Within fifteen minutes he had made it downtown to the Plaza del Congreso, alive with pigeons and old ladies and children, occasional lovers strolling arm in arm, and cars, motorcycles, and bicycles everywhere.
He threaded his way through the early-evening traffic around to the rear of the fountains, just across the avenue from the slim-domed capitol building, spotting Teva Cernades seated at the edge of the pool.
She jumped up as he pulled to the curb and nervously scanned the area behind and to the left and right of her. There was no one watching them.
“Did you have any trouble getting away?” he asked as she came up to him.
She pecked him on the cheek. “None whatsoever,” she said climbing onto the motorcycle behind him. “You?” Her eyes were bright, and there was a smile on her delicate face. She wore designer jeans, a sweatshirt, sandals, and a bright red bandana to contain her long, light-brown hair.
“I circled around and came up from the university,” he said. “Have you heard from Eugenio?”
“Not today. But he'll be there, don't worry about it.”
“I worry about him.”
“You worry about everything, Juan. Perhaps you worry too much.”
Juan Carlos looked over his shoulder at her. She was very slim, almost emaciated, but he had seen her in action in the training camps, and they had been lovers for thirteen months now. He knew that her slender body was powerful and well muscled. She could outshoot, outfight, and certainly outlast most men in the field. Besides his work in the camps, and his motorbike, he was most proud of Teva. “Too much?” he asked. “Someone must be concerned. I do not want to throw my life away uselessly.”
“Nor I,
estúpido
,” the young woman flared. “But you know what the man told us.”
“No, refresh my memory, my little dove,” Juan Carlos said sarcastically. She hated being called his “little dove.”
“The plan is a good one. It will work. We will see to it.”
“The plan is a good one, because it is my plan. And
without concern for detail, even the little man could never make it work.”
Teva's nostrils flared, but she looked the other way, across at the capitol. “Pigs,” she said half under her breath.
Juan Carlos slipped the bike in gear, revved up the engine, and popped the clutch, nearly spilling both of them before he managed to regain control. Teva's arms were around his midsection, and she jerked hard, causing him to wince in pain.
They rounded the plaza and headed north out of the city, up the coast, toward the railway station at Olivos. Conversation was impossible because of the wind whipping around their ears and the engine noise, and it was just as well, he thought. Just as it was for the best that very soon they would be going into action. It was already the end of June, and all of them were on edge. Each accused the other of worrying too much, of being too nervous.
“It is the pigeon in the park too frightened to eat near the well-intentioned passerby, who will starve,” the Argentine homily went.
And it was true. Drink at the well, or die of thirst. Move forward, ever forward, or stagnate and die.
For years there had been order and stability in the country. Socialist goals were becoming a fact. But then, after Perón, nothing seemed the same. Of course Juan Carlos knew of those times only through books and political tracts, but he could see with his own eyes what was happening these days. The farmers were oppressed, little more than slaves. The government was rotten, a mere tool of the North American capitalists. And even the military was unable to do anything right. The loss in
the Malvinas was a national shame that would sting for years to come.
A blow had to be struck. Now. And very hard. But with care, lest they fail. They could not fail, for if they did, it would set back their cause—Argentina for Argentines—by years.
Loyal but empty-headed women like Teva, and idiots like Eugenio, knew what had to be done and why, but neither of them had the slightest feel for the details.
The little man had taken him aside personally last night and told him that he was to be the leader, because he had an iron courage and a head for detail.
“You are a natural-born leader, Juan,” the little man had said. “I trust you to be my field commander.”
“I will not let you down,” Juan Carlos had promised. Nor would he.
It was a few minutes after 7:00 P.M. when they finally made it into the small college town of Olivos. Juan Carlos drove directly over to the railway station, where he parked his bike behind the market stalls, closed now for the evening. He was careful to wrap his chain first around the bike's frame and then around a metal light pole, before locking it and pocketing the key.
Teva watched him, and when he straightened up, she shook her head. “Is that what you call your attention to detail?”
He looked back at his bike and shrugged.
“We are not returning here. Not for a very long time. Once we are finished we will be leaving the country. Or we will be dead. Yet you lock your precious motorcycle.”
“If they are to steal it, let the bastards work for it,” he said, and he strode off around the corner, toward the
front of the depot.
There was quite a bit of traffic around the station, mostly college students heading into the city, farmers going to market, and businessmen coming out of the city from work.
Eugenio was waiting for them, across the street from the taxi stands, in a battered old pickup truck. “Any trouble coming up here?” he asked, pulling slowly away from the curb. He was dressed as a farmer.
“None,” Juan Carlos said. “How about you? Did you notice anyone watching you? Anyone suspicious?”
“There was an accident in front of the depot, and the stupid police had half the barracks there. Must have been someone important. There were ambulances too.”
“When?” Juan Carlos snapped, looking back at the depot. It didn't smell right. That was how they could have brought in their snoops. Set up their watchers, maybe even taken photographs of stupid Eugenio.
“Half an hour ago. Maybe a little more. They just cleared it up a few minutes before you arrived.”
Eugenio Mendes was a larger man than Juan Carlos, and although at twenty-eight they were the same age, Eugenio seemed ten years older in his face, his actions, and his speech. At first he seemed a thoughtful man who chose his words with care. Perhaps a scholar. But in actuality Eugenio was that rare person who was slow, yet recognized he was slow, so always took care with what he said and how he acted. As slow as he was mentally, however, he was quick on his feet. In school he had been a fine athlete, and now as a terrorist, he was a fearless fighter. A follower, not a leader.
They came onto a narrow secondary road that roughly paralleled the main federal highway back into
Buenos Aires. Eugenio drove at a steady forty miles per hour, a huge yellow dust cloud rising behind the truck.
Teva lit a cigarette with nervous hands and flicked the ashes on the floor. “Did you call your cell?” she asked Eugenio.
He glanced over at her and managed a thin smile. “Yes, I did. They will all be out of the city by morning, and ready the night after tomorrow. There is nothing to worry about now, Teva.”
“All hell is going to break loose once we pull this off. You know that, don't you, Juan?” she asked, turning the other way.
“As long as everyone keeps his cool, and doesn't do anything he isn't supposed to do, it'll work out. Is it you worrying now?”
“Of course I'm worried, but about the proper things,” she shot back.
“Don't fight,” Eugenio said simply.
Teva started to say something, but then thought better of it and slumped down instead, staring out the dirty windshield.
Juan reached for her cigarette, took a deep drag, and handed it back. “Where is the meeting to take place?”
“On the boat,” Eugenio replied, without taking his eyes off the road.
“When?”
“As soon as we get there. He is taking us up to Tigre; from there we will have to go on foot to the clearing.”
After that it would be touch and go. But in the short time that Juan Carlos had known the little man, he had developed an abiding trust in him and his judgment. If the little man said such-and-such was so, and would work … then such-and-such was the truth, and it
would go like clockwork.
He had known only a few men like that in his life: a professor at the university, who had introduced him to the group; two instructors in Libya; and then of course Colonel Qaddafi and Arafat.
All great men. All like the little man, who inspired trust and confidence. Anything that could be thought of as worthy of doing for the cause, could be done. Given the proper plan, the proper equipment, and the proper manpower, anything on this earth could be accomplished.
The Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Sandinistas, the FALN—all of them lent credence to that philosophy.
Juan Carlos and his Montonero cell would go into the history books for their upcoming action. He could almost taste the victory that would be theirs. Soon, very soon.
Eugenio drove them into Buenos Aires, right through the downtown Federal District, and then to the commercial docks along the southern waterfront. There they entered a warehouse and parked the truck.
Without a word, the three of them climbed out of the truck, hurried across the warehouse, and slipped out a back door. They crossed the wide dock and went down a flight of stairs to the floating concrete dock, riding on the tides, where a sixty-foot sport fisher was tied, its diesels ticking over slowly, its bridge lit a dull red. Farther up the dock, a Swedish ship was unloading cargo. But here it was quiet, with no prying eyes to see the two men and the woman slip quietly aboard the local charter fisher
Santiago
, and move into the shadows along the port companionway.
As soon as they were aboard, several deckhands emerged silently from one of the aft hatches and slipped the docklines. The boat slowly headed away from the dock toward the breakwater and out into the Rio de la Plata.
When they were under way, a steward came out onto the deck. “This way, please,” he said politely.
They followed him aft to the well-furnished main salon. Its entire rear wall was sliding glass doors looking out over the fantail, beyond which were the lights of the city they were leaving.
Only the light from the outside provided any illumination. The steward left, closing the door.
“I trust you managed to make it here without attracting undue attention,” someone said from the far corner.
Juan Carlos took a step forward. “Is it you, comrade?” he asked.
“It is I,” the man said, and a soft light came on, revealing the little man seated on a high-backed stool before a wet bar. “But you have not answered my question.”
“No one followed us,” Juan Carlos said. He moved across the room, Teva and Eugenio right behind him.

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