Heartland (21 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Heartland
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Newman and Saratt looked at each other. “Why didn't Lundgren tell us this?” Newman asked.
“I don't know, sir. I truly do not know,” Stansfield said, and he looked over his shoulder. “I have to get back. I just wanted to make sure I caught you before you left the city.”
“Thank you,” Newman said.
“
Are
you dealing with the Russians, sir?” the man asked.
Newman just smiled at him.
In their taxi, heading across town to the Watergate, neither man trusted himself to speak, each lost in his own dour thoughts.
Saratt finally broke the silence. “If Stansfield is telling the truth …”
Newman nodded. “We'll have to find out, but I have a feeling he is.”
“So what's next?”
“We're going to have to put it to Dybrovik.”
Saratt looked at him in disbelief. “You don't mean to tell me that we're going to go through with this. That you're even considering continuing?”
“You're damned right I am, Paul. We're going to keep on buying futures with Soviet money. We're not shipping much corn now; the big shipments won't start until October.”
“And if it is a market manipulation?”
“
We
'll have the futures, not the Russians. At low prices. We'll sell on the open market.”
“The Russians would howl.”
“I don't think so. They'd have too much explaining to do. They'd be happy to get their money back.”
Saratt fell silent again. He was still bothered.
“What's eating you, Paul?” Newman asked.
“There's more to this than Stansfield has told us. I'm convinced of it. Dybrovik is just too smart to try and pull another Grain Robbery. He'd have to know we'd find out sooner or later.”
Newman shrugged. He was remembering the look on Dybrovik's face the last time they had met. The man had been holding something back. He had been frightened.
“Let's get a telex off to him in Geneva. I want a
meeting on neutral ground.”
“Athens?”
“Anywhere, it doesn't matter. I'm going to lay it all out for him and see what he does.”
“I think we should just back out of it, Kenneth, and leave well enough alone.”
“I won't quit. We'll hang on a bit longer, at least until I meet with him. Maybe we can come up with some kind of a holding agreement. If worse comes to worst, we'll sell him the futures but ship the grain to an intermediate, neutral port until we find out what the hell is really going on.”
 
The telephone was ringing when they got to the apartment, and Newman answered it as Saratt poured them each a drink.
It was a person-to-person call to Kenneth Newman from Lydia Newman. He took it in the bedroom.
“Lydia! God, it's good to hear from you,” Newman said, when the connection was made.
“I talked with Coatsworth from Tri-States Security, and he told me that you had canceled your security contract,” Lydia said in a rush. There was something wrong. “He's sending someone down from New York. They'll be there sometime this afternoon. Stay where you are until then. Someone is trying to kill you, do you understand?”
“No, I don't, Lydia. What the hell are you saying? Who's going to try to kill me, and why?”
The doorbell rang again. “Hold on,” Saratt shouted.
“You're in danger, Kenneth, please believe me. It's Perés, he's been crazy ever since you managed to get away.”
“You say Perés is going to have me killed?”
“No, not him—
because of him!
”
“I don't understand …”
“I can't talk any longer. I must go. Please be careful, darling. Please!”
“Lydia?” Newman shouted, but the connection was broken.
From the living room came a tremendous explosion. Glass flew everywhere and the lights went out.
“Paul?” Newman shouted, tearing open the bedroom door and leaping into the living room.
Flames were eating at a huge hole in the wall where the door used to be. Bits and pieces of tattered flesh and clothing were spread all over the floor.
Lying back on the dilapidated davenport in his apartment, Dybrovik could, without moving his head more than an inch or two, see the kitchen to the right, the front door in the vestibule to the left, and straight ahead, the window overlooking the darkness that was coming to the city.
Yesterday, after speaking with Vostrikov at the Ministry of Transportation, he had come home, fixed himself a supper of boiled potatoes, onions, and fish, and then drunk himself into a stupor.
This morning he had awakened late and tried to telephone Gordik at the bureau to tell him that he had work to do at home, and would not be in until much later. But there had been no answer. Only belatedly, after he had hung up the phone, did he realize it was Saturday and no one would be at the office unless there was a special assignment.
He had taken a shower and begun to get dressed when it dawned on him that there was nowhere for him to go. Ordinarily he would have gone to his office anyway, but now he felt there was no need for it. He was burned up. Expended. His talk with Vostrikov had done all that. In one fell swoop he had used up his one and only chance —the little man—and now he was done.
Vostrikov had a big mouth, and he was running scared. He had already tried to contact Shalnev at the bureau, and that would surely have tipped off the little man that something was going on. Someone was meddling.
“It's the end,” he told himself at one point, holding the vodka bottle straight out away from him and addressing it as if it were a mirror and he could see his image in it.
He drank most of the morning, falling asleep again for a few hours. At about two o'clock he roused himself enough to get dressed and walked the few blocks to the government liquor store, where he purchased more vodka. The Foreign Exchange Store was closed on Saturdays, so he could not get Scotch or more American cigarettes, but that didn't matter either, he kept telling himself. He had been born a Russian, he would die a Russian.
It was market day, and the Prospekt was busy with traffic as well as pedestrians of all sizes, shapes, colors, and ages. But he had been on his guard ever since meeting the little man, so he spotted the two men behind him. He took them to be either civil police or KGB officers. They were following him. Just as they had been following him for the past five weeks. They'd never let him go. They'd hound him to the ends of the earth.
Only he was going to fool them all, including the little man. He wasn't going to run. He was going to return to his own little private hole and wait for them to show up.
Back in the apartment, he took off his coat and tossed it aside, then opened a fresh bottle of vodka and poured himself a stiff drink. He went to the window and looked down at the street. The two men who had followed him were climbing into a black Zil, which pulled out into the street and took off.
Was he imagining it all? He continued to stare down at the street where the car had been. Hadn't he seen the men around the building before? Wasn't it possible that they were tenants in this very building, and so had a legitimate right to be hanging around?
He drank his vodka, poured himself another, and then laid his head back on the couch.
He was in Montreal again, with Susanne. They were climbing the stairs to her flat in Outremont. They had been out dining and dancing. It was dark then. She switched on the lights when they came in; he went around turning them all off. She came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel, and he gently slipped it off, releasing her lovely breasts and exposing the delicate tuft of pubic hair. “Delos,” she breathed into his ear. “Take me right here. On the floor.” And he did.
Thinking of it now made him ache for her.
He turned and looked at the bathroom door. It was tightly closed. Not like the evening he had come home to find the little man waiting for him. The door had been ajar that time.
He set his glass down and walked unsteadily to the door. For several seconds he could not bring himself to touch the doorknob, let alone open the door. But finally
he mustered the courage and did it.
The bathroom was empty, of course; he released a sigh of relief and laughed. What had he expected? Larissa had died weeks ago. Her body had been cut down by the ambulance attendants, he had received a document—death by suicide—and her body had been cremated. Her clothes and pitifully few belongings he had given to the woman downstairs, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing left in the apartment to remind him of her. Except her aura. Her spirit. Whatever.
He could sense her presence here in the bathroom. He could almost see her hanging from the light fixture. He could almost smell her musky odor and feel her body next to his in the bed. He could almost hear her speaking to him. Calling from some unutterably vast distance. “Delos,” she was calling. “Delos. It was he who killed me.”
Insanity, he told himself, firmly closing the bathroom door. It was pressure that had created such feelings. Pressure and too much drink.
He poured another drink and threw himself down on the couch.
Newman was worried about Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and Vance-Ehrhardt; on the other hand, the little man was worried about secrecy. Newman was direct and straightforward. The little man was devious and insinuating. Newman was harsh, however, the little man gentle. Newman was a businessman, the little man a KGB officer.
He turned that thought over in his mind as he absently reached out for his glass, drained it, and poured still another drink.
Newman had warned him against an overzealous KGB officer. But the Americans were always warning against dark plots of one sort or another.
In the beginning the project had been exciting; the only worry was that it wasn't really true. That there would not be the funds the little man had promised to do the sweeping things he wanted done.
But the money was there. Shalnev was making sure of that.
He held his vodka glass up and looked at the bathroom door through the clear liquor. Larissa. What would you have advised?
Dybrovik felt totally alone. Not only was there no one here to comfort him, there was no one to talk to. No one to turn to. No one in this city whom he could trust.
It would be so easy, he thought lying back on the davenport, to let go and trust his fate to the little man. Even now. But he just could not. There would be no grain shortfall this year, there would be a surplus. So why one hundred million tons of corn? What were they going to do with it? And where had the money come from? The Central Committee? Did the Party know of this? Did it approve?
“You think too much,” Larissa would have said. But now she was dead. He finally understood it in his bones. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She was dead. Murdered. He had always known it, ever since his first conversation with the little man; he had simply not allowed himself to think about it.
He got up from the couch and staggered into the kitchen. Larissa had died. Here. Would he be next? From a drawer he pulled out a large butcher knife and held it up in front of his face.
He had never. killed a man before. The thought had never even crossed his mind. But he could hear Larissa now, calling to him for help. And he could see Newman standing by is car in front of the house at Coppet, warning him. And he could see the fright on Vostrikov's face.
Someone knocked at the door, and Dybrovik spun around, almost losing his balance. The little man had come for him! It was no longer a matter of speculation. The end was now!
He moved out of the kitchen and into the living room where he paused in front of the couch, his eyes never straying from the door.
The knock came again, much louder now, more insistent. “Dybrovik? Are you in there?”
Through his vodka-numbed brain, he could not identify the voice, although it sounded familiar. In his mind he could see the little man sitting across the room in the corner. His voice had been soft. Scolding. Like a mother speaking to her naughty child.
He stepped closer to the door, unconsciously bringing the butcher knife higher.
The little man had killed Larissa. The thought consumed his brain, and with it came the consuming resolve to avenge her death and so put an end to the terrible things that were happening. Cargill. Louis Dreyfus. Vance-Ehrhardt. And now him?
“I know you're in there,” the voice called again, and Dybrovik stiffened, tightening his grip on the knife.
Of course he knows I am in here. His people watched me go out and then come back. They knew I was here, and they reported to him.
Dybrovik slipped the lock with his left hand while
holding the butcher knife over his head with his right, and then stepped back.
“Come on,” he said, the words slurred.
The door opened. “That's better,” Shalnev said, stepping across the threshold at the same moment Dybrovik brought the butcher knife down with every ounce of his strength.
The blade deflected off Shalnev's collarbone, then buried itself deeply in the man's neck, severing the carotid artery.
Shalnev lurched powerfully backward. Dybrovik lost his grip on the handle.
“Shalnev,” Dybrovik whispered in abject horror.
Shalnev's eyes were rolling as he stumbled farther out into the hall, clawing at the knife jutting obscenely from his jacket collar.
A slight bubbling sound emerged from Shalnev's mouth, and then his knees buckled. His eyes rolled up into his skull, and he fell on the floor dead, a look of surprise on his face.
 
It was still early, only a few minutes after ten in the evening, when Vladimer Valentin Vostrikov answered the telephone in his apartment.
“There has been an accident, Comrade Vostrikov,” a voice at the other end said.
“Who is this? What accident?”
Vostrikov's wife and daughter looked up, concern in their eyes.
“You are needed at the ministry, comrade. It is an emergency. Please hurry.”
“Who is this calling?”
“Everyone is being telephoned, comrade. I am only
following orders. It is terrible. We are all needed. Please hurry.”
“I don't know who this is, but I certainly will report this to the authorities,” Vostrikov said with more courage than he felt. His wife had gotten up and she stood by his side, her hands to her mouth. He had not told her about what had happened with that bastard Dybrovik, but she had guessed something was wrong
“It is assassination. Director Lysenko. There can be no civil police. You must understand, I am under orders. We all are under orders. You must come at once.” The caller hung up.
“Assassination? What are you talking about? Who has been assassinated …?” Vostrikov sputtered, but then he realized he was speaking to a dead phone.
“What is it, Vladi?” his wife asked, her eyes wide.
“I don't know. They want me at the ministry.”
“Who has been assassinated?”
“I don't know.”
“It is trouble for us. I can feel it. I knew something would happen by the way you came home. You have drunk entirely too much tonight. You can't go to your office this way. The others—Comrade Lysenko—will see you this way and know what you have been doing.”
“Keep your peace, woman,” Vostrikov roared. He pushed past her, went into the bedroom, and grabbed his jacket from the closet. If there was trouble at the ministry, and they wanted him—Vladimir Valentin—then he would comply. Who was he to question such a telephone call in the night?”
His wife had followed him into the bedroom, and she was wailing and screeching that their lives were ended, that he was a foolish, foolish man who had surely done
something to bring shame and exile down on their heads.
He brushed her aside and without a backward glance left his apartment, hurrying downstairs and out into the mild evening.
By God, it was easy to put two and two together. Some insane person had assassinated Director Lysenko, and now they needed the staff gathered to find out who had done it, and further, to plan for Monday. After all, even without a director, the ministry would have to continue. There was so much to be done.
Thank heavens the subways were still running. Otherwise he'd have to walk, and it was more than two miles.
At the end of the block, as he started across the dark street, an automobile turned the corner a block away and headed toward him. He was halfway across the street when he decided that he could not make it ahead of the oncoming car, so he stopped to wait for it to pass.
He could not see much of the car, just the headlights bearing down on him, so he turned his eyes away from the glare.
He was still worrying about the work of the ministry when the car struck him, hurling his body upward to crash through a second-story window.
Dybrovik paused about two blocks from the bureau and lit a cigarette, turning sideways as if to block the wind. He studied the street and sidewalk behind him, but there was no one. He had not been followed. They didn't know. Yet.

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