Over dinner, Ursula Hardesty warmed to Della McIntosh very quickly. Ursula had been a farmer’s wife, after all, and she liked plain speaking and she liked to talk about the land. She even found that she and Della had friends in common – remote friends, the Shaughnessys of Kansas City – but friends all the same.
Ursula wore a powder-blue dress with silver stitching – a dress about which Season had always said, ‘It’s terrific taste if you’re planning on taking a time machine back to nineteen fifty-eight.’ Della had taken her suitcase up to the wide back-bedroom which overlooked the meadow where they usually landed the helicopter, and she had changed into a simple low-cut dress of bottle-green satin. She had bought the dress especially for this week-end, to impress Shearson.
Perhaps Ursula wasn’t aware of Della’s shining red hair and her big, firm breasts. Perhaps she wasn’t aware of the way Della’s lips glistened moistly in the candlelight, and the way that she spoke to Edward in such a careful, modulated voice. But Ed doubted it. He knew that his mother liked Della a lot. She was a country girl, for all her involvement in Washington; and South Burlington Farm, in Ursula’s opinion, badly lacked the attention of a country girl.
At nine-thirty, Ursula declared her intention of going to bed. She was going to return to her house in Independence in the morning, and ‘leave Edward in peace.’ Ed had never seen her retire so early, or in such good humour. He kissed her evasively, and said, ‘Good night, Mother,’ and she smiled at him as she left the room.
‘You want a brandy?’ he asked Della, as he led her into the living-room. ‘It’s quite a civilised label. I didn’t distil it myself.’
‘I’d love one,’ she said, and watched him as he went to the drinks cabinet to pour it. ‘This is a very attractive house, you know. Dignified but friendly.’
‘Well, that’s us Hardestys all over,’ smiled Ed, handing Della her drink. He sat down beside her on the sofa.
‘Shearson Jones seems to be very taken with you,’ said Della. ‘He thinks you’ll make an excellent figurehead for this Blight Crisis Appeal.’
‘He does? And what do you think?’
‘I think he’s right. Now I’ve seen you, I can vouch for his intuition. He was a little worried you might look like Quasimodo, but since you clearly don’t – well, I think you’re just the man.’
‘What are his plans?’ asked Ed, sipping brandy, and looking at Della over the shining rim of his glass.
‘He wants you to make a live TV broadcast from Fall River on Saturday afternoon. As far as I know they’ve written the script already. It won’t be anything ridiculous or schmaltzy. All they’ll ask you to say is that you’re a young Kansas wheat farmer, that you’ve dedicated your life to cultivating your farm, and that through no fault of your own you’ve now found yourself flat busted. That’s it.’ Ed sat back. ‘That sounds simple enough. Is it going to be networked?’
‘Coast-to-coast, as far as we know.’
Ed nodded. ‘That sounds okay.’
There was a silence, and then he said: ‘What’s a pretty girl like you doing with a character like Shearson Jones anyway? He’s a major-league heavy, isn’t he? And not just politically, either. From what I’ve seen of him on television, he’s not exactly the world’s skinniest man. How come you’re working for someone like that?’
‘I wasn’t, until Wednesday.’
‘But why? I don’t know much about him, but from what I’ve heard he’s pretty hard to g. t near. The only way I got through to him in the first place was because my daddy helped him with some wheat-dumping deal. I don’t understand why you’re hanging around a man like that.’
Della shrugged. ‘It’s the power, I guess. The influence. It’s very intoxicating.’
‘Even more intoxicating than good country air?’
She looked up at him. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Whatever you want it to mean.’
‘You’re a married man, aren’t you?’ she reminded him. ‘A married man with a young daughter of six.’
‘You want to talk about families?’
Della held her glass of brandy up to the light. An amber reflection curved across her cheek. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not particularly.’
They sipped their drinks in silence for a few minutes and then Ed said, ‘What does Shearson Jones want out of this fund? Can you tell me that?’
‘Prestige,’ said Della. ‘Votes. It’s all very good for the public image.’
‘Is that why he’s working so hard to suppress the truth about this blight? How serious it is, and how wide it’s spread?’
Della blushed. ‘I wasn’t aware he’d done anything like that.’
‘Wouldn’t you, if you were in his position? Let’s face it, the moment the public realises how many crops have been destroyed, they’re not going to worry about Ed Hardesty and Walter Klugman and all the other poor jugheads of Kingman County, are they? They’re going to start worrying about themselves.’
Della said, ‘I think this blight’s spread much faster than Shearson expected it to. He thought he’d have two or three clear weeks at least. Now it looks like a matter of days. But he’s collected something like eleven million dollars already, and if you do well on the television on Saturday – well, that could jump to twenty or thirty million.’
Ed set down his glass. ‘He’s got eleven million already?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, that explains a lot,’ said Ed.
Della leaned over towards him. ‘Don’t think too badly of Shearson, Ed. He’s all kinds of things, but he’s also a very professional and dedicated politician.’
Ed found himself looking into Della’s eyes, very closely. ‘You’re an interesting woman,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know they bred them as interesting as you in Oklahoma.’
‘We’re not all hayseeds,’ she said. ‘And my mother was Miss Oklahoma City, nineteen fifty-one.’
‘You’re aiming higher than that, huh?’
‘I could be.’
They had known what was going to happen from the moment Ed had invited her to stay over. All through dinner their conversation had been leading inevitably to this one moment. Ursula had helped it to happen, too, by her active approval of everything that Della had said and done. She had smiled at Della with a toothy expression that could only be interpreted one way: wouldn’t I have loved to have you as a daughter-in-law?
Ed said, ‘You must be tired.’
‘Not too tired,’ said Della, throatily.
Ed stood up, walked across to the drinks cabinet, and poured himself another brandy. ‘Like you said,’ he told her, ‘I’m a married man with a young daughter of six.’
‘I’m not forcing you to do anything you don’t want to do,’ Della said.
He turned, and looked at her, and then gave her a wry smile. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I know you’re not. But you must have guessed where my marriage is at, right now. And at times like this, I guess everybody’s looking for a little reassurance, and a little consolation, and maybe a little excitement, too.’
‘You think I’m exciting? Miss Kansas City Herald-Examiner, as was? Shearson Jones’s private messenger lady?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘What about your mother?’
‘She takes enough sleeping-pills to knock out a rhinoceros. Apart from that, she likes you.’
‘She likes me that much?’
He walked back to the sofa, and stood close beside her. ‘Does it matter?’ he asked her, quietly.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t.’
Ed leaned forward and kissed Della on the forehead, just below the line of her bright coppery hair. It started off as a chaste kiss; as a kiss of friendly affection and nothing more. But she put her arm around his neck, so that he couldn’t break away from her, and she raised her lips to him, very soft and very moist and very willing. He hesitated for a moment, and then he kissed her again, and this time it was a long, searching, devouring kiss, a kiss that meant I want you, however wrong it might be. A kiss of lust, and shared frustrations, and sheer excitement at making love to someone new.
‘Let’s take a bath,’ whispered Della. ‘I’ve been flying, and taking a look around your farm and I’ve been looking forward to a bath all afternoon.’
‘All right,’ said Ed. ‘A bath it is.’
They went upstairs together, Ed leading Della by the hand up the galleried staircase, until they came to the rococo bedroom. Della said, ‘Quite a place,’ as Ed showed her through to the bathroom.
‘Season designed it. She visited the Palace of Versailles once, on a trip to France, and I think it made a lasting impression.’
They went into the bathroom. The tub itself was midnight blue, and the wallpaper was an Osborne & Little design from England, blue peacocks strutting across a white background, like a Rorschach print of stately elegance. Ed ran the faucets, and sifted Swiss herb salts into the water. Della stood before the mirror, tidying her hair.
‘I’m surprised you took this farm on,’ said Della.
‘Oh?’ asked Ed. ‘Why?’
She turned away from the mirror. ‘You seem to like classy living as much as the next man. You’re not dumb. So why maroon yourself out here in Kansas, away from civilisation, and theatres, and anything that’s anything?’
Ed unbuttoned his shirt. ‘Land, and growing things, they’re as much a part of what makes this country worth living in as theatre and smart restaurants. And, in any case, I guess every actuary’s a dumb hick at heart.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ she asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Well, I hope you’re not too dumb and hickish to unzipper my gown for me.’
She turned around, lifted her hair up from the nape of her neck, and presented her back to him. He stood right behind her, watching both of their faces in the bathroom mirror. The steam from the hot water was already misting the edges of the glass so that it looked like an old and romantic photograph.
Ed tugged the zipper right down the curved small of her back. Then he gently slipped the straps off her shoulders, and pulled down the front of her gown, baring her breasts. In the mirror, he could see how large and rounded they were, and how wide her pink areolas spread. He watched his hand reach around her, and clasp her left breast as if it were a heavy, ripe fruit.
Della stretched her neck back, and kissed him. He pulled her gown right down, and she was standing in front of the mirror naked. The shape of her pale body was punctuated only by the petal-pink spots of her nipples and the gingery plume of her pubic hair.
They said nothing. There was nothing for them to say. Ed stripped off his shirt, and took down his pants. Then he sat on the edge of the tub and clasped Della around the waist, pulling her towards him, so that at last she lowered herself on his lap. As the steam from the running water gradually hazed up the bathroom mirror completely, they were able to see Della opening her thighs wide, and straddling Ed’s legs, so that the dark hard head of his penis could slide its way between the rose-coloured lips of her vulva, right up as far as his black-haired balls; but then they could make out nothing more than two blurred impressionistic figures, two different patterns reflected in a surface like breathed-on mercury.
Ed clutched Della’s soft, big breasts, resting his cheek against her back and thrusting and thrusting until he felt that it wasn’t humanly possible to thrust any deeper. Della threw her head from one side to the other, gasping and shuddering with the feeling of what Ed was doing to her. And when Ed at last ejaculated, she bent forward and said, ‘Oh, that’s beautiful,’ even though she hadn’t reached a climax herself.
Afterward, they sat in the bedroom, wrapped in huge soft yellow towels, watching each other with new awareness. Della hadn’t told him yet, but she didn’t want to sleep with him in his marital bed. The act would only have been symbolic, but it was more than she felt he was prepared to give her, and more than she was prepared to take – at least until they knew each other better.
Ed said, ‘Was I better than Shearson Jones?’
She looked at him wide-eyed. ‘How do you know I’ve ever made love to Shearson Jones?’
‘Have you?’
She smiled at him. Not too broadly. She didn’t want to antagonise him. ‘Would it matter to you if I had?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m being ridiculously jealous, the way most new lovers are.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Shearson Jones has plenty of enviable things in his life. Money, power, influence, and scores of women. But you have plenty of enviable things, too. A farm, and a beautiful wife, and a lovely daughter.’
‘What are you trying to do?’ Ed asked her. ‘Make me eat ashes for what we just did?’
‘How could I? We both wanted it and we both enjoyed it. And that’s as far as it has to go. No guilt. No recriminations. No nothing.’
‘Are you really that blasé?’ he wanted to know.
She shook her head. ‘I’m not blasé at all. If I was blasé. I’d cling on to you for all I was worth. I wouldn’t care about who you were, and what your farm meant to you. I wouldn’t care about your wife or your daughter.’
‘You don’t care now. Don’t give me that.’
‘I do care, as a matter of fact, because I think you’re somebody special. You’re a nice man. Good-looking, hard-working, and prepared to fight for what you believe in. I wanted to make love with you because I wanted to please you and I wanted to please myself. Now, it’s over.’
‘You mean we’re never going to make love again?’
‘How do I know? I thought it was up to the man to do all the chasing.’
He frowned, and rubbed the back of his hair with his towel. Then he grinned, and chuckled.
‘You know what you are, don’t you?’ he asked her.
‘What am I?’
‘You’re beautiful. That’s all. Just beautiful.’
*
On Friday morning, the president called a delayed news conference and informed the White House Press Corps that he had been holding ‘urgent and concerned meetings’ with the Department of Agriculture, and that he had also talked directly on the telephone with the governors of nine states, including Kansas, Iowa, Montana, Washington, California, and Florida. The damage to crops caused by various blights and diseases was ‘difficult to assess in terms of the nation’s foreseeable lunchpail’ – a phrase which he would later have cause to regret he had ever spoken, and not just for grammatical reasons, either. But most of the governors had believed that the blight situation was ‘containable’ and that food stocks were generally high enough to see them through until next year’s spring crops.
What none of the governors realised was that the blight crisis was already well beyond disaster level. Most of their state agricultural departments had sent samples of the mystifying disease to Washingon for assessment, but Washington had so far given them nothing in return except the words of Shearson Jones – that the federal researchers were ‘on the brink of solving the problem’ and that ‘the agricultural cavalry is on the way.’
By Friday, the truth was that the blight had spread so terrifyingly quickly over crops of all kinds that some kind of antidote treatment would have to be applied by the following Tuesday at the latest to save even fifty per cent of the nation’s expected food production. And despite the reassuring words of Shearson Jones – on which the state governors had based their opinion that the situation was reasonably under control – there was no chance at all that an antidote could be manufactured in sufficient quantities to meet that deadline, even if an antidote were discovered at all.
The media, too, had been lulled into thinking that the blight story was nothing more than a passing problem – like a hurricane, or a snowstorm. It was beyond the imagination of most newspaper and television editors to interpret American life as anything more than a series of transitory crises – headlines that were fresh one day and stale the next. They still hadn’t been able to grasp that the blight could irrevocably alter the whole structure of western society in the time it usually took for the average American to work up an appetite for his next meal. Shearson Jones said nothing to disabuse them, and for lunch on Friday he ate turtle soup, two roasted squab, and a peach crab lantern.
On Friday afternoon, CBS News reported in a special bulletin that the president was now ‘carefully optimistic’ about the national shortfall in food production. Senator Shearson Jones was going to Kansas for the week-end, and he would make a full broadcast about the crisis on Sunday night, when he had been able to judge the effects of the blight first-hand.
Early on Friday evening, a California wine grower went out into his blighted vineyard in the Napa Valley and blew most of his own head off with a 12-bore shotgun. His distraught wife told police that they had struggled for fifteen years to cultivate their own distinctive wines, and that this year had been ‘make or break’ year for their winery.
In Washington, the Federal Crop Insurance Programme announced that ‘very careful screening’ would have to be given to claims for blighted crops. It was possible that claims would be so heavy this year that the programme would not be able to meet all of them out of its own resources.
In Washburn, North Dakota, a farmer called his local radio station to say that the crop blight was caused by ‘bacteria from the moon rocks.’ All the moon rocks should be gathered up at once and fired back into space he insisted.
In Georgetown, shortly after six o’clock, Shearson Jones’s telephone rang, and Billy, his manservant, went to answer it.
*
It was Peter Kaiser. He wanted to know if Shearson was still on schedule for the nine o’clock flight from Dulles to Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. Shearson had just come out of the shower, and he was wrapped in a silk Chinese robe with an electric-blue dragon twisting its way around it. He was smoking a large cigar and he smelled of Signoricci II.
‘I’ll be there,’ he told Peter Kaiser. ‘Barring an act of God, or an unforeseeable disaster.’
‘What about a foreseeable lunchpail?’ asked Peter Kaiser.
Shearson chuckled. ‘Wasn’t that the worst speech ever? I’m surprised the TV people haven’t picked it up already. If we didn’t have this Blight Crisis Appeal going, I’d have gone right in there and torn it to shreds myself. A chicken in every pot, and a mirage in every lunchpail. How that stuffed dummy ever got to be president is beyond me.’
‘He was voted in,’ said Peter.
‘No, he wasn’t. His opponents were voted out. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about him. Tell me how the fund’s going.’
Peter paused as he shuffled through his accounts. Eventually, he said, ‘As of this afternoon, when the banks closed, we had seven million dollars already credited to the Blight Crisis account by special clearance. There were still two million dollars outstanding, and the bank doesn’t expect that money to be through until Tuesday or Wednesday.’
‘What about the Michigan Tractor contribution?’
‘That could take longer. You know what they’re like. Their board hardly ever agrees to meet in emergency session; and when they do, they’ve got five major subsidiaries to take into account. We’ll be lucky if we get their cheque for a week, maybe longer.’
‘But they’ve offered us two million.’
‘I know. Senator. That’s why they’re taking so long about it.’
‘Damn,’ breathed Shearson. ‘I don’t know how much longer we can keep this whole balloon flying. Seven million is a hell of a lot less than I was counting on. And we’re going to lose a million at least in administrative expenses and commissions.’
‘I’m sorry. Senator,’ said Peter. ‘I’m doing my very best to get the money cleared promptly. But I’ve only had three days, and it’s a miracle we’ve gotten so much already. There were twenty-eight corporations involved in raising that seven million. Most of them were already on my list of over-profitables, and they couldn’t get rid of the money fast enough. But from now on in, we’re going to have a far tougher time.’
‘To be quite frank, Peter, I don’t think there’s going to be any “from now on in”,’ breathed Shearson, puffing at his cigar. ‘I’ve done what I can to keep this blight in the right kind of perspective, but if the media don’t realise what’s going on by the middle of next week, then they’re even dumber than I always thought they were.’
‘The president seems to think it’s all under control,’ said Peter.
‘The president’s scared shitless, and he’s clinging on to any and every optimistic statement that anybody comes up with,’ retorted Shearson. ‘How can he possibly turn around to the people of the greediest nation on the face of this earth and say, “I’m sorry, folks, but you’re going to have to do without bread, or corn, or french fries, or Post Toasties”? He’d be dragged out of the White House and publicly crucified.’
‘What about Protter?’ asked Peter. ‘Has he come up with anything yet? I asked him to call you direct if he did, in case I was out.’
‘No. No word from Protter,’ said Shearson. ‘Listen – I’ll meet up with you later. Right now I have to get myself dressed. But start thinking up ways to get that two million out of Michigan Tractors before mid-week.’
‘Okay, Senator. I’ll see you at the airport.’
Shearson put the phone down, but almost immediately it rang again. Billy walked across the parquet hallway with metal-tipped heels that methodically clicked, and picked up the receiver. He listened, and nodded, and finally he said to Shearson, ‘It’s Professor Protter. He says priority.’
‘All right,’ said Shearson. ‘I’ll take it. Bring me a tankard of Dom Perignon, will you? I’m as dry as a hog.’
Professor Protter sounded strained. ‘Senator? I believe I may have some good news for you.’
‘Good news?’ asked Shearson, suspiciously.
‘That’s right. We’ve made some excellent progress on the virus. It was very fortunate. Almost an accident. But the net result is that we may be able to clear most of it up.’ Shearson sucked silently at his cigar.
‘Are you there?’ asked Professor Protter.
‘I’m here,’ said Shearson. ‘Tell me what you’ve found out.’
‘It was Dr Egan’s idea, as a matter of fact. He sent a sample around to the Pentagon’s bacteriological warfare centre, and asked if they could possibly identify it. They spent twenty-four hours going through ten different samples, and then they called us back and said there wasn’t any doubt about it.’
‘Well?’ said Shearson, impatiently.
‘It’s an artificially cultivated virus which bears a strong resemblance to one of our own viruses called Vorar D. It was originally developed as a defoliant for Vietnam, but since then it’s been taken through several different variants. It has the same effect as powdery mildew – it arrests photosynthesis in growing plants – but it also causes very rapid decay and breakdown of the cells. It’s aerobic – which means that it’s transmitted through the air – and it’s not very easy to kill.’
‘I thought you said we could clear most of it away.’
‘I did. The Pentagon already have a formula for sterilising crops that have been infected by Vorar D, and they’re pretty sure they can adapt it to clear away this particular variety. The only problem is that it’s going to take some time.’
‘I see,’ said Shearson.
There was a lengthy silence. Then Professor Protter said, ‘You don’t sound as if you’re particularly pleased.’
‘Pleased? Of course I’m pleased,’ said Shearson.
‘Then what will you do? Will you call the president, and get the authorisation for the sterilising compound to be manufactured right away? Or what?’
‘I hope you’re not trying to dictate my course of action. Professor,’ said Shearson, testily. ‘I need to see a written report on this Vorar D before I can advise the president. And what do we know about this sterilising compound? Federal restrictions are very tight on what we can spray on our crops and what we can’t. Supposing it has dangerous side-effects? Supposing it pollutes water? Supposing it can cause malformation in unborn children?’
‘It’s been thoroughly tested,’ said Professor Protter. ‘Maybe it has, but you’re talking about a variant of it. Come on. Professor, the lives and safety of millions of Americans are at stake here. You can’t treat them like guinea-pigs in one of your laboratories.’
‘Senator-it will take weeks to produce sufficient supplies of sterilising compounds and even longer to spray them over all the affected areas. If we don’t set something in motion now, we may be too late. That’s if we’re not too late already.’
Billy arrived with a half-pint silver tankard of cold champagne, which he set down beside Shearson’s telephone. Shearson snapped his fingers at him to bring him a taper for his cigar.
‘What I want you to do. Professor—’ said Shearson, puffing at his cigar again, ‘—what I want you to do is prepare me a complete file on what you’ve discovered so far. Then, when I come back from Kansas on Monday morning. I’ll call a special meeting of the Agriculture Committee, and we can discuss what action we’re going to take.’
‘But Senator—’
‘Don’t “but Senator” me, Professor. Just do what you’re told.’
‘Senator, this is one time when I’m going to say no. The situation is urgent, we have the means to do something about it. Two days could make all the difference. I’m going to go way over your head with this information, and if I still don’t get anywhere. I’m going to the press.’
‘Professor,’ rumbled Shearson, gently. ‘I very much advise you against doing that.’
‘Try and stop me,’ snapped Professor Protter, and slammed his phone down.
Shearson held his own receiver in his hand for a few seconds, staring at it thoughtfully. Then, almost inaudibly, he said to Billy, ‘Get me Peter Kaiser again.’
*
At eight forty-five p.m., Karen Fortunoff was still waiting by the gate at Dulles Airport for Peter Kaiser to join her. She was wearing a smart camel-coloured suit, and she had bought herself a new week-end case especially for the trip. The flight had already been called twice, and she didn’t know if she ought to board the plane, with the risk that Peter wouldn’t make it in time, and that she would have to fly to Wichita alone – or if she should wait for him to arrive, and risk missing the flight altogether.
Outside, in the darkness, the Tri-Star’s engines were already whining, and she could see the last of the service vehicles driving away. She checked her watch. Maybe she should just forget the whole thing. She didn’t particularly like Peter anyway. If she hadn’t already told her friends that she was going to spend the week-end in the million-dollar vacation home of Senator Shearson Jones, and if she hadn’t been so worried about keeping herself up-to-date on the blight crisis, she would have gone back to her apartment and resigned herself to another Saturday and Sunday doing the same old things. Reading, drawing, watching TV.
She went to the window and stared out at the aeroplane. Most of the passengers were already in their seats, and she could see the stewardess counting heads for cocktails. Reflected in the dark glass, she could see her own face, too, like a silent and inquisitive stranger.
She heard someone talking in a loud, harsh voice, and she turned around. With relief, but with apprehension, too, she saw Peter hurrying along the carpeted corridor. He had to hurry because he was trying to keep up with one of the airline’s electric carts, on which in huge and weighty splendour sat Senator Shearson Jones, in a white suit as large as a circus marquee.
Peter gave Karen a quick half-smile when he saw her, and said, ‘Hi. You made it, then?’
Karen said, ‘Yes,’ but she was more interested in the spectacle of Shearson Jones easing his bulky body from the cart and waddling sweatily towards the gate. She felt as if she were in the presence of a political and physical phenomenon; a being who defied gravity and governments, both.
She didn’t think at first that Shearson had noticed her, but as they followed him down the walkway to the aeroplane, the senator said loudly, without turning around, ‘Who’s the girl, Peter?’
‘Karen Fortunoff,’ said Peter. ‘My head girl. Very efficient.’
‘Good,’ rumbled Shearson. ‘I like to have pretty girls around me. I congratulate your taste.’
Peter took Karen’s elbow as they boarded the plane. ‘See?’ he whispered. ‘He likes you.’
Karen gave him an uneasy grin. ‘As long as he doesn’t want me, I don’t mind.’
*
Dr Benson yawned as he walked along the corridor to his office in the Kansas Agricultural Research building. He could hear his telephone ringing but he wasn’t going to hurry. He was too tired after driving all the way back from the experimental agricultural station near Hays, and all he wanted now was a cup of hot coffee, a bath, and six hours’ sleep.
The phone was still ringing as he pushed open the door of his untidy office and threw his dogeared briefcase into a corner. He took off his car-coat, hung it up on the back of the door, and then shuffled through the heap of papers on his desk to see if the telephone was anywhere within easy reach. He found it at last, sniffed, and picked it up.
‘Yes?’ he asked, non-committally.
‘Is that Dr Nils Benson?’ asked an intent voice.
‘Who wants him?’
‘Professor Protter, from the Federal Agricultural Research laboratory in Washington.’
‘Oh, I see. Then this is he. How do you do, Professor. I’m glad you called.’
Professor Protter sounded anxious. ‘I’m glad you answered,’ he said. ‘I was just about to hang up.’
Dr Benson lifted his eyeglasses with his left hand and pinched the bridge of his nose to relieve the pressure of tiredness. ‘I went out to the state experimental farm at Garden City, and then over to the experimental agricultural station at Hays. It’s been a pretty exhausting couple of days. I only just walked into the office.’
‘Have your state research people found anything out?’
‘Not a lot,’ said Dr Benson. ‘But they confirmed the blight is a virus of some kind – which is what I originally guessed it to be. They’re running more tests over the weekend.’
‘Listen,’ said Professor Protter, ‘they’re absolutely right when they say it’s a virus. We took it to the chemical warfare people, and they identified it almost straight away as a new strain of Vorar D.’
‘Vorar D? I read about that. So, I wasn’t so far off target after all. I told one of our farmers here that the blight was probably started deliberately.’
‘I’m not hazarding any guesses about how it was started,’ said Professor Protter. ‘That’s up to the FBI. But I am worried about the lack of concrete help I’m getting from the Agriculture Committee in general and Senator Shearson Jones in particular.’
‘You’ve told Jones about Vorar D?’
‘Of course. I told him that the Pentagon have a suitable sterilising compound, too.’
‘And he didn’t seem interested?’
‘He wanted written reports, and tests on the sterilising compound, and God knows what. There’s no question at all that he’s trying to slow this whole thing down.’
‘Can you think of any reason why he should?’
‘Only one,’ said Professor Protter. ‘He’s opened this Blight Crisis Appeal for Kansas wheat farmers, as you obviously know. So far I think it’s brought in three or four million dollars, although the news tonight said he was aiming for a target of twenty-five million dollars or more. Now – I may be unjust in thinking this – but it occurs to me that if the government announces they’ve found a way to arrest the blight, then interest in compensating the poor unfortunate farmers is going to take a downward curve. It’s the same with the way that Jones keeps telling the media that the blights in other states apart from Kansas aren’t very serious. In my opinion, he’s trying to maintain a completely distorted impression of what’s going on, simply to rake in as much contribution money as he possibly can.’
Dr Benson threw a copy of the Kansas paper off his chair, and sat down. ‘That’s a pretty heavy accusation,’ he said. ‘Do you think you can substantiate it?’
‘I’m not interested in substantiating it right now,’ said Professor Protter. ‘All I’m interested in is getting through to the president, and making sure that production starts on sterilising compounds right away.’
‘Why don’t you make an announcement to the press? That’s what I always do when I want to tug a few executive earlobes.’
‘I’m not in a position to do that,’ said Professor Protter.
‘Why not? If you’re right, what can they do to you?’
‘Senator Jones can do a lot to me, and to my family. That’s why I’m sharing this information with you. I was wondering if you could leak the story for me – get things moving. You could always say that it was your own people in Kansas who had identified the virus.’
Dr Benson cleared his throat. ‘You want me to be the fall guy?’
‘You can call your research people – have them check on the virus. I can assure you that everything I’m telling you is true. Six CW experts can’t be wrong.’
‘Well…’ said Dr Benson.
‘It’s not just important,’ Professor Protter told him. ‘It’s crucial to the survival of this whole nation. I wouldn’t have asked you otherwise.’
‘All right, then,’ said Dr Benson. ‘I’ll call Mike Smith at the local radio station. He’s good on handling this kind of thing.’
‘I’m sure you won’t regret it,’ said Professor Protter.
‘No, Professor, I don’t think I will,’ Dr Benson told him. ‘If I’m going to go down, I might as well go down with all guns blazing.’
Dr Benson put the phone down, and rummaged around his room for his telephone directory. He was searching for the number of the Wichita news station when there was a light rapping sound at his door. He looked up, and there was a pretty red-headed woman in a grey raincoat, with a pocketbook under her arm. She smiled at him, and said, ‘Hi. Am I disturbing you?’
‘I, er – well, no, I don’t think so,’ said Dr Benson.
The woman stepped confidently into the office. ‘I was waiting for you to come back from Hays. I saw the light go on in your office so I came up. My name’s Della McIntosh, by the way. I’m the new projects manager for Shearson Jones’s Blight Crisis Appeal.’
Dr Benson shook her hand hesitantly. ‘That’s quite a coincidence,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been talking about the Blight Crisis Appeal to a colleague of mine.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Della, perching herself on the edge of Dr Benson’s desk, and giving him more of her warmest grin. ‘Was it anybody I know?’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. You’re not an agronomist, are you?’
‘No, but I’m over the age of consent.’
Dr Benson let out a grunt of amusement. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’ he asked. ‘Apart from ask your consent?’
‘I flew in from Washington yesterday,’ Della told him. ‘I spent last night looking over Mr Hardesty’s farm at South Burlington, and now I’m interested in talking to you. Have you discovered what causes the blight yet?’
‘No… not exactly. We’re still working on the theory that it might be a form of powdery mildew.’
‘I thought you believed it was a virus.’
‘Did Mr Hardesty tell you that? Oh, well, I was only generalising. It could be any one of a dozen things. It’s going to take our people at Hays and Garden City a long time to find out which.’
Della stood up. ‘We’re sending out a television statement on Sunday evening from Senator Jones’s home at Fall River. If you can spare me an hour or so, I was wondering if you could give me some scientific background. We want to make it all sound authentic.’
‘Well, er – I have a quick call to make – then maybe I can spare you a little time. Would you excuse me for just a minute or two? You could sit in my secretary’s office across the hall.’
‘Sure,’ smiled Della, and stepped out of the office, closing the door behind her. She quickly crossed the corridor to the office marked ‘Enquiries’, switched on the light, and went across to the grey steel desk. The tell-tale light on the telephone was already lit up, so she carefully lifted the receiver, and listened in.
‘—called me urgently and confidentially, and said that the Pentagon’s chemical warfare people had identified it as Vorar D – that’s right – well they used to use it for defoliation work in Vietnam – but he doesn’t want to leak the story himself – no – well, as far as I understand it, Senator Jones can put some sort of a squeeze on his family – that’s right—’
When the light blinked off again, Della quietly replaced the receiver, and tippy-toed across to the window. By the time Dr Benson came in, shrugging on his car-coat again, she appeared to be absent-mindedly staring out at the light of Wichita’s Civic Centre.
‘I thought we’d go down to the coffee shop,’ said Dr Benson. ‘I haven’t eaten in hours.’
‘Personally, I could do with a drink,’ smiled Della. ‘Is there a good cocktail bar near here?’
‘Well, I guess so – but the truth is I don’t usually—’
Della linked her arm in his. ‘Oh, come on. Surely work’s over for the day, even for you busy agricultural scientists.’ Dr Benson shrugged. ‘I guess I’m all right as long as I stick to Coke.’
‘Coke?’ asked Della, as they walked along the corridor to the elevator. ‘What kind of a scientist drinks Coke?’
Dr Benson didn’t answer, but pulled her an uncomfortable smile as they descended to the lobby. Della cuddled his arm, as if he was an affectionate old white-haired sugar-daddy, and when the security guard opened the downstairs door for them and let them out into the cool night air, he gave Dr Benson such a significant wink that Dr Benson felt like Humbert Humbert on his night off.
‘Is that the bar?’ asked Della, looking across the neon-lit plaza. ‘The Silver Star?’
‘That’s the bar,’ said Dr Benson, in a resigned voice.
*
The rented chauffeur-driven Lincoln Continental skirted the trees on the southern side of Fall River Lake and came out at last into a clearing. The driver had done this run before, and he turned up the driveway which led to Shearson Jones’s house without having to be directed. He stopped at the white-painted wrought-iron gates, let down his window, and said, ‘Senator Jones and party,’ into the driveside microphone. There was a pause, then a click and a hum, and the gates swung open.
Sitting in one of the jump seats, Karen couldn’t see the house very well until the chauffeur turned the Lincoln around on the gravelled front apron, applied the brake, and opened the door for her. When she climbed out, though, and stood waiting for Peter and Senator Jones in the wind that blew off the lake, she realised just how much one and a half million dollars could buy, especially out in rural Kansas.
Lake Vista – a name which one of Shearson’s mistresses had chosen – was a modernistic two-story house built out of natural stone, timber and glass. It was set in the rock overlooking the lake, with two balconies actually overhanging the dark and glittering water. But its most striking feature was the triangular timber roof which rose from the centre of the house like a stylised Indian tepee. Shearson kept at Lake Vista one of the country’s most valuable and important private collections of primitive Indian art, including a Pottawatomie painting on buffalo hide that had been valued at six million dollars.
‘Quite a place, huh?’ asked Peter, taking Karen’s arm and leading her towards the front door. ‘You wait until you see the inside.’
‘It’s unbelievable,’ said Karen. ‘It’s just like something out of the movies.’
The featureless wooden front doors of the house opened up, and two tall blue-jawed men in plaid shirts and mushroom-coloured stetson hats came out to help Senator Jones across the gravel. One of them tipped his hat to Karen and said, ‘How are you?’
‘They’re the Muldoon brothers,’ explained Peter, leading Karen up the steps and into the polished wood hallway. ‘They used to work a farm in Elk county, until they were bought out by an oil company. They’re pretty wealthy in their own right, but for some reason they’ve always attached themselves to Shearson as unpaid side-kicks. Don’t ever ask me why. You’ll have to find out for yourself.’
The inside of Shearson’s house was even more spectacular than the outside. The interior of the pointed wooden roof was lined with zig-zag galleried steps, so that a visitor could climb upwards from level to level, admiring Shearson’s Indian paintings and artifacts all the way up to the very tip of the house. Under the stressed-concrete beams which supported the ‘tepee’, there was a spacious conversation area; and off to the left, towards the lake, there was a sitting-room with Cherokee rugs and leather furniture and genuine Canadian totem poles.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Karen.
Behind her, the Muldoon brothers were almost carrying Shearson into the house. Grimacing, they supported him through the doors, across the conversation area, and into the sitting-room, so that they could deposit him at last in a sturdy studded library chair, with a view through the sliding-glass windows of the darkling lake.
‘Travel grows less and less desirable every day,’ grumbled Shearson. ‘Did Della get here yet?’
‘She called and left a message,’ said one of the Muldoon brothers. ‘She said she was talking to someone called Dr Benson at the Silver Star cocktail bar in Wichita, and that she didn’t expect to be late. Things were going just fine, she said.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Shearson. ‘Now, will one of you boys bring me a bottle of champagne, and some glasses? I think we ought to celebrate our safe arrival.’
Peter nudged Karen towards a large couch, covered in rough-brushed hide. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘The senator won’t eat you. Will you. Senator?’
Senator Jones took out a large linen handkerchief and mopped sweat from his face and his jowls. ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘I’m so damned hungry I could eat anything, and she looks pretty tasty.’
*
It didn’t take Ed long to find them. The security guard at the agricultural research centre had seen them leave the building, and walk across the plaza towards the Silver Star bar. When he pushed his way through the Dodge City-style doors, he saw them at once. Dr Benson with his white-haired head in his hands, Della with her arm around him, and Mike Smith from the radio station, short and crewcut and stubby, standing beside them with a helpless look on his face.
Ed crossed the bar and laid both of his hands on Dr Benson’s back. ‘Dr Benson?’ he said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Drunk,’ said Dr Benson.
Ed looked at Della with an expression like cracked ice. ‘Did you bring him in here?’ he demanded.
Della said, ‘He wanted to come. He said he felt like a drink.’
‘Goddamit, you knew he was an alcoholic!’
‘How was I supposed to know that?’ asked Della. ‘I’ve never met him before in my life. All I wanted to do was talk about the blight, and all he wanted to do was drink. Is that my fault?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ed said, bitterly.
‘He called me,’ said Mike Smith. ‘He said he had some news about the blight.’
‘Did he tell you what it was?’ asked Ed.
‘Well, he did,’ said Mike. ‘But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to believe now. I mean, the guy’s stewed. Whatever he says, it isn’t going to make a lot of sense.’
‘It’s a virush,’ said Dr Benson, rearing up from his barstool.
‘You see what I mean?’ put in Mike Smith. ‘It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘It’s a virush,’ insisted Dr Benson. ‘A damned terrible virush I can’t remember the name of. Vorar D. That’sh it. Vorar D. You look it up. Vorar D.’
‘That’s what he told me on the phone,’ said Mike Smith. ‘He said that somebody called Professor Protter in Washington had called him up, and spilled the beans on the whole blight situation. The blight was caused by some virus called Vorar D, some kind of defoliant they developed for Vietnam.’
‘He’s drunk,’ said Della. ‘He’s been rambling like this ever since I met him. Earlier on, he was saying that the blight was an act of God.’
‘God?’ enquired Dr Benson, loudly. ‘Has God decided to grace us with His presence?’
Mike Smith pulled a face. ‘I can’t broadcast anything from a source as pickled as this,’ he said.
Ed kept his arm protectively around Dr Benson’s shoulders. ‘I know you can’t,’ he told Mike Smith. ‘But when I first talked to Dr Benson about this blight, he wasn’t drunk. And he did believe it was caused by a virus. Presumably somebody in Washington – Professor Protter, or whoever – presumably they’ve discovered what virus it is.’
‘I can’t send out a story on evidence like this,’ said Mike Smith, shaking his head.
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Ed. ‘You’ve seen the crops for yourself, the condition they’re in. Are you going to ignore them, and run the same news stories as everybody else?’
‘It’s under control,’ said Mike Smith. ‘Everybody from the governor downwards tells me it’s under control.’
‘Sure it’s under control,’ said Ed, hotly. ‘It’s under so much control that I’ve just lost eighty-five thousand acres of wheat without being able to stop it, or even slow it down. Under control, crap.’
Mike Smith spread his arms apologetically. ‘I don’t see what I can do. Here’s a scientist giving me all the answers I want, and the only trouble is that the scientist is blind drunk. Sober him up, and then I’ll talk to him. But it’s more than my reputation’s worth to interview him now.’
Della said, ‘I’m afraid he’s right. You can’t believe a man in this condition, even if you want to.’
Ed lowered his eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose you can’t. Dr Benson – I’m going to drive you home.’
Dr Benson shook his head. ‘One more drink. One more, and then I’ll come. Bartender – one more drink!’
Ed looked at Della with a feeling of bitterness that he could hardly control. ‘I should have known better,’ he said. ‘I should have known a whole damned sight better.’
‘Once a hayseed, always a hayseed,’ Della told him, and grinned.
Ed slammed the fiat of his hand on to the bar, and the barman looked around warily.