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Forty minutes later, Gwen knocked on Messenger’s door. She’d lingered longer than planned in the shower, warming up. Despite the exercise, she’d felt chilled when her pulse had slowed and her breathing had returned to normal.

“Come!” bellowed Messenger.

Gwen walked in, closed the door. Messenger was sitting at his desk, leaning back in his chair. He had the quizzical expression he often wore when looking at her. Gwen had a fleeting but unpleasant sensation that he could peer into her brain. She frowned at him. This made him smile.

“Take a seat, Gwen. And don’t veil your feelings, will you?”

Gwen stopped frowning, sat down opposite him. “Stop scrutinizing me with that laser look then.”

Messenger raised his hands in surrender.

“I’ve stopped. Look, I got you in here for several reasons. One was to discuss the next step with Project Zeus, but another was to say thank you for all your work on it. I tested the model last week, sent up the drones. You’ve got the yield up close to nine percent.”

Gwen blinked. “Wow! It worked.”

“And some,” beamed Messenger. “Sheikh Ali and I would like to thank you.”

“Just doing my job,” replied Gwen.

Messenger slid an envelope across the desk. Gwen stared at it.

“Take it,” said Messenger. “It’s not booby-trapped!”

Gwen took it.

“Go on then,” urged Messenger. “Open it up.” He was smiling.

Gwen felt uneasy.

She tore open the envelope, pulled out a check.

“Holy hell!” she exclaimed, echoing Messenger’s earlier words.

“One million dollars! That’s insane!”

Messenger burst out laughing, but Gwen saw anger in his eyes.

“I swear you are a one-off! I just do not get you. Every other person in this office would be whooping with glee, but you.… you look almost outraged!”

Gwen felt like she was being bought. She wanted to hand back the money, or at least demand why, really why, she had been given it. But her warning bells were clanging and she pushed down her defiance. Act, you silly fool!

“I’m overwhelmed, that’s all,” she stated. “You have to remember a few months ago I was flat broke. Now I am a millionaire many times over. It’s a leap.”

She forced a smile. “Sorry, I’m being ungracious.” She leaned across the desk, offered Messenger her hand to shake. Messenger gripped it in his customary clench.

“Thank you,” said Gwen. Messenger held on past the time of release. Gwen felt his scrutiny again. Finally he released her.

“My and the Sheikh’s pleasure. Now go and put that in your pocketbook before you lose it, or before someone sees it, and would you please call in Peter and Kevin and come back in here?”

“Sure,” murmured Gwen. Heart pounding, she stashed the check in her pocketbook. It nestled in the bottom, against the lining, touching the location transmitter.

*   *   *

Peter Weiss and Kevin Barclay sat at the round table. Gabriel Messenger paced. Gwen took a seat beside Barclay, gave him her bright, slightly mocking smile. His bruises had almost, but not quite faded. His wariness had not gone. He looked away, met Weiss’s eye. Weiss frowned at Gwen, puzzled by the undercurrents.

“We are at the next stage of Project Zeus,” announced Messenger, steepling his fingers, voice slow and low as he glanced between his three employees. “Thanks in part to your efforts, Gwen, we have got the rain yield of Zeus up to where we can make a significant economic difference to agricultural yields on farmland.” He leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Kevin and Peter have identified the best potential land areas to buy. I wanted to run them past you, Gwen, get any weather observations you might have.”

Gwen just nodded. There was a visceral, tangible hunger in the room. She saw it in the three men’s eyes.

Messenger pointed to a map he had pinned up on his cork board. In it were stuck ten red pins.

“To back up a bit, here’s the initial thinking. In the initial stages, we wish to limit the risks. I told Kevin and Peter not to go for Africa—too unstable, huge corruption, poor transport infrastructure, political instability. Much better to go for Australia—serious water problem, huge marginal semi-arid areas, and Anglo-Saxon law, not to mention easy access to the enormous Asian markets.” Messenger swept his hand across the map, shot a smile at Gwen.

“And right here on our doorstep in the US Midwest there are extensive areas of marginal farming territory which could be bought for a song, but which crucially have the transport infrastructure, as would Australia.”

Barclay and Weiss were nodding enthusiastically.

“We are also planning to buy, build, and own storage, transportation, and port infrastructure, both at the exporting as well as the importing ends, as well as grain trading companies. The idea being, once we have the entire supply chain sewn up we can make a fortune.”

Messenger sat back, folded his arms across his stomach, beaming at his own brilliance. Weiss and Barclay gazed up at their boss like the acolytes they so clearly were.

Gwen nodded, said nothing for a moment, finally found her voice.

“Wow. You’ve got it all planned out.”

“That’s why we’re here. That’s what we do,” replied Messenger, looking hard at Gwen, as if seeking out any hint of sarcasm in her words.

It was like a military campaign, thought Gwen, or a kind of modern-day colonialization by capitalism.