THE VIRON CONSPIRACY (JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS #4) (14 page)

“Oh, God. Not that bad. I loved it. You saw that I did.”

“And heard it. As did Cleveland.”

Kate blushed to her roots. She had turned the lights on, as she always did during sex. She liked to watch.

“You know what I mean. There was passion, but not
the
passion. Oh, hell. What am I trying to say?”

“We’ve moved on, Katie. You broke my heart ….” She started to speak and he put his hand over her mouth
. “…. and it mended. Things have happened to both of us since, things that put our years together in perspective. I wish they didn’t happen, because they’ve scarred us even more.” Scarne got a strange look in his eyes. “I’ll always love you. I probably loved you more than any man will ever love you again. Including me.”

They were lying side by side, exhausted, just talking. At his last words, Kate began crying.

“Hey,” Scarne said. “I don’t mean to be so candid. I don’t mean to say that I don’t find you desirable. The first day I saw you out at the pool I wanted to jump your bones.” He teased. “But when Aurelia served the lobster, I got distracted.”

Kate punched him in the side and smiled.

“No. It’s all right. I know what you mean. I just miss it so. That feeling. I wonder if I will ever have it again.”

“Don’t worry. Women live in the moment. You’ll love again.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to try to go as long as I can without complicating things.”

She looked at him.

“Who was she? What did she do to you?”

“It’s what I did to her,” Scarne said, and then told her the story.

When he finished, Kate said, “Oh, my God.”

“I always could talk to you, Kate.”

Kate Ellenson looked at Scarne and saw a hardness in him she’d never seen before. For a moment, she was actually frightened.

“Why are you doing this for me, Jake? Really.”

“You asked me.”

CHAPTER 23 - BOONE CITY

Anzor Turchin wrinkled his prominent nose.

“What is that smell?”

“It’s something, isn’t it,” Anne Rasmussen said. “Soybeans. One never quite gets used to it. Do you find it unpleasant?’

“Not particularly,” the Russian said. “I have smelled much worse.”

An understatement, Turchin mused.

“We could put up the windows and I could turn on the air-conditioning,” Rasmussen said. “Although I’m not sure that would help much.”

“No, no. I like the fresh air.” It was a pleasant September day. What was it with Americans? They closed car windows and put the air-conditioning on maximum if the temperature reached 21degrees Celsius. They probably didn’t want to muss their hair, a consideration that never occurred to the totally bald Turchin. “But does the entire state of Illinois smell like soybeans?”

Rasmussen laughed.

“God, no. It’s just that the wind is in the right direction. We’re still 20 miles or so from the BVM complex, but they process a hell of a lot of the stuff, as well as corn and other agricultural products. Wait until you see it. Could be worse. Ever been downwind from a paper factory? Now, that’s a noxious odor.”

Turchin affected a laugh. Might as well humor the woman, he thought. If Rasmussen, a typically dim apparatchik with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, knew how many factories and facilities I’d been downwind from in my life, she’d be stunned. I’ve even had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of Chernobyl after the meltdown, Turchin recalled with a bitter smile, thanks to an idiot helicopter pilot. He would have had the fool aviator shot but it wasn’t the man’s first error. He’d flown into the radiation cloud too many times and soon died quickly, and horribly. Turchin escaped with only the permanent loss of his hair, which, he rationalized, had been thinning anyway.

The Russian looked out the window of the black Ford Explorer at the vast flatland. They had flown in to Terre Haute on the Illinois-Indiana border, where they picked up their car at a Department  of Agriculture regional office for the 75-minute drive to Boone City. Turchin didn’t mind the drive. Rasmussen was an excellent driver, aggressive but alert. She handled the big American SUV with aplomb, and was a pleasant change from drivers in Russia, who were typically overly aggressive and often soon in traction. The vista reminded him of the steppes of his native land, although he admitted that there was no farmland on earth as productive as the American heartland. Blessed with a temperate climate unlike any other on earth, the United States could feed the world, and, in the past, did. Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri; the Americans didn’t appreciate what they had. They spent tens of billions on farm subsidies and crop insurance that lined the pockets of giant agribusinesses and wealthy absentee “farmers” in places like Los Angeles and New York City (including, Turchin knew, a Rockefeller in Manhattan who was paid $340,000 for land he owned that grew nothing). It always amused Turchin when his American friends lectured him on the evils of socialism. Congress ranted about “welfare” and national health insurance while funding, since the 1930’s, one of the largest socialist systems in the worlds, American farming.

Turchin, a student of American agriculture, knew that more than 3,000 American farms had grown no crops for at least five years. He also knew that 20,000 people living in 50 of America’s largest cities, often hundreds, if not thousands
, of miles from the nation’s wheat and corn fields, received millions of dollars annually in farm subsidies last year. Even many farmers who actually lived on the land gamed the system, he knew, receiving more millions for not growing crops. They and their legislative supporters argued that the subsidies were needed because crop prices were so volatile, and could dip at any time. That ignored the fact that the past seven years had seen some of the highest farm income ever. Of course, Turchin also realized that several members of Congress owned farmland and supplemented their incomes with the subsidies they, in effect, voted themselves! This, at the same time they were cutting back on food stamps for the poor. Even Stalin would have had a hard time pulling that one off!

The Americans were fools. They, at least those in power, treated the breadbasket of the world as a huge cash register into which they could dip at will. Didn’t they know they had the greatest weapon on the planet? Well, they would soon learn how powerful that weapon could be in the hands of someone who knew how to use it.  

Turchin and Rasmussen were due for lunch and a tour at the BVM Corporation. As Deputy Director of Planning for the Minselkhoz, the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Agriculture, Turchin controlled just about everything in Russia related to livestock farming, veterinary services, plant and animal pharmaceuticals, crop production, phytosanitary control, soil fertility, aquaculture and water biological resources. An honors graduate of Moscow’s prestigious National Research University Higher School of Economics, the 64-year-old Turchin, who thanks to a rigorous physical regimen looked ten years younger, was a favorite in Washington, known for his prowess on the tennis court. His American friends might not have been so accommodating had they known that prior to a careful laundering of his background he was known as a particularly brutal colonel in the Soviet Union’s Committee of State Security, the dreaded KGB.

“I was told that you’ve never visited BVM, Dr. Turchin,” Rasmussen said. “I’m a bit surprised, given the company’s long history with Russia. You must know how important the company, which was then called Barker Vallance Magruder, was to Russia in the Second World War. I believe it was a relationship that even continued during the Cold War, if you can believe it.”

Rasmussen was trying to show off her knowledge, Turchin thought. Knowledge she probably gleaned from a quick perusal of a briefing paper last night. Another female promoted for good looks over competence. The Americans make such a big deal over “equal opportunity,” but Turchin had yet to see a woman weather forecaster on their television who couldn’t win a beauty contest. The same held true for many of the Government drones that had been assigned to keep him company. In Russia, the few women allowed to hold jobs of any importance had to know their stuff. I know more about BVM and its history than this American knows about her own pussy. Turchin smiled. Actually, that was something he’d like to know more about. Rasmussen was certainly a good-looking girl, tall and lithe with a sharp, pretty face. In Russia, he admitted, he’d probably be sitting in a car with a woman the size of refrigerator and the face of sturgeon.

“Yes, that is true,” Turchin said.” I am looking forward to my tour. BVM has a wonderful reputation in my country.”

“I think you will really be impressed by Dr. Lenzer,” Rasmussen gushed. “We consider him something of a visionary. He’s doing wonders at BVM.”

“So I understand,” Turchin said.

It certainly didn’t take long for the Americans to forget about Bryan Vallance, the Russian thought. As long as the stock went up, they didn’t care who was in charge. He opened his briefcase and began reading some documents related to BVM’s worldwide activities. The information was produced by a Wall Street securities firm and was widely available, but Turchin nevertheless found it useful and comprehensive. He smiled inwardly at his other knowledge of BVM, and its new chairman, that was unavailable to the analysts, and had never been committed to paper.

“There it is,” Rasmussen said ten minutes later.

Turchin looked out the window as the Explorer turned down a long road toward the giant BVM complex. Good Lord!

“What is that building
?” he blurted.

They were passing a huge structure that almost blotted out the horizon. At one end of the building was a rail terminus, in which several trains with scores of boxcars each were obviously in the process of unloading grains and corn. At the other end of the massive
edifice, which must have been 100 feet high and a quarter of a mile in length, a constant stream of trailer trucks roared away in clouds of asphalt dust and diesel smoke.

Turchin had never seen anything quite like it.

“What is in the trucks?” he asked.

“Margarine,” Rasmussen said. “One out of every three tubs of margarine produced in the United States comes out of that one building. Grains, soybeans and corn go in one end, and margarine in little tubs comes out the other. Hundreds of millions of them.”

“I didn’t know BVM sold margarine,” Turchin said, impressed in spite of himself.

“Oh, no. The company doesn’t sell margarine directly to consumers. The retailers just slap their own name brands on the tubs. No one can tell the difference, you know.”

What a horrendous waste of good grain, Turchin thought, actually incensed.

“I wonder what we will have for lunch,” Turchin, who fancied himself a bit of a gourmet, asked glumly.

“Keep your fingers crossed,” Rasmussen said. “I’ve been here before and got nothing but soy burgers and soy milk. And, of course, bread and margarine. But maybe they’ll treat you better, Doctor. After all, you are a valued guest.”

You don’t know the half of it, the Russian thought.

***

Turchin and Rasmussen were a little early, and when they got to the BVM headquarters complex they were told that Roland Lenzer was on the
“trading floor.” An assistant offered to take them there and they agreed.

The “trading floor” turned out to be a huge computer room that resembled nothing so much as a stock or commodities exchange, with scores of men and women at computer terminals, constantly working their machines or phones. All the “traders” faced a massive, floor
-to-ceiling electronic Mercator map projection showing the entire planet. Hundreds of green and red dots could be seen on the oceans.

The BVM assistant led them up a central aisle to where two men were standing looking up at the map. The shorter of the men was pointing at something in the Pacific Ocean. The other man said “fa
scinating” and wrote something in a notebook.

The assistant cleared his throat and said, “Dr. Lenzer?”

The shorter man turned around, looking annoyed.

“Yes.”

“Dr. Lenzer, I’m sorry to interrupt,” the assistant said quickly. “This is Dr. Turchin from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture and Ms. Rasmussen from the United States Department of Agriculture. You left word to bring them to you if you weren’t back when they arrived.”

“Yes. Of course. Thank you, Tom.”

Lenzer put out his hand. He was a thin man with a sallow complexion and bad skin who looked as if he didn’t spend much time outdoors. His blond hair was stringy and combed straight back. His eyes were his best feature, blue and piercing.

“Dr. Turchin. A pleasure. Your reputation precedes you.”

“As does yours, Dr. Lenzer.”

Lenzer smiled, revealing teeth that looked like a line of tombstones. He turned to Rasmussen.

“Nice to see you again, Anne,” he said with a perfunctory handshake and a small bow. “Will you be joining us for lunch?”

“Yes, thank you, Doctor.”

“I hope you will be with us a while, Dr. Turchin,” Lenzer said. “I have so much to show you.”

“
Until Wednesday.”

“
Wonderful. Where are you staying?”

“I’ve arranged rooms at the Boone City Inn,” Rasmussen said.

Lenzer looked horrified.

“The Boone City Inn! Do you want to start the Cold War all over again
? Cancel the reservation for Dr. Turchin. I would be honored if he stayed at my house.”

“That’s very kind,” Turchin said, “but I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Nonsense. I’ll be glad to have some company. I have a huge home all to myself. And I can provide meals far superior to any you would have in Boone City. And then we can talk more informally. I may even have some Russian vodka lying about.”

“Yes, I would like that,” Turchin said. “Is that a problem, Anne?”

Rasmussen looked confused, but rallied.

“Of course not.”

“Good, then it’s settled,” Lenzer said. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to drop Dr. Turchin off at my home around 7 P.M. One of my assistants will give you the directions. I want to stop in town for some things for dinner. I presume you are probably sick of looking at corn and soybeans, Dr. Turchin. I’ll get us a couple of nice steaks to grill.”

Lenzer suddenly realized he’d been ignoring the man he’d been speaking to when the others joined them.

“Forgive me.” He turned to the man and introduced him. “This is Jake Stone from Shields Magazine. I was giving him a quick tour. He’s doing a piece on Bryan Vallance.”

“Indeed,” Turchin said.

“Actually, it’s a book,” Jake Scarne said, shaking hands all around. “A biography.”

“Something like the one about Steve Jobs that came out after his death?” Rasmussen said.

“Well, yes. Although I don’t count myself in Isaacson’s league.” Scarne adjusted the reading glasses he’d bought in Chicago to make him look more literary. Kate said their thick black frames only made him look like Clark Kent. “We think Vallance was just as much a visionary in his field as Jobs was in his.”

Scarne was glad he’d read Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography .