Karen shook her head. ‘He believes it’s going to be minimal. Peter Kaiser and I and all the rest of the staff have been working on assessments of the country’s food reserves. Canned foods, dried foods, frozen food, military dumps, that kind of thing. There are going to be shortages, sure, and we’re all going to have to look forward to a few months without adequate supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables, until the next crops can be forced. But it’s not going to be that bad. I mean, it’s going to be bad, but nobody’s going to starve. There’s always the danger they won’t be able to find an antidote to the virus in time for next year, I suppose, but Shearson’s been leaning pretty heavily on the federal research people to come up with something.’

‘So,’ said Ed, quietly. ‘You really believe that Shearson Jones isn’t doing anything worse than flim-flamming the news media for a few days while he rakes in a few shekels? Just playing the same old game that politicians have always played – making money out of inside information?’

‘Do you know very much different?’ asked Karen, disturbed.

Ed leaned his elbows on the railing. ‘I believe I do. I’m not saying that what you’ve just been telling me isn’t right. I’m sure it is. But he’s been playing the game a whole lot closer to the edge. Or at least I think he has. You know this blight is caused by a virus?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard that.’

‘Well – I’ve been working alongside of Dr Benson at the Kansas Agricultural Research Centre, and Dr Benson was told last night that the federal laboratories in Washington have already found a way of killing the virus off.’

‘You’re serious?’ asked Karen. ‘They’ve actually done it? But that means Shearson’s been deliberately holding it back.’

Ed nodded. ‘The way Dr Benson heard it, Shearson Jones doesn’t want to announce that the blights are all caused by the same virus, because that would take away the special status he’s been trying to give to the wheat farmers in Kansas. Apart from that, the virus has turned out to be something very much like Vorar D, which was developed by the Pentagon for use in Vietnam, as a replacement for Agent Orange. Vorar D eats its way through plant life like you wouldn’t believe, and the media will know that. The whole thing will bust wide open.’

‘But you say they’ve got an antidote.’

‘They have the technology to develop some sort of sterilisation compound. It isn’t magic, and we’d probably still lose most of our crops. But the sooner it’s manufactured and sprayed, the better.’

‘Why didn’t the federal research people go to the media?’ asked Karen. ‘That would have sunk Shearson Jones on the spot.’