‘Well, the fact is. Senator, it’s worse,’ said Peter. Shearson sniffed. ‘Worse? What do you mean by worse? Worse than what?’

‘Worse than it was before. Much worse. I’ve had two urgent and confidentials from Dick Turnbull in the past three hours. The wheat blight is spreading like crazy. Dick estimates five hundred thousand acres already. And now we’ve got nine major farmers in Iowa reporting a similar kind of blight on their com and soybean crops.’

‘Are you serious?’ asked Shearson. ‘Com and soybean too?’

‘All the reports have been authenticated,’ said Peter. ‘There are six or seven more which haven’t been checked back yet, including two reports of fruit and vegetable blight in California.’

Shearson rubbed his jowls thoughtfully. ‘What about the media?’ he asked. ‘Any trouble from them yet?’

‘Not too much, although the Wall Street Journal’s been pestering me for most of the evening. That may give us a little time – maybe until the morning – but we won’t be able to hold it back for very much longer. It seems like every darned crop in the whole darned country’s going rotten.’

Shearson said, ‘Listen, Peter – I want you to keep a tight rein on what the media get to hear about. Right at the moment, I don’t want a panic. I’m trying to set up this appeal fund to help farmers whose crops have been destroyed by the blight, and if everybody starts running about like blue-assed baboons, then it’s going to spoil the whole presentation. The minute the public themselves start to feel threatened by what’s happening, they’ll lose all interest in giving aid to the farmers.’

‘Well, all right,’ said Peter, dubiously. ‘But what am I going to tell the press if they put it to me point-blank?’

‘Tell them there’s a crop blight crisis. Tell them it’s serious. But tell them we have whole teams of experts working on a solution, and we expect to be dusting with proven antidotes within the week. If they want figures, tell them we don’t anticipate anything worse than an eight per cent cereal crop shortfall.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Peter. ‘Supposing they go take a look for themselves?’

‘Use your head,’ retorted Shearson. ‘All press and television people are up against deadlines. You think they’re going to be able to take a look at the whole of Kansas before tomorrow morning’s editions? They’ll take one or two stock shots and leave it at that.’

‘All right, Senator, if you say so,’ said Peter. ‘Do you want me to keep you in touch throughout the night?’

‘Tonight, I’m busy,’ Shearson growled. ‘Call me at seven tomorrow morning. Oh – and there’s one thing you can do. Get in touch with the agricultural research laboratories and see how they’re progressing with their analysis.’

‘Okay, Senator. I’ll call you tomorrow.’