lustration]

Aleksander Kardelj had his shortcomings but he was no coward. He said,
wryly, "Very well, sir. But would you tell me what Josip Pekic has
done now? My office has had no report on him for some time."

"What he has done! You fool, you traitorous fool, have you kept no
record at all? He has been in the Macedonian area where my virgin
lands program has been in full swing."

Kardelj cleared his throat at this point.

Jankez continued roaring. "The past three years, admittedly, the
weather has been such, the confounded rains failing to arrive on
schedule, that we have had our troubles. But this fool! This
blundering traitorous idiot!"

"What has he done?" Kardelj asked, intrigued in spite of his position
of danger.

"For all practical purposes he's ordered the whole program reversed.
Something about a sandbowl developing, whatever that is supposed to
mean. Something about introducing contour plowing, whatever nonsense
that is. And even reforesting some areas. Some nonsense about
watersheds. He evidently has blinded and misled the very men I had in
charge. They are supporting him, openly."

Jankez, Kardelj knew, had been a miner as a youth, with no experience
whatsoever on the soil. However, the virgin lands project had been his
pet. He envisioned hundreds upon thousands of square miles of maize,
corn as the Americans called it. This in turn would feed vast herds of
cattle and swine so that ultimately the United Balkan Soviet Republics
would have the highest meat consumption in the world.

Number One was raging on. Something about a conspiracy on the part of
those who surrounded him. A conspiracy to overthrow him, Zoran Jankez,
and betray the revolution to the Western powers, but he, Zoran Jankez,
had been through this sort of plot before. He, Zoran Jankez, knew the
answers to such situations.

Aleksander Kardelj grinned humorously, wryly, and reached to flick off
the screen. He twisted a cigarette into the small pipelike holder, lit
it and waited for the inevitable.

It was shortly after that the knock came on his door.

* * * * *

Zoran Jankez sat at his desk in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a
heavy military revolver close to his right hand, a half empty liter of
sljivovica and a water tumbler, to his left. Red of eye, he pored over
endless reports from his agents, occasionally taking time out to growl
a command into his desk mike. Tired he was, from the long sle