Death Therapy
( The Destroyer - 6 )
Warren Murphy
Richard Sapir
Brilliant and dazzlingly beautiful Dr. Lithia Forrester is masterminding an undercover agency that is stealing America's top secrets. The group is infiltrating the highest echelons of the U.S. government and planning to sell the information at an international auction, where every country's ante is a billion in gold - control of the USA going to the highest bidder. What the small army doesn't know is they are subjects of Dr. Forrester's mind control experiments. They are doing themselves in, while the lovely doctor reaps the rewards. That is, until Remo and Chiun crush the plot and save the country - then both buyer and selling may be going . . . going . . . gone!
***********************************************
* Title : #006 : DEATH THERAPY *
* Series : The Destroyer *
* Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *
* Location : Gillian Archives *
***********************************************
CHAPTER ONE
The shot heard round the world had been stilled for almost two centuries when an Iowa banker did something far more significant for American independence than fire a single musket ball at the Redcoats.
He mailed a manila envelope from Lucerne, Switzerland, to his office in the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C.
It was not an unusually large envelope, nor were its contents voluminous. There were ten typewritten pages produced in a rush that morning in his Lucerne hotel suite. Many of the words were incorrectly spelled in a haste of typing fury. He had not used a typewriter since his days at Harvard Business School nearly forty years before.
What the ten pages said was that America still had a chance to retain its independence, but that chance was not very good at all. He estimated his country's prospects of survival at only slightly better than his own, which, in his opinion, were nil.
The ten pages were a memorandum to the President of the United States, but the banker did not dare mail the envelope directly to him. Nor did the banker, who was also an undersecretary of the treasury, dare mail the envelope to his official superior, the Secretary of the Treasury.
No. If what Clovis Porter, undersecretary of the treasury for foreign affairs, had discovered was true—and he knew as sure as Iowa mud that it was true—then his memorandum would never reach the President if mailed directly to the President's office.
For access to the President of the United States was part of the horrifying package for which the international bidding would soon get underway. And Clovis Porter had been just the person to track it down.
It could have been hidden from practically any intelligence agent in the world, even if that agent knew what he was looking for. Which he undoubtedly would not have. But the secret could not have been hidden from a banker. And because Clovis Porter was a banker and because he had discovered what was so terrifyingly obvious to him, he was going to die. And there was no one from his own country he could trust to protect him.
Clovis Porter waited, trying not to look too impatient, as the postal clerk pounded the envelope with an ink pad stamp. The clerk asked in French if the gentleman wished to send the envelope registered mail.
No, answered Clovis Porter.
Did the gentleman wish the envelope sent first class?
Not especially, came the casual answer from Clovis Porter.
Air mail?
Uh, yes, why not?, answered Clovis Porter absently as he casually glanced around the small post office. He was not being followed. Good. He would not be this safe in Washington. But Lucerne? A better chance indeed.
And how is the gentleman enjoying Switzerland?
"A lovely country," answered Clovis Porter, shovelling some franc notes across the counter at the clerk. "I think I'll stay another two… maybe three… weeks."
Clovis Porter told this to the manager of the hotel also. He mentioned his vacation to the Swiss bankers with whom he had had lunch. He mentioned it in the car rental office where he hired a Mercedes Benz for two weeks.
Then in his hotel room, he placed a call to his wife in Dubuque, and while waiting for it to be completed, printed in his own hand a message to a bright young man he had met three months before in an office in Langley, Virginia.
The message read:
Mr. A. C. Johnson,
Cormider Road,
Langley, Va.
Dear Mr. Johnson. Stop. Large money movements apparent result of market fluctuations. Stop.
Nothing unusual. Stop. Just normal. Stop. Am vacationing for two weeks. Stop. Sorry I could find nothing unusual. Stop. Wasted three months. Stop.
C. Porter.
Then Clovis Porter took off his gray suit, white shirt and dark tie and folded them neatly into one of the three valises he travelled with. He was middle-aged, yet of such stature that when he dressed in casual touring clothes, slacks and open-necked shirt, it appeared as if he had spent his entire life out of doors.
Perhaps because banking had become something he had forced himself to like, his real love had always been the flat fields of Iowa and the American plains. It would have been nice, he thought, to have spent his last days on the plains with Mildred, perhaps even to have his children and grandchildren by his bedside when his time to depart came.
But that was not to be. He had become a banker, then a Republican fund-raiser and then an undersecretary of the treasury. And if he had wanted that strongly to live his life with the land, he would not have gone to Harvard Business School In the first place.
Clovis Porter donned his soft Italian leather walking shoes, and, making sure to take his hotel room key, brought his pencilled note downstairs to the manager of the hotel.
He told the manager that the telegram was urgent, read it to the manager with clerks listening, made a small scene about the secrecy and urgency of this message that said all was well. Then, having gathered the focus of attention truly on himself, he stormed away from the manager, not quite accidentally knocking the handwritten message off the counter in the hotel lobby.
Naturally, the manager was forced to retrieve the message from the floor, muttering about "these stupid Americans." Anyone following Clovis Porter could not help but discover what the message said.
He returned to his hotel room and waited for the phone call to get through to Bubuque. In ninety minutes by his wristwatch, it did.
"Hello, hello," came his wife's voice, and hearing that voice, Clovis Porter's strong composure suddenly melted and he gripped the night table, fighting for control of tears he suddenly discovered he still had.
"Hello, darling," he said.
"When are you coming home, Clovis?"
"In about two weeks, Mildred. How are you? How are the children? I miss you."
"I miss you too, dear. Maybe I should meet you in Switzerland?"
"No. Not here."
"Clovis, if I didn't know you better, I would swear you're having an affair with another woman."
"Maybe. You know at this time of life what they say about last flings."
"Clovis, I don't know what's going on, but I can't wait for it to be over."
"It will be soon. I'm just going to relax for a couple of weeks here in Switzerland. How are the kids?"
"They're fine, dear. Jarman is finding himself for the third time this week and Claudia's second child is still expected around late November. We're all fine and we miss you. And we all want you home as soon as possible."
"Yes, yes," said Clovis Porter, and because his knees were becoming very weak, he sat down on the bed. "I love you, dear," he told his wife. "I have always loved you and you have given me a very good life. I want you t
o know that."
"Clovis? Are you all right? Are you all right?"
"Yes, dear. I love you. Goodbye."
He hung up the telephone and checked out of the hotel. He drove his rented car towards the village of Thun at the base of the Alps. It would be good to breathe the clean mountain air. It would be a good place to die, far from any place where he might endanger his wife and family.
The manila envelope had a chance, just a chance, to reach the President. And then America had a chance, although for the life of him, he did not see how the President, even knowing what was happening, could halt the inevitable flow of events. After all, whom could he trust to stop them?
Still, inevitable events were funny things and to know what was happening was the first step toward changing their inevitability. His secretary, Miss T. L. Wilkens, would get the envelope within a few days—apparently office instructions. That is what the covering memo said:
To: T. L. Wilkens From: C. Porter Re: Office Procedure
I wish alterations in the formulation of interoffice memoranda. I think you should change to the pattern we used back at the bank in Iowa. You will see from the attached message that you will take it to the chief executive of the country, showing it to no one but himself under any circumstances. We will use monarch-sized stationery in the future and Number 9M envelopes…
An agent giving the message a fast nervous perusal might just take it at face value as new office instructions. One had to read the whole note to see that it was more than just a collection of banking instructions. But it contained the message to the President, and if Miss Wilkens held to her guns, refused to leave the note with the President's secretary but waited outside with the stubbornness of the Iowa farmer blood that was in her too, there was a chance. And that was something.
Driving along mountain roads bothered Clevis Porter. The picturesque postcard towns clustered at the foot of mountains bothered Clevis, just as winding, tree-shaded roads bothered Clovis.
He wanted to drive on a straight road, straight as a plumb-line, and see flat, unending God's country. He wanted to see corn again, the shoots, then the rising stalks making the plains a forest of green. He wanted to see the wheat again, flowing like a golden sea as far as the eye could reach.
He wanted to sit on a man's porch and shake hands on a seed loan, the man's character being his collateral.
But because of his education and his experience in international finance during the second world war, Clovis Porter was made an undersecretary of the treasury for foreign affairs, when it came time to reward Republicans for faithful service.
It had seemed like a career-topping situation. Four, maybe eight, years in Washington, then back to Iowa, knowing you'd done something big, and then spend the last days with friends.
Then there had been Washington and no amount of hiking or group discussions or even that silly encounter group he had joined when the city just got to him too much…none of those things seemed to replace the vitality a man could feel, standing on good Iowa earth and talking to friends.
So when that innocent little phone call came three months before, it did not seem so unattractive to take a world trip, ostensibly to examine international monetary fluctuations for an economic report. That was his cover story.
He knew now that he should have followed his instincts. Turn down the assignment and return to Iowa. But he couldn't; he owed it to the Republican party and the country to stay.
That was just the logic used on him to send him into the world's money markets looking for the thing that could not be hidden from a man of his sort. And when he found it, he knew he was a dead man and that the best place to die was away from his loved ones, where they could not get hurt.
Dammit, it had started so simply with a phone call from the intelligence people who needed some advice on international currency. Fine. Glad to help. Just a casual questioning. Nothing formal, nothing to bother the Secretary of the Treasury with. Just a word or two of background.
So on that winter day, he drove from the slush of Washington into the snow-dappled countryside of Langley, Va., where he entered a new office building and met a rather pleasant, clean-faced young man named A. G. Johnson, who asked him a very engaging question:
"What does a billion dollars mean to you?"
Clovis Porter had barely finished depositing his coat on a hanger when he began to answer the question.
"In dollars, land, project budgets or what?"
"In gold."
"It doesn't mean much," said Clovis Porter, sitting down. "Only a handful of countries in the world have that much gold. And those that have it don't use it. They just keep it in a warehouse someplace, and let it maintain the value of their currency."
"Why would a country try to gather up a billion in gold?"
"Just habit," Porter said. The question intrigued him. "In dealing between countries, the dollar is as good as gold. But people have been collecting gold for so long, they've just got the habit. So have countries."
"What could a country buy for a billion in gold?"
"What couldn't you buy?," Clovis Porter said.
"If something were for sale for a billion dollars in gold, could you find out what it was? And who was getting ready to buy it? I mean, could it be kept secret?"
"To anyone who knew what he was looking for, it would stand out like a blizzard in July."
"I take it you would know what you're looking for?"
"Yes sir, I would," Clovis Porter said.
"I'm glad you said that," the young man answered, "because we need a little favour."
And that was it. Clovis Porter, who was tired of Washington anyway, went out into the marketplaces of the world. And he found out which countries were suddenly trying to build stockpiles of gold, and how they were doing it.
And because he was a banker and because he was willing to liquidate all his assets—even $2.4 million took a frenzied three weeks to turn into cash—he found out why they needed the gold.
They were going to bid in an auction. And one billion dollars in gold was the opening bid. And when he found out what was going on the auction block, he knew that America had only a slim chance of survival and that he could not even trust the young Intelligence man who had given him his assignment.
And he also knew that when it was discovered that he had used his personal fortune to learn what was going on, he would be very much a dead man.
So Clovis Porter mailed the envelope to Miss T. L. Wilkens, then drove out into the Swiss countryside waiting for them to kill him, hoping that they thought his family was unaware of what he knew.
He would be discovered three days later, nude, having attempted, apparently, to swim upstream in the sewer system. Official cause of death: drowning in the excrement of the good people of Thun. There were witnesses, all of whom thought it odd that a man could be walking around the town, incessantly humming a strangely happy song, and then only minutes later take his own life.
The body would be returned to Dubuque for burial, but Miss T. L. Wilkens would not be there to pay last respects to her employer of the last two decades. She would be running for her life, because of a seemingly nameless telephone conversation she had had with Clovis Porter the day before his death.
It was long distance from Switzerland, and before she picked up the call, Miss T. L. Wilkens, a bosomy solid woman with graying hair and bone spectacles, took a freshly sharpened pencil from a tray in front of her.
"Yes, Mr. Porter. Good to hear from you."
"Did you get the manila envelope I mailed?"
"Yes, sir. Came in this morning."
"Good. Good, It was office instructions and I've been thinking that I want to rewrite them. So why don't you just tear it up, throw it away, and I'll prepare a new one when I get back. All right?"
Miss T. L. Wilkens paused and, in a flash, she understood.
"Yes, Mr. Porter. I'm tearing it up right now. Want to hear?"
"Did you read it yet?"
"N
o, Mr. Porter. Haven't gotten to it yet."
"Well, as I say, just tear it up."
Miss T. L. Wilkens slipped some blank paper from a drawer and tore it neatly down the middle in front of the phone receiver which nestled under her ample chin.
"Good," Porter said. "See you in a few days. Miss Wilkens. Bye."
And because Miss T. L. Wilkens had indeed read the entire memorandum, she proceeded directly to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and would not leave the President's outer office until at 11:00 that night, at her urgent insistence, the President agreed to see the secretary of the undersecretary of the treasury for two minutes. He spoke with her for two hours. Then he said:
"I wish I could offer you the protection of the White House, but as you know that may not be worth all that much anymore. It's probably the worst place. Do you have any money for travel?"
"I have credit cards."
"I wouldn't use them if I were you. Wait a minute. I haven't carried cash for years. A strange job." The President rose from his seat and went to an outer office. He was back in a few minutes with an envelope.
"There's a few thousand in there. It should last you for a couple of months. And by then you'll know if you can surface again."
"Probably never, sir. It looks pretty bleak."
"Miss Wilkens, we're not out of the box yet. Not by a long shot. We're going to win."
And he ushered the surprised woman to the door and wished her good luck. She was surprised because of his confidence, and in her Iowa farmer's way, she wondered if he were not just acting for her benefit.
But what she could not know was that someone's brilliant, perfect and thorough plan had a flaw. Precautions had been taken to prevent every existing American agency that could stand in the way of success from even reaching the President's office. But the plan could not take into account an organization that did not exist—and a man who was officially dead.
And now, if the President faced danger from unknown quarters and was unable to trust anyone, let his enemies be blissfully unaware. Because he was still able to unleash upon them the most awesome human force in the nation's arsenal.
Death Therapy td-6 Page 1