Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

Beth decided that she’d have only one chance to make it work. Despite the risk, she had to try it if she wanted to get out of this place alive.

49

MANILA BAY

With the Corporation’s senior staff gathered in the boardroom, along with Raven, Juan nodded to Murph, who put Langston Overholt’s craggy face on the main view screen. Because of the thirteen-hour time difference between Washington and Manila, they could see the rainy late afternoon outside the CIA windows even though it was almost dawn where the Oregon was. Maurice finished serving mugs of coffee and breakfast pastries before closing the door behind him.

“I see a lot of bleary eyes there,” Overholt said in his gravelly baritone.

“We’ve had a busy few days,” Juan said, stifling a yawn. “Rack time has been hard to come by.”

“I don’t think what I’m about to tell you will help you sleep any better.” Overholt trained his eyes on Raven before saying, “By the way, Ms. Malloy, this conversation is strictly confidential, and you are bound by the security clearance you obtained while you were a military police officer.”

“Understood,” she said. She was the only one who wasn’t eagerly downing coffee, preferring orange juice to wash down her Danish.

“Have you been able to confirm that Typhoon was developed by the Army?” Juan asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Overholt said. “I pulled a few strings and obtained classified records from Dugway Proving Ground. They’ve been buried in a dusty storeroom for over seventy years. That is, until a chemist in an experimental lab out there found the file. Name’s Greg Polten. He and a colleague named Davis are now missing.”

“Do you think they sold the info to Salvador Locsin?”

“I doubt it. Apparently, using off-the-books wire transfers that we were able to track, Polten hired Gerhard Brekker to help him find more. Given what Ms. Malloy told us about his encounter with Locsin, it doesn’t sound like they were working together.”

Julia Huxley sat forward. “Mr. Overholt, what can you tell us about the drug?”

“The files are not complete, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute. The military considered U.S. involvement in the war inevitable in 1941, so we were conducting all sorts of experiments to see what kind of edge we could give our soldiers in battle. The use of methamphetamine for some of our bomber pilots was one unfortunate result of that project. But Typhoon was on a whole different level. Some in the community considered it a superdrug until its full effects were understood. Its original code name was TYPE-400N, but the scientists started calling it Typhoon.”

“Why was it developed out here?” Juan asked.

“Because that’s where the plant that formulated its key ingredient was located. It was a rare variety of orchid, but its scientific name and description were not in the file. Its identity was so secret that only a few scientists on the project knew what it was.”

“It’s odd they wouldn’t include such an important piece of information in the file,” Julia said. “What happened to the scientists?”

“This is where we come to the reason for the incomplete info,” Overholt said. “No one saw the Japanese invasion of the Philippines coming, of course. Corregidor was the location of the top secret laboratory where the drug was being developed and produced. When it was clear in early 1942 that the invasion would overrun U.S. forces, MacArthur himself ordered the scientists, the drug supply, and all their equipment to be evacuated by destroyer. It was called the USS Pearsall , and, according to Japanese war records, it was sunk with all hands somewhere in the Philippines by Sub I-38, which was itself sunk by the U.S. Navy before it could return to Japan and record the exact location of the Pearsall .”

Julia looked puzzled. “Then how did the Japanese subsequently get the Typhoon formula?”

“We can’t know for sure, but, from the documents you found, it looks like they rescued one of the scientists from the Pearsall and dropped him off at Corregidor after it fell. The Japanese might have tortured him to get him to cooperate, then killed him to hide the secret. What we do know is that they developed their own version of the drug and shipped most of it back to the homeland in 1945 when we retook the Philippines. Despite the terrible side effects, they were scaling up to mass-produce it in a large factory in Hiroshima. It could have turned the planned home island invasion into the bloodiest battle in history. I’m not saying that’s why we nuked Hiroshima, but the A-bomb did obliterate any trace of it.”

Overholt paused to let that sink in.

“I’m just glad we never ended up using Typhoon ourselves,” Julia said.

“The Army agreed, which was why they buried all mention of the drug when it didn’t make it back to U.S. shores. After we saw the horrors that the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731 committed in the name of science, we didn’t want to continue down that path.”

“So if the destroyer sank,” Linda Ross said, “then all traces of Typhoon must have been destroyed.”

“Locsin may have found the formula in the Japanese files Juan saw them take,” Overholt said, “but it’s unlikely. They would probably have never left such critical information behind. Which is probably why he will be looking for the Pearsall right now, and why Brekker might already be there.”

“But whatever supply Locsin found should be running out soon, and we know he didn’t find any more on Corregidor,” Eric Stone said. “If the Pearsall is on the bottom of the ocean, then the pills would have turned to mush long ago even if they hadn’t been destroyed in the sinking. Even if the tablets were sealed in metal containers, they would have rusted apart in five to ten years, letting the salt water in.”

Overholt shook his head slowly. “Earl Silas Tupper.”

“Who’s that?” Max said.

Mark Murphy rattled off the answer. “As in Tupperware. He was the inventor. Created it when he was working at DuPont. He started selling the products to the general public after the war, but he actually made non-breakable containers for the military during the war.”

Max shook his head in amusement. “Why aren’t you on Jeopardy! ?”

“My application has been accepted twice,” Murph said matter-of-factly, “but it wouldn’t be good publicity for the Corporation for me to go on national TV.”

“Mr. Murphy is exactly right,” Overholt said. “The Typhoon was being shipped back to the U.S. in plastic, watertight barrels designed by Tupper himself.”

“How much?” Juan asked.

“We don’t have the exact figures, but the scientists produced two million pills before they halted production after seeing its long-term effects.”

Max whistled at the astounding figure.

“Enough to supply an entire Army division for years,” Juan said.

“Or a communist insurgency for decades,” Overholt replied. “You need to keep both Brekker and Locsin from getting that supply.”

“Do we know where the Pearsall is?”

“NUMA does. Divers reported finding the wreck in a small archipelago northeast of Negros Island.” Eric noted the GPS coordinates that Overholt recited.

“NUMA hasn’t excavated the wreckage yet?” Juan said.

“They have a ship on the way,” Overholt said, “but it’s not expected to be on-site for another week. It wasn’t considered a high-priority mission.”

“Because they didn’t have access to the classified records about its cargo.”

“Correct.”

“And if we find the cargo intact?”

“I’m sure there are elements of the U.S. Army biochemical warfare division that would like to get their hands on it again, despite Typhoon’s grievous reputation,” Overholt said. He paused for a moment, then added, “But if the drug and its formula somehow got destroyed once and for all, they wouldn’t know what they missed, would they?”