Warren Murphy: Death Therapy

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* Title : #006 : DEATH THERAPY *

* Series : The Destroyer *

* Author(s) : Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir *

* Location : Gillian Archives *

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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 to 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: