"Destroyer - 006 - Death Therapy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"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 daysЧapparently 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 envelopesЕ

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 muchЕnone 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."