The Devil's Banker

Chapter 53

THe weekly shipment to the Philadelphia offices of the World Health Organization included three hundred cartons of Atabrine; four hundred fifteen boxes of Z-PAKs, the five-day course of azithromycin; and four hundred thousand aspirin tablets. A total of eight hundred thousand individual doses of medicine that had passed its expiration date and was to be returned to its manufacturers for immediate destruction. The traffic in expired drugs by certain dubious distributors to the impoverished nations of the third world had grown from a trickle five years earlier to a torrent. Measures had to be taken to protect innocent victims, and Claire Charisse was at the forefront of the effort.

“Paperwork in order today, Bill?” she asked, standing in the Global Trans offices on the grounds of Geneva Cointrin Airport.

“A-OK. Just sign off and we’ll get the stuff airborne.”

Claire scribbled a signature on the paperwork and tore off her copy. Looking out the window, she could see the pallet of medicine being loaded by forklift into a Global Trans container. From there, the container would pass through a cursory security check before being put aboard the morning flight to Philadelphia. Normally, all containers being shipped into the United States were made to pass through VACIS, the vehicle and cargo inspection system. The VACIS system used gamma rays emitted by cesium or cobalt and hundreds of advanced sensors to detect anomalies in density within the container and create an X-ray-like photo of the object inside. However, as the medicines were preclassified as radioactive and the property of a nongovernmental organization, they would forgo VACIS and pass directly to a U.S. Customs inspector, whose job was simply to verify that all medicines were accounted for.

“Look at you,” Bill Masters said. “You’re all spiffed up for a Saturday. What do you got going?”

“I’m taking a trip,” Claire answered crisply.

“You? Leaving Geneva? Who’ll man the offices? They’ll be lost without you.”

“I’m sure they’ll find someone to replace me.”

A concerned look darkened Masters’s face. “You’re leaving for good?”

Suddenly, Claire Charisse found it very hard to speak. Without answering, she turned and rushed from the office.

“Hey!” shouted Masters after her. “You didn’t give me a chance to say good-bye.” He looked at Doherty, his assistant. “I liked that gal. She had guts.”