3rd Degree

Chapter 44

FOR A SWISS, Gerd Propp had acquired a lot of American tastes and habits. One of them was going after salmon. In his room at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Gerd excitedly laid out on the double bed the new Ex Of?cio fishing vest he had just acquired, along with some hi-tech lures and a gaff hook.

His job, as an economist with the OECD out of Geneva, might be thought by some as stiff and tedious work, but it did bring him to the States several times a year and had intro-duced him to men who shared the same passion for coho and chinook.

And that was where Gerd was headed tomorrow, under the guise of finalizing his speech before the G-8 gathering in San Francisco next week.

He put his arms through the brand-new fishing vest and regarded himself in the mirror. I actually look like a professional! As he adjusted his hat and puffed out his chest in his fancy vest, Gerd felt as energized and manly as a lead-ing man in a Hollywood film.

There was a knock on the door. The valet, he assumed, since he had left word at the front desk to bring up a press for his suit.

When he opened the door, he was surprised to see a young man not in a hotel uniform at all but in a black fleece jacket and a cap hiding part of his face.

“Herr Propp?” the young man asked.

“Yes?” Gerd pushed his glasses up on his nose. “What is it?”

Before he could utter another word, Gerd saw an arm shoot toward him. It caught him in the throat, knocking the air out of him. Then he was shoved back onto the floor, land-ing hard.

Gerd tried to shake his head clear. His glasses were no longer on his face. He felt the ooze of blood running from his nose. “My God, what is going on?”

The young man stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. All of a sudden there was a dark metal-lic object in his hand. Gerd froze. His eyes were not too good, but there was no mistake. The intruder was holding a gun.

“You're Gerhard Propp?” the young man asked. “Chief economist of the OECD in Geneva? Don't try to deny it.”

“Yes,” Gerd muttered. “By what right do you barge in here and -”

“By the right of a hundred thousand children who die annually in Ethiopia,” the man interrupted, "from diseases that could easily be prevented, if their debt repayments

weren't six times their national health care coverage."

“Wh-what?” Gerd stammered.

“By the right of AIDS patients in Tanzania,” the man went on, “who the government lets rot because they're too busy repaying the debt you and your well-heeled bastards have swamped them with.”

“I'm just an economist,” Gerd said. What did this man think he did?

“You are Gerhard Propp. Chief economist of the OECD, whose mission is to advance the rate by which the economi-cally advantaged nations of the world expropriate the resources of the economically weak in order to convert them into the garbage of the rich.” He took a pillow off the bed. “You are the architect of the MAI.”

“You've got it completely wrong,” Gerd said, panicked. “The agreements have brought these backward countries into the modern world. They have created jobs and an export market for nations that could have never hoped to compete.”

“No, you are wrong!” the young man shouted at the top of his voice. He walked over and switched on the TV. “All it has brought is greed and poverty and plundering. And this TV bullshit.”

CNN was on, the international business briefs, which seemed appropriate. Gerd's eyes bulged as he watched the intruder kneel down next to him, at the same time hearing the TV voice announce how the Brazilian real was under pressure again.

“What are you doing?” Gerd gasped. His eyes bugged out.

“I'm going to do what a thousand pregnant mothers with AIDS would like to do to you, Herr Doctor.”

“Please,” Gerd begged. “Please... you are making some kind of serious mistake.”

The intruder smiled. He took a look at the supplies on the bed. “Ah, I see you like fishing. I can work with that.”