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Hachette UK
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The Destroyer#35Last CallThe DestroyerBook 351978
Last Call
- Writer
- Warren Murphy
- Series creators
- Warren Murphy, Richard Sapir
New CIA director Wingate Stantington cuts hundreds of agents and shuts a costly secret program whose purpose his staff cannot explain. As Russian diplomats begin dying, former CIA officer Harold W. Smith and Soviet colonel Vassily Karbenko seek to understand the program and prevent a wider crisis.
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New CIA director Wingate Stantington cuts the budget and closes Project Omega just as its dormant operatives begin killing Soviet diplomats. Former CIA officer Harold Smith explains the program’s retaliatory design, but its activation cannot be stopped through ordinary channels. Remo and Chiun fail to protect the London ambassador; Smith and Soviet colonel Vassily Karbenko bring the unnamed Soviet premier to the United States, where CURE protects him. At Disneyworld, Karbenko is killed by Stantington’s agents and the premier’s wife Nina is exposed as the last assassin. Chiun stops her shot, and the premier takes her home. A joint U.S.–Soviet statement condemns political terrorism without disclosing Omega; Time later reports Stantington drowned in his office bathroom, while Remo and Smith acknowledge CURE would have had to kill Karbenko for learning its secret.
Characters & places
SpoilersFull articles
- ChiunCharacter
- Conn MacClearyCharacter
- CUREOrganization
- Folcroft SanatoriumPlace
- Harold W. SmithCharacter
- House of SinanjuGroup
- Remo WilliamsCharacter
- Ruby Jackson GonzalezCharacter
- Sinanju (martial tradition)Lore
Characters 27
- Amelia Sinkings
- Anatoly Duvicevski
- Andre
- Chiun
- Conn MacCleary
- Ernest Scheisskopf
- Freddy
- General Arkov
- Great Wang
- Harold W. Smith
- Igor Gruboff
- Master Ung
- Nina
- Norton
- Remo Williams
- Rocco Giovanni
- Rosanna Giovanni
- Ruby Jackson Gonzalez
- Semyon Begolov
- Unnamed CIA operations chief
- Unnamed CIA secretary
- Unnamed earlier President
- Unnamed former CIA director
- Unnamed Soviet premier
- Unnamed U.S. President
- Vassily Karbenko
- Wingate Stantington
Places 28
- Atlanta
- Colony Astor
- Compo Beach
- Dean Street
- Disneyworld
- Dulles International Airport
- Folcroft Sanatorium
- Greens Farms Road
- Langley, Virginia
- London
- North Korea Bay
- Orlando, Florida
- Paris
- Potomac River
- Rome
- Russia
- Russian embassy residence in London
- Rye, New York
- Trafalgar Square
- United States
- Unnamed Korean village
- USSR
- Vatican
- Washington, D.C.
- Watergate Complex
- Westport, Connecticut
- White House
- World Trade Center
Organizations 9
Groups 5
Lore 2
Chapter summaries
Chapter 1
Stantington becomes CIA director, fires 250 field agents, and shuts Project Omega. Amelia Sinkings receives no expected call, activates a concealed signal at her Atlanta flagpole and dies shortly afterward; signal lights activate across Europe.
Chapter 2
Ruby directs Remo and Chiun to stop the American Nazidom Party’s Westport march. Remo kills its six-person cadre overnight; news reports say the Zionist Defense League claimed credit, while Remo recognizes the staged body arrangement.
Chapter 3
Rome doctor Rocco Giovanni responds to the Omega light, kills the Russian ambassador in his office and then kills himself when the bodyguard enters.
Chapter 4
Soviet colonel Karbenko tells Stantington that Giovanni was a CIA-funded Omega operative. Stantington recognizes he has disbanded the plan; a Paris ambassador is then reported killed. A damaged records room yields a file tying Omega to Harold W. Smith.
Chapter 5
The President authorizes Stantington’s search of Amelia’s house after the fact and privately recalls CURE’s secret role. Remo and Chiun abduct Stantington to Folcroft, where Smith confirms two diplomats were targets and says the Russian premier is also marked.
Chapter 6
Smith tells the President that Eisenhower initiated Omega after the U-2 incident as deterrence against a Soviet first strike. He says the plan was due to end after twenty years but now targets the London ambassador and Soviet premier; the President orders the CIA to stand aside.
Chapter 7
Karbenko and U.S. ambassador Duvicevski discuss the threat; Karbenko believes the official explanation but suspects Smith has withheld how the present targets were selected, and says he will question Smith.
Chapter 8
Smith sends Remo and Chiun to protect Begolov. Remo finds him at the embassy but Andre, the valet, shoots him. KGB guards shoot Andre; Remo kills or disables them and escapes.
Chapter 9
Karbenko abducts Smith to Gruboff’s house to question him about Omega. Ruby locates the house and enters under a religious pretense, but is disarmed when Karbenko takes Smith hostage. Remo and Chiun arrive, Gruboff dies from his own gun, and Karbenko is restrained.
Chapter 10
Smith persuades Karbenko to recommend that the Soviet premier travel alone to America so they can protect him and identify the assassin.
Chapter 11
The premier resists an intrusive KGB detail; after speaking with Karbenko, he agrees to go alone to America. Nina decides she will accompany him.
Chapter 12
Smith assigns Remo and Chiun to protect the arriving premier. Stantington, angry about his abduction and distrustful of Karbenko, decides to protect the premier for his own career and suspects Karbenko.
Chapter 13
Two cars chase the party from Dulles; Remo disables one car and the party escapes. Karbenko gives Stantington a false hotel location and places the premier’s party in a motel, where the premier decides to visit Disneyworld.
Chapter 14
Stantington traces the false booking and learns the group flew to Orlando. He concludes Karbenko intends to kill the premier and decides Karbenko must die.
Chapter 15
The premier’s group visits Disneyworld. They enter a haunted house offered as a free test; a staged time-travel effect begins, and Karbenko vanishes.
Chapter 16
Remo finds dying Karbenko, who says Stantington’s men shot him. Nina shoots at the premier; Chiun deflects the bullet and disarms her. The premier and Nina reconcile and return home. A public statement condemns terrorism without mentioning Omega. Karbenko’s body is found in Florida, reported as a boating accident. Remo attributes Nina’s coercion to MacCleary and recognizes the CURE secrecy policy would have required Karbenko’s death. Time later reports Stantington drowned in his locked office bathroom; no direct account identifies who caused his death.
Other mentions
- Atlanta flagpole signal installation
- Burt Reynolds
- Clint Eastwood
- CURE secrecy
- Daily Variety
- Davy Crockett hat
- Ernest Borgnine
- Freedom of Information policy
- Henry the Eighth
- Ivan the Terrible
- Joseph Stalin
- Khrushchev
- Krugerrand
- Lysenko
- Mickey Mouse watch
- Omega retaliatory deterrence plan
- Paul Newman
- Peter Ustinov
- Pharaoh Ramses
- Planned American Nazidom Party march
- President Eisenhower
- Project Omega
- Project Omega activation signal
- Raymond Burr
- Robert Redford
- Sidney Greenstreet
- The Watchword
- Time
Editions & covers
Explore cover historyReferences & notes
Sources 29 references
- stopyourekillingme.com/D_Authors/Destroyer.html
- www.fantasticfiction.com/series/destroyer
- www.warrenmurphy.com/index.php?page=books
- sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/murphy_warren
- www.45cat.com/book/title/created-the-destroyer
- api.publicrecords.copyright.gov/search_service_external/simple_search_dsl?query=TX0000164927
- www.hachette.co.uk/titles/warren-murphy-5/last-call/9780751558319
- spyguysandgals.com/sgShowChar.aspx?id=472
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Edition and source notes
Names are the bibliography’s title-level “written by” attribution key, not a verified edition byline. credited_authors is null because no first-edition cover/title page was checked. A creator name in the general franchise metadata must not be treated as proof of sole drafting.
registration-declared first publication: 1978-12-15. CPRS record field is the registrant/depositor-reported first-publication date, not independent retail/on-sale verification; no print copy inspected. Source
Last Call:
Publisher's description: A dormant government assassination program is accidentally reactivated, sparking attacks on senior Russian officials across Europe.
Story timeframe
Coarse estimate from the assumed incumbent’s historical presidency. The term range is context, not a claim that the plot spans the term or that a particular event occurs at either endpoint.
Historical term dates: Source 1
Presidential clues
Current U.S. President: retained hypothesis — Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter
Strong historical fit: the incumbent attended the Naval Academy and served under Stantington at sea. Carter’s Naval Academy and Navy career support the comparison; the fictional Stantington relationship is not independently corroborated history.
The unnamed Naval Academy President
Jimmy Carter
- An early aside says a personnel director thought the Atlanta agent might be related to the President, but checks and rejects that possibility (ch01:p0055–p0057).
- The President knows CURE exists and cannot issue assignments, only suggest them (ch05:p0088–p0095).
- No name, term, party, or year is provided.
- Stantington had been ahead of the President at the Naval Academy and later was the younger man’s commanding officer on sea duty (ch05:p0034).
Strong historical fit: the incumbent attended the Naval Academy and served under Stantington at sea. Carter’s Naval Academy and Navy career support the comparison; the fictional Stantington relationship is not independently corroborated history.
This is a historical comparison, not an observed personal name. The source observation and its fictional acts remain separately scoped.
Eisenhower and Project Omega
Dwight D. Eisenhower; name explicitly present in primary text
- Smith dates the start to the late 1950s during Eisenhower’s presidency (ch06:p0006).
- Smith says he attended the Eisenhower–Khrushchev meeting because Eisenhower assigned him to implement Omega (ch06:p0008–p0010).
- Smith says Eisenhower gave MacCleary’s recruitment instructions through Smith (ch09:p0111).
primary text names Eisenhower in the Omega origin account
The text names Eisenhower; CURE’s founder scene is separately called “another young President” and is not explicitly linked to him.
The earlier CURE founder
another young President
- Narration says a “young President” tapped Smith to head a secret agency called CURE (ch05:p0089).
- The contemporary President learned of the agency from his predecessor and considered disbanding it (ch05:p0090–p0093).
- No name or date identifies this earlier President.
role confirmed; personal identity unknown
The source names no person or date. Its separate Eisenhower Omega history does not identify CURE’s founder.
The incumbent’s predecessor
his predecessor
- “This new President had been briefed on the agency by his predecessor” (ch05:p0090).
source role/name observed; no additional fictional identity inferred
No story-present identity or date is supplied beyond the text quoted in the observation.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
- The premier is told the White House still has a Lincoln bed (ch11:p0004).
source role/name observed; no additional fictional identity inferred
No story-present identity or date is supplied beyond the text quoted in the observation.
George Washington
George Washington
- The passage says signs indicate where George Washington slept (ch11:p0004).
source role/name observed; no additional fictional identity inferred
No story-present identity or date is supplied beyond the text quoted in the observation.
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