James Orayo Fielding

James Orayo Fielding is a wealthy Denver industrialist and the central antagonist of The Destroyer #21, The Thousand Deaths. He owns a network of businesses and chairs the Denver chapter of Cause, a relief organization. In public he presents himself as a philanthropist concerned with famine; in private he treats other people as expendable and plans mass death. CURE is a covert organization headed by Harold W. Smith, with Remo Williams as its enforcement arm. Smith sends Remo and his teacher Chiun to protect brokers caught up in a suspicious winter-wheat futures sale; their investigation leads to Fielding’s Wondergrain scheme.

Fielding’s public project is Wondergrain, a rapid-growth crop he promotes as an answer to famine. He calls the underlying process the Oliver method, honoring his servant Oliver. Fielding’s doctor has told him that an incurable form of anemia leaves him roughly a year to fifteen months to live; Fielding responds by telling Oliver he intends to kill at least a billion people, whom he calls “bugs.”

To build a market for the grain, Fielding has secretly sold winter-wheat futures on a large scale through the Oliver Foundation, depressing the market while researching how to make the crop effective. When commodities brokers begin to suspect him or threaten exposure, he brings his public-relations partners into the scheme. They package the process as a famine remedy and prepare to give the formula away, while Fielding intends the resulting crop and its chemicals to destroy whole civilizations. His public presentation and private objective are therefore opposites: the promise of ending hunger conceals his intended catastrophe.

Remo’s investigation exposes the public demonstration as a deception: the apparently flourishing crop is a mechanical display, while real seeds have already been shipped abroad. Fielding survives a confrontation at the Mojave site and later admits to Remo that he intends the grain to cause mass death.

Chiun counters the plot by showing Fielding what appears to be a sprouting seed and saying salt can make the grain chemicals harmless. Remo later discovers the plant was plastic. Fielding then publicly calls Wondergrain a hoax and orders overseas ships carrying the seed to dump their cargo; the narrative does not confirm that the ships obey. Fielding’s final position is thus a public reversal under pressure, while the fate of the already-exported seed remains unresolved in this book.