Double Tap

by Steve Martini

  Tonight I am huddled over the keyboard of the desktop in my study, doing a Google search online to learn how my computer works.

  I am taking Jim Kaprosky’s advice, checking out the nature of spyware and looking for the two items that he mentioned during my visit to his house last night. When I got to the car I scrawled the words mirror software and looking glass on the back of one of my business cards. Tonight the note is sitting on my desk next to the keyboard.

  When Harold Klepp mentioned the word spyware that night at the bar, I thought he was using shorthand to describe Chapman’s Primis package, high-level security software intended to allow the government to plumb the depths of personal information. I was wrong. Klepp may have been out of the loop at Isotenics, but he was hearing things from someone closer to the center of the action.

  Chapman had been overheard using the term spyware during her argument on the phone with Gerald Satz. Klepp got the word right but, like me, he didn’t understand the context, the fact that the word was being used in the technical sense: as a term of art, not to describe Primis, but something else.

  According to the articles online, adware is a computer term used to describe small bits of what is known as “execution programming.” These are used by commercial firms to track information whenever a computer user goes online and visits certain sites. Shop for a pair of running shoes online, and the next thing you know you’ll be getting pop-up screens trying to peddle everything for the foot, from sneakers to slippers. Chances are one or more of the sites you have visited has just attached bits of adware to the hard drive of your computer.

  If you have a pop-up blocker—unless you run one or more scanning programs to search out and remove the adware—you’ll never know it is happening, except that over time your machine will slow down as it loads up on the small bits and pieces. Most of it is harmless, though some can transmit viruses, worms, and other odious items that can kill your computer.

  From the digital handshake of surfing the Web, you can also pick up the insidious little devil known as spyware. Generally this is a more sophisticated version of looking-over-your-shoulder as you shop. Spyware usually sends more detailed information to the vendor who planted it online. It is designed to track your shopping habits. According to the information, some of it is so sufficiently sophisticated that it can hunt out your mailing address and fill your mailbox with junk mail.

  I do a search for the terms mirror software and looking glass. I score pages of hits, including a firm that produces medical software and a project by a large commercial software manufacturer. But none of these are what I am looking for.

  Unless I misunderstood him, Jim Kaprosky was not talking about proprietary software manufactured by a private company. He was talking about the software equivalent of aviation’s spy-style Skunk Works, an operation buried in the dark tunnels of government that somehow has crafted a way to tap into home and office computers, anything online, and gather private data so that it can be processed through Primis.

  If this is true, it would allow the government to monitor patterns of conduct and individual activity at a depth and in detail that is mind-numbing.

  Given the ever-increasing grasp of central governments around the world, the threat of mischief or worse posed by such technology is daunting. True, it could be used to thwart terrorism. But, unchecked and unseen, it could just as easily give rise to tyranny. Private information on a global scale could be used to chill political speech at a monumental level. In the hands of the unscrupulous, it could be harnessed to extort any number of favors from individuals in public office or those who control the economic throttle and pull the levers that make the world go around.

  If information is power, access to personal digitized data in a form that is raw and unrestricted—coupled with processing software allowing oceans of it to be mined at the speed of light—is an open and engraved invitation to despotism.

  Sitting in the blue haze emitted from the monitor in my darkened study, I am scrolling down the screen when my eye catches something. It’s a tagline near the bottom of the page, a single news item from one of the wire services. In the second line of the description is the abbreviation NSA. I pull it up.

  The article is brief and two years old. According to the wire-service story, a spokesman for the National Security Agency has denied reports that his agency has pioneered a computer bug known as “looking glass,” software designed to track and transmit large volumes of digital data in highly compressed microbursts. According to the initial reports, which have now been denied, the software was believed to be intended for use in foreign intelligence gathering and engineered in a form that would be virtually invisible except to the most sophisticated scanning devices.

  I print the article out and scroll on. There are two more articles. When I try to pull them up, I find that both have either expired or been removed from the Internet.

  Piecing together what Kaprosky told me and from the information on adware and how it works, if the government is using looking glass as a form of spyware at some or all of its online sites, this has ominous implications for anything remotely approaching a free society.

  Businesses or individuals going to their computers for tax forms or electronic filing, some of which is now required by law, would have no way of avoiding the attachment of virtually invisible spyware to their computers. Everyone from farmers reporting agricultural production, to banks dealing with the Federal Reserve, to doctors and hospitals using computer uplinks to communicate with government regulatory agencies, could be having their confidential data files scanned at the speed of light with no oversight or restriction on how it is used.

  Those possessing the keys to this kingdom would be the ultimate inside dealers. They would know the details of every business transaction before it occurred, like playing Monopoly with loaded dice.

  In the area of privacy, everything, from patient medical records to supposedly confidential financial data, from the content of e-mail to personal notes and records maintained on home computers, could be scanned.

  If this is true, and if the system is in full bloom, any computer that has ever surfed to a government site is probably already infected. In this case, its data and anything networked to it is being scooped up without notice or benefit of a search warrant. If Kaprosky is right, all of it at this moment could be running through high-speed lines in compressed microbursts to computers running Primis in the basement of the Pentagon.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Our mystery man, retired General Gerald Satz, has now disappeared. Two days ago a relentless process server, a friend of Herman’s working out of Washington, D.C., finally gained access to Satz’s outer office in the Pentagon, only to be told that Satz was gone.

  According to the information, the general is out of the country on government business. They will not say when he left, when he will be back, or where he is. According to his staff, Satz’s location and his itinerary are confidential for reasons of security. What is clear is that Satz will not be available for the trial. The government is sealing off the last small fissures in the cover that might shed light on what happened between Madelyn Chapman and the Pentagon in the days before she died.

  Friday afternoon, the end of the week, and Templeton is sitting at the cusp, right at the edge of the state’s case in chief. He is a master of timing, and the feeling is palpable as he climbs the stool to take the podium. You can almost smell it, like ozone in the air after a jolt of lightning: the packed courtroom seems to crackle with a psychic charge.

  Like a pint-size philharmonic conductor, Templeton would like to end his case on a crescendo, some high note that he can leave ringing in the minds of jurors, for them to ponder as they kill time, sequestered in their hotel rooms over the weekend, waiting for the defense to begin its case.

  “Mr. Templeton, do you have any more witnesses to call?” Gilcrest looks up only briefly as he makes a note on the blotter in front of him. The jury is in the box.

  “O
ne final witness, Your Honor.”

  “Very well, let’s do it,” says the judge.

  “People call Jensen Quinn to the stand.”

  I glance over at Harry, who has already leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on the table as he turns to look at me. His face is an expressive question mark, a shrug of the shoulders. He has no clue.

  Harry fingers through the separate piles of paper on the table in front of him until he finds a copy of the state’s witness list. This is nearly eighteen pages in length, names single-spaced and numbered along the left-hand margin. There are hundreds of names here, people Templeton thought he might want to call, long shots that in a pitched battle over some minute point could come in handy, others that would be called only if the factual sands underlying the case shifted beneath his feet. I suspect many of the names were grabbed out of phone books in the library and dropped on his list like chaff among the wheat to distract us, so that we would waste time checking them out.

  I lean into Emiliano. “Do you recognize the name?”

  He shakes his head. He is turned now, looking toward the back of the courtroom, toward the double doors where the bailiff has announced the name out in the hallway.

  A second later I hear the whoosh of one of the swinging double doors at the rear of the courtroom as it opens and closes. Before I can turn to look behind me, I notice that Emiliano’s face has gone ashen. There is something in his fixed gaze that I have not seen before. It is the focused appearance of fear. A second later, when he snaps around to the front, his breathing is heavy, his eyes darting.

  I turn to look behind me. At the back of the courtroom there is a man talking to the bailiff, who is directing him up the main aisle toward the front of the courtroom. He is of medium height with dark, wavy hair. He’s wearing a tan jacket, slacks, and a polo shirt. As he heads up the aisle I get a better look. His eyes are directed straight ahead, as if he is consciously avoiding any eye contact with the people at either table and instead is staring off into the ether.

  I look over toward Harry. He has slid the state’s witness list toward the center of the table in front of Ruiz where we can all see it. Harry’s finger is on the page next to the name Jensen Quinn.

  I cup a hand and whisper to Ruiz, “Do you know him?”

  He nods quickly, twice, a kind of muted gesture. “I knew him as Jack. It’s what he went by in the military,” he whispers back.

  “What’s he going to say?” I ask.

  A little shake of his head, a shrug of his shoulders. Ruiz is telling us he doesn’t know.

  “What is he going to say on the stand?” Harry is whispering through clenched teeth from the other side. He has picked up the same signal of panic from Ruiz that I have.

  Emiliano falls silent, his eyes on the witness, who is now raising his hand to be sworn in by the clerk.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  “Ah do.”

  “Take a seat and state your name for the record.”

  He sits in the witness chair. “Jensen Jonathan Quinn.”

  He has a distinct accent. If I had to guess, I would say the southeast hill country, maybe the western Carolinas or Tennessee.

  “Mr. Quinn, my name is Lawrence Templeton. I’m a deputy district attorney with the county of San Diego. We have met and talked to one another on one earlier occasion, have we not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you sometimes known to your friends as Jack Quinn?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t have to call me sir. Just relax. All you have to do is answer the questions truthfully and we’ll get you out of here as quickly as we can.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry,” he says.

  Several of the jurors are smiling.

  “That’s okay, we all understand. It’s natural to be a little bit nervous. Let me ask you, Mr. Quinn, are you a member of the United States military?”

  The witness shakes his head. “Not at the present time. No, sir.”

  “But were you at one time a member of the United States Army?”

  “Yes, sir.” The witness blushes, shrugs his shoulders.

  “That’s all right. Old habits are hard to break,” says Templeton. “If it makes it any easier for you, you can just go ahead and keep on pretending I’m a sir.”

  The jury laughs.

  “Mr. Quinn, can you tell the jury what type of work you did when you were in the Army?”

  “I was in the infantry, Army Rangers.”

  “And where were you stationed?”

  “Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”

  “You’re currently out of the Army, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you been out?”

  “Let’s see.” He thinks for a moment. “Fourteen, almost fifteen months now.”

  “And you were honorably discharged, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long were you in the Army?”

  “Eight years.”

  “And during all that time, were you stationed at Fort Bragg?”

  “Except for the times when mah unit was overseas, yes, sir.”

  “Did you see any combat during this period of time?”

  “Yes, sir. In the Middle East. Twice,” he says.

  “And both times that you were in combat, were you a member of an Army Ranger unit?”

  “Ah was, yes, sir.”

  “And can you tell the jury, are the Army Rangers considered to be what is known as an elite unit within the military?”

  “Yes, sir. They are.”

  “And what was your rank or grade when you left the Army?”

  “Ah was a staff sergeant.”

  “Would members of the Army, enlisted servicemen or women, have to go through special training to become an Army Ranger?”

  “Yes, sir, they would.”

  “And can you tell the jury what kind of training would be involved in order to qualify to become a Ranger?”

  “Well, besides basic training and advanced individual training, to get your MOS—”

  “Excuse me. What is an MOS? Can you explain for the jury?”

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry. MOS is short for ‘military occupational specialty.’ Mine was advanced infantry.”

  “Thank you. Go ahead. What else is required to become a Ranger?”

  “Besides that, you have to graduate from airborne school.”

  “Become a paratrooper, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what else?”

  “You have to complete RIP,” he says.

  “What is RIP, Mr. Quinn?”

  “Ranger indoctrination program.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Would we be safe in assuming that all of this—the basic training, the advanced training, the airborne school, the RIP program—all of it involves fairly rigorous physical aptitude on the part of the recruit, the person trying to become an Army Ranger?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your Honor”—I interrupt Templeton’s flow—“I have to object. I’m sure all of this is very interesting, but it’s irrelevant.”

  “Mr. Templeton, I’m beginning to wonder the same thing,” says Gilcrest.

  “Your Honor, if you’ll just give me a couple more minutes, I think you’ll begin to see the relevance.”

  “Very well, get to the point,” says the judge.

  “Mr. Quinn, at one point after you became an Army Ranger, did you consider making the Army a career?”

  “Ah did.”

  “And what changed your mind?”

  “I was passed over,” he says.

  “You mean to say you were passed over for a promotion?”

  “No, sir. Ah was turned down on assignment to another unit.”

  “And what was that unit?”

  “First Special Forces Operational Detachment. First SFOD, sir.”

 
“And is there another name that that unit is more commonly known by?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what is that name?”

  “Delta Force.”

  “And where is Delta Force located? Where is their headquarters?”

  “You mean officially?” asks the witness.

  “Yes.”

  “Nowhere. According to the Army, they don’t exist.”

  A few people in the audience laugh. They’ve seen the film or read the book, the bloody battle on the streets of Mogadishu. Delta is like Area Fifty-one out in the desert. Everybody knows it exists, but the government won’t admit it.

  “Why is that? Why won’t the Army acknowledge Delta’s existence?”

  “Because it’s classified. Everything about the Delta is off limits.”

  “Where do they exist, unofficially?” says Templeton.

  “At Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”

  “The same place you were stationed when you were in the Rangers?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And can you tell the jury why you were turned down, disapproved for assignment to Delta Force?”

  I’m getting a sick feeling, the kind of sensation you feel just as Vesuvius erupts up the esophagus.

  “Because someone said … because I was found not to be qualified for certain live-fire exercises with small arms.”

  “And can you tell the jury who made that determination? Who said you weren’t qualified?”

  “He did.” The witness nearly comes up off his seat, reaching out to point toward Ruiz. Emiliano is just sitting there, his back against the chair, looking at the witness with a blank stare.

  “And when you said ‘He did,’ who are you talking about? Can you identify this person by name?”

  “Yes, sir. Sergeant Emiliano Ruiz,” he says.

  “You’re talking about the defendant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And at the time that Sergeant Ruiz found you not to be qualified, was Sergeant Ruiz a member of the Army Rangers?”

  “No, sir. He was a member of Delta Force.”

  There is stirring out in the audience, the hum of voices. The judge cracks the gavel on the hard oak surface of the bench, and suddenly there is silence.