THE
BANNERMAN EFFECT
BY
JOHN R. MAXIM
-1-
December. Alexandria, Virginia.
The secretary of state, Barton Fuller, had never been entirely comfortable with computers. Least of all where intelligence operations were concerned.
While fully appreciating their capabilities, he considered that they tended to encourage the gathering of information rather than the decisive use of it. An endless flood of data from a million different sources, all needing to be processed and stored. Too much processing, not enough thinking. Need an opinion? A forecast? An assessment of the tottering Russian economy or of Syria's capacity to produce nuclear weapons? Ask the computer. Never mind that it's almost always wrong. Not enough data, they'll say. Let's pump in some more and ask it again.
It was the computer, in his opinion, more than the Congress, that had pulled the teeth of the CIA. Reduced them all to clerks and analysts. And filled his desk daily with a mound of intelligence reports that he'd long since given up trying to read.
Then, too, he couldn't help feeling that there was something terribly unconfidential about a network of computers. He could never seem to call up a classified file or read the printout of an eyes-only report without wondering whether some pale and pimply faced hacker in Silicon Valley or some damned place had found a way to read over his shoulder.
His own hackers, of course, had done their best to reassure him. Such a thing was not possible, they said. The system used by the State Department, right down to the machine he kept in the study of his home, was absolutely impenetrable. They were certain of it because their security system was itself designed by computer. There was, he felt sure, a flaw in that logic.
For these reasons alone, therefore, Barton Fuller would have been less than pleased when, on this bright Sunday morning, Roger Clew appeared at his home and produced a laptop Toshiba from a bag that was supposed to contain the wherewithal for their regular Sunday game of platform tennis.
Clew was also two hours early. Barton Fuller was still in his robe, his first cup of coffee in hand, the Washington Post crossword puzzle open but untouched beside his favorite chair. The solitude of an early Sunday was one of his few indulgences. Now young Roger had shattered it, no explanation, just a series of incomplete sentences and mysterious bear-with-me gestures as he busied himself, unbidden, setting up the Toshiba next to Fuller's IBM station, fiddling with cables, connecting the two.
“Unless we're at war and I haven't been told”—Fuller made a show of searching the front page of the Washington Post—“can't whatever that is wait until Monday?”
He made it a rule: Sunday mornings at Briarwood were for platform tennis in winter and clay-court tennis in summer. Or some half-court basketball, depending on the athleticism of the day's guests. But, barring a legitimate emergency, no shoptalk. Not until noon when a few department heads and the odd senator arrived for an informal working lunch. One's oases were where one finds them. Sunday mornings at Briarwood were his. They restored the body and flushed the mind.
Clew straightened. “Um . . . actually, it can't, sir. The fact is, after you see this, you might tell me not to bother coming in on Monday.”
Fuller released a sigh. He had been afraid of this. High drama. It was usually on Monday mornings that the world seemed about to come to end. Or on an evening for which he had theater tickets. It rarely happened on Sunday mornings, Pearl Harbor notwithstanding.
“This is not personal, is it?” he asked. “You're not in some sort of trouble.”
“No, sir. Well—um, no.”
Certainly clears that up, he thought. “Do I gather then, that this is something Harry and Irwin may not be privy to?” Harry Hagler was special adviser to the Intelligence Committee of the National Security Council; Irwin Kaplan was director of operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Except on Sunday mornings. On Sunday mornings they played platform tennis. In fact, Fuller seemed to recall, it was Roger who had suggested that particular foursome in the first place.
“Sir”—Clew turned to face him—“my position is that they know nothing about it. That position may change depending on how this meeting goes.”
Another sigh, deeper than the last. “Roger,” he said, grimacing, “one of the most attractive things about you is that you've never seen the inside of a law school. Have you been keeping bad company?”
“Ah—Irwin is a lawyer, sir.”
“I'd hoped he'd gotten over it. Please consider that all appropriate asses are covered. What say we get on with this?”
“Yes, sir.” He continued fiddling. His tennis tote yielded a box of floppy disks. Clew inserted one into the slot of the IBM, another into his laptop. Fuller studied him. In the nearly twenty years he'd known Roger Clew, first in Europe where Roger had spent most of his career, and, for the last three years, in Washington where Roger had been appointed his undersecretary of state for political affairs, Barton Fuller was not sure he'd ever seen him sweat. Not even at tennis. He might glow a bit from time to time, but actually trickle? Never. It would ruin his image. It would be like having his hair mussed. A bit of spinach between his teeth. Being caught ordering a pizza.
But he was sweating now. All these “yes sirs” and “no sirs” were another matter. On Sunday mornings, the formalities were to be left in the locker room.
Roger Clew reached for the Toshiba's “power” switch and flipped it. A soft blue light filled the screen. He followed this procedure with the IBM. A title appeared. JTR EFFECT, Fuller thought it said. The younger man quickly advanced past it to what seemed to be a short list of instructions. From his tote, he produced a single sheet, covered in plastic. This he placed beside the keyboard.
“These are some special commands.” He pointed. “Otherwise, the system is interactive. It's basically self-explanatory.”
“Am I going to hate this, Roger?”
“My hope is you'll. . . .” He pulled out Fuller's chair. “Sir, if you'll just—sit.”
An hour later, Barton Fuller had still not moved from the IBM machine. Nor had his eyes left the screen except to consult the list of commands or to glance up, blinking, at Roger Clew.
The younger man watched him in silence, his hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long grown cold. He'd watched the secretary's expression change from one of confusion to one of disbelief to one of horrified fascination. But he did not see rejection. He began to hope that, come Monday, he would still have a career after all.
Fuller, a large man, a full head over six feet, leaned back in his chair and stretched. With one huge hand he kneaded the muscles near his neck. His head turned toward the little Toshiba that Clew had set up within arm's length of his machine. Curiously, to no purpose, he reached out to touch it. He found himself reflecting on its size. One of his hands, spread wide, could easily cover the entire keyboard. Such a little thing. Somehow he'd always thought of laptops as more toy than tool. Not any more. This was no toy. This, in theory at least, was a machine that killed.
In the past thirty minutes alone, Barton Fuller had snuffed out the lives of eight men and two women. He had kidnapped three others. He caused four more to vanish without a trace. He made a shambles of two known terrorist organizations, one Libyan, the other Irish. He had paralyzed them, caused defections from their ranks, and caused member to turn on member.
Fuller muttered something. Clew leaned forward. “Sir?” he asked.
”I said it's a game.” Fuller's eyes remained fixed to the screen. “It's still only a game.”
“No, sir.” Clew answered. ”I don't think so.”
Fuller waggled
the fingers of one hand in a signal to be still as his other hand searched the keyboard and his eye returned to the list of commands. At the top of the sheet was that legend again: JTR EFFECT. He'd asked what it meant at the outset. Clew, he thought, had avoided answering. He'd apparently forgotten it was there. “When you're finished, sir,” he said. “Please.”
An index of organizations appeared on the screen. He scrolled past those of known terrorist groups. There were more than 200 in the Middle East alone. A similar number throughout Europe. More in Africa. More everywhere. A few, even, in the Soviet Union.
Next came the drug traffickers, another long list. Then Mafia families. Then came corporations. Barton Fuller frowned. Corporations?
Then he understood. He recognized the names of a German firm that had helped Libya build a chemical weapons factory, a Danish company that had illegally sold submarine detection devices to the Soviets and an American defense contractor whose greed and shoddy standards had resulted in the deaths of several flight crews.
Fuller returned to the drug traffickers. He was more comfortable there. He selected one at random, a drug distribution network based in Mexico. He touched a key and an organization chart appeared. He touched another and the names became faces. Fuller chose one face at random. A brutish looking man, hooded eyes, thick lips. Fuller ordered his execution, using the keyboard to type in the means. He chose a car bomb. Next he asked the computer to predict the effects of that assassination. A list of consequences appeared on the screen, in order of probability. The primary effect was a relatively peaceful reorganization and a redistribution of the dead man's property among his associates. Fuller then killed his replacement. Another car bomb. Now the effect was panic. He killed two more. The effect was chaos. Incredibly to Fuller, the computer predicted six additional deaths, all men and women who were likely to be suspected of the original killings. The drug distribution network was effectively destroyed. In theory.
Fuller leaned away once more. He took a long breath and exhaled slowly. Roger Clew tried to read his expression. He thought he saw a certain wistfulness, and a measure of satisfaction. Again, his hopes began to rise.
Fuller folded his long arms. He nodded in the direction of the laptop. “Who knows about this? Who programmed it?”
“Basically it's the TENET program adapted to the new Cray-3 computer system. I asked some of the Cray programmers to experiment with a few refinements. No one person has seen all of it.*
Fuller nodded.
TENET, an acronym for Terrorist Network, was a data bank that collected and continuously updated all available information on known terrorist organizations. It included estimates of capability, political orientation, and even psychological profiles from the world's leading experts on terrorism. The Cray was simply the world's fastest and most-sophisticated computer. TENET and the Cray-1 had been used to predict terrorist behavior and targets since “84. Results had been mixed. But the capabilities of the new Cray-3 were said to be nothing short of miraculous. And, even then, Roger Clew had refined them. God knows how long he'd been working on this.
In retrospect, Fuller supposed, he should not have been surprised. He and Clew had had many conversations about this during the past two or three years. Roger had complained, sometimes bitterly, that the intelligence services had a system that could identify an enemy, tell us what he's done in the past and what he's likely to do in the future, and yet we do practically nothing with it. It's not a failure of capability, he'd argue. It's a failure of will.
“Roger,” the secretary asked quietly, “by any chance, are we talking about government death squads here? Argentine style?”
“Absolutely not.*’
Fuller gestured toward the screen. “But I see a great many unpleasant people dying in many exotic ways. How else does this come about?”
“The actions I have in mind do not necessarily involve killing. And I do not propose to use government personnel.”
Fine distinctions, thought Fuller. Perhaps young Roger is a closet lawyer after all. “What, then, do you have in mind?’9
“Sir, at this time I’m still really just exploring potential. But these actions would not be unlike many of the covert operations, past and present, of our intelligence services.”
“Those operations fall, for better or worse, under a legally constituted charter. Does this?”
“No, sir. It can't work if it does.”
“Do I gather, then, that I have just been lured into a criminal conspiracy with you, Mr. Hagler, and Mr. Kaplan?”
“Not at all. We're just . . . talking.”
“Funny, you don't look hypothetical,”9 Fuller said, deadpan. “But as long as we're just talking, what does our expert on counterterrorism think about all this?”
“You know what Hagler wants. He wants his hands untied.”
“Who among us does not? But I'm asking about this.” He turned his thumb to the laptop.
“In Harry's words, he would like the freedom to hit those fuckers so hard and so often that they'd be afraid to come up for air. Any way he could. Legally or not.”9
“That's Harry, all right. Where would he draw the line?”
”I asked him that. He said he'd let me know when he reached it.”
“Surely he'd stop at murder.”
“Naturally. If that's what it was.”
“What else could it be and still have the same effect?”
“Punitive action. Preemptive strikes. Pest control. Whatever works for him.”
“And Irwin?”
“He was—uneasy in the beginning. He's coming around. It was Kaplan who insisted that I expose this to you before we go any further.”
“In search of a godfather, I take it.”
“On the contrary, Kaplan doesn't think you'll have the stomach for it. Frankly, I think that's what he's hoping for.”
“He might be right. What are you hoping for?”
“That we can all, the four of us, put our minds together. That we can come up with a way to use this technology that is both morally defensible and effective. Above all, sir, I'm with Hagler. I want the enemies of our country to be afraid. TENET can show us how to hit them with random but strategic—countermeasures.” He'd almost said brutality. “But they will have no idea who is hitting them or why.”
“No idea?” Fuller raised an eyebrow. “Does TENET say these people are all stupid? You don't think they'll make some gesture in our direction such as blowing a few more of our airliners out of the sky?”
“Not if our strikes appear to be the work of rival factions. We can have terrorists killing each other off at two or three times their current rate. We can start wars between drug lords, drive them undercover, paralyze their traffic.”
“And gang wars between mobsters?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“And corporate executives, Roger. Do we start killing them off as well?”
Clew bit his lip. “That was purely ... an exercise. There are corporations with policies every bit as inimical to the interests of the United States as those of the drug cartels. However, I would—”
“Draw the line?”
“Yes.”
Fuller stared at him.
“In any case,” Clew continued, “after these—surgical strikes—our own legally constituted agencies would be employed to move in and pick up the pieces. The computer would have told them exactly—”
”I get the picture.”
“The beauty of it is,” Clew pointed out, “that no one else has to be in on this. Just Kaplan and Hagler. They'll go on directing operations just as they're doing now. No one's going to ask them how they got so smart all of a sudden.”
“No CIA?” Fuller asked.
“Not while Palmer Reid is there.”
Fuller's eyes narrowed. “Which, I gather, means that your chief surgeon is to be your old friend Mama's Boy.”
“There is no more Mama's Boy. He's just Paul Bannerman now. But yes, he'd be my first choice.”
“No one knows. Just the four of us.”
“What makes you think he'd be interested?”
“He won't be. Not at first. I'd have to work on him.”
Fuller brought his hands to his eyes, rubbing them. He should, he supposed, ask how. Better, probably, not to know. Except he owed that much to Cassie.
“Cassie Bannerman.”
He spoke her name in his mind. And he saw her face. The one they called “Mama.” He never called her that; to him, she was simply Cassie.
Abruptly, Fuller rose from his chair. He stepped to the sideboard where he filled his mug, slowly, from a thermos pitcher. He kept his back to the younger man. Turning, he wandered toward a painting, a pastoral scene, that hung on the far wall. It was not of any great value. He simply liked it. Or rather she did. Knew the artist. Knew his work. That was why he'd bought it.
“Yes, Cassie. I still have it. I look at it every day.”
Sixteen . . . almost seventeen years.
He could still feel the emptiness, although the anger had faded over time. It was more than anger. The closest he'd ever come to taking up the gun himself, to wanting to look into a man's face as he killed him, was on the day he was told that Cassie had been murdered.
The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series) Page 1