Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

W >> Winn Schwartau >> Since the author also requests remuneration, we would ask these

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53

"It's a story, that, well, doesn't have enough to go into print,
but, it's there, I know it. Off the record, ok?" Scott wanted to
talk.

"Mums the word."

"A few days ago I received some revealing documents papers on a
certain company. I can't say which one." He looked at Tyrone for
approval.

"Whatever," Tyrone urged anxiously.

Scott told Tyrone about his nameless and faceless donor and what
Higgins had said about the McMillan situation and the legality of
the apparently purloined information. Tyrone listened in fasci-
nation as Scott outline a few inner sanctum secrets to which he
was privy.

Tyrone got a shiver up his spine. He tried to disguise it.

"Can I ask you a question?" Tyrone quietly asked.

"Sure. Go for it."

"Was one of the companies Amalgamated General?"

Scott shot Tyrone a look they belied the answer.

"How did you know?" Scott asked suspiciously.

"And would another be First Federated or State National Bank?"
Tyrone tried to subdue his concern. All he needed was the press
on this.

Scott could not hide his surprise. "Yeah! And a bunch of others.
How'd you know?"

Tyrone retreated back into his professional FBI persona. "Lucky
guess."

"Bullshit. What's up?" Scott's reporter mindset replaced that of
the lazy commuter.

"Nothing, just a coincidence." Tyrone picked up a newspaper and
buried his face behind it.

"Hey, Ty. Talk ol' buddy."

"I can't and you know it." Tyrone sounded adamant.

"As a friend? I'll buy you a lollipop?" Scott joked.

Ty snickered. "You know the rules, I can't talk about a case in
progress."

"So there is a case? What is it?" Scott probed.

"I didn't say that there was a case," Ty countered.

"Yes you did. Case in progress were your words, not mine. C'mon
what's up?"

"Shit, you media types." Tyrone gave himself a few seconds to
think. "I'll never know why you became a reporter. You used to
be a much nicer pain in the ass before you became so nosy."
Scott sat silently, enjoying Ty's awkwardness.

Tyrone hated to compromise the sanctity of his position, but he
realized that he, too, needed some help. Since he hadn't read
any of this in the papers, there had to be journalistic responsi-
bility from both Scott and the paper. "Off, off, off the record.
Clear?" He was serious.

"Done."

The train rumbled into the tunnel at the Northern tip of Manhat-
tan. They had to raise their voices to hear each other, but that
meant they couldn't be heard either.

"As near as I can tell," Tyrone hesitantly began. "There's a
well coordinated nationwide blackmail operation in progress. As
of yesterday, we have received almost a hundred cases of alleged
blackmail. From Oshkosh, Baton Rouge, New York, Miami, Atlanta,
Chicago, LA, the works. Small towns to the metros. It's an
epidemic and the local and state cops are absolutely buried.
They can't handle it, and besides it's way out of their league.
So who do they all call? Us. Shit. I need this, right? There's
no way we can handle this many cases at once. No way. Washing-
ton's going berserk."

"Who's behind it?" Scott asked knowing he wouldn't get a real
answer.

"That's the rub. Don't have a clue. Not a clue. There's no
pattern, none at all. We assumed it was organized crime, but our
informants say they're baffled. Not the mob, they swear. They
knew about it before we did. Figures." Tyrone's voice echoed a
professional frustration.

"Motives?"

"None. We're stuck."

"Sounds like we're both on the same hunt."

The train slowed to a crawl and then a hesitant stop at Grand
Central. Thousands of commuters lunged at the doors to make
their escape to the streets of New York above them. Scott won-
dered if any of them were part of Duncan's problems.

"Scott?" Tyrone queried on the escalator.

"Yeah?"

"Not a word, ok?"

Scott held up his right hand with three fingers. "Scott's
honor!" That was good enough for Tyrone.

They walked up the stairs and past a newsstand that caught both
of their eyes instantly. The National Expose had another sensa-
tionalistic headline:

FBI POWERLESS IN NATIONAL BLACKMAIL SCHEME

They fought for who would pay the 75 cents for the scandal filled
tabloid, bought two, and started reading right where they stood.

"Jesus," Tyrone said more breathing than actually saying the
word. "They're going to make a weekly event of printing every
innuendo."

"They have the papers, too," muttered Scott. "The whole blasted
lot. And they're printing them." Scott put down the paper.
"This makes it a brand new ball game . . ."

"Just what I need," Tyrone said with disgust.

"That's the answer," exclaimed Scott. "The motive. Who's been
affected so far?"

"That's the mystery. No one seems to have been affected. What's
the answer?" Tyrone demanded loud enough to attract attention.
"What's the answer?" he whispered up close.

"It's you." Scott noted.

Tyrone expressed surprise. "What do you mean, me."

"I mean, it seems that the FBI has been affected more than anyone
else. You said you're overloaded, and that you can't pay atten-
tion to other crimes."

"You're jumping to conclusions." Tyrone didn't follow Scott's
reasoning and cocked his head quizzically.

"What if the entire aim of the blackmail was to so overwork the
FBI, so overload it with useless cases, and that the perpetrators
really have other crimes in mind. Maybe they have already hit
their real targets. Isn't it possible that the FBI is an unwill-
ing dupe, a decoy in a much larger scheme that isn't obvious
yet?" Scott liked the sound of his thinking and he saw that
Tyrone wasn't buying his argument.

"It's possible, I guess . . .but . . ." Tyrone didn't have the
words to finish his foggy thoughts. It was too far left field
for his linear thinking. "No this is crazy as the time you
though that UFO's were invading Westchester in '85. Then there
was the time you said that Columbian drug dealers put cocaine in
the water supply . . ."

"That wasn't my fault . . ."

" . . .and the Trump Noriega connection and the other 500 wild
ass conspiracies you come up with."

Scott dismissed Tyrone's friendly criticism by ignoring the
derisions. "As I see it," Scott continued, "the only victim is
the FBI. None of the alleged victims have been harmed, other
than ego and their paranoia levels. Maybe the FBI was the target
all along. Scott suggested, "it's as good a theory as any
other."

"With what goal?" Duncan accepted the logic for the moment.

"So when the real thing hits, you guys are too fucked up to
react."

* * * * *

The Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Square, Manhattan.

The flat white and glass square building, designed in the '60's,
built shoddily by the lowest bidder in 1981, in no way echoed the
level of technical sophistication hidden behind the drab exteri-
or. The building had no personality, no character, nothing
memorable about it, and that was exactly the way the tenants
wanted it.

The 23 story building extended 6 full floors below the congested
streets of Lower Manhattan. Throughout the entire structure well
guarded mazes held the clues to the locations of an incredible
array of computing power, some of the world's best analytical
tools, test equipment, forensic labs, communications facilities
and a staff of experts in hundreds of technical specialties
required to investigate crimes that landed in their jurisdiction.

The most sensitive work was performed underground, protected by
the solid bedrock of Manhattan island. Eavesdropping was impos-
sible, almost, and operational privacy was guaranteed. Personal
privacy was another matter, though. Most of the office staff
worked out in an open office floorplan. The walls between the
guard stations and banks of elevators consisted solely of bullet-
proof floor to ceiling triple pane glass. Unnerving at first, no
privacy.

There was a self-imposed class structure between the "bugs",
those who worked in the subterranean chambers and the "air-heads"
who worked where the daylight shone. There was near total sepa-
ration between the two groups out of necessity; maintain isola-
tion between those with differing need-to-know criteria. The
most visible form of self-imposed isolation, and unintended
competitiveness was that each camp spent Happy Hour at different
bars. A line that was rarely crossed.

Unlike the mechanism of the Corporate Ladder, where the higher
floors are reserved for upper, top, elite management, the power
brokers, at the FBI the farther down into the ground you worked,
the more important you were. To the "airheads", "bugs" tried to
see how low they could sink in their acquisition of power while
rising up on the Government pay scale.

On level 5, descending from street level 1, Tyrone sat on the
edge of his large Government issue executive desk to answer his
ringing phone. It was Washington, Bob Burnsen, his Washington
based superior and family friend for years.

"No, really. Thanks," Ty smiled. "Bob, we've been through this
before. It's all very flattering, but no. I'm afraid not. And
you know why. We've been through this all . . ." He was being
cut off by his boss, so he shut up and listened.

"Bob . . .Bob . . .Bob," Tyrone was laughing as he tried to
interrupt the other end of the conversation. "OK, I'll give it
some more thought, but don't get your hopes up. It's just not in
my cards." He listened again.

"Bob, I'll speak to Arlene again, but she feels the same way I
do. We're both quite content and frankly, I don't need the
headaches." He looked around the room as he cocked the earpiece
away from his head. He was hearing the same argument again.

"Bob, I said I would. I'll call you next week." He paused.
"Right. If you don't hear from me, you'll call me. I understand.
Right. OK, Bob. All right, you too. Goodbye."

He hung up the phone in disbelief. They just won't leave me
alone. Let me be! He clasped his hands in mock prayer at the
ceiling.

* * * * *

Tyrone Duncan joined the FBI in 1968, immediately after graduat-
ing cum laude from Harvard Law. Statistically the odds were
against him ever being accepted into the elite National Police
Force. The virtually autonomous empire that J. Edgar Hoover had
created over 60 years and 12 presidents ago was very selective
about whom it admitted. Tyrone Duncan was black.

His distinguished pre-law training had him prepared to follow
into his father's footsteps, as a partner with one of Boston's
most prestigious law firms. Tyrone was a member of one of the
very few rich and influential black families in the North East.
His family was labeled "Liberal" when one wasn't ashamed of the
moniker.

Then came Selma. At 19, he participated in several of the
marches in the South and it was then that he first hand saw
prejudice. But it was more than prejudice, though. It was hate,
it was ignorance and fear. It was so much more than prejudice.
It was one of the last vestiges left over from a society con-
quered over a century ago; one that wouldn't let go of its mis-
guided myopic traditions.

Fear and hate are contagious. Fueled by the oppressive heat and
humidity, decades of racial conflict, several 'Jew Boy Nigger
Lovers' were killed that summer in Alabama. The murder of the
civil rights workers made front page news. The country was out-
raged, at the murders most assuredly, but national outrage turned
quickly to divisional disgust when local residents dismissed the
crime as a prank, or even congratulated the perpetrators for
their actions.

The FBI was not called in to Alabama to solve murders, per se;
murder is not a federal crime. They were to solve the crime
because the murderers had violated the victims' civil rights.
Tyrone thought that that approach was real slick, a nice legal
side step to get what you want. Put the lawyers on the case.
When he asked the FBI if they could use a hand, the local over-
worked, understaffed agents graciously accepted his offer and
Tyrone spent the remainder of the summer filing papers and per-
forming other mundane tasks while learning a great deal.

On the plane back to Boston, Tyrone Duncan decided that his
despite his father's urging, after law school he would join the
FBI.

Tyrone Duncan, graduate cum laude, GPA 3.87, Harvard Law School,
passed the Massachussettes Bar on the first try and sailed
through the written and physical tests for FBI admission. He was
over 100 pounds lighter than his current weight. His background
check was unassailable except for his family's prominent liberal
bent. He had every basic qualification needed to become an FBI
Agent. He was turned down.

Thurman Duncan, his prominent lawyer father was beside himself,
blaming it on Hoover personally. But Tyrone decided to 'investi-
gate' and determine who or what was pulling the strings. He
called FBI personnel and asked why he had been rejected. They
mumbled something about 'experience base' and 'fitting the mold'.
That was when he realized that he was turned down solely because
he was black. Tyrone was not about to let a racial issue stand
in his way.

He located a couple of the agents with whom he had worked during
the last summer. After the pleasantries, Tyrone told them that
he was applying for a position as an assistant DA in Boston.
Would they mind writing a letter . . .

Tyrone Duncan was right on time at the office of the FBI Person-
nel Director. Amazing, Tyrone thought, the resemblance to Hoov-
er. The four letters of recommendation, which read more like
votes for sainthood were a little overdone, but, they were on FBI
stationary. Tyrone asked the Personnel Director if they would
reconsider his application, and that if necessary, he would
whitewash his skin.

The following day Tyrone received a call. Oh, it was a big mix-
up. We misfiled someone else's charts in your files and, well,
you understand, I'm sure. It happens all the time. We're sorry
for any inconvenience. Would you be available to come in on
Monday? Welcome to the FBI.

Tyrone paid his dues early. Got shot at some, chased long haired
left wing hippie radicals who blew up gas stations in 17 states
for some unfathomable reason, and then of course, he collected
dirt on imaginary enemies to feed the Hoover Nixon paranoia. He
tried, fairly successfully to stay away from that last kind of
work. In Tyrone's not so humble opinion, there were a whole lot
more better things for FBI agents to be doing than worry about
George McGovern's toilet habits or if some left wing high school
kids and their radical newspaper were imaginarily linked to the
Kremlin. Ah, but that was politics.

Three weeks after J. Edgar Hoover died, Tyrone Duncan was promot-
ed to Section Chief in the New York City office. A prestigious
position. This was his first promotion in 8 years at the bureau.
It was one that leaped over 4 intermediate levels. The Hoover
era was gone.

After hanging up the phone with Bob Bernsen, Tyrone sat behind
his desk going over his morning reports. No planes hijacked, no
new counterfeiting rings and nary a kidnapping. What dogged him
though was the flurry of blackmail and extortion claims. He re-
read the digested version put out by Washington headquarters that
was faxed to him in the early hours, ready for his A.M. perusal.

The apparent facts confounded his years of experience. Over 100
people, many of them highly placed leaders of American industry
had called their respective regional FBI offices for help. A call
into the FBI is handled in a procedural manner. The agent who
takes the call can identify the source of the call with a readout
on his special phone; a service that the FBI had had for years
but was only recently becoming available to the public. Thus, if
the caller had significant information, but refused to identify
himself, the agent had a reliable method to track down the call-
er. Very few people who called the FBI realized that a phone
inquiry to an FBI office triggered a sequence of automatic events
that was complete before the call was over.

The phone call was of course monitored and taped. And the phone
number of the caller was logged in the computer and displayed to
the agent. Then the number was crosschecked against files from
the phone company. What was the exact location of the caller?
To whom was the phone registered? A calling and billing history
was made instantly available if required.

If the call originated from a phone registered to an individual,
his social security number was retrieved and within seconds of
the receipt of the call, the agent knew a plethora of information
about the caller. Criminal activities, bad credit records; the
type of data that would permit the agent to gauge the validity of
the call. For business phones, a cross check determined any and
all dubious dealings that might be valuable in such a determina-
tion.

Thus, the profile that emerged from the vast number of callers
who intimated blackmail activities created a ponderous situation.
They all, to a call, originated from the office or home of major
corporate movers and shakers. Top American businessmen who,
while not beyond the reach of the law, were from the FBI's view,
upstanding citizens. Not pristine, but certainly not mad men
with a record of making outlandish capricious claims. It was not
in their interest to bring attention to themselves.

What puzzled Tyrone, and Washington, was the sudden influx of
such calls. Normally the Bureau handles a handful of diversified
cases of blackmail, and a very small percentage of those pan out
into legitimate and solvable cases. Generally, veiled vague
threats do not materialize into prosecutable cases. Tyrone Duncan
sat back thoughtfully.

What is the common element here? Why today, and not a year ago or
on April Fools Day? Do these guys all play golf together? Is it
a joke? Not likely, but a remote possibility. What enemies have
they made? Undoubtedly they haven't befriended everyone with
whom they have had contact, but what's the connection? Tyrone's
mind reeled through a maze of unlikelihoods. Until, the only
common element he could think of stared at him right in the
face. There was a single dimension of commonality between all of
the callers. They had, to a company, to a man, all dealt with
the same organization for years. The U.S. Government.

The thought alone caused a spasm to his system. His body liter-
ally leapt from his chair for a split second as he caught his
breath. The government. No way. Is it possible? I must be
missing something, surely. This is crazy. Or is it? Doesn't
the IRS have records on everyone? Then the ultimate paranoid
thought hit him square in the cerebellum. He playfully pounded
his forehead for missing the connection.

Somewhere, deep in the demented mind of some middle management G-
9 bureaucrat, Duncan thought, an idea germinated that he could
sell to another overworked, underpaid civil servant; his boss.
The G-9 says, 'I got a way to make sure the tax evaders pay their
share, and it won't cost Uncle Sam a dime!'. His boss says, 'I
got a congressional hearing today, I'm too busy. Do some re-
search and let me see a report.'

So this overzealous tax collector prowls around other government
computers and determines that the companies on his hit list
aren't necessarily functioning on the up and up. What better way
to get them to pay their taxes than to let them know that we, the
big We, Big Brother know, and they'd better shape up.

He calls a few of them, after all he knows where the skeletons
and the phone numbers are buried, and says something like, 'Big
Brother is listening and he doesn't like what he hears.' And he
says, 'we'll call you back soon, real soon, so get your ducks in
a row' and that scares the shit out of the corporate muckity-
mucks.

Tyrone smiled to himself. What an outlandish theory. Absurd, he
admitted, but it was the only one he could say fit the facts.
Still, is it possible? The government was certainly capable of
some pretty bizarre things. He recalled the Phoenix program in
Viet Nam where suspected Viet Cong and innocent civilians were
tossed out of helicopters at 2000 feet to their deaths in the
distorted hope of making another one talk.

Wasn't Daniel Ellsburg a government target? And the Democrats
were in 1972 targets of CREEP, the Committee to Re-Elect the
President. And the Aquarius project used psychics to locate
Soviet Boomers and UFO's. Didn't we give LSD to unsuspecting
soldiers to see if they could function adequately under the
influence? The horror stories swirled through his mind. And they
became more and more unbelievable, yet they were all true. Maybe
it was possible. The United States government had actually
instituted a program of anonymous blackmail in order to increase
tax revenues. Christ, I hope I'm wrong. But, I'm probably not.

The buzzer on the intercom of his phone jarred Tyrone from his
daydream speculations.

"Yes?" He answered into space.

"Mr. Duncan, a Franklin Dobbs is here for his 10 o'clock appoint-
ment. Saunderson is out and so you're elected." Duncan's secre-
tary was too damned efficient, he thought. Why not give it to
someone else. He pushed his intercom button.

"Gimme a second, I gotta primp." That was Tyrone's code that he
needed a few minutes to graduate from speculative forensics and
return to Earth to deal with real life problems. As usual,
Gloria obliged him. In exactly 3 minutes, his door opened.

"Mr. Duncan, this is Franklin Dobbs, Chairman and CEO of National
Pulp. Mr. Dobbs, Mr. Duncan, regional director." She waited for
the two men to acknowledge each other before she shut the door
behind her.

"Mr. Duncan?" Dobbs held his hand out to the huge FBI agent.
Duncan accepted and pointed at a vacant chair. Dobbs sat obedi-
ently.

"How can I help you, Mr. Dobbs?"

"I am being blackmailed, and I need help." Dobbs looked straight
into Duncan's coal black eyes.

The IRS, thought Duncan. "By whom?" he asked casually.

"I don't know." Dobbs was firm.

"Then how do you know you are being blackmailed?" Duncan wanted
to conceal his interest. Keep it low profile.

"Let me tell you what happened."

Good start, thought Duncan. If only half of us would start in
such a logical place.

"Two days ago I received a package by messenger. It contained
the most sensitive information my company has. Strategic posi-
tions, contingency plans, competitive information and so on.
There are only a half dozen people in my company that have access
to that kind of information. And they all own enough stock to
make sure that they aren't the culprits."

"So who is?" interjected Tyrone as he made notes.

"I don't know. That's the problem."

"What did they ask for?" Duncan looked directly into Dobbs'
eyes. To both force an answer and look for signs of deceit. All
he saw was honesty and real fear.

"Nothing. Nothing at all. All I got was the package and a brief
message."

"What was the message?" Tyrone asked.

"We'll be in touch. That's it."

"So where's the threat? The blackmail. This hardly seems like a
case for the FBI." Tyrone was baiting the hook. See if the fish
is real.

"None, not yet. But that's not the point. What they sent me
were copies, yet they looked more like the originals, of informa-
tion that would negatively affect my company. It's the sort of
information that we would not want made public. If you know what
I mean."

Tyrone thought, you bet I know. You're up to and you want us to
protect you. Fat chance. "I know what you mean," he agreed.

"I need to stop it. Before it's too late?"

"Too late?" asked Duncan.

"Too late. Before it gets out."

"What gets out, Mr. Dobbs?" Duncan stared right into and beyond
Dobbs' eyes.

"Secrets. Just secrets." Dobbs paused to recompose himself.
"Isn't there a law . . .?"

"Yes, there is Mr. Dobbs. And if what you say is true, you are
entitled to protection." Duncan decided to bait Dobbs a bit more.
"Even if the information is illegal in nature." Wait for the
fish to bite.