Terminal Compromise

There was a self-imposed cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tiveness 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, Bob Burnsen, his Was.h.i.+ngton 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 c.o.c.ked 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 c.u.m 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 partic.i.p.ated 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 a.s.suredly, 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 c.u.m laude, GPA 3.87, Harvard Law School, pa.s.sed the Ma.s.sachussettes 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 una.s.sailable 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

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 a.s.sistant 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 s.h.i.+t 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 inst.i.tuted 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 s.p.a.ce.

"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 d.a.m.ned efficient, he thought. Why not give it to someone else. He pushed his intercom b.u.t.ton.

"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.