Terminal Compromise

Tyrone showed his identification at the J. Edgar Hoover Building wis.h.i.+ng he had the const.i.tution to wear a seersucker suit. There is no way on G.o.d's earth a seersucker could show a few hours wear as desperately as his $1200 Louis Boston did, he thought. Then, there was the accompanying exhaustion from his exposure to the dense Was.h.i.+ngton air. Duncan had not been pleased with the panic call that forced him to Was.h.i.+ngton anyway. His reactions to the effects of the temperature humidity index did not portend a good meeting with Bob Burnson.

Bob had called Tyrone night before, at home. He said, we have a situation here, and it requires some immediate attention. Would you mind being here in the morning? Instead of a question, it was an unissued order. Rather than fool around with hours of delays at La Guardia and National Airport, Tyrone elected to take the train and arrive in the nation's capitol just after noon. It took, altogether just about the same amount of time, yet he could travel in relative luxury and peace. Burnson was waiting for him.

Bob Burnson held the t.i.tle of National Coordinator for Tactical Response for the FBI. He was a little younger that Duncan, just over 40, and appeared cool in his dark blue suit and tightly collared s.h.i.+rt. Burnson had an unlikely pair of qualities. He was both an extraordinarily well polished politician and a astute investigator. Several years prior, though, he decided that the bureaucratic life would suit him just fine, and at the expense of his investigative skills, he attacked the political ladder with a vengeance.

Despite the differences between them, Burnson a willing compatri- ot of the Was.h.i.+ngton machine and Duncan preferring the rigors of investigation, they had developed a long distance friends.h.i.+p that survived over the years. Tyrone was most pleased that he had a boss who would at least give his arguments a fair listen before being told that for this or that political reason, the Bureau had chosen a different line of reasoning. So be it, thought Duncan.

I'm not a policy maker, just a cop. Tyrone sank into one of the government issue chairs in Burnson's modern, yet modest office ringed with large windows that can't open.

"How 'bout that Arctic Chill?" Burnson's short lithe 150 pound frame showed no wear from the heat. "Glad you could make it."

"Shee...it man," Tyrone exhaled as he wiped his s.h.i.+ny wet black face and neck. He was wringing wet. "Like I had a choice.

If it weren't for the company, I'd be at the beach getting a tan." He continued to wipe his neck and head with a monogrammed handkerchief.

"Lose a few pounds, and it won't hurt so bad. You know, I could make an issue of it," Bob poked fun.

"And I'm outta here so fast, Hoover'll cheer from his grave," he sweated. The reference to the FBI founder's legendary bigotry was a common source of jokes in the modern bureau.

"No doubt. No doubt." Burnson pa.s.sed by the innuendo. "Maybe we'd balance the scales, too." He dug the knife deeper in refer- ence to Tyrone's weight.

"That's two," said Duncan.

"Ok, ok," said Burnson feigning surrender. "How's Arlene and the rest of the sorority?" He referred to the house full of women

"Twenty degrees cooler." He was half serious.

"Listen, since you're hear, up for a bite?" Bob tried.

"Listen, how 'bout we do business then grab a couple of cold ones. Iced beer. At Camelot? That's my idea of a quality afternoon." Camelot was the famous downtown strip joint on 18th and M street that former Mayor Marion Berry had haunted and been 86'd from for unpublished reasons. It was dark and frequented by government employees for lunch, noticeably the ones from Treas- ury.

"Deal. If you accept." Bob's demeanor s.h.i.+fted to the officious.

"Accept what?" Tyrone asked suspiciously.

"My proposition."

"Is this another one of your lame attempts to promote me to an office job in Capitol City?"

"Well, yes and no. You're being re-a.s.signed." No easy way to say it.

"To what?" exclaimed Tyrone angrily.

"To ECCO."

"What the h.e.l.l is ECCO?"

"All in good time. To the point," Bob said calmly. "How much do you know about this blackmail thing?"

"Plenty. I read the reports, and I have my own local problems.

Not to mention that the papers have picked it up. If it weren't for the National Expos printing irresponsibly, the mainstream press would have kept it quiet until there was some con- firmation."

"Agreed," said Burnson. "They are being spoken to right now, about that very subject, and as I hear it, they will have more lawsuits on their doorstep than they can afford to defend. They really blew it this time."

"What else?" Bob was listening intently.

"Not much. Loose, unfounded innuendo, with nothing to follow up.

Reminds me of high school antics or ma.s.s hysteria. Just like UFO flaps." Tyrone Duncan dismissed the coincidences and the thought of Scott's conspiracy theory. "But it does make for a busy day at the office."

"Agreed, however, you only saw the reports that went on the wire.

Not the ones that didn't go through channels."

"What do you mean by that?" Duncan voiced concern at being out of the loop.

"What's on the wire is only the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot more."

"What else?"

"Senators calling the Director personally, asking for favors.

Trying to keep their secrets secret. A junior Midwest senator has some quirky s.e.xual habits. A Southern anti-p.o.r.nography ball- breaker happens to like little boys. It goes on and one. They've all received calls saying that their secrets will be in the news- papers' hands within days."

"Unless?" Duncan awaited the resolved threat.

"No unless, which scares them all senseless. It's the same story everywhere. Highly influential people who manage many of our countries' strategic a.s.sets have called their senators, and asked them to insure that their cases are solved in a quiet and expedi- ent political manner. Sound familiar?" Burnson asked Duncan.

"More than vaguely," Tyrone had to admit. "How many?"

"As of this morning we have 17 Senators asking the FBI to make discreet investigations into a number of situations. 17! Not to mention a couple hundred executive types with connections.

Within days of each other. They each, so far, believe that theirs is an isolated incident and that they are the sole target of such...threats is as good a word as any. Getting the picture?"

Tyrone whistled to himself. "They're all the same?"

"Yes, and there's something else. To a man, each claimed that there was no way the blackmailer could know what he knew. Impos- sible." Burnson scratched his head. "Strange. Same story everywhere. That's what got the Director and his cronies in on this. And then me...and that's why you're here," Burnson said with finality.

"Why?" Tyrone was getting frustrated with the roundabout dia- tribe.

"We're pulling the blackmail thing to the national office and a special task force will take over. A lot of folks upstairs want to pull you in and stick you in charge of the whole operation, but I told them that you weren't interested, that you like it the way it is. So, I struck a deal." Burnson sounded proud.

Duncan wasn't convinced. "Deal? What deal? Since when do you talk for me?" Tyrone didn't think to thank Bob for the front line pa.s.s interference. Keep the politicos out of his hair.

"Have you been following any of the computer madness recently?"

Burnson spoke as though he expected Tyrone to know nothing of it.

"Can't miss it. From what I hear, a lot of people are getting pretty spooked that they may be next."

"It gets more interesting than what the papers say," Bob said while opening a desk drawer. He pulled out a large folder and lay it across his desk. "We have experienced a few more computer incidents than is generally known, and in the last several weeks there has been a sudden increase in the number of attacks against Government computers."

"You mean the INTERNET stuff and Congress losing it's mind?"

Tyrone laughed at the thought that Congress would now use their downed computers as an excuse for not doing anything.

"Those are only the ones that have made it to the press. It's lot worse." Bob scanned a few pages of the folder and para- phrased while reading. "Ah, yes, the NPRP, National Pretrial Reporting Program over at Justice...was..h.i.t with a series of computer viruses apparently intentionally placed in VMS comput- ers, whatever the h.e.l.l those are." Bob Burnson was not computer fluent, but he knew what the Bureau's computer could do.