Solomon's Keepers (17 page)

Fourteen

‘The only thang you need to be is ga-aarn,’ sings Patti Frane. The last syllable stretches and finally breaks and the sounds of the electric slide spill out like silver water. The bobbing couples circle steadily on the dance floor, as though in a whirlpool, under the gaze of their fellows who sit eating chicken-fried steak and drinking beer at the wooden tables on the shadowed side of the room. Patti is a home-grown favourite at The Broken Spoke in Austin and her clever cross-over mix brings out a typical Texan crowd; genuine and would-be westerners in their buckles, boots and Stetsons mix with polo-shirted geeks from the high tech hinterland; Middle America with its hair loose and its best faded denims on. When a number stops they cheer Patti’s smiling face and outstretched arms and bang on the tables.

Lieutenant John Shaw likes it more than he’d admit. As a much-moved Northerner he likes as much he mocks the bumper sticker Texan pride and the hold that the place has on his wife, Sal. He has spent much of his young life adjusting and fitting in to new environments and his schooling and his career have taught him the value of change in providing opportunities for a bright young man to get inside and get on. But the army and the law have also taught him the value of long traditions. He likes their celebrated past, the comfort of black and white heroes looking down from walls, their continuity. He likes that here too. He likes it when Sal pulls him on to the dance floor, after a couple of beers to warm up. He likes the fact that there are accepted steps and a route to follow, old fashioned moves which easily became familiar, old fashioned moods that make him smile. Tonight Sal has offered to drive and he is feeling slightly drunk and a little detached. He is drunk enough to dance unselfconsciously and to succumb to the further intoxication of the movement. He looks at Sal and she sways and mouths the song along with Patti. ‘Don’ need to act the hero, don’ need to say so long. The only thang you need to be is ga-aarn.’ They exchange a smile.

The phone in his shirt pocket is discreet but the vibration is insistent. Sal’s shoulders stiffen and she pulls away. He feels the accusation in the way she looks at his shirt pocket first and then blanks his eyes as they pull apart. It’s late on a Friday night and he’s promised too many times not to let cases interfere with their already sidelined social life.

It’s his secretary Amy, her breathless voice.

‘John, I’m sorry but I’m the duty scooper tonight and I’ve just had a call from General Dooley, THE General Dooley. It won’t wait, just to forewarn you. He’s going to call. Can you…’ He loses her as he walks to the lobby, picking her up again once the music is behind doors at his back and he has just the sound of the crickets in the night air and his footsteps across the car park. ‘I gave him your personal cell, sounds urgent so I said I’d pull you out of whatever. He’ll be on .’

He thanks her and cuts her off to take an incoming call.

‘Shaw, this is General Dooley and I run the Special Operations Unit up here in Belvoir. I realise what time it is and where you are so I’ll get to the point. I’ve a job that’s urgent and I’m told you’re the man I need. It’s Friday night and I’ve got one out of the shitter for you; I’d like to give you a heads up on it before Monday.’ It’s the kind of voice that is all phlegm and whistles and is evidently saving its mid-section until it shouts. Shaw says ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Lieutenant, there’s a protocol for what I’m about to do and in the interests of time I am going to break it. I have evidence that indicates someone is pissing on a very private patch of my territory. The nature of this particular intrusion is disturbing on several counts I won’t go into here and I need someone smart who can figure out what is happening and take some very swift steps to stop it – without making waves. Curtis tells me you made quite a name for yourself on Jackson, tells me it took all the hours God gave to get done and you stood up to a lot of crap from a certain southern Senator who spends too much time in the media. You kept your findings under the radar. He also tells me that you deserve to be on leave, that you ought to be doing something entertaining right now – but I’ve leaned on him and instead you’re listening to my profanities and wondering who the hell I am and what the hell I want.’

Dooley’s introduction pauses.

‘I know who you are, Sir.’

‘I need to get you a confidential briefing. We don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got the army, the CIA and Homeland telling me I’m on the wrong track, which, on the basis of history may not be a bad place to start. I need someone open minded, smart…and on Monday.’

‘Where do you want me to be on Monday, Sir?’

‘Get to 81st Airborne for seven-thirty. They’ll be waiting to fly you up here and we’ll get you briefed and take it from there. You talked to Curtis yet?’

‘No, Sir. I believe he’s in transit. I’ve got a message to call him later tonight.’

‘Okay, Lieutenant. Glad to have you on board. Pack for a trip. See you Monday.’

The phone clicks and dies.

Hal Dooley is pacing his office when Shaw arrives, ten minutes early, at the Fort Belvoir campus and the low rise complex that houses the US Army Special Operations Executive. He is a stocky man in his mid-fifties with big hands, short grey hair and a neck that bulges under his collar. He is dressed in a grey suit and red tie. Only the huge black shoes with their mirror shine look decidedly military. Shaw stands a head taller when they shake hands, lithe and fit and twenty five years younger. Dooley leads Shaw to a pair of leather arm chairs and gestures for him to sit. The older man continues to pace and asks about the flight and the drive and talks about what a good man Shaw’s boss, Curtis, is while his assistant, Mary-Beth, plants a tall coffee pot and an ashtray in the middle of a table in front of them. When they are alone again, Dooley leans his elbows on a chair back and looks down at Shaw. It seems to the younger man that Dooley is pleased with what he sees. He has the air of someone who has bought an animal at auction and can only now examine it at close range. Shaw offers to pour out cups of coffee and Dooley nods. He is already lighting a cigar.

Thirty-five years of working with men under pressure has taught Hal Dooley the art of putting people at their ease, when he wants to. When he sits down and begins talking, it is as though to an old friend. Shaw feels that he is being drawn into a privileged circle where weighty issues are broached and a special set of unwritten rules applied. Somehow he has qualified to step up. Dooley smells like power.

‘I’m going to tell you in plain English what this is all about and then I’m going to let you read those.’ The cigar loops vaguely in the direction of a stack of beige folders on the corner of Dooley’s desk. ‘You’re Intelligence so I expect you’ll want to read something soon and from what I hear you might even understand it. But before you get into all the science of it and everyone’s official reports about this that and the other I want to give you a start point based on nothing stronger than my experience and my nose for bullshit. That okay?’ The cigar twitches and his eyes glint.

‘There’s a top secret programme called VIPOD,’ Dooley begins, ‘Versatile Intelligence at the Point Of Deployment. It came out of classified work on enhancing human intelligence with silicon devices – borrowing some out-of-the-box thinking at NASA and some bought-in external projects, notably a programme the Brits had going, called Solomon. Modern warfare needs some smarter people and this is the way to get them. We put chips in people’s brains, Lieutenant Shaw. I was on the oversight committee when it was first broached and it took a lot of persuading for me to back this project but eventually I realized it wasn’t science fiction and that we were falling behind and we had to do something about it. So I became an advocate and eventually its champion and now I find I’m in charge of the unit that owns it. And this is not a research project. The D is for deployment. In the last three years we have put twenty-five individuals through a procedure that plants a device in their brains that can communicate with an external computer. Of those twenty-five, about half have reached active deployment. It hasn’t been easy. We’ve had delays, we’ve had setbacks, and we’ve had fatalities. We are talking about something that is very new and extremely difficult.

All of this has of course been conducted under the highest security classifications and great care has been taken in the selection of the individuals and in managing their progress and assignments. We believe we have got something that creates a real advantage. We have the results that prove it.’

Dooley gauges the receptivity in Shaw’s eyes and pauses to take a puff of his cigar and blow the smoke out in a steady stream. ‘Fundamentally we have no choice; we’re not getting any smarter and machines are. It’s that simple. But the public isn’t ready; there are issues to work through. We’ve had to keep it covert, offshore. That’s the way it is.’

Shaw clears his throat and nods understanding. Dooley stands up and begins to pace again.

I now believe this programme has been breached. Hell I know it has, but I can’t prove it…yet. Someone has successfully gotten hold of our property. You’ll see it in those files. Someone has got it and I want it back. With an election coming, I don’t need to tell you the reception any possibility of an embarrassment over this gets upstairs. We are going to figure out how we get it back and how we restore this situation to some kind of order.’

He sits down again and leans across towards Shaw. ‘Before I tell you what I think I know, let me tell you what I know I know:

One: We’ve been breached before. My predecessor bought in simulation technology from the commercial sector. That’s all the cleverness that recreates the outside world in software. It underpins the training suites, recreates all the complicated mechanics of how things work. It was done under normal secure contracts but last year our intelligence reported that much of that code was turning up in gaming products supposedly developed in Asia. You remember the flight simulator stories and all the hoo-hah about yellow flight code?

Two: We start hearing rumours about new devices trialling in Europe seemingly capable of recreating experiences in the mind and operating with a sophistication we’d need a full on simulation suite for. It’s all dedicated to the creation of various entertaining sensations, frequently of a pornographic nature, for a media venture backed by Reuben Matzov. All this is crammed into a consumer helmet device also manufactured in the Far East. When we take a look at these things we find it works a whole lot like the base end of the Solomon system we’d bought in from the Brits. Now, my people keep telling me it just isn’t possible that we’ve been breached but I haven’t had one person explain to me how the hell anyone could get that far on a brain interface device from any of the start points out there that we know about. Either someone has gotten hold of the complete works or they’ve built something similar that we didn’t even know existed! I don’t like either of those options.

Three: This is the part that is most disturbing. The service that I’m talking about is capturing sensations from one individual and sending that experience in every detail so that it can be shared, actually experienced by someone else, through one of these devices. It’s live capture. That means they have an implant chip up and running and installed out there in someone doing all this stuff. Now, at this point I consider all the research, the time, the money, damn it the lives lost in learning how to handle these implants, which God knows is the hardest thing, and getting them to the stage where we can deploy. Again, I talk to our best people and they assure me that there is no way, absolutely no way, that anyone in the world even if they somehow got the raw technology could implant it successfully into an active individual. We’ve learned too much. It’s the most highly specialised surgical technique, it’s complex, only a handful of people know anything about it and we know who they are. Which brings us, Lieutenant, to another possibility I am advised could absolutely in no way on God’s earth have happened. That someone has not only gotten hold of the device and the code; they’ve gotten hold of one of our people.’

Dooley pauses to see if this has gone over. Shaw’s eyes say it has but he doesn’t speak. The two men hold the contact for a moment and then Dooley goes on.

‘That’s what I know I know. And this is where I go right out on a limb. I gave you the numbers because even the army can count to twenty-five. You lose one; you know about it, right? And sadly we have lost some, several in fact. We had fatalities on the operating table. We had fatalities after a seemingly successful procedure, where something went wrong later. We had a soldier on the programme kill himself while on leave in Florida – name of Martinez, poor bastard. It’s all in those files. He shot himself with a twelve gauge and wasn’t found till a month later, floating in a swamp and so badly eaten away they could only identify him by lab tests. Helluva mess and a real job to keep quiet but we did it. We never had a live one go missing and, apart from Martinez, in every case of a fatality the grafted chip was recovered. Under the VIPOD protocol there are rules. The graft is removed, the body is cremated. The family is informed of a loss on active service. Dooley waves his hand and stops. ‘Am I making sense to you, Shaw?’ Shaw watches the older man revive his cigar.

‘Yes, Sir. You’re saying that all of the implanted individuals still alive are accounted for, that even where there are fatalities the device itself is recovered, removing any doubt as to the…I presume there is a ‘but’ coming?’

‘Damn right.’ Dooley munches the end of the cigar, frowns and shuffles in his seat.