The Bannerman Effect (The Bannerman Series)

THE

BANNERMAN
EFFECT

BY

JOHN R. MAXIM

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.

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.”

“Ah—Irwin is a lawyer, sir.”

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.

“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 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.

“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?”