The Turing Option

“Christ — how the hell do you think I know? I worked two years in Canada and I know what a goddamned Canuck sounds like.”

“Calm down,” Benicoff said, an ominous grumble in his voice. “We’ll get back to this man later. Now tell me about the pilot.”

“You know I didn’t want to get involved. I only went along with this whole thing because I really needed the cash. I had a lot of debts and my alimony was really killing me. So you help me — and I’ll help you. Get me outta this thing whole and I’ll tell you something that they didn’t know, what I didn’t even know myself until this pilot walked in. I was told to vouch for him and I did just as I had been told. He was a big arrogant old sonofabitoh, had gray hair — what was left of it. He had flown in Nam or the Gulf War, you could tell that just by the way that he walked. He looked at me, right through me, but at the same time making believe that he knew me so he could get to fly the chopper. That was the arrangement. I was to say I knew him, to recommend him. And I went along with the whole thing, I was really happy about it then.”

Dusty smirked and stretched, touched his knuckle to his mustache. “We made believe that we knew each other because that was part of the deal. But I’ll tell you something, the old fart had forgotten, but I had seen him once before. And I even remember his name because one of the guys afterwards was bullshitting my ear off about what a hotshot this old guy had been in the old days.”

“You know his real name?”

“Yup. But we got to make a deal…”

Ben’s chair crashed to the floor and he strode forward into the camera’s view, seized the pilot by the collar and dragged him to his feet. “Listen you miserable piece of crap — the only deal I make is to send you to jail for life if you don’t shout that name out loud — now!”

“You can’t.”

“I can — and I will!” The pilot’s toes were dragging on the floor as Ben shook him like a great rag doll. “The name.”

“Let me go — I’ll help. A screwball foreign name, that’s what it was. Sounded like Doth — or Both.”

Ben dropped him slowly back into the chair, leaned forward until their faces were almost touching. Spoke with quiet menace.

“Could it have been Toth?”

“Yes — that’s it! Do you know the guy? Toth. A funny name.”

The tape ended, and when his recorded voice died away Benicoff spoke aloud.

“Toth. Arpad Toth was head of security here at Megalobe when the events occurred. I checked the Pentagon records at once.

“It appears that he has a brother, by the name of Alex Toth. A helicopter pilot who flew in Vietnam.”

24 February 22, 2024

“This is my responsibility now,” General Schorcht said, a glint of grim determination in his eye, a touch of cold anger in his voice. “Toth. Alex Toth. An army pilot!”

“That is a very good idea,” Ben agreed. “This is on your patch and you have the organization to do it. We will of course keep the investigation going at this end. I suggest that Colonel Davis and I liaise at least once a day, oftener if there are any dramatic developments. We must keep each other fully informed about our mutual progress. Is that satisfactory, General?”

“Satisfactory. Company dismissed.”

The two Army officers jumped to their feet, stood at attention, followed the General out.

“And you have a good day too, General,” Brian said to the stiff, vanishing backs. “Were you ever in the Army, Ben?”

“Happily, no.”

“Do you understand the military mind?”

“Unhappily, yes. But I don’t want to be rude in the presence of a serving officer.” Ben saw Shelly’s grim expression and softened his words with a smile. “A joke, Shelly, that’s all. Probably in the worst possible taste — so I apologize.

“No need,” she said, returning a slight smile. “I don’t know why I should be defensive about the military. I joined rotsee to pay for college. Then I enlisted in the Air Force as the only way to get through graduate school. My parents had a vegetable stand in Farmers Market in L.A. Which for anyone else would have been a gold mine. My father is a great Talmudic scholar but a really lousy businessman. The Air Force enabled me to do the only thing I wanted to do.”

“Which leads inexorably to the next generation,” Brian said. “Where does the investigation go from here?”

“I’m going to follow up all the leads that the copter development opened,” Ben said. “As to the Expert Program, our wizard detective Dick Tracy- — that is up to you, Shelly. What’s next?”

She poured herself a glass of water from the carafe on the conference table; gave herself a moment to think.

“I’m still running the Dick Tracy program. But I don’t expect it to find anything new until we get more data for it.”

“Which leaves you with free time — and that means you can work full time on the AI with me,” Brian said. “Because the work we do will eventually be fed into the Dick Tracy program.”

Ben looked puzzled. “Say again.”