Entei Tankado collapses in a plaza in Seville from an apparent heart attack. Gasping his last breath, he points to his deformed hand and the gold ring with its enigmatic numerical code. So Dan Brown opens his first published thriller, Digital Fortress. Here we find the seeds of what will be vintage Brown: the clock is set on page one, the central character is knocked off with flair in the first scene, raising the question that drives the remaining 350 pages of plot: What is the meaning of the ring’s code?
Meanwhile at headquarters of the National Security Agency just outside Washington DC, Commander Trevor Strathmore is transfixed on the large screen revealing the inner workings of TRANSLATR, the secret code breaker that “couldn’t be built.” Nine stories tall, built like a missile silo with six stories underground, the massive computer deciphers cryptic codes at amazing speed, making the NSA the most powerful intelligence agency in the world. No code is unbreakable, or so he thought. But now an intruding software program was engaging TRANSLATR in a duel. Where most ciphers were broken within two hours, the intruder had been monopolizing the computer’s processing power for sixteen hours. More than an encryption program, this intruder was a computer worm, and its creator was Entei Tankado, a former NSA cryptographer.
Relieved of his job under spurious circumstances, Entei hoped to salvage his reputation as the world’s foremost cryptographer by building an impenetrable counterintelligence weapon. One that would stop the unbridled power of the government to snoop on its citizenry. His scheme sought to bring ruin upon the NSA crypto lab, while exposing to the world their clandestine activities against law biding citizens. Entei planned to publicly release the Digital Fortress in his website, available for surfer and school kid to download, therefore rendering obsolete the invincible power of TRANSLATR. Commander Strathmore needs the kill code, the password that will kill the worm. There are two hitches. The very dead Entei Tankado held the kill code. Second, entering the wrong code will trigger the worm to eat its victim. Entei carried the kill code to his death.
Fascinated by the brute force of Entei’s program, Strathmore is slow to respond to the crisis, hoping each minute TRANSLATR will beat the worm. Learning of Entei’s death, he dispatches an undercover agent to Spain to retrieve Entei’s body and the ring, a university professor and symbologist David Becker. Next he calls his top cryptologist—and David’s fiancée—Susan Fletcher into the lab on the weekend to work with him surreptitiously in finding a second copy of the kill code, which Strathmore suspects lies in a the computer files of one North Dakota, Entei’s avowed partner. Earlier, Entei had warned the commander that, should he meet an untimely death, North Dakota was prepared to carry out the plan. Susan then sets to the task of finding North Dakota in the worldwide internet system with the goal of stealing the kill code.
The action literally hops between Seville and Washington—plus a chapter or two in Tokyo—with nanosecond speed. The scenes in Seville are Brown’s best writing in this book, full of sensual detail that pulls the reader into the story. The characters are memorable and engaging, if type cast, while the settings give the reader a whirlwind tour of the seedy side of Seville. One has the impression Brown has spent time in this city.
Not so with the Crypto lab and NSA offices. Inane dialogue and nonaction fill most of these scenes dotted throughout the first half of the book. Luckily, no chapter is longer than five pages, most running just over one page. The pacing gives this work the feel of a commercial movie channel or MTV. Dedicated readers who like to digest a book in one or two sittings will find this flash approach annoying. One scene—a chase from a gothic nightclub to the Seville airport—stretches out for twenty chapters, bouncing back to the ennui of NSA headquarters at each turn in the action.
While the frantic swapping detracts from the rhythm and pacing of the plot, it might serve the busy reader who snatches a story in sound bytes, on the bus, in the airport, or during the kids’ soccer game. There are times, when the plot feels like a computer game, moving from scenario to scenario picking up clues and solving puzzles. While not as satisfying as writing that offers sensory details in setting and character, the game structure at least ties the reader to the story and to finishing the book.
David Becker is a strongly crafted character who might be the alter-ego of Dan Brown himself. His scenes are rich and intelligently written, blending humor and insight. The scenes with Susan at NSA are sometimes appalling. She has all the outer trappings of an anima-type “squeeze”—she’s beautiful and brainy with a high powered job—but her words and actions are those of a helpless dumb blonde. Most of the dialogue surrounding Susan at NSA sounds more like the ramblings of a high school locker hall than the chatter of a business office or computer lab, never mind a high powered government facility.
Other characters in the NSA scenes are clichés worn out in the early nineties. The overweight computer geeks guzzling coke with minimal skills at human interaction, the politicos of the evil empire, and a number of panting males seeking animal gratification at Susan’s expense. It is not until the grand finale that Susan finally takes action commensurate to her brains and her lofty position.
In Seville, however, the reader is treated to a robust cast of characters who ring true, if not to life at least to story. A harried police chief points Becker on the right path to his first witness who fingers the German and the red-headed prostitute. The search leads him to a gothic night club, the Seville airport and finally to a cathedral on Sunday morning where the assassin has finally caught up with him.
Digital Fortress was Brown’s first foray into the world of thriller fiction. While the work is not as polished as his later works, the story is colossal and compelling. With the “end of the world as we know it” looming overhead, the reader pushes through the sludge to find an innovative plot, that quickens the pulse and keeps you turning page after page from the first untimely death to the final explosion.
