The Footprints of God: A Novel

by Greg Iles

  “This is no time to talk about trivialities,” he said. “We lost a giant yesterday. Andrew Fielding and I disagreed about a lot of things, but I respected him more than any man I’ve ever worked with.”

  I couldn’t hide my surprise. Everyone at the table leaned forward, so as not to miss a word. The hypnotic blue eyes made a quick circuit of the room. Then Godin continued, his voice soft but still deep and powerful.

  “From the dawn of history, the driving force of science has been war. If he were here today, Fielding would argue with me. He would say it is mankind’s innate curiosity that has driven the upward surge of science. But that’s wishful thinking. It is human conflict that has marked the great forward leaps in technology. A regrettable reality, but one that every rational person must recognize. We live in a world of fact, not philosophy. Philosophers question the reality of the universe, then look surprised when you hit them with a shoe and ask if they felt that reality.”

  Ravi Nara snickered, but Godin gave him a withering glare.

  “Andy Fielding was not that sort.” Godin nodded to the black- and-white photo on the wall. “Like Robert Oppenheimer, Andy was something of a mystic. But at his core, he was a gifted theoretician with a great practical bent.”

  Godin brushed a wisp of white hair off his ear and looked around the table. “The weaponization of science is the inevitable first step that brings countless peacetime gifts in its wake. Oppenheimer’s superhuman efforts to give us the bomb ended the Second World War and gave the world safe nuclear energy. We here—we five who remain—face a task of no lesser importance. We’re not trying, as Fielding sometimes suggested, to assume the mantle of God. God is merely a part of the human brain, an evolutionary coping mechanism that developed to make bearable our awareness of our own deaths. When we finally succeed in loading the first neuromodel into our prototype and communicating with it, we will have to deal with that part of the brain, just as with all the rest. For those who favor anthropomorphic expressions, we will have to deal with Him. But God, I predict, will prove no more troublesome than any other vestigial element of the brain. Because the completion of Trinity will render that particular coping mechanism unnecessary. Our work will end death’s dominion over humanity. And surely there can be no more noble goal than that.”

  Godin laid his crooked hands on the table. “But today…today we mourn a man who had the courage of his convictions. While we, out of grim necessity, focused on the military and intelligence possibilities of an operational Trinity prototype, Fielding looked toward the day that he could sit down and ask the computer man’s oldest questions: ‘How did life begin? Why are we here? How will the universe end?’ At sixty-three, Andy Fielding had the enthusiasm of a child, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. Nor should he have been.” Godin nodded soberly. “And I, for one, will miss him.”

  My face felt hot. I’d expected the crocodile tears of John Skow, then a rush back to full-scale research and development. But Peter Godin was classier than that. His words showed that he’d known his adversary well.

  “After the cause of our neurological symptoms has been found,” Godin concluded, “the project will resume. If we need another quantum physicist, we’ll hire one. What we will not do is charge forward without knowing the dangers. Fielding taught me the importance of prudence.”

  Godin carefully massaged his right hand with the fingers of his left. “We’ve all sustained a severe shock. I want everyone to take three full days of rest, beginning at lunch today. We’ll meet in this room on Tuesday morning. All the usual off-site security precautions will be observed during this period.”

  The resulting silence was total. The man who drove himself twice as hard as anyone else was suggesting time off? Such a “vacation” went so against Godin’s nature that no one knew what to say.

  Skow finally cleared his throat. “Well, I, for one, could use some time at home. My wife is about ready to divorce me over the hours I put in here.”

  Godin frowned and closed his eyes again.

  “Meeting adjourned?” Skow said, glancing at Godin.

  The old man got unsteadily to his feet and walked out without another word.

  “Well, then,” Skow said needlessly.

  I stood and walked back to my office, my eyes on Peter Godin’s retreating back. The meeting had gone nothing like I’d expected. Ahead of me, Godin started to turn the corner, but instead he stopped and turned to face me. I walked toward him.

  “You and Fielding were very close,” he said. “Weren’t you?”

  “I liked him. Admired him, too.”

  Godin nodded. “I read your book two nights ago. You’re more of a realist than I would have guessed. Your opinions on abortion, fetal tissue research, cloning, the expenditures on last-year-of-life care, euthanasia. I agreed with all of it, right down the line.”

  I couldn’t believe Peter Godin had worked with me for two years without reading the book that had brought me to Trinity. He looked over my shoulder for a moment, then back at my face.

  “Something occurred to me during the meeting,” he said. “You know the old hypothetical about history? If you could go back in time, and you had the opportunity to kill Hitler, would you do it?”

  I smiled. “It’s not a very realistic formulation.”

  “I’m not so sure. The Hitler question is easy, of course. But imagine it another way. If you could go back to 1948, and you knew that Nathuram Godse was going to assassinate Gandhi—would you kill him to prevent that assassination?”

  I thought about it. “You’re really asking how far down the chain of events I would go. Would you murder Hitler’s mother?”

  It was Godin’s turn to smile. “You’re right, of course. And my answer is yes.”

  “Actually, I think your question is more about causality. Would murdering Hitler’s mother have prevented the Second World War? Or would some other nobody have risen from the discontented masses to tap German resentment over the Versailles Treaty?”

  Godin considered this. “Quite possibly. All right, then. It’s 1952, and you know that a clumsy lab technician is going to ruin the cell cultures of Jonas Salk. The cure for poliomyelitis will be greatly delayed, perhaps by years. Would you kill that innocent technician?”

  A strange buzzing started in my head. I had a sense that Godin was toying with me, yet Peter Godin never wasted time with games.

  “Thankfully, real life doesn’t present us with those dilemmas,” I said. “Only hindsight allows us to formulate them.”

  He smiled distantly. “I’m not so sure, Doctor. Hitler could have been stopped at Munich.” Godin reached out and patted me on the arm. “Food for thought, anyway.”

  He turned and carefully negotiated his way around the corner.

  I stood in the corridor, trying to read between the lines of what I’d heard. Godin never wasted words. He hadn’t been idly reflecting on history or morality. He had been talking quite frankly about murder. Justifiable murder, in his mind. I shook my head in disbelief. Godin had been talking about Fielding.

  Fielding’s murder was necessary, he was saying. Fielding was innocent, but he was interfering with a great good, and he had to be eliminated.

  As I walked back toward my office, I realized I was shivering. No one had asked about my call to Washington. No one had mentioned my visit to Fielding’s house. Not one word about Rachel Weiss. And three days off would give me plenty of time to speak to the president. I might even be able to fly to Washington. What the hell was going on?

  I froze in my office doorway. A tall, sinewy blonde woman with electric blue eyes and a stippled scar on her left cheek sat in my chair, gazing at my computer screen. Geli Bauer. If anyone in this building had murdered Andrew Fielding, it was she.

  “Hello, Doctor,” she said, a trace of a smile on her lips. “You look surprised. I thought you’d be expecting me.”

  Chapter

  11

  I stood speechless in my office doorway. Relief had turned to paralyzing anxi
ety in less than a second, and the fact that Geli Bauer was a woman did nothing to slow my racing pulse. Like her handpicked subordinates, she was lean and hard, with a predatory gleam in her eyes. She radiated the icy confidence of a world-class alpinist. I could imagine her hanging for hours from a precipice, her body supported only by her fingertips. Her intelligence was difficult to judge in an incubator filled with geniuses, but I knew from previous conversations that she was quick as mercury. She treated all but the top Trinity scientists like prisoners working under duress, and I attributed this to her being the daughter of a powerful army general. Ravi Nara had crudely called her “a terminator with tits,” but I thought of her as a terminator with brains.

  “What can I do for you?” I said finally.

  “I need to ask you a couple of questions,” she said. “Routine stuff.”

  Routine? Geli Bauer had visited my office a half dozen times in two years. I mostly saw her through a sheet of glass, observing the polygraph tests to which I was randomly subjected.

  “Godin just gave us three days off,” I told her. “Why don’t we do this when I get back?”

  “I’m afraid it can’t wait.” She had the stateless accent of elite overseas schools.

  “You said it was routine.”

  A plastic smile. “Why don’t you have a seat, Doctor?”

  “You’re in my chair.”

  Geli didn’t get up. She thrived on conflict.

  “You don’t usually handle this kind of thing personally,” I said. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “Dr. Fielding’s death has created an unusual situation. We need to be sure we know as much as possible about the circumstances surrounding it.”

  “Dr. Fielding died of a stroke.”

  She studied me for a while without speaking. The scar on her left cheek reminded me of some I’d seen on some Vietnam vets during physicals. The vets described how shrapnel from a phosphorous grenade burned itself deep into the skin and then self-cauterized, only to reignite in the air and wound the operating surgeons when they attempted to remove the fragments. Soldiers lived in terror of them, and Geli Bauer looked as though she’d suffered intimate contact with one. I had been predisposed to like her because of that scar. A beautiful woman marked by such a thing might have earned some insight about life that few of her sisters possessed. But my interactions with Geli had convinced me that whatever hell she had survived, she’d learned only bitterness.

  “I’m concerned about your relationship with Dr. Fielding,” she said.

  Always I with Geli, never the bureaucratic we, as though she felt personal responsibility for the security of the entire project.

  “Really?” I said, as though shocked.

  “How would you characterize your relationship?”

  “He was my friend.”

  “You saw him and spoke to him outside this facility.”

  To concede this was to admit a violation of Trinity security regulations. But Geli probably had videotape. “Yes.”

  “That’s a direct violation of security protocol.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sue me.”

  “We could jail you.”

  Shit. “That’ll really help keep this place secret.”

  She ran her long fingers through her blonde hair. I thought of a hawk preening itself. “You could lose your position here, Doctor.”

  “Now I get it. You’re here to fire me.”

  Her smile slipped a notch. “There’s no need for drama. I’m trying to learn what I can about Dr. Fielding’s situation.”

  “His situation? He’s dead. Deceased. No longer with us.”

  “What did the two of you discuss outside work hours?”

  “Soccer.”

  “Soccer?”

  “Fielding called it football. He was ‘football mad,’ in his words. He followed Arsenal, an English team. It bored the hell out of me, but I liked talking to the guy.”

  “You’re being disingenuous, Doctor.”

  “Am I?”

  “Both you and Dr. Fielding opposed further work on this project.”

  “No. I had ethical concerns about one aspect of it. Fielding had other concerns.”

  “He wanted the project stopped.”

  “Only until the cause of the neurological side effects we’re all experiencing could be determined.”

  “Did he discuss those side effects with anyone not cleared for Trinity information?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “His wife, for example?”

  I strained to keep my face impassive. “I can’t imagine that he would.”

  Geli raised one eyebrow. “You spent nearly an hour with her last night.”

  So they had been watching. Of course they had. They’d just killed Fielding, and they needed to see how his best friend would react. That meant they knew about Rachel.

  “I made a condolence call.”

  “You discussed sensitive Trinity information with Lu Li Fielding. A Chinese physicist.”

  “I did nothing of the kind.” I had thought Lu Li’s marriage to Fielding made her a British citizen, but I didn’t want to get into that discussion now.

  “Mrs. Fielding has vanished. We need to talk to her.”

  “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  Geli ignored my sarcasm. “If you helped her flee, you could be charged with treason.”

  “Has Lu Li committed a crime?”

  Geli’s face gave away nothing. “That has yet to be determined. She may be an accessory to treason.”

  The crystal, I thought suddenly. This has to be about Fielding’s watch. “So both Fieldings are missing now. That’s embarrassing, isn’t it?”

  Geli didn’t look embarrassed. She looked unflappable.

  “Last night Lu Li told me she’d received no word about her husband’s body,” I said. “She was very upset.”

  “That’s not my area of responsibility.”

  “What about Fielding’s personal effects? Lu Li particularly mentioned a gold pocket watch. An heirloom.”

  Geli pursed her lips, then shook her head. “I don’t recall a pocket watch. But as soon as Mrs. Fielding turns up, all this will be sorted out.”

  Geli was lying. She hadn’t worked here for two years without seeing that watch a hundred times.

  “We’re going to need a polygraph this morning,” she said.

  Cold sweat broke out on my trunk. “Sorry. I won’t be taking one.”

  Her eyes narrowed. This was the first time I’d ever refused such a request. “Why is that?”

  “I just lost a good friend. I didn’t sleep well. I feel terrible. My dog ate my homework.”

  “Dr. Tennant—”

  “And I don’t feel like submitting to your fascist bullshit today. Get it?”

  She settled back in my chair and regarded me with increasing interest. “The employment agreement you signed permits polygraphs to be taken at any time. You’ve already agreed to submit.”

  The fear in my belly made me want to punch her in the face. I’d lived all my life with an extraordinary amount of freedom. As an internist, I’d owned and managed my own practice. As an author I’d been limited only by my subject. But in the oppressive atmosphere of Trinity, I’d developed a kind of spiritual claustrophobia. My father had experienced similar feelings when working on nuclear weapons at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. And he’d submitted to his share of polygraph tests in his day. But times had changed since the Cold War. Today the NSA had lie detectors based on MRI technology, and unlike conventional polygraphs, they were accurate 100 percent of the time.

  The principle was simple: it took more brain cells to lie than to tell the truth. Even a pathological liar first thought of the true answer when asked a question. Then he invented or recited his lie. That activity lit up the liar’s brain like Christmas lights, and the MRI detector imaged and recorded the result for his interrogators. It was Fielding who’d stopped the MRI polygraph sessions, arguing that our strange symptoms could be ag
gravated by further MRI exposure. It was a victory in Fielding’s war against the invasion of our privacy, but conventional polygraph sessions were unnerving enough. Taking them on a surprise basis gave you the feeling you were living in an Orwellian dystopia, especially when you had something to hide.

  “Are you going to sedate me?” I asked. “Tie me down?”

  Geli looked as though she’d like to.

  “No? Then forget it.”

  She raised a finger and idly touched her scar. “I don’t understand why you’re so combative, Doctor.”