The Footprints of God: A Novel

by Greg Iles

  “My God,” breathed Skow. “The Israelis. They’d kill to get their hands on Trinity technology.”

  Ravi wasn’t thinking about Trinity. “Do you know where Geli Bauer is, John?”

  Skow looked curiously at him. “Of course. Walter Reed Hospital.”

  Ravi shook his head, a sinking feeling in his stomach. “I thought you were better than this.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Geli is here, guarding Peter.”

  Skow blanched.

  “Why didn’t you know that?”

  “That bitch has been taking my calls all day on her cell, telling me how great the doctors are at Walter Reed.”

  “You told me she was on board with us.”

  “She said she was. I’m going to have to call her father.”

  Ravi’s military driver marched over to them. “Dr. Nara? It’s time to board the plane.”

  Skow addressed the soldier in a commanding voice. “Corporal, I’m taking Dr. Nara back to see Mr. Godin. The situation in Israel has changed.”

  Ravi had no intention of staying in New Mexico. “I’m going to Jerusalem, John. Tennant and Weiss could turn up at any time. Peter wants it to look like he’s doing everything in his power to save Tennant, and I think he’s right.”

  “I know you’d like to go to Jerusalem,” Skow said, holding Ravi’s arm tight. “But the fact is, you’re needed here.”

  “Peter’s got a new doctor.”

  “But he needs you.”

  Ravi looked at his escort. “I’m ready to get on the plane.”

  The soldier stepped forward, but an authoritative glare from Skow stopped him. “Corporal, I’m here on direct orders from the president. Your commanding officer, General Bauer, is fully conversant with my mission. I need two minutes with this man. Then we’re going to see Mr. Godin. Step back, please. Give me twenty meters.”

  The corporal obeyed.

  Ravi tried to pull away, but Skow’s hand held him like a claw. “You gave me up, didn’t you? You little bastard.”

  “I didn’t tell them anything! But that won’t help you. They know too much. I’d be dead now if Peter hadn’t got into medical trouble.”

  Skow looked around the runway as though he expected soldiers to descend on him at any moment. “Listen to me, Ravi. Running to Jerusalem won’t save you. The president is buying our version of the story, but if Godin is around to tell his side, we’re dead. So—you still have a job to do.”

  Ravi felt nauseating fear in his belly. “You’re crazy! They’ll never let me close to him now. And if I stay here, Geli will kill me.”

  Skow shook him like a child. “Calm down, for God’s sake! You can hide in my quarters until I straighten things out.”

  “Straighten things out? With Godin?”

  Skow smiled. “You’ve forgotten that my specialty is information warfare.”

  He led Ravi to the Jeep and signaled for the corporal to get behind the wheel.

  “But they already suspect you,” Ravi said. “What will you tell them?”

  Skow’s smile took on a reptilian quality. “I’m an old hand at survival, Ravi. Even Geli could take lessons from me.”

  Chapter

  35

  JERUSALEM

  The Strudel Internet Bar was closed. I could see a bearded man inside, cleaning the bar. I knocked on the glass, then waved and pointed at the door handle. The man shook his head.

  “You have the money belts?” I asked Rachel.

  “Yes.”

  “Give me a hundred-dollar bill.”

  I pressed the bill up against the door. It took the man inside a minute to notice it, and when he did, he only waved me away again. When we refused to leave, he walked to the door and looked closer at the bill. Then he yelled in English for us not to go anywhere, disappeared into an office, and came back with a set of keys.

  “I need a computer,” I said, when the door opened.

  “Come in, no problem. High-speed Internet.”

  Rachel paid the cabbie, then joined me inside.

  The Strudel was dark and smelled like bars around the world, but it did have a computer. I sat at the bar and began searching the Internet for the e-mail addresses of the top universities and computer facilities in the United States and Europe. Cal Tech, the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, CERN in Switzerland, the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, the Chaim Weizmann Institute in Israel, the Earth Simulator computer team in Japan, several others.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel asked, climbing onto the stool beside me.

  “Going public.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to do that.”

  “I don’t have a choice now. They’ve done it. Or nearly done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “Trinity is about to become a reality.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.”

  “And you’re going to tell the world?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “Enough to start a media storm that the president can’t ignore.”

  I opened Microsoft Word and began typing my message. The first line was the easiest, a quote from the great Niels Bohr, writing about the nuclear arms race: We are in a completely new situation, that cannot be resolved by war.

  “David?” Rachel said softly. “What happened to you while you were in that coma? Did you see things?”

  “Not the way I used to. It’s difficult to explain, but I’ll try as soon as we have some time. I need to finish this first.”

  She got up and walked to the door to watch for police.

  I bent over the keyboard and typed without pause, as if the words were being channeled through me by some outside force. After twenty minutes, I asked the man behind the bar to call us a taxi with a Palestinian driver. Then I typed a closing: In memory of Andrew Fielding.

  “Did you send your mail?” Rachel asked.

  “Yes. There’ll be media chaos within four hours.”

  “Is that really what you want?”

  “Yes. Evil doesn’t flourish in the light.”

  She drew back and looked strangely at me. “Evil?”

  “Yes.”

  A taxi pulled to the curb outside, and its bearded driver looked toward the door.

  “Let’s go.”

  We went out to the cab. “Are you Palestinian?” I asked the driver.

  “Why do you care?” he asked.

  “Do you know where Mossad Headquarters is?”

  The driver squinted as if studying a curious sight. “Sure. Every Palestinian knows that.”

  “That’s why I wanted you. I need to go there.”

  Rachel looked at me in astonishment. I could almost read her mind. What could I possibly want from the Mossad, Israel’s ruthless intelligence service?

  “You got money?” asked the driver.

  “How does a hundred dollars American sound?”

  “I see better than I hear.”

  Rachel got out the money.

  The driver nodded. “Get in.”

  I hadn’t even got the back door closed when he threw the car into gear and roared away from the curb.

  WHITE SANDS

  Geli knew she was watching the old man die. She desperately needed a cigarette. Despite the antiseptic bite of the air, there was an odor of death in the room. She couldn’t define it, but she knew it well. She’d smelled it in field hospitals and other, darker places. Perhaps evolution had sensitized the human olfactory system to the scent of approaching death. In a world of communicable diseases, it would certanly be a survival advantage. Geli had once smelled her own face burning, so she had no illusions about mortality. But witnessing Godin’s final struggle was getting to her in a way she had not expected.

  There were periods when he couldn’t swallow, though he still spoke fairly well. He’d been talking wistfully about his dead wife, as he might to a daughter. Geli wasn’t sure how to handle this kind of intimacy
. From her third birthday onward, her father had treated her like a military draftee. Horst Bauer’s idea of a heart-to-heart talk was sitting down together to make a daily timetable. She put up with this until adolescence. Then open warfare broke out in the Bauer house. When Geli began to display a sexual adventurousness similar to her father’s, the general lost all control. She knew that at some primal level, he wanted her sexually, and that gave her power over him. She paraded in front of him half-dressed, flirted shamelessly with his fellow officers—men twice her age—and seduced her psychiatrists. The resulting beatings only reinforced her will to fight.

  Geli was sixteen when she discovered her father had a mistress—several, in fact—and finally solved the mystery of her mother. Eighteen years of infidelity and violence had turned a loving woman into a pathetic shell of her former self, a lost soul who lived only for her next drink. When Geli confronted the general about this, he looked her in the eye and told her she’d discovered the weakness of strong men. Men of great capacities required more than one woman to keep their passions at bay, and the sooner she accepted that truth, the better off she would be. That argument ended as so many had, with a beating.

  Yet when Geli arrived at university, she found that her father’s words seemed to hold true for strong women as well. No man could satisfy her lust for intense experience for long. The day she graduated—with double majors in Arabic and economics—she went to a shopping mall recruiting station and enlisted in the army as a private.

  Nothing could have enraged her father more. With that single act Geli had rejected all his power and influence, embarrassed him before his fellow West Pointers, and followed in his footsteps. The general began to drink heavily and entered a period of instability that quickly culminated with his wife’s suicide. Geli had never known what finally broke her mother’s spirit. One more mistress? One too many full-fisted blows? But she never forgave her father for it.

  By contrast, Peter Godin had lived faithfully with his wife for forty-seven years, even though the union had produced no children. As the old man rambled on about a trip he had taken to Japan, Geli thought of Skow and his plan to blame Godin for Andrew Fielding’s death.

  “Sir?” she said, interrupting the old man’s reverie.

  Godin looked up, his blue eyes apologetic. “I’ve been running on, haven’t I? I’m sorry, Geli. It keeps my mind off the pain.”

  “It’s not that. I want to tell you something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t trust John Skow. He’s the one who put Nara up to killing you. Skow thinks Trinity is going to fail, and he’s been planning to blame it on you.”

  Godin smiled distantly. “I know that. I’m sure your father is part of the same plan.”

  “Then why don’t you do something about it?”

  “When the computer reaches Trinity state, they’ll be powerless. Until then, I have you to protect me.”

  “But if you don’t trust them, why did you use them?”

  “Because they’re predictable. Even in their betrayals. Their greed makes them so. That’s the reality of the human animal.”

  “What about me? Why do you trust me to protect you? Because you pay me well?”

  “No. I’ve watched you for two years now. I know you hate your father, and I know why. I know what you did in Iraq. You don’t shrink from difficult jobs, and you’ve never betrayed your uniform—unlike your father. I also know that you admire me. We’re kindred spirits, you and I. I have no daughter, and in a way, you have no father. And my gut tells me that if General Bauer walked in here to kill me, you’d stop him with a bullet.”

  Geli wondered if this was true. “But why hire both of us?”

  “When Horst told me about you, I had a feeling he was trying to patch things up with you. I was wrong.”

  Her hand flew to her pistol. The Bubble’s hatch had popped open with a hiss of escaping air. John Skow walked in wearing an immaculate suit, every hair in place. He didn’t look like a man worried about his future.

  “Hello, Geli,” he said.

  Godin’s blue eyes tracked the NSA man across the room. “Search him.”

  Geli threw Skow against the Plexiglas wall and searched him from head to toe. He was clean.

  “Well, that was fun,” Skow said. “Can I do you now?”

  She wondered what kind of game Skow was playing. He would not be here if the cards were not stacked in his favor.

  “Hello, Peter,” he said. “We have something of a situation on our hands. Tennant has gone public.”

  Godin’s face went into spasm. It was difficult to watch, but when the pain subsided, the drooping cheek had regained its tone. He fixed Skow with a gaze of electrifying intensity.

  “What did Tennant do?”

  “He escaped from Hadassah, went to a public computer, and sent a letter to the top computer facilities in the world. He told them all about Trinity. Fielding’s death, the attempts on his life, everything.”

  Godin closed his eyes. “The technology?”

  “He revealed enough to convince the world that he’s telling the truth. Enough to put countries like Japan within three years of their own Trinity computer. He told them about this facility. I have no idea how he found out about White Sands. Probably from Fielding.”

  Godin sighed deeply. “I handled Tennant wrong. I should have talked to him…reasoned with him.”

  Skow edged closer to the bed. Geli kept her hand on her pistol. She could put two slugs in Skow’s back before the NSA man closed the distance to Godin.

  “We’re in a difficult spot, Peter. Here’s what I suggest—”

  “To hell with what you suggest,” Godin muttered, struggling upright in the bed. “You’ve treated me like a fool from the beginning, but you’re about to find out how wrong you are.”

  Godin picked up the phone beside his bed and pressed a single button.

  “Who are you calling?” Skow asked, his face still confident.

  “You’ll see. Hello? This is Peter Godin. I need to speak to the president. It’s a matter of national security…. What’s that?…The code is seven three four nine four zero two. Yes, I’ll wait.”

  Skow paled. “Peter—”

  “Shut up.” Godin glanced at Geli, then spoke in a powerful voice. “Mr. President, this is Peter Godin speaking.”

  Geli had never heard such authority before. Her father’s fabled command presence was as nothing compared to it. Godin had announced his identity to the commander in chief as if saying, Mr. President, this is Albert Einstein speaking.

  Godin listened for a few moments, then began a detailed explanation of why he had built the White Sands facility. Over a year ago, he said, he had become aware of serious security concerns in North Carolina. Someone inside Trinity was sabotaging computer code and possibly selling secrets to a foreign power. Rather than bring in “insecure agencies” such as the FBI and CIA—which would slow the project and further compromise its security—Godin had used his own money and connections to set up a secure research site. He had initially trusted John Skow to investigate the threat, but he now believed that Skow had been part of the problem from the beginning.

  The president asked more questions, and Godin answered with absolute confidence. To his knowledge, Andrew Fielding had died of natural causes, but foul play could not be ruled out. David Tennant had become unhinged after Fielding’s death and was suffering from psychosis possibly induced by the Trinity MRI machine. Everything humanly possible would be done to help Tennant regain his health. Before more questions could be raised, Godin informed the president that Trinity was less than twelve hours from completion, and that all data indicated the computer would not only meet but surpass all expectations as to weapons and intelligence applications. This altered the conversation completely.

  Fielding, Tennant, and the existence of White Sands receded into the background as Godin promised undreamed-of power to the man who’d had the wisdom and courage to fund such a strategically important proje
ct. Godin appeared quite relaxed until the end of the conversation, when he went rigid and concluded with a curt, “Yes, sir, of course. I understand. I’ll do that immediately.”

  He handed the phone to Geli, his eyes on Skow. “Are you surprised I could do that? I’ve been dealing with presidents on a firstname basis since LBJ.”

  “What did Matthews say at the end?” Skow whispered.