The Footprints of God: A Novel

by Greg Iles

  “Peter, for God’s sake. What does that mean?”

  “Trinity is in control.”

  “Of what?” The general looked at the door of the Bubble as if he could somehow see the Containment building. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We’ve known each other for a long time, Horst. You know I’m a man of my word. If you attempt to enter or destroy the Containment building now, you’ll be destroying the country you swore to defend.”

  Bauer’s eyes narrowed in a mixture of suspicion and confusion.

  “You’ll understand soon,” Godin said. “I advise you to be patient and prudent, for your own sake.”

  The general stepped closer to the bed and spoke softly. “You know I’ve always supported your cause when I could. But this isn’t the situation we talked about. This is a king-size clusterfuck with worldwide media on the way to cover it.”

  Godin waved his hand indifferently. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to extricate yourself. You always do.”

  General Bauer sighed, then turned and left the Bubble without a glance in Geli’s direction.

  She felt the same foreboding she had as a child. Her father did not handle uncertainty well. She turned back to Godin and saw that he was weeping. The sight stunned her.

  “What’s the matter, sir?”

  Godin raised a shaking hand and touched his face as if making sure it was there. “I’ve done it. You’re looking at the first man in the history of the world to exist in two places at once.” Wonder shone from the old man’s eyes. Wonder and peace. “I’ll die in this bed,” he said. “But in Containment I’ll go on living.”

  Geli didn’t know what to say. Even if Godin were right, the computer was unlikely to survive for long.

  “Take my hand, Geli. Please.”

  His eyes pleaded with her. She gave him her free hand, and he squeezed it like a child.

  “I can let go now. I can let this body die.”

  Another burst of gunfire echoed across the compound. Geli gritted her teeth and fought the urge to pull her hand away.

  Chapter

  37

  EL AL FLIGHT 462, FIVE MILES OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

  Major General Kinski of the Mossad had reserved the entire upper deck of an El Al 747 for our trip back to the United States. Passengers and flight attendants were barred from ascending the staircase by a Mossad agent. When the airliner reached New York, Rachel and I were to be transferred to a private jet that would fly us to Albuquerque, New Mexico. From there, a chartered helicopter would ferry us to the gates of the White Sands Proving Ground.

  To pay for these arrangements, I’d spent the past three hours sitting on a stool up front, briefing five Israeli scientists on Project Trinity. A video camera recorded my words, but most of the scientists took their own notes. General Kinski seemed amazed that I would discuss such a sensitive project so freely, but he had failed to grasp the essential reality of Trinity. The existence of a single Trinity computer had negated the old paradigms of national security. For mankind, there was no security.

  Rachel sat two rows behind the scientists in an aisle seat. As I spoke, her expressive eyes betrayed a host of emotions: anxiety, sadness, disbelief, anger. I wanted to walk her to the back of the plane and reassure her, but the Israelis had other ideas.

  General Kinski periodically walked to the rear of the upper deck to take satellite phone calls. From his reports I learned that my e-mail from the Strudel Bar had created the chaos I’d sought to cause. The theories behind Project Trinity had quickly been validated by the world’s top computer scientists. In an attempt to put the story in perspective, many media commentators were comparing the story to the cloning controversy of 1998. But the implications of Trinity made the idea of cloning almost passé. The sixth time General Kinski returned from the rear of the plane, he touched me on the shoulder, his face taut with concern.

  “What is it?” asked a scientist from the Chaim Weizmann Institute. “What’s happened now?”

  The Mossad chief rubbed his tanned chin. “Various computer experts around the world have started to notice something happening on the Internet.”

  “What something?”

  “An unknown entity has been systematically moving through every major computer network and database in the world. Corporations, banks, government offices, military bases, remote defense installations. Existing security such as firewalls barely slows it down. People are publicly speculating that it’s the Trinity computer.”

  “Perhaps it’s only a talented hacker,” suggested another man. “Or a group. Is this entity destroying files?”

  “No. It’s simply viewing everything. Almost as if it’s creating a map of the computer world. Some amateurs—hackers—claim to have traced the source of these probes to New Mexico.”

  “Then I think we have to assume that it is Trinity,” said the Weizmann scientist. “What I don’t understand is why somebody hasn’t simply shut off the power to this machine.”

  I shook my head. “Godin’s been planning this for a long time. I suspect that turning off that machine would have catastrophic consequences.”

  General Kinski was clearly ahead of the scientists. “We’ve talked a lot about the design and capabilities of this computer. We haven’t discussed what its intent might be.”

  “Your best chance at understanding that is to understand Peter Godin,” I said. “If a model has been successfully loaded, it’s Godin’s.”

  “You knew the man for two years. What can you tell us?”

  “He’s brilliant.”

  “Obviously.”

  “He has strong opinions about politics.”

  “Such as?”

  “He once said that the principle of one man, one vote, had made America great, and that the same principle would ultimately destroy her.”

  Kinski barked a laugh. “What else?”

  “Godin has read deeply in history and political theory, and he has a knowledge of philosophy. He’s not religious.”

  “I assume that like all very successful men, he has a strong ego?”

  I nodded.

  “I know this much history,” said the Mossad chief. “Give a brilliant man unlimited power, and you’ve got big problems.”

  The scientists nodded soberly, but the general’s gift for stating the obvious made me smile.

  “Tell me something, Doctor,” Kinski said. “Why do you want so desperately to get to White Sands?”

  “To stop him. To stop Godin.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “By talking to him.”

  “You think you can stop him by talking to him?”

  “I’m the only one who can.”

  Kinski shook his head. “How do you know that?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  He looked at me as he might at a deranged man in the street. “But I do.”

  “I misspoke, General. I should have said Godin is the only one who can do it. He’ll have to stop himself.”

  “The American president may have different ideas about that. Not to mention his generals.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” I rubbed my face with both hands.

  “I’d like to rest now, if I may.”

  Kinski patted me on the shoulder. “Soon, Doctor. A few more questions first. Gentlemen?”

  I glanced at Rachel. She shook her head, then got up and walked down the aisle to the back of the plane.

  WHITE SANDS

  Ravi Nara watched in amazement as troops from Fort Huachuca constructed a space-age command post around him in an unused area of the Administration hangar. Skow hadn’t bothered to introduce General Bauer, but Ravi had picked up a lot just by listening.

  Military Intelligence had long ago created a portable Situation Room that could be set up anywhere in the world. Centered around a large oval table were huge plasma display screens fed by racks of computers and communications terminals. Satellite dishes outside connected the Situation
Room to every American intelligence agency and surveillance satellite on or orbiting planet Earth.

  When Skow asked General Bauer how he had known to bring the specialized equipment, Bauer had chuckled bitterly.

  “Dr. Tennant’s statement was pretty specific about the abilities of this computer. And I know Peter Godin. He’d never voluntarily relinquish that much power. That’s Nietzschean reality.” The general gave Skow a look of disdain. “I can’t believe you thought for one minute that Containment was really isolated from the rest of the world.”

  “But that was the whole point in building it,” Skow said.

  Bauer snorted. “What the hell were you doing in North Carolina? Playing golf? Godin’s engineers had the run of this reservation for months. He flew cargo planes in and out. They could have done anything in here. If you believe that computer isn’t connected to anything, I’ve got some oceanfront land by Fort Huachuca I’d like to sell you.”

  Ten minutes later, the general’s signals experts discovered a pipeline running deep beneath the sand around the Containment building. The iron pipe appeared to be a water line, but it gave off electromagnetic radiation. The pipeline ran due north for many miles and in all likelihood carried cables connecting the Trinity computer to the OC48c data backbone that served the White Sands Proving Ground.

  Certain other facts had become known during the construction of the Situation Room. First, that a squatter’s village of journalists and TV trucks had appeared outside the main gate. Second, that computer professionals around the world had detected a mysterious presence on the Internet, a force that moved through networks and databases with effortless speed and exhaustive thoroughness. Third, that Ewan McCaskell had lifted off from Andrews Air Force Base some time ago in the backseat of a supersonic jet and would soon arrive at White Sands.

  When one of the half dozen soldiers manning the consoles in the Situation Room announced that McCaskell’s plane was about to touch down on the White Sands airstrip, General Bauer turned to Skow.

  “I want Godin brought in here.”

  Skow shook his head. “We don’t want him talking to McCaskell.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that. Godin knows things I need to know. He can die here as well he can in the hospital.”

  Skow reluctantly walked away.

  “Tell my daughter I’ll personally vouch for Godin’s safety!” Bauer called. “She can lie in his bed with her pistol if she wants.”

  After Skow left the hangar, General Bauer looked up at a display screen showing a floodlit view of the Containment building. He stared at it for a few moments, then looked at Ravi.

  “You’re the neurologist, right? Dr. Nara?”

  “Yes, General.” Ravi walked toward the oval table.

  “Is Godin out of his mind?”

  “No, sir.” Ravi figured the general would appreciate a sir, even from a civilian. “He’s quite sane.”

  “What about his brain tumor?”

  “He’s had it for some time, but our Super-MRI detected it when it was very small. The tumor was inoperable even then, but it wasn’t affecting his mind. I don’t think it is even now.”

  General Bauer looked hard at Ravi. “But you might testify differently at a congressional hearing.”

  Ravi averted his eyes. “That’s quite possible. It’s a complex case.”

  “Skow told me you tried to kill him. Godin, I mean.”

  Ravi wasn’t sure how to respond.

  Bauer gave him a grin. “Stick around, Doctor. I may need you.”

  Ravi bowed his head.

  Ewan McCaskell strode into the Situation Room flanked by two Secret Service agents. Like Skow, McCaskell hailed from Massachusetts, but he’d left the affectations of the Ivy League far behind him. The chief of staff had black hair and wore a navy suit so dark it looked black. He took the chair at the head of the table and motioned for General Bauer to sit to his right.

  Skow had returned and now took a seat farther down the table. When the general waved his hand for Ravi to join them, Ravi sat at the far end of the table, opposite McCaskell.

  “Peter Godin will be here in a few minutes,” said Skow. “They’re moving his life support equipment now.”

  McCaskell nodded and looked around the table, his eyes projecting a laserlike focus. “Gentlemen, I am here to assess this situation, and also to clear any and all potential action with the president before it’s taken.”

  General Bauer’s face tightened.

  “For the time being,” McCaskell continued, “we will table the issue of how the hell this unauthorized facility came into being, and whose heads will go on the chopping block when this is over.”

  Skow looked at the table.

  “Peter Godin told the president that none of these brain models have been loaded yet, but the media is screaming about a computer taking over the Internet. Something is happening on the Internet. Just what are we dealing with, gentlemen?”

  General Bauer said, “I think Mr. Skow and Dr. Nara are better able to speak to that issue than I am.”

  “Somebody better start talking,” snapped McCaskell.

  “We’re dealing with something no one has ever dealt with before,” Skow said. “A neuromodel has almost certainly been loaded into the computer. And that neuromodel was almost certainly Peter Godin’s. But all we can be sure of is that we’re dealing with a superior intelligence.”

  McCaskell didn’t like this answer. “But it’s still Peter Godin, right?”

  “Yes and no. Godin’s neuromodel is his mind, in the strictest sense. But from the moment it entered the computer, that mind began to operate at an exponentially faster speed than it did when it was confined to organic brain tissue. Dr. Nara?”

  Ravi considered it a good sign that Skow had called on him. “Electrical signals in computers travel about one million times faster than they do in brain neurons, Mr. McCaskell.”

  “And the difference isn’t merely one of speed,” Skow clarified. “Once it begins functioning in digital form, Godin’s mind has the ability to learn in an entirely new way. Massive amounts of stored data can be downloaded into it. So it’s possible—in theory, at least—that ever since the computer reached Trinity state, Godin’s technicians have been loading data into it. History, mathematics, military strategy. It can also search the Internet and absorb anything it finds, which from all indications it seems to be doing.”

  McCaskell shook his head in amazement.

  “To view the Trinity computer as a mere extension of Peter Godin would be a mistake,” Skow said. “Godin’s neuromodel left Godin the man behind hours ago. And an hour to Trinity is like a century to us. By now, Godin’s model has evolved into something none of us has ever contemplated dealing with.”

  “You talk like it’s some kind of god,” McCaskell said.

  Skow gave the chief of staff a condescending look. “That is why we refer to a functional neuromodel as being in the ‘Trinity state.’ It’s man and machine, yet greater than both.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to tell the president?”

  “That we don’t yet know what we’re dealing with,” said General Bauer.

  “When will we know?”

  “When the computer tells us something,” Skow replied.

  “Goddamn it,” said McCaskell. “I still don’t understand why somebody hasn’t just cut the power to this machine.”

  General Bauer cleared his throat. “Mr. Godin advised me that doing so would be a costly mistake.”

  “What else would you expect him to say?”

  “I’ve known Peter Godin a long time, sir. I’m not inclined to test his honesty on that point.”

  “What are you afraid of, General?”

  Bauer tensed at the implication of cowardice, but he kept his voice even. “Mr. McCaskell, the NSA funded Project Trinity because it believed this computer had the potential to become the most powerful weapon in history. That weapon is now self-directed and aimed at us. It doesn’t take a degr
ee from Cal Tech to know how dependent America is on computer systems. What am I afraid of, sir? I’m afraid this machine may be in a position to blackmail us in a way the Soviet Union never could with nuclear weapons. Because we have no deterrent against it. It has no children it wishes to protect. No cities. No population. We can assume it wants to survive, but not nearly so badly as we do.”

  “Blackmail us?” McCaskell echoed. “It’s a machine. What the hell could it want?”

  There was a clang from outside the ring of display screens, then a squealing of casters.