The Footprints of God

by Greg Iles

  “Sure you do.”

  “You’re hiding something.”

  “If I were, that would make two of us.”

  “You’re trying to subvert this project.”

  “How could I do that? And why would I? The project’s already been suspended.”

  Geli studied her fingernails, two of which were gnawed to nubs. Maybe she wasn’t unflappable after all. “By going public,” she said finally.

  There it was. The deepest fear of the paranoid military mind. “I haven’t done that.”

  “Are you considering it?”

  “No.”

  “Have you spoken to the president?”

  “In my life?”

  Annoyance crept into her voice at last. “Since Dr. Fielding’s death.”

  “No.”

  “You left a message at the White House yesterday.”

  I felt my face flush. “Yes.”

  “You used a pay phone.”

  “So?”

  “Why?”

  “The battery on my cell phone died.” An easy lie, and impossible to check.

  “Why not wait and call when you got home?”

  “I was in the mood right then.”

  “In the mood to talk to the president of the United States?”

  “That’s right.”

  “About Dr. Fielding’s death?”

  “Among other things.”

  She seemed to weigh her next words carefully. “You told the White House you didn’t want the other Trinity principals informed of your call.”

  My blood pressure dropped like a stone. How did they know what I’d said during that pay phone conversation? It had to be wiretapping surveillance, and not the local police or FBI variety. The NSA recorded millions of private telephone calls every day, the disk drives in the basements of Fort Meade triggered by key words like plastique, Al Qaeda, strong encryption, RDX, or even Trinity. I recalled that I’d said “Trinity” as soon as the White House operator answered, to make her switch me to the proper contact. The NSA probably had a recording of my conversation from that point forward.

  I drew myself up and looked Geli hard in the eyes. “I was personally appointed to this project by the president. Not by the NSA or John Skow or even Peter Godin. I’m here to evaluate ethical problems. If I determine that a problem exists, I report directly to the president. No one here has any say in the matter.”

  The gloves were off. I had just drawn a line between myself and everyone else in the Trinity building.

  Geli leaned forward, her blue eyes challenging me. “How many cell phones do you own, Dr. Tennant?”

  “One.”

  “Do you have others in your possession?”

  Clarity settled in my mind like a resolving chord. They knew I’d called the White House, but they didn’t know whether or not the president had gotten back to me. They had my phones covered—the ones they knew about—but they were worried about channels of communication they didn’t know about. If they were worried about that, they had no inside line to the president, and I still stood a chance of convincing him of my suspicions.

  “Rachel Weiss owns a cell phone,” Bauer said, her eyes alert for the slightest reaction on my part.

  I took a slow breath and kept my voice even. “I don’t know a doctor who doesn’t.”

  “But you know Dr. Weiss rather better than you know almost anyone else.”

  “She’s my psychiatrist, if that’s what you mean.”

  “She’s the only person other than Trinity personnel to whom you’ve spoken more than fifty words over the past two months.”

  I wondered if this was true.

  “The same is true for Dr. Weiss,” Geli said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She sees no one. She lost her son to cancer last year. After the boy died, her husband left her and returned to New York. Six months ago, Dr. Weiss began accepting occasional dates with male colleagues. Dinner, a movie, like that. She never saw anyone more than twice. Two months ago, she stopped seeing men altogether.”

  This didn’t surprise me. Rachel was an intense woman, and I couldn’t imagine many men meeting her expectations.

  “So?” I said.

  “I think you’re the reason for that, Doctor. I think Dr. Weiss is in love with you.”

  I laughed, really laughed, for the first time since I’d seen Fielding’s body. “Dr. Weiss thinks I’m delusional, Ms. Bauer. Possibly schizophrenic.”

  This didn’t faze Geli. “She kissed you last night. At the Fielding house.”

  “That was a sympathy kiss. I was upset about Fielding.”

  Geli ignored this. “What have you told Dr. Weiss about Project Trinity?”

  “Nothing, as you well know. I’m sure you’ve found some way to record every one of my sessions.”

  She surprised me by conceding this with a slight nod. “But lovers are resourceful. You may have managed unauthorized contact. Like last night.”

  “Last night was the first time I ever saw Rachel Weiss outside her office.” I folded my arms across my chest. “And I refuse to discuss her further. She has nothing to do with this project. You’re invading the privacy of an American citizen who has signed no agreement waiving her rights.”

  This time when Geli smiled, a little flash of cruelty burned through. “Where Project Trinity is concerned, privacy means nothing. Under National Security Directive 173, we can detain Dr. Weiss for forty-eight hours without even a phone call.”

  My frustration boiled over. “Geli, do you know what Project Trinity is?”

  My use of her first name wiped away her smile, and my question put her squarely on the defensive. It would kill her to admit that she didn’t know the inmost secrets of Trinity, but to say otherwise might cost her her job. She glowered but said nothing.

  I took a step toward her. “Well, I do know. And until you do—and you fully understand its implications—don’t be so damn eager to follow orders like a good little German.”

  The insult struck home. Geli tensed in the chair as though about to spring at me. I took a step back, instantly regretting my words. There was nothing to be gained by earning the personal enmity of Geli Bauer. In fact, it was a singularly bad idea. She had probably killed Fielding herself. And that’s why I’m baiting her, I realized.

  “We’re done,” I said, taking my car keys from my pocket. “I’ll be back on Tuesday morning. Keep your human Dobermans away from me until then.”

  I turned my back on her.

  “Dr. Tennant?”

  I kept walking.

  “Tennant!”

  I pressed the elevator button. When the door opened, I got in, then stepped out again. Geli could probably turn the tiny cubicle into a cell with the push of a button. She could seal the entire building just as easily, but I took the stairs anyway.

  As I hit the fourth-floor landing, an image of Fielding sitting in a cloud of smoke filled my mind. The Englishman smoked like a chimney, but smoking was forbidden everywhere in the Trinity complex, even for the top scientists. This wasn’t due to federal regulations; Peter Godin couldn’t stand a hint of smoke in the air. Ever resourceful, Fielding had found a place where he could indulge his habit. In the materials lab on the fourth floor was a large vacuum chamber that had been used during the project’s early stages, for testing the properties of carbon nanotubes. There were smoke detectors in the lab, but none in the vacuum chamber. Fielding had managed to pile enough boxes around the chamber that most people had forgotten its existence. When I couldn’t locate him anywhere else, I’d always known I could find him there.

  If Fielding were in the Trinity building and afraid for his life, I reasoned, wouldn’t he have tried to distance the crystal watch fob from himself? He wouldn’t hide it in his office, which would certainly be searched. But the vacuum chamber was only one floor away, and he could be fairly sure that I would eventually search his informal sanctum sanctorum.

  I exited the stairwell and made my way down the hall to
the materials lab. Two engineers recruited from Sun Microsystems walked out of the lab and separated to pass me, heading toward the elevators. I forced a smile, then slowed my walk so that I would reach the materials lab after they rounded the corner behind me.

  The lab was empty. I moved swiftly to the pile of boxes that obscured the steel vacuum chamber and began uncovering the door. The forbidding machine was like a large decompression chamber for scuba divers, with a porthole window and a large iron wheel set in its hatchlike door. I turned the wheel that unlocked the hatch. The lights came on automatically.

  My heart thudded when I stepped inside. I remembered wide shelves cluttered with tools, clamps, and old scraps of carbon. There was nothing in the chamber now. Even the shelves were gone. The entire room looked as though it had been steam cleaned.

  “Geli Bauer,” I breathed.

  If Fielding’s pocket watch had been hidden here, Geli had it now. I hurried out of the chamber, half-expecting her to confront me in the lab. But the lab was still empty, as was the hall. Slipping back into the stairwell, I descended to the third floor and walked toward the security desk, where Henry awaited me.

  Upon exiting Trinity, staff had to submit to a body search to prove they weren’t trying to remove computer disks or papers from the building. How Fielding must have laughed inside every time Henry ignored his crystal watch fob. As I approached the desk, I realized that Henry was speaking into his collar radio.

  “What’s up, Henry?” I said, pausing to wait for his pat-down.

  “Just a minute, Doc.”

  My heartbeat accelerated. I imagined Geli Bauer giving him orders: Don’t let Tennant out of the building…

  “I really need to get moving,” I said. “I have an appointment.”

  Henry looked at me, then said into the mike, “He’s right here.”

  Jesus. If Geli had to ask if I was at the door, that meant she wasn’t watching me on camera from the security office. She was probably on her way here. My limbic brain was telling me to run like hell, but how far would I get? Harmless-looking Henry was armed with a 9mm Glock automatic. Still, it took a supreme act of will not to bolt for the door.

  Henry listened to his ear-bud for a few seconds, looking confused. “Are you sure?” he asked. “All right.”

  He came around the desk, and I suddenly knew that if Henry reached for his gun, survival instinct would dictate the next few seconds. I tensed for action when his hands dropped, but then he squatted and began his normal pat-down, starting with my pant legs.

  Geli had decided to let me go. Why? Because she can’t be sure whether I’ve talked to the president.

  “Good to go, Doc,” Henry said, patting me on the shoulder. “For a second I thought she—I mean they—wanted me to hold you here.”

  As I looked into Henry’s face, I saw something in his eyes that I didn’t understand. Then I did. He didn’t like Geli Bauer any more than I did. In fact, he was afraid of her.

  The minute I cleared the armored-glass doors, my cell phone began ringing. I hit SEND and held the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “David! Where the hell have you been?”

  “Don’t say your name,” I snapped, recognizing Rachel’s voice.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour!”

  No cellular transmissions could pass through the copper cladding that encased the Trinity building. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Did you come to my office this morning?”

  “Your office? Of course not. Why?”

  “Because someone practically tore it to pieces. Your file is missing, and everything’s out of place.”

  I sucked in a lungful of air and forced myself to keep walking toward my car. “I haven’t been near your office today. Why do you think I’d do something like that?”

  “To bolster your delusions in my eyes! To make me think they’re real!”

  She sounded close to hysteria. Had she understood nothing last night? “We need to talk. But not like this. Are you at your office now?”

  “No, I’m on Highway 15.”

  Rachel could take 15 all the way from the Duke Medical Center to Chapel Hill. “Are you in a cab?”

  “No. I went and got my car this morning.”

  “Meet me where you saw me making the videotape.”

  “You mean—”

  “You know where. I’m on my way. Hang up now.”

  She did.

  It took all my self-control not to run the last few steps to my car.

  Chapter

  12

  Rachel’s white Saab was parked in front of my house. Rachel herself was sitting on my front steps, her chin in her hands like a college girl waiting for a class to begin. Instead of her usual silk blouse and skirt, she wore blue jeans and a white cotton oxford shirt. I tapped my horn. She looked up, unsmiling. Waving once, I pulled into my garage and walked through the house to open the front door.

  “Sorry you got here first,” I said, glancing up the street for unfamiliar vehicles.

  Her eyes were red from crying. She went into the living room but didn’t sit. Instead, she paced around my sparse furniture, unable to remain still.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  She paused long enough to fix me with a glare, then continued pacing. “I was at the hospital, checking on a patient who attempted suicide two days ago.”

  “And?”

  “I decided to run by my office and dictate some charts. When I got there, I realized someone else had been there. I mean, the office was locked, but I could tell, you know?”

  “You said the place was torn to pieces.”

  She averted her eyes. “Not exactly. But lots of things were out of place. I know, because I like my things a certain way. Books arranged from small to large, papers stacked…never mind.”

  “You’re obsessive-compulsive.”

  Her dark eyes flashed. “There are worse problems than having OCD.”

  “Agreed. You said my file was missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any other patient records missing?”

  “No.”

  “That’s it, then. What I don’t understand is why they would steal my file. Why not just photocopy it? I’m sure they’ve read it before. They probably read it every week.”

  Rachel stopped pacing and looked at me in disbelief. “How could they do that?”

  “By sneaking someone into your office. Probably the nights of my appointment days.”

  “Why didn’t I notice anything before?”

  “Maybe this time they were in a hurry.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “Me. Of what I’ve done. What I might do.”

  She sat on the edge of my sofa as though to collect herself. “I need to be clear on this, David. Just who is they? The NSA?”

  “Yes and no. They’re the security people for Project Trinity, which is funded by the NSA.”

  “And this is who you say murdered Andrew Fielding?”

  “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes. “I had a friend at the medical center test that white powder you gave me. It’s not contaminated with anthrax or any other known pathogen or poison.” Her eyes opened and looked into mine. “It’s sand, David. Gypsum. White sand. No threat to anybody.”

  My mind began spinning with the possible significance of that. Microchips were made of silicon, a kind of sand. Was gypsum the basis of some new semiconductor Godin had discovered? Maybe Fielding was trying to tell me something like that without being overt—

  “Have you tried to reach the president again?” Rachel asked.

  I opened my mouth in surprise.

  “What?”

  “I forgot to check my answering machine. Excuse me.”

  I went to the kitchen. The machine’s LED showed one message waiting. When I hit the button, a New England accent crackled from the tiny speaker:

  �
�Dr. Tennant? This is Ewan McCaskell, the president’s chief of staff. I remember you from your visit a couple of years ago. I just received your message. I’m sure you understand that we’re very busy over here. I can’t involve the president until I know what this is about, but I do want to talk to you as soon as possible. Please remain at this number, and I’ll call back as soon as time permits.”