The Footprints of God

by Greg Iles

  “What are you saying?

  “Failure requires a scapegoat.”

  “I’ve had nothing to do with building that computer.”

  “No, but Fielding’s death might be blamed for its failure. And who killed Fielding?”

  Now she saw where Skow was headed. “You’re starting to piss me off.”

  The NSA man turned up his palms. “I’m only painting a possible scenario. You’re an easy fit for the role. Known to be overzealous—”

  “Do you want to leave this room alive?”.

  Skow smiled. “I’m only showing you your personal stake in this. Now, Tennant and Weiss are still running around loose. And Lu Li Fielding is still missing.”

  “Those are three problems I can solve.”

  “All evidence to the contrary.”

  She gave him a look that would shatter glass.

  “Take it easy,” Skow said. “I don’t want Tennant dead now anyway. It’s stupid to keep piling up bodies. It makes things exponentially harder on us.”

  She sensed that they had arrived at the point of this meeting. “Okay. If I’m not the scapegoat, who is?”

  “Peter Godin.”

  “What?”

  Skow blew a perfect blue smoke ring between them. “Think about it. After Peter dies, everything can be explained by a mere exaggeration of the truth. He’s been dying of a brain tumor all along. None of us knew it. Peter was a great man, but the tumor affected his mind. He became obsessed with saving his own life. He saw the Trinity computer as the only possible means of doing that. When Fielding and Tennant suspended the project, Godin panicked and ordered their deaths.”

  Geli leaned back and let the plan sink in. The logic was perfect. It was the Big Lie, which turned everything black to white.

  “If we go this way,” Skow continued, “Tennant can’t hurt us no matter what he says. This is a much more elegant solution than murder.”

  “There’s one problem,” Geli said. “If we leave Tennant alive, he’ll tell the world that I was the one trying to kill him.”

  “Will he?” Skow smiled and shook his head. “Who went to Tennant’s house to kill him? Whom did Tennant and Weiss see?”

  “Ritter.”

  “Exactly. And Ritter Bock was an employee of Godin Supercomputing before you came on board. Correct?”

  Skow seemed to have thought of everything. “Yes.”

  “Does anyone know you gave Ritter the order to kill Tennant?”

  “I never gave such an order.”

  Skow grinned. “Of course you didn’t. I couldn’t imagine such a thing. Peter gave the order directly to Ritter, his own private Doberman. Dr. Tennant got lucky and killed Ritter in self-defense. You’re as pure as the driven snow, Geli. All you’ve been doing is following Godin’s orders.”

  “And you?”

  “By the time I realized that Fielding didn’t die of natural causes, Ritter was already dead and Tennant was on the run. I’ve been trying to get to the truth ever since.”

  Geli kept trying to punch a hole in the story. “And the reason we cremated Fielding’s body so quickly?”

  “Once we realized he’d been murdered, we suspected a highly infectious biological agent. Nara’s advice was to burn the body and all blood samples immediately. That was the only way to maintain the safety of this building.”

  “Will Nara verify this story?”

  “He’ll do anything to save his reputation.”

  Geli got up and began to pace the control center. Skow turned his chair and followed her with his eyes.

  “What if Godin succeeds?” she asked. “What if he delivers Trinity before he dies, and it’s everything he promised?”

  “Ravi says it won’t happen. Peter’s fading too fast.”

  The irony of the situation depressed her. “You know, I like Peter Godin. I respect him. You, on the other hand, I don’t like at all. I didn’t respect you either, until you came up with this. This could work.”

  “It’s going to work. The only missing piece is you.”

  She saw no option but to cooperate. “Tell me where the other Trinity facility is, and you have a deal.”

  The confidence left Skow’s face. “I’m not at liberty to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll understand in a minute. I’m going to give you the name of the person who handles security at the other site. You can ask him your questions.”

  Geli stopped and stared at him. “What kind of game is this?”

  “That’s the way he told me to handle it, and he’s not the kind of person I like to make an enemy of.”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  Skow shook his head. “I’ll give you his number.”

  “I’m not calling anybody until I know who I’m calling.”

  Skow drew on his cigarette, looking at her with something like pity. “General Horst Bauer.”

  Geli’s face felt hot. Every bit of pride she’d felt at her Trinity job drained out of her in a sickening rush. “My father is in charge of the other Trinity site?”

  “Yes.”

  “You son of a bitch. Why are he and I both involved in this?”

  Despite obvious reluctance to speak, Skow seemed to sense that she wouldn’t cooperate further until he had answered.

  “It’s simple,” he said. “Every aspect of Trinity has been stage-managed by Godin from the beginning. Because of your father’s military intelligence background, he always had influence on what types of computers the army used at certain facilities. The Pentagon, various bases, and now Fort Huachuca.”

  Fort Huachuca, Arizona, was the center of U.S. Military Intelligence, and her father was its commanding officer.

  “General Bauer helped secure contracts for Godin Supercomputing from the army,” Skow said. “His influence helped Peter beat out Cray, NEC, all the rest.”

  “You mean he took money.”

  “Wads of it. He’s got a numbered Cayman account padded by Godin, same as me. The NSA doesn’t pay near enough to finance my lifestyle.”

  “That hypocritical son of a bitch. I thought at least where his country was concerned, he’d—never mind. I should have known better.”

  “Your father didn’t damage the country by pushing Godin supercomputers. They were as good as anything out there. The general just took a little bonus where he found it. That’s the way business is done these days.”

  The scar on Geli’s face seemed to pulse with fury. “The army is a service, not a business.”

  Skow chuckled. “I’d never have pegged you as a romantic.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Anyway, when Peter decided he needed a secret research site, he called your father. Some money changed hands, and the general found us a nice secluded spot where no one would bother us.”

  “Why was I brought in?”

  “Peter was looking for a certain kind of person for your job. Your father suggested you.”

  Geli began to pace again, blood pounding in her ears. “He knows about all this, doesn’t he? Godin dying, the project going down the tubes?”

  “Yes. And he’s on board. He has a career to save, too.”

  “Well, fuck him. And fuck you.”

  “Call him, Geli.”

  “Is the secret Trinity site at Fort Huachuca?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t believe him. There were thousands of acres set aside for weapons testing at the remote Arizona base. On the other hand, her father was an expert at covering his ass. He’d have wanted some deniability if Trinity became a liability and so would have been unlikely to put it at his own base.

  She slipped on her headset, hit a computer key, and said, “Major General Horst Bauer. Fort Huachuca, Arizona.”

  Skow breathed an audible sigh of relief.

  The general’s aide-de-camp answered the phone.

  “General Bauer,” Geli snapped.

  “The general is unavailable. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Tell h
im his daughter is on the phone, Captain.”

  “Hold, please.”

  Skow was clearly enjoying this spectacle. She spun her chair so that she wouldn’t have to look at his aging Ivy League face.

  As she waited, images of her father rose in her mind. Tall and imposing in the Germanic mold, Horst Bauer had been described by his enemies as a blond version of Burt Lancaster’s General James Mattoon Scott from Seven Days in May. This was a fair comparison. Yet the stiff martinet seen by the public was not the man Geli knew. She saw the womanizer who had cheated ceaselessly on his wife and left several illegitimate children abroad. She saw the brute who, upon finding himself embarrassed by his daughter’s “wildness,” beat her remorselessly with whatever was close to hand. The irony of her life was that she had followed in the footsteps of the man she hated. The reason was simple. She’d hated her father for scarring her so deeply, but she’d despised her mother’s passiveness even more.

  “Well, Geli,” said a deep voice that tensed every muscle in her body. “You must be in trouble. That’s the only time I hear from you.”

  She wanted to slam down the phone, but she needed answers. “What do you know about a certain artificial intelligence project?”

  “So much for pleasantries. That’s a vague question you asked.”

  “You want specifics? I’m in charge of security for Project Trinity in North Carolina. I’m told there’s a secret facility carrying out research for that project. What do you know about that?”

  A moment of silence. “I might know something.”

  “And you never told me about this because…?”

  Dry laughter. “I wasn’t aware we’d started a father-daughter rehabilitation program.”

  “You gave Godin my name for this job?”

  “How else did you think he found you? But as for telling you about my involvement, Godin wanted everything compartmentalized. You can’t be angry about that. You haven’t told me anything about your life since puberty. What I learned, I learned from gossip or doctors or the police.”

  Some battles never end, she thought. “There’s no point in rehashing the past. I know what I needed to know.”

  “And you understand the situation? What has to be done?”

  “I’ve been made aware.”

  “Skow has no balls, but he does have a talent for damage control.”

  “I’m going now,” she said, yet she remained on the line.

  “Go ahead,” said the general. “I have a feeling I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  She yanked off her headset and glared at Skow.

  “Well?” said the NSA man. “Are we all on the same page?”

  “Get out.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “What choice do I have? But it sickens me that a man like Godin will be torn down so that scum like you and my father can skate. You’re not fit to carry water for Peter Godin.”

  Skow colored at last. “You agree about Tennant and Weiss? We bring them in alive? Tell them it’s all been a misunderstanding?”

  “Godin’s not dead yet.”

  “True.”

  “And we have no idea where they are. We can’t communicate with them unless we go on TV and tell the whole world.”

  “Also true.”

  “I’m still not sure I want Tennant running around telling everyone what he thinks went on here. He knows some powerful people.”

  Skow nodded thoughtfully. “I tell you what. I’ll leave Tennant and Weiss to you. If they have to die, we’ll make it play.”

  “You’re damn right you’ll leave them to me.”

  He got up and moved toward the door. “Any last questions?”

  “Just one. Why was Fielding sabotaging the project?”

  Skow smiled. “He didn’t believe scientists should create things they don’t understand.”

  “Then why did he sign on for the project?”

  “I don’t think he believed it would move nearly as fast as it did. He thought we’d have to earn the requisite knowledge about the brain before we could make Trinity work.”

  “And did you? Earn that knowledge?”

  “Are you kidding? If Trinity does go a hundred percent operational, it will be completely beyond us.”

  Chapter

  25

  We chose a cheap motel in Arlington, across the Potomac from Washington, one where the desk clerk didn’t raise an eyebrow if a guest preferred to pay in cash. One room, two double beds, a bathroom, a television, a phone. Rachel stripped off her camouflage jumpsuit the minute she got inside and went to the bathroom to shower. I found myself watching her until the bathroom door closed. Her informal attire of the previous day had been startling enough after weeks of seeing her dressed only in skirt suits. To see her walking unabashedly away from me in her underwear transformed my perception of her. Rachel’s body was taut and well muscled in a way that only strenuous exercise could maintain. This didn’t square with my impression of her as an academic physician, but maybe it fit with her obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

  I retrieved our street clothes from the truck, then bought a Washington Post and two bottles of Dasani from machines in the parking lot and returned to the room. The crack beneath the bathroom door exhaled puffs of steam. I changed into my regular clothes, propped myself against the headboard, and switched on CNN. There was no mention of any federal fugitives, so I started scanning the stories in the Post.

  We’d begun preparing for our trip to Israel during the eight-hour drive from Tennessee. The first step was to arrange for the illegal passports. We used a truck stop near Roanoke for Rachel’s first phone call. A former patient of hers from New York gave her a contact number in Washington, D.C., and told her to wait an hour before calling it. During that hour, someone would vouch for Rachel to the person at that number.

  She made her second call from Lexington, Virginia, where she received instructions to go to the Au Bon Pain café in Washington’s Union Station at eleven tomorrow morning. She was also told to choose two full names and birth dates, and to obtain passport photos for the “friends” involved. She should deliver the photos along with cards bearing the names and physical descriptions of the “friends” to the person at the Au Bon Pain meeting. When Rachel asked how long it would take to obtain what she required, the source told her forty-eight hours was the usual delay.

  Between Lexington and Interstate 66, we realized we had another problem. Credit cards. Buying air tickets to Israel for cash would raise concerns, as would the fact that we had no advance hotel reservations. Friends or relatives would have to make reservations for us in our new names, using legitimate credit cards. My parents were dead, and all my friends would be covered by the NSA. Rachel’s parents, ex-husband, and friends would be covered as well. In the end, she chose to call a doctor to whom she’d almost become engaged when she was attending Columbia. He was Jewish, traveled often to Israel, and was utterly devoted to her. I thought a request to make flight and hotel reservations in names he didn’t know might worry the man, but Rachel assured me that anything she asked would be done. She tried three times to phone him before we reached D.C., but had no luck. His answering service refused to give out his cell number, and Rachel couldn’t leave a number for him to call back.

  The bathroom door opened with a rush of steam, and Rachel emerged with one towel wrapped around her body, another around her head.

  “There’s still some hot water left. And one towel. You should try it. I feel human again.”

  “We need to try your doctor friend one more time. I brought in your clothes. They’re pretty dirty.”

  She smiled wearily. “I’d give a thousand dollars for my flannel pajamas.”

  “We’ll get some new clothes tomorrow. Or tonight, if you really want some. After we make that call.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “Can’t we just sleep for a while?”

  “We need that hotel reservation to date from as early as possible before our departure. Most res
ervations like that are made weeks in advance.”

  “You’re telling me to get dressed?”

  I nodded.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and began drying her hair.