by Greg Iles
“He’s worried about the media.”
“Ewan McCaskell is on his way here now. They’re setting up an emergency oversight group. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.”
“What are you going to do?” Skow asked.
Godin flicked his hand as if to swat a fly, then looked at the NSA man with unalloyed hatred. “Geli, if this parasite moves without my permission, kill him.”
The blood left Skow’s face.
“This is what you’re going to do,” Godin said. “Go to the airstrip. General Bauer should be arriving at any moment.”
A chill raced up Geli’s back.
“Surely you’ve figured that out,” Godin said. “Horst would have panicked the moment Tennant went public. He probably called the White House five minutes later and told them I’d duped him into providing this facility. His next move will be to come here and secure the computer. The president may even have ordered him to do it.”
“What do you want me to tell him?” Skow asked.
“That any attempt to interfere with the Trinity prototype will result in retaliation on an unimaginable scale.”
Skow’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about, Peter?”
“Just remind the general of something he should know very well by now.”
“What’s that?”
“I never bluff.”
Skow cut his eyes at Geli, then at her pistol.
“Get out,” Godin rasped.
Skow turned and left the Bubble.
“Why are you letting him go?” Geli asked. “At least let me lock him in an office.”
“There’s nothing he can do now.”
“Maybe not alone. But with my father?”
Godin shook his head as though the time for trivial concerns had passed. “Get me Levin in Containment.”
Geli made the call, then held the phone up to the old man’s face.
“Levin?” said Godin. “Listen to me. In nomini patri, et filii, et spiritus sancti.”
Geli could faintly hear the other end of the conversation.
“Are you sure, sir?” asked Levin. “Fielding’s model is only at eighty-one percent.”
“My model will have to solve the final algorithms,” Godin said.
There was a pause. “Is this the end?”
Godin’s gray lips hardly moved. “Not yet. But we may not speak in this way again. You should prepare for visitors.”
“We have. I heard some soldiers talking outside Containment. They said the general is inbound.”
Geli’s insides went cold.
Godin coughed into the phone. “Remember…there’s no end for me now. The end is the beginning.”
“It’s been a privilege, sir. And I’ll be there for you when Trinity state is reached.”
Godin closed his eyes. “Good-bye, my friend.”
Geli hung up the phone. How close was her father? Fort Huachuca was only three hundred miles away.
Godin’s hand touched her wrist, startling her. “Do you understand what’s about to happen, Geli?”
“Yes, sir. Levin’s going to dump Dr. Fielding’s model from the computer and load yours. Sometime in the next hour, your model will reach the Trinity state. You will become the Trinity computer. Or vice versa, whichever it is.”
Godin nodded wearily. The events of the past few minutes had drained him. His breathing had grown labored.
“How does that help you?” she asked. “Even if Trinity works, all they’ll have to do is shut it off, right? Or cut power to it?”
“Skow is probably trying to figure out how to do that right now. But he’ll fail.”
“My father will bring troops and equipment with him.”
Godin’s eyes closed. “Let me worry about that. With luck, you won’t have to shoot anyone. Least of all, American soldiers.”
Geli wanted to scream. The old man didn’t realize what forces would soon be arrayed against him. The Containment building looked solid, but Horst Bauer had made short work of much harder targets in his career.
“I must live to see this,” Godin murmured. “Keep your weapon ready to fire.”
Geli sat on the floor with her back against the wall and pointed her Walther at the door.
Chapter
36
JERUSALEM
When I gave my name at the door of the Mossad building, we were immediately pulled inside and searched. Our money and papers were confiscated. Then we were locked inside a white room containing only a wooden table and three chairs.
A plainclothes officer appeared and asked why we had come. I told him I wanted to speak to the most senior officer of the Mossad. He pressed me for information, but I refused to say more. The officer left the room and locked the door behind him.
Forty minutes passed.
Rachel didn’t speak. She understood that anything we said would be recorded by hidden microphones. Despite my urgency to reach New Mexico, a preternatural calm settled over me. Rachel seemed to sense this, because she reached out and took my hand as though to draw strength from me.
At last the door opened, and a short man with the leathery skin of a desert warrior walked in and sat behind the table. In his middle fifties, he wore dusty khaki clothes and scarred boots. He had a shock of white hair and the most alert eyes I had ever seen.
“David Tennant,” he said, looking at a file in his hand. “Physician, author, would-be presidential assassin. You’re the most hunted man in America this week. To what do we owe this honor?”
“Are you the chief of the Mossad?”
“I am. Major General Avner Kinski.”
“I thought you would be in Tel Aviv.”
“I was in Bethlehem. There was a bombing early this morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Of course.” Kinski gave me a quick, emotionless smile. “So. Why are you here?”
“I need your help.”
“To do what?”
“I need to get to the U.S. Secretly, and as fast as possible.”
My answer surprised him, and I could tell he was a man not often surprised. “Why do you want to go back to the United States? You’re very unpopular there.”
“That’s my business.”
The Mossad chief leaned back in his chair, a bemused look on his face. “Where exactly do you wish to go?”
“White Sands, New Mexico.”
“Interesting. Are you aware that my government has been asked to take you into custody?”
“I assumed so.”
“My government tries to cooperate with yours whenever possible.”
“But not always. Especially where arms and technology are concerned.”
The spymaster sniffed and leaned forward, his eyes challenging me. “You run from Shin Beth at Hadassah Hospital, yet you run straight into my arms. Why?”
“I knew you would help me.”
Kinski shook his head. “Maybe you didn’t run so straight. Where did you go between Hadassah and here?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“I’d like to know now.”
“Sorry.”
“Tell me something, Doctor. Is it your intention to kill the U.S. president?”
“Do I look like an assassin to you?”
Kinski shrugged. “Assassins come in many shapes and sizes. Women. Little boys. Smiling teenagers. You do have the look of a fanatic.”
“I’m not a killer.”
“Yet you have killed. I see that in your eyes.”
“In self-defense.”
The Mossad chief lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. “We’ve strayed from our main business. What makes you think I would fly you secretly to America?”
“I have something you want.”
The dark eyes flickered. “You’re a businessman now?”
“I know how the world works.” I leaned forward. “There’s a secret defense project in America known as Trinity. It’s been going on for two years, and in a matter of hours it will produce th
e most powerful weapon on the face of the earth. I know more about that weapon than any man you’re likely to have in your hands for the foreseeable future.”
The Israeli’s mouth was hanging slack.
“I see this is not a total surprise to you,” I said. “I’m one of six people who’ve had access to every detail of Trinity since its inception. I was appointed to the project by the president. So, you’ve got two choices. One, you can hold me prisoner and torture me for what I know. But a lot of people know I’m in Israel—including the president—so that could get messy for you. Two, you can fly me to White Sands. If you do that, you can put whatever scientists you want aboard the plane, and I’ll tell them all I know about Trinity.” I settled back in my chair. “That’s my offer.”
Gray tendrils of cigarette smoke drifted out of Kinski’s mouth. He looked calm, but I knew my words had almost knocked him off his chair.
“Tell me the nature of this weapon, Doctor.”
“Artificial intelligence. Trinity will make the computers in your most advanced weapons labs as obsolete as canvas biplanes. It will break your most complex codes in seconds. And that’s only the beginning. I’m in a hurry, General.”
The spymaster took another drag on his cigarette, then stood and smiled with appreciation. “You’re an audacious man, Doctor.”
“And?”
“You got yourself a plane ticket.”
WHITE SANDS
Five minutes before General Bauer’s plane touched down, shooting broke out near the Containment building. The sound of gunfire echoed across the compound, stirring Geli’s blood. There was no sound on earth like shots fired in anger.
Godin started awake and pressed a button that electrically raised his bed. “Your father must have ordered his men to try to open the Containment building.”
Geli wondered if an assault team was about to burst into the Bubble. “Your technicians are armed?”
“Of course.”
“They won’t be able to hold out against a determined force with the right ordnance.”
“I think you’ll be surprised.”
“Sir, I know what I’m talking about. If—”
“What time is it?” Godin cut in. “Have I slept? Has Levin called?”
“You slept a little, but no one’s called. They loaded your neuromodel over an hour ago. Why does it take so long to know something?”
“It takes time to purge a neuromodel from the computer. Then there’s a period of acclimatization after the new model is loaded. An analogue of medical shock, I expect, as the mind accustoms itself to separation from its physical body.”
“How long does that last?”
“Tennant’s model was in a confused state for over an hour. Fielding’s for thirty-nine minutes. But the system was only functioning at fifty percent efficiency at that time.”
The phone rang. It was Levin. He sounded out of breath, and Geli heard shouting in the background. She held the receiver up to Godin’s ear. Godin listened, then said, “Thank you, Levin. Good luck.”
He motioned for her to hang up, profound satisfaction on his face. “My model has fully acclimatized and is now resolving the final algorithms at the same rate Fielding was.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
The phone rang again. This time it was John Skow. Godin refused to speak to him.
“Geli,” Skow said in a taut voice, “your father just touched down on the airstrip. He brought some serious firepower with him. That skirmish a moment ago was nothing. Small-arms fire. If someone doesn’t persuade Godin to get Levin and his people out of Containment, the general will destroy the building and the computer.”
“I’ll relay that message.”
She hung up. Godin watched her expectantly.
“Skow says my father will blow up the Containment building if you don’t order your techs out.”
The old man’s face twitched against nerve pain. “I don’t think he’ll do that without speaking to me first.”
“How much does he know about what you’re building here?”
“He knows it’s artificial intelligence. He knows I wouldn’t waste time on something small. But he mostly knows what he gets paid to keep this place invisible.”
“My father will do anything to protect his career. If the president wants the computer shut down, he’ll shitcan the whole building without a second thought, if that’s the only way he can do it.”
The door of the Bubble opened with a hiss. Geli whipped up her pistol and found herself aiming at her own father.
“It was bound to come to this someday,” General Bauer said, a wry smile on his face.
Geli gave him nothing. At fifty-five her father looked much as he had at thirty—trim and hard and blond—with gray eyes that brooked no nonsense from anyone, regardless of rank or position. He was wearing his Class A dress uniform with its bright splash of fruit salad on the breast, which told Geli he anticipated meeting the president’s chief of staff. He was not wearing a sidearm, but she saw the bulge of a shoulder holster beneath his dark green coat.
General Bauer moved close enough to the bed to make eye contact with Godin. “Sir, the president ordered you to cease operations. If you issued any such order to your technicians, they’ve ignored it. They’ve barricaded themselves in the Containment building and fired on my troops. I have two dead and five wounded. I ask you now to order your people out. If you or they refuse, I’ll have no choice but to bring them out by force.”
Godin stared back at Bauer but said nothing.
Geli knew her father was speaking for recording devices. Godin probaby knew it, too. The eye contact between the two men spoke far more eloquently than their voices.
“Did you understand what I said?” General Bauer asked. He looked as if he thought Godin might be so near death that he was past reason.
“My technicians have been instructed not to answer phone calls,” Godin said finally. “Not even from me.”
“Then I’ll have you moved outside. You can use a megaphone to contact them.”
Godin smiled faintly, as though he enjoyed this chess game with his secret employee. “The Containment building is soundproof, General. It’s also built of reinforced steel and concrete. It has its own water and air supply, plus its own electrical generators.”
“I can reduce that building to dust in a matter of seconds,” Bauer said. “My men are setting the explosives now. The president would like your computer to survive, but if you refuse to cooperate, I won’t hesitate to destroy it.”
This threat seemed to move Godin. “I expect my lead engineer to call me at any moment.”
The general glanced at Geli, then relaxed his ramrod posture. “What the hell are they really working on in there, Peter?”
“The most powerful machine ever built by man.”
“Was Dr. Tennant’s e-mail accurate about its capabilities?”
“It would be impossible to overestimate them.”
A shadow of doubt crossed Bauer’s face. He looked at Geli for confirmation, but she looked away, nauseated by disgust. Her father was standing there like a champion of right, an emissary of the president, but he’d been part of Trinity from the beginning. She did not relax her aim. If her father thought killing Godin would protect him from political repercussions, he wouldn’t hesitate to try.
“You leave me no choice,” General Bauer said. He glanced at Geli’s pistol, then turned to go.
The ringing telephone stopped him. Geli picked up the receiver with her free hand and passed it to Godin. Again she heard frantic voices in the background, one saying something about ammunition. Then very clearly Zach Levin said, “Trinity state has been reached, sir…. I repeat, Trinity state has been reached.”
Godin closed his eyes and sagged back into his pillow. “Thank you, Levin. Carry on.”
He dropped the phone on the mattress.
“Why the hell did you tell him to carry on?” General Bauer asked.
When the b
lue eyes opened, the triumph in them was absolute. “Trinity state has been reached. There’s nothing you can do now.”
“Peter, for God’s sake. What does that mean?”