The Footprints of God

by Greg Isle

  "Right."

  Geli clicked off and thought again about Fielding's personal effects in the storeroom. She had a feeling something was missing, and her instincts were usually dead-on. But she didn't want to leave the control center now. Once Ritter reached the scene, things could happen fast.

  Chapter 6

  I pulled Rachel into the foyer of the Fielding house. The door closed quickly behind us, and we turned to face an Asian woman just under five feet tall. Lu Li Fielding had lived most of her forty years in Communist China. She understood English well enough, but she didn't speak it well at all.

  "Who this woman?" she asked, pointing at Rachel. "You not married, are you, Dr. David?"

  "This is Rachel Weiss." She's a good friend of mine. She's a physician, too."

  Suspicion filled Lu Li's eyes. "She work for the company?"

  "You mean Argus Optical?"

  "Trinity," she said, substituting an l for the r.

  "Absolutely not. She's a professor at the Duke University Medical School."

  Lu Li studied Rachel for several moments. "You come in, too, then. Please. Hurry, please."

  Lu Li bowed and led us into the den, which opened to the kitchen. I smiled sadly. When Fielding had occupied this house alone, it always looked as though a tornado had just blown through it. Books and papers strewn about, dozens of coffee cups, beer bottles, and overflowing ashtrays littering every flat surface. After Lu Li arrived, the house had become a Zen-like space of cleanliness and order. Tonight it smelled of wax and lemon instead of cigarettes and stale beer.

  "Sit, please," Lu Li said.

  Rachel and I sat beside each other on a pillowy sofa. Lu Li perched on the edge of an old club chair opposite us. She focused on Rachel, who was staring at a plaque hanging on the wall behind Lu Li's chair.

  "Is that the Nobel Prize?" Rachel asked softly.

  Lu Li nodded, not without pride. "Andy win the Nobel in 1998. I was in China then, but still we knew his work. All physicists amazed."

  "You must be very proud of him." Rachel spoke with a calm that her wide eyes belied. "How did you two meet?"

  As Lu Li responded in broken English, I marveled at the union of this woman and my dead friend. Fielding had met Lu Li while lecturing in Beijing as part of a Sino-British diplomatic initiative. She taught physics at Beijing University, and she'd sat in the first row during each of Fielding's nine lectures. Party bureaucrats held several receptions during the series, and Lu Li attended them all. She and Fielding had quickly become inseparable, and by the time the day arrived for him to leave China, they were deeply in love. Two and a half years of separation followed, with Fielding trying desperately to arrange an exit visa for her. Even with the supposed help of the NSA brass, he made no progress. Fielding eventually reached a point where he was considering paying illegal brokers to have Lu Li smuggled out of the country, but I convinced him this was too risky.

  Everything changed when Fielding began delaying Project Trinity with his suspicions about the side effects we were all suffering. As if by magic, the red tape was cut, and Lu Li was on a plane bound for Washington. Fielding knew his fiancée had only been brought to America to distract him, but he didn't care. Nor did her arrival have its desired effect. The Englishman continued to painstakingly investigate every negative event at the Trinity lab, and the other scientists grew to hate him for it.

  "Lu Li," I said during a pause, "first let me express my great sadness over Andrew's passing."

  The physicist shook her head. "That not why I ask you here. I want to know about this morning. What really happen to my Andy?"

  I hesitated to speak frankly in the house. Seeing my anxious expression, she went to the fireplace, knelt, and reached up into the flue. She brought out a sooty cardboard box, which she set on the coffee table. I'd seen the box before. It contained several pieces of homemade electronic equipment that reminded me of the Heathkit projects my father and I had worked on when I was a boy. Lu Li withdrew an object that looked like a metal wand.

  "Andy sweep house this morning before work," she said. "Plugged all the mikes. Okay to talk now."

  I glanced at Rachel. The subtext was clear. Lu Li knew the score on Trinity, or at least she knew about the NSA's security tactics. Geli Bauer would probably have this house torn apart as soon as Lu Li left for the cleaner's or the grocery store. I was surprised she had waited even this long.

  "Have you left the house at all today?" I asked.

  "No," Lu Li said. "They won't tell me what hospital they take Andy to."

  I doubted Fielding had been taken to a hospital. He'd probably been flown to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, probably to some special medical unit for an autopsy, or worse. The British might complain later, but that would be the State Department's problem, not the NSA's. And the British—framers of the Official Secrets Act and the "D" notice—had a way of falling into line with the United States where national security was concerned.

  "I still think we should whisper," I said softly, pointing at the wand. "And I think I should take that box with me when I go. I'm afraid the N"—I stopped myself—"the company security people might search this house the first time you leave. You don't want anybody to find it."

  Lu Li had been raised in a Communist country with ruthless security police. Her willingness to believe the worst was deeply ingrained. "Did they kill my Andy?" she whispered.

  "I hope not. Given Andrew's health, age, and habits, a stroke was possible. But ... I don't think it was a stroke. What makes you think he might have been murdered?"

  Lu Li closed her eyes, squeezing tears out of them. "Andy knew something might happen to him. He tell me so."

  "Did he say this once? Or often?"

  "Last two weeks, many times."

  I exhaled long and slowly. "Do you know why Andrew wanted to see me at Nags Head?"

  "He want to talk to you. That all I know. Andy very scared about work. About Trinity. About..."

  "What?"

  "Godin."

  Somehow I had known it would be Godin. John Skow was easy to hate—an arrogant technocrat with no moral center—but he did not generate much fear. Godin, on the other hand, was easy to like—a genius, a patriot in the best sense of the word, a man of conviction—yet after you worked with him awhile, you sensed a disturbing vibration radiating from him, a Faustian hunger to know that disdained all limits, disregarded all boundaries. One thing was plain: anyone or anything that stood between Godin and his goal would not remain there long.

  Godin and Fielding had got along well in the beginning. They were from roughly the same generation, and Godin possessed Robert Oppenheimer's gift for motivating talented scientists: a combination of flattery and provocative insight. But the honeymoon had not lasted. For Godin, Trinity was a mission, and he pursued it with missionary zeal. Fielding was different. The Englishman did not believe that just because something was possible, it should be done. Nor did he believe that even a noble end justified all means to attain it.

  "Did Andy have papers to show me?" I asked hopefully.

  "I don't think so. Every evening he make notes, but every night before bed"—she pointed to the fireplace—"he always burn them. Andy very secret. He always try to protect me. Always to protect me."

  He did the same for me, I thought. Suddenly, I remembered the words in Fielding's letter. "Did Andrew take his pocket watch to work with him today?"

  Lu Li didn't hesitate. "He take it every day. You no see it today?"

  "No. But I'm sure it will be returned to you with his personal effects."

  Her lower lip began to quiver, and I sensed another imminent wave of tears, but it didn't come. Watching Lu Li's stoicism, I felt a sharp pang of grief, familiar yet somehow new to me. I was no stranger to mourning, but what I felt now was different from what I'd felt after the loss of my wife and daughter. Andrew Fielding was one of the few men of his century who might have answered some of the fundamental questions of human existence. To know that such a mind
had gone out of the world left me feeling hollow, as though my species were diminished in some profound and irrecoverable way.

  "What will happen to me now?" Lu Li asked quietly. "They send me back to China?"

  Not a chance, I thought. One reason Trinity was so secret was the belief held in some quarters that other countries might be at work on a similar device. With its history of aggressive technology theft, Communist China ranked high on that list. The NSA would never let a Chinese-born physicist who had been this close to the project return to her native land. In fact, I worried about her survival, but I could do little to protect her until I talked to the president.

  "They can't send you back," I assured her. "Don't worry about that."

  "Andy say the government do anything it want."

  I was about to answer when headlight beams shone through the foyer. A car was passing slowly by the house.

  "That's not true," I said. "Lu Li, I don't like saying this, but the best thing you can do right now is to cooperate with the NSA. The less trouble they see you making, the Jess they'll perceive you as a threat. Do you understand?"

  Her face tightened. "You say now I should let them kill my Andy and say nothing? Do nothing?"

  "We don't know that Andy was killed. And there's very little you can personally do right now. I want you to leave everything to me. I've called the president, and I could hear back from him at any time. He's in China now, of all places. Beijing."

  "I see on TV. Andy tell me you know this president."

  "I've met him. He was a friend of my brother's, and he appointed me to my job. And I promise you that one way or another I'll find the truth about Andrew's death. I owe him that. And more."

  Lu Li suddenly smiled through her anguish. "Andy was good man. Kind, funny man. And smart."

  "Very smart," I agreed, though words like smart meant little when applied to men like Andrew Fielding. Fielding had been a member of one of the smallest fraternities on the planet, those who truly understood the mysteries of quantum physics, a field reserved—as Fielding's Cambridge students often joked—for those students who were "too smart to be doctors."

  Rachel squeaked in surprise as a white ball of fur raced into the room and leapt into Lu Li's lap. The fur-ball was a small dog, a bichon frise. Lu Li smiled and vigorously stroked the bichon's neck.

  "Maya, Maya," she cooed, then murmured softly in singsong Cantonese.

  The bichon seemed anxious at the presence of strangers, but it did not bark. Its little brown eyes locked on me.

  "You know Maya, Dr. David?"

  "Yes. We've met."

  "Andy buy her for me. Six weeks ago. Maya my baby. My baby until God blesses Andy and me with ..."

  As she lapsed into silence, I realized that my sixty-three-year-old friend had been trying to have child with his forty-year-old wife.

  "I'm sorry,'" I said uselessly. "I'm so sorry."

  Rachel looked as though she wanted to speak, but there were times when even a gifted psychiatrist found herself at a loss for words. As Lu Li stared into space, my anxiety grew. If Fielding had suspected that he might be murdered, and he had voiced that fear to his wife, then the NSA might know he had done that. They almost certainly knew I was here now. If they were outside, they had probably photographed Rachel and would be trying to figure out what she was doing here.

  "Maya looks like she could use a walk," I said brightly.

  Lu Li started from her trance.

  "I'll be glad to take her out for you," I added.

  "No. Maya no need—"

  I cut her off with an upraised hand. "I think the air would do us all good."

  Lu Li stared at me for several moments. "Yes," she said finally. "Is good idea. Me inside all day."

  Looking around for something to write with, I saw a message pad by the telephone. I went to it and wrote, Do you have a portable tape recorder? Then I pulled off that sheet and wrote my cell phone number on the next page.

  When Lu Li read my question, she walked back to Fielding's study and returned with a Sony microcassette recorder, the type used for dictation. I put it in my pocket and led both women to the glass doors that opened onto the patio.

  Maya followed us out but stuck close to Lu Li, who attached a leash to the dog's collar. About a hundred meters through the woods lay the University of North Carolina's outdoor amphitheater. On two previous occasions. Fielding had taken me there to talk.

  "I know Andrew swept the house," I whispered to Lu Li, "but I still don't feel safe talking inside. I need to speak to Rachel alone for a few minutes. I want you to go back inside. Lock the doors, but leave Maya with us. We're going to walk through the woods to the amphitheater. We'll be back very soon. I have my cell phone, and I left the number on your message pad. If anything strange happens, call me immediately."

  Confusion and worry wrinkled Lu Li's face. "You need Maya?"

  "For cover. You understand? An excuse to walk out here."

  She nodded slowly, then knelt, whispered something to the dog, and retreated into the house. I picked up the whimpering bichon and walked swiftly across the backyard to a narrow path that led through the woods. Rachel struggled to keep up as branches began to pull at our clothes.

  "What are we doing?" she hissed.

  "Keep quiet. I have to talk to you, and I don't think we have long."

  I wasn't sure of the source of my fear, but I knew it ran deep. Without being aware of it, I had shifted the dog to my left hand and drawn my gun with my right.

  Chapter 7

  "Ritter's here," said Corelli, his voice sounding tense in Geli's headset. "He's already got the laser trained on the front window."

  "What's he hearing?"

  "Definite sounds, but no conversation. Like one person moving around the house. They could be in one of the back rooms."

  "Change position and put the laser on a back window. Hurry."

  "Right."

  Geli could hardly stay in her chair. Something was going down at the Fielding house, and she had only one way to know what it was. A minute passed, then Ritter's deeper voice said, "Nichts."

  "You're not getting anything in back?" she asked.

  "Nein."

  "They know where the bugs are, and they've plugged them."

  "Ahh," said Ritter. "How could they know that?"

  "Fielding."

  "That bastard," said Corelli. "He was always playing games with us."

  Geli nodded. Around Trinity, Fielding had acted like an absentminded professor, but he was the sharpest son of a bitch in the place.

  "They've probably left the house," Geli said. "Fielding and Tennant did that twice before. Walking Fielding's dog. I'm going to put a team in the woods."

  "Nein," said Ritter. “ Tennant will hear them."

  ''You have a better idea?"

  "I'll go alone."

  "Okay, but I'm setting up a perimeter. Tennant could be trying to run."

  "I don't think so. It's a stupid way to run. And Tennant's not stupid."

  "Why stupid?"

  "When you run, you don't take women with you. You move fast and light."

  Geli smiled to herself. "Tennant's not like you, Liebchen."

  Ritter laughed. "He's a man, isn't he?"

  "He's American and he was raised in the South. I knew guys like him in the army. Born heroes. They have this romantic streak. It gets a lot of them killed."

  "Like the English?" Ritter asked.

  Geli thought of Andrew Fielding. "Sort of. Now get going. Tell Corelli to cover the front."

  .”

  Geli got out of her chair and began to pace the narrow alley between the racks of electronic gear. She thought of calling John Skow again, but Skow didn't want to be bothered. Fine, She'd call him when Tennant bolted, then see what the smug bastard had to say about not keeping the leash too tight.

  Chapter 8

  I moved silently through the dark trees. Rachel sounded like a blind bear blundering along behind me. On a Manhattan street s
he probably maneuvered like a pro halfback, but the woods were alien to her. I slowed until she caught up, then told her to hold on to the back of my belt. She did.

  When we were fifty yards away from the house, I said, "Do you believe me about Fielding now?"

  "I believe you worked with him," Rachel said. "I'm not sure he was murdered. I don't think you are either."

  I stepped over a fallen log, then helped her over. "I know he was murdered. Only two people at Project Trinity opposed what was being done there. Fielding was one, and now he's dead. I'm the other."

  "Are you going to tell me about Trinity now?"

  "If you're willing to listen. I think you understand now that it could be dangerous for you."

  She sucked in her breath as briers raked her arm. "Go on."

  "When you came to my house today, I was making a videotape to give to my lawyer. He was to open it if something happened to me. I never finished it. And the truth is, I'm worried about seeing tomorrow morning alive."

  Rachel stopped in the overgrown track. "Why don't you just call the police? Lu Li clearly shares your suspicions, and I think there's enough circumstantial evidence to—"

  "City police can't investigate the NSA. And that's who oversees Trinity."

  "Call the FBI then."

  "That's like calling the FBI to investigate the CIA. There's so much ill will between those agencies that it would take weeks to get anything done. If you really want to help, become my videotape. Listen to what I have to tell you, then go home and keep it to yourself."

  "And if something happens to you?"

  "Call CNN and The New York Times and tell them everything you know. The sooner you tell it, the safer you'll be."

  "Why don't you do that? Tonight?"

  "Because I can't be sure I'm right. Because the president could be trying to reach me as we speak. And because, as juvenile as it may sound, this is a national security matter."

  Holding Lu Li's whimpering bichon in my left arm, I put my gun in my pocket and pulled Rachel forward. Forty yards on, I saw a deeper darkness ahead. The trees gave way like thinning ranks of soldiers, and then a man-made wall stopped me in my tracks. When my eyes adjusted, I saw the door I had known was there. I opened it with my free hand and led Rachel through. We emerged into a moonlit bowl, lined with cut stone.