The Footprints of God

by Greg Isle

  "Coffee's brewing,” Rachel said. "You're still awake?"

  "Sort of."

  She watched me like someone observing an animal during an experiment. "There's no food in your kitchen, nothing but rock-hard saltines. When was the last time you went to the market?"

  I couldn't remember. The last few weeks had been an endless parade of hours working with Fielding on experiments I barely understood.

  Rachel sat on the bed and put her fingers against my carotid artery. Her fingertips were cool.

  "I was like that for a while," she said, looking at her watch. Her lips moved slightly as she counted pulse beats. "After I lost my son. Not going to the market, I mean. Not paying bills. Not bathing. I guess it takes a man longer to get back to those kinds of things. In the end, I used those small chores to enforce some order in my life. It kept me from going completely mad."

  I felt my lips smile. I liked that she didn't let psychiatry get in the way of using words like mad. I also liked the way her fingers felt against my neck. I wanted to tell her something about her touch. It reminded me of someone, but I couldn't think who . . .

  "When's your birthday?" she asked.

  I couldn't remember.

  "David?"

  A black wave rolled over me, covering me in darkness

  I'm walking up a suburban sidewalk, studying the perfect houses in their perfect rows. It's Willow Street. I live on Willow—sleep on it, anyway—but it has little in common with the street I lived on as a boy. On Willow Street, I don't know my neighbors well, and some not at all. The NSA told me not to make friends, and that has turned out to be easy. On Willow Street, no one makes an effort. In Oak Ridge the houses were smaller, but I could name everyone who lived in them. My little neighborhood was a world unto itself, filled with faces I knew like those of my own family. On Willow Street the children stay inside more than outside. The fathers don't cut the lawns, hired men do. In Oak Ridge, the fathers cared for their lawns like little fiefdoms, spent hours discussing various mowers and fertilizers with each other.

  I walk around a curve and see my own house. White with green trim. From the outside it looks like a home but it's never felt like home to me. A black Labrador retriever lopes across the street without its master, a rare sight here. A Lexus rolls toward me, slowing as it passes. I wave at its driver, a tall, imperious woman. She stares at me as if I'm a dangerous interloper. I cross the street and walk up to my front door.

  My hand goes into my pocket for my key, then to the doorknob. I insert something into the lock, but. . . it's not my key. It's thin and metallic, like a file. I jiggle it in the lock. There's a moment of resistance, then the lock gives. I open the door, slip inside, and quickly close it behind me.

  My hand digs into my other pocket, brushing against something cold. My fingers close around wood, and my hand emerges gripping the butt of a gun, an automatic. I don't recognize the weapon. From my other pocket I withdraw a perforated silencer and slowly screw it onto the gun barrel. It seats itself with satisfying finality. From the hallway, I hear a tinkle of glass. Someone's in the kitchen. I take one careful step forward, testing the floorboards, then begin to walk—

  I snapped awake in panic and jerked my pistol from my waistband. A revolver, not an automatic. And no silencer. I wanted to call out to Rachel, but I suppressed the urge. In a single motion I rolled off the bed, landed on my feet, and moved to the bedroom door.

  At first I heard only a soft humming in a female register. The tune sounded like "California" by Joni Mitchell.

  The hardwood floor of the hallway creaked.

  I drew a silent breath and held it.

  The floor creaked again. Someone was passing my door from right to left. I closed my eyes and waited. Another creak. I counted slowly to ten. Then I reached down with my free hand and slowly turned the knob. When it had turned far enough, I yanked open the door, leapt into the hall, and aimed my .38 to the left.

  A long-haired blond man stood six feet away, his arms extended through the kitchen door. I couldn't see his hands, but I knew they held a gun.

  I pulled the trigger.

  There was no boom or kick. I'd forgotten to cock the hammer, so the double-action trigger only went halfway back. As I jerked it home, the blond man whirled and a silenced automatic whipped into view, its bore black and bottomless. Then my trigger broke, and an orange flash illuminated the hallway. I blinked against it, and when I opened my eyes, the blond man was gone.

  A woman was screaming an ice pick through my eardrums.

  I looked down. The blond man lay on the floor, blood pouring from his skull. I moved forward and stepped on the wrist of the hand holding the gun. The screaming wouldn't stop. I glanced to my right. Rachel was standing with her back against the sink, her face deathly gray, her mouth open wide.

  "Stop it!" I yelled. "Stop!"

  Her mouth remained open, but the scream died.

  I pulled the automatic from the blond man's hand, then checked his brachial pulse. Thready. The bullet had entered the skull just above the right ear. His gray eyes were glazed, both pupils fixed and dilated. Leaning down, I saw exposed brain matter. He wouldn't last five minutes.

  I sensed more than saw Rachel moving. Looking up, I saw her holding the kitchen telephone, preparing to dial.

  "Put that down."

  "I'm calling for paramedics!"

  "He doesn't have a chance."

  "You don't know that!"

  "Of course I do. Examine him, if you don't believe me." I straightened up. "Even if he did, we couldn't risk it."

  ? What do you mean?"

  "Who do you think this is? Some street punk? A crackhead breaking into my house in broad daylight? Look at him."

  Rachel glanced down for perhaps a second. "I don't know who he is. Do you know him?"

  As I stared down at the ruined young face, I realized that I did. At least I'd seen him before. Not often, but I had passed him in the parking lot at Trinity, a tall, lanky blond with the look of someone you'd meet on a mountain trail in Europe. Like Geli Bauer, he had the physique of a climber, or an elite soldier.

  "I do know him. He works for Geli Bauer."

  Rachel squinted in confusion. "Who's that?"

  "She's Trinity. She's Godin. She's the NSA." I laid both guns on the kitchen counter. "Someone ordered her to take me out too. You, too, apparently."

  Something in me still resisted the idea that Peter Godin had ordered my death. Yet nothing at Trinity happened without his approval.

  "We have to call the police," Rachel said. "We'll be all right. He was about to shoot me. This was self-defense, or justifiable homicide, whatever they call it."

  "The police? You can't call local police to investigate the NSA. I told you that."

  "Why not? He was going to kill me. That's a state crime."

  I almost laughed. "The NSA is the largest and most secret intelligence agency in the United States. Everything they do is classified. It would take a court order to get a cop past the front gate at Fort Meade."

  "This isn't Fort Meade."

  "To the NSA, it is. Look, until I talk to the president, we're on our own. Do you understand?"

  She looked down at the growing pool of blood. "Maybe he is a street punk."

  "Don't you get it? This is why they stole my file from your office!"

  "What?"

  "They already knew they were going to kill you."

  She opened her mouth but said nothing.

  "Otherwise they would have photocopied the file and left it in place. They wanted nothing left in your office for the Durham police to connect you to the project."

  She was shaking her head, but my logic was difficult to refute. I stuck the automatic into my waistband and picked up my .38.

  "We have to get out of here. Fast. There could be others close by."

  Her eyes went wide. "Others?"

  Suddenly I saw it all. "The XSA taps my phones. When they heard Ewan McCaskell leave his message, they knew I hadn't sp
oken to the president yet. That's all they were waiting for. I was too excited to see the implications."

  I grasped her hand. It was cold and limp. "We have to run, Rachel. Right now. If we don't, we'll die here."

  "Run where?"

  "Anywhere. Nowhere. We have to disappear."

  "No. We haven't done anything wrong."

  "That doesn't matter." I pointed at the man on the floor and saw that he was no longer breathing. "Do you think that corpse is one of my hallucinations?"

  "You killed him," she said in the voice of a child.

  "And I'd do it again. He was about to fire a bullet into your head."

  She wobbled on her feet. I steadied her, then led her to the guest bedroom where I'd lain unconscious only minutes ago.

  "Stay here. I have to get something." I tried to put my .38 in her hand, but she recoiled. "Keep it," I insisted, closing her fingers around it. "If you leave this house alone, you'll be killed."

  She stared hollow-eyed at me.

  I took the silenced automatic from my waistband and checked to make sure the safety was off. "Promise me you won't leave."

  ''I won't leave," she said dully.

  I left the guestroom and raced upstairs. My bedroom was on the left side of the landing. On the right was a bedroom I used for storage. I pulled an old chair into the closet of that room and stood on it. With my arms stretched high, I could just reach the plywood panel that gave access to the attic. I pushed out the wooden square, then lifted myself by main strength and wedged my body through the space.

  Standing half-erect to avoid the roofing nails jutting down from above, I balanced on two rafters and looked around to get my bearings. Enough light was showing through the eaves and vents to show my way. I crept twenty feet to my left and knelt. Lying on pink fiberglass insulation were a hammer and crowbar I'd left there four weeks ago, as though dropped carelessly. I picked them up and moved quickly to an area floored with quarter-inch plywood.

  Jamming the crowbar into a seam between two pieces of wood, I hammered it deeper, then leaned heavily on the bar. The plywood splintered. I shoved the end of the bar through the resulting hole, then jerked upward, ripping open a two-foot section of wood. From the dark cavity below I removed a small nylon gym bag and unzipped it. The light filtering through the eaves illuminated the rectangular outlines of a passport and two thick bundles. The bundles were stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Twenty thousand dollars' worth.

  Five weeks ago, when Fielding told me I needed to cache a bag like this, I'd laughed at him. But he had known this day would come. Zipping the bag shut, I crab-walked across the rafters to the access hole, then dropped the bag onto the closet floor. My arms quivered from strain as I lowered myself back down to the chair and pulled the plywood square back over the opening.

  When my feet hit the floor, an image of Rachel running from the house in panic filled my mind. I grabbed the bag and ran downstairs.

  She was still sitting on the bed, her eyes blank with shock.

  "Time to go," I told her. "Are you ready?"

  She blinked but said nothing.

  I took her free hand and pulled her to her feet. "I need you to keep it together for five minutes. After that, you can collapse if you need to. Here we go."

  I led her through the hall and kitchen to the laundry room, which opened into the garage. Leaving her there, I retrieved Fielding's box from the back door, then returned and took my .38 back from her.

  "Hold this," I said, giving her the box. "Wait here till I call for you."

  Without pausing long enough for fear to take hold, I threw open the door from the house to the garage and charged through with the automatic extended, traversing it right and left to cover all angles of fire.

  The garage looked empty.

  I made a quick circuit of my Acura, then dropped to my knees and looked beneath it. "Come on!" I shouted. "Hurry!"

  Rachel's shoes hissed on the smooth cement. I opened the passenger door for her, then took Fielding's box and set it on the backseat. "If anything bad's going to happen, it's going to happen right now," I said, getting behind the wheel. "Get down in your seat."

  She slid to the floor. The top of her head showed above the doorframe. I pushed it down, then started the engine and put the car in reverse.

  "Stay down."

  I touched the remote control clipped to my visor. The garage door motor groaned above us, and the wide white door began to rise. With the killer's gun clenched in my hand, I watched for the silhouette of legs in the growing rectangle of sunlight.

  I saw nothing.

  The instant the garage door cleared roof height, I gunned the engine. The Acura shot backward over the cement and into blinding sunlight. I hit the remote to lower the garage door, then spun the wheel left. I didn't touch the brake until the car was pointed up Willow Street.

  "What's happening?" Rachel cried, alarmed by my sudden stop.

  "Stay down!"

  I'd planned to drive calmly if the street was clear, but as we stopped, I could almost feel an unseen marksman taking aim. I shifted into drive, floored the accelerator, and fishtailed up Willow, leaving six feet of rubber on the pavement behind us.

  Chapter 13

  In the Trinity building's control center, Geli Bauer stood absolutely still and spoke into her headset.

  "We heard a shot. In Tennant's house."

  "Isn't that what you expected?" Skow asked.

  Idiot. "No. Ritter had a silenced weapon."

  "And Tennant was carrying his gun last night."

  "Right."

  Skow processed this in silence. "That doesn't mean Ritter failed."

  "No. In fact, I can't imagine a scenario like that."

  "Good. What do you want to do?"

  Geli had always pegged Skow as a theoretical warrior, and now that bullets were flying, he was looking to her for guidance. "I pulled my other assets back so nothing would look suspicious. But if I don't get confirmation of success within five minutes, I'm putting in a team to check things out."

  "You have cover?"

  "A carpet-service truck."

  "Is there any chance the shot might have been reported to local police?"

  "Some. If a patrol car shows up before we've cleared the scene—"

  "Use your NSA credentials to quarantine the house," Skow finished, showing some balls at last. "Then contact me immediately."

  "I will."

  "I'm out."

  "Wait."

  "What is it?"

  Geli was tired of being in the dark. "Tennant asked me about the pocket watch."

  "What pocket watch?"

  Her bullshit detector pegged the meter. "I checked the storage room this morning. Fielding's personal effects. Everything was there except his pocket watch."

  Skow was silent for a time. Then he spoke almost to himself, "Fielding must have told him something about it."

  "You want to tell me something about it?"

  "That knowledge isn't necessary for you to do your job."

  Anger flashed through her. "If it's on Tennant's mind, it may be important."

  "It is important. Just not to you. Keep me posted on the situation at the house."

  Skow hung up.

  Geli sat in her chair. She hated the mushroom treatment, but that was the nature of intelligence work. Keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit. She understood the value of compartmentalizing knowledge. And for the past two years, she hadn't really needed to know what the scientists were working on. But things had changed.

  Since the project's suspension, Peter Godin had been spending a great deal of time away, supposedly visiting his corporate headquarters in California. Geli no longer believed that. Sometimes Godin took Ravi Nara with him, and that made no sense. Nara had nothing to do with Godin Supercomputing, and Godin didn't even like the neurologist.

  Now Godin had dropped off the face of the earth. Had Fielding's pocket watch gone with him? How could the watch be so important? When Fielding first
came to work at Trinity, an NSA engineer had disassembled the pocket watch to be sure it contained no data-recording device. He'd pronounced the watch clean. It was disassembled again this year, on a day chosen at random. The watch was clean again. So why had it been taken from the storeroom? Geli pictured the watch in her mind. A heavy gold case, scarred from use. There was a chain attached, and a crystal on the end of the chain. But the crystal was transparent. Nothing could be hidden inside that. At least nothing she knew about.

  Her direct line to the NSA flashed red. She routed the call to her headset. "Bauer."

  "Jim Conklin here." Conklin was her main contact in Crypto City at Fort Meade.

  "What is it?"

  "We're still running those intercepts on the pay phones around Andrew Fielding's house. All pay phones within three miles, twenty-four hours a day. You never rescinded the order."

  "I never meant to."

  "Well, with all the intercepts we're doing for the antiterror effort, we're running a few days behind on screening for voiceprint matches."

  Geli's heartbeat quickened. "You have something?"

  "Andrew Fielding made a call four days ago from a service-station convenience store. I think you'll want to hear it."

  "Can you send me the audio file?"

  "Sure. I'll use Webworld." Webworld was the NSA's secure intranet, and Geli was one of the few outsiders linked to it. "You want the spectrograms of the matches?"

  "No. I know Fielding's voice."

  "Two minutes."

  Geli clicked off, looked at her watch, then said, "JPEG, Fielding, Andrew." A photo of Fielding filled her computer screen. The white-haired Englishman had an angular, handsome face that bloomed red in the cheeks. Fielding had liked his gin. But it was his eyes that got you. Sparkling blue, they held a childish mischief that almost blinded you to the deep intelligence beneath it. As Geli looked into those eyes, she realized how formidable an adversary Fielding was. He might be dead, but he was still controlling events.

  An audio file icon popped onto the corner of her screen. The NSA was nothing if not efficient. She was about to open it when her headset beeped an alert code from her team in the carpet-service van.