The Footprints of God (28 page)

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 him 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 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 cafe 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 reservations 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.

"I was thinking," I said. "If you don't have any problem with it, we should travel as husband and wife."

She turned and looked at me. "Do I look like I have a problem with it?"

"Good. We'll give your friend married names for the reservations. Should we use Jewish names?"

"No. You wouldn't fool an Israeli for five seconds. I'm a good Jewish girl who broke down and married a goy. I'll do all the talking."

She picked up her shirt off the bedspread and walked back into the bathroom. I heard the wet towel land on the shower rod; then she returned wearing only the shirt. Its tail hung halfway down her thighs, but there was nothing beneath, and it left little to the imagination.

"I have to lie down," she said. "Wake me up when you're ready to go."

I looked at my watch. It was 5:45 p.m. Letting her fall asleep would be a mistake, but it was probably better to wait for dark. I didn't think I could get up yet either. I'd had no real sleep for two days, and I ached in muscles I hadn't used for years.

Rachel pulled back her bedcovers, climbed under them, and lay on her stomach, her face turned toward me. Her dark eyes were cloudy with fatigue, but there was a trace of a smile on her lips.

"I can hardly think," she said. "You?"

"I'm barely here."

"Do you know why I'm really here?"

"Because you're afraid of dying?"

"No. Because I'm more afraid of not living than I am of dying. Does that make sense?"

"Some."

She slid deeper under the covers. "You don't understand. My son is dead. My marriage is over. What do I have to lose?"

Rachel had always surprised me, but maybe this time she was delirious. "I'm sure your patients—"

"If I died tomorrow, my patients would get another shrink. I sit in that room for days on end, listening to people who are depressed, afraid, angry, paranoid. I listen to other people's lives and try to make sense of them. Then I go home and write about them for the journals."

She smiled strangely. "But today is different. Today a man I diagnosed as delusional has pulled me into his delusion. I'm Alice through the looking glass. People are trying to kill me, but I'm still alive. And now I'm going to fly to Israel
because
of a hallucination. Because a man I actually respect has suddenly decided he's Jesus."

"You need sleep."

She shook her head, her eyes never leaving my face. "Sleep won't change how I feel about this."

In that moment I wasn't sure what she was referring to. I slid down the headboard, rested my head on my elbow, and looked across the space between the beds. Her shoulders were dark against the white sheet, and her damp hair spilled across her eyes.

"What are you really talking about?" I asked.

Her eyes looked through mine the way they sometimes had in her office, as though all the walls I had put up since my family's death were nothing to her. Then, very deliberately, she smiled.

"I have no idea. Why don't you go take a shower?"

The look in her eyes spoke more directly than her mouth. I got up and went to the bathroom, stripping off my dirty clothes as I went. After two days of running for my life, the steaming water felt more nourishing than food. My hands and neck stung from brier scratches, but my muscles began to relax under the spray. As I washed my hair with shampoo from the tiny hotel bottle, I thought of Rachel's dark hair spread over the pillow, and I hurried to finish. She had to be as exhausted as I was, and sleep would be hard to fight. I toweled off in the bathroom, then tied the towel around my waist and walked out to the space between the beds.

Rachel still lay on her stomach, but now her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and regular. I looked down at her, wishing she had managed to stay awake, but I couldn't blame her. She had seen too much in the past two days, and run too far. I pulled off my towel, then sat on the edge of my bed and started drying my hair. After a few moments, I wanted only to fall back on the bed and sleep until I could sleep no more.