Greg Iles - The Footprints of God

"You're right. We need fake passports."

She laughed bitterly. "You say that like 'We need to pick up some bread and milk on the way home.'"

"I have eighteen thousand dollars left. There has to be a way to get fake passports with that."

"Fake passports won't cut it in Israel. Those people deal with terrorists every day."

"Being jailed in Israel is better than being murdered here."

Rachel leaned back in her seat and sighed. "You've got a point."

"I'm going to New York. With eighteen grand, I can find a fake passport there. I know it."

"What about me?"

"You can go. You can not go. It's up to you."

She nodded as though she'd expected this. "I see. What will happen to me if I don't?"

I thought about Geli Bauer. "You want me to lie to you?"

Rachel put the truck in gear and pulled onto the northbound on-ramp, accelerating fast.

"New York?" I asked.

"No."

"Where, then?"

She looked at me, her face less guarded than I'd ever seen it. "Do you want me to come with you or not?"

I did. More than that, I felt she was supposed to go with me. "I want you with me, Rachel. For a lot of rea¬sons."

She laughed dryly. "That's good, because you couldn't make it without me. Passing out by yourself in the street isn't very healthy. If I'd left you back there in the truck, you'd be dead now."

"I know that. Are you coming?"

She passed a tanker truck and eased back into the right lane. "If you want to go to Israel, we have to go to Washington, D.C., first."

I stiffened in my seat. All my doubts about her had returned in a nauseating rush. "Why Washington?"

"Because I know someone there who can help us."

"Who?"

I wanted to probe her eyes for deception, but she kept them on the road. "I treated a lot of women when I practiced in New York. Mostly women, actually."

"And?"

"Some of them had problems with their husbands."

"And?"

"Sometimes the courts gave husbands access to their children despite evidence of physical abuse. Some of the wives were so afraid of what might happen that they felt they had no alternative but to run."

I felt a tingle in my palms. "You're talking about cus¬tody situations. Kidnapping your own children."

She nodded. "It's not difficult to hide from the police if you're alone. But with children it's tough. You have to enroll them in school, get medical care, things like that." She glanced at me, her face taut. "These women have a network. Sort of an underground railroad. That takes resources."

"New identities," I said.

"Yes. For a child, the foundation of a new identity is a birth certificate. For an adult, a social security card and a passport. I don't know many details, but I know that the people who help these women are in Washington."

"These women buy fake passports in Washington, D.C.?"

Rachel shook her head. "They're not fake. They're real."

"Real? What do you mean?"

She cut her eyes at me, reluctant to give up what she knew. "There's a woman who works in one of the pass¬port offices in D.C. She had a problem with her husband years ago. She's sympathetic to the cause. I don't know who she is, but I know someone I can call. A former patient."

"The cause," I said. "This is still going on?"

"Yes. I sent a woman from Chapel Hill to them. A doctor's wife."

"Wow."

"There's only one serious problem I can see," Rachel said.

"What's that?"

"You're a man. I don't know if they'll do anything to help you."

When the security door buzzed open this time, Geli knew it was Skow. She also knew it was bad news, because she hadn't been off the phone with him long, and the NSA man had sounded too exhausted to get out of bed. She spun her chair and saw him striding toward her, for the first time wearing something besides his Brooks Brothers suit. Today it was khakis and an MIT sweatshirt. Skow's eyes had dark bags under them, but he still looked more like a university administrator than an expert on infor¬mation warfare.

"You look like shit," Geli told him.

"I feel worse."

"You wouldn't be here if this was good news."

"You're right. Ravi Nara called me as soon as you and I hung up." Skow flopped into the chair behind her. "Give me one of your cigarettes."

"You don't smoke."

"Oh, Geli, the things you don't know about me."

She shook a Gauloise from her pack, lit it, and passed it to him.

Skow took a deep drag and exhaled without cough¬ing. "These are nasty."

"Where did Nara call from?"

Skow shook his head. "Everything in time. I want you to listen to me now."

She crossed her legs and waited.

"You and I have always held back a lot from each other. But now is the time to come clean. Or as clean as we can."

"I'm listening."

"Godin has always compartmentalized everything at Trinity, so I don't know what you know. You know we're working on artificial intelligence, but do you know exactly how?"

"Tell me."

"We're using advanced MRI technology to make mol¬ecular scans of the brain, then trying to load those scans into a revolutionary type of supercomputer."

"Go on."

"Our goal is to create artificial intelligence not by reverse-engineering the brain, but by digitally copying it. The result, if it works, is not a computer that works like a human brain, but a computer that for all practical purposes is a specific person's brain. You understand?"

Geli had thought the MRI scans were being used to study the brain's architecture, not as the actual basis of a machine, "The principle sounds fairly straightforward."

Skow gave a hollow laugh. "In theory, it is. And it will be accomplished, sooner or later. But the difference between sooner and later is critically important to you and me."

"Why?"

"Because Peter Godin is dying."

Something fluttered in her chest at this confirmation of an unacknowledged suspicion. Images of Godin flashed behind her eyes: facial swelling, his drooping mouth, his clumsy gait.

"Dying how?"

"Peter has a brain tumor. Ravi Nara discovered it six months ago, when the original scans for the neuromodels were made. That's why you haven't been able to con¬tact Godin these past two days. When he's not working directly on Trinity, he's under treatment."

Geli shifted in her chair. "How close to death is he?"

"It's a matter of hours now. A day at most. The tumor was inoperable even at the early stage where Ravi found it. Peter thought if the government knew he had a termi¬nal cancer, it wouldn't commit the resources necessary to make Trinity a reality. So he and Ravi made a deal. Ravi would keep the tumor secret and treat Peter with steroids to keep him functioning long enough to complete Trinity. I hate to think what Ravi asked for in return."

"Nara's a weasel."

"Agreed. The point is, there's been a hidden agenda at Trinity from the beginning. Peter Godin has been build¬ing Trinity to save his own life."

"What do you mean?"

"If the Trinity computer were to be completed before he died, Peter's neuromodel could be loaded into it. His body would die, but he would continue to exist in the computer as Peter Godin."

Geli blinked in disbelief. "There's no way in hell I believe that."

Skow laughed. "Not only is it possible, it's inevitable. It's just not going to happen this week."

"If that's true, then couldn't Godin's neuromodel or whatever be loaded into the computer after his death as well? Whenever Trinity is finished?"

"Of course. But in that scenario Peter would have to die without being certain it would happen. He'd have to die the way every other human being in history has. And he'd have to trust us to resurrect him in the machine."

"I see." She was trying to absorb the implications of Godin's imminent death. "So why exactly are you here?"