Greg Iles - The Footprints of God

"Why not?"

"My father turned his back on God when he was seven years old."

"Why so young?"

"He turned seven inside a concentration camp."

Something inside me went cold.

Her gaze became unfocused, as though she were looking years into the past. "My father saw his father murdered in front of him. It wasn't a normal event, even by camp standards. The Allies were approaching, and the SS guards were liquidating the prisoners. One guard invented a game with his small work detail. He killed one prisoner a day. He tried to get the starving prisoners to kill each other and offered them survival if they would. My grandfather refused, of course. He'd been a surgeon in Berlin. He'd met Freud, corresponded with Jung."

My mind spun as Rachel's career choice came into perspective.

"The guard beat my grandfather to death in front of his little boy-my father. My father decided then that a God who allowed what he'd seen deserved curses, not prayers."

I wanted to say something, but what words would mean anything?

"He was one of the lucky ones allowed to emigrate to America. He was taken in by distant relatives in Brooklyn." Rachel smiled sadly. "Uncle Milton was a locksmith. My father's refusal to worship angered him, but Milton knew the boy had been through a lot. When he came of age, my father changed his name to White, moved to Queens, and stopped seeing his family, though he did send them money. He married a gentile who cared nothing for religion, and they raised me in a secular house."

I listened in amazement. You saw a face on an American street, or in an office, and you had no idea that a tragic epic lay behind it.

"I always felt like an outsider because of that. All my friends went to church or synagogue. I got curious. When I was seventeen, I sought out my Uncle Milton. He told me everything. After that… I embraced my heritage."

Many small mysteries of Rachel's personality sud¬denly made sense. Her severe dress, her professional dis¬tance, her abhorrence of violence…

"The thing is," she went on, "I think I became Jewish more out of emotional and political identification than a desire to do God's will."

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"Of course there is. If you ask me what I really think about God, it has nothing to do with the Torah or the Talmud. It has to do with what I've seen in my own life."

"What do you really think?"

She folded her hands on her lap. "I believe that to create means to make something that didn't exist before. If God is perfect, then the only way he can truly create is to make something separate from himself. So by defini¬tion, his creation must be imperfect. You see? If it were perfect, it would be God."

"Yes."

"I believe that for human beings to be distinct from God, we must be able to make our own choices. Free will, right? And unless bad choices resulted in real pain, free will would have no meaning. That's why we have such evil in the world. I don't know what religion that adds up to, but whatever it is, that's what I believe."

"That's a good explanation for the world as we find it. But it doesn't address the central mystery. Why should God feel compelled to create anything at all?"

"I don't think we'll ever know that."

"We might. Our sun is going to burn for another five billion years or so. Even if the universe ends by collaps¬ing inward on itself-the Big Crunch-the earliest that could happen is about twenty billion years from now. If we don't destroy ourselves, we'll have plenty of time to answer that question. Maybe all questions."

She smiled. "You and I will never know."

Looking into her dark eyes, I realized just how little I knew about her. "You're not nearly as conventional as you pretend to be. I wish you could have talked to Fielding."

"What did he believe about God?"

"Fielding had a big problem with evil. He was raised a Christian, but he said that neither Judaism nor Christianity had ever faced evil head-on."

"What did he mean?"

"He'd recite three statements: 'God is all powerful. God is all good. Evil exists.' You can logically reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three."

Rachel nodded thoughtfully.

"Fielding thought the Eastern religions were the only truly monotheistic ones, because they admit that evil flows from God, rather than trying to blame a lesser figure like Satan."

"And you?" she asked. "Where do you think evil comes from?"

"The human heart."

"The heart pumps blood, David."

"You know what I mean. The psyche. The dark well where primitive instincts mix with human intelligence. When you look at the atrocities man is capable of, it's difficult to imagine a divine plan behind any of it. I mean, look what happened to your grandfather."

Rachel gripped my arm and looked at me with almost desperate urgency. "On the day my grandfather was murdered, there was a moment when he could have killed that guard. They were alone at a rock quarry, one guard and three prisoners. The Americans were only a day away. But he didn't do it."

"Why not?" I asked, stunned by her passion.

"I think he knew something that we've forgotten."

"What?"

"That if you take up the weapon of your enemy, you become like him. Jesus knew that. Gandhi, too."

"Even with your son standing there beside you? Needing your protection? You turn the other cheek and sacrifice yourself?"

"You don't commit murder," Rachel said firmly. "If my grandfather had killed that guard, he and my father might have been executed that night. We can't know the future. That's why what I did yesterday shook me so badly. I picked up your gun and shot a fellow human being. What did I really do when I did that?"

"You saved my life. Yours, too."

"For a while."

I squeezed her hand tight. "We're alive, Rachel. And I believe I have something very important to do before I die."

"I know you do."

A male flight attendant appeared in the aisle beside us. I didn't want to look up, so I motioned for Rachel to turn.

"Yes?" Rachel asked in a sleepy voice.

"Are you going to want dinner tonight?"

She looked back at me, and I nodded. "Yes," she said. "Thank you."

The flight attendant glanced at me, then walked away.

Rachel was holding her breath. "What do you think?"

"I don't know. It seemed odd, but maybe he was checking to see if we were going to sleep through din¬ner. "

She shook her head. "I can't do this."

"Yes, you can. We're fine."

"What about the Tel Aviv airport?"

"We'll make it through."

"You don't know that."

I touched her cheek and spoke with conviction I had not known was in me. "I do know. There's something waiting for me in Jerusalem."

"What?"

"An answer.”

WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO

Ravi Nara revved the throttle of his Honda ATV and drove toward what Godin's technical staff was deluded enough to call the hospital. The New Mexico air parched his throat, and the scorching sun left the neurol¬ogist so drained that he tried to stay indoors as much as possible. A white-coated technician crossed his path on foot and raised an arm in greeting. Ravi braked angrily and drove on.

It had taken all his nerve to telephone John Skow, even with the scrambled cell phone the NSA man had given him. But with Godin close to death, he'd had to take the risk. Skow had made it clear that if Godin died before Trinity became a reality, all their careers-and maybe their lives-could be destroyed. Zach Levin, Godin's chief engineer, had predicted that the Trinity prototype could go fully operational in seven to ten days. But that estimate assumed the continued participation of Godin himself. Ravi knew he'd be lucky to keep the old man alive for another twenty-four hours.