Greg Iles - The Footprints of God

"That's why I wanted you. I need to go there."

Rachel looked at me in astonishment. I could almost read her mind. What could I possibly want from the Mossad, Israel 's ruthless intelligence service?

"You got money?" asked the driver.

"How does a hundred dollars American sound?"

"I see better than I hear."

Rachel got out the money.

The driver nodded. "Get in."

I hadn't even got the back door closed when he threw the car into gear and roared away from the curb.

WHITE SANDS

Geli knew she was watching the old man die. She desper¬ately needed a cigarette. Despite the antiseptic bite of the air, there was an odor of death in the room. She couldn't define it, but she knew it well. She'd smelled it in field hospitals and other, darker places. Perhaps evolution had sensitized the human olfactory system to the scent of approaching death. In a world of communicable diseases, it would certainly be a survival advantage. Geli had once smelled her own face burning, so she had no illusions about mortality. But witnessing Godin's final struggle was getting to her in a way she had not expected.

There were periods when he couldn't swallow, though he still spoke fairly well. He'd been talking wistfully about his dead wife, as he might to a daughter. Geli wasn't sure how to handle this kind of intimacy. From her third birth¬day onward, her father had treated her like a military draftee. Horst Bauer's idea of a heart-to-heart talk was sit¬ting down together to make a daily timetable. She put up with this until adolescence. Then open warfare broke out in the Bauer house. When Geli began to display a sexual adventurousness similar to her father's, the general lost all control. She knew that at some primal level, he wanted her sexually, and that gave her power over him. She paraded in front of him half-dressed, flirted shamelessly with his fellow officers-men twice her age-and seduced her psychiatrists. The resulting beatings only reinforced her will to fight.

Geli was sixteen when she discovered her father had a mistress-several, in fact-and finally solved the mystery of her mother. Eighteen years of infidelity and violence had turned a loving woman into a pathetic shell of her former self, a lost soul who lived only for her next drink. When Geli confronted the general about this, he looked her in the eye and told her she'd discovered the weakness of strong men. Men of great capacities required more than one woman to keep their passions at bay, and the sooner she accepted that truth, the better off she would be. That argument ended as so many had, with a beating.

Yet when Geli arrived at university, she found that her father's words seemed to hold true for strong women as well. No man could satisfy her lust for intense experi¬ence for long. The day she graduated-with double majors in Arabic and economics-she went to a shop¬ping mall recruiting station and enlisted in the army as a private.

Nothing could have enraged her father more. With that single act Geli had rejected all his power and influ¬ence, embarrassed him before his fellow West Pointers, and followed in his footsteps. The general began to drink heavily and entered a period of instability that quickly culminated with his wife's suicide. Geli had never known what finally broke her mother's spirit. One more mistress? One too many full-fisted blows? But she never forgave her father for it.

By contrast, Peter Godin had lived faithfully with his wife for forty-seven years, even though the union had produced no children. As the old man rambled on about a trip he had taken to Japan, Geli thought of Skow and his plan to blame Godin for Andrew Fielding's death.

"Sir?" she said, interrupting the old man's reverie.

Godin looked up, his blue eyes apologetic. "I've been running on, haven't I? I'm sorry, Geli. It keeps my mind off the pain."

"It's not that. I want to tell you something."

"Yes?"

"Don't trust John Skow. He's the one who put Nara up to killing you. Skow thinks Trinity is going to fail, and he's been planning to blame it on you."

Godin smiled distantly. "I know that. I'm sure your father is part of the same plan."

"Then why don't you do something about it?"

"When the computer reaches Trinity state, they'll be powerless. Until then, I have you to protect me."

"But if you don't trust them, why did you use them?"

"Because they're predictable. Even in their betrayals. Their greed makes them so. That's the reality of the human animal."

"What about me? Why do you trust me to protect you? Because you pay me well?"

"No. I've watched you for two years now. I know you hate your father, and I know why. I know what you did in Iraq. You don't shrink from difficult jobs, and you've never betrayed your uniform-unlike your father. I also know that you admire me. We're kindred spirits, you and I. I have no daughter, and in a way, you have no father. And my gut tells me that if General Bauer walked in here to kill me, you'd stop him with a bullet."

Geli wondered if this was true. "But why hire both of us?"

"When Horst told me about you, I had a feeling he was trying to patch things up with you. I was wrong."

Her hand flew to her pistol. The Bubble's hatch had popped open with a hiss of escaping air. John Skow walked in wearing an immaculate suit, every hair in place. He didn't look like a man worried about his future.

"Hello, Geli," he said.

Godin's blue eyes tracked the NSA man across the room. "Search him."

Geli threw Skow against the Plexiglas wall and searched him from head to toe. He was clean.

"Well, that was fun," Skow said. "Can I do you now?"

She wondered what kind of game Skow was playing. He would not be here if the cards were not stacked in his favor.

"Hello, Peter," he said. "We have something of a situ¬ation on our hands. Tennant has gone public."

Godin's face went into spasm. It was difficult to watch, but when the pain subsided, the drooping cheek had regained its tone. He fixed Skow with a gaze of elec¬trifying intensity.

"What did Tennant do?"

"He escaped from Hadassah, went to a public com¬puter, and sent a letter to the top computer facilities in the world. He told them all about Trinity. Fielding's death, the attempts on his life, everything."

Godin closed his eyes. "The technology?"

"He revealed enough to convince the world that he's telling the truth. Enough to put countries like Japan within three years of their own Trinity computer. He told them about this facility. I have no idea how he found out about White Sands. Probably from Fielding."

Godin sighed deeply. "I handled Tennant wrong. I should have talked to him… reasoned with him."

Skow edged closer to the bed. Geli kept her hand on her pistol. She could put two slugs in Skow's back before the NSA man closed the distance to Godin.

"We're in a difficult spot, Peter. Here's what I sug¬gest-"

"To hell with what you suggest," Godin muttered, struggling upright in the bed. "You've treated me like a fool from the beginning, but you're about to find out how wrong you are."

Godin picked up the phone beside his bed and pressed a single button.

"Who are you calling?" Skow asked, his face still confident.

"You'll see. Hello? This is Peter Godin. I need to speak to the president. It's a matter of national security… What's that?… The code is seven three four nine four zero two. Yes, I'll wait."

Skow paled. "Peter-"

"Shut up." Godin glanced at Geli, then spoke in a powerful voice. "Mr. President, this is Peter Godin speaking."

Geli had never heard such authority before. Her father's fabled command presence was as nothing com¬pared to it. Godin had announced his identity to the commander in chief as if saying, Mr. President, this is Albert Einstein speaking.