The Footprints of God (36 page)

"Are you a doctor?" the tech asked, noticing her expression.

"Yes."

His eyes softened. "I'm sorry."

As he reached to shut off the machine, Rachel saw a theta wave appear on the screen.

"Wait!" she cried, pointing.

"I see it."

The theta waves increased steadily in amplitude. Then some beta waves appeared.

"He's
dreaming,"
Rachel said, hardly believing it. "Could he only be asleep?"

The tech pinched David's arm. There was no response. He leaned down to one ear and yelled, "Wake up!"

Nothing.

"He's not sleeping," the tech said thoughtfully. "But those thetas are definitely increasing in strength."

"What do you think is happening?"

"This guy's definitely in alpha coma. But his brain is doing something. What, I don't know." The tech walked to the door, then looked back at Rachel. "I'm going to leave the machine connected and get a neurologist down here. Okay?"

"Thank you."

She sat alone beside the bed, her hands shaking as she watched the screen. Until she'd seen that theta wave, she'd believed David was as good as dead. Now she had no idea what was happening. But
something
was going on in his head. Could he be hallucinating in coma as he had during his narcoleptic attacks? Maybe he wasn't really in coma at all. Sometimes a patient could appear to be comatose when he was actually having small seizures. Yet the EEG didn't show that. It showed an alpha coma state, interrupted by inexplicable theta and beta intrusions.

She didn't want to think about what David had been doing prior to his seizure, but she couldn't stop herself. In the medieval gloom of Holy Sepulchre, he had been searching for some remnant of Jesus' life on earth. Or of his death. He had scorned the traditional places venerated by pilgrims—the anointing stone, the tomb itself— but at the place marked as the spot where Jesus died on the cross, he had fallen to his knees and whispered,
"This is the place."
Then the seizure had started.

The incident had actually begun before that. When David looked at the mural depicting Christ being nailed to the cross, he had clenched his fists as though his hands were in agony. What had been going on in his mind? Did he really believe that he was Jesus Christ? Believe it so completely that he felt Jesus' wounds? She'd heard of cases of stigmata caused by the mind, but she had never really believed them. Was she witnessing something similar?

She grasped David's limp hand. Despite the EEG, she half-expected him to open his eyes. Yet they remained closed. She silently thanked God that the ER doctor had ordered a CT scan rather than an MRI. How could she have talked him out of what he would see as a harmless imaging test? How could she protect David from anything here? She didn't know what her enemy was. The only person she could think of who might have answers about this strange coma was Ravi Nara. But according to David, Nara was part of the group that wanted to kill them.

"Wake up, David," she said softly in his ear. "For God's sake, wake up."

CHAPTER 
32

White Sands

Ravi Nara parked his ATV outside the hospital hangar and walked to the door. In his pocket was a syringe of potassium chloride that would stop Godin's weakened heart as surely as a bullet.

He paused at the hangar door, unable to open it. It had taken hours to steel himself for this visit, and without Skow threatening him, he would not have made it this far.
They're watching this on monitors somewhere,
he said to himself.
Move.

He entered the hangar, slipped on a fresh lab coat, then walked into the decontaminator and stepped on the floor switch. High-intensity UV light bombarded him from all sides. As he stood in the purple glow, he stared through the hatch in the Bubble. Godin's nurses sat like guard dogs on either side of the bed.
It's him or me,
he told himself.
Remember what Skow said. . . .

The NSA man had not shouted with joy when he'd learned that the computer might reach Trinity state within twelve hours. He'd asked how long Godin was likely to live. When Ravi answered more than twelve hours, Skow told him that could not be allowed to happen.

"Why not?" Ravi had asked, afraid he already knew the answer.

"Because it's too late," Skow snapped. "The president called me from China, very upset about the Tennant situation. Very suspicious, too. I had to tell him something that made sense."

"Something besides the truth, you mean."

"Exactly. I told him that Peter has been ill all along, and that I was afraid he might be responsible for Fielding's death. I told him that Peter had disappeared, and that there might be a secret research facility somewhere. The FBI is tearing apart the Godin Supercomputing complex in Mountain View as we speak."

Ravi shut his eyes and prayed this was a nightmare. In the conference room in North Carolina, the decision to end Fielding's life had seemed almost an official government act. Trinity existed to strengthen America's strategic position in the world. Fielding had sabotaged its progress. But when you stripped away the window dressing, Fielding's "termination" had been plain old murder.

"Ravi?"

"I'm here." He knew what Skow was going to ask of him. And he dreaded it.

"You know what has to be done."

Ravi made one last stand. "You said that if we delivered Trinity, no one would care who had died to make it happen."

"That was before the mess with Tennant. We've had a shooting in Washington, for God's sake. I've painted Tennant as a dangerous psychotic, but that's all right. I have medical evidence to support that." "Those are problems for
you,
not me." Skow spoke calmly, but his words chilled Ravi's blood. "You're not the only person who knows you were part of Fielding's death. I have recordings of you. Very incriminating recordings. We're all in the same boat, Ravi. You, me, Geli, and General Bauer. If we all tell the same story, no one can touch us. But Peter has to die." Ravi closed his eyes in anguish.

"Our lives are in your hands, Ravi. A few seconds of courage will wash you clean."

Clean!
he thought.
I'll never be clean again.
Was it morally wrong to kill Godin? The man was only hours from a natural death, and without Ravi he would have died days ago. Godin had ordered the murder of Andrew Fielding without any visible compunction. And beyond that, there was the almost fantastic reality that killing Godin's biological body would not really end his life. As long as his neuromodel existed, his mind and personality could be resurrected in the Trinity computer.

The problem was not one of morality, but of opportunity. When a man was as sick as Godin, there were a half dozen ways to push him over the edge. But Godin's nurses never left him alone. Ravi had tested them twice today; in both instances they had taken cell phones from their pockets and awakened sleeping relief nurses for assistance.

After considering several options, Ravi had prepared the syringe of potassium chloride. As a diversion, he would trigger an alarm on one of the monitors, then inject the potassium into Godin's IV line. A code blue would follow—one that Godin would never survive.

The UV lights of the decontaminator buzzed and went dark. Ravi saw the blur of nurse's whites through the Bubble's Plexiglas door.

Where the hell is Geli Bauer?
he thought.
This job is
tailor-made for her.

Ravi opened the Bubble's hatch and stopped, his throat sealed shut. Standing beside one of Godin's nurses was Geli Bauer. She wore black from head to toe, and she looked every bit as dangerous as she had when he had last seen her in North Carolina.

"Hello, Ravi," she said. "You look surprised to see me."

Ravi could not speak. Geli wore an armored vest over her black bodysuit, and a web belt laden with pistol, Taser, and knife.

Godin raised the upper half of his bed with a switch, his blue eyes locked on Ravi. Only then did Ravi realize that Godin had been taken off the ventilator.

"What do you have to say, Ravi?" the old man asked.

"I'm surprised to see Geli up and around," he stammered. "I'd heard it was a neck wound."

Geli smiled, then pulled down her black turtleneck, revealing a white pressure bandage. "Just another scar to add to my collection. I had a good surgical team."

Ravi's heart thumped against his sternum. What the hell was Geli doing in White Sands? And why was she guarding Godin? According to Skow, she'd accepted the necessity of Godin's death and was on board with Skow's plan.

The old man seemed amused by Ravi's discomfort. "Well, here I am, back from the dead," he rasped. "They tell me it was my heart this time."

"Ventricular tachycardia," Ravi confirmed.

"I hear it was my nurses who brought me back."

All Ravi could think about was the syringe in his pocket. He felt sure that Geli was going to walk over to him, pull out the syringe, and jam it into his jugular vein. "They did everything perfectly," Ravi said. Godin nodded. "Would you have done the same, Ravi? If you were alone with me?"

Ravi's stomach flipped over. "I don't understand, Peter. Of course I would have."

Godin ignored his answer. "As for Geli ... I wanted her with me. I feel safer when she's around."

The piercing blue eyes fixed Ravi with a relentless stare. "What are you doing here. Dr. Nara?"

"I was hoping to take you off the ventilator. But I see your nurses have already done that."

Godin glanced at Geli. They seemed to be sharing a private joke.

Ravi searched for something to support his lie. "Levin told me the prototype could reach Trinity state soon. I knew you'd want to be as alert as possible when that happens."

"And all due to Andrew Fielding," Godin said. "The ironies are breathtaking."

Ravi glanced nervously at Geli. "It's a miracle, Peter. You're going to live to see your dream come true."

Godin's lids descended until his eyes were slits. "Really? Have you heard from Skow lately?"

Ravi's blood pressure plummeted. "I spoke to him earlier today. He's very excited. He's going to fly out soon."

Godin snorted. "He wants to be present at the creation?"

"I suppose so. I mean, naturally he does." The ensuing silence became almost unbearable. Ravi couldn't bring himself to look into Geli's eyes. He was searching for an excuse to leave when Godin said, "How long do I have left? Worst case?"

Ravi was too frightened to speak anything but the truth. "You could code again in the next half hour. If you chew your food wrong, it could trigger fatal hydrocephalus."

Godin nodded soberly. "What's the longest I could live?"

"Maybe . . . twenty-four hours."

Ravi marshaled all his courage and stepped toward the bed. "I'd like to do a quick examination, if you don't mind."

Geli blocked his path. She did nothing overtly threatening, but her very posture seemed dangerous. Ravi could hardly believe he'd once spent hours fantasizing about having sex with her. The idea that he could satisfy a woman of such strength and power seemed ludicrous.

"Search him," Godin said.

Ravi knew then that he was lost. He wanted to bolt, but he was like a man facing an attack dog. If he ran, Geli would pounce and rip his throat out.

She knelt before him and patted him down. She gave his groin a taunting scratch with her fingernail, but as her hand passed over his right thigh, her eyes lit up like a mischievous child's. Reaching into his pocket, she pulled out the loaded syringe, which she held up for Godin to see.

"What's in that?" Godin asked.

"Epinephrine," Ravi said. "In case of another code. I wanted to be ready."

Geli shook her head. "I just reviewed a surveillance tape of you in the dispensary earlier this afternoon. It shows you filling this syringe from a bottle marked KC1. Potassium chloride."

Ravi's hands began to shake.

Godin spoke in a neutral voice. "Dr. Thomas Case from Johns Hopkins is being flown here as we speak. You will brief him when he arrives. Dr. Case will perform any hands-on treatment that is required after that point."

Ravi's face felt numb.

Godin's eyes sought him out, refusing to let him hide. "You couldn't wait one day for the cancer to take me?"

What could he say? Would blaming Skow spare him anything?

"Don't answer," Godin said. "Despite past glory, you want more. You look at your achievements not with pride, but with fear that you might never repeat them. You're a pygmy in your soul, Ravi. Andrew Fielding was worth ten of you."

"And of you," Ravi said, surprising himself. "Is that why you killed him?"

The blue eyes closed, but Godin answered in a clear voice. "Fielding was a great physicist, but no man can hold back the future. He'll have another chance at life. He's partly alive in Containment now, and one day his model will reach Trinity state. On that day, he'll understand what I've done. Now . . . it's time for you to go."

Ravi had never seen Geli Bauer smile with more pleasure than she did now. Taller than he by three inches, she draped her arm around him like a lover. Then she looked down into his eyes with chilling intimacy.

"There's only one question we need answered," she said. "Did you hatch this in your own little overheated brain, or did you have help?"

You already know that,
Ravi thought. He tried to slip out from under her arm, but Geli only tightened her grip. Then she ran a fingernail along his shoulder to his neck. "Come on, Ravi . . . haven't you ever fantasized about spending some time alone with me?" He feared his bladder would let go.

Jerusalem

For Rachel the night had not passed without hope. But as dawn crept over the Dead Sea and lighted the valley of Kidron, she sank slowly into despair.

David was dying.

The neurologist who had appeared to evaluate him yesterday evening was a short, good-humored man named Weinstein. Dr. Weinstein had dark hair and quick black eyes that missed nothing. He'd done some training at Massachusetts General in Boston, and he spoke perfect English.