Dark Matter (13 page)

I froze in my office doorway. A tall, sinewy blonde woman with electric blue eyes and a stippled scar on her left cheek sat in my chair, gazing at my computer screen. Geli Bauer. If anyone in this building had murdered Andrew Fielding, it was she.

"Hello, Doctor," she said, a trace of a smile on her lips. "You look surprised. I thought you'd be expecting me."

I stood speechless in my office doorway. Relief had turned to paralyzing anxiety in less than a second, and the fact that Geli Bauer was a woman did nothing to slow my racing pulse. Like her handpicked subordinates, she was lean and hard, with a predatory gleam in her eyes. She radiated the icy confidence of a world-class alpinist. I could imagine her hanging for hours from a precipice, her body supported only by her fingertips. Her intelligence was difficult to judge in an incubator filled with geniuses, but I knew from previous conversations that she was quick as mercury. She treated all but the top Trinity scientists like prisoners working under duress, and I attributed this to her being the daughter of a powerful army general. Ravi Nara had crudely called her "a terminator with tits," but I thought of her as a terminator with brains.

"What can I do for you?" I said finally.

"I need to ask you a couple of questions," she said. "Routine stuff."

Routine? Geli Bauer had visited my office a half dozen times in two years. I mostly saw her through a sheet of glass, observing the polygraph tests to which I was randomly subjected.

"Godin just gave us three days off," I told her. "Why don't we do this when I get back?"

"I'm afraid it can't wait." She had the stateless accent of elite overseas schools.

"You said it was routine."

A plastic smile. "Why don't you have a seat, Doctor?"

"You're in my chair."

Geli didn't get up. She thrived on conflict.

"You don't usually handle this kind of thing personally," I said. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Dr. Fielding's death has created an unusual situation. We need to be sure we know as much as possible about the circumstances surrounding it."

"Dr. Fielding died of a stroke."

She studied me for a while without speaking. The scar on her left cheek reminded me of some I'd seen on some Vietnam vets during physicals. The vets described how shrapnel from a phosphorous grenade burned itself deep into the skin and then self-cauterized, only to reignite in the air and wound the operating surgeons when they attempted to remove the fragments. Soldiers lived in terror of them, and Geli Bauer looked as though she'd suffered intimate contact with one. I had been predisposed to like her because of that scar. A beautiful woman marked by such a thing might have earned some insight about life that few of her sisters possessed. But my interactions with Geli had convinced me that whatever hell she had survived, she'd learned only bitterness.

"I'm concerned about your relationship with Dr. Fielding," she said.

Always I with Geli, never the bureaucratic we, as though she felt personal responsibility for the security of the entire project.

"Really?" I said, as though shocked.

"How would you characterize your relationship?"

"He was my friend."

"You saw him and spoke to him outside this facility."

To concede this was to admit a violation of Trinity security regulations. But Geli probably had videotape. "Yes."

"That's a direct violation of security protocol."

I rolled my eyes. "Sue me."

"We could jail you."

Shit. "That'll really help keep this place secret."

She ran her long fingers through her blonde hair. I thought of a hawk preening itself. "You could lose your position here, Doctor."

"Now I get it. You're here to fire me."

Her smile slipped a notch. "There's no need for drama. I'm trying to learn what I can about Dr. Fielding's situation."

"His situation? He's dead. Deceased. No longer with us."

"What did the two of you discuss outside work hours?"

"Soccer."

"Soccer?"

"Fielding called it football. He was 'football mad,' in his words. He followed Arsenal, an English team. It bored the hell out of me, but I liked talking to the guy."

"You're being disingenuous, Doctor."

"Am I?"

"Both you and Dr. Fielding opposed further work on this project."

"No. I had ethical concerns about one aspect of it. Fielding had other concerns."

"He wanted the project stopped."

"Only until the cause of the neurological side effects we're all experiencing could be determined."

"Did he discuss those side effects with anyone not cleared for Trinity information?"

"I have no idea."

"His wife, for example?"

I strained to keep my face impassive. "I can't imagine that he would."

Geli raised one eyebrow. "You spent nearly an hour with her last night."

So they had been watching. Of course they had. They'd just killed Fielding, and they needed to see how his best friend would react. That meant they knew about Rachel.

"I made a condolence call."

"You discussed sensitive Trinity information with Lu Li Fielding. A Chinese physicist."

"I did nothing of the kind." I had thought Lu Li's marriage to Fielding made her a British citizen, but I didn't want to get into that discussion now.

"Mrs. Fielding has vanished. We need to talk to her."

"Sounds like a personal problem."

Geli ignored my sarcasm. "If you helped her flee, you could be charged with treason."

"Has Lu Li committed a crime?"

Geli's face gave away nothing. "That has yet to be determined. She may be an accessory to treason."

The crystal, I thought suddenly. This has to be about Fielding's watch. "So both Fieldings are missing now. That's embarrassing, isn't it?"

Geli didn't look embarrassed. She looked unflappable.

"Last night Lu Li told me she'd received no word about her husband's body," I said. "She was very upset."

"That's not my area of responsibility."

"What about Fielding's personal effects? Lu Li particularly mentioned a gold pocket watch. An heirloom."

Geli pursed her lips, then shook her head. "I don't recall a pocket watch. But as soon as Mrs. Fielding turns up, all this will be sorted out."

Geli was lying. She hadn't worked here for two years without seeing that watch a hundred times.

"We're going to need a polygraph this morning," she said.

Cold sweat broke out on my trunk. "Sorry. I won't be taking one."

Her eyes narrowed. This was the first time I'd ever refused such a request.

"Why is that?"

"I just lost a good friend. I didn't sleep well. I feel terrible. My dog ate my homework."

"Dr. Tennant—"

"And I don't feel like submitting to your fascist bullshit today. Get it?"

She settled back in my chair and regarded me with increasing interest. "The employment agreement you signed permits polygraphs to be taken at any time.

You've already agreed to submit."

The fear in my belly made me want to punch her in the face. I'd lived all my life with an extraordinary amount of freedom. As an internist, I'd owned and managed my own practice. As an author I'd been limited only by my subject. But in the oppressive atmosphere of Trinity, I'd developed a kind of spiritual claustrophobia. My father had experienced similar feelings when working on nuclear weapons at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge. And he'd submitted to his share of polygraph tests in his day. But times had changed since the Cold War. Today the NSA had lie detectors based on MRI technology, and unlike conventional polygraphs, they were accurate 100 percent of the time.

The principle was simple: it took more brain cells to lie than to tell the truth. Even a pathological liar first thought of the true answer when asked a question. Then he invented or recited his lie. That activity lit up the liar's brain like Christmas lights, and the MRI detector imaged and recorded the result for his interrogators. It was Fielding who'd stopped the MRI polygraph sessions, arguing that our strange symptoms could be aggravated by further MRI exposure. It was a victory in Fielding's war against the invasion of our privacy, but conventional polygraph sessions were unnerving enough. Taking them on a surprise basis gave you the feeling you were living in an Orwellian dystopia, especially when you had something to hide.

"Are you going to sedate me?" I asked. "Tie me down?"

Geli looked as though she'd like to.

"No? Then forget it."

She raised a finger and idly touched her scar. "I don't understand why you're so combative, Doctor."

"Sure you do."

"You're hiding something."

"If I were, that would make two of us."

"You're trying to subvert this project."

"How could I do that? And why would I? The project's already been suspended."

Geli studied her fingernails, two of which were gnawed to nubs. Maybe she wasn't unflappable after all. "By going public," she said finally.

There it was. The deepest fear of the paranoid military mind. "I haven't done that."

"Are you considering it?"

"No."

"Have you spoken to the president?"

"In my life?"

Annoyance crept into her voice at last. "Since Dr. Fielding's death."

"No."

"You left a message at the White House yesterday."

I felt my face flush. "Yes."

"You used a pay phone."

"So?"

"Why?"

"The battery on my cell phone died." An easy lie, and impossible to check.

"Why not wait and call when you got home?"

"I was in the mood right then."

"In the mood to talk to the president of the United States?"

"That's right."

"About Dr. Fielding's death?"

"Among other things."

She seemed to weigh her next words carefully. "You told the White House you didn't want the other Trinity principals informed of your call."

My blood pressure dropped like a stone. How did they know what I'd said during that pay phone conversation? It had to be wiretapping surveillance, and not the local police or FBI variety. The NSA recorded millions of private telephone calls every day, the disk drives in the basements of Fort Meade triggered by key words like plastique, Al Qaeda, strong encryption, RDX, or even Trinity. I recalled that I'd said "Trinity" as soon as the White House operator answered, to make her switch me to the proper contact. The NSA probably had a recording of my conversation from that point forward.

I drew myself up and looked Geli hard in the eyes. "I was personally appointed to this project by the president. Not by the NSA or John Skow or even Peter Godin. I'm here to evaluate ethical problems. If I determine that a problem exists, I report directly to the president. No one here has any say in the matter."

The gloves were off. I had just drawn a line between myself and everyone else in the Trinity building.

Geli leaned forward, her blue eyes challenging me. "How many cell phones do you own, Dr. Tennant?"

"One."

"Do you have others in your possession?"

Clarity settled in my mind like a resolving chord. They knew I'd called the White House, but they didn't know whether or not the president had gotten back to me. They had my phones covered—the ones they knew about—but they were worried about channels of communication they didn't know about. If they were worried about that, they had no inside line to the president, and I still stood a chance of convincing him of my suspicions.

"Rachel Weiss owns a cell phone," Bauer said, her eyes alert for the slightest reaction on my part.

I took a slow breath and kept my voice even. "I don't know a doctor who doesn't."

"But you know Dr. Weiss rather better than you know almost anyone else."

"She's my psychiatrist, if that's what you mean."

"She's the only person other than Trinity personnel to whom you've spoken more than fifty words over the past two months."

I wondered if this was true.

"The same is true for Dr. Weiss," Geli said.

"What do you mean?"

"She sees no one. She lost her son to cancer last year. After the boy died, her husband left her and returned to New York. Six months ago, Dr. Weiss began accepting occasional dates with male colleagues. Dinner, a movie, like that.

She never saw anyone more than twice. Two months ago, she stopped seeing men altogether."

This didn't surprise me. Rachel was an intense woman, and I couldn't imagine many men meeting her expectations.

"So?" I said.

"I think you're the reason for that, Doctor. I think Dr. Weiss is in love with you."

I laughed, really laughed, for the first time since I'd seen Fielding's body.

"Dr. Weiss thinks I'm delusional, Ms. Bauer. Possibly schizophrenic."

This didn't faze Geli. "She kissed you last night. At the Fielding house."

"That was a sympathy kiss. I was upset about Fielding."

Geli ignored this. "What have you told Dr. Weiss about Project Trinity?"

"Nothing, as you well know. I'm sure you've found some way to record every one of my sessions."

She surprised me by conceding this with a slight nod. "But lovers are resourceful. You may have managed unauthorized contact. Like last night."

"Last night was the first time I ever saw Rachel Weiss outside her office." I folded my arms across my chest. "And I refuse to discuss her further. She has nothing to do with this project. You're invading the privacy of an American citizen who has signed no agreement waiving her rights."

This time when Geli smiled, a little flash of cruelty burned through. "Where Project Trinity is concerned, privacy means nothing. Under National Security Directive 173, we can detain Dr. Weiss for forty-eight hours without even a phone call."

My frustration boiled over. "Geli, do you know what Project Trinity is?"

My use of her first name wiped away her smile, and my question put her squarely on the defensive. It would kill her to admit that she didn't know the inmost secrets of Trinity, but to say otherwise might cost her her job. She glowered but said nothing.