Dark Matter (38 page)

"Good. First floor. You know the way out?"

"Yes, but..."

I stood and took her hand in mine. "Everything has changed, Rachel. I know what I have to do. But we have to go now.'"

I saw her faith in me cracking under the weight of her training as a psychiatrist and her desire to deny the danger.

"Please help me."

She closed her eyes and sighed. Then she went to the window and tried it. The window was sealed shut, and barred outside.

I went to the door and opened it a crack. Two nurses sat at a receiving desk, but they were turned partly away from me. One was talking on a telephone.

"What's past those nurses?" I whispered.

"A corridor that leads to the ambulance bay outside. There's a guard."

The guard was probably there to challenge people entering rather than leaving, but in Israel you never knew.

The nurse who wasn't on the phone got up and went into a treatment room. "Get ready," I said. When the other nurse was distracted, we walked quickly across the floor to the hall that led outside.

Rachel waved to the guard seated at the desk, then started to lead me past him.

The guard said something in Hebrew.

Rachel slowed but did not stop. "Do you speak English?"

"A little," said the guard.

"Dr. Weinstein told me to make sure this patient got some fresh air this morning. Do you know Dr. Weinstein?"

The guard looked confused. Then he smiled and flicked his hand as if to say,

"Go ahead, go ahead."

We walked unhindered into the morning light.

Two ambulances sat parked beneath a flat concrete roof. I moved quickly to the left, where an access road led around the hospital.

There was no footpath, so we walked on the curb. When we rounded the building, I saw the Dome of the Rock flashing gold in the Old City. The road beside us led down a long hill, and cover was minimal. To our right was a huge cemetery that looked vaguely colonial.

"We're going to have to find a taxi," Rachel said. "We won't get anywhere on foot."

"Listen."

Out of the general hum of the city below, a more urgent sound was emerging. A siren.

We crouched behind a row of low shrubs. Thirty seconds later, two dark green vans raced up the hill toward us. They didn't look like ambulances. One screeched to a stop at the hospital's front entrance, the other wheeled around back. The van in front disgorged two men wearing business suits, then a squad of paramilitary police carrying submachine guns.

"Who's that?" Rachel whispered.

"Shin Beth, maybe. Some branch of the secret police. Whoever Washington called to secure the hospital and prevent us leaving."

"Ravi Nara told me they were going to move you to a more secure hospital."

"Do they need a SWAT team for that?" I pulled her to her feet. "Come on!"

Though cover was scarce, we used every bit we could find as we made our way down the hill. Rachel wanted to run toward the Old City, but I led her down Churchill Street toward a Hyatt Regency Hotel, glancing back at the hospital all the way. The van was still parked out front. I could only imagine the frantic search inside.

A rank of taxis waited at the Hyatt. I climbed into the first in line, and Rachel got in after me.

"American?" asked the driver.

"American. I need an Internet bar."

The driver seemed to be working this out in his head. "You need computer?"

"Yes."

"Hyatt has computer inside. Pay by half hour."

"I want a public place. I don't like this hotel."

"Not many such bars in Jerusalem. The Strudel has computers, but it may not be open yet."

"Take us there."

The cabbie cranked his engine and pulled onto Ha-Universita. I saw a phalanx of police cars parked in a lot to our left. "What's that place?"

"National Police Headquarters. I hope you don't want to go there."

"The Strudel. Make it fast. I have important business."

"Yes, sir. Ten minutes, tops."

White Sands

A uniformed soldier drove Ravi Nara to the airstrip. The limitless desert night had once made Ravi uncomfortable, but tonight it comforted him. As the Jeep approached the runway, a Learjet taxied around the hangar and parked beside Godin's Gulf stream 5. The Lear was black and had no markings. When its door opened, John Skow bent and stepped through it.

"I've been trying to reach you!" the NSA man called. "Is something wrong with your phone?"

Ravi looked at his military escort again, but the soldier seemed oblivious to the conversation. "I'm on my way to Jerusalem."

Skow gripped Ravi's arm and walked him ten paces away from the soldier. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Peter's sending me to Jerusalem."

"He's still alive?" . "Yes."

Panic and anger distorted Skow's features. "Did you even try?"

"Yes, goddamn it!"

"Why is Peter sending you to Jerusalem?"

"To make sure Tennant dies."

Skow tilted back his head like a man looking to the heavens for assistance.

"Forget that. You're not going anywhere. Tennant escaped from Hadassah Hospital."

"But . . . they said he was in alpha coma."

"He must have come out of it. Rachel Weiss sure didn't carry him out of there."

Ravi couldn't believe it. "Maybe somebody else did."

"My God," breathed Skow. "The Israelis. They'd kill to get their hands on Trinity technology."

Ravi wasn't thinking about Trinity. "Do you know where Geli Bauer is, John?"

Skow looked curiously at him. "Of course. Walter Reed Hospital."

Ravi shook his head, a sinking feeling in his stomach. "I thought you were better than this."

"What are you talking about?"

"Geli is here, guarding Peter."

Skow blanched.

"Why didn't you know that?"

"That bitch has been taking my calls all day on her cell, telling me how great the doctors are at Walter Reed."

"You told me she was on board with us."

"She said she was. I'm going to have to call her father."

Ravi's military driver marched over to them. "Dr. Nara? It's time to board the plane."

Skow addressed the soldier in a commanding voice. "Corporal, I'm taking Dr.

Nara back to see Mr. Godin. The situation in Israel has changed."

Ravi had no intention of staying in New Mexico. "I'm going to Jerusalem, John.

Tennant and Weiss could turn up at any time. Peter wants it to look like he's doing everything in his power to save Tennant, and I think he's right."

"I know you'd like to go to Jerusalem," Skow said, holding Ravi's arm tight.

"But the fact is, you're needed here."

"Peter's got a new doctor."

"But he needs you."

Ravi looked at his escort. "I'm ready to get on the plane."

The soldier stepped forward, but an authoritative glare from Skow stopped him.

"Corporal, I'm here on direct orders from the president. Your commanding officer, General Bauer, is fully conversant with my mission. I need two minutes with this man. Then we're going to see Mr. Godin. Step back, please.

Give me twenty meters."

The corporal obeyed.

Ravi tried to pull away, but Skow's hand held him like a claw. "You gave me up, didn't you? You little bastard."

"I didn't tell them anything! But that won't help you. They know too much. I'd be dead now if Peter hadn't got into medical trouble."

Skow looked around the runway as though he expected soldiers to descend on him at any moment. "Listen to me, Ravi. Running to Jerusalem won't save you. The president is buying our version of the story, but if Godin is around to tell his side, we're dead. So—you still have a job to do."

Ravi felt nauseating fear in his belly. "You're crazy! They'll never let me close to him now. And if I stay here, Geli will kill me."

Skow shook him like a child. "Calm down, for God's sake! You can hide in my quarters until I straighten things out."

"Straighten things out? With Godin?"

Skow smiled. "You've forgotten that my specialty is information warfare."

He led Ravi to the Jeep and signaled for the corporal to get behind the wheel.

"But they already suspect you," Ravi said. "What will you tell them?"

Skow's smile took on a reptilian quality. "I'm an old hand at survival, Ravi.

Even Geli could take lessons from me."

The Strudel Internet Bar was closed. I could see a bearded man inside, cleaning the bar. I knocked on the glass, then waved and pointed at the door handle. The man shook his head.

"You have the money belts?" I asked Rachel.

"Yes."

"Give me a hundred-dollar bill."

I pressed the bill up against the door. It took the man inside a minute to notice it, and when he did, he only waved me away again. When we refused to leave, he walked to the door and looked closer at the bill. Then he yelled in English for us not to go anywhere, disappeared into an office, and came back with a set of keys.

"I need a computer," I said, when the door opened.

"Come in, no problem. High-speed Internet."

Rachel paid the cabbie, then joined me inside.

The Strudel was dark and smelled like bars around the world, but it did have a computer. I sat at the bar and began searching the Internet for the e-mail addresses of the top universities and computer facilities in the United States and Europe. Cal Tech, the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, CERN in Switzerland, the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, the Chaim Weizmann Institute in Israel, the Earth Simulator computer team in Japan, several others.

"What are you doing?" Rachel asked, climbing onto the stool beside me.

"Going public."

"I thought you didn't want to do that."

"I don't have a choice now. They've done it. Or nearly done it."

"Done what?"

"Trinity is about to become a reality."

"How do you know that?"

"I just know."

"And you're going to tell the world?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"Enough to start a media storm that the president can't ignore."

I opened Microsoft Word and began typing my message. The first line was the easiest, a quote from the great Niels Bohr, writing about the nuclear arms race: We are in a completely new situation, that cannot be resolved by war.

"David?" Rachel said softly. "What happened to you while you were in that coma? Did you see things?"

"Not the way I used to. It's difficult to explain, but I'll try as soon as we have some time. I need to finish this first."

She got up and walked to the door to watch for police.

I bent over the keyboard and typed without pause, as if the words were being channeled through me by some outside force. After twenty minutes, I asked the man behind the bar to call us a taxi with a Palestinian driver. Then I typed a closing: In memory of Andrew Fielding.

"Did you send your mail?" Rachel asked.

"Yes. There'll be media chaos within four hours."

"Is that really what you want?"

"Yes. Evil doesn't flourish in the light."

She drew back and looked strangely at me. "Evil?"

"Yes."

A taxi pulled to the curb outside, and its bearded driver looked toward the door.

"Let's go."

We went out to the cab. "Are you Palestinian?" I asked the driver.

"Why do you care?" he asked.

"Do you know where Mossad Headquarters is?"

The driver squinted as if studying a curious sight. "Sure. Every Palestinian knows that."

"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 desperately 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 birthday onward, her father had treated her like a military draftee. Horst Bauer's idea of a heart-to-heart talk was sitting 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.