Dark Matter

She confided this because she believed my disturbing dreams were caused by the tragic loss of my family, and she wanted me to know she had felt the same kind of pain. Rachel, too, had lost more than her child. Unable to handle the devastating effects of his son’s illness, her lawyer husband had left her and returned to New York. Like me, Rachel had descended into a pit of depression from which she was lucky to emerge. Therapy and medication had been her salvation. But like my father, I’ve always been fiercely private, and I fought my way back to the land of the living alone. Not a day went by that I didn’t miss my wife and daughter, but my days of weeping as I replayed old videotapes were over.

“This isn’t about Karen and Zooey,” I told Rachel. “Please close the door.”

She remained in the open doorway, car keys in hand, clearly wanting to believe me but just as clearly skeptical. “What is it, then?”

“Work. Please close the door.”

Rachel hesitated, then shut the door and stared into my eyes. “Maybe it’s time you told me about your work.”

This had long been a point of contention between us. Rachel considered doctor/patient confidentiality as sacred as the confessional, and my lack of trust offended her. She believed my demands for secrecy and warnings of danger hinted at a delusional reality I had constructed to protect my psyche from scrutiny. I didn’t blame her. At the request of the NSA, I’d made my first appointment with her under a false name. But ten seconds after we shook hands, she recognized my face from the jacket photo of my book. She assumed my ruse was the paranoia of a medical celebrity, and I did nothing to disabuse her of that notion. But after a few weeks, my refusal to divulge anything about my work—and my obsession with “protecting” her—had pushed her to suspect that I might be schizophrenic.

What Rachel didn’t know was that I had only been allowed to see her after winning a brutal argument with John Skow, the director of Project Trinity. My narcolepsy had developed as a result of my work at Trinity, and I wanted professional help to try to understand the accompanying dreams.

First the NSA flew in a shrink from Fort Meade, a pharmacological psychiatrist whose main patient base was technicians trying to cope with chronic stress or depression. He wanted to fill me up with happy pills and find out how to become an internationally published physician like me. Next they brought in a woman, an expert in dealing with the neuroses that develop when people are forced to work for long periods in secrecy. Her knowledge of dream symbolism was limited to “a little historical reading” during her residency. Like her colleague, she wanted to start me on a regimen of antidepressants and antipsychotics. What I needed was a psychoanalyst experienced in dream analysis, and the NSA didn’t have one.

I called some friends at the UVA Medical School and discovered that Rachel Weiss, the country’s preeminent Jungian analyst, was based at the Duke University Medical School, less than fifteen miles from the Trinity building. Skow tried to stop me from seeing her, but in the end I told him he’d have to arrest me to do it, and before he tried that, he’d better call the president, who had appointed me to the project.

“Something’s happened,” Rachel said. “What is it? Have the hallucinations changed again?”

Hallucinations, I thought bitterly. Never dreams.

“Have they intensified? Become more personal? Are you afraid?”

“Andrew Fielding is dead,” I said in a flat voice.

Rachel blinked. “Who’s Andrew Fielding?”

“He was a physicist.”

Her eyes widened. “Andrew Fielding the physicist is dead?”

It was a measure of Fielding’s reputation that a medical doctor who knew little about quantum physics would know his name. But it didn’t surprise me. There were six-year-olds who’d heard of “the White Rabbit.” The man who had largely unraveled the enigma of the dark matter in the universe stood second only to his friend Stephen Hawking in the astrophysical firmament.

“He died of a stroke,” I said. “Or so they say.”

“So who says?”

“People at work.”

“You work with Andrew Fielding?”

“I did. For the past two years.”

Rachel shook her head in amazement. “You don’t think he died of a stroke?”

“No.”

“Did you examine him?”

“A cursory exam. He collapsed in his office. Another doctor got to him before he died. That doctor said Fielding exhibited left-side paralysis and had a blown left pupil, but …”

“What?”

“I don’t believe him. Fielding died too quickly for a stroke. Within four or five minutes.”

Rachel pursed her lips. “That happens sometimes. Especially with a severe hemorrhage.”

“Yes, but it’s comparatively rare, and you don’t usually see a blown pupil.” That was true enough, but it wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking that Rachel was a psychiatrist, and as good as she was, she hadn’t spent sixteen years practicing internal medicine, as I had. You got a feeling about certain cases, certain people. A sixth sense. Fielding had not been my patient, but he’d told me a lot about his health in two years, and a massive hemorrhage didn’t feel right to me. “Look, I don’t know where his body is, and I don’t think there’s going to be an autopsy, so—”

“Why no autopsy?” Rachel broke in.

“Because I think he was murdered.”

“I thought you said he died in his office.”

“He did.”

“You think he was murdered at work? Workplace violence?”

She still didn’t get it. “I mean premeditated murder. Carefully thought out, expertly executed murder.”

“But … why would someone murder Andrew Fielding? He was an old man, wasn’t he?”

“He was sixty-three.” Recalling Fielding’s body on his office floor, mouth agape, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, I felt a sudden compulsion to tell Rachel everything. But one glance at the window killed the urge. A parabolic microphone could be trained on the glass.

“I can’t say anything beyond that. I’m sorry. You should go, Rachel.”

She took two steps toward me, her face set with purpose. “I’m not going anywhere yet. Look, if anyone died while not under a doctor’s supervision in this state, there has to be an autopsy. And especially in cases of possible foul play. It’s required by law.”

I laughed at her naiveté. “There won’t be an autopsy. Not a public one, anyway.”

“David—”

“I really can’t say more. I shouldn’t have said that much. I just wanted you to know … that it’s real.”

“Why can’t you say more?” She held up a small, graceful hand. “No, let me answer that. Because to tell me more would put me in danger. Right?”

“Yes.”

She rolled her eyes. “David, from the beginning you’ve made extraordinary demands about secrecy. And I’ve complied. I’ve told colleagues that the hours you spend in my office are research for your second book, rather than what they really are.”

“And you know I appreciate that. But if I’m right about Fielding, anything I tell you now could put your life at risk. Can’t you understand that?”

“No. I’ve never understood. What sort of work could possibly be so dangerous?”

I shook my head.

“This is like a bad joke.” She laughed strangely. “‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.’ It’s classic paranoid thinking.”

“Do you really believe I’m making all this up?”

Rachel answered with caution. “I believe that you believe everything you’ve told me.”

“So, I’m still delusional.”

“You’ve got to admit, you’ve been having disturbing hallucinations for some time now. Some of the recent ones are classic religious delusions.”

“But most not,” I reminded her. “And I’m an atheist. Is that classic?”

“No, I concede that. But you’ve also refused to get a workup for your narcolepsy. Or epilepsy. Or even to get your blood sugar checked, for that matter.”

I’ve been worked up by the foremost neurologist in the world. “That’s being investigated at work.”

“By Andrew Fielding? He wasn’t an M.D., was he?”

I decided to go one step further. “I’m being treated by Ravi Nara.”

Her mouth fell open. “Ravi Nara? As in the Nobel Prize for medicine?”

“That’s him,” I said with distaste.

“You work with Ravi Nara?”

“Yes. He’s a prick. It was Nara who said Fielding died of a stroke.”

Rachel appeared at a loss. “David, I just don’t know what to say. Are you really working with these famous people?”

“Is that so hard to believe? I’m reasonably famous myself.”

“Yes, but … not in the same way. What reason would those men have to work together? They’re in totally different fields.”

“Until two years ago they were.”

“What does that mean?”

“Go back to your office, Rachel.”

“I canceled my last patient so I could come here.”

“Bill me for your lost time.”

She reddened. “There’s no need to insult me. Please tell me what’s going on. I’m tired of hearing nothing but your hallucinations.”

“Dreams.”

“Whatever. They’re not enough to work with.”

“Not for your purpose. But you and I have different goals. We always have. You’re trying to solve the riddle of David Tennant. I’m trying to solve the riddle of my dreams.”

“But the answers are bound up in who you are! Dreams aren’t independent of the rest of your brain! You—”

The ringing telephone cut her off. I got up and went into the kitchen to answer it, a strange thrumming in my chest. The caller could be the president of the United States.

“Dr. Tennant,” I said from years of habit.

“Dr. David?” cried a hysterical female voice with an Asian accent. It was Lu Li, Fielding’s Chinese wife. Or widow …

“This is David, Lu Li. I’m sorry I haven’t called you.” I searched for fitting words but found only a cliché. “I can’t begin to express the pain I feel at Andrew’s loss—”

A burst of Cantonese punctuated with some English flashed down the wire. I didn’t have to understand it all to know I was hearing a distraught widow on the verge of collapse. God only knew what the Trinity security people had told Lu Li, or what she had made of it. She’d come to America only three months ago, her immigration fast-tracked by the State Department, which had received a none-too-subtle motivational call from the White House.

“I know this has been a terrible day,” I said in a comforting voice. “But I need you to try to calm down.”

Lu Li was panting.

“Breathe deeply,” I said, trying to decide what approach to take. Safest to use the corporate cover the NSA had insisted on from the beginning. As far as the rest of the Research Triangle Park companies knew, the Argus Optical Corporation developed optical computer elements used in government defense projects. Lu Li might know no more that this.

“What have you been told by the company?” I asked cautiously.

“Andy dead!” Lu Li cried. “They say he die of brain bleeding, but I know nothing. I don’t know what to do!”

I saw nothing to be gained by further agitating Fielding’s widow with theories of murder. “Lu Li, Andrew was sixty-three years old, and not in the best of health. A stroke isn’t an unlikely event in that situation.”

“You no understand, Dr. David! Andy warn me about this.”

My hand tightened on the phone. “What do you mean?”

Another burst of Cantonese came down the wire, but then Lu Li settled into halting English. “Andy tell me this could happen. He say, ‘If something happen to me, call Dr. David. David know what to do.’”

A deep ache gripped my heart. That Fielding had put such faith in me … “What do you want me to do?”

“Come here. Please. Talk to me. Tell me why this happen to Andy.”

I hesitated. The NSA was probably listening to this call. To go to Lu Li’s house would only put her at greater risk, and myself, too. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t fail my friend. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Thank you, thank you, David! Please, thank you.”

I hung up and turned to go back to the living room. Rachel was standing in the kitchen doorway.

“I have to leave,” I told her. “I appreciate you coming to check on me. I know it was beyond the call of duty.”

“I’m going with you. I heard some of that, and I’m going with you.”

“Out of the question.”

“Why?”

“You have no reason to come. You’re not part of this.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “For me it’s simple, okay? If you’re telling the truth, I’ll find the distraught widow of Andrew Fielding at the end of a short drive. And she’ll support what you’ve told me.”

“Not necessarily. I don’t know how much Fielding confided in her. And Lu Li hardly speaks English.”

“Andrew Fielding didn’t teach his own wife English?”

“He spoke fluent Cantonese. Plus about eight other languages. And she’s only been here a few months.”

Rachel straightened her skirt with the flats of her hands. “Your resistance tells me that you know my going will expose your story as a delusion.”

Anger flashed through me. “I’m tempted to let you come, just for that. But you don’t grasp the danger. You could die. Tonight.”

“I don’t think so.”

I picked up the Ziploc bag containing the white powder and the FedEx envelope and held it out to her. “A few minutes ago I received a letter from Fielding. This powder was in the envelope.”

She shrugged. “It looks like sand. What is it?”

“I have no idea. But I’m afraid it might be anthrax. Or whatever killed Fielding.”

She took the package from me. I thought at first she was examining the powder, but she was reading the label on the FedEx envelope.

“This says the sender is Lewis Carroll.”

“That’s code. Fielding couldn’t risk putting his name into the FedEx computer system. The NSA would pick that up immediately. He used ‘Lewis Carroll’ because his nickname was the White Rabbit. You’ve heard that, right?”

Rachel looked as if she were really thinking about it. “I can’t say that I have. Where’s this letter?”

I motioned toward the front room. “In a plastic bag on the couch. Don’t open it.”

She bent over the note and quickly read it. “It’s not signed.”

“Of course not. Fielding didn’t know who might see it. That rabbit symbol is his signature.”

She looked at me with disbelief. “Just take me along, David. If what I see supports what you’ve told me, I’ll take all your warnings seriously from this point forward. No more doubts.”

“That’s like throwing you into the water to prove there are sharks in it. By the time you see them, it’s too late.”

“That’s always how it is with these kinds of fantasies.”

I went and got my keys off the kitchen counter. Rachel followed at my heels. “All right, you want to come? Follow me in your car.”

She shook her head. “Not a chance. You’d lose me at the first red light.”

“Your colleagues would tell you it’s dangerous to accompany a patient while he chases a paranoid fantasy. Especially a narcoleptic patient.”

“My colleagues don’t know you. As for the narcolepsy, you haven’t killed yourself yet.”

I reached under the sofa cushion, brought out my pistol, and thrust it into my waistband. “You don’t know me either.”

She studied the butt of the gun, then looked into my eyes. “I think I do. And I want to help you.”

If she were only my psychiatrist, I would have left her there. But during our long sessions, we had recognized something in each other, an unspoken feeling shared by two people who had experienced great loss. Even though she thought I might be ill now, she cared about me in a way no one else had for a long time. To take her with me would be selfish, but the simple truth was, I didn’t want to go alone.

THREE

Geli Bauer sat within the dark bowels of the Trinity building, a basement complex lit only by the glow of computer monitors and surveillance screens. From here electronic filaments spread out to monitor the people and the physical plant of Project Trinity. But that was only the center of her domain. With the touch of a computer key, Geli could interface with the NSA supercomputers at Fort Meade and monitor conversations and events on the other side of the globe. Though she had wielded many kinds of power during her thirty-two years on earth, she had never before felt the rush of knowing that all the world bounded by electronics could be manipulated by the touch of her finger.

On paper, Geli worked for Godin Supercomputing, which was based in Mountain View, California. But it was her company’s quasi-governmental relationship with the NSA that had lifted her into the stratosphere of power. If she deemed a situation an emergency, she could stop trains, close international airports, retask surveillance satellites, or lift armed helicopters into the skies over U.S. soil and order them to fire. No other modern woman had wielded such power—in some ways her authority rivaled that of her father—and Geli did not intend to give it up.

On the flat-panel monitor before her glowed a transcript of the conversation between David Tennant and an unknown White House functionary, recorded at a Shoney’s restaurant that afternoon, but Geli was no longer looking at it. She was speaking on the headset phone to a member of her security team, the man who was watching Tennant’s residence.

“I only heard conversation in the kitchen,” she said. “That makes no sense. He and Dr. Weiss had to be talking elsewhere.”

“Maybe they were getting it on.”

“We’d have heard it. Weiss looks like a screamer to me. It’s always the quiet ones.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Get in there and check the mikes.”

Geli tapped a key on the pad before her, which connected her to a young ex-Delta operator named Thomas Corelli, who was covering Andrew Fielding’s house.

“What are you hearing, Thomas?”

“Normal background noise. TV. Bumps and clatters.”

“Did you hear Mrs. Fielding’s end of the phone call?”

“Yeah, but it’s hard to understand that Chinese accent.”

“Are you out of sight?”

“I’m parked in the driveway of some out-of-town neighbors.”

“Tennant will be at your location in five minutes. He has a woman with him. Dr. Rachel Weiss. Stay on this line.”

Geli clicked off, then said clearly, “JPEG. Weiss, Rachel.”

A digital photograph of Rachel Weiss appeared on her monitor. It was a head shot, a telephoto taken as the psychiatrist left the Duke University hospital. Rachel Weiss was three years older than Geli, but Geli recognized the type. She’d known girls like that at boarding school in Switzerland. Strivers. Most of them Jews. She would have known Weiss was Jewish without hearing her name or seeing her file. Even with fashionably windblown hair, Rachel Weiss looked like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. She had the dark martyr’s eyes, the premature lines around the mouth. She was one of the top Jungian analysts in the world, and you didn’t reach that level without being obsessive about your work.

Geli had been against involving Weiss. It was Skow who had allowed it. Skow’s theory was that if you held the leash too tight, you were asking for trouble. But it was Geli’s head that would roll if there was a security breach. To prevent that eventuality, she received transcripts of Weiss’s sessions with Tennant and recordings of every telephone call the psychiatrist made. Once a week, one of her operatives slipped into Weiss’s office and photocopied Tennant’s file, to be sure that nothing escaped Geli’s scrutiny.

That was the kind of hassle that came from dealing with civilians. It had been the same at Los Alamos, with the Manhattan Project. In both cases the government had tried to control a group of gifted civilian scientists who through ignorance, obstinacy, or ideology posed the greatest threat to their own work. When you recruited the smartest people in the world, you got crackpots.

Tennant was a crackpot. Like Fielding. Like Ravi Nara, the project’s Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist. All six Trinity principals had signed the tightest possible security and nondisclosure agreements, but they still believed they could do anything they wanted. To them the world was Disneyland. And doctors were the worst. Even in the army, the rules had never quite seemed to apply to M.D.s. But tonight Tennant was going to step far enough over the line to get his head chopped off.

Her headset beeped. She opened the line to her man at Tennant’s house. “What is it?”

“I’m inside. You’re not going to believe this. Someone put painter’s putty in the holes over the mikes.”

Geli felt a strange numbness in her chest. “How could Tennant know where they were?”

“No way without a scanner.”

“Magnifying glass?”

“If he knew to look for them. But that would take hours, and you’d never be sure you got them all.”

A scanner. Where the hell would an internist get that? Then she knew. Fielding. “Tennant took that FedEx delivery. Do you see an envelope anywhere?”

“No.”

“He must have taken it with him. What else do you see? Anything strange?”

“There’s a video camera set up on a tripod.”

Shit. “Tape in it?”

“Let me check. No tape.”

“What else?”

“A vacuum cleaner in the backyard.”

What the hell? “A vacuum cleaner? Take the bag out and bring it here. We’ll chopper it to Fort Meade for analysis. What else?”

“Nothing.”

“Take one last look, then get out.”

Geli clicked off, then said, “Skow—home.” The computer dialed the Raleigh residence of Project Trinity’s administrative director.

“Geli?” Skow said. “What’s going on?”

Bauer always thought Kennedy when she heard John Skow’s voice. Skow was a Boston Brahmin with twice the usual brains of his breed. Instead of the customary liberal arts and law background of his class, Skow had advanced degrees in astronomy and mathematics and had served for eight years as deputy director of special projects for the NSA. His primary area of responsibility was the agency’s top secret Supercomputer Research Center. Skow was technically Geli’s superior, but their relationship had always been uncomfortable. Short of taking a human life, Geli had independent responsibility for Project Trinity’s security. She held this power because Peter Godin—citing security leaks at government labs—had demanded that he pick his own team to protect Trinity.

The old man had found her just as she was leaving the army. Geli believed heart and soul in the warrior culture, but she could no longer endure the bloated and hidebound bureaucracy of the army, or its abysmal quality standards for new recruits. When Godin appeared, he’d offered her a job she had wanted all her life but hadn’t believed existed.

She would receive $700,000 a year to work as chief of security for special projects for Godin Supercomputing. The salary was immense, but Godin was a billionaire. He could afford it. Her conditions of employment were unique. She would follow any order he gave, without question and without regard for legality. She would not reveal any information about her employer, his company, or her employment. If she did, she would die. Geli could hire her own staff, but they would accept the same conditions and penalty, and she would enforce that penalty. She was amazed that a public figure like Godin would dare to set such terms. Then she learned that Godin had found her through her father. That explained a lot. Geli had hardly spoken to her father in years, but he was in a position to know a lot about her. And she could tell by the way Godin looked at her that he knew something about her as well. Probably the stories that had filtered out of Iraq after Desert Storm. Peter Godin wanted a security expert, but he also wanted a killer. Geli was both.