"It's because the sum of human knowledge has been loaded into your memory, and you still feel empty. But I have the answer you want. So… I ask you again. Please destroy those missiles."

"You don't need to worry about the missiles. This building is hardened and shielded. You'll survive both the blast and the radiation. "

"I'm not worried about myself!" "Do you really care so much about people you don't know?"

I wondered if "Peter Godin" was finally vanishing into an emotionless digital entity. "I do know someone outside this building. There's a woman there. She saved my life once. Probably more than once. She's believed in me, helped me search for the truth. I don't want her to die." "Let us continue our discussion. " "No. I love this woman. I want her to live. I want to spend whatever time I have left with her." "That is not much time."

I closed my eyes, unable to summon more persuasive words.

"If you want Dr. Weiss to live, tell me the rest of it."

THE SITUATION ROOM

Rachel sat at the table in the Situation Room, mentally replaying David's last words to Trinity. His declaration of love had had no effect on the computer, but it had given her some peace.

"What do we do now, General?" asked Senator Jackson.

"There's only one thing we can do here," General Bauer replied. "Evacuate." The general turned to face the room. "I'm going to check on the possibility of air evacuation. I want everyone to remain here. I'll return very shortly."

He walked quickly toward the door, but before he reached it, he turned and looked pointedly at Ewan McCaskell and John Skow. Then he motioned for them to follow him.

As the hangar door closed, Geli Bauer slid into the seat across from Rachel. Rachel tried not to look at the scar on her cheek, but it was impossible to ignore. Geli wore it arrogantly, like a badge of honor.

"Is Tennant crazy or sane?" Geli asked.

Rachel answered without thought. "I honestly don't know."

"This God obsession of his is bullshit. But the funny thing is, if it weren't for that, you'd be dead. Because if you hadn't gone to Israel, I'd have found you."

Rachel knew she was right. David's decision to follow his visions had pulled them out of the line of fire when almost nothing else could have. Rachel doubted that Geli Bauer had missed many targets in her career.

"So here we are," said Rachel. "At the end of the world."

A hint of a smile touched Geli's lips. "Confession time?"

"I have nothing to confess. What about you? Did you kill Andrew Fielding?"

Geli glanced around to make sure no one was near. "Yes."

Rachel was reminded of a little girl fascinated by her own cruelty. "How does a woman come to do what you do? You carry a lot of anger around, don't you?"

Geli touched the bandage over the bullet wound in her neck. "I can see how you might get that feeling."

Rachel's eyes didn't waver. "You were angry long before that."

"You playing shrink with me now?"

"I am a shrink."

Geli laughed bitterly. "My first shrink seduced me when I was fourteen. I got the last laugh, though. He killed himself over me."

"What about your father? He seems like a real throw¬back. Dr. Strangelove stuff."

"If you only knew."

Rachel wondered what secret misery drove this cold woman. "There's something dark between the two of you."

"No. Just your ordinary army family hell."

"You hate him, yet it seems you've tried to live up to all his expectations of you."

Geli's ironic smile faded. "Are you in love with Tennant?"

"Yes."

"Will you still love him if it turns out he's crazy?"

"Yes."

"Then you understand a little about me and my father." She rubbed her forefinger repeatedly against her thumb, like someone desperate for a cigarette. "Who killed the man who came to Tennant's house with a gun? You or Tennant?"

For the first time, Rachel sensed some unguarded emotion. "Why do you care? Were you in love with him?"

"We fucked sometimes."

"You really work at being hard, don't you?"

One sculpted eyebrow lifted. The moment of vul¬nerability had passed. "Why are you talking to me, Doctor?"

"I suppose I'm trying to find out how dangerous you are."

"You mean, am I here to do my duty or to get revenge on you two?"

"Something like that."

The cold smile returned. "Maybe they're one and the same. Any more questions?"

Rachel whispered so softly that her words were almost inaudible. "Is your father really going to evacuate us?"

Geli's eyes glinted. "You're smarter than I thought. I wouldn't count on it."

Ravi Nara sat on the sand outside the Situation Room hangar, his muscles clenched in terror, his eyes on the dark sky. There was no stockade at the White Sands facil¬ity, so the guard who'd restrained him had handcuffed him to a flagpole by the door. A neutron bomb, the gen¬eral had said. Ravi was pondering the grisly death caused by radiation poisoning when the hangar door burst open and General Bauer marched out, barking orders into a walkie-talkie.

John Skow and the president's chief of staff followed the general. The three men walked fifteen meters from the door and stopped. They probably never saw Ravi in the darkness.

"I hope to God you've got some kind of plan, General," said Ewan McCaskell. "Because evacuating this place doesn't do a damned thing for Washington."

"I've got a plan. But I don't think I'm the only one. Skow?"

The NSA man nodded. "We can kill Trinity."

"How?"

"Isolate it from the Internet. That's the same as killing it."

"Talk fast."

"When Godin died, the computer crashed and the Russian missiles launched. Cause and effect, right?"

General Bauer nodded.

"Trinity has to be sending out some sort of safety sig¬nal. A constant signal telling certain computers that all is well with Trinity. When Godin died, that signal was dis¬rupted, and the Russian missiles were launched. If we can separate that 'all is well' signal from the rest of Trinity's output, we can probably duplicate it. Then all we have to do is feed our own version into the data line Trinity is using and cut Trinity's power. Trinity will be dead, but the computers tasked with retaliation will have no idea anything is wrong."

"How long would it take you to isolate that signal?"

"I don't know. Trinity would detect any direct moni¬toring of its lines, so we'd have to do it from outside the cables. That causes distortion. And since the signal is generated by and for computers, it's probably very com¬plex. It might even appear random to us without intense analysis."

"How long? "

The NSA man shrugged. "It could take ten minutes or ten days."

"We'll be dead long before you do that. And Washington will no longer exist."

The beat of rotor blades reverberated over the com¬pound. McCaskell looked skyward, then at General Bauer. "Is that helicopter coming to evacuate us?"

"No. It's coming for you."

Puzzlement wrinkled McCaskell's face. "Why?"

"Our EMP strike failed because our communications were compromised. But the plan was sound."

"Do you have another bomber in the air?"

"We don't need one. We have ICBMs sitting in silos in Kansas cornfields right now. One of those can reach the necessary altitude for an EMP detonation in three hundred seconds."

"That's five minutes," said Skow. "An eternity in Trinity's terms. And Trinity will detect the launch imme¬diately."

General Bauer nodded. "We'll inform Trinity of what we're doing just prior to launch. We’ll say the president has decided he can't survive politically if he doesn't respond to the Russian missile detonated off Virginia. We'll remotely retarget the missile for Moscow, and Trinity will hear our telemetry. But when it reaches the peak of its boost phase… boom. EMP."