just make the choices from now on.' She saw doubt in my eyes. 'You still don't trust me?'
'It's not that. But by now Geli Bauer knows every¬thing there is to know about you. She knows things even you don't remember.'
Rachel's lips compressed into a white line. 'I hate her. I hate her, and I don't even know her.'
'I know. But hate's not going to save us.'
'Why can't we just disappear into nowhere? Pay cash at a no-name motel in a no-name town? Back this truck up to a fence and go to sleep for three days. America is a big place. Even for the NSA.'
'You ever watch America's Most Wanted? They catch criminals every week who try what you just suggested. Television makes America a lot smaller than you think.'
I leaned back in my seat and tried to let instinct take over. Cars and trucks passed in both directions, some slowly, others shaking the truck with the wind they threw off. As I sat there, the situation began to clarify itself.
In three days, we would get a chance to see the presi¬dent. Our problem was staying alive long enough to talk to him. The odds of that were long and getting longer. Even if we did reach Matthews, I'd have to convince him that I was telling the truth and that everyone else involved in Project Trinity was lying. To do that, I needed hard evidence. And I had none. My other option-going public-would only convince the presi¬dent that I was the loose cannon everyone at Trinity claimed I was and alienate the one man who could save us. Three days…
'How long are we going to sit here?' Rachel asked.
'Give me a minute.'
Hiding was not the answer. Running wasn't either. Not in any conventional way. We needed to take a step so radical that no entity in the world could predict it. But what?
As I stared through the windshield at the oncoming traffic, I realized I was sitting here with Rachel for one reason: my dreams. My dreams had brought us together. Without my dreams, we would both have been shot back at my house. Yet I was no closer to understanding them than I had been on the day I first walked into Rachel's office.
For months they had progressed, like a persistent message being sent from a distant radio source. In the beginning, the incomprehensible images had troubled and even frightened me. But over time-and especially during the past three weeks-a conviction had begun to crystallize within me that something important was being communicated to me. Of course, schizophrenics felt the same conviction. What separated me from them?
I closed my eyes and tried to blank my mind, but the opposite happened. I suddenly saw a walled city on a hill, its stones glowing yellow in the sun. There was a gate set in its face.
The eastern gate, whispered a voice in my head. Jerusalem.
Never had I experienced a vision while awake. I opened my eyes and saw Rachel staring at the dash¬board. I closed my eyes again, but the city vanished like the afterimage of a flashbulb.
'David? What's wrong with your eyes?'
'Nothing.'
I rubbed my temples and tried to open my mind to whatever was coming. I'd felt drawn to specific places before. During my twenties, I'd traveled a lot, and while I was usually driven by student wanderlust, there were times when something deeper had pulled me off my planned track.
While visiting Oxford University, I'd awakened one morning with a feeling that I needed to get to Stonehenge- not just to see it, but to be in the presence of the sarsen stones. My companion assured me that there was no rush; the stones had been standing for five thousand years and would surely wait another few days. But still I rented a car and drove south until I reached Salisbury Plain. After darkness fell, I approached the ancient ring alone and did what tourists can do no longer: walked among the stones in the moonlight and lay upon the sacrificial altar. I was no New Age dilet¬tante, but a medical student from the University of Virginia, looking toward a stable career. Yet this wasn't the only time such a thing had happened. I was drawn to Chichen Itza the same way. And on a drive to the Grand Canyon, I changed course and camped at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico for a week instead. In Greece it was Delphi over Athens. In all these situations I had felt an external pull, as though something were calling me to a specific place.
What I felt now was different, an internal compulsion to travel to Jerusalem, whatever the consequences. That the city was sacred to three great religions was irrele¬vant. I had nothing in common with the faithful millions planning pilgrimages to the Holy Land. I sensed only that the city held answers for me, answers that could be found nowhere else.
'Where are we going?' Rachel asked irritably.
'Israel,' I said.
'What?'
'Jerusalem.'
'David-'
'It's because-'
'Don't tell me. Because of your hallucinations, right?'
'Yes.'
She reached out and lifted my chin, then looked deeply into my eyes. 'David, people are trying to kill us. The government is trying to kill us. You've been having hallucinations for reasons we don't understand, but which may have been caused by damage to your brain. And you want to use those hallucinations to guide you in trying to save our lives?'
'Whoever will save his life shall lose it.'
'What?'
I turned up my palms. 'I'm not saying this will save our lives. I'm saying that if I'm going to be hunted down and killed, I'd rather it happen while I'm trying to learn the meaning of something I believe has meaning.'
'You truly believe your hallucinations have meaning?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'I can't explain it logically. It's just something I know. Like a bird flying south.'
She sighed like an exhausted mother talking to a child. 'Try, okay? Try to explain.'
I closed my eyes and searched for words to explain the inexplicable. 'I feel as though I've been chosen.'
'For what?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Chosen by whom?'
'God.'
'God God?'
'Yes.'
She took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap. She was clearly struggling to remain calm. 'I think it's time you told me what these recent hallucinations have been about. Are you still dreaming that you're Jesus?'
'Yes.'
'What's different about these visions as compared to the older ones? Why have you hidden them from me?'
We'd finally arrived at the line between sanity and the rubber room. I was glad we were in a truck on a highway and not in Rachel's office. There was no one she could call to have me committed. 'Because I no longer believe they're hallucinations. Or dreams. I think they're memories.'
She expelled air in a frustrated rush. 'Memories? My God, David. What's happening in these dreams?'
'I'm reliving parts of Jesus' life. His travels to Jerusalem. His experiences there. I hear voices. My own… the disciples. Rachel, what I see in my head is more real than what I see around me. And events are moving rapidly. I'm approaching the crucifixion.'
She was shaking her head in disbelief. 'How could you have two-thousand-year-old memories that only entered your mind in the past six months?'
'I don't know.'
'These dreams make you feel some urgency to get to Israel?'
I hadn't thought of my feeling as urgency before, but that was what it was. What I'd perceived as generalized anxiety was really a slowly developing compulsion to travel to the setting of my dreams.
