The Tower A Novel (Sanctus)

21





‘Hubble Flight Team.’

The line was noisy and Shepherd covered his other ear so he could hear better. ‘Merriweather?’

‘Speaking.’

‘It’s Agent Shepherd. Where are you?’

‘I’m at Goddard. I’ve stepped out for some air and patched my calls through to my cell in case anyone needed me, how can I

help?’

‘Before the attack you said Hubble was exploring a piece of thin space in the constellation of Taurus.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What do you use as shorthand for Taurus?’

There was a pause. ‘If I was writing it down I’d use the astrological sign, a circle with two horns.’

‘Not the letter T?’

‘No.’

‘What if you were typing it?’

‘If I was typing it I would put in the whole word, or maybe just the first few letters and then predictive text would do the

rest.’

Shepherd wrote T and TAURUS in his notebook and added a large question mark after them. ‘What about MALA?’ he spelled it.

‘Nothing, sorry. What are these in relation to?’

‘They showed up in some raw data we recovered from Dr Kinderman’s computer. It’s probably nothing but we have to check.’

Shepherd wrote MALA in his notebook and added a question mark after that too. ‘Thanks, Merriweather. Sorry to have bothered you.

’

‘No problem. Listen, if you find anything else let me know, I’m as eager to get to the bottom of this as anyone …’

‘I’m sure you are.’

‘… and you can always get me on this number. I’ll keep it patched through to my cell and leave it switched on just in case,

though I’m planning on sleeping at my desk until either Hubble comes back online or someone forces me out of here at gunpoint.’

Shepherd smiled. ‘I’m sure of that too. You take care, Merriweather. We’ll sort this thing out, one way or another.’ He put

the phone down just as the door opened on the far side of the room and footsteps approached.

‘Found anything?’ Franklin’s voice boomed across the empty space.

No – Shepherd thought.

‘Yes,’ Smith said, cheerful as ever. ‘We recovered some CARBON data, and Agent Shepherd has been helping me sort through it.’

‘Good for Agent Shepherd – anything useful?’

Shepherd looked down at his notes. ‘We found a couple of unusual words. I think the T might refer to Taurus but I have no idea

what MALA means.’

‘Interesting.’ Franklin leaned forward in a wash of coffee and cigarette smoke. ‘Watch and learn, rookie.’ He clicked on

Google and typed MALA into the search window, hit Return and pages of results popped up. ‘Sometimes the simple, direct route gets

the best results.’ He clicked on the top hit and a Wikipedia page opened up.

Mala: [mala] Name given to several historical anti-establishment groups and more recently a clandestine anti-religious terror

organization.

Shepherd turned to Franklin who was smiling his trademark smile. ‘If you’d paid a little more attention you would have seen the

Mala mentioned more than once in those old newspapers we found back in Kinderman’s pad. I told you the Bureau got involved. They

were the terrorist group blamed for the attacks on the Citadel in Ruin.’

Shepherd turned back and continued to read.

The Mala are one of two pre-historic tribes of men whose combined history underpins the emergence of modern civilization and

religion. The other tribe – the Yahweh – were victorious in a struggle to possess and control a powerful ancient relic known as

the Sacrament, which is believed by many to still exist inside the Citadel fortress in the southern Turkish city of Ruin, where it

has been kept and protected since pre-history by the spiritual heirs of the Yahweh, a brotherhood of monks known as the Sancti.

Shepherd bristled at this last word. ‘The letter sent to Kinderman was signed Novus Sancti.’

Franklin nodded. ‘Looks like the religious angle is starting to fly. Read on.’

The Mala, having lost the Sacrament, were branded as heretics by the emerging Church and driven into hiding where they became

synonymous with other anti-Church organizations such as the Illuminati. Because of the secretive nature of the Mala, little is

known about them but many famous scientific figures are believed to have been members. These include Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo

Galilei and many others, particularly in the field of astronomy, who often suffered persecution because their theories and

discoveries challenged the teachings of the church. The church, in turn, continues to portray the Mala as terrorists, Satanists

and worshippers of the occult.

Shepherd sat back in his chair. ‘The letter also called Kinderman a member of the occult tribe.’

‘Which would explain why Kinderman was targeted by religious freaks, though not why he would sabotage Hubble.’ Franklin turned

to Smith. ‘Can you dig anything else out from Kinderman’s drive? Maybe the context of these words will give us something to go

on.’

Smith hammered in more commands, so hard that Shepherd wondered how many keyboards he went through a year. He hit Return and the

program went to work.

Shepherd looked down at the question marks in his notebook, feeling that his usefulness to the investigation was slipping away. He

was already thinking of the report he would have to write before dawn and getting through the next day of classes having had no

sleep.

‘Looks like he was talking to someone,’ Franklin said.

Shepherd looked up and read the new messages.

408 Finished calculating co-ordinates for the Mala star, will send separately for you to check

408 Not much time left. May be needing our friends in Mala sooner than I thought.

‘It’s network mail,’ Shepherd said, recognizing the repeated number as a directory code. ‘It’s an encrypted, stripped down

version of email they use to share data between different departments and facilities. He was talking to someone else at NASA.’ He

grabbed the desk phone, hit redial and put it on speakerphone so everyone could hear. This time it barely rang before being picked

up.

‘Hubble Flight Team.’

‘Merriweather, Shepherd again. Do you have a network mail directory handy?’

There was a pause punctuated by the muffled rattle of a keyboard. ‘Yeah, I got it.’

‘Could you tell me who has the directory code 408?’

Three muffled taps then a louder one. ‘That’s Professor Douglas.’

Shepherd felt the ground fall away beneath him. ‘Joseph Douglas?’

‘Who else.’

‘OK, thanks.’

‘You need anything else?’

Franklin leaned over. ‘This is Agent Franklin. Please do not mention this conversation to anyone. Not even Chief Pierce,

understood?’

‘You got it.’ Franklin disconnected before Merriweather could say anything else, picked up the handset and dialled the number

for transport. ‘Looks like I’ll be heading back to Goddard with an arrest warrant.’

‘Professor Douglas isn’t at Goddard,’ Shepherd said, ‘he’s at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. That’

s where they’re testing all the components of the James Webb Telescope prior to launch. Professor Douglas is in charge of the

whole project.’

Franklin’s face went dark as he registered the implications. ‘This is Franklin,’ he barked down the phone at whoever answered.

‘I need a ride, soon as humanly possible, to fly me as close to Huntsville, Alabama as possible.’ He covered the mouthpiece.

‘Make yourself useful Shepherd, find me the name of whoever is head of security at Marshall and get him on the phone.’

‘You should take me with you.’

Franklin looked genuinely amused. ‘Really? And why’s that?’

‘Because I know Professor Douglas,’ Shepherd replied, sensing that the door closing on his part of the investigation might just

be starting to open again. ‘I used to be his student.’