The Tower A Novel (Sanctus)

5





Shepherd and Franklin drove for the first ten minutes in total silence, the whump of windscreen wipers and hiss of tyres over wet

tarmac punctuated only by the rustle of paper as Franklin read through the file. Occasionally he jotted a note in a pocketbook lit

by the glow of a small Maglite clamped in his teeth. Shepherd sensed he was unhappy about the situation. That made two of them.

After his performance on Hogan’s Alley the last thing Shepherd wanted was to be heading out into the real world with a loaded gun

tucked into his jacket. As promised, Agent Williams, the firearms instructor, had been ready and waiting in the armoury with an

oiled SIG 226, which he made Shepherd speed-load from an open box of 9x19 Parabellums while he looked on. Shepherd’s Catholic

education had hammered enough Latin into him to know that para bellum meant ‘prepare for war’. He tried to push the thought from

his mind as he slotted fifteen shells into the magazine, fumbling two, before smacking it home and looking up into the pained

expression on the instructor’s face.

‘Do yourself a favour,’ Williams had said, as Shepherd signed for the gun and the spare shells, ‘try not to put yourself in any

situation where you may have to draw this weapon. Just keep it in your holster and come back as quickly as you can to finish your

training.’

Shepherd checked the rear-view mirror. Behind him he could see the lights of the grey panel van that had followed them out of the

gates at Quantico. It was a tech wagon, loaded with forensics equipment and two Physical Science Technicians ready to process the

crime scene his former workplace had now become. They were on I-95, heading north: the bright lights of DC spread across the

horizon ahead of them like a luminous stain, lighting up the low cloud that was spilling monsoon-level rain over everything. The

weather was slowing them down but at least it would be too late for commuter traffic to be a problem when they eventually hit the

capitol. He figured they would be in Maryland in twenty minutes, though he still had no idea why they were heading there.

The Maglite twisted off in the passenger seat and Shepherd heard the creak of the vinyl seat as Franklin turned to him. ‘That

little story you span back there,’ he said, ‘your tale of travel to the far corners of the world to find yourself – I just want

you to know, I ain’t buying it.’

Shepherd felt heat on his cheeks and was glad it was too dark for Franklin to see. ‘I don’t follow you, sir.’

‘I’ve spent over twenty years talking to people who have done everything from write bad cheques to kidnap children so they could

torture them for fun, and you know what every single one of ’em had in common? They all tried to lie to me. Now you may have all

your highfalutin’ degrees in astrophysics and rocket science and whatever else, but I got a degree in people and I know when

someone is spinning me a line. I can smell it on them, and right now, Agent Shepherd, you stink.’

Shepherd said nothing and kept his eyes on the road.

‘Now I don’t really care all that much why you’re lying or even what it is you’re hiding, what does concern me, however, is

having a partner I can’t trust. Having a partner you can’t trust is like having no partner at all, and that’s dangerous, Agent

Shepherd, as you just discovered down in that basement. So if at any point you feel like kicking a piece of the truth in my

direction – man to man, partner to partner, in the knowledge that, felonies aside, it will go no further – then we’ll get along

a whole lot better. In the meantime, operate on the assumption that I’m apt to doubt every single goddam word that comes out of

your mouth, understood?’

‘Sir, I promise you …’

Franklin raised his hand and turned his head away. ‘Don’t make it worse by lying to me again. I’m being honest with you, Agent

Shepherd, I’m just asking for you to do the same.’

The seat creaked as Franklin turned back to the briefing documents. ‘OK, now I’ve put it out there so you know where we stand

you can make yourself useful and explain to me the wisdom behind spending over a billion tax dollars putting a telescope into

space that then costs over forty million dollars a year to run.’

Shepherd stared ahead through the spray and considered the question, relieved to be back on safe, familiar ground. He thought

about the unimaginable distances the Hubble Space Telescope could penetrate compared to the relatively puny ones achieved by

terrestrial instruments. He thought about the light from dead stars it could gather from the pure nothingness of clear space,

carrying information all the way back from the beginning of time. But in the end he kept it simple. ‘How many stars can you see

tonight?’ he said.

Franklin looked out into the wet, black night as a Big Rig hooned by, going way too fast for the weather and throwing up so much

spray you could hardly see the edge of the freeway let alone the sky. ‘OK, fair point, but why not just build a telescope on top

of a mountain in Mexico or somewhere the sun always shines. Hell, why not just wait for a clear night, be a lot cheaper.’

‘They did all that. There’s a fifty-metre dish on top of the Sierra Negra volcano in south Mexico that can observe both northern

and southern skies. It’s pretty impressive. Trouble is the earth keeps turning, so it can only study a piece of sky for a few

hours at a time. A space telescope like Hubble can lock onto a distant object and keep it in its sights for months, years even,

while the earth turns beneath it.’

‘And that costs forty million a year?’

‘It’s a very complicated process.’

Franklin grunted. ‘Sounds like a scam to me.’

Shepherd considered letting it go but didn’t want to slip back into the uneasy silence. ‘How good a shot are you?’ he asked.

‘Better than you, Special Agent.’

‘You think you could hit a tin can on the side of the road from a moving car?’

‘Depends how fast the car is going.’

‘Say it’s doing thirty.’

‘Nine times out of ten.’

‘What if the car was doing eighty-five?’

Franklin considered. ‘Maybe three out of ten.’

‘OK, now imagine the car is doing eighty-five thousand miles an hour and the tin can is on the other side of the country, perched

on top of the Hollywood sign. Think you could hit it then?’ Franklin didn’t reply. ‘Hubble could. It could lock onto that can

and take a picture of it so steady you could read the label. It’s orbiting the earth at around seventeen thousand miles an hour,

and the earth is orbiting the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour. That’s a total of eighty-four thousand miles an hour and

yet Hubble can still fix onto a tiny patch of sky nearly fifteen billion light years away. It’s one of the greatest miracles of

modern technology, the pinnacle of man’s achievements in science. That’s why it cost so much and needs all that money to run it.

’

‘And all of that is controlled out of Goddard?’

‘Yes.’

Franklin shook his head. ‘Not any more – right now your gold-plated telescope couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo. It’s

spinning around up there like a bottle at a frat party. Someone managed to upload a virus that knocked out the guidance system and

shut down all communication.’

‘Really? That would be – very difficult.’

‘How difficult?’

‘When I was working at Goddard they had a small systems security scare. One of the ground operating stations for another

satellite was left wide open via an email account and some kid hacked into it. He didn’t do any damage but some of the ops

systems got infected with internet junk that flowed in through the hole he’d made. It was picked up pretty quick and fixed but it

prompted a review of the whole system. How much do you know about government cyber security?’

‘About as much as you know about firing guns.’

‘OK, so all state owned and operated computer operating systems are rated according to the Orange Book scale drawn up by the

Department of Defense. This lays out specific security criteria for all government systems ranging from a D grade for non-

sensitive, clerical stuff all the way up to beyond A1 for things like the NSA, the FBI and the military systems that launch the

nukes. Following the scare at Goddard all the operating systems had to be upgraded to at least an A1. That means the prospect of

Hubble’s ground-based operating system being breached by any kind of regular cyber attack is extremely unlikely. It would be like

a junkie with a twenty-dollar pistol knocking off Fort Knox. Whoever did this must have known exactly what they were doing.’

‘You think it’s an inside job?’

‘Has to be. We should talk to Dr Kinderman, he’s in charge of Hubble and helped redesign the new system. He’ll be able to give

us the names of everyone with the right kind of technical knowledge and any ex-employees who might have an axe to grind.’

‘Good thinking, Agent Shepherd,’ Franklin said, ‘only problem with your otherwise flawless plan of investigation is that Dr

Kinderman is AWOL. Right now he is our number one suspect.’