Simon Toyne - The Tower

‘Anyone else been in there since Kinderman went missing?’

‘Just myself and the technician who found it.’

‘OK, let’s start there.’

Pierce swiped them through another security door and pointed to an office door halfway down the corridor.

Shepherd had been in Kinderman’s office a few times before, once when he had started working here and again on the day he left. It was something of a tradition at Goddard, being paraded in front of the chief on your way in and out for a chat and a pep talk. He remembered being struck on both occasions by Kinderman’s extraordinary neatness and precision, a memory that jarred heavily with the chaotic mess of files and paperwork now covering most of the floor.

Franklin surveyed it all from the door while he pulled on a pair of blue Nitrile gloves he’d produced from his jacket pocket. Shepherd felt hot blood rising up his neck as he realized he’d left his own back in the car.

Franklin stepped into the office and made his way through snowdrifts of paperwork towards the centre of the room. He stood for a moment, turning slowly, taking it all in: the neat, uncluttered desk; the crooked photos on the wall of various presidents standing next to the same neatly-pressed man; the same man shaking hands with the King of Sweden as he received the Nobel Prize for his work in measuring the rate of universal expansion. In the world of astrophysics Dr Kinderman was the closest thing you could get to a rock star and Shepherd was finding it very hard to think of him as a suspect.

He felt something soft and cold press against the back of his hand and looked down to discover a pair of fresh gloves held low so Franklin wouldn’t see them. He smiled his thanks at the PST who had come to his rescue and quickly pulled them on just as Franklin finished his silent appraisal of the room and looked up. ‘OK boys,’ he said, ‘get to work.’

The two techs swooped into the room, one shaking open various-sized evidence bags, the other scoping every surface with a high-end camera that took both stills and video. Franklin joined Shepherd and Pierce back in the corridor. ‘Looks like someone left in a hell of a hurry.’

Pierce nodded. ‘When I first saw it I thought it was a break-in.’

‘You still think so?’

He shook his head. ‘Not when I saw that.’ He pointed to a small book lying open next to the terminal keyboard. It was photographed and handed out to Franklin. It was a standard appointments diary, a double page to a week, every blank space crammed with small, precise handwriting. ‘I was trying to find out where Dr Kinderman might be, but as you can see it wasn’t much help.’

Franklin flicked through the pages until he arrived at the current week where the writing just stopped. The last entry was in today’s date:

T

end of days

The rest of the diary was blank, as if nothing was going to happen ever again.

Franklin looked up. ‘You said no one has been in this room apart from you and the person who found it like this.’

‘That’s right, just me and Merriweather.’

Franklin handed the diary over to one of the techs for processing. ‘Why don’t we go and say hello to Merriweather.’

The Space Telescope Operations Control Centre was roughly half the size of a tennis court and smelt of warm circuitry and ozone. There were no windows in the room and therefore no daylight. The only illumination came from the occasional desk lamp and the combined glow of a few dozen flat-screen monitors facing a larger central screen. All of them were displaying the same message:

MANKIND MUST LOOK NO FURTHER

A man stood as they entered, his clothes and horn-rimmed glasses making him look like he had beamed in from the fifties.

‘Merriweather, these are Special Agents Franklin and Shepherd from the FBI.’

They shook hands. Franklin nodded at the big screen. ‘That the same message you found on Kinderman’s computer?’

‘Yes, sir –’ He cleared his throat and stared up at the screen rather than anyone in particular. ‘Well, I mean it was part of the program that did it – I think. Or rather – this message was the last thing that uploaded and now it’s everywhere and we can’t take it down. The whole system’s locked.’

‘Any idea what it might refer to?’

Merriweather blew out a breath and raised his eyebrows. ‘Hubble’s a telescope, all it does is look at stuff – it could refer to anything.’

‘It’s not looking at anything any more though is it?’

Merriweather shook his head and Shepherd felt for him. He knew how attached people got to the projects they were working on, how they often became the most meaningful relationships you had. Hubble had just been attacked, possibly put out of action for months, and Franklin was talking about it like someone had dented a car.

‘Talk us through the sequence,’ Shepherd said, trying to steer the conversation back to the investigation. ‘What was the first physical manifestation of the virus?’

‘It hit the guidance system first. That was when I knew it was serious and went looking for Dr Kinderman. I found his office in a mess and this message on the screen. Actually no, first there was a command box with what looked like a decaying googolplex in it, then the message popped up.’

‘Tell me about the googolplex.’

‘Wait a second,’ Franklin jumped in, ‘would you mind translating for those of us who flunked Physics.’

‘A googolplex is a mathematical term for a particularly long number,’ Shepherd said, his eyes staying on Merriweather. ‘It’s where we get the word “Google” from. All those zeros you get when a search comes back refer to the googolplex. And the fact that it was decaying simply means it was getting smaller.’

Franklin nodded. ‘OK, got it.’ He turned to Merriweather again. ‘So a big number flashed up on the screen followed by this message?’

‘Yes, sir. I think the googolplex was probably something to do with the initialization of the malware and I just happened to be there to see it.’

‘And you were alone in the control room when all this happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that standard practice?’

‘No. I mean usually there are at least … everyone else was at the party.’ He looked at Pierce for support.

‘Merriweather volunteered to man the graveyard shift,’ Pierce said. ‘I checked on the staff rota. He was the only one here.’

‘Mighty public spirited of you, staying back here to watch the store while everyone else gets to go off and party. Not so great that that’s when the store got knocked off though, huh?’ Franklin stared hard at Merriweather for a long few seconds then smiled in the way Shepherd was fast getting used to. ‘Don’t worry, son. I reckon you’re too smart to hang yourself out to dry by throwing a spanner in the works on your own watch. Tell me about Dr Kinderman, when was the last time you saw him?’

Shepherd recognized the interview method Franklin was using. He was moving the questions around, rapidly changing topic and tone to give the subject no time to think and shake away any subterfuge they might be clinging to. It was a technique you used on someone you thought might be lying.

‘He was still in his office at around five thirty. I walked past on my way to get a snack before everyone else left.’

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘No. He was at his desk, working.’

‘Did he seem anxious to you?’

‘Not that I could tell.’

‘Did you notice him acting strangely at all in the past few days?’

Merriweather shrugged. ‘I can’t really say. Dr Kinderman doesn’t exactly conform to conventional notions of behaviour.’

Franklin took a deep breath and seemed to double in size. ‘Listen, son, you can either choose to help us or you can choose to be obstructive, and one of those options is a Federal offence and comes with jail time. Just answer the question.’