“Back in the typewriter days, before photocopiers even, the only way you could get an exact copy of a typed document was to sandwich carbon paper between two blank sheets. The force of the typewriter letters striking the top sheet would leave a carbon trace on the bottom one, producing a copy. This application does a similar thing. It records keystrokes, only the user doesn’t know anything about it. In fact very few people do.
“After nine-eleven, when homeland security became the number one priority and the usual concerns for civil rights and privacy went out the window, the U.S. government cut a very high-level deal with all the major computer chip manufacturers. Not sure if you know this but ninety-nine percent of all the world’s microchips are made in South Korea. So you can imagine, having the American government in your corner when you’ve got North Korea as a neighbor must have been a powerful persuader in the discussions. Anyway, the deal was simple. All they had to do in exchange for Uncle Sam’s undying gratitude and future unspecified favors was to modify their product a little. Ever since then, each new chip produced has an extra partition of memory built into it that doesn’t show up on any directory and can only be accessed by certain approved law enforcement agencies with the right software.” He pointed at the progress bar on the screen as it closed in on 100 %. “CARBON. Basically, they created the ultimate in spyware. Normal virus protection doesn’t even see it because it’s not code, it’s built right into the hardware.”
The progress bar disappeared and a document opened, crammed solid with words and numbers. “The data is pretty raw,” he said, his fingers resuming their tap routine, “and because of the covert nature of the technology the memory cache is relatively small to keep it hidden, so it has to constantly dump old data to keep recording new stuff, just like media discs on security cameras. Usually it holds about a week’s worth of activity. I’m just going to run a filter to split the data out a little and pick out any hot or unusual high-frequency words.” He executed a new command and another window popped open. “This is where you can make yourself useful.”
Shepherd leaned in as words started to appear in the window, gleaned from the raw data. He recognized almost all of them. “Ophiuchus is a constellation,” he said, working his way down the growing list. “Andromeda is a galaxy and all those long numbers beginning with PGC are from the Principal Galaxy Catalog. Red-Shift is an astronomical term for what happens to distant light…”
They continued in this way for several minutes, Smith highlighted everything Shepherd recognized until they reached the bottom of the list and Smith hit delete to get rid of all the isolated words. There were now just two remaining:
MALA
T
Shepherd fished a notebook from his pocket and flipped back through the entries he had made at Goddard. There was the T again in the last entry Dr. Kinderman had made in his diary:
T
end of days.
A thought struck him, something about the T and what it might mean in relation to Hubble. He found the contact numbers he had taken down and dialed one, checking the time as he waited for it to connect. The line clicked a few times before a ring tone cut in. Shepherd held his breath as he waited for someone to answer.
20
Two floors above Shepherd, Franklin sat in a small office, door closed, his face illuminated by a different computer screen.
During his more than twenty years’ service in the Bureau he had learned a lot about himself. He knew he wasn’t the most instinctive of investigators, didn’t have the genius he had seen in some to ask exactly the right question at exactly the right time and had never been the one in a midnight incident room to make the single connection that pulled everything together. But he was dogged and he knew people. He could tap them like a tuning fork and listen to the sound they made. He always knew when the note was wrong, and right now, with Shepherd, it was screeching like nails on a blackboard.
On the screen in front of him were Shepherd’s Bureau application forms and résumé. He had been scouring them for the last twenty minutes, cross-checking the missing two years against social security records, credit-scoring agencies, anything that might give him a steer on where Shepherd was and what he had been doing. So far the only small discrepancy he had found was on the standard questionnaire for national security positions. There was a new addition to the form, a declaration of faith, added by a Republican government riding high on the wave of post 9/11 hysteria. The Democrats had fought it, citing it as a dangerous erosion of the Constitution and its separation of religion and state, but the Republicans maintained that it would help identify Muslim candidates whose background and cultural knowledge could prove insightful in the war on terror. The bill had just squeaked through, but only after a compromise had agreed that the new section should be optional and no candidate could be penalized for not filling it in. Shepherd had exercised that option and left his blank.
This in itself was unremarkable, but in Franklin’s experience the only people who chose not to fill in the faith section were atheists. Shepherd’s résumé showed he had spent several years at a hard-core Catholic boarding school and yet he hadn’t ticked the box declaring himself to be Catholic. It was a small point but it added to Franklin’s distrust of him. There was something hardwired into his DNA that could not allow him to entirely trust anyone who did not, in one way or another, have a healthy fear of God. It was one of the central tenets of the Irish, whispered down to him on whiskey breath by his father and uncles when they were swaying with patriotism for a country none of them had ever set foot in: never trust a man who does not have God in his heart, and never trust a man who will not take a drink with you.
He sat back in his chair, reaching for his phone.
Thinking about his da’ had tugged at something inside him. Maybe it was Christmas and the usual guilt that came with that. It was too late to call so he scrolled down the contacts list to the entry for Marie and opened up a blank text:
Something’s come up. Got to work tomorrow so won’t be able to make it home. Will call when I know when I can get away. Say sorry to Sinead for me.
He pressed send and watched the message go. It was odd that he still thought of the house as home even though he didn’t live there anymore.
He’d closed all the files, shut down the terminal and was pulling his jacket off the back of the chair when his phone buzzed. Marie had gotten straight back to him.
What about saying sorry to me?
Franklin read the words and felt the ache inside him twist a little more. She was right of course, but he’d gotten tired of apologizing to her a long time ago. He slipped his jacket on and headed for the nearest exit, swapping the phone for a crumpled packet of Marlboros. Another bad habit he had been trying for a long time to quit.
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.”