“Is that anything to do with the Hubble Space Telescope?”
“Not really. They both collect data from the farthest edges of the universe, at least they did—Explorer is pretty much used as a test satellite now. Hubble does everything Explorer used to and has a much greater reach.”
The lips pursed again. “Not anymore.” O’Halloran opened his desk drawer, removed a badge wallet and handed it to Shepherd. “I am not in the habit of sending trainees out in the field before they have completed their training or spent at least a year in a field office, but apparently, out of more than thirty thousand currently active Bureau personnel, you are uniquely qualified for a situation that has arisen.” Shepherd opened the wallet and saw his own photo staring back from an FBI ID card. “That will temporarily entitle you to carry a concealed weapon and transport it aboard commercial airlines. You can collect your Roscoe and a box of shells from Agent Williams on your way out.”
Shepherd read the name printed next to a date that expired in a month. “My middle name is Thomas,” he said, turning the badge to O’Halloran.
“There’s already a Special Agent J. T. Shepherd in the Memphis office and, as no two agents can have the same ID,” he raised his hand and made a small sign of the cross in the air, “I now baptize you J. C. Shepherd. That’s your Bureau name, and you will answer to it. I am placing Agent Franklin in full command of the investigation and you are to follow his lead exactly. You have been assigned to this investigation solely because of your unique and considerable expertise in the field of astronomy. You will use it to assist Agent Franklin in this investigation and give your opinion only when it is requested. The rest of the time you will look upon this as a valuable opportunity to learn on the job from a well-seasoned and highly regarded agent. Once your usefulness to the investigation has been exhausted, your temporary status will be revoked and you will report back here to finish your training, understood?”
“Yessir.”
“I trust you know your way to Goddard from here? There’s a car signed out to you in transport.” He took the plain covered file from the desk and held it up. “Agent Franklin can brief you on the way.”
5
Shepherd and Franklin drove for the first ten minutes in total silence, the whump of windshield wipers and hiss of tires over wet tarmac punctuated only by the rustle of paper as Franklin read through the file. Occasionally he jotted a note in a pocket book 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 armory 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 favor,” 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 rearview mirror. Behind him he could see the lights of the gray 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 capital. 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 spun 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 checks 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 goddamn 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. “Okay, 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 roared 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. “Okay, 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 165-foot 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 on to a distant object and keep it in its sights for months, years even, while the earth turns beneath it.”