‘Mike Pierce, Chief of Security,’ a voice rumbled from beneath the hood. He held the umbrella up for Franklin as he got out of the car and glanced at Shepherd as he did the same. Shepherd saw the eyes take him in, make a quick decision based on seniority and logistics then turn to usher Franklin away beneath the cover of the umbrella, not bothering to wait for the junior agent. The van that had followed them all the way from Quantico pulled in next to him, sending a wave of cold water arcing onto the back of Shepherd’s legs. He locked the car and splashed across the tarmac after the umbrella. He figured if the techs could find fingerprints on cotton and microscopic traces of DNA in a sterile room, they could probably find their way into a building without his help.
Stepping through the open service door into the clean, white-walled corridors of Building 29 was like jumping through a time-portal back to a previous life. Because there were no pictures on the walls and no unnecessary furnishings – to help maintain the sterile conditions required in the ‘clean rooms’ at the heart of the building – everything looked exactly as it had the last time Shepherd had set foot here.
‘Mike Pierce.’ The hooded man crushed Shepherd’s hand in a wet grip. ‘We met before?’ The eyes studied him from within the frame of a too-large face made bigger by the absence of hair. He looked like a weightlifter gone to fat but who still had some steel at his core and clearly felt a need to prove it whenever he shook another man’s hand.
‘I was here for a few months back in spring ’04,’ Shepherd said, letting go of Pierce’s hand to prompt him to do the same.
Pierce shrugged out of the rain slicker in a shower of water and draped it over a seat by the door. ‘I don’t recall any kind of Bureau investigation back then.’
‘Don’t be fooled by the lines around the eyes,’ Franklin cut in. ‘Agent Shepherd here is still wet behind the ears as far as Bureau work goes. He’s just here to help walk me through the tricky science parts.’
‘I worked on Explorer for a while,’ Shepherd explained as a bang behind them announced the arrival of the others heaving various boxes of gear out of the rain and in through the narrow service door.
‘Looks like the gang’s all here,’ Franklin said. ‘Lead on, Chief Pierce: tell us what you know.’
‘Well pretty much everything is in the report,’ Pierce said, closing the door behind them then swiping a card through a lock to gain entrance to an inner hallway. ‘At 20.05 this evening the main system network servicing the Hubble Space Telescope was subjected to a sophisticated cyber attack. Merriweather, the technician who was on duty when it happened, is waiting in the control centre to go through all the specific details for you.’
‘What about Dr Kinderman?’
‘Still no word. I’ve tried contacting him on all his numbers, sent emails, even got Merriweather to ping him on Twitter and Facebook. Nothing. His cell phone was found in his office, which appears to have been ransacked.’
‘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