Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  Pay attention!

  Getting bleary eyed in heavy traffic, oncoming headlights bright white like suns, and I’m blinking often, my blood sugar dipping. Trying not to be obvious about the two black Suburban SUVs in my wake, three and four vehicles back and following. DC license plates in the 900 numbers, tinted windows, possibly armored to protect not just the people but the equipment inside. Not military or private security, and they’re not State Department, I decide, first noticing them several minutes after driving away from 1111.

  They swung in behind me as I passed the van pool, keeping a discreet distance while locked in to each other and my truck like a tractor beam. Or that’s what I sense even as I remind myself it’s probably nothing. If they’re interested in me for some unknown reason, they wouldn’t be this blatant. I need to be careful about overreacting. Because Dick can make me paranoid, and I am right now, just a little.

  Keeping my eyes on the SUVs, almost feeling the agents tracking me like a signal sniffer, as if they’re curious about whether I might be a rogue frequency, an intruder, one of those unwanted events they’re always talking about. It’s not typical for a security detail to be wandering around back here. Certainly not a Secret Service detail, for crummy sake. But it depends on who of import might be touring the treasures hidden in our labs.

  Except nobody’s touring anything at this hour as we prepare for a furlough and a nor’easter. And I’m always informed about VIP guests well in advance.

  00:00:00:00:0

  I WATCH the two Suburbans in my mirrors, making out the shapes of two people in each. Taking in their technology and modus operandi, profiling who’s bird-dogging me.

  The scarcity of visible antennas on the lead SUV suggests conformal microstrips blended into the rooftop and body. The thin narrow bands can operate at almost any frequency and communicate with satellites if need be. The second SUV has an array of telecommunications antennas on both sides of the roof, and also two domes for electronic countermeasures such as signal jamming. Not a normal protective detail for around here unless the vice president is touring, as he was the other week.

  I’m all but certain I recognize the profile of the vehicles, the subtle maneuvers, the DC plates and all the rest. As a recent addition to the Secret Service’s Electronic Crimes Task Force, I’m still learning their intricate and unusual ways, some of them super high tech even for me. But why would agents be here at Langley without my knowing, and is it just these two vehicles, or are there others? And if so, who are they protecting?

  Or looking for?

  The disturbing thought floats up from the depths of my consciousness, and I don’t know where it came from. Since when would the Secret Service be looking for a fugitive or person of interest on our NASA campus? Mostly what we worry about is espionage. That’s handled by the FBI, and I wouldn’t expect the Secret Service to take charge unless there’s the perceived threat in their wheelhouse.

  Including an assassination attempt on the president, vice president or their families. Or cabinet members and others requiring the highest level of executive protection. Or if there’s a suspicion of financial or electronic crimes including fraud, identity theft and hacking with catastrophic repercussions that could threaten our national security. And I can’t imagine how any such unwanted events might apply to the frigid Langley campus right now.

  Focus. Focus. Focus.

  My nerves are singing like violin strings as I drive toward my headquarters. Around a traffic circle, and up ahead, the white vacuum spheres loom larger, lined up like gigantic ostrich eggs. I feel the pressure of time, not looking forward to an all-nighter in Mission Control, and the threat of almost everyone being sent home indefinitely interferes with everything. All because of feuding politicians, and for that matter, I don’t care to make a list of everything I must get done before the government shuts down.

  Assuming that happens, and it almost never does. But the specter of it is damaging on its own, the researchers in their usual uproar because who wants to be locked out of his or her office? I know I wouldn’t. But one of many advantages in working for NASA Protective Services is that’s not going to happen to us. Not usually. And never to me.

  Once 1232 has been evacuated, I may not be able to work inside as a scientist, but that doesn’t mean I can’t access the building during routine patrols.

  In other words, pretty much whenever I like and for whatever reason I might decide. The same is true of my protective services HQ and our next-door neighbor, NASA Fire and Rescue. There’s nothing to stop me from coming and going as I please, and when I turn into the parking lot, I’m surprised to find it empty except for the small fleet of army-green Polaris ATVs.

  “Where the hell-o is everyone . . . ?” Muttering as I tuck my truck in the chief’s empty spot where his Harley-Davidson was earlier.

  Leaving the briefing when Fran and I did, he’s probably safely home by now, and good for him. Because there are no heated grips and seat, no batwing fairing that would make me want to ride a motorcycle in this cold. Grabbing my gear bag, I lock my truck, and gosh darn it’s freezing.

  “Brrrrr . . . !”

  Hurrying along the sidewalk, I maneuver around patches of pet-friendly salt toward the back entrance of our two-story modern red brick and blue-tinted-glass building. Scanning my smartcard to unlock the front door. Hurrying inside and stopping in my tracks.

  “Hmmm.”

  Doesn’t seem anyone’s home, and I’m not surprised based on the empty parking lot. But the alarm isn’t set, and I stand perfectly still, on high alert. Looking around the lobby inside our blue world. Blue carpet. Blue-upholstered reproduction furniture. Walls displaying the blue NASA logo, “Meatball,” as those in the know call it, and rocket launch and space photographs with wispy white clouds and oceans of lapis blue.

  Doing a high recon, my counter-intel instincts kicking in. Aware of any shiny surface that might reflect the slightest motion of an intruder lurking about in here. Including autonomous surveillance devices, because these days I have to worry about more than humans. Not so much as a twitch of anything or anyone caught in glass doors and partitions, or in the big flat-screen TV turned on with the volume off in the sitting area.

  And that’s odd, too, the channel on a NASA live video feed of the two US astronauts currently on the International Space Station. Its commander, Peggy Whitson, and Jack Fischer are setting up cable harnesses for the installation of the presumed Low Earth Atmospheric Reader (LEAR) at 2:00 a.m. tomorrow. Less than 9 hours from now, and I’ve been routinely monitoring the NASA live feeds on my phone. So far everything is nominal and a go for the doubleheader.

  The resupply launch from Wallops is on track, the rocket on the pad, stolid and iridescent white in stormy weather. And in outer space, the SpaceX Dragon and the Station rendezvoused yesterday, the cargo capsule safely berthed, its payload in the process of being unpacked and stowed. It’s an astro-rodeo I’ve been to many times before, except this one is different. And hardly anybody knows it.

  LEAR is tricky business, and I find it an eerie irony that I’m watching the very astronauts who are about to install it in outer space. Reminded that I’m assisting in a falsehood about the true nature of the instrument rocketed from Cape Canaveral two weeks ago, the cargo capsule orbiting earth ever since until captured by the Space Station’s robotic arm.

  During the EVA, this same arm will carry Commander Whitson and the alleged nerdy scientific instrument to a research platform attached to the Station’s shiny metal structure. Except LEAR isn’t LEAR, and it won’t be observing or measuring anything about Earth, the moon, Mars, deep space, not anything anywhere. Not exactly.

  What the public is told and what’s actually true can’t always be the same, not with our military, not with NASA, and I pause for a moment, watching the astronauts talking to each other and to
Mission Control, saying things I can’t hear. Probably dealing with Houston exclusively for the pre-prep setup going on inside the Station’s US lab module.

  But during the actual EVA, it will be Rush sitting in the hot seat. He’ll be in Langley’s Mission Control, overseeing the installation of a top secret multibillion-dollar instrument that, trust me, isn’t typical, normal or expendable. It’s not exactly some high school science project that’s about to be sling loaded half the length of a football field and plugged into a platform while orbiting the earth at 17,500 miles per hour.

  I can’t help but find it slightly unreal that this is what’s playing silently on TV right now. Since it’s just my freakin’ luck that in the face of the government shutdown and storm warning, I have a rocket launch and spacewalk happening simultaneously. That’s a lot for essential NASA people like me to manage when everyone else has been sent home.

  If the furlough happens as threatened, then at midnight the Langley workforce will be reduced from some 3,600 to no more than 50 of us holding down the fort. The same will be happening at every NASA center, including Wallops Island and Ames. But what’s nagging at me aren’t the big items on my list like rockets and top secret instruments.

  I can’t figure out why the TV in our lobby is set on the International Space Station network at all. The channel is always on CNN or Fox, depending on who gets his or her way about what we watch on any given day.

  Who’s been in here?

  Finding the remote control on a table, I turn off the TV, and wander over to a section of blue cubicles we reserve for visiting law enforcement agents and interns. No sign of anyone, and when there are no human distractions, I’m unpleasantly struck by the similarity between high-density work areas and milk crates or egg cartons. Glancing at what’s out in plain view on top of desks, deposited in wastepaper baskets, pinned on partitions. And from there I move on to do a high recon inside the break room, the restrooms.

  Using my skeleton key of a smartcard to check various areas I pass, stepping inside the Office of Emergency Management, OEM, where data walls are busy with live feeds from hundreds of surveillance cameras at the gates and on campus. Big flat-screens are busy with news correspondents mutely explaining what’s happening on the streets and in outer space, and with weather reports, and skirmishes on the Senate floor.

  I pause to watch for any update about the government shutdown, and it appears the political chaos is status quo. I’m not surprised that the emergency communications center we share with Fire and Rescue is swamped. For a moment I watch a real-time video feed of dispatchers and operators overwhelmed with calls. It’s rush hour, and one traffic mess and mishap after the next. But I don’t see any alerts I ought to know about beyond politics and storm alerts.

  Satisfied all is clear and secure, I leave the OEM and shut the door, headed to a long hallway of investigative workrooms and offices. My steel-toe shoes hushed by blue carpet. Just me, myself and I. Nobody else home, and yet I can’t shake the feeling that something’s not right. For starters, the TV was set to NASA’s International Space Station channel when it never is unless something dramatic is going on. Far more perplexing than that is why the security alarm wasn’t set.

  “What moron didn’t do that?” Under my breath.

  I hope it wasn’t the chief but can’t imagine he’d be that careless. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with a background in military policing and intelligence, Elroy Rogers has a PhD in astrophysics. His preferred ride is his iron horse Harley-Davidson touring bike, white with Screamin’ Eagle pipes and a custom silver-studded western saddle seat. Naturally, nicknamed Trigger, and no doubt it and Dr. Rogers blasted out of here not all that long ago. They might have been the last to leave.

  But our illustrious chief is anything but sloppy. No way he neglected to set the alarm, and I’m beginning to wonder what’s happened to everyone. Doors I pass are locked for the day, and I understand the top brass, branch executives and contract management shoving off by this hour. Especially with a furlough looming, but not every single special agent, no one left standing except me.

  Where is everyone?

  As if there’s nothing going on when I know that couldn’t be further from the truth. All of us are chronically backed up, and I sit down on the carpet in the hallway, resting my back against the wall, realizing how much of today I’ve spent on my feet without a break. I try Fran’s cell phone.

  “Miss me already?” she says in my wireless earpiece before I can utter hello. “Was getting ready to call you.”

  “Good, because I’m confused.” Keeping my scan going, and one thing NASA doesn’t lack is photographs, mock-ups and models of all its toys and those who use them.

  From my vantage point on the floor I can scan the entire empty hallway, painted in a soft gray tone, both sides arranged with large photographs of vehicles tested in various wind tunnels, including vertical-spin and high-temperature ones. Everything from NASCAR race cars to hypersonic jets and spacecraft, and I find it a shame what we tend to take for granted around here.

  Me included. It’s easy to think space capsules, satellites, moon habitats, robots and the like are normal when they’re your wallpaper.

  6

  I EXPLAIN that I’m sitting on the floor inside our headquarters with nobody home.

  There are a number of inexplicable things going on, I let Fran know. Including at least two black Suburbans with special antennas and signal jammers roaming the campus. Maybe following me.

  “You’re sitting in the hallway? Huh? What for? You get in trouble with the teacher again?” her voice in my wireless earpiece, and I can tell that she’s still driving, probably headed home. “And I’m sure you’re being followed because there’s a plot behind every bush, isn’t that right, Aggie?”

  Fran’s usual dig at my no-stone-unturned way of doing business, accusing me of inflating the smallest thing into a full-blown Agatha Christie mystery.

  “Just making sure there’s nothing inside our headquarters that shouldn’t be here,” I reply from my seat on the carpeted floor.

  Both sides of the hallway are a gallery of more poster-size NASA photographs, these of astronauts in their Extravehicular Mobility Units, EMUs. A jargony term for their puffy white spacesuits and Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue, SAFER, “jet packs.” Seeming tiny and fragile with nothing but handrails and shiny braided stainless steel wires to keep them from floating off from the half-million-ton Space Station, flaring in the blackness like platinum in the sun.

  All around me are photographs of walking on the moon, of splashed-down crew capsules and the Space Shuttle. But I admit to having a soft spot for our spacecraft orbiters, satellites and probes like Cassini, Viking and Galileo. I can get quite attached to the gold-winged antenna dishes we deploy as our explorers and spies, sending them on endless one-way flights to cruise planets, moons, stars. Our creations but not in our own image, that’s for sure. Doing as instructed without stupid questions or attitude.

  Never shirking their responsibilities or complaining. Or in a mood. Out to lunch. Taking a nap. Ditching their orbit for a better one. Our autonomous astro-envoys do what we decide. As long as they’re not hacked.

  “I worry you’re getting really weird,” Fran in my ear. “Excuse me, I meant weirder.”

  “When I walked in a few minutes ago, the TV was on and the alarm wasn’t set. You got any idea why?” I ask.

  “That’s bad. Have you checked who was the last to leave?”

  “Not yet. I intend to get to the bottom of it and write up whoever did it. We can’t have people coming and going with no thought of setting the alarm,” I reply. “Last I checked, we’re some of the lucky ones who don’t get furloughed. Where is everyone?”

  “It’s almost suppertime, Aggie. In case you’re not looking at the clock,
and I don’t know about everyone. But Kim and John had to leave early today, both of them not feeling so hot. That bug going around, the same thing Easton had a few weeks ago. And Butch and Scottie are out on a DOA . . .”

  “Excuse me? What DOA and why don’t I know about it?” Unzipping my gear bag.

  “Cool your jets. Maybe you weren’t called because it’s a sensitive situation and not for everybody’s ears,” and she’s just going to keep picking on me.

  My punishment for witnessing her moment of weakness in the tunnel, and nothing new. When she’s had one of her phobic attacks and I have to help her out, the aftermath is predictable.

  “Ha-ha, very funny.” I take off my steel-toe sneakers.

  “I got the call not even two minutes ago from the Hampton officer first on the scene,” Fran puts all snide kidding aside. “I was getting ready to let you know that a NASA outside contractor appears to have committed suicide.”

  “Oh boy.” I never like to hear something like that. “Awful,” and I almost add, Especially this time of year, but think better of it.

  Fran doesn’t need a reminder that death and destruction never take a holiday. She’s not the same after what happened three years ago, and the closer we get to December 24, the darker her mood.

  “Wanted you to be aware in case you hear something about it,” she’s saying. “Hopefully it won’t be on the news before we can notify her next of kin.”

  “This didn’t occur on campus, obviously,” working my feet into my boots. “There’s no way I wouldn’t be aware of a death inside one of our facilities.” Unless nobody’s telling me anything anymore, I can’t help but wonder.