“What would Sherlock Holmes do?”

“He’d solve the problem,” said Jerry irritably.

“Don’t be obtuse, Mr. Culpepper. You have your answer.”

“What answer, damn it!” snapped Jerry, but the click! at the other end of the line was audible even to Bucky.

Jerry hung up. “So what do you make of it?” asked Bucky. “Did you recognize the voice?”

Jerry shook his head. “No.” He paused. “But it didn’t sound like a crank call.”

“I agree. In any case, we’ve got to follow it up.”

“Follow it where?” asked Jerry in frustration.

“I don’t know,” admitted Bucky. “Yet.”

“I don’t know where the devil we can start.”

“With the clue,” said Bucky.

“What clue?” Jerry practically yelled.

“You heard him: What would Sherlock Holmes do?”

“And you heard my answer: He’d solve the damned problem!”

“Ah . . . but how?” said Bucky. “That was the clue.”

“I don’t understand you any more than I understood him.”

“It’s fascinating, Jerry. I don’t know what we’ve found, what we’ve brought back. A couple of curved metal panels, that’s all. But there’s an answer somewhere, and this phone call may be the key to it. In other words, it’s a two-step process. First, we figure out what the hell he was talking about, where this mysterious something is hidden. Then we find it, get our hands on it, and hopefully solve the mystery of what they’ve been hiding from us all these years.”

“You make it sound simple,” said Jerry.

“It can’t be simple, or someone would have figured it out in the past half century.”

“Not necessarily,” replied Jerry. “For most of that time, no one knew there was anything to be discovered, or that Myshko had landed on the Moon.”

“Then, since we know it, it shouldn’t be that difficult, should it?” said Bucky.

Jerry just stared at his employer. Now I know why you’re the billionaire, and I’m the employee, he thought. You love a challenge, you come alive with one, and I just want it to go away.

“Have you read much Holmes?” asked Bucky.

“A little.”

“And you didn’t recognize the voice?”

“No,” said Jerry, frowning. “Why?”

“Because if he doesn’t know you, he can’t assume you’re familiar with the canon, that you know all the stories inside out. So that has to be a simpler clue than we thought at first.”

“I don’t see anything simple about it.”

“What characters do you know from Sherlock Holmes?” asked Bucky. “Besides Holmes, Watson, and their landlord, what was her name? Ah! Mrs. Hudson! Okay, who else do you know?”

“Professor Moriarty, of course,” said Jerry. “Irene Adler.” He frowned. “Moriarty, Adler . . .” He shook his head. “That’s it.”

Suddenly, Bucky was grinning like the cat that had swallowed the canary.

“Son of a bitch!” exclaimed Jerry. “You know! Just from that, you know!”

“I think so,” said Bucky.

“Well?” said Jerry. He could barely control his voice.

“I think almost everyone knows Moriarty and Irene Adler. A few might also know Colonel Sebastian Moran, but you didn’t, and he couldn’t assume you did. But even if you’ve never read the books, one or the other is in more than half the movies. Hell, they were both in a Broadway musical called Baker Street a few years before Armstrong landed on the Moon.”

“How do you know that?”

Bucky smiled. “I’ve always had a passion for Mr. Holmes.”

“So what’s the answer?” persisted Jerry.

“Consider this: Moriarty was even more of an egomaniac than Holmes was. He never hid anything from Holmes. He wanted Holmes to know what he was doing and dared the detective to stop him. But Irene Adler, despite the fact that the movies loved her, appeared in only one story. She had some love letters and was blackmailing the king of Bohemia with them, and Holmes was paid to get them back. He failed.”

“Why?”

“Because she was as smart as he was, and she realized that the very best place to hide something everyone’s searching for is in plain sight.” Bucky paused. “She had them stashed behind a sliding panel out in the living room, where you might keep a few glasses. The problem is that we need your brainpower on this, not mine. You’re the one he spoke to, so the clue is for you.”

Jerry sat motionless for a full minute. Finally, he responded. “Son of a bitch!”

“You know!” said Bucky excitedly.

Jerry nodded. “I think so.”

“Well? Where is it?”

“Can your private jet get me to Huntsville, Alabama, first thing in the morning?”

“No,” said Bucky, and before Jerry could protest he added: “But it can get us there.”

“Okay, but I don’t think they’ll let you in.”

“In where?” asked Bucky.

“The Huntsville Archives.”

“Everybody knows you’re working for me now. What makes you think they’ll let you in?”

“Because I just may have a secret weapon. I’ll let you know tomorrow morning whether I can manage it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Call Mary. My old boss.”

“You think she’ll help?”

He thought about it. “Yes,” he said. “I’d be surprised if she didn’t.”

40

Jerry and Bucky drove up to the NASA Archives in a rented car.

“Jason Brent is going to kill me for leaving him behind if someone else doesn’t kill me first,” noted Bucky wryly.

“I’ll see if I can get you in,” said Jerry, opening his door. “It’ll be easier if they don’t recognize you.”

“If they don’t recognize me, I hate to think how many hundreds of millions of dollars I’ve wasted.”

“No kidding, Bucky,” said Jerry. “You’re not the government’s favorite person this week. Let me handle it.”

Bucky nodded and fell into step behind Jerry, who climbed the stone steps and approached the two armed guards at the front entrance.

“May I help you, sir?” said one of them, with an expression that implied that helping the visitors wasn’t first on his list of priorities.

“My name is Jerry Culpepper. I used to work for NASA. I believe Mary Gridley has cleared me to enter.”

“I’ll have to check on that, sir.”

The guard pulled out a communicator and spoke into it in low tones, then waited for an answer. Bucky looked around at the utilitarian buildings of the Marshall Space Flight Center, their blandness contrasted with the rockets, the shuttle, and the landers on display.

The guard got his answer and nodded. “Welcome to the Archives, Mr. Culpepper. You have been cleared.”

“I assume my assistant can accompany me,” said Jerry, indicating Bucky.

The guard frowned. “I don’t know anything about an assistant, sir.”

“Damn it,” said Jerry, trying to look annoyed rather than terrorized at the consequences of sneaking the notorious Morgan Blackstone into the building. “I expressly said I would be bringing him along.”

“Hold on, sir,” said the guard, pulling out his communicator again. “I’ll have my superior check with Ms. Gridley.”

“Good,” said Jerry, wondering what the penalty was for lying to an archive guard.

There was a pause that stretched from one to two to three minutes. Finally the guard pocketed the device and looked up at Jerry.

“Ms. Gridley is away from her desk at the moment,” he announced. He stared at Bucky, but there was no sign of recognition on his face. “All right,” he said at last. “I suppose there’s no harm. After all, he works for you, and you’ve been cleared.”

“Thank you,” said Jerry.

He entered the building, followed by Bucky.