"Now, I am going to take Mr. Tucci and our luggage to the hotel and
check us all in, while you and Agents Mulder and Scully go over the
pertinent data. We can meet back at the hotel for a supper confab at 7
p.m. so you can question Mr. Tucci. and discuss our next move. Sound
good?"

"Sure," Graham amiably agreed.

"Can't we eat in Chinatown?" Krycek suggested. "I know this great
little place not far from the hotel. That is, if it's still in
business."

Skinner checked for the others' approval with eye contact. "OK. Do we
need reservations?"

Krycek shrugged. "Probably. In fact, if we booked a private banquet
room we could still discuss the case. Anybody got a phone book? It's
the Chi Din Yu, on Kearny, near Pine."

"Oh! The food is *great* there!" Wong exclaimed. "Ah, but it's very
authentic."

"That's a Chinese euphemism for 'may not please White palates,'"
Krycek grinned. "But it's Cantonese-style food. What's not to like?"

"The menus aren't very 'tourist' friendly, for one thing --no
descriptions included, and they don't exactly specialize in tourist
fare. So don't order anything without consulting me, first," Wong
said, as he invited himself to the dinner party.

"Yeah, and no ordering anything with 'syu,' in the title," Krycek
added.

Wong giggled despite only half understanding the joke, although
ordering 'rat' was reason enough for Tucci to object, since Tucci
himself had recommended the Chi Din Yu, which was a seafood
restaurant, he ought to know there would be no rat on the menu.
Unless, of course, he had confused the place with another.  "Wrong
restaurant for *syu*," he said. "Maybe you're thinking of the place on
Powell?"

Krycek guffawed. "What, the Kao Gongdian? Hai la! How many health
officials are *they* bribing to stay in business? No! *No syu*!" The
pair dissolved in giggles but neither one shared the joke, leaving the
others to stare at them as if they were a pair of twelve-year-olds
shooting milk out their nostrils until they regained their composure.

"Ahem! How about I drive you to your hotel, then come back and
familiarize myself with the case?" Wong volunteered. Skinner nodded
approval, made his adieus to the locals, and escorted the still
grinning Krycek back to the van.

It was a short, twelve block drive to the Galleria Park Hotel, a nine
story building with a roof top garden and jogging track, and they all
three helped tote the luggage to their rooms on the third floor. They
left Mulder and Scully's luggage in their respective closets, then
Wong left to rejoin Mulder, Scully, and Graham, while Skinner and
Krycek continued down the hall to their room.

Like the other two, a floor to ceiling window was set opposite the
door, giving a spectacular view of the taller hotel next door. A table
and two chairs were situated before the window, so diners could enjoy
watching the diners in the neighboring building watch them as they
ate.

The bathroom was to the left, acting as a sort of privacy partition
for the bed, hiding it, at least from the immediate view of people
entering from the door. The closet was on the right, and it extended
beyond its actual confines in the form of the dresser that was every
bit as long as the closet, and just as deep.

A TV hovered in mid air over the dresser's middle, held there by a
very inelegant steel brace, which did, at least, leave room on the
dresser top for a vase of flowers, an ice bucket, and two uninspired
paintings that seemed picked primarily for their ability to blend into
the wallpaper.

Skinner strode by the closet, setting his suitcase and briefcase down
in front of the dresser. "There's only one bed," Skinner noted as he
stood up, relieved of his burden.

"Um, yeah. It's a California King, though --no extra cost," Krycek
said as he exited from the closet where he'd stashed his carry-all.

"Oh," was all Skinner could think to say aloud. Internally, he thought
he was going to suffer a melt-down. //Oh, shit!// he silently cursed.
//I have a will of iron, I have a will of iron,// he chanted.
//Besides, he's enamored by Mulder, not me, so it's not as if he's
going to seduce me.... He'll probably sleep as close to the edge of
his side of the bed as he can get without falling out.// Which was all
to the good. He'd have to try and do the same. He sighed.

"I could always have them send up a roll-away?" Krycek said, sensing
Skinner's discomfort.

"No! No, no. We're grown men. We can sleep in one bed. No problem."
//No problem at all.// He checked his watch. //Oh, great. Forty-five
minutes till 7.// He set about unpacking, leaving half the dresser
space for Krycek, who was disinclined to follow suit.

Instead, he kicked off his loafers, pulled off his wig, and grabbed
his dop bag. "I'm, uh, going to freshen up."

"Sure thing," Skinner answered, not looking up from his unpacking. 

Krycek ducked into the bathroom, showered and shaved in fifteen
minutes then exited wrapped in a towel and holding his clothes,
prosthetic, and comb in one incongruous bundle. He rounded the end of
the bed and dumped his stuff on its left side, the night stand, and
the top of the honor bar, which was conveniently located within reach
of someone sitting either on the left-hand side of the bed, or in the
left-most chair at the table. "I, uh, thought we'd save time if I
dressed out here," he said as he closed the drapes.

"I didn't know we were in a hurry," Walter said as he checked his
watch again.

"Well, the restaurant's only four blocks away, so I thought we could
walk."

"Oh. OK." He paused for a moment, as Krycek grabbed up his prosthetic
and inserted his stump, then used the pump to 'vacuum pack' his flesh
inside the plastic shell. Sensing Krycek's unease at his gawking,
Walter hurriedly grabbed up his own toiletry kit and a fresh shirt and
ducked into the bathroom himself.

It gave Walter an odd sensation to use the bathroom after Krycek, what
with his scent hovering in the steamy air along with the odors of
soap, shampoo, deodorant, and aftershave like a pleasantly musky,
oddly alluring perfume. Walter felt his cock twitch and he blushed
over his own reaction. He also refused to indulge it.

//No time for foolishness, Walt, we're working on deadline, here. I
have a will of iron.// He busied himself, emptying his bladder before
stripping, showering, and shaving. When he emerged, ten minutes later,
Krycek was just combing his hair up like a Kewpie doll's.

"Make sure you dry your hair well, Skinner. Wouldn't want you to catch
cold in this vichyssoise they call air."

Skinner didn't argue, he towelled his fringe till it fuzzed up, then
combed the feathery hairs down into compliance, while Krycek pulled
his blond wig out and dragged it over his head with a well-practiced
sweep, tugging to center it.

"All set?" he asked Krycek. "Then let's go." They were strolling up
Kearny in no time.

###

The Chi Din Yu restaurant was a tacky little dive in a third floor
walk-up over an equally weathered but bustling Asian market. The place
was packed bare algae green wall to bare algae green wall with
customers, only one or two of whom weren't Asian, all of them
clattering plastic chopsticks and rattling dishes of aromatically
spiced seafood as they chattered with their table mates.

Krycek leaned in to confer with the cashier/hostess standing at a cash
register-topped podium near the front door then leaned back towards
Skinner, menu in hand, to put his mouth to Skinner's ear so the AD
could hear him. "The rest of our party has already arrived. They're
already seated."

Krycek pointed to the very back of the restaurant then took off across
the pebbly brown linoleum, Skinner on his heels. They dared the
gauntlet of close set, hideously orange, round tables and tubular
steel 'malt shop' style chairs, and actually had to hold their breaths
a couple of times to squeeze between a few of the customers, for the
floor layout had not been arranged with hefty
Americans in mind. 

Skinner was glad that they had a room to themselves after he observed
the waiters lofting round, chocolate brown trays, dangerously laded
with food and nearly as wide as the lazy susans that topped every
table, over their customers' heads in order to traverse between the
tables themselves. Leastwise, Skinner thought, he would be in no
danger of having his dinner rain onto him from
above because some balancing act went bad. 

His relief was short-lived when he escaped the outer din for the
relatively quiet oasis inside their closed off room and saw that the
only two places left at their own hideously orange table were directly
between the table and the door, putting him directly in the waiter's
line of fire.

Alex grinned a greeting to Wong, and took the seat beside him, leaving
Skinner the seat beside Mulder, which put his back directly to the
door. They picked up their menus, plastic sheaved pieces of unlined
white paper onto which the numbered dishes were scribbled first in
Chinese, then in the English equivalent, without, as Wong had warned,
any explanation.

"Chi Din Yu means 'The Goldfish Pond.' They specialize in seafood,"
Alex said, which, in a roundabout way, explained the intent behind the
algae green walls and the bare, garish orange laminated table and lazy
susan, as well as the over-lying odor of fishtanks that was thankfully
absent in their little enclosure. "I recommend the steamed rock fish
in black bean sauce, the salt baked shrimp, the squid in its own ink,
and the abalone with five mushrooms."

"Hmm! Good choices. My favorite dish here is the shark fin soup," Wong
said.

"Oh, yeah, I could go for that!" Krycek seconded enthusiastically.
"They put in an obscene amount of saffron!"

They looked up as Scully moaned unenthusiastically. "I don't suppose
there's any shrimp chow mein on this menu?"

Alex and Wong grinned at each other as if Scully had just tattooed her
forehead with a scarlet 'T' for 'Tourist.' "No," they said in unison.

"But they do make Lobster Cantonese," Alex grinned. "Always a hit."

"And you can't go wrong with the whole, crispy fried crab," Wong
added.

Skinner set down his menu, which had been less than enlightening, and
spread his hands. "We're at your mercy, gentlemen. Be gentle with us."

"But no shark fin soup," Scully said adamantly.

"Aw, you don't know what you're missing," Alex wheedled.

"With the price of saffron what I *won't* be missing is sticker
shock," Scully informed them.

"And I refuse to eat anything that has tentacles," Mulder added.

The two serendipitous chums shrugged in unison. "So be it." 

When the waiter came in, Wong ordered everything else they'd
mentioned, and Alex added Chinese broccoli in garlic sauce and the
five seaweed platter --in fluid Cantonese.

"I didn't know you spoke Cantonese, Kry-- choo! Ahem! Pardon me. Mr.
Tucci," Skinner said as he took out a handerchief to wipe his nose.

"Yeah. I lived in Hong Kong for two years, while papa was stationed at
the American Embassy. And call me 'Val,'" Krycek said with an
approving wink at Skinner's quick ruse.

"I guess that explains why you ran off to Hong Kong, *Percival*"
Mulder blurted, without thinking. Three pairs of glaring eyes
admonished him silently for his slip-up. "Uhm, I know you speak
Russian. How come you never got a job as a translator?" Mulder asked,
obediently bolstering the tacit 'no business till after the food
arrives' small talk rule.

Krycek shrugged and casually stared at Mulder, easy enough to do since
Skinner was several inches shorter than them while sitting, owing to
their comparatively longer torsos. "Who says I haven't?"

"It's surprising that you retained your Cantonese. Most kids lose
learned languages if they don't practice them regularly," Wong
commented as the waiter returned with tea cups, plates, paper napkins,
and plastic chopsticks.

"I never had any problems, that way,"Alex confessed. "I have a real
facility with languages. In fact, I was a language major at
Princeton."

"Really? So, how many languages do you speak, Mr. Tucci?" Scully asked
pointedly.

"...Uhm...twelve, actually."

"One of them wouldn't happen to be Navajo, would it?" Mulder asked
sourly.

Krycek's smile broadened. "As a matter of fact, it would," he
confessed. "I did my thesis on the code-talkers of World War II. Oh,
the stories I could tell," he smirked.

Mulder glared daggers at him. Of all the hands in all the world
Majestik's Navajo encoded DAT tape could have fallen into, it had to
end up with a traitorous Rat Bastard who knew Navajo. No wonder he'd
been selling State secrets to the French in no time flat!

Wong cleared his throat. Clearly, there was a subtext to the
conversation he wasn't privy to, but he tried to ignore it. "Navajo,
huh? That's interesting. Uh, because Chinese and Navajo are similar,
being tonal. Most of the Amerind languages are, and so is Australian
Aborigine. It's one of the major classifications distinguishing
languages as a whole."

"Yes," Alex nodded. "My knowing Cantonese was a definite plus when
learning Navajo, as my ear was already trained to pick out the
different intonations."

"Been back to Frisco since the Kallenchuk affair?" Mulder dug,
seemingly unable to refrain from goading Krycek.

"No," Alex said curtly. "My Frisco bridges are pretty well burned." He
did not add 'thanks to you,' but then, he didn't have to.

Two pots of tea and a generous platter of salt baked shrimp arrived,
the latter served whole in their shells. Wong and Krycek grossed the
others out by tearing off the heads and sucking the brains out, then
eating the body in its entirety, legs, tail fan, shell and all.

"Hmm, so sweet," Alex cooed. "Hey, dibs on any females with egg sacs,"
he said as he poked the platterful of crustaceans with a chopstick
looking for likely candidates.

Scully looked as if she'd rather be eating live crickets.

Skinner almost laughed. Shades of Nam! "Ah, yes, Asians and their
cuisine," he said. "It was truly said that a Chinese would eat
anything that moved that wasn't a plane, train, or automobile --and
quite a few things that were stationary." He plucked a shrimp off the
platter, beheaded and peeled it, and ate only the tail meat. "Hmm!
Excellent!" He offered the head to Krycek. "Brain?"

Krycek grinned and accepted the tidbit.

The whole crabs were delivered next. Mulder noticed a lack of
equipment. "Hey, where are the crab crackers?"

"They don't come with crackers," Alex said.

"How are we supposed to eat them, then?" Mulder inquired.

Alex picked up a crab, tore off a claw and bit down on it till the
shell cracked then pried it open and plucked the tender flesh out.
"Like that."

Mulder shook his head. He pulled one of the crabs onto the table, drew
his Sig Sauer, dumped the clip, emptied the chamber, then held it
barrel up and whacked his own crab till it resembled a smashed hard
boiled egg. Scully borrowed his weapon and copied his technique. Then
he cleaned the grip off with his napkin, replaced his ammo, holstered
his gun, placed the crab on his plate, picked the shell shards off,
and started eating. "Ooh, Damn! This is good!"

Graham and Skinner grimaced at the display, and copied Wong and
Krycek, instead, because they'd rather break a tooth than expose their
weapons to crab detritus.

The rest of the meal, including a huge bowl of steamed rice, arrived
in good order, and, with the reasonable expectation of privacy, they
began to discuss the case.

"We got right to work on the profile you faxed us," Graham said.
"We've pulled together a list of all the medical related businesses in
the Bay Area with multi-national ties. We're still working on their
personnel, subsidiaries, suppliers, and real estate holdings, but we
should have a complete list in a day or two.

"And I noticed there was no composite of our suspect, so I've arranged
a meeting for you with Willis, our computer guy, tomorrow, so you can
put together an identi-kit on this perv and we can get his description
out on the street."

"I don't know that that's going to do much good," Krycek said. "I
haven't seen him since the assault, and that was fourteen years ago. A
lot can change in fourteen years."

"Still and all. Anything would help. And we could run it through the
computer and have it aged."

"I'd like to see where the body was dumped," Mulder said.

"Well, there's not much to see," Graham said, "but I can take you if
you want. In the meantime," he pulled out a map, and pointed. "This is
where the body was found, not far from the South Wharf. It's an
industrial area. Warehouses, stuff like that."

"That could be important," Krycek said. "He --his company, that is,
has to move delicate stuff, like vaccines, around in big batches. I
don't know what their preferred mode of overseas shipping is, air or
sea, but either way, they'd need a warehouse. It wouldn't have to be
in his name, or even his company's, if they lease it, but whoever owns
the warehouse, maybe a supplier. If they use it mostly for storage,
except for a security man and the occasional worker  to transport the
stuff from place to place, the place would be uninhabited, a good
place to hide a dungeon."

The fibbies exchanged glances, then looked at Graham. "Good thinking,
Tucci," Skinner said.

Graham nodded. "We'll start checking out warehouse leasees, see if any
names match our medical places or their suppliers."

"Yeah, and you should concentrate on the businesses past this
intersection, and near this street," Mulder added. "The ocean is so
near, the only reason he dumped the body here is so he could 'revisit'
it, no doubt while driving to and from the warehouse."

Graham nodded.

"If you're wanting a way to winnow down your suspects, get one of your
computer guys to pin-point medical companies on the map and route them
to their respective warehouses, to see which ones could use that
street without going too far out of their way," Krycek suggested.

"Wow! Good idea!" Wong congratulated. "I think my people could handle
that."

"Something else we'll need to handle is a way to insure that we don't
lose Mr. Tucci," Skinner said. "I think some sort of transmitter
should do the trick."

"Yeah. Something not easily found --or removed," Mulder drawled.

"Size will be a problem," Wong said. "Our best transmitters are only
the size of a straight pin, but their reach is also small --no more
than half a mile. I suggest we give Mr. Tucci a transmitter disguised
as a wristwatch which will act as a global positioning beacon. Its
range is quite literally global. We should be able to track him to
within a meter with that."

"I was thinking more along the lines of, say, something we could stick
in his prosthetic," Mulder said. "As a back-up unit."

"I approve of having a back-up transmitter," Skinner nodded. "There's
nothing more reassuring to an old bureaucrat like me than redundant
systems. Looks like you're going to have a busy morning, Mr. Tucci."

"Call me Val, please."

"Well, we have mid-range transmitters we could use," Wong said
thoughtfully. "Range about five miles. Or, if they're too bulky, we
have a one miler that should do the trick."

"Which brings up the problem of how we draw the skell out," Graham
said. "What's this perv likely to be doing now that he's taken the
edge off his obsession?"

"*Not* hanging around gay bars, I guarantee," Mulder said immediately.
"In fact, I think he'll be trying to re-establish his 'normal'
behavior."

"Which means he'll be going to dance clubs to woo the women," Scully
said.

"I guess you get to justify your presence here, after all, Agent
Scully," Skinner said. "Hope you brought your dancing shoes."

"Sir?" she asked, not understanding his meaning.

"Scully isn't exactly the most docile of females," Krycek observed.

"I'll say!" Mulder concurred. "I don't even think she's good enough of
an actress to fake it."

Scully's mouth scrunched up to one side as she contemplated her
partner's left-handed compliment. On the one hand, she wanted to
emphatically claim her inner tiger; on the other hand, to agree that
she wasn't actress enough to 'play' docile was akin to saying she
didn't have that tiger under complete control, and she would bite her
own tongue bloody before she admitted to anything which might be
construed as impeding her ability to do her job. Besides, if one of
their number had to own up to being out of control, it was Mulder, not
she.