Absolution: Prologue
The line clicked, clicked again, then a pause, then two more clicks, then a
short silence before the connection cut off.
"Who is this?" Mulder asked the question, knowing that there could be no
reply. For a moment he stood, receiver in hand, feeling the cold sense of
foreboding drench down over his shoulders and spine. Then he hung up the
phone and walked back to the tossed bundle of clothes on the couch, looked
down at them as if he could just take up where he left off and act like
nothing had happened.
Deep Throat was dead, safe in his grave in Arlington cemetery for three
years. But the code was right. Repeated because the date was an even
number,
a space at the end before hanging up for the day of the week. Two clicks.
Second choice of venue for a night meeting.
Mulder turned again, looked at the phone as if he expected it to be able to
enlighten him. But it sat innocent and indifferent. Mulder took up his
holster from the desk and checked the gun clip.
Alex Krycek pulled his dark green sedan in close to the kerb a couple of
hundred yards back from the corner, cut the lights and engine. He scanned
the street, found the car he was looking for, parked on the opposite kerb
less than a hundred yards from the entryway to Mulder's building. He got out
and crossed over, making his way casually towards the other car, his
attention seemingly engrossed in buttoning and unbuttoning the sleek slim
jacket of his dark pewter colored suit, and loosening the knot of his olive
green silk tie.
As he drew nearer the car he slowed slightly, dipping and craning his head
till he could make out the shape of a close cropped fair head above the
driver's seat, turned towards the corner evidently not paying attention to
what was happening behind the car. Krycek's mouth tightened, a little
unconscious gesture of disapproval. He stepped off the kerb, approaching on
the passenger side of the car. The
driver still hadn't noticed him. Krycek reached inside his jacket, eased his
handgun out of its underarm holster. The passenger window was wound down,
and Krycek passed the rear bumper and swooped, pulling his gun.
To be confronted by the muzzle of an automatic, resting on the back of the
passenger seat, where the car driver's hand had seemed casually draped.
The
blonde head turned placidly, and Krycek was caught in a bright amber brown
gaze.
"Krycek." The voice had a long slow southern drawl.
"Davis." Krycek's hard cool expression broke open into a smile. "When did
you see me?" He asked, his voice husky with suppressed laughter as he
reholstered his gun and leaned down on the open window.
"Saw the car. Saw you fussin' with your jacket an' tie. Saw you pullin' your
gun." Davis had turned his head again, and Krycek realized that he wasn't
just looking towards the apartment entrance, he was looking at the wing
mirror, tilted to show him the street behind him. The rearview mirror was
angled to let him see the offside of the car. Krycek laughed, a low hoarse
sound.
"What's happening?" He asked.
"Nuthin'. Brenton's on in fifteen minutes and I'm outta here." Davis kept
his head turned away from Krycek, his gaze moving steadily from apartment
building to wing mirror to rearview and back as he put his gun away.
"Hot date?" Krycek's eyes moved absently towards the entryway, registering
the short stocky man walking towards the car and then turning in towards
the
front of the apartment building, but not really paying attention. So it took
a second for the glimpse he'd caught of the side of the man's face to sift
down through his memory and find its place.
"Scorchin'," Davis was saying, and Krycek's mouth was still shaping out a
smile and a smartass reply as the sudden blow of recognition hit him,
lifting him off the car window on a wave of adrenalin.
"Target! That's McMahon, he's one of the Smoker's men." Krycek was
dragging
his gun free as he ran around the front of the car. Davis flung his door
open, scrambling out, but Krycek was already ahead of him. "Fuck!! He's got
a gun." Krycek read the movement of McMahon's hand inside his loose coat.
"Where's Mulder?!?"
"He's—" Davis was on the verge of saying 'inside' when he saw the tall
shape vivid in the lit hallway through the open door. Mulder, in jeans and
casual jacket, head down as he searched in his pocket for his carkeys. "Oh
Christ."
Krycek took one fraction of a second to judge the angle and distance, and
took off across the street at a headlong sprint, long legs eating up the
distance, cleared the low wall in front of the building, coming in on an
intercept between McMahon and the front door. Davis ran straight across,
trying to come in behind McMahon.
Mulder, deep in thought, came out the front door and looked up, suddenly
aware of someone running across the kerb, leaping the front wall. Just
flashes and scraps, impressions that lasted milliseconds: sleek dark head,
the dull glint of a gun, a hard intent face turned towards him, eyes like
glass. Alex Krycek.
"Mulder get down!" Krycek shouted the words, but Mulder's brain refused to
translate the gritty sound of his voice into meaning. The world narrowed to
Krycek's proximity and the cool oily slip of Mulder's gun under his hand as
he tried to pull it free from his waist holster.
"You son of a..." Everything slowed, turned to an endless instant while
Mulder drew his gun and the small fragment of his attention not absorbed by
Krycek running towards him became aware of a third man, a heavy built
figure
in a loose cloth coat, gun extended shoulder high, the muzzle a small black
void pointing straight at Mulder.
"McMahon, drop the gun! Drop it!" Krycek was twenty feet away from Mulder,
completely ignoring Mulder's gun trained on him, his own weapon pointed at
McMahon. Mulder saw the gun muzzle falter away from him and towards
Krycek
for an instant, then swing back, the flash of the discharge a white flower
burnt on his vision for a lifetime before he hit the door frame and felt the
sear of pain down his forearm, his hand falling open and his gun hitting the
ground at his foot.
The gun muzzle centered on him, steady. McMahon had wide round gray eyes,
with very fair lashes. Mulder's heart pounded once, stilled, his blood
standing in his veins.
Krycek slammed into Mulder hard, knocking him against the wall so that
Mulder's forehead banged painfully off the hard plaster. Two shots, Mulder
felt the impact of them as an echo through Krycek's body. Krycek swung his
gun hand up and Mulder saw the muzzle waver slightly then the flash of the
discharge. The round caught McMahon in the left shoulder, spun him slightly,
but he steadied himself and his gun went off twice more. Krycek hit the
wall, sliding downwards. Mulder got a glimpse of his face, dead white, blind
eyes, then saw his hand around his gun, struggling to squeeze the trigger
with fingers he could no longer flex.
Davis got off one clean shot, drilled McMahon right through the back of the
head and dropped him like a stone. He ran to the apartment entry, jumping
over the corpse in his way, flew to where Krycek was letting the gun drop
from his fingers, letting his eyes flicker closed. Davis threw one predatory
glance at Mulder, seeing the small bloody graze on his temple and the
bloodstained tear on his jacket sleeve, then swooped down to Krycek, took in
the mess of blood and torn cloth.
"Get down." Davis snapped the instruction at Mulder, who was too
disorientated to argue. He hunkered down in the doorway while Davis pulled a
cellphone and called 911, looking warily around him all the time.
Davis had given the location and requested an EMT when they heard a car
pulling up and the door slamming, someone running across the street. Davis
squared up, gun raised, putting himself between Mulder and the approaching
figure. Then he recognized the man coming towards him, gun in hand.
"Brenton, watch the street."
The dark haired solidly built young man Davis had addressed instantly turned
his back on the apartment scanning his surroundings.
Davis was pulling Krycek's jacket out of his way, stripping off his own and
wadding it on Krycek's chest over the blossoming wet stains of scarlet.
Krycek's eyelids flickered, opened enough to show a narrow gleam of blue
green. His eyebrows tensed, drawing together. His small precise mouth
opened, and he said something, a thread of sound that Davis had to lean down
to catch.
"Mulder's okay," he answered, controlling the venom in his voice.
Krycek relaxed, his eyes closing. Davis pressed two fingertips to the side
of Krycek's neck, his face intent. "Ah come on Alex, don't die on me, the
boss'll kick my ass into next year." Krycek's mouth flinched, the intention
a smile, but then it dropped into blankness. Mulder, with the sound of
sirens pushing into his awareness, managed to find his voice again.
"Who are you?" He demanded of the man leaning over Krycek.
"Fairland Davis, Central Intelligence Agency." The words were said with
bitter satisfaction.
"And him?" Mulder lifted his chin, indicating the body on the ground.
"The dead one?" Davis wasn't sure Mulder didn't mean Brenton, who was
standing in that general direction too. Mulder nodded.
"Krycek made him as McMahon, he works—worked, for your friend with the
nicotine fixation. The one still alive is Aaron Brenton, he's CIA as well."
Mulder's gaze came back to Krycek, to his white drawn face, to Davis's hands
leaning on him as if he could drive the blood back into his body by force of
will. Mulder didn't ask, and Davis didn't volunteer an answer.
Brenton went with Krycek in the ambulance. Davis insisted on taking Mulder
in himself. The paramedics weren't very happy, and the police who turned up
just after them were even less contented, but Davis hauled out his ID and
flashed it around and they grudgingly let him have his own way. Mulder had
managed to get his jacket off and pull up the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and
even he could see that the round had done no more than clip the flesh inside
his forearm. When Davis tried to usher him to the car he hung back.
"I can't go to the hospital, I have to... there's someone who needs to meet
with me."
"What?!?" Davis spat the word out in angry disbelief. "Agent Mulder sir,"
the drawl was thick with sarcastic politeness, "I don't think you exactly
understand what's goin' on. They just tried to kill you, right out here in
public and not like they could make out it was an accident or somethin'.
That smoke tanned old buzzard has lost whatever small sense he had. He
wants
you dead and he doesn't care who knows it. You're goin' nowhere except to
the hospital an' I ain't exactly thrilled about that, but I guess it can't
be helped."
"What's it to you?" Mulder asked in honest bewilderment, though he now
realized that the call must have been the lure to bring him out where
McMahon could get at him. Someone somewhere had replicated Deep Throat's
code. "What do you people care if I get killed?"
"Nuthin'. Not a damn. That's why my best friend has four bullet holes in
him. Now would you please get in the car... sir." Davis was three years
younger than Mulder and four inches shorter and had the kind of heart
shaped
face and almond eyes and china doll mouth that would make a pretty woman.
Something in the tone of his voice and the glint of his tiger's eyes made
Mulder's guts start trying to climb over each other in an attempt to get out
of the way. Mulder got in the car.
Davis drove one handed while he got out his cellphone and dialed without
looking at what he was doing. He tucked the phone between his chin and
shoulder and must have got an answer almost at once. Mulder listened to the
cryptic one sided conversation.
"Sir, it's Davis. They just tried for a knockdown. Yes sir, right out in the
open. No sir, he's fine," a sidelong glance from Davis told Mulder it was
his health that was being discussed. "He's dead." That must have been about
McMahon. "I didn't know him sir, it was Krycek put the make on him, said his
name was McMahon." There was a pause, and Davis's voice dropped a tone.
"He's on his way to the hospital sir, he's hurt. I think he's hurt pretty
bad, four rounds, into the chest." Another pause. "Yes sir, I guess someone
better call her, an' it'd be best comin' from you. I'll see you at the
hospital. Thank you sir." Davis killed the connection, set his face in a
mask of blank indifference and focused his attention on driving.
They made it to the hospital about two minutes behind the ambulance. Davis
hustled Mulder into the Accident and Emergency, where Brenton was pacing
in
the hallway till he saw them approach.
"How's he doin'?" Davis threw the question while he and Mulder were still
walking towards Brenton.
"We just got here, they're taking a look at him. He's... he's still alive."
Brenton looked very young and very shaken.
"Stay here. Dubretsky's gonna come in, he's gonna call Alex's sister. You
wait for him, I'm gonna get someone to take a look at Agent Mulder." Davis's
solid calm tone infused itself into Brenton too, and he nodded firmly, happy
to have instructions to follow.
"What have we got?" Someone managed to make themselves heard over the
controlled panic of the ER, over the noise of voices cutting across each
other as the gurney was swung into place and half a dozen pairs of hands
started trying to salvage something from the mess of bloodstained flesh and
clothing.
"Multiple gunshot. Three in the chest, another one in the right abdomen."
Krycek's jacket had been cut away by the paramedics and his shirt pulled
open. His holster still hung from his shoulder, causing a certain amount of
dubious looks from the staff attending him, but one of the medics reached
for a shears and cut the strap and lifted the holster clear, holding it
rather gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.
"It's okay." A nurse coming through the swing doors caught the look the
medic was giving the holster. "The guy who came in with him has his gun, and
we have ID." She held up a plain leather pocketbook.
"He's a cop?"
"He's CIA."
"Jesus. Okay, let's get him on whole blood..." The doctor took the
pocketbook from the nurse and glanced down at it "... B positive." He
passed the ID back to the nurse, then leaned down over his patient, locking
his gaze on the flickering eyelids above the clear oxygen mask. "Agent
Krycek. Alex. Can you hear me? Alex you've been shot, but you're going to be
okay, just stay with me, alright?" To his satisfaction the man on the gurney
moved his head a fraction of an inch, and the fingers of one blood streaked
hand flexed very slightly. "Okay we've got one lung down, let's get a chest
tube in here."
"His blood pressure's dropping, we're losing blood somewhere."
"We have an OR."
"Okay, let's get him upstairs."
Mulder submitted to having his arm cleaned and bandaged, and a small
dressing put on his forehead. The whole time he was being attended to, Davis
was hovering in the background impatiently. Mulder was just pulling back on
his bloodstained sweatshirt when Davis, who had been pacing aimlessly back
and forth across the doorway, suddenly stood still, watching someone
approach. Mulder slid down off the couch and watched warily as another man
appeared at the door.
The newcomer was taller than Mulder by a safe two inches, and wider by at
least that much on each shoulder. His hair was fair brown, cut to a severe
one inch long all over, receding slightly from a widow's peak. He had hard
narrow facial features, all angles and crags, with constellations of deeply
etched lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes and cutting from his
nose to either side of his rather small lean mouth, and a fine white scar
marked his upper lip. His eyes were light hazel, a taupe color speckled with
tiny flecks of blue and gray and khaki green. He wore a charcoal gray
raincoat over a gunmetal gray suit. Mulder got a glimpse of white shirt and
dark blue tie.
"Mister Mulder. I'm Christian Dubretsky, I work for the Central Intelligence
Agency." Dubretsky drew one gloved hand out of his coat pocket and flashed
an ID that Mulder didn't know enough about to be able to judge for
authenticity.
"What is this, the CIA annual jamboree? I already have one of your boys
joined to me at the hip," Mulder lifted his chin, indicating Davis still
prowling at the door, "and there's one more around here somewhere."
"Two more. One of them is in an OR having four thirty eight calibre bullets
pulled out of him."
"Alex Krycek is CIA?" Mulder's voice hit disbelief and stayed up there,
cracking slightly on the surname.
"I'm afraid you'll have to tolerate Mister Davis's presence for a while
longer," Dubretsky said, totally ignoring Mulder's outburst. "I have every
reason to believe that the attempt on your life tonight was...
unauthorized. The man who ordered it is being sent for by his superiors
right now. But till I have confirmation that he has agreed to let you alone,
I'd prefer you stayed where we can see you."
"You'd prefer?" Mulder was offbalance and confused and it was coming out
as aggression. Dubretsky took a single step forward, standing between
Mulder
and the doorway. It was like someone just put up a brickwall.
"I'd really prefer it."
Mulder backed off, angry at himself as much as at Dubretsky. He had no idea
of what was going on, but he had a feeling he was safer with Dubretsky than
without him. Dubretsky read the change in Mulder's demeanor, and his own
expression softened a little.
"Mister Mulder. One of my agents is hurt, maybe dying. I'm not going
anywhere till I know for sure about him. You're not going anywhere till I
know you're not in danger. Maybe we should just go get a coffee. Maybe we
should talk."
"What about?" Mulder asked warily.
"I've been a covert operative for twenty years Mister Mulder. That length of
time... you come to think of secrecy as a virtue in itself. Now I'm not so
sure. Now I think maybe you should know who your friends are."
Krycek was somewhere with the ebb and flow of breath, of his own breath
like
a tide, in his ears.
Fragments. Scraps and shards of time. A moment, filled by a thought or look
or feeling that opened and unfolded until it lasted a lifetime. Knowledge
and insight and certainty that had taken years to come by, suddenly
compressed and crystallized into a single point of time no longer than a
heartbeat. All floating together, lifting and dipping on dark lapping water.
Pale golden light.
The sun was shining in through the window of his father's study. There
wasn't a window seat, but the sill was wide enough to accommodate a slender
wiry boy of twelve and one of his father's books, with their tiny
unforgiving print and their intricately drawn maps, each overlaid by a sheet
of glassine paper. His world was the warm bright space between the drape
and
window pane, and the wide oceans and battlefields and conference tables of
history, and the sight of people crossing the street below, going about
their business, and the scratch of his father's pen across the pages of his
students' essays.
They lived in Boston, in a tall old house, full of books and sunlight and
beautiful things. His father was old, much older than the fathers of his
schoolfriends were. Alex was vaguely aware of some story of war and
hardship
that lay behind his father's coming to America: that the things he read of
in his father's history books had been so real that they had impinged on his
father's life, that they had been a part of his father's coming to live
here, of his meeting with Alex's mother while she was a student and he was a
revered and admired academic; and so of Alex's own birth.
Some of the things in that house were fine and fragile: glass like soap
bubbles, china lighter than eggshells. Alex was a boisterous young boy; his
sister Tatalya was a reckless toddler. Things got broken. And when they did,
his father took up the pieces in his big hands and showed them to his son.
"Look," he would said. "One hundred years and more this little cup has
survived. Through war and revolution and hardship for its owners, it has
come across the ocean from the Old World to the New. And now it has
collided
with my Alex, and see, it is just clay and paint, just trash that your
mother will throw away."
Alex took one of the shards from his father's palm, feeling rather sheepish,
but interested to see how very thin the ceramic was, examining the hairfine
cross section of the piece he held.
"This is important, Alex," his father said, and Alex looked up into his
bright blue eyes. "This cup was beautiful, and a little valuable, but it was
a thing. It was not precious. You, your sister, your mother... I would
break every piece of glass or china in this house to spare any of you one
moment's unhappiness. Do you understand? Things and people. The books
that
you and I love so much: history is the stories of real people. Nothing else
has real value, but people, the people we love."
Alex looked back down at the white and red and gold fragment in his hand,
nodding carefully, smiling. He was thinking of little Tatalya, and the mark
on her lip where she had fallen on the front step a few days before. How his
mother had kissed and caressed and soothed her little daughter, more
affectionate and attentive than ever because she was hurt.
Alex smiled up at his father, wide set tilted eyes like his, but their deep
jade green color an amalgam of his father's blue eyes and his mother's deep
emerald ones.
"I understand. When things get broken or spoilt, then they aren't any good.
But people... when a person is hurt, or something in them gets spoilt..."
He trailed off, unable to express what it was he felt, but his father saw
the dawning realization in his son's eyes, and touched his lips to Alex's
broad forehead, and then shooed him away, telling him to take the broken
pieces of the teacup downstairs and wrap them up carefully and throw them
in
the trash.
It was years later, while his father suffered stoically through his final
illness, that Alex's mother told him the story of his father's other family,
his first family. A wife and two sons left behind in Russia. Left in their
graves: dead of the harsh realities of war and tyranny. Alex, out of a
thousand memories, found over and over the image of his father embracing
him
with fervent intensity, saying in his beautiful courtly Russian:
"Alex, you are all my sons."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At eight years old Tatalya was a long legged colt of a child in a red
velvet Christmas dress, with a tulle bow in her dark red brown hair. Alex
sat with her on the sill of the study window, though at eighteen he was tall
enough and broad enough that he could only perch precariously beside her,
and they looked at the large glossy picture book she had been given by
Senator Aldridge. See, her father joked, already you see the advantages of
my leaving the academic life for the political. The Senator had smilingly
replied that if all his advisors had such charming daughters, his
expenditure in picture books would be reprehensible indeed. Tatalya had
dimpled and tossed her hair and taken the gift as her due. The combination
of solid noble Slavic blood and wild Boston Irish was formidable even in a
child.
After dinner, in the drawing room, with the curtains drawn and the lights of
the Christmas tree twinkling against the deep burgundy window drapes, the
conversation had turned idly to Alex's plans for college. The Senator was
much taken with Alex's easy proficiency in Russian: more than merely fluent,
he spoke most naturally in his father's polished Moscow accent, but he had
picked up half a dozen others in the Russian neighborhood, from the slow
laconic tones of western Russia to the singsong lilt of the steppes.
Alex had intended to study history, but somewhere in the course of that
evening, listening to the Senator describing his hopes for the future,
discoursing on how it was the inherent liberalism of the young that he
relied on to guide the course of history in wiser kinder paths, he had a
change of plan. He was thinking too of his father telling him so earnestly
that the stories in those history books were the lives of real people.
Alex went upstairs to his father's study and stood in the chill space
between the window and the drapes, looking down at the snowy street, the
streetlights making sparkling halos in the blue evening. After a while, he
heard the door open behind him, and the drape lifted, and a small slender
body tucked itself into the window recess beside him.
"What are you doing Alex?" Tatalya wound her thin little arms around his
waist, putting her cheek against his sweater.
"Just thinking."
"Bout what?"
"Books."
"What?" She drew back, smiling up at him. Alex took hold of the curtain and
pulled it back, his gaze tracking over the expanse of shelves and side
tables and the large desk, all covered with books.
"All that paper, all those words... they're not real. I want to do
something... real."
"Oh." Tatalya settled her cheek back on her brother's side. Alex smiled at
the tone of her voice, as if she fully understood and approved his decision.
"Come on Princess," he said, smoothing her hair. "Let's go down and see if
you missed anything under the tree."
It was bitterly cold. A thin raw wind, with sharp icy flecks of sleet
cutting against the side of his face, and the freezing tracks of his tears
scouring the skin of his cheeks. He had to turn away from the graveside and
wipe his face with the palms of his gloves before he could face the kind
condolences of his father's friends and associates. His mother and sister
had taken refuge in the car, and he could see the shadow of their two dark
heads bowed together through the rear window.
"Alex."
"Senator Aldridge, thank you for coming."
"I'm so very sorry Alex. Your father will be sorely missed."
Alex had to turn his head again, and fight for calm.
"I know that sir."
"Alex..." The Senator hesitated, then plunged in. "I appreciate that you
may not want to make plans just yet, but... I understand you leave college
this fall. I just want you to know that I would be happy to have you join my
staff. A Krycek with a postgrad in politics.... that's a formidable
combination."
"Thank you sir. And... I would be proud to work for you. My father admired
you greatly."
"It was mutual Alex. It was mutual."
"Alexander Krycek? Mind if I sit down for a second?"
"Eh... sure. Go ahead." Alex drew some of the fortification of open books
he had collected around him on the library desk towards him, clearing a
space in front of the shorthaired sharp suited man who had addressed him.
"Working hard?" His visitor surveyed the array of paper on the desk with
evident complacency.
"Yeah... thesis deadline in five days."
"Um. Though I gather your thesis is just a formality. The only way you don't
get an honors degree is if you send in a bunch of blank paper."
"Well... I don't think it's quite that much of a done deal." Alex looked at
the other man rather narrowly. "I'm sorry, do I know you, Mister... ?"
"Carey. I was hoping I could talk to you about your plans for after this."
He waved one hand over the desk, indicating the thesis, and by association
all things academic.
Alex relaxed, smiling. Another recruiting agent.
"I'm sorry Mister Carey. I've already settled on my future plans. I'll be
going to—"
"Senator Aldridge's staff. I heard. But I was hoping I could interest you in
a slightly different branch of the government..."
"The CIA? You want to join the CIA? Alex, are you crazy? You want to be a
spy?" Alex's mother sat down heavily, her hand on her chest as if to
physically hold in her frantic heart.
Alex pulled another chair out from the glossy rosewood table, and sat down
beside her, smiling broadly.
"It isn't like that at all. They need researchers, translators, people with
backgrounds in politics, diplomacy. Things are changing so fast in Russia
and we need peacemakers, not spies. This is the very thing that Senator
Aldridge talks about. The thing that Father talked about. Taking all the
things we read about in those books and making them real, making them
change
how people live. I want to do that, I want to do something that counts."
He got lucky, they sent him straight to Virginia. The work was pretty
routine, translating intelligence reports, attaching explanatory notes where
required; but he was making useful contacts, learning the system, and he had
been given a commitment that in six or eight months he would be moved to
Moscow station. For now he just had to learn the ropes.
Even as an academic he was put through a basic fieldcraft course. The
fundamentals of security practice he mastered quickly and efficiently, as so
much more knowledge to add to his already extensive education. The only
thing that caused the faintest ruffle in his composure was the requirement
that he take a short course in the use of firearms.
He wasn't a natural shot by any means, but from the first moment he picked
up the gun, something in the slick cold metal, the raw oily scent and sense
of weight—and the handgun was so much heavier than he had expected—seemed to have a brutal reality to it that made everything else recede into
the background. The recoil didn't make him flinch, he instinctively leaned
into it, feeling the solid kick of the gun as a something sweet and strong
and satisfying. After the course, he put the gun he was issued with away in
the back of his desk drawer and thought no more about it. But deep inside,
something hungry and dark and free of morality had had its first taste of
life.
Mulder allowed himself to be steered into a small waiting room, with
battered vinyl covered chairs and a low table with a lot of ragged dogeared
magazines scattered over it. Davis, by dint of southern charm, had managed
to obtain three mugs of coffee which, while vile, was considerably better
than what came out of the vending machine in the hallway. Mulder sat down,
Dubretsky pulled another chair out from the wall and sat facing him, after
taking off his coat and draping its sweeping folds on the chair back. Davis
however went and stood at the door, and after a while took a chair and sat
in the hallway just outside.
"You never answered my question." Mulder was looking into his coffee as if
he held it responsible for Dubretsky's reticence. "Alex Krycek works for the
CIA?" The outrage had gone from Mulder's voice. He didn't have such a high
opinion of the CIA that he could feel much surprise at their choice of
employee.
"Works for me, for the Agency, yes."
"All along?" Mulder could feel the sinews of his brain cracking and
straining to try and re evaluate the past in the light of this new
information.
Dubretsky took a certain satisfaction in finally saying it out loud. Other
than Fox Mulder, there was only one person on earth Chris would sooner have
made this admission to, and if things went as he hoped, if Alex Krycek
lived, then Chris Dubretsky was going to give himself the pleasure of
explaining matters to that smoke tanned old bastard too, who could break
the
bad news to his friends in the KGB.
"Yes. All along. Alex Krycek has been in the employ of the CIA since
nineteen ninety one. He's worked for me personally since ninety two."
Dubretsky waited for some kind of reaction, but none was forthcoming.
Mulder
sat and studied the ring forming around the surface of his coffee, while
Dubretsky unbuttoned his jacket, loosened the knot of his tie a little,
settling his long legs comfortably and reaching one hand inside his jacket
momentarily to ease the strap of his shoulder holster. Then he began to
speak, quite quietly and naturally, as if he were telling the story to
himself.
"Alex came into the Agency as a research assistant or a translator or
something. He had a post grad in politics and he could speak Russian In
twenty different accents. They had him pushing papers in the Pentagon.
That's what he was... a desk jockey. That's all he was meant to be.
In ninety one I was running this nice little counter espionage scam for the
Company. We had turned someone in the KGB, someone who was part of an
operation to put Russian agents in place in a number of security agencies
and research facilities here. At the time, we thought their interest was in
generalized espionage. Now I think they were working to another agenda.
Their targets included projects on transmission of viruses, gene
therapy,fetal development... and the FBI.
Well, like I say, we had someone inside the operation. The Russians would go
to all this trouble training these guys to pass as American, setting up
cover stories and identities for them here, bring them in. And we'd know
about them before they ever got here. Sometimes we'd arrange for them to
meet a little... accident. Sometimes we'd let them get where they going,
and just keep tabs on them. Sometimes we'd use them to feed junk
information
back to the Russians."
"You couldn't just arrest them?" Mulder asked, half sarcastically.
"No Mister Mulder, we couldn't. We had to block the Russians without letting
them know we were on to them. If they realized we knew what was going on,
their first thought would be that we had someone on the inside of their
operation. And I don't think they'd have settled for arresting our man.
Sometime early in the year—I think it was about the third week in January,
we got word that the Russians had selected another candidate to come over.
They were targeting the FBI, and the guy they'd picked for the job was in a
whole different league from the other ones they'd sent.
His name was Arntzen, Ishmar Arntzen. I'm sure the name doesn't mean
anything to you, but his father was a big shot in the Politburo during the
sixties and seventies, and Ishmar had the best education communism could
buy.
He went to the Military Academy in Moscow, passed out top of his class. All
he had to do was keep his nose clean and stay out of trouble and he was a
made man.
He made Lieutenant in eighty nine. They sent him over to Afghanistan, where
he served with distinction. Took a bullet in the leg about five months into
his tour, and was invalided home to Moscow.
And that should be the last we hear of him. He should have been given a nice
job as an aide to some guy with a fruit salad of medals on his chest and he
would have been out of the way.
But I guess active service gave him a taste for a little action, some
adventure. The next thing you know, Arntzen's traded in his army rank for a
place in the KGB. And this guy is pushing hard, he's on the fast track and
he's ready for anything.
Well, when I find out that this is who the Russians have lined up for the
trip, I figure they maybe know something is going on, something is messing
up their operation. I figure they feel they're not getting the return on
their efforts and investment that they should be getting. Arntzen is an all
or nothing bet: he's way too smart to walk under a bus, or fall off a
balcony, or let himself get deadended in a job with no security access, or
any of the other things that seemed to have happened to their other
operatives. If they don't get a result from him, they're gonna know for sure
they have a problem.
So, I have the choice between letting Arntzen in—and he's a smart boy, the
kind that you don't want rattling around loose in the FBI—or blocking him,
and the only way you're gonna block someone like Arntzen is with a bullet in
the head, which means exposing my man in the KGB.
Great choice, huh? Well, I was putting in twenty hour days looking at the
pictures and reading the reports and trying to come up with some shade of
gray in a black and white situation, and getting nowhere..."
Dubretsky pushed back from the desk, throwing the folder in his hand down
on
top of the other pages spread out in front of him. He stretched his head
back, grimacing as something in his neck crunched and clicked.
"You want some coffee sir?" Davis, on the other side of the desk, looked up
from the handwritten list he held, glad to get his eyes off the innumerable
scratchings out and overwritings for a second.
"Yeah... no it's okay, I'll go. I need to get out of this chair before I
lose the use of my legs. You want some?"
"Yes, thank you sir."
"Okay. I'll be a few minutes, I'm gonna go walk around for a while, I think
I'm losing the circulation to my feet."
Dubretsky stood up rather slowly and painfully, twisting his shoulders to
try and loosen them. He cast a glance towards his jacket on the coatstand in
the corner but left it where it hung and went out as he was, in shirt
sleeves with his gun holster loose on his shoulder.
In the hallway he had a second of complete disorientation, blinking at the
sight of freshly shaved and pressed agents coming to work with takeout
cappuccinos and morning newspapers in their hands. He caught one or two
curious glances, though by and large the paper pushers considered the
activities of the spy catchers to be too bizarre to mention. He looked down
at his watch and realized that it wasn't in fact Thursday evening as he had
half thought, it was Friday morning.
Scratching ruefully at the dark blond stubble on his jaw Chris made his way
down to the corner of the hallway where the coffee maker was kept going
night and day. He took down a couple of mugs and had just taken up the
coffee jug when, yawning and grizzling, he cast an idle glance down the
hallway towards the open plan office the spy catchers referred rather
scathingly to as the Paper Mill.
"Holy..."
Dubretsky whispered the word. Years as a covert operative had trained him
so
that in any degree of extremis, his instinct was to become very quiet and
still. Gently he put the coffee jug back down, slowly he lifted his hand to
his holster, easing his gun out, thumbing the safety off.
He was dimly aware that he was too exhausted and too stressed to be
thinking
clearly. That somewhere there was a flaw in his certainty that Ishmar
Arntzen had somehow fetched up in the Pentagon, standing right out in plain
view of at least two dozen CIA agents, helping himself to a desk in the
middle of the Paper Mill, putting down a coffee carton and flicking through
a sheaf of manilla folders he had taken from the in tray.
But Chris couldn't deny what he was seeing. He had spent too long
scrutinizing every available picture of Arntzen not to know that profile,
with its sharp elegant bones and the dark wing of hair falling forward and
shading that broad forehead. As he moved cautiously forward, Chris had
enough time to think that Arntzen had lost weight since the last picture had
been taken, he lacked the slightly blurred muscularity Chris had expected.
"Put your hands up, step away from the desk." Chris had the muzzle of his
gun against that glossy dark head before his quarry was even aware of his
presence.
Chris gave him mental credit for not showing any great dismay: just a blink
of surprise, then he lifted his hands slowly, the bunch of papers still held
aloft, as he backed one pace from the edge of the desk. Chris took the
folders from him, throwing them down on the desk, peripherally aware of
people stopping to watch this strange drama as he roughly patted down both
sides of his prisoner's suit looking for a gun. Nothing.
"Turn around. Slow." Chris stood back a little, but kept his gun trained
at the level of the other man's temple. He wasn't inclined to take any
chances, this guy was evidently way crazier than Chris had allowed for.
Arntzen. Arntzen? It was like one of those weird dreams where you know who
someone is meant to be, despite the fact that they don't look like
themselves. Every feature was there, every point that made Ishmar Arntzen
who he was, but everything ever so slightly redrawn, mostly with a finer
more fragile line, so that the overall effect was a slightly younger
slightly less masculine man.
Chris let the gun muzzle drop, but he kept both hands cradled around the
grip, and his eyes locked on this strange find.
"Who the heck are you?" He asked, his tone indicating only faint irritation.
"Em... Agent Krycek. Alex Krycek."
Of course, Dubretsky's first thought was that Krycek was too good to be
true. And in Dubretsky's experience, anything that seemed too good to be
true, was. So Agent Krycek was summarily suspended from duty while
Dubretsky
had his background taken apart, looking for the connection to Ishmar
Arntzen
that he knew must be there.
But it wasn't. After a week of suspension, Agent Krycek was recalled, and
Dubretsky sent for him.
"Agent Krycek. May I introduce myself a little more formally than the last
time we met? I'm Chris Dubretsky, Counter Espionage."
"Pleased to meet you sir," Krycek replied, somewhat insincerely.
"Whatever." Dubretsky smiled, as he got up from behind his desk and walked
over to a filing cabinet, taking out a thick folder.
"I hope you'll overlook the rather... rude treatment you got from me, and
this whole investigation thing you've had to go through this week. But I
think you'll see how I could have had my doubts about you...."
Dubretsky took out a single photograph from the folder in his hand and laid
it down in front of Krycek with the air of a conjuror.
For a second Krycek didn't understand. Didn't understand why the picture
had
been taken without his knowledge, or where it had been taken. He tried to
place the street, the moment when he had been standing at the door of a
church, looking away to something out of frame and not seeing the camera
trained on him.
Then he registered the street sign just visible in the top of the photo, the
models of the cars parked in the foreground... this picture had been taken
in Russia. And he'd never been there.
"Who is this?" Krycek looked up at Dubretsky, a wide eyed appeal for help.
"His name is Ishmar Arntzen, he works for the KGB."
It was a test. A way of sounding the quality and purity of the young man.
Dubretsky watched narrowly as Krycek looked back down at the picture.
Watched as the bright spinning mechanism of his mind turned, working out
the
possibilities. Every shade and nuance of his thoughts passed visibly across
his fine boned face, moved his small bowed mouth. Oh brother, thought
Dubretsky, whatever else we do we have to teach him to control his
expression.
Krycek's first thought was of his father's other family. That this man who
was his double was somehow one or other of his dead halfbrothers, snatched
out of the maelstrom and grown to adulthood.
But that wouldn't work. Krycek took his height and width from his father,
and the wide flat bones of his temples and cheeks, and the shape of his
eyes. But his colouring was from his mother's family, pure Black Irish, his
red black hair and black lashes and pale sallow skin that tanned easily and
quickly, freckling sparsely with little flecks the colour of dark chocolate.
And his eyes, like Tatalya's, were a colour unknown in either family, a
perfect blending of both, and he knew from his own mother that his father's
first wife had been a Nordically fair woman, and her sons had taken after
her.
Dubretsky volunteered a short resume of Arntzen's background and career,
laying down a few more pictures of Arntzen as he did so, allowing Krycek to
see that the resemblance was striking from any angle.
Krycek was half listening to Dubretsky, half trying to resolve some deep
truth from the fact that the pairing of a Russian couple on Soviet soil, and
that of his own father and his Irish American motherhad somehow produced
two
men as alike as twins.
"My father was Russian," he said, rather hesitantly. "Is it possible that
I'm even distantly related to..." He stopped as he realized that Dubretsky
had got there way ahead of him. "That's what you've been looking for all
week, isn't it? You think he and I are..."
"That was my first thought. And once I found out your father was a former
Soviet citizen... that's why I had you up and off the premises as fast as I
did. "
Krycek frowned, displeased that his father should have been considered a
shade on anyone's integrity.
"Don't worry." Dubretsky sat down again, drawing his chair in close to the
desk. "You checked out, your father checked out, and as far as anyone can
ascertain, the resemblance between you and Arntzen is... just one of those
things. A lucky break for me."
"A lucky... ? I don't think I understand."
Liar, thought Dubretsky. He could read the sudden sharp glitter in Krycek's
eyes, the way that mouth suddenly tightened, clamping down on something he
was on the verge of saying. Good, Dubretsky said to himself. You think
first, speak later. I think we can work with that.
Krycek had a not entirely unpleasant sense of the surface of the world
giving way beneath him, so that he was falling into a strange new universe,
where the accidents of his birth, the shape and tilt of his eyes, the fact
of his having spoken Russian every day of his life, were all suddenly more
significant than anything as trite as knowledge or education or even intent.
For a long second he wavered on the edge. The words formed themselves in
his
mind, found the tip of his tongue, waited only for his lips to part and give
them shape. To tell this hard faced bright eyed crazy that he was an
academic, that he had joined the Agency solely because the days for this
kind of cloak and dagger stuff were over.
Years later, looking back on it, he would convince himself that he had made
no decision at that point. That when he did speak, he asked for information
merely out of curiosity. Which was disingenuous to say the least. He had
been in the Agency plenty long enough to know that information was a double
edged knife: to know something was to be responsible. To ask was to indicate
a willingness to be a part of something, and to be given an answer was to be
inducted into a new more demanding level of complicity.
"You seriously think I could pass for him. You want me to go to Russia, and
pass for a KGB man. I've never even been to Russia, and okay, I look really
like him, but I couldn't fool anyone who knows him well."
Dubretsky smiled, a slow blade of an expression. He loved being proved
right. He'd had no problem getting authorization to put this proposition to
Agent Krycek, despite Krycek being so recently recruited, because not for
one second did anyone think that Krycek was going to bite. On the contrary,
they expected him to go running back to his desk and his translations as
fast as he could.
But Dubretsky had scanned over the evaluations and psyche tests, and more
importantly he'd talked to Agent Krycek's instructors. The trace was there,
faint, and deeply hidden beneath a fine education and laudable principles
and an essentially good nature. But Dubretsky had seen it, seen the thin
steel gleam, the need to be somewhere fear and adrenaline and danger could
put sharp edges on the world.
"No, you're right, you'd have no hope of passing in Russia, but that's not
the idea. The plan is you pass for Arntzen right here. With people who know
him only from pictures like these."
"Here?"
"Yeah. Arntzen's coming to the States, just as soon as the KGB can cook up
a
cover story for him."
"How soon is that?" Krycek's voice failed on the last word, as the
implications of the situation began to sink in.
"We don't know for sure. Though... we could help things along." Dubretsky
had a dangerous glint in his eyes as he looked at some vision hanging in the
air before him. Krycek sat as still and quiet as he could for as long as he
could.
"How?" The clean intent way he finally asked the question was his ticket
into Dubretsky's department.
"We supply them with a cover ourselves." Dubretsky got up, gathering
handfuls of files and folders off his desk and roughly stacking them on top
of the filing cabinets. "Have Supplies send a desk in here for you, and
you'll need a secure line and someone from the typing pool to do your paper
work for you. If you have any plans for the weekend, cancel them, we have
work to do. And clean out your desk in the Paper Mill, you work for me now."
Mulder had leaned forward in his chair, unconsciously drawn by the story
Dubretsky was telling. Dubretsky, on the other hand, had leaned back further
and eased the knot of his tie a little further down and opened the top
button of his shirt collar. It was going to be a long night, and he had no
intention of leaving before it was over. There'd been enough subterfuge and
sleight of hand in the past three years. It was time for a little truth.
"You have to understand, Agent Mulder. The situation was less than perfect.
Alex knew about as much about being a double agent as a fibb—sorry, as a..." Dubretsky stalled out, unable to come up with any comparison other
than the one he had abandoned out of courtesy towards Mulder.
"So I wanted to keep things simple. It was enough for Alex to have to master
Arntzen's contacts and codes here, without having to master some
elaborate
cover story that the Russians would come up with for Arntzen, to pass him
off as an American.
We fed our own choice of cover story to the Russians, via the agent we had
in the Russian end of the operation: that was his input into the whole
thing, designing cover stories for these guys.
So the Russians spend all spring and most of the summer drilling Arntzen in
the cover story we had planted, preparing documents, teaching him to be an
American. While we tried to teach Alex not to laugh when he got nervous.
And
I gotta tell you, I really think the Russians got the easy job."
"And the cover story you had your agent in the KGB use. What was it?"
Mulder
asked, though his expression made it clear he already had a pretty good
idea, so Dubretsky just lifted one eyebrow and waited for Mulder to answer
his own question.
"It was Krycek, wasn't it?" Mulder ventured. "You used his real life as a
cover story for Arntzen."
"Gave a whole new meaning to the expression 'economical with the truth'.
Why
make something up when you can make the truth do double duty?"
"So what happened to the real Arntzen?"
"Ah. Well. Couple of weeks before Arntzen was due to come over, we sent
Alex
to Moscow on a cheap tourist flight, with his hair in his face and a student
ticket and a passport in the name of... Lynch I think. Anyhow, he spent a
fortnight kicking around his ancestral hometown and loosening up his accent,
and then he came back on the same flight as Arntzen.
And, somehow or other, in the course of that flight, Arntzen ended up in a
bodybag in the cargo section, and Alex ended up wearing his suit sitting in
his window seat. The part I felt had a certain ironic symmetry to it was the
passport. The Russians had this pretty good fake made up with Arntzen's
picture and Krycek's name on it. That went into the bag with Arntzen, and
Alex came back into the country on his own passport."
"So Krycek killed Arntzen," Mulder said bleakly. For some reason, the idea
hurt, but he couldn't figure out why.
"Hell no. Alex was a rookie, and I knew he'd had enough of a moral crisis
when he finally worked out that there was no way we were going to have two
Arntzen's or Krycek's or whoever they were, running around. The only way I
really got him past that was laying it on thick about what a risk Arntzen
was to the security of the FBI, and what the Russians were going to do our
agent in the KGB if they found out he was selling them to us. And they were
sure to figure it out if I had to resort to having Arntzen taken out with no
replacement.
Plus, we're not talking about a nice clean drill through the head here. They
were on a plane: no guns, and it had to be quiet and quick."
"You?" Mulder said it half as a question, half as an accusation.
"Uh uh. The Russians know my ugly face far too well. If I go to a liquor
store and buy Russian vodka alarm bells go off in the Kremlin. I had my day
as an undercover agent, but after twenty years in the Company... I know
them, and they know me." Dubretsky seemed ready to move the
conversation on,
but than he realized that Mulder couldn't let this go yet. So Dubretsky told
him, figuring it wouldn't be the last hard fact Mulder would have to
overcome. "Davis. Davis was on the plane too, and he did it."
"How?"
Dubretsky didn't answer, he just made a brief little gesture with one hand
past the front of his throat.
Mulder contemplated him, dismay fighting with the need to hear what else
Dubretsky had to say. Finally he looked away, back at the whitening dregs of
his coffee.
"Wait a second..." Mulder lifted his head again, looking at Dubretsky.
"You said the Russians were planning on putting Arntzen into the Bureau.
How? Someone there must have been working with them...."
"Yeah. The name Alexander Krycek appeared on the intake list for Quantico,
but it seemed pretty well impossible to trace who had managed to get it
there. The best we could do was have Alex sit tight and hope that someone
would appear out of the woodwork to claim him."
"And someone did?"
"And someone did. Towards the end of his time at the Academy."
"Who?"
Dubretsky knew that Mulder had already worked that out for himself a long
time ago, so he just rendered the answer as a gesture, a mime of removing a
cigarette from his mouth and holding it cupped in his fingers.
"He works for the RUSSIANS?!?" Mulder was stunned by this final excess of
duplicity.
"He works for himself." Dubretsky smiled grimly, the creases at the corners
of his eyes deepening. "He approached Alex, or rather Arntzen, and cut him a
deal. In return for certain small services, he would continue to preserve
and protect his cover within the FBI. Failure to comply would result in
Arntzen being exposed as a spy and sent back to Russia in disgrace. Alex
showed a proper reluctance and then agreed."
"You know who he is." Dawning certainty in Mulder's voice.
"Yes I do. And I'm going to do you a big service Mister Mulder. I'm not
going to tell you."
Mulder banged his empty mug down on the table, muscles tensing, ready to
thrust up onto his feet.
"Leave it." Dubretsky just said the words, he didn't raise his voice, and
though his face hardened he couldn't be said to be frowning as such. The
only gesture he made was to lift one hand slightly, palm up to Mulder. But
the effect was like someone pulling a plug on Mulder's aggression. Mulder
could only think that Dubretsky was very used to being obeyed. He sat back,
forcing himself to calm down and listen.
"If you know his name, he will kill you, no matter what it costs him. It is
not my job to put you in that kind of danger Mister Mulder. I hear you call
him the cancer man. I like that. It's appropriate. More than you know
maybe."
"So you knew he was harbouring a Russian agent in the FBI. Why didn't you do
something about it? Or is he beyond your reach too?"
"No one is beyond my reach Mister Mulder: a bullet in the head is no
respecter of rank or person. But it was clear that this wasn't an isolated
incident. I wanted to know how many more errand boys your 'cancer man' had
salted away in the Bureau. We were in a position to extricate our agent in
the KGB at a moment's notice, the Russians were viewing Arntzen as a long
term investment, they were happy for him to beaver away in the FBI for the
foreseeable future, and Alex was graduating Quantico with honours. I figured
we'd let it roll and see what happened."
"And what did happen?"
"For a while, not much. Alex got a plum assignment straight out of the
Academy, partnered with a veteran VCU agent. Hard to know if he got it
because he earned it or because someone was pulling strings for him.
Anyway,
he took to it pretty well, he said he'd had all the education he could eat,
he wanted some action. He might have made a good cop in different
circumstances."
Mulder's eyebrows climbed at that, but he refrained from arguing. "And
then?"
"And then, right around the last week of July ninety four, Cancer Man called
in his marker. Alex's partner met with an... accident. Alex was a ten month
rookie on his own, and he was told to submit a 302 to investigate the death
of Doctor Grissom. Which was allowed."
"It shouldn't have been."
"No, of course not. It was Cancer Man's way of getting you two together."
"How did he know I'd find out about Grissom's... Jesus... that son of a
bitch..." Mulder felt another section of his fragile world shift and
crumble. "X. He left me a copy of the 911 tape. Was he... did he work for... No. He saved my life. He helped me."
"Ashton Rae. Lieutenant Colonel Ashton Rae. Yes, he worked for Cancer Man,
nominally at least. But I figure he was working for someone else too,
someone with a very different agenda from the Smoker."
"You knew him?"
"I knew of him. We walked parallel paths you might say. I know there were
things he did, things he had to do, that sat badly with him. But he was
afraid, and fear makes people pliable. I think towards the end even he
didn't know what side he was on."
Mulder sat for a while, just trying to absorb that. He bent his head down
into his hands, his fingers cupping his forehead as if trying to hold his
fragmenting thoughts together physically.
"So Krycek has the file on Grissom's death, and I go to Skinner looking for
the same." Mulder was picking his way over the chaos of his thoughts, trying
to put the train of events together. "No." He looked up sharply. "Skinner
was pissy with me about it, he sent me back to transcribing wiretap with a
flea in my ear. I didn't think he was going to give me the case at all."
"He probably wasn't. Assistant Director Skinner was held personally
accountable for what was seen as the fiasco of the X files project. He was
under considerable pressure to keep you out of trouble—trouble meaning
anything that could be even vaguely construed as X file type material. Which
he was signally failing to do."
"So what happened?"
Dubretsky shrugged, massive movement of shoulders like the side of a
building.
"Well, I wasn't there you understand, so I'm guessing. Maybe it was put to
him that Agent Krycek might wish to take a lead from an older more
experienced agent. And I'm sure he figured there was nothing to the case
anyhow and what trouble could even you find in some guy having a heart
attack in his hotel room? Anyhow, he ended up confirming the case
assignment
to Alex, on the understanding that you would be brought on board.
Needless to say, the fact that Cancer Man was going to all this trouble to
have you paired up with his errand boy made you a subject of great interest
to us. You were an unknown quantity to me, but I found out that your name
was already well known to my own superior."
Mulder felt his heart stutter and stop.
"Who, who do you work for?"
"You know him yourself Mister Mulder. You met him once, on the lighted
walkway in Central Park. Agent Scully met him at your father's funeral.
You'll forgive me if I show some respect for his privacy and don't give you
his real name. We can refer to him as... Gentry. Mister Gentry."
Dubretsky's amused tone and sparkling eyes made Mulder resolve to sit down
and play word games with the name 'Gentry' as soon as he got the chance.
Clearly there was some connection between the word and the reality that
Dubretsky appreciated.
In fact, the pun was on the man's middle name, Earl, and the fact that
despite his beautifully polished and buffed persona, he was so far from
being a member of the social elite that he had grown up without soles to his
boots or a seat to his pants. Dubretsky admired and revered him as one of
nature's aristocrats.
"And he knew me?"
"I gather he knew your father too, way back. He said he'd been tracking your
progress since you managed to get the X files reopened round about the
same
time Alex came to work for the Company."
Dubretsky stalled out, wondering if he should intrude his own personal
theories on the subject, but he decided to leave conjecture till he was out
of facts. "He impressed on me, on Alex, how important it was that you be
protected from Cancer Man, but also that it had to be done without you being
aware of it. Protect you, protect Alex's cover, in that order."
"Sir!" Davis was in the doorway, eyes vivid with some suppressed emotion.
Dubretsky was out of his chair and across the room in a couple of outsized
strides. "What is it?"
Brenton was right at the door too. Mulder stood slowly, drawn by the
intensity of their concern, though it had little to do with him. For the
first time since he had left his apartment that evening, he was no longer at
the centre of the storm.
"He's out of OR, they've taken him into the IC unit. It's gonna be a while
before they know, but he came through the surgery at least."
Brenton had shed any trace of weakness: he said his piece firmly and even
flashed Mulder a cool curious deep blue glance, as if measuring his
reaction. Mulder wondered if Brenton could read his emotions, given that he
could make no sense out of them himself.
"Stay with Mulder, I'm going to talk to the doctors." Dubretsky had one foot
out the door when Mulder called after him.
"Agent Dubretsky, sir?" The honorific came out as if by instinct, though
Skinner had constantly to yank it out of Mulder with a curt reminder.
"What is it Mister Mulder?" Dubretsky turned, locked eyes with Mulder.
"What happened then?" Mulder asked with naked uncertainty.
Dubretsky smiled. A small smile won out of the midst of concern for his
agent and annoyance at what had happened and dread of what he would say
to
Krycek's sister when she arrived. But it was a smile none the less, and his
mild pale eyes lit up, sparkling and shining.
"Well, that's when things got complicated Mister Mulder." He cocked his
forefinger, pointed it at Mulder. "We'll talk more later."
THE END OF THE PROLOGUE.
9/29/1997
Absolution: Act One, the events of 'Sleepless' take on a rather
different significance in the light of Chris Dubretsky's revelations.
These Men Of Honor I
by Rachel Lee Arlington
Mulder was sorting laundry, one eye on the clothes and one on the TV, when
the phone rang. He threw down the two odd socks in his hand and went to
answer it, expecting it to be Scully. She'd had to leave the office early to
fill in for a regular pathologist out with flu, and he had still been
wrangling with Skinner about a 302 for a case that would take them out of
state. She'd said she'd call him at home to find out if she should pack for
the expedition. He picked up the phone, a smile forming on his lips as he
drew breath to say 'get your bags Scully, we're goin' on a roadtrip'.
