by Xanthe
I haven't seen him for three years, and I'm shocked by the change in
him. His skin is paper thin, and his rugged, much-loved face is
deeply lined, and pale, and yet he's still Max. Still fighting,
still as stubborn as ever. He looks up as I enter the room, and I
wave my hand to prevent him getting up. It's all I can do to hide my
dismay at his appearance, but he sees through me anyway. He always
did. He always could. Not many can.
"Max." I stride over to his side, and kiss both his cheeks, and he
smiles at me, that watchful, loving smile that I'll miss so much
that it makes me ache just thinking about it. "You're looking well,"
I tell him, sitting in the armchair by the fire, opposite his own.
He shakes his head, chiding me.
"Dominik, you always were an excellent liar," he scolds, pursing his
lips as he used to when I was 10 years old, and had just got into
some mischief or other.
"I learned from the best." I incline my head in his direction and he
laughs at me. "How's Maddie?" I ask, because that's always what I
want to know first. He shrugs, and makes a little face.
"She's well, Nicky. She's fine. There's no change, but she's happy.
That's all we can ask for."
We're silent for a moment, and he gazes at me. Those sharp, dark
eyes miss nothing. They roam over every single inch of me, and I
know that he's missed me as much as I have missed him. His
expression is as clear and inscrutable as ever, but I am as skilled
at reading the nuances as he is. There are no secrets we could ever
keep from each other, not after all this time. He knows me too well,
and I love him too much.
" Nicky, I'm sorry," he says after he has given me a thorough
inspection. He reaches forward, and places a thin, wrinkled hand on
my arm. "Maybe I was wrong," he murmurs.
"That bad, huh?" I smile, ruefully, and he gives a grunt of
laughter, but it quickly fades.
"Yes," he says, and then we both fall silent.
"How long?" I ask as the clock's endless ticking finally grinds me
down, as if it is ticking away the last moments of his all too
precious life, which, in a way, it is.
"Several months yet, I suspect." He gives me a reassuring smile, and
reaches for a cigarette. His hands are not so sure as they once
were, and he fumbles for his lighter. I find it for him, and flick
it open, then light the cigarette.
"Still smoking?" I raise an eyebrow, and he gives another amused
grunt.
"Dominik, I know those bastard quacks have already told you I have
lung cancer. Doubtlessly, they've also told you that it's
inoperable. To quit now would be the surest case of shutting the
stable door after the horse has bolted that I've ever heard of, so
don't be a silly boy and give me a hard time about it."
"You know me better than that, Max." I shrug. "We all make our own
decisions, for good or ill. It swings both ways, though—whatever
has happened to me, please don't blame yourself. I'd do it all
again."
He takes a puff on his cigarette, and then gives a strained cough,
before settling back in his chair with a searching look in my
direction, and a raised eyebrow.
"Well, maybe not all of it," I amend softly, staring into the fire.
"No. Not all." He coughs again, almost apologetically. "We have a
lot to talk about, Nicky," he says, rearranging the blanket over his
knees. "A lot of things to sort out before I snuff it. There are
things I need to tell you, so that you can handle it all when I'm
gone." I'm not listening to a word he's saying because I'm too busy
watching him. I realise that he's grown impossibly thin for such a
large man. His wizened flesh sticks to his bones, and makes him
look...old. That hurts; it makes it hit home, and I feel physically
sick.
"I won't go back, Max. Not when you're dying," I tell him, snapping
out of my reverie. "I want to be here with you."
"To do what?" He shrugs. "The Organisation needs you more than I do,
Nicky. You're the only one who has seen the full picture, and knows
what's going on."
"Maybe not for much longer."
I examine my fingers for a moment, and he waits. He has always
waited for me, and he has never been disappointed. Sooner or later I
come to him, and tell him everything he wants to know. I'm not blind
to the power of his patience, and I've tried to emulate him. It's a
hard but useful weapon to acquire, and it didn't come easily or
naturally to such an impatient, headstrong soul as myself. There is
silence between us for a long time, and then I get up, and wander
over to the window. Outside, the frost is thick and white on the
ground. The trees are bare, and the winter is like a blanket over
the land around us.
"An order went out yesterday." I glance back at him, where he waits.
"The circle is closing, Max. I might not have any longer than you."
"What will you do?" He takes a slow, leisurely puff on his
cigarette, and blows out the smoke. It's an action that's familiar
to me, but for entirely different reasons.
"Watch how it plays out." I shrug. "Play that waiting game you
taught me so well."
"And what do you want to do?" He asks, those sharp, dark eyes never
leaving my face.
"Come back here, and be with you when the end comes." I turn back to
the winter white world outside, because I don't want to see the
expression on his face right now.
"Nicky..." His voice never wavers. His will has always been so strong;
he's an example to us all. "I'd like that too." And he would, but he
won't allow it all the same. "But this is too important. You are too
important to us. You know that. I don't matter. I'll be gone soon,
but what I've worked for all my life will remain, and I'm relying on
you to bring about the resolution that we've all sacrificed so much
to achieve."
"And what about what I want? Doesn't that matter, Max?" I turn back
to him, and reach his side with three strides. "Damnit, you're the
closest thing I have to family in the whole world. You're the only
one who really knows me, Max. You're the only one who understands."
I crouch down beside his chair, and place my hand on his thin,
fragile arm.
"Yes. I do." He touches my hair, gently with his yellowed,
nicotine-stained fingers. "Nicky, I love you as if you were my own
son. You know that. I won't order you to go back. Just follow your
conscience—that's all I've ever asked of you."
"Yes. That's all." I rock back on my haunches, and consider him
thoughtfully. "Damn you, Max," I curse softly, and he smiles.
"So, you're going back?"
"Yes." I get up, and return to the window. It's growing dark
outside, and snow has started to fall. "I hate him you know." I
twitch aside the curtains, and gaze at the whitening world. It's
beautiful—so beautiful that it reminds me exactly what we stand to
lose if I screw up. Sometimes I hate the weight of this
responsibility, weighing so heavily on my shoulders. I've lost my
mother, my father, my best friend, my wife, and my own soul to this
cause. Haven't I given enough?
"Who?" His voice is rougher than it used to be, and it always had a
gravelly quality; deep, and low.
"Alex Krycek." I watch the world outside turn dark and white at one
and the same time, and find some resonance in that.
"Ah." He takes another puff on his cigarette.
"Sometimes I hate him so much that I want to kill him." I let those
words linger between us, holding my breath. If he were to give me
the word then I'd do it. If I just had his permission then I'd kill
Alex Krycek once and for all, and wipe him out of this beautiful
world like the cancerous growth that he is. I know that Max won't
give me that permission though. That's Max. He's strong for me when
I'm being weak, and stops me from doing what he knows I'll
inevitably regret.
"Something's happened?" Max coaxes.
"Yes. Krycek is a liar, a thief, and a killer, but...what I never
knew... it turns out that he's a sadist too." The snow outside
performs a long, slow, dizzying dance that bewitches me for a
moment, and almost makes me forget. Almost. "There's a man..." I
stiffen, and then turn back. "A good man. His name is Walter
Skinner."
"I've read the reports," Max says, encouraging me to continue with
an inclination of his grizzled old head.
"He is a good man," I tell him, urgently, because it's important to
me that he understands. "I wasn't sure at first, but I am now. He's
only ever tried to do his job. He's given his life for his country
once already, and Krycek killed him a second time, and then brought
him back to life. He's a sadist: a cat, toying with his prey. He
holds a decent man's life in his hand; with one snap of his fingers
he can choose to cause Skinner pain, or release him from that pain,
or kill him. It's not good for any man to hold that power over
another, Max. It sickens me." My whole body tenses, and I spit those
words out, the tension knotting every single muscle in my body.
"I know." He nods, a small, frail shell of the man I once knew, and
yet still Max behind those sharp, dark eyes, still my all-knowing
Max. He's the only person who understands. "Will Krycek kill
Skinner?" He asks, never taking his eyes off me.
"I don't think so. I think Walter Skinner is more useful to the
Project alive, so I think that's the way he'll stay—for now at
least. Poor bastard. He never did anything, you know? He's spent the
past 5 years running around, tying himself in knots, trying to do
the right thing, and now Krycek has him—like this." I close my
gloved hand into a savage fist, like a tightening noose. Max's eyes
have never left my face. "It hasn't been pretty. Skinner fights.
Sometimes I wish he'd just give in, but he fights. He can't stop
fighting—it's who, and what he is. He struggles, like a wild
animal caught in a trap, thrashing around, but they have him; he
just hasn't figured that out yet—or maybe he has. Maybe that's
what makes his death throes so desperate, and so very sad. I hate
what Krycek is doing to him."
"Nicky, are you in love with Skinner?" Max asks. Did I mention that
he knows me better than any person on this earth?
"Oh yes, Max," I reply, gazing into the fire, "I'm very much afraid
that I am."
Skinner was working late, his shoulders hunched. The words in the
report leapt and danced in front of his tired eyes. It was almost
midnight, and he should probably go home. He would go home if there
was any point, but nothing waited for him there but a cold bed, and
an emptiness he would have gone to the end of the earth to avoid
right now—except for the fact there was no point. It accompanied
him everywhere he went, like a cold, dead weight, nestled in the pit
of his stomach. His eyes hurt, and he could no longer make any sense
of the words on the page. Skinner reached up, snagged off his
glasses, and then pinched his eyes, wearily.
"You should get some rest."
It was a familiar voice. Skinner didn't even open his eyes; he knew
the hard tones of his bitter enemy when he heard them.
"Krycek." He put his glasses back on, feeling naked and vulnerable
facing this old foe without them. Krycek was standing in the corner
of his office. God knows how long he'd been there—maybe as long as
five minutes. Maybe he'd slipped in when Skinner had gone to get his
8th cup of coffee of the evening. The other man walked into the
light, with that slinky, prowling grace that Skinner hated so much.
"You're looking old, and tired, Skinner, and you're no use to us
like that." Krycek smiled, a cold smile that didn't reach those
elusive green eyes.
"And being of use to you is my main objective in life, after all,"
Skinner snarled, barely keeping a leash on his temper.
"It should be. I do hold your life in my hand, after all." Krycek
grinned, and reached into his pocket. Skinner stiffened, as the
familiar, dark shape of the palm pilot came into view, clutched
between two plastic fingers.
"If it means betraying Mulder again, I won't do it," Skinner
snapped. "Last time there were ramifications I didn't understand. I
didn't know that giving him that assignment, and making that tape
would place him in danger."
"Relax." Krycek sat down, and slowly placed first one, and then the
other foot on Skinner's desk, crossing them nonchalantly. He stared
at Skinner, a challenge in his eyes, daring the other man to object.
Skinner's jaw clenched, but he said nothing. Krycek grinned. "This
has nothing to do with Mulder, or Scully. This is something you can
do for us, using all the excellent resources at your disposal."
"I won't kill anyone," Skinner said quickly.
"I'm not asking you to," Krycek snapped back, equally quickly. "This
is a nothing job, Skinner. And by that I mean nothing to spoil that
oh so spotless conscience of yours." He smirked, as the irony of
those words clearly hit home. "All we want you to do is find
someone."
"You need my help with that?" Skinner raised a surprised eyebrow. "I
would have thought that you and your associates were skilled enough
in that field yourself."
"We are, but this is different. There's a man we've been looking for
who is proving particularly elusive. We need to find him. It's
important."
"And when you find him? Will you kill him?" Skinner asked. "I won't
help put an innocent man in the grave."
"Who said he was innocent?" Krycek's eyes were dark, and savage. "He
isn't. He's a very dangerous man, and he's been playing a very
dangerous game. We need to find him, Skinner. The only trouble is,
the last information we have on him is from when he was nine years
old. Since then..." He shrugged, expansively, and waved his good arm
in the air. "Nothing. So...we thought it was time to call in the
resources of the good old FBI. What's the point of having a pet
Assistant Director if you can't make him jump through hoops
occasionally, after all?"
Skinner fought with every single degree of his self-control to stop
himself jumping over the desk and throttling his old enemy where he
sat.
"It's a nice, easy job. You find him, and then you tell me where he
is. That's all. Nothing else. You don't even have to get your hands
dirty. It's just a simple missing persons case. Surely even you
haven't been out of the field so long that you've forgotten how to
investigate one of those?" Krycek's raised eyebrow was a challenge.
Skinner considered the request for a moment. It didn't seem too bad.
There was clearly no point in refusing the assignment, not until he
knew more. If he found out where this person was then he might be
able to warn the man before he gave the information to Krycek.
"All right. Who is he?" He asked.
Krycek smiled, and reached under his jacket for a file.
"His name is Crozier," he said, throwing the file on the desk.
Skinner looked into Krycek's expressionless green eyes for a moment,
and wondered what was going on behind that jade façade. "Dominik
Crozier," Krycek said, unblinking. "One thing though, Skinner. You
investigate this yourself. Alone. Don't tell anyone else, not even
Mulder."
Skinner shrugged, and nodded, then reached for the file, and opened
it, and when he looked up again he was unsurprised to find that the
assassin had left as silently as he had arrived.
"Dominik Crozier." Skinner flicked through the file, and began to
read.
It's late as I return to the most recent in the series of rundown
lodgings that I've called home over the years. I'm cold, and weary,
and I'm worried about Max. I wish he had let me stay. I pass a
poster for a production of The Marriage of Figaro, and my stomach
does its usual somersault. It was once my favourite opera, but I
haven't seen it a production of it for years. The last time I saw it
was on my 9th birthday, the day my life ended, and Dominik Crozier
died. He died again 14 years later; Walter Skinner isn't the only
man who knows what it is like to have died twice. I wonder if that
is one of the reasons why I fell in love with him. Love. I could
laugh at myself for using such a word. As if I am entitled to either
give or receive love. I'm an idiot, and being an idiot could get me
killed. I care less about myself than what my death would do to Max,
and Maddie, and the whole damn Organisation. Without me, I don't
know what chance they stand. Hell, realistically, I'm not sure what
chance we stand anyway. The Marriage of Figaro. I can hear the music
echoing in my head, and it makes me retch. Once it made me dance,
but for years I've felt sick whenever I've heard even the smallest
snippet of that opera.
I remember the journey home. Our chauffeur was driving, and I was
chattering excitedly. The evening had been a birthday treat for me,
and my mother was laughing as I treated her to my rendition of Voi
Che Sapete. She was very beautiful, but it pains me that I can
barely remember her face now. Max was right to burn the photographs,
I know that, but it hurts all the same that my own memory is so
hazy. I loved her very much, and I know that she had blonde hair,
and eyes that were a stunning shade of turquoise. I remember that
she was petite, and slim, and that she had a tiny mole beside her
mouth, that her teeth were straight, and white, but I don't remember
how it all fitted together. I remember the individual parts but not
the ensemble whole, and that upsets me. I wish I hadn't seen the
poster for the opera, because it's all in my head again, and now I
must re-live it, the way I have countless times over the years.
"Damn but the boy has a fine voice, Marguerite," my father said.
"You were right to pester me for singing lessons. He must take after
his Mama because I can't sing a note."
"We know that, Papa!" I laughed. "We've heard you singing in the
bath!"
"Monster!" He tickled me until I sank to the floor of our enormous
limousine, breathless with laughter.
"Hush, boys," my mother chided. "Nicky, come and sit up here beside
me and settle down. You're distracting Leo." Our driver glanced at
me in the mirror, and winked, and I grinned at him. Leo and I were
old friends. He once took me out on his motor-bike when mother and
father were off at some political function or other. I loved every
second of it—the feel of the wind in my hair, and the way the
world whizzed by at top speed. I enjoyed the sense of danger, of
doing something illicit. I always did love sailing too close to the
wind. Leo had me back at the house and in bed before Papa got home.
When Mama came up to kiss me goodnight, she took one look at me, and
said, with a conspiratorial smile: "I think you should wash your
face before your father comes up." When I looked in the mirror, I
saw a smudge of grease along my cheekbone, and washed it off
quickly. "I think, also, that it might be best if you at least
pretend to be asleep when Papa looks in on you," she chuckled. "It
is one o' clock after all." And then she pressed her lips to my
forehead, and glided from the room. I don't think Leo got into any
trouble for that. I hope not.
I sat down beside my mother in the limousine, snuggling up to her.
She was wearing a dress of long, cool, ice blue satin, and she
smelled of eau de Mama. Maybe everybody has a smell they associate
with their mothers, but I always remember her particular scent. I
can still smell it if I close my eyes, and think back. Sometimes I
think I smell it again, in the perfume of a woman wafting by, and
I'm ashamed to admit that occasionally I have followed women, just
to smell their scent. Mama had a fur stole around her beautiful
white neck. She was beautiful; that isn't just the false memory of a
9 year old boy in love with his mother. Mama was an actress before
she married my father. She was well known in Vienna, where we lived.
Then my father came along and swept her off her feet, and she gave
up the stage for him. He was fifteen years older than her, not
particularly tall, but an imposing man. His dark hair was streaked
grey, the same colour as his eyes, and he was such a serious man. It
was only with her, or me, that he smiled. He loved us. We were the
centre of his universe, and I was happy in a way you take for
granted when you are 9 years old, and your world is one of love and
indulgence. Maybe I was a little spoiled, but I don't think it made
me obnoxious; it merely made me confident, and that's no bad thing.
We drove back to our house, still laughing and chattering, and just
thinking about it makes me ache, because it was many years before I
felt that happy again.
"I want to be an opera singer when I grow up," I said
enthusiastically. "Or maybe an actor, like Mama."
"You're certainly loud enough to make yourself heard onstage," my
father snorted, ruffling my hair.
"I'll be a great actor. You'll be proud of me," I proclaimed,
thrilled by the thought of starring in movies.
"Oh darling, we'll be proud of you whatever you do, won't we,
Josef?" My father was staring out of the window, lost in thought,
but he looked around, and laughed.
"What? Oh, yes. Maybe you'll be a doctor," Papa said. I'd almost
forgotten that snippet of conversation. We'll be proud of you
whatever you do... I don't think so, Mama. Somehow, I don't think so.
Our car drew up at the house. Looking back, I always want it to end
differently. I want to scream at us not to go in, and sometimes I
do, but they can't hear me. They're still teasing each other, and 9
year old Nicky was still singing. He tumbled out of the car, eager
to pirouette, and prance, to show off for his doting parents. I
wonder if I was ever that precocious, but I know that I was. We
wandered up to the house, and somehow I feel that there should be
something to warn us; maybe a feeling, or a sign, to tell us to
stop, not to go in, but there is nothing. It was a perfectly
ordinary summer evening. Papa opened the door, while Leo put the
car away in the garage, and I followed behind my father, with Mama
bringing up the rear.
"Nicky, run upstairs and get ready for bed. I'll be up to say
goodnight in a few minutes," Mama said, and while I longed for the
evening to go on forever I was too well brought up to argue with
her, so my little pout sufficed to register my protest, and she
laughed at me, and kissed my forehead, then pushed me up the stairs.
I went into my bedroom, and washed, and changed into my pajamas,
then sat in my bed, waiting for them both to come up. They always
came to say goodnight, and read me a bedtime story, but not that
night. That night I waited...and waited...I began to wonder if they were
planning another birthday surprise for me, and then I heard raised
voices. It wasn't my parents arguing; they never did for a start,
and my father was a quietly spoken man. I never even heard him shout
before that night, but one of those voices was definitely his.
"I don't know, I tell you!" He cried, desperately, in a tone of
voice that scared me. Even at the age of 9 I knew that something was
very wrong. "Please, let her go! I don't know. I don't have them.
You're wro..." And then a loud snapping sound, followed by a scream of
pain. I jumped out of bed, ran out into the corridor, and crouched
in the darkness, staring through the banisters. I could see my
father, remonstrating with someone in the hallway below, beneath the
huge crystal chandelier, and I could smell tobacco. A thin, wafting
plume of smoke was making its way up the stairs to where I was
crouched. I remember thinking that Papa was probably angry that
someone was smoking in his house. Mama hated smoking so father quit
the day they got married, and wouldn't allow anyone to smoke in the
house.
"You have something that belongs to us," the intruder was saying, in
fluent German with a heavy American accent, and that's when I caught
sight of my mother. She was lying on the floor, a livid red bruise
on the side of her jaw. She was whimpering. Father's hands had been
tied behind his back, and he looked pale, and small, and defeated. A
little boy should never see his father looking like that. A boy's
father should always seem big, and strong, and capable of taking on
the world alone, and winning. That was the way my father always
seemed to me until that night.
"Leave her alone. She doesn't know anything," my father said
desperately. "It's me you want."
"Then tell us what we want to know," the smoking man requested, in a
voice that sounded eminently reasonable. I willed my father to
agree. One of the intruders had a gun held to my father's head, and
another had his aimed loosely at my mother's back. I didn't
understand why my father was hesitating. Didn't my mother's life
mean more to him than some political secret?
"I can't." My father sounded broken, and there are tears in his
eyes.
"Then we'll have to kill her," the smoking man said, flicking his
fingers.
My "NO!" rang out, but was lost in the sound of gunfire, and the
noise of a woman screaming. My mother wasn't dead though. My father
had wrenched himself free of his captors, flung himself over her
body, and taken the bullet for her. A steady stream of blood was
flowing from his chest, and his stiff white shirt was glowing bright
red under the lights of the chandelier. The smoking man kicked my
father and he rolled over, and I know immediately that he was dead.
His eyes were open, and he was staring straight up at me, and, in
death, I sensed that he was giving me a message. He was asking me to
save my mother. Silently, finding courage that I didn't know I had,
I tiptoed back to my bedroom, and opened the window. I climbed out
onto the garage roof, and to this day I'm still not sure how, but I
somehow managed to open the skylight, and half climbed, half fell
into the garage. Only a few minutes had passed since we entered the
house, and Leo was still there, putting the car away. He looked at
me, startled. He hadn't even heard the gunshots, and screams,
because he had the car radio on, and was polishing one of the wing
mirrors.
"Leo...help...Papa..." And that's all I managed to say. He guessed the
rest by the look on my face, and the look on his face surprised me.
He didn't look like Leo any more. He looked different.
"In the house?" He asked, and I nodded, the tears streaming down my
face. "How many of them?" He didn't seem surprised.
"I don't know. More than two. They shot him...they shot...please, save
Mama!" I was shaking all over, and on the verge of collapse.
"All right, Nicky. Listen to me very carefully." He grabbed my
shoulders, and sank his fingers into them. "I want you to go inside,
into my apartment." He nodded at the door leading from the garage to
his sleeping quarters. "Find the phone, and call this number." He
wrote a number for me, and I stared at him in disbelief. My father
was lying dead next door and he wanted me to make a phone call? "Ask
for Max." He spoke quickly, and urgently. "Nicky, just do it. It's
important. When it's done, I want you to run. Run as far away from
the house as possible, and hide somewhere. Max will find you."
"What about Mama?" I asked him, and he nodded at me.
"It's all right, Nicky. I'll find your Mama. Now go." He pushed me
towards the door, and I went, but as I reached the door, I turned
back...and that's when I saw him change. Leo, my skinny, wiry little
Leo, with his thin, dark hair, and crooked nose, grew in front of my
eyes. He became six feet tall, taller maybe, and his hair changed to
a light brown, and he was bulging with muscles. He turned, and saw
me watching, and nodded impatiently to the door. "Do it, Nicky," he
hissed, and his voice was still Leo, but it changed even as he
spoke, and became deeper, stronger, and if I was scared before I was
petrified out of my wits now. I ran into the apartment as Leo—not
Leo—ordered, and found the phone. I tried to dial the number but
my hand was shaking so much that it took three attempts before I
could manage it. A woman with a smooth, cultured, American accent
answered the call immediately, on the second ring.
"Max...I must speak to Max," I said urgently into the phone.
"Who is this?" she asked sharply.
"It's Nicky...I mean...it's Dominik, Dominik Crozier. Please, Leo told
me to call. Please..." I was crying again, and she hesitated, and then
I heard her talking to someone. A few seconds later, a man's voice
came on the line.
"This is Max," he said cautiously.
"They've killed my father," I sobbed incoherently down the phone.
"Where are you?" Max asked urgently, seeming to understand the
situation a lot better than I did at that moment in time.
"In Leo's apartment. He told me to run, and hide, and call you. He
changed shape..." I was shaking and crying, and I knew that I wasn't
making any sense.
"Do as he says. I'll be there, Dominik. Now go. RUN!" he ordered,
and I dropped the phone, scared by the intensity of his voice.
I ran back out into the garage, and that's when I heard the second
gunshot. All I could think of was my Mama, lying on the floor with
that huge red bruise on her face, and I couldn't help myself. I
disobeyed Leo, and Max. Instead of running into the garden, to
safety, I jumped onto the roof of the car, clambered out through the
skylight again, crawled to my bedroom window, and climbed back
inside. There I resumed my previous place, watching through the
banisters. There were more gunshots. I could see Leo walking towards
the smoking man, and my mother was still alive! She was sitting on
the floor, trembling, but she was still alive. Leo shouldn't have
been. The smoking man was firing his gun, and the man who was once
Leo just kept on walking. A strange green goo was oozing from the
places where he had been shot, and my eyes started to burn.
"Let her go." Leo stopped in front of my mother, and stared down at
the smoking man. I couldn't see the face of my father's murderer,
just his hand, his fingers curled around a cigarette. "She doesn't
know anything, Spender," Leo said.
"You shouldn't be here." The smoking man didn't even sound worried.
"I make my own choices. Now leave," Leo said, but at that moment
there was a movement in the shadows, and I tried to call out but it
was too late. For a moment I couldn't see what had happened, but
then Leo was falling forward, onto his knees, and his face was
crumpling before my eyes. I didn't hear a gunshot, and I didn't
understand what was happening. Leo seemed to be disintegrating, and
the green ooze was seeping from his eyes, and mouth. He fell
forward, and that's when I saw that he had what looked like a knife
sticking in the back of his neck. My mother gasped, and placed a
hand over her mouth, and I started to cough, but nobody heard me in
the general melee below. There was an acidic smell in the air that
burnt my nostrils, and eyes, and mouth. It hurt.
"Kill her," Spender said, and my mother screamed.
"Please...don't...please...I beg you. Let me live..." She implored, holding
onto his legs. He looked down on her, and that's when I started
moving. I ran down the stairs, screaming at the top of my voice. I'm
not sure what I said, and my throat was hoarse, and sore, and I was
out of my mind with fright. They hadn't yet seen me; one of the men
had moved his gun, and he placed it against my mother's head, and
fired. It's that easy to kill. It takes only one second to snuff out
a life. There's no sense to it, and no justice. It's just death. I
learned that at 9 years old. I screamed at the top of my voice as I
watched her lifeless body sink forward, her hair covering the blood
that seeped out from underneath it in a steady stream, forming a
pool, and staining her beautiful blue satin dress a bright, sickly
red. Spender looked up, and saw me for the first time, and that's
also when I got my first glimpse of him, face to face. I was
crouched in the darkness of the stairwell, but he was standing in
the full light of the chandelier. He was a tall man, with hooded
hazel eyes, and a supercilious sneer on his lips, which were curled
around a cigarette. I'm not sure that he even knew who I was, and at
that moment one of his lackeys ran in, distracting him.
"We have to go! They're on their way!" He yelled, and the intruders
started racing towards the door, leaving only Spender, who looked
straight at me. I shrank back into the shadows as he raised his gun.
"I don't like leaving witnesses," he murmured. "It's untidy." He
pulled the trigger, and I started moving at the same time, and he
was moving too, running for the door. I felt something slice into my
head, and the world turned red as I fell down the stairs, blood
running down the side of my face. I came to rest on the bottom step,
and my head hurt so much that I passed out.
I don't know how long I lay there, drifting in and out of
consciousness, but the next thing I remember is waking to find a big
man, wearing a balaclava, bending over me. I came to with a start,
and began screaming. The big man placed a hand over my mouth. He
smelled of smoke, and that made me think of Spender—he was tall,
like this dark clad stranger; maybe he'd come back for me. I was
screaming and struggling as the man picked me up, effortlessly, and
carried me outside.
"Hush, Dominik. It's Max. I'm not going to hurt you. You came to me
for help, remember?" he said urgently, as he bundled me into the
back of a car.
"Max?" I barely remembered that phone call. It could have taken
place a lifetime ago.
"Yes. Hush." He pulled off his balaclava as the car took off at top
speed and I saw immediately that he wasn't the man who had murdered
my parents. He was about 40, with a lined, craggy face, and
deep-set, brown eyes. There was something about him that I
recognised, even then; Max was one of the good guys. It was obvious
in the warmth of his smile, the humour in his eyes, and the sheer
charisma that oozed from every pore in his body. Yes, Max is an
inveterate womaniser; he drinks too much, and he smokes like a
chimney, but I'd trust him with my life, and he's never once let me
down in all the years since he carried a small, frightened,
helpless, injured boy from the wreckage of his life, and helped him
build a new one. "Dominik, you're hurt. Hold still while I see how
bad it is." His large fingers probed my forehead, and came away
blood red. I opened my mouth, wanting to scream, but caught the
expression in his eyes.
"It's all right, Dominik," Max said softly. "You're going to be all
right. It's just a flesh wound."
"He shot me." I put my fingers up to my forehead, and touched the
wound.
"The shot must have ricocheted. If it had entered your head cleanly
it would have killed you," Max said. Then, as now, he always told me
the truth. He never treated me like a child; maybe he recognised
that when you've just seen your parents slaughtered in front of your
eyes, there is no truth that's too hard to bear, or maybe that's
just Max. He doesn't like to hide the hard facts, but he's always
there to help you bear them.
"My mother...father..." I whispered, brokenly.
"Dominik, I'm very sorry." And he was. His dark eyes were sad and
sincere. "Your father was a good man, Dominik, never forget that."
"Leo told me to hide...but I couldn't. I heard her scream. I couldn't
leave my mother. I thought I could stop them. I ran down the stairs,
but she was already...they had already...I was too slow. If I had said
something sooner...I could have distracted them...I could have..."
"Dominik." He stopped the torrent of guilty words with his finger,
placing it gently over my lips. "You couldn't have done anything.
You're just a boy. They were men, with guns. You did your best to
protect your mother. You couldn't have done anything more."
"Mama." I opened my mouth, and said the word in an almost voiceless
whisper.
"You've been very brave, Dominik," Max was saying but I was hardly
listening. I was just remembering the way my father had stared at me
with those dead eyes, telling me to save her, and how I'd failed
him. "Dominik." Max tapped my cheek lightly, to bring me back.
"Listen to me," he said in a firm, low voice, "You couldn't have
done anything more. You're the bravest kid I've ever met. You could
have run—you should have run, the way Leo and I ordered you to,
but you didn't. You went back to save your mother. That says a lot
about you, and the kind of boy you are. Many a grown man would have
thought twice about running back into the house under such
circumstances." I stared at him, unblinking, and he smiled at me.
With those few words, he stopped what could have become a lifetime
of self-blame before it even began. Oh, on some level I'll always
hate myself for being too small, too young, and too weak to save my
parents, but Max took away at least some of the guilt, even if he
could never take away the pain.
"Where are we going? What will happen to me?" I asked him in a small
voice. I was suddenly aware that I was dressed in blood- stained
pyjamas, speeding away from the only home I'd ever known, and that
all the people who had ever loved me were dead, wiped out in less
than ten minutes of chaos and carnage.
"I'm taking you somewhere safe," Max said gently. "We'll look after
you, Dominik. I know we can't replace your parents, but we will take
good care of you. You'll have everything you need. We look after our
own."
I wasn't sure what he meant by that, and I gazed at him,
distrustfully.
"The man...that man who shot me...he was asking my father questions. He
was looking for something. My father wouldn't tell him. Why wouldn't
he tell him?" I gazed at Max, the tears filling in my eyes. "Even
when they threatened my mother...why? Didn't he love her?" Max took a
deep breath, and swallowed hard, and I think he was close to tears
as well.
"Of course he loved her, Dominik," he said softly, "but there was so
much more at stake. Your father was a brave man—and your mother
was brave too. She knew all about the secrets your father was
hiding. She knew the risks, but she never once asked him to be less
than he was, or to give it all up."
"I don't understand," I told him, shivering badly from shock.
"I know, and I will explain it all one day, but for now, you're too
tired, too sad, and too young. Come here, Dominik."
He opened his arms, and I stared at him. I didn't know this man. I'd
never met him before, and yet I trusted him. A bond had been forged
between us that would never be broken, from that day to this. I was
cold, and tired, and I hurt. I crawled across the car seat towards
him, trembling violently, and disappeared into the comforting
oblivion of his arms.
"Nicky," I whispered, resting my weary, aching head against his
shoulder.
"What?" He frowned down at me, his big arms holding me tight,
swallowing me up in their warmth.
"Papa only calls me Dominik when he's cross with me. Otherwise I'm
always Nicky." I closed my eyes, and felt his arms tighten around
me.
"Nicky then," he said softly, gently stroking my hair. "Nicky."
Skinner got out of the taxi, and paid the driver. He had taken a few
days leave to travel to Vienna on the track of Krycek's mysterious
Dominik Crozier. The house was beautiful; large, and elegant, set in
lovely gardens. Skinner opened the file he had brought with him, and
checked the address. He didn't know why he should be surprised:
Josef Crozier, Dominik's father, had, after all, been a wealthy
politician with fingers in many pies. Skinner opened the large,
wrought iron gate, and walked up the gravel drive, his footsteps
crunching as he went. He had justified this trip by telling himself
that his life was on the line, and he had to find this Crozier if he
was to save himself at best another spell in the hospital, his
arteries choked by carbon, and at worst an early grave. This wasn't
the entire truth though, and he knew that, although he wasn't sure
why this case had captured his interest in this way. Maybe it was
the fact that this Dominik Crozier, whoever he was, was so badly
wanted by Krycek's bosses that they were prepared to bring in the
FBI to find him, and maybe it was because the bare facts in the file
were so fascinating. There was very little information to go on at
all, save for the fact that at the age of 9, little Dominik Crozier
had witnessed his parent's death, and suffered what the Consortium
operative writing the report had deemed to be "probably a fatal
bullet wound to the head." But if they really thought Crozier was
dead, then why were they looking for him? Then again, maybe that
wasn't it either. Maybe, instead, it was the blurred, black and
white photograph of a small boy, laughing as he was swung between
two disembodied arms, which Skinner presumed belonged to the child's
parents, as they walked through the streets of Vienna that had
caught his imagination. The child couldn't have been more than four
years old in the picture. Was this really all they knew about
Dominik Crozier? It wasn't much to go on. Skinner took the picture
from the file, and gazed that the blurred, grainy image of the boy
for a long time. He looked so happy. He had no inkling that in a few
years time, his world would be destroyed, and his life shattered.
Skinner returned the photograph to the file, and tucked both into
his duffel bag. He swung it onto his shoulder, and knocked on the
imposing door. There was no reply. He knocked again, and then took a
step back, and gazed at the upstairs windows, as if looking for some
kind of clue.
"Nobody lives here now," a voice behind him said, in German. Skinner
jumped, startled, and turned to find himself face to face with a
gardener.
"Nobody's lived here for years. You'd think they'd sell the place if
they didn't want to live here. Must be worth something." The
gardener stared at the house.
"It's well kept," Skinner observed, in faltering German, gazing at
the façade.
"Yes. They pay an army of people to keep it, but nobody lives here.
Nobody even visits. I've never been inside, but I've heard..." The
man's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "I've heard that
it's like being in a time warp. Everything just as it was that night
when Josef Crozier, and his wife and little boy, were gunned down,
right down to the bloodstain on the floor."
"Do you believe that?" Skinner asked, frowning.
"Well, maybe not the part about the blood stain." The gardener
grinned, ghoulishly. "Makes a good story to frighten the children
with though!"
"You speak of Crozier's son. I wasn't aware...did he die here?"
Skinner asked, his inefficient German barely adequate for the
question.
"Yes. Gunned down with his parents. They cremated him in his
mother's coffin," the gardener replied, clearly enjoying being the
source of so much information. "Strange tale. Nothing stolen, and
nobody knows who owns the house now."
"So nobody ever comes here?" Skinner pressed.
"I've never seen anyone." The gardener shrugged. "I've heard the
house is haunted by the ghost of Marguerite Crozier though. The
housekeeper comes here once or twice a week, and she says that
sometimes she finds things have been moved, and she can smell the
dead woman's perfume lingering in the air. Gives me quite a chill, I
can tell you." He shivered dramatically, and Skinner grunted.
Ghosts. This was turning out to be more Mulder's department than
his, and yet Krycek had been quite specific that he should
investigate this himself. So, the local people thought that Dominik
Crozier was dead; what information did the Consortium have to the
contrary? And why were they looking for this man now, decades after
he had supposedly 'died'?
I come to with a start, and realise that I'm stiff, and wet, and
damned cold. I'm not dressed for this kind of weather. I'm still
staring at the poster for The Marriage of Figaro, and the lightly
falling rain has soaked me to the skin. On the street beside me
there's a small, steaming pool of vomit that I don't remember
depositing there. I wipe the stench from my lips with the back of my
sleeve, and then turn and trudge swiftly home, still lost in
thought. Max's illness, and the knowledge that Spender's people have
stepped up their search for me, has made me question my choices. I
used to be so sure, but maybe now is the time to get out, before
it's too late. Maybe it's already too late. Walter Skinner is a
clever man. He might find me where they failed. If so, then my days
are already numbered. It's almost 2 am by the time I get back to my
apartment block. The familiar stench of urine assaults me as I open
the door, and start running up the concrete steps. I come across a
gang of youths in the stairwell further up. They're off their heads
on some substance or other, and they look at me as I jog up the
stairs, hostility evident in their posture, and their dull lifeless
eyes.
"Excuse me," I say politely, waiting for them to move so I can get
past.
"Fuck off." It's mindless, without meaning. He's just another lost,
dispossessed soul, but I have no pity for him. He hasn't seen what
I've seen, and I'd defy him to know the kind of tragedy that I've
known in my life. My hand fastens easily around his throat, and I
defy his other, drugged up friends to come to his assistance. They
gaze at me, uneasily, sensing danger. I could kill them all before
they even know what's hit them, but I didn't get this far by drawing
attention to myself. I pull the youth out of the way, and push him
down the stairs. He falls, awkwardly, and gazes after me blankly.
"Thank you," I murmur ironically as I continue on my way.
"Wanker." He fingers his throat gingerly, but he's too scared to
retaliate. I climb the next few steps to my apartment, and let
myself in. It's small, and grubby, consisting of one room, and a
small kitchen area. The paint is peeling, and the entire apartment
block smells damp and musty. I go to the basin, and splash water on
my face, and then fill myself a mug of the same cool liquid, and
squat down on my mattress. The water rinses the taste of vomit from
my mouth, and makes me feel human again—although sometimes I've
doubted even that. The truth is that I'm scared, not for myself, but
for what will become of me without Max. When he dies, there will be
nobody left in the whole world who knows my story, and also...who
loves me. I'm an orphan, and I've walked with loneliness all my
life. The two people in the world who had showed me unconditional
love without question are long since dead, but Max did his best to
fill their shoes, and for that I'll be eternally grateful to him.
It wasn't always easy for either of us in those first, terrible days
after my parents' death, but Max was amazing. I have no idea how he
put up with me, but he did, and he pulled me through. I'm not sure I
can bear to lose him. Looking back on my life, he's always been the
one constant, from the moment he found me. I suppose that I took
that for granted, but now, facing his death, all I can think about
is how much he means to me. Maybe I need to go over these memories
again now. I, of all people, know how important memories are.
Sometimes they're all we have...
I woke up in a small bed in an underground room, and, for just a
split second, I didn't remember what had happened, and then it all
kicked back in, and I curled up in bed in a fetal position, and
didn't move for the next 48 hours. I was kept pretty much sedated as
they healed the graze on my head, but the scars inside would take
much longer to heal—if they ever could. On the fifth day, Max
strode in, pulled the covers off my bed, and told me to get up.
There are very few people who would dare defy Max when he's in one
of his determined moods, and, trust me, I'm not one of them. I got
up. Sulkily. Slowly. I submitted to being pushed under the shower,
and washed, and I put on the clothes he threw onto the bed for me. I
followed him through the strange, underground place I had been
brought to, and sat beside him at a trestle table in the dining
room. It was then that my natural curiosity kicked in.
"Where are we?" I asked him.
"This is our base—one of them at least."
"Base?" I frowned. This was like something out of a television show.
I didn't really understand what it meant.
"Somewhere secret, where nobody will find us. Where the men who
killed your father won't find us," he added gently, seeing my
puzzled expression.
"Oh." I nodded, but suddenly I couldn't eat my breakfast. He didn't
make me. Not that morning at least, but the next day when I sat
morosely playing with my food, he told me I wasn't leaving the table
until I'd finished it. I think I was shocked by his tone, but his
dark eyes were deadly serious. Didn't he realise? Didn't he
understand what I'd lost, and what I'd been through? Gazing at him
with deadly hatred, and finding his resolve unwavering, I realised
that he did. He understood all of it.
"I'm not hungry," I hissed, defying him, and all that had happened
to me, choosing instead another path. I pushed my plate away, and
crossed my arms over my chest.
"I know." He pushed my plate back. "Dominik, if I could turn back
the clock I'd give my life to make sure that the abomination that
happened to you never took place, but I can't do that. The one thing
I can do is to make sure that your parents' sacrifice wasn't in vain
and that their only child gets a chance to grow up with people who
care about him, and to one day bring credit to the name of Crozier.
Now eat it."
And I did.
It isn't many people who have watched their own funeral procession.
I have. Max said it would be for the best if we pretended that I'd
died in the house. I was 9 years old, and hardly in any position to
argue. Besides, looking back, he was probably right. Spender knew
I'd seen his face, and even though it was unlikely he'd ever be
brought to justice he's the kind of man who prefers to, as he said,
keep things tidy. Some of Max's associates didn't want me to even
attend my parents' funeral, deeming it too dangerous, and, of
course, it was, but I was adamant, and Max was, surprisingly
perhaps, on my side.
"They're his parents. He needs to say goodbye," he told the
assembled people in his usual blunt, no-nonsense way. I didn't have
a clue who half of them were. They were just some of the faceless
folk who climbed out of the woodwork in the immediate aftermath of
my parents' death, and then faded away again afterwards. Max was the
person I clung to, my new reality, and he didn't let me down.
"Take him then," said a woman, who seemed to be in charge. "But
we'll hold you accountable if anything happens to him. He's your
responsibility, Max."
"I know that, Janna. He always will be from now on," Max replied,
and a fiery look passed between the two of them. I sensed some
history between them, but I was too young to understand that back
then. Of course Janna was one of Max's many conquests. He lived life
on the edge, risking that life almost daily, and he took his
pleasures in equal proportions to his risks.
So, on the day of my parents' funeral, Max took me to a hotel
overlooking the crematorium, and we watched from the room he'd
booked. It was a bright, sunny day, not a cloud in sight, which made
no sense to me, as my world held no beauty any more. I watched,
numbly, as the coffins were carried into the crematorium.
"Why can't I go inside?" I asked Max, who was standing by the window
next to me, wearing a stiff, formal suit and looking supremely
uncomfortable in it. Max was a man more used to casual clothing.
After that day it was to be 10 years before I saw him in a suit
again.
"Because you're dead," Max reminded me bluntly. I stared, silently,
as aunts, uncles and grandparents filed into the crematorium They
were my family. I knew them, and yet they thought they were going
into that church to pay their last respects to me. I caught a
glimpse of my mother's sister, Maria, and felt an almost
overwhelming sense of homesickness. She had my mother's curled
blonde hair, and the same petite figure. For a moment I thought she
was my mother, and that the events of the past week had been a
dream. I gasped out a startled "Mama" and ran towards the door, only
to find my way blocked by Max's large body.
"It isn't her, Nicky," he said.
"No, it is, you're wrong...she isn't dead," I cried, trying to get
past him, pummelling him with my small fists.
"Nicky..." He let me fight it out of my system. He let me pound
against his chest until I was too tired, and hurt too much inside to
carry on, and that was when I broke down and cried for the first
time. Then he picked me up, carried me over to the bed, sat me down,
and held me tight while I sobbed inconsolably into his white shirt.
They were all filing out of the crematorium by the time I'd
finished. Max wiped my tears away with a huge, ink-stained
handkerchief, and then he picked me up and carried me back over to
the window, and held me there so I could watch. I'm glad he did
that. I wasn't capable of walking by that point. I stared, sullen,
and swollen faced, as my family filed out of the Crematorium, and
the big black cars rolled away. Then I placed my hand on the
window-pane, knowing it was all over.
"Goodbye," I whispered. I stared out at the sunlit world for a long
time, trying to remember the way my mother laughed, and the sound of
my father's voice, and then all the energy left me, and I became as
limp as a rag doll. I rested my forehead against Max's craggy face,
and he held me close, and kissed by hair, and then, after several
long, silent minutes, he walked me out of that room and into my
future.
Skinner sat in his hotel room, and watched the snow fall outside.
Winter in Vienna was beautiful. It had been a long time since he had
sat and watched the world go by, and it was curiously restful. He
rolled his shoulders, trying to release the tension in them. He was
always tense these days. Maybe it had been years. Years of living
one lie after another had taken its toll on him. He took a gulp of
brandy, and glanced at the equipment laid out on his bed. It had
been a long time since he had gone on a mission like this, and his
gut rebelled against breaking into that beautiful house, and
defiling that dead family on the orders of Alex Krycek of all
people, but he had no choice. He was here to find Dominik Crozier,
and he'd reached a dead end. He needed more information.
It was 6pm. He had hours to kill before he could do his enemy's
dirty work, and he couldn't spend it sitting here in this hotel
room, all alone, with only brandy for company. He'd be in no fit
state to break in anywhere if he did that. Skinner picked up the
phone, rang the concierge, and asked what there was for a man to do
in Vienna in the evening. He could almost hear her laughing as she
reeled out a long list of concerts, plays, operas and ballets.
Opera. He was a regular visitor to the opera in Washington. He had
first met Sharon at the opera, more years ago than he cared to
remember. Music was one of his loves in life. He was a solitary man,
and music spoke to him, in a way that little else did in these days
of numb emotions. Skinner skimmed through the list of available
options he had noted down, and dismissed the great tragic operas
immediately. He was in no mood to deal with all that death and
despair. He chose Mozart instead. The Marriage of Figaro. It wasn't
his favourite opera—he disliked all the ridiculous farce about
mistaken identity—but he loved the music. The music soothed his
soul; he could bury himself in the music.
Skinner took a shower, and dressed in stone-colored chinos, and a
navy polo neck sweater. He pulled on a smart jacket, and surveyed
himself in the mirror. Krycek was right. He was looking old, and
tired. Leading a double life could do that to a man. By day an
Assistant Director of the most famous law enforcement agency in the
world, by night a common burglar, breaking and entering into a place
where he had no right to be, courtesy of Alex Krycek. Skinner gazed
at himself with loathing. How had it come to this? He had sold his
soul to the devil in exchange for his own life—has it really been
worth it? Was he really doing this to help Mulder and Scully? To
keep in the game so he could be of use to them, or was it just self
interest at the end of the day? The desire of a survivor not to
relinquish his grip on life, to selfishly cling on, no matter what.
Twice he had died, and twice he had been returned to life and for
what? To eke out this miserable existence in thrall to a man he
loathed beyond any other? Skinner picked up his wallet, and exited
his hotel room without a backward glance. He had made his choice,
and now, god help him, he was having to live with it.
The opera house was full, teeming with well-dressed Viennese
hausfraus and businessmen. Skinner took his seat, and closed his
eyes as the first aria rose up and filled his soul. He felt as if he
was soaring with it, lost in the music, far away from the bitter
complexities of his own life. If only he could stay here, and never
return. Here there was no Krycek, no dead wife, staring at him with
reproachful, lifeless eyes, no Mulder, no Cancerman. Here he felt
none of the aching loneliness that had been part of his existence
since puberty, and the choice he had made all those years ago, to
effectively lead a double life. Here there was only the music.
"Excuse me, sir."
Skinner looked up, surprised, as the voice cut through his reverie.
"The opera is over," the woman said, and he realised, with some
surprise, that she was right. The auditorium was empty; the last few
patrons were just walking through the door. "Are you all right?" She
asked, her dark eyes full of concern.
"What?" He frowned. "I'm fine." He brushed off the inquiry
brusquely, and she smiled uncertainly, nodded, and walked away. His
glasses were smeared, and he reached up to clean them, and that was
when his fingers found the slick wetness of tears on his cheeks.
Skinner returned to his hotel, and slowly removed his clothing, and
then, equally slowly, dressed himself in plain black pants, black
sweater, black shoes, and black jacket. He placed the tools he would
need in a thin cloth bag, and tucked them into the inner pocket of
his jacket, along with a fine bladed knife that he knew he could use
to kill a man in less than five seconds. It was a trick he'd learned
in Vietnam, and, once learned, it was never forgotten. Was this what
he had come to? What difference was there, he wondered, as he
slipped out of the hotel, between himself, and Alex Krycek? They
both skulked around in the night, both of them knew how to kill
swiftly, and silently. How many times had Krycek left on a mission
such as this, with similar tools of trade tucked into his pocket?
The house was in darkness when he arrived. It was protected by a
sophisticated security system, but Skinner had done his homework
well, and he knew how to bypass the trigger areas, found the main
control box, and disabled it. His black gloved hands worked quickly,
surely. It should have surprised him how well he could perform this
task, but it didn't. He knew what he was capable of. He'd known it
since he was 18 years old. It was living with that knowledge that
was hard.
The lights in the house were set on a random timer, to give the
illusion of occupancy. There was no problem therefore in turning
them on—nobody would be surprised. Skinner walked silently down a
long, grand hallway, past a huge, imposing flight of stairs, and
flicked a switch. He held his breath as the house was suddenly
bathed in the light of an enormous chandelier. This place was
beautiful—and the gardener was right about one thing: it had been
maintained just as it had been on that fateful night when the
Croziers died, but he was wrong about something else; there was no
bloodstain marring the polished wooden floor. Skinner had read the
Consortium report on their mission that night. He knew they had
gained entry to the house while the Croziers were at the opera—a
birthday treat for their nine year old son. They had been lying in
wait in the kitchen, and when the Croziers had returned the boy had
been sent straight up to bed. His parents had been cornered in the
hallway. Skinner wondered what information Josef Crozier had that
was so important his entire family had been butchered for it. He
paused under the giant chandelier. This, according to the
characteristically thorough Consortium report on that slaughter, had
been where they had been standing. Josef Crozier had his back to the
staircase, and the Consortium operative leading the mission had been
facing him. There had been 6 of them in all. Six fully armed men to
take on one frightened man, his petite wife, and their small son.
Skinner's jaw did a sideways clench. He crouched down, and glanced
at the floor. Even after all this time, there were sometimes still
small clues. Finding nothing, he stood up, and glanced at the
staircase. The boy must have heard the commotion from his bedroom.
Skinner began to silently climb the stairs.
The first doorway at the top of the stairs, on the left, was open,
inviting him in. He pushed open the door, and turned on the light,
and almost gasped out loud in surprise. This was unmistakably the
child's room—and it was exactly as it must have been all those
years ago, on the night that the Croziers were wiped out. The bed
was made, and the room was clean, and tidy, but it was frozen in
time. The blue walls were covered in posters of the Beatles, and
some sporting stars he could not identify. There was a pair of
roller skates propped up by the bed, next to some ice skates. The
closet was covered in a myriad of word and letter magnets. They had
been arranged to spell out: This boy's room is a pig sty, and
beneath it, the reply: but he likes living like a pig! Honk! Skinner
ran his hand over the magnets, and smiled, imagining the child and
his mother leaving silly little messages for each other on this
closet door. The room certainly wasn't a pig sty now; it was as
tidy as the rest of the house.
Skinner opened the closet door. The child's clothes still hung
there, covered in plastic, and shrouded in mothballs. Skinner
frowned, and pulled out a small, boy's sized sweater. Who had
ordered that this house be kept like this? It had been
systematically wrapped and preserved, like a precious possession,
nothing changed, or altered, nothing allowed to decay. It made the
hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He had been right; this
was Mulder's territory.
Skinner put the sweater back in the closet, and closed the door
silently. He didn't like being here. It felt as if he was intruding
on someone's memories, on something too painful, and too precious to
be trampled on by a stranger. He was about to leave the room when
something caught his attention. By the child's bed, there was a
photo frame—an empty photo frame. Skinner picked it up in his
gloved hand, looked at it thoughtfully, and then he returned it to
its place on the nightstand, and silently exited the room. The other
rooms were equally eerie. All of them were exactly as they must have
been that night, when the Croziers met their end, and although there
were countless elegant silver photo frames all over the place, none
of them contained any pictures. It was puzzling. The master bedroom
was elegantly furnished, and the lady of the house had her own en
suite dressing room. There was a dressing table, covered in neatly
arranged potions and lotions, perfume bottles, and hairbrushes—as
well as the requisite empty silver picture frame. Skinner sat down
at the dressing table, and gazed at it. It was kept perfectly
dusted, as frozen in time as the rest of the house. Some of the
perfume bottles were half empty, and one of them was out of place,
as if it had been recently used...Skinner placed one black-gloved
finger on the bottle thoughtfully. A ghost who wore perfume? Or was
there a much more earthly explanation for the mysterious scent? He
caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he looked out of
place. He was big, and clumsy, and, clad all in black, he didn't
look as if he belonged in this light, airy, feminine, pink room. He
was an intruder, and he didn't like that feeling.
Skinner got up, turned off the lights, and slipped silently back out
onto the upstairs landing. The boy, on hearing raised voices
downstairs, must have tiptoed out of his bedroom, and stood up here,
looking down on the terrifying scene below. Skinner couldn't begin
to understand what that poor child had felt, seeing his parents
surrounded by men with guns. He looked over the banisters—there
was a clear view below. The child would have seen everything. At
some point he had come down the stairs, trying to stop the men below
from killing his mother, and he had stopped...around here...Skinner
decided, glancing at the Consortium report. The stairwell was
relatively dark, cast in the shadow, and the Consortium operative
would have had trouble seeing his target, especially if he was
moving. The report said that the chauffeur had disturbed the
mission, and he had been killed...but if that was the case, why had
they aborted the mission without first making sure the boy, the only
witness to these atrocities, was dead? Skinner thought about it for
a moment. It didn't make sense. "Probably a fatal bullet to the
head" the report said. Why probably? Since when had the Consortium
ever been so sloppy? Unless...they had been interrupted. Not by the
chauffeur, who was already dead, but by someone else—or by someone
they expected to arrive. But who? And what had they found when they
got here? Krycek wouldn't have given him this case if he didn't
believe that little Dominik Crozier was still alive, and if the boy
had survived that fateful night, wouldn't it be likely that he had
become some kind of nemesis for the people who had killed his
parent. His hatred of the Consortium must run very deep.
Skinner paused, his black gloved hand finding a small nick in the
polished banister as he walked down the stairs. He crouched down,
and examined it at eye level. A small piece of wood was missing.
Skinner glanced behind, and measured what trajectory a deflected
bullet might take. Supposing the bullet had hit the banister, and
ricocheted, catching the boy only a glancing blow to the head, and
then continuing its path...such a bullet might end up round
about...here. Skinner ran his hands over the wall. It was smooth.
There was nothing...and yet. He stepped back. A whole panel of
wallpaper had been replaced. It was a neat job, and over the years
it had become almost unnoticeable, but for an almost imperceptible
difference in colour. So, little Dominik Crozier had lived. Skinner
felt an almost absurd sense of triumph on hearing that. The boy had
lived, and someone had taken him to safety—but why spread the lie
that the child was dead? To protect him in case the Consortium came
back to finish the job? That was plausible. But how had the child
managed to hide so convincingly, and for so long? And what had
Crozier become that the Consortium feared him so much?
Skinner reactivated the security system, and, with one last glance
around the house, left it as silently as he had entered. He returned
to his hotel and called the number Krycek had given him.
"What do you have for me?" Krycek demanded, in his usual cold,
belligerent tones.
"Nothing. Not yet. I was wondering what you had for me," Skinner
replied, glancing out of the hotel window. Outside the temperature
had risen fractionally, and the evening's earlier light flurry snow
had turned to rain.
"What the hell do you mean? Don't play games with me, Skinner,"
Krycek snarled.
"I'm not. I've been doing some investigating, but I'm working in the
dark here. We need to meet."
Krycek hadn't sounded too pleased by this request, but he had
acceded to it. With a weary heart, Skinner folded away his black
mission clothes, packed his suitcase, and prepared to return to
Washington DC.
For the first few months after my parents' death I lived in a daze.
I clung to Max as my only reality amid the wreckage of my life. He
was good to me. For such a large, worldly, blunt- talking man, he
could be surprisingly sensitive. We stayed in the underground base
in Vienna, and he slept in the bunk below mine, sticking close to
me, like a bodyguard, or a parent, both of which I suppose he had
become. The night after the funeral, my mother came to me in a
dream. She was calling to me, but I was paralysed, and couldn't
reach her. She was surrounded by faceless men who tied her to a
pyre, and lit a fire beneath her. She was burning to death, and I
just watched, unable to stop them, or to help her. I saw Leo in the
crowd of people around her, and sobbed at him to rescue her, and,
beneath my horrified gaze, he changed shape, and became Max, and I
watched as those faceless men plunged a knife into the back of his
neck, and his whole body crumpled in front of me.
"Nicky...hush! It's all right. It's okay." I woke to find myself
screaming into Max's face. He smelled of cigarettes, and whisky, and
it was the most reassuring smell in the world, because it was the
scent of life. I'll always be ashamed, to this day, of what I said
to him next.
"You let them burn my mother! She was still alive and you let her
burn!" I railed at him helplessly, and hit him as I'd done so often
in our short acquaintance, but he's a big man, and my small fists
made little impact. He held me tight, captured my fists in one large
hand, and pushed my sweaty hair out of my eyes with the other.
"She's dead, Nicky. She was dead. You saw them kill her, Nicky.
Hush. Hush." I crumpled, my eyes swimming with tears, and he slipped
into my bunk beside me, held me in his arms, and rocked me back and
forth until I had cried my eyes out on his shoulder. Then we just
lay there, gazing at the ceiling. I don't know what in life had
equipped Max to be the saviour of one small, lost boy, but it was a
job he did brilliantly. It's ironic, because he's a long way from
being anyone's ideal father figure. My mother would have turned in
her metaphorical grave if she had known who was looking after me,
but, despite appearances, Max was a good man. He still is—and I
trusted him, which was the most important thing. As we lay there,
both exhausted by the nightmare, I finally spoke about something
that had been at the back of my mind for several days.
"Max, Leo changed shape."
"Is that so?" He didn't seem surprised.
"Can you change shape, Max?" I asked, and he roared with laughter.
"No, Nicky, I can't."
"Oh." I was disappointed. "You could in my dream."
"Well, I'm afraid I can't." He smiled down at me.
"How could Leo do it?" I asked him, holding my breath.
"Well, Leo was special," Max said softly. "That's why we sent him to
look after your father."
"Why did my father need looking after, Max?" I asked, remembering
Spender's questions, and my father's refusal to answer. Max's large
arms closed around me, and he squeezed comfortingly.
"Your father was helping us, Nicky. He had found out something -
something very big. Something that certain people wanted to cover
up. We asked him to see if there was anything else he could
discover, and he promised to help us. We sent Leo along to protect
him."
"It didn't work," I whispered into Max's chest. "Leo died too,
didn't he Max? That green stuff that came out of his body..." I
trailed off, convulsed by another sob as I remembered the burning
sensation in my eyes and mouth that Leo's 'blood' had caused.
"Yes, Nicky. Leo's dead too," Max confirmed, although I had already
known that.
"He was kind to me. He took me out on his motorcycle. Papa didn't
know. We never told him." Max made no reply, save to drop a kiss on
my hair. "Max..." I ventured, after a long silence. "Why did they kill
my parents? Who are they? What was Leo?"
"Nicky, you're nine years old." He looked down at me, his dark eyes
glowing in the lamp-lit room. "I will answer all your questions but
you're not old enough yet."
"Adults always say that," I accused, crossly. "I am old enough, Max.
I want to know."
"And I promise I'll tell you when you're older."
"Adults always say that as well, but they never do," I snapped
angrily.
"Well, I don't lie. If I say I'll tell you then I will. Why don't we
set a date?" He suggested. I looked at him, curious. Max was
different to any other adult I'd ever met. "How about your 16th
birthday?" He said. "How about I tell you then?"
"That's years away. How about my 10th birthday?" I haggled. His eyes
widened with amusement.
"Let's settle in the middle—your 13th birthday. Shake on it?" He
disengaged himself, and held out his hand to me. I sat up, one hand
on his chest, and regarded him thoughtfully.
"It's a promise?" I pressed.
"Yes, Nicky. It's a promise, and you'll find I always keep my
promises."
"All right. It's a deal." And we shook on it.
Max saw me through many more sleepless nights, and when the
nightmares came, as they always did, he saw me through every single
one of those as well.
We stayed in Vienna for only a couple of months while Max resolved
the complication that was my inheritance. Of course, as I was
officially 'dead' I didn't stand to inherit a thing, but having
already lost my parents, Max wasn't about to let my fortune slip
away from me as well. Instead, an illegitimate son was invented -
and my father's will was duly altered to leave everything to one
Nicolas Remarque. I didn't ask questions as to how this was
achieved. Max knew a way—and, as is the case when children view
the adult world, I had no idea that what Max was doing was actually
difficult and complicated. It's a testament to his skills that I am
now an exceedingly wealthy man. I have no idea what my aunts and
grandparents made of the news that my father had an illegitimate
son. I never gave them a second thought. I was, after all, dead. My
old life had been burned in that crematorium along with my parents.
Max intended to give me a new life—but I still didn't know who or
what he was.
He took me to Geneva in the Autumn of my ninth year, to an
absolutely enormous mansion, bigger than any place I've ever been,
before or since. It was set away, in the countryside, and guarded by
an impenetrable security system. This was to be my home for the next
four years. It was beautiful. There were large grounds, where a boy
could roam for days on end, and a huge lake, visible from the west
wing of the house. That was the wing where I lived. Max lived there
too, in his own apartment, along the corridor from the room I
occupied. It was here, as the leaves fell around my head, and the
cold winds began to blow, that I met Neil.
Neil was fourteen, and English. He had a broken leg, legacy of an
unauthorised midnight swim in the lake during the summer holidays,
which was why he was still at The House, which was what the mansion
was incongruously called by the many people who lived and worked
there. Neil was a tall boy, with thick sandy hair and freckles, and
a smiley face, and I liked him immediately. Although I was only
nine, I was fast witted and old for my years, whereas Neil was more
of an athlete than an intellectual. His leg only slowed him a small
amount—and levelled the age gap between us. We spent three months
running wild, with very little adult supervision, save for Max's
sometimes gruff, sometimes indulgent attention. I amused Neil by
making up voices, and mimicking the people who lived in The House,
including my beloved Max, and Neil amused me by standing on his
hands, and walking the entire length of the lawn, all the way to the
lake. Superficially, we had little in common, but there was one
thing that bound us together more than anything else: Neil had been
orphaned by the same people who had killed my parents.
"This place is huge. Don't go in the East wing—that's got so much
security they can hear a mouse breathe and you'll get into big
trouble," Neil instructed, as he showed me to the room we were to
share. "The West wing is where we all live." Neil showed me into
various rooms, and pointed to a door along the corridor. "That's
where Max lives. He gets a whole apartment to himself because he's
so important."
"He is? Why?" I asked, running along to see if I could peek into
Max's apartment, only to find the door locked.
"He's one of our best agents," Neil said with a shrug. "He's broken
into the Kremlin—and the Pentagon," he added, with a certain
degree of pride.
"Why would he want to do that?" I frowned, wrinkling up my forehead.
"I don't know, but it was important," Neil said, as if the reason
was irrelevant to the daring of the deed itself, which, to him, it
probably was. Neil always did have an uncomplicated way of looking
at the world. I was more curious, and less inclined to take anything
at face value.
He showed me to my room, and life soon settled into an easy pace. I
still suffered nightmares, and often crept along the corridor to
Max's apartment, and let myself in, bypassing the lock without too
much trouble, much to his amusement. Often I'd find him in bed with
some lady friend or other, and she'd wake up with a groan to find me
standing in the doorway, the sweat sticking to my forehead, and
sigh, and move onto the sofa in the other room so that I could slide
in beside Max. Max never once turned me away, although I must have
put a serious crimp in his vigorous love-life. My nightmares became
less and less frequent though, and I was even, in the way of
nine-year-old boys, happy.
The House was home to a few children during the school holidays, but
I was a fish out of water. Older children went to boarding school
during term time, and there was a nursery for the little ones. Many
of us had been orphaned either directly, or indirectly, as a result
of our parents' involvement with Max's Organisation, whose purpose I
wasn't to fully understand for several years. The very small
children only stayed at The House for a short while, before being
re-homed with members of the Organisation who took good care of
them, and treated them like their own. I was different because I
refused to be adopted—Max was the only person I'd have allowed to
adopt me and he didn't lead a normal life—and I was too young to
be sent away to boarding school. Although there were always plenty
of other adults around to take care of me, Max was special. He knew
me better than anyone else—and he could see through me too. I
wasn't any more badly behaved than any other young lad I don't
suppose, but the tragedy that had changed my life did affect my
behaviour to a certain degree. I had periods of morose sulking, and
other times when I'd just disappear into the grounds for days on
end, camping out under the stars. My mother would have been
horrified, but Max was a firm believer in boys being boys, and he
pretty much allowed me to do what I liked—as long as I told him
what I was doing and where I was going.
My whole world began and ended with Max and Neil, and the first
crisis of my new life came when Neil's return to boarding school
coincided with Max preparing to leave on the first mission he'd been
on since we'd come to Geneva. I couldn't believe that having lost my
parents just a few months before, I was now going to lose two more
people.
"Why don't you ask them if you can stay here?" I pestered Neil, who
looked at me in surprise.
"I don't want to stay here? I want to go back to school. School's
fantastic," he informed me. He had told me all about his beloved
Stowe school, in England, and I hated hearing how much he loved it,
as if it was a direct competitor with me for his affections. Neil
was far too straightforward to understand my dark and complex
emotions, so I went to appeal to the ultimate authority in my life:
Max. I found him sitting on the terrace of the West Wing,
overlooking the lake, his legs resting on the balustrade, a familiar
puff of cigarette smoke clouding around his shoulders. It was cold,
but he was sitting out in the open air, his long black coat tucked
around his large body, lost in thought.
"Max, Neil is going back to school tomorrow," I said, stomping out
onto the terrace to stand beside him.
"Hmm?" He said in a distracted tone. Then he looked up. "Oh. Yes.
Nicky, come here. I need to talk to you." He held out his arm, and
pulled me close. "Nicky, I have to go away next week," he said. I
stared at him aghast, unable to take in what he was saying. First
Neil, and now Max. My young world suddenly seemed very fragile, and
I was taken back in time to the moment when my parents had been
forcibly removed from my life, and a dark, ugly cloud descended on
me.
"Going where?" I asked blankly.
"I've been out of action too long, Nicky," he said. "I wanted to
make sure you had me around for awhile, but there are jobs I have to
do. People who need me."
"What people?" With the arrogance of youth I couldn't understand who
could need him more than I did.
"Just people." He shrugged, and took another puff on his cigarette.
"What jobs then?" I asked desperately. He paused for a moment, a
distracted look in his eye as he gazed out over the lake.
"I won't lie to you, Nicky—they're dangerous jobs. But you're safe
here, you'll be taken good care of."
"Are you saying you might not come back?" I stared at him, aghast,
and he shrugged.
"There's always that possibility, Nicky," he said gruffly.
"Then don't go. Don't leave me," I implored, and he shook his head,
and tried to hug me, but I was stiff, and unresponsive.
"Nicky, I have to go. You're not the only person who needs me," he
chided. I stared at him, feeling an intense sensation of betrayal.
He tried to talk to me, but I pushed him away, and stalked angrily
back to my room, shaking. I'm not sure if I was more angry, or more
scared, maybe a combination of both—but it was a potent
combination. I'd never been without Max since my parents' died. He
was my security, and, despite all his shortcomings, I adored him.
I refused to say goodbye to Neil when he left, and spent the next
day wondering how I could hurt Max as much as he had hurt me. Don't
ask me what was going through my mind, because I'm not sure it was
anything coherent, but I took it into my head to hide. Maybe, if he
couldn't find me, he'd understand what it was like to lose someone
you cared about. The only trouble was that he knew The House and
grounds and all my favourite hiding places as well as I did. That
was when I decided to break into the East Wing.
Neil was right; the East Wing had a state of the art security system
that was seriously impressive—but I'd been watching people come
and go in and out of the wing for months, and, as I've said before,
I'm a naturally curious person, as well as being somewhat inventive.
I had no idea what I was getting into, but I did know enough to let
myself into the rooms of one of the personnel, and steal their ID.
I chose to break in during the early hours of the morning. If I
succeeded then I'd be missed at breakfast, and if I failed then I
hoped that the resulting chaos would at least mean that Max didn't
get to spend an entire night with his latest amour, a tall, willowy
brunette called Suzette who I loathed with a vengeance.
The hallway leading to the East Wing was in darkness when I tiptoed
to the main internal security door. I had already shorted out the
camera that surveyed every movement made in the outside corridor,
and it was a simple matter to slip the ID card into the slot
provided, and wait for the door mechanism to open. That wait seemed
to take forever, but after a series of clicks, and squeaks, the door
swung open, and in my euphoria I thought I was through. I was a
child, and had no idea that of course it couldn't be that easy.
I wandered down a corridor and looked in a few rooms, but didn't
find anything interesting. Further down the hallway was a flight of
stairs. I dithered, but finally decided to go down, rather than up,
and found myself in a dimly lit corridor blocked at regular
intervals by a series of intriguing plastic doors. I had, in my
ignorance, stumbled into the most secure zone of the wing, and a few
seconds later I tripped an invisible laser beam, and within seconds
a loud alarm was sounding throughout the building, and the plastic
doors in front of me had all slammed shut. I tried to run back the
way I'd come, but the siren was so deafening it scared me, and I ran
instead into a small side room. There was shouting in the corridor
outside, and I hid, trembling, under a table in the dark room,
seriously scared out of my wits. A few seconds later, a security
team descended on the room I was in, tracking me with a heat seeking
device, and, no longer thinking straight, if I ever had been, I
decided to make a run for it. A bullet rang out, missing me by a
hair's breadth as I darted across the room towards the window, and
then a light went on outside, flooding the entire building. I saw
the leader of the security team raise his gun to take aim again, and
hesitated, unsure what to do next, caught in the spotlight, and then
I heard a voice yelling, "Don't shoot for god's sake—it's Nicky!"
and Max was standing in the doorway, dressed only in a pair of boxer
shorts, a gun in his hand. "Christ, Nicky, what the hell are you
doing in here, and how the fuck did you get in here?" He growled,
crossing the room towards me, and grabbing me literally by the
scruff of my neck. He shook me a few times while I stared,
dumbfounded and shocked into his dark, angry eyes.
"Let me go!" I screamed, surprising myself, and I kicked his bare
shins soundly with my sneakers.
"Not fucking likely. You could have been killed, Nicky. Christ, you
could have been killed." He alternated shaking me with hugging me,
and I struggled uselessly in his grasp as he hauled me back up the
corridor and into the West Wing, trailing a horde of security guards
in our wake. "It's all right. I'll take care of this," Max told them
shortly, and they nodded, as a man and a woman who I knew to be
important operatives came towards us, tying their robes, angry looks
on their faces. I'm not sure what happened next. There was a bit of
shouting, and some terse exchanges, and that was when I realised I'd
wet myself. Max noticed it too, because he gave a muffled
exclamation, then ended his conversation with the others, promised
to deal with me and report back to them in the morning, and hauled
me off to his apartment. He stripped off my clothes, shoved me under
a hot shower, pulled me out again, roughly towelled me dry—all
without saying a single word to me, and then he threw me one of his
tee shirts, which came down to my ankles. Finally, washed and warmed
up, he sat down on the couch, pulled me to stand in front of him,
looked me straight in the eye and said: "Dominik Crozier don't you
ever, ever pull a stunt like that again. What the hell did you think
you were doing?"
I shrugged, and looked at my bare feet, sticking out from under his
tee shirt, but he wasn't going to allow me to get away with that.
"I want an answer, Dominik!" He rapped out, crossing his arms over
his chest. I shrugged again, and he sighed, and tried reasoning with
me instead. "Dominik, you almost died. What you did was dangerous,"
he said in a softer tone of voice.
"I know," I muttered.
"So why do it?" He asked in despair.
"You tell me!" I yelled at him. "You're about to go and do something
dangerous, and you might die and not come back, but you're still
going to go!"
He gazed at me steadily with those dark eyes. "So, that's what all
this is about," he said eventually. He reached out, and put his
hands on my shoulders. "Dominik, there's a difference between
putting your life at risk for good reason, and behaving like a
spoilt child."
"I am a child," I muttered resentfully, glaring at him.
"Yes, and I can treat you like one if you want. That means giving
you a bedtime, and making you stick to it. It means confining you to
the house, and not allowing you into the grounds on your own. Is
that what you want, Mister?" He demanded roughly. I shook my head,
my eyes full of tears. "Well, that's what you've bought yourself,
for the next two months at least."
"Two months?" I glowered at full force, but my sulkiness made little
impression on him.
"Two months. Did you think I wouldn't punish you, Dominik?" He
asked. "Did you think that because of what has happened to you that
you'd get special treatment? Is that what you thought?"
I opened my mouth to protest but closed it again. Max knew me too
well, then as now. He knew that I was genuinely devastated by my
parents' murder, but also that I was bright, and had a certain
animal cunning, and that I would play on people's sympathy if it
would get me anywhere. It never got me anywhere with him but it had
worked on a couple of his girlfriends.
"I hate you," I seethed at him under my breath, but he just smiled,
mildly, and shook his head.
"I don't hate you, Dominik. I love you. That's why I'm not going to
let you risk your life just because your emotions got the better of
you."
"Go to hell!" I snapped, and he threw back his head and laughed out
loud, taking all the wind out of my sails.
"Oh, Nicky, that's inevitable," he said, wiping tears of mirth from
his eyes a few seconds later. "Come here." He held his arms open,
and I grudgingly edged forward, unsure whether he was about to spank
me or hug me. He did neither. Instead he sat me on the sofa next to
him, put his arm around me, and said something that has stayed with
me all my life. "Nicky, you have a choice." He looked down into my
eyes, and his expression was intensely serious. "You can allow what
happened to your mother and father to ruin your whole life. That
would be easy—it would even be understandable. Nobody can know
what it's like to walk in your shoes, and live with that kind of
memory. I'm asking you to be bigger than that. I'm asking you to be
stronger, and to take the harder path. We both know that you're
brave—I'm also asking you to have courage. That's something else."
He paused for a moment, and I melted into his arm, needing the
reassurance of the scent of whisky, and cigarettes that made him my
Max, and not this serious stranger he had become. "You can give in
to the sadness, Nicky, and let it rule you. You can spend every
single day of your life wallowing in self-pity and never make
anything of yourself or this precious gift of life that your mother
and father gave you, but I don't think they'd want that. They want
you to grow up strong, and confident, and to live your life to the
full. Yes, there will be times when you ache with sadness for your
loss, but they'd want you to hold your head up high, and keep on
going throughout the tough times, to make them proud of you. So,
Nicky..." He gently brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes. "Like I
said, you have a choice. It's your life, and it can be a full, and
happy one, or it can be a damaged, self-pitying one. It's up to you.
Nobody can make up for what you've lost, but it's your choice
whether you get over it or not."
And that was Max. Saying it like it is. Not pulling any punches. I
was only 9 years old, but even at that age, I knew, instinctively,
that he was right.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, putting both arms around his neck, and
crawling into the comfort of his lap. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry. I'm scared that you're going away. Nobody stays. Everyone
goes," I whispered into his neck.
"Hush. It's all right." He held me tight, and kissed me gently. "I
can't promise I'll come back, Nicky, but I'll do my damndest. I'm
not ready to die just yet." He smiled. "And now I have even more
reason to live," he said. "Nicky, I don't have any children, but now
I have you, and as far as I'm concerned you're my son. That's a
powerful incentive to me to come home safely, believe me, but if I
don't, I want you to remember what I said to you tonight.
Everything's a choice in life, Nicky. Everything—even down to
whether you choose to be happy or not." I nodded into his neck,
clinging on for dear life, and a few minutes later, he snorted into
my hair. "Nicky, just between you and me, and don't tell anyone I
said this, but I'm seriously impressed by tonight's escapade. How
the hell did you manage to break into the East Wing? I helped design
that security system myself so I know how damn hard that must have
been. You're a clever boy, Nicky." I stared at him incredulously,
and then we both started to laugh.
Looking back, Max's words resonate with me. I don't blame Max for
what I've come to now, sitting in this rundown apartment, staring at
these peeling walls, and listening to the sounds of the couple next
door arguing and beating up on each other. I made this choice. It's
down to me.
Skinner waited in the bar, nursing his third whisky of the night. He
should stop. He knew that he should stop, but he had long since
developed considerable tolerance for hard liquor—during the long
years of his marriage it had sometimes been all that numbed him to
what he was doing, both to himself, and to Sharon. She shouldn't
have had to lead the lie he had built up between them, but he had
been too lost in it himself to see how unfair he was being to her.
He would do things differently now, he decided, staring at the
bottom of the glass. Now, facing himself caught in yet another great
lie, he could see what he hadn't before.
"Thinking warm thoughts?" A sly voice said in his ear, and he
stiffened, and turned. Krycek had slipped into the seat beside him.
"No. I was thinking what a fucking sorry excuse for a human being
I've become, thanks to you." Skinner raised his glass ironically,
and downed the rest of it in one gulp.
"Oh, you give me too much credit," Krycek hissed. "Lying, cheating,
killing...it's all so easy, Skinner. It all starts with one tiny lie.
You managed that all by yourself."
Skinner grunted. Krycek was right. One expedient lie to Mulder,
denying any knowledge of the man who had placed the nanocytes in his
bloodstream, had sealed his fate and brought him to this. One small
lie to Sharon on their wedding night had turned into a huge gulf
between them over the 17 years of their marriage.
"What is it Mulder says? All lies lead to the truth?" Skinner
slammed his glass back down on the table. "If so, I'm not sure I'm
ready for the truth."
"I didn't come here to discuss semantics. You wanted information,"
Krycek said, bringing the conversation abruptly back to the point.
"Yes. I went to Vienna, but I'm sure you already know that." Skinner
watched Krycek's eyes but they gave nothing away. Krycek inclined
his head, acknowledging that he did indeed know of Skinner's little
European jaunt.
"Find anything interesting?" He asked.
"Maybe. I need to know one thing—that file you gave me says that
Dominik Crozier probably died with his parents—why do you think he
didn't?"
"That's irrelevant."
"Not really. So far, all my investigations, and all the paperwork
I've sifted through have led me to conclude that the boy is dead.
Any other line of investigation leads to a dead end. So, why are you
looking for him? If I know, then it might help me figure out where
to start looking."
Krycek shifted uneasily in his seat, his green eyes hooded, and
distrustful. "We have information that leads us to believe that
Crozier didn't die. We think he's still alive. You do too, I think.
What did you find in Vienna?"
"I went to his house—the one he lived in as a child," Skinner
said.
Krycek nodded. "We've looked there. There's nothing there."
"Maybe you were looking for the wrong thing," Skinner said softly.
Krycek looked up sharply. "You were looking for a man. Maybe you
should have been looking for a ghost."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Krycek snapped.
"I'm not sure—yet. There was something about the house, though,
something I haven't figured out yet," Skinner mused.
"You went inside?" Krycek pressed, leaning forward, his green eyes
glowing.
"Yes." Skinner shrugged.
"How did you get inside?"
"I broke in—what's the matter, Krycek, did you think you were the
only one who knows how to break and enter?"
Krycek sat back in his chair, a look of triumph curling around his
lips. "How easily your lofty values are corrupted when your own life
hangs in the balance, Skinner," he stated with utter contempt.
"Thank you for showing me the darkness of my own soul," Skinner said
ironically, tipping his glass in Krycek's direction. "I'm in your
debt."
"And what did all this law breaking gain you, Skinner?" Krycek
asked, snapping out of the uneasy banter and returning, once more,
to the point.
"Nothing. I've told you. The boy didn't die in that house, but you
knew that already or you wouldn't have sent me looking for him."
Krycek's expression remained unchanged, but he gave the slightest
shrug of his shoulders.
"Why track him down after all this time?" Skinner asked, fighting
down a sense of impotent fury. "You surely can't possibly still
believe that he'd be able to testify about his parents' murder? That
can't be what all this is about."
"What it's about is irrelevant," Krycek said brusquely. "We gave you
an order, and we expect it to be obeyed. That's it, Skinner." His
hand went to his pocket, and he removed the palm pilot. "Or do I
have to give you another taste of this to make you obey?" He asked,
moistening his lips with his tongue.
"You son of a bitch. Listen to me; if that kid is still alive, why
the hell can't you leave him alone? Haven't your people done enough
to him? Gunning his parents down in cold blood, and nearly damn well
killing him too? God knows what kind of injury he suffered from that
bullet. Doesn't he deserve some goddamn happiness after what you
butchers did to his folks?" Skinner demanded angrily. Krycek's eyes
narrowed, and he flicked open the palm pilot, and played, idly, with
the controls. Skinner stiffened.
"You're in no position to issue threats, Skinner," Krycek said in a
low, sibilant tone. Skinner took a deep breath, and held it, then
slowly released it, never taking his eyes off the palm pilot.
"Tell me why you want him, or I won't look for him," Skinner said.
"As far as I'm concerned he's earned his anonymity the hard way. I'm
not making any trouble for him now."
"You seem to think that he's still a nine year old child, Skinner,"
Krycek snapped. "He isn't. He grew up—and he grew up to become a
very dangerous man. He isn't an innocent little boy any more. He's a
killer. An amoral, utterly ruthless murderer."
"I suppose it takes one to know one," Skinner growled, his fingers
tightening around the glass he was holding. It would be so easy to
just smash the glass into the hated face of his enemy, and grind it
into the other man's flesh until blood poured out of those evil
green eyes. Skinner didn't know that he had ever hated anyone more
in his entire life than he hated this man sitting next to him.
"Find him," Krycek hissed. "And fast—before he does any more
damage." Looking into those vengeful green eyes, Skinner had a
sudden flash—and something that had been bothering him slotted
into place.
"Christ, you're not just asking me to find out where he is, are you?
You don't know who he is—and that's why he's so dangerous," he
murmured, realisation sinking in. He could see he was right by the
way Krycek's eyes narrowed, and a wave of tense fury possessed the
other man's body. Was that it? Dominik Crozier had become some kind
of threat to the Consortium and they had no idea who the man was? No
wonder Krycek was riding him so hard to find Crozier.
"Just do your job, errand boy," Krycek sneered, standing up. "After
all, you don't really have a choice, do you? It's either Dominik
Crozier, a man who you've never met, and know nothing about, or
yourself. Don't tell me that you're really having any trouble with
the math involved in that equation. I know you too well for that."
Skinner's hand snapped out, and grabbed Krycek's real arm, and he
squeezed, hard. Krycek's face registered just the barest degree of
pain.
"Not all of us would sell our souls to save our own life," he
hissed. "Not all of us are like you, Krycek."
"Find him, and report back to me. I'll take care of the rest,"
Krycek said, shaking Skinner's hand away.
"Not if you're going to kill him," Skinner stated flatly. "I won't
have that on my conscience."
"Your conscience, as you call it, is long since dead," Krycek
replied, a smile playing on his vicious, beautiful lips. "Just
follow orders, Skinner, there's a good boy. You know the alternative
if you fail." Krycek slipped the palm pilot slowly and pointedly
into his pocket, and then, with another twist of his lips into a
grim parody of a smile, he was gone.
Skinner stared glumly at his empty glass of whisky for a long time.
It stuck in his craw to be taking orders from Alex Krycek, but what
choice, realistically, did he have? And yet...he had meant it when he
told Krycek that he wouldn't sell an innocent man to save his own
life. It wasn't enough for him to find Crozier, even if that proved
possible (and if the Consortium didn't know who the man was then he
doubted that it was possible); no, he had to know why they wanted
Crozier. If the man truly was the killer Krycek said he was, then
Skinner would hand him over to his old enemy, but if he wasn't...if he
wasn't then he would have to think again. Skinner looked up, caught
the eye of the waitress, and pointed to his glass.
"I'll have another whisky," he growled.
Max came back. In fact, he kept on coming back after every mission,
although that didn't mean that I ever slept easily while he was
gone. On my 13th birthday, right on cue, and three months before I
was due to leave for school in England, Max called me into his
apartment.
"I believe we have something to discuss," he said. "I think you know
that I always keep my word, Nicky."
"Yes, Max. Always." I made a face, because that was a double edged
sword—Max kept his word about the length of time I should be
grounded when I got into one of my frequent bouts of mischief, as
well as about more pleasant things. He was almost impossible to
reason with over such matters, and I'd tried, believe me. None of
the wiles that had worked on my father worked on Max though. He
could always see through me.
"Sit down, Nicky." I sat on the sofa, and watched as he poured
himself a large glass of whisky, and then swallowed it in one gulp.
He sat down in the armchair opposite me, and lit a cigarette, gazing
at me the whole time. He looked tired, and haggard, his jowls
hanging lower than ever on his rugged face. His thick dark hair rose
from his head in stubbles, re-growing after his last mission when
he'd shaved off all his hair for some operational reason that he
hadn't chosen to share with me.
"All right, Nicky. I'm going to explain a few things. When I get to
the end, you can ask me any questions you like. We can keep going
all night if you want. Whisky?" He held up the bottle, and pushed
another glass my way. I could just hear my mother's squawk of
protest, but Max was a man's man, and he had never treated me with
kid gloves. He expected me to make my own decisions, but I'd taken a
mouthful of whisky once, and hated it so I shook my head.
"Don't know what you're missing, boy," he grunted, and then he shot
me a calculating glance. "You know a bit about what we do here,
Nicky. You're not a child any more, and besides, you always did have
too much curiosity for your own good. Some of us haven't forgotten
the East Wing episode."
"That was years ago!" I protested, and he grinned, and took a large
inhalation of his cigarette.
"I'm not having a go, Nicky. I told you at the time that I was
impressed by that, and I've always thought you had the makings of an
agent, to tell the truth."
"An agent?" I held my breath. "You mean, work here, in the
Organisation?"
"Why not? Plenty of the kids we bring up do that. The Organisation
is often the only family they know." He shrugged. "Oh, I know, you
want to be an actor, or a singer, or an astronaut, or whatever job
of the week it is this week, but I just thought I'd mention it." He
often teased me about my wild ambitions. I always wanted to do
something extraordinary—my jobs of the week were noticeable for
never being "dentist" or "plumber". "Okay, just think about that. We
won't talk about it any more until you finish at school. You're a
bright boy, so you might have other ideas. I just wanted you to know
that it's on the table, that's all."
"All right," I said uneasily, unsure how I felt about this.
"Okay, let's get back to the point. I want you to know that
everything I tell you this evening will be the truth. Whether you
choose to accept it or not is your own affair. I think you know me
well enough by now to know I wouldn't lie to you. I've never done
that, Nicky and I'm not about to start now. However, what I have to
say is unbelievable—and some choose not to believe as a way of
coping with that. That's fine." He shrugged, and I noted just a hint
of contempt for anybody who chose that path. "Nicky, we're in the
middle of a war. It's an old war, and it's been going on for a long
time, but it isn't between humans, it's between two alien races." He
paused for a moment, and looked at me, to see my reaction. I just
stared at him. Whatever I expected to hear, it wasn't this. "Earth
is strategically important in this war. There's a group of aliens -
we'll call them the grays—who have been landing here for years.
They've been using Earth as a re-fuelling, and regrouping point, and
its their intention to return here, and turn this planet into one
huge base from which to carry on their war. When they do that,
they'll use us humans as a slave race to serve them, and they'll
kill the rest of us. The only thing standing in the way of their
plan is their enemies—who we'll call the shape-shifters. They're
the good guys in all this, although there are some who work for the
grays, so it isn't always easy telling them apart. Equally, there
are some grays who work for the shape-shifters—just like in any
human war it's messy, and its complicated. Understand so far?"
Max leaned back, and took a deep drag on his cigarette. I stared at
him in disbelief. I had wanted information about why my family had
been killed; I had never expected, in a million years, to hear this.
"I think so," I muttered weakly.
"Good. I'll carry on then. The grays anticipated resistance from us,
so they contacted a small group of men years ago, and told them that
in return from their co-operation, they would be spared when the
invasion took place. It was their job to prepare the rest of us for
the coming colonisation. They wanted an acquiescent slave race, and
they had developed some kind of virus that would make us do whatever
they wanted. They gave that to this group of men, who have been
conducting experiments on it ever since, as well as on a gray foetus
they were given. I've tried many times to get my hands on that
foetus, and failed." Max gave a heartfelt sigh, and lit another
cigarette. "They were given the foetus to supposedly create an
alien/human hybrid that would be canon fodder in the war against the
shape-shifters—the grays want to create a slave race that will do
as they're told, without question, and they thought we humans looked
like good material for this. The shape-shifters are horrified. By
and large, they're a much more peaceful race and this kind of
behaviour appalls them, which is why they contacted us."
"Us?" I question, frowning, barely able to follow all this.
"Well, our Organisation. They more or less set us up, years ago. Our
enemies run what we call the Project—collaborating with the gray
aliens to enslave us, and we're trying to stop them. If they succeed
in creating an alien/human hybrid, then the colonisation will begin.
There won't be anything to stop the grays then. They'll move in, use
us as genetic raw material to create a stronger, but utterly
expendable slave race, and deploy our genetically modified children
in their war against the shape-shifters."
"That's obscene," I breathed. "Surely, no human being would
collaborate in something like that."
"The man who killed your parents was such a human being, I'm afraid.
His name is Spender, and he's one of their leaders. Your father..." He
took a deep breath, and then continued, "had found something in the
government department where he worked. He was a well-known, and
high-ranking politician, and had access to all kinds of secret
material. What he found was detailed notes of medical experiments
conducted in top secret in Austria when the Nazis were in power -
containing information that bastard Spender was desperate to lay his
grubby little hands on." He almost spat the words, and I understood
in that moment the depth of his hatred for Spender and the obscene
Project he worked for. "These Nazi experiments were vital to the
Project, but the notes had been lost in the confusion that was the
end of World War II. When Spender realised your father had found
them, he wanted them. We knew your father was at risk, which was why
we sent the man you know as Leo to guard him, but we had no idea
then just how important those notes were. By the time we did, your
father and mother were already dead." He stubbed out his cigarette,
and gazed at me over his glass of whisky. "I'm sorry, Nicky. We
failed your father. We had no idea that what he had found was so
important, or we'd have sent more people to guard him. We were
grateful for his help—we still are. Nicky, it comes down to this -
they want to sell humanity down the river, and we want to fight to
stop them. There is no damn way I'm becoming part of any slave race,
or allowing any abomination of a hybrid to be made out of my flesh
and blood to serve a bunch of gray aliens intent on galactic
domination. The shape-shifters help us where they can—they've
given us information, and they'll stand beside us in the battle for
this planet, if and when that happens. This Organisation is the
front line against colonisation."
"Shit," was all I managed, succinctly, to say—a word that I had,
incidentally, learned from him.
"Yeah. Shit." He nodded. "Sure you don't want that whisky now?"
"That's why my father wouldn't give them what they wanted? Even
though they threatened my mother's life?" I mused softly. This had
been preying on my mind for four long years.
"That's why." He nodded. "Think about it, Nicky. You know how much
she meant to him, but if he handed over that information he was
bringing all of us, the whole of mankind, one step closer to
slavery. He wasn't about to condemn us to that, even if he had to
sacrifice himself, your mother, and even you to his enemies. Some
things are beyond price—do you understand that? Some things are
worth giving up your life for, Nicky, however hard it is to do. Your
father was a brave man—and he knew that he couldn't have lived
with himself if he sold everyone on this planet in order to save
himself. That's what makes him different to Spender and his Project.
That's what makes everyone in this Organisation different." He
leaned forward, his eyes glowing intently. "I've done some things
I'm not proud of Nicky, I won't lie to you. I've done things that
would make you scream in your sleep the way you still sometimes do."
I jerked my head up. It had been a long time since I'd crawled into
his bed after a nightmare, but I did still have them; I just didn't
know that he knew that.
"I'm not sure I'm what you'd call a good person, Nicky. I've killed
innocent people, but not in cold blood, not the way Spender killed
your parents. I've done bad things in the name of a good cause. I
hope that's enough to win me a reprieve on judgement day, but if it
isn't..." He shrugged. "Well, then I'll be damned to hell just like
Spender, and Strughold, and Mulder, and all those other bastards.
I'm not an intellectual like you, Nicky. I don't spend my nights
wondering whether the ends can ever justify the means. I just do
what I think is right."
I gazed at him, seeing him for the first time for what he was; he
was a simple man. Bloody minded, strong in body, and in heart. I
knew him to be a good person. Whatever he had done, I didn't want to
know about it. I just hoped, for his sake, that it could be
justified.
"And I know you're wondering, deep inside, whether I ever made any
child an orphan, just like you," he tells me, softly, "and the
answer is probably, but not knowingly, and I'd never have shot at a
nine year old boy to stop him being a witness. There is a difference
between them and us, Nicky, but it's a bitter and bloody war, and if
they could wipe us all out they would. That's why we're so vigilant.
They can't touch us here—this is our main base and it's too well
guarded, but we can't touch them in their main base either. It's a
war of attrition. Sometimes they try to infiltrate us, but they
haven't been successful so far. Then again, sometimes we try to
infiltrate them, but we haven't succeeded yet either. We've lost a
lot of good men that way. They usually end up on one of our
doorsteps somewhere, with a bullet through the back of the head.
Sometimes I just wish I knew what they were doing; in this game,
information is the most valuable commodity. That's why your father
was killed after all."
I sat back on the sofa, still trying to make sense of what I'd
heard. It sounded crazy, preposterous, but I knew Max well enough to
know that he was hardly a man with a vivid of imagination. He
believed what he was saying, and if he believed it, that was enough
for me.
"When..." I cleared my throat. "When will it happen, Max?"
"Colonisation? We don't know. We don't have a clue—that's down to
the grays and to Spender's bunch. They know; a date has been set,
but they aren't telling us of course."
"So it might be next month, or next year, or next century?" I asked
him.
"Yes." He shrugged.
"It's possible I might live out my life without it ever happening at
all?"
"It's possible, yes. We don't know, Nicky."
"That's what I want," I said slowly. "I don't want to become an
agent, Max. I don't want think that's what my parents would want for
me. They died because they wanted a future for me."
"Nicky, just because the Organisation has brought you up doesn't
mean we've bought you," he explained, running a tired hand over his
eyes. "You're entitled to any life you choose. We're not imposing
anything on you. Go away and become a doctor, or a lawyer, and
forget all about us, and what I've told you. You're right. I think
that is what your parents would have wanted."
"You don't mind?" I asked him, suddenly feeling like a total coward.
"Nicky, you're my son. I just want you to be happy," he shrugged.
"Here." He handed me a box, and I took it, surprised. It wasn't
wrapped—that wasn't Max's style, and he'd never given me a
birthday present before; that wasn't his style either. I'm not
entirely sure he even knows what shops are. Inside the tiny box was
a solid gold ring, with a tiny St Christopher engraved upon it. "I'm
not a religious man, Nicky," he shrugged. "But Louise says that St
Christopher is the patron saint of travellers, and you're leaving
for England soon." Louise was his woman of the moment. I liked her;
I was trying to stop being jealous of every single one of his
girlfriends. He was being disingenuous about not knowing the saints
though; he knew, he'd just decided that religion played no part in
his life. Maybe, after all he'd seen, and done, it was hard to
believe in any kind of god. I placed the ring on my middle finger,
my eyes misty with tears. "Don't go all girly on me," he growled, in
that typical Max way. "When are you off?"
"To England? In September," I whispered. I was going to Stowe, to be
with Neil, who was still my closest friend. He would be in his final
year there, while I would be just starting out. I was offered the
choice of any school in the whole world; the Organisation had people
everywhere, and I could even have gone to Eton if I'd wanted,
despite not being on their waiting list—the Organisation could
always pull strings—but I had chosen Stowe, because Neil was
there, and had told me so much about it.
"Be good," Max told me, before I left Geneva a few months later.
"And if you can't be good, which, knowing you, is likely to be the
case, then take a leaf out of my book, and be careful," he winked.
I took my seat beside Neil, my stomach full of butterflies. God
knows, this wasn't the first time I'd had to say goodbye to someone
I loved, but I knew that it was a big change for both of us. I was
ready for it though; I spoke fluent English, German and French, and
I longed to be stretched intellectually, and to socialise with boys
my own age, and, of course, I wanted to spend more time with Neil.
Max didn't stay to wave the train goodbye; he just tapped on the
window, and gave me a half salute, but I saw him blink the tears out
of his eyes as he turned and left the station. His job was almost
done. He'd more or less raised me from the age of 9 to 13, and had
gone a long way to healing the wounds in my damaged young psyche,
but the time had come for me to grow, and move on, and he had his
own life to lead as well. I watched him leave the station, my tall,
broad shouldered Max, limping slightly from an old bullet wound to
the leg, shambling along in his worn old jeans, and faded checked
shirt. You wouldn't spare him a second glance if you passed him in
the street, but that was partly why he was such a successful agent.
I didn't regret my choice though. There was no way I was going to
give up my life the way he had done, to serve the faceless, shadowy
Organisation that had, indirectly, led to my parents' death. I was
saying goodbye to Dominik Crozier—at Stowe, I would be using the
name Nicholas Danon. I had asked why I couldn't take up the identity
of the made-up illegitimate heir to the Crozier fortune, Nicolas
Remarque, but Max said it was still too dangerous, and I bowed to
his wisdom. As I sat on that train, fingering the ring Max had given
me, I resolved that Nicholas Danon was going to live his life for
himself, and himself alone—and that life was just about to start.
A big internal crisis at the FBI kept Skinner from doing any more
investigating into the whereabouts of Dominik Crozier for the next
few weeks. He got home late every night, and had to be up early the
next morning. He was so engrossed in his job that there were times
when he was even able to forget that there was a metaphorical gun
being held to his head, and that was a good feeling. Work had always
been his respite and he threw himself into it with a vengeance -
until the Consortium sent him a reminder of who he really worked for
these days.
He woke one morning feeling like shit. His head ached, and his whole
body was stiff. He groaned, turned over, and glanced at the clock on
the nightstand. 9.15. He was late. Christ, maybe he was getting old,
and couldn't take the pace any more. He staggered into the bathroom,
wondering why his legs felt so heavy, and why he couldn't breathe
properly, took one look in the mirror, and gazed, horrified at his
reflection; his face was covered in dark, pulsing veins. The veins
on his neck were so black, and congested by carbon build up, that
they looked as if they were going to burst. He felt sick, and his
knees buckled beneath him. If he hadn't been holding onto the basin
he would have collapsed. Slowly, he half walked, half crawled back
into his bedroom, and managed to pull himself onto the bed, where he
lay, breathing heavily. His head brushed something as he smashed
down onto the pillow, and it took him several seconds before his
eyes came into focus enough to see that it was a note. He moved his
fingers in slow motion, and wrapped them around the piece of paper.
Even that small movement hurt, and he had to lie there, panting, in
order to get his breath back enough to read the note. It was
handwritten, in a precise scrawl he remembered from a long time ago,
and it was sharp, and to the point.
"Don't forget who owns you, Skinner. I'm waiting. AK."
Skinner crumpled up the paper in his hand, and gazed at the ceiling
in despair. Nobody owned him. Nobody. Even as he thought that, he
knew it wasn't true. Alex Krycek held the power of life and death
over him—and if that wasn't the same as owning him he didn't know
what was. He turned over onto his side, feeling the pain in his ribs
lessen, and watched, in disbelief, as the veins in his hands and
forearms pulsed back a fraction closer to normality. This was just
to scare him, not to kill him, but that made it even worse somehow.
It was a cruel, and unusual punishment for his tardiness in dealing
with their assignment. The nanocyte activity lessened gradually,
torturously, over the next three days, rendering him too weak to go
to work. He didn't mind that. He didn't even mind the pain, or the
hideous disfigurement that the nanocytes caused while they were
active, because in some way he felt he deserved that. The one thing
he did mind, the one thing that really pissed him off, was the fact
that Alex Krycek had hand- delivered that note. Krycek had been in
his apartment, in his room. His old enemy had disabled his
sophisticated security system, crept silently up the stairs, and
stood beside his bed, looking at him, and he had slept through it
all. Krycek had delivered his note, and then silently slipped away
again, the ultimate thief in the night. Skinner felt dirty, defiled.
He spent the first day dozing uneasily, his dreams full of Krycek.
He saw the other man in his mind's eye, standing over him, holding
that damned note, watching him, like a hunter stalking prey, and it
was too much for him. He made it to the bathroom just in time, and
heaved his guts up into the toilet, and then lay on the cool tiles
of the bathroom floor, curled up into a ball like a foetus. Now, he
thought, would be a good time to die. If he could only die now, then
he'd be able to form the welcoming committee for Alex Krycek when he
turned up in hell.
He was too tired, and too weak to move, so he spent the rest of the
afternoon just lying there. They were breaking him, piece by piece,
and he was so tired of it all. Tired of all the running and
fighting, tired of all the lies, and half truths. So many of them
that he had trouble keeping track of them all. He had always thought
himself a straightforward man before this happened. An honourable
man. He didn't lie, cheat, steal or kill...who was he kidding? He'd
killed countless men before his 19th birthday. He tried to tell
himself that in battle that didn't matter, but he couldn't sure any
more. Once he had started to question one part of himself, then the
rest of his life came under his all too critical scrutiny. Skinner
had never been a man who went easy on himself.
His belly felt as if it was on fire, as his body tried to adjust to
the massive trauma it was undergoing, and he wrapped his arms around
his torso, and screamed, silently, into the flooring. He deserved
this. He welcomed the pain. He saw Sharon's white body as she lay in
the morgue. He had loved her, it just wasn't the kind of love that
she wanted, that she deserved, and because of the affection between
them, it had been hard for both of them to just let go. He wished it
had been he who had died, and not her. She was on his conscience,
and always would be. Krycek was right; his conscience was dead. It
had died along with his wife, and his principles, which he had sold
in exchange for his life.
"Damn you to hell, Krycek," he hissed, before passing out.
I loved England. My time at Stowe was one of the happiest of my
life. I've always been easy going, and able to fit into any kind of
crowd, and I've always found it easy to be effortlessly popular.
That doesn't mean that I've ever felt I truly belonged. Even at
Stowe I was living a lie. I enjoyed my status, but I always felt I
was living outside it, watching myself talk, and laugh, without ever
really engaging with my own studied charm. It was a curious
sensation.
Stowe suited me. I loved the studying, I loved the sports, which I
excelled at, and the plays that we regularly performed, and, more
confusingly, I found that I loved Neil. Or, more specifically, that
I was in love with Neil. He was rugby captain, and had grown into a
huge, six foot four inch young man, but he was still the same
daredevil, slightly obtuse boy who I had spent every summer holiday
with for three years. It was only when we got to Stowe, and I saw
him around the school all the time, that I realised that my feelings
were more complicated. Homosexual experimentation was rife in the
dormitories, and I was much sought after, both for my looks, and the
fact that I was so popular, and I took advantage of that, believe
me. I went through a heady, hedonistic stage and embarked on a slow
voyage of sexual discovery, but that didn't stop me wanting the one
person I couldn't have, and that was Neil, and I couldn't have him
because Neil was 100% heterosexual. I think I knew that even then,
although I fantasised about him pulling me into the showers, or some
dark corner of the school, and pressing his lips against mine,
holding my body tight against his massive, rugby playing bulk, and
wanting me the way I wanted him. It didn't happen, and I grew more
and more miserable as the end of my first summer term approached.
Neil wouldn't be returning after the vacation. This was his final
year at the school. I was too young to be part of his immediate
circle of friends, although, to his credit, he never ignored me. One
day, we found ourselves sitting next to each other, watching an
aimless game of cricket. Neil was padded up, ready to go on next,
but the two batsmen at the crease looked as if they were firmly
bedded in and would be there for the rest of the afternoon.
"I'll be sorry to leave all this," Neil said with a sigh. "I'll miss
playing cricket." We were alone—the rest of the team, and the
spectators, were dotted all around the field, and the nearest were
several feet away. We couldn't be overheard.
"You could come back here, and live. You're English. You have an
English passport—even if you didn't, I'm sure the Organisation
would find one for you," I shrugged. What was the problem?
"I won't be coming back here, Nicky." He looked at me in surprise.
"You're going to live in Geneva, back at The House?" Now it was my
turn to be surprised.
"Of course. I owe them everything, and besides...I've always wanted
to...you know." He gazed at his hands, and then cast a sideways glance
in my direction. "I'm joining them. Max says I can train to be an
agent," he whispered.
"Why would you want to do that?" I stared at him, dumbfounded. Was
he an idiot? He could do anything, and go anywhere. He had his whole
life ahead of him and he was going to give it all up for what he
perceived as a glamorous lifestyle as some kind of spy?
"Because it's all I've ever wanted to do," he said.
"Christ, widen your ambitions, Neil," I snapped.
"I don't understand you, Nicky. Those bastards killed your parents
too. Don't you want revenge?"
"Who was it who once said that living well is the best revenge?" I
replied. I was a precocious little shit and I loved throwing this
kind of pretentious crap at him, and watching him flounder. I really
was a nasty piece of work. I still am.
"I don't know, and I don't care." He shrugged, looking miserable. "I
just thought, after all Max had done for you..."
"Max doesn't want me to be an agent. He told me so." I felt guilty
saying that, although I'm sure Neil never guessed because I was
adept at hiding my feelings, especially towards him, but I was,
after all, twisting the truth somewhat.
"Well, I want to join them. They're my family. I believe in what
they're doing."
"Crap. You just want to run around shooting a gun, wearing a
balaclava, and showing off," I told him coolly.
"You're wrong, Nicky. We're not all as selfish as you. I'm doing
this because I want to give something back, after all they've done
for me."
I think, perhaps, that we were both right. Neil was attracted to
what he saw as some kind of James Bond lifestyle, but he did
genuinely want to do the right thing by our "family" as well. I, on
the other hand, was a selfish little shit. I gazed at him from under
my eyelids, drinking in his lightly tanned, freckled skin, and those
deep blue eyes that I would have drowned in if he'd let me.
We returned to The House for the summer, and spent an idyllic couple
of months. Neil had been given orders to report for training in
Bermuda in the fall, and he spent several weeks with me, saying
goodbye to his boyhood, as we roamed the grounds of The House, and
revisited all our old haunts. I slept in the bed next to his every
night, listening to his breathing, and longed to be sleeping beside
him. I was melting in the fever of unspoken, unrequited love. Some
days I wanted him so much that I thought I'd burn up altogether. I
was good at hiding it, but Max noticed all the same. For a bluff,
unsentimental man he could see what nobody else did. One day, he
invited me into his apartment to talk, sat me down on the couch, and
looked me in the eye as usual.
"Nicky, you're far too old for me to be giving you the birds and
bees talk. Hell, you've been to boarding school so I'm sure your
friends have taught you everything you need to know." He grinned.
"But if you ever want to fill in the gaps, or get an expert opinion
on the ladies, then I'm here." He sat back expectantly, and I just
shook my head, mute. "Oh, hell, Nicky, I know I haven't exactly got
a good track record!" He laughed. "I've never understood women, and
my bedroom door should be a revolving one, but I sure as hell like
the ladies, and I've known a few. What I'm saying, in my own screw
up kind of a way, is that I'm here if you want to talk."
"Thanks, Max, but I don't think you'll be much help with this one."
My shoulders were hunched, and defensive.
"Try me," he offered.
"I'm in love with Neil," I told him, with a nonchalant shrug.
"There, see, like I said, I don't think you'll be much help with
this one."
"Neil? Christ, Nicky." He ran a hand through his hair, looking
fairly grossed out by this news. "No offence, Nicky, but Neil's a
guy."
"I had noticed." I shrugged again.
"You're saying what? That you're a pansy? A queer?" He asked.
"Probably. Does it matter?"
He looked at me, bemused, as if the question made no sense to him,
and then gave a bellowing half laugh of surprise. "Hell, no.
Truthfully, Nicky—I may not understand but I don't give a damn. I
mean, what's not to like about girls? They feel good, they taste
good, they're soft, welcoming..." He shrugged. "But it's your choice.
Christ, I'm fighting the end of the world here. I'm not going to be
stressed out because you like cocks instead of pussy." It still
makes me wince when I remember the way he expressed that particular
truth. Nobody could ever accuse Max of being politically correct.
"Have you told Neil yet?" He asked. I shook my head, numbly. "My
advice? Don't." He gave me a serious look, and shook his head. "Neil
won't thank you for it, and it might ruin your friendship. Grow up,
find yourself some ballet dancer or hairdresser, and forget all
about Neil. He's not for you."
"But I want him." I said stubbornly, barely listening.
"We all want things we can't have," Max said, in his usual blunt
way. "It's the best advice I can give you," he shrugged.
And, as usual, he was right. If only I'd listened to him.
He led a double life. Did that make him a liar?
He did not feel a
liar. He was a man of two truths."
From 'The Sacred and Profane Love Machine,'
by Iris Murdoch.
ax is dying. Oh, not quickly; I don't think he'd ever do anything
so strategically suspect as to die without due thought and
consideration, but, nonetheless, he is dying. His doctors,
characteristically ignoring patient confidentiality and, I suspect,
his own dire threats, have told me that he has lung cancer. That's
ironic, really, I suppose.
