Skinner marveled silently at the irony of it all. "Quite a ringing
endorsement coming from an arch enemy."

"Arch enemy?!" Krycek scoffed in disbelief. "I practically threw
myself at Mulder's feet trying to help him!"

Skinner snorted. "That kind of falls under the heading of: 'with
friends like you, who needs enemies,' doesn't it?"

Krycek scowled menacingly. "Kind of got that backwards, don't you?"

Skinner sputtered. "Oh, right!"

Krycek's eyes narrowed. "Let's review the facts, shall we?" he intoned
evenly. "After *I* risked my life to infiltrate a white supremacist
militia and send Mulder all the evidence he needed to make a bust
--for which aid I was soundly thrashed, by the way-- I told Mulder I
had information that would help him expose the Consortium. I proceeded
to tell him about a special courier who was bringing some kind of
sensitive material into the country. I told him when and where. I then
told him --quite specifically!-- to 'follow the pouch.' Fol-low. Not
back track!" he said, calm facade crumbling under the force of his
emotions.

"*I* wanted to expose the Consortium members in the United States, not
Russia! Is that such a hard concept to grasp? You follow your target
inconspicuously, he leads you to the higher ups, and *then* you bust
*all* of them! It's textbook!"

Skinner frowned. He had never heard Krycek's side of the story, hadn't
thought that it would make a difference to him if he did, but Krycek
was right: the procedure he'd outlined could be torn from the
surveillor's handbook.

"So, what does Mulder do? He handcuffs *me* to a guardrail, spooks the
courier, chases him around the damned airport till he ditches his
diplomatic pouch, which Mulder promptly confiscates --has he never
heard of diplomatic immunity!?" Krycek exclaimed, splaying his
fingertips upward in a fine Italian display of exasperation. "And then
he had the contents analyzed!" He grabbed his hair with his good hand.
Then, as if the act had freed it, his arm began to flail with increasing 
furor, accenting his narrative. "But *one* breach of International Law is 
not enough for Mulder! No, *he* decides he has to uncover the *source* 
of the ore!"

Skinner smiled grimly in remembrance. Mulder had chosen an inopportune
moment to hare off, as well: the middle of a Senate subcommittee 
probing F.B.I. --and in particular the X-Files Department's-- 
investigative practices. It had landed Scully in jail, and him in the 
hot seat, both within the Bureau and without. He would have 
gladly throttled Mulder over *that* escapade himself.

"*I* didn't twist Mulder's arm and force him at gunpoint to whip out
his platinum card and board a plane bound for a possibly hostile,
politically sensitive country thats language he did not know without
the approval or knowledge of his superiors, the State Department, the
Russian Embassy, or the friggin' Russian Tourist Bureau! Au contraire,
Mr. Think Warm Thoughts, *I* was the one in handcuffs with a gun in
*my* ribs being physically and verbally abused for days on end!

"*I* didn't steer him to a source who provided him with quasi-legal
entrance visas in the middle of the night. I was just the schmuck he
was abandoning in long term parking, outside, at night, in November,
who'd been handcuffed to his car door all day long without so much as
a bathroom break or a bite to eat and only Mulder's smarmy little
promise that he'd tell Scully to rescue me if he wasn't back in
*seven* days! Excuse *me* for thinking I'd be better off exploiting
his need for a translator!"

Krycek snarled, so worked up, by this point, he was literally 'hopping
mad.' "Do you actually believe for one hot second that I'd have gotten
my arm chopped off if I'd had Clue One as to what was going on over
there? It wasn't *my* idea to risk an international incident by
snooping around a secret Russian installation. Mulder should drop to
his knees and kiss my ass for talking them out of shooting us on sight
as foreign spies! But *no*! *He* was exposed to the black oil and *I*
wasn't! Poor baby!" he whined sarcastically. "Obviously, it must have
been a plot to get *him* all along!"

Skinner bit his lip to keep from smiling. From the day they'd met,
Mulder had held the irritatingly egocentric notion that --no matter
what happened or why-- it was all about him.

"He never mentions the fact that *all* the prisoners in that facility
were exposed to the black oil *after* they were given the only viable
vaccine known to man! He never mentions that the black oil *he* was
exposed to was the moron cousin of the black oil *I--*" he pounded his
chest "--was possessed by for days!

"He never stops to think that maybe --just maybe-- my previous
exposure to the oil had some bearing as to why I was excluded from the
tests! And he *sure* as hell doesn't understand that if it *was* my
fault he was exposed to the black oil, then it's also 'my fault' he
was *inoculated* and is now *immune* to possession by black oil!

"He never mentions that while he rabbited out of the country
--empty-handed, as per usual-- *I* stayed behind --with my one
remaining arm!-- making nice with the Russians until *I* could steal a
sample of the vaccine and smuggle it back to the U.S., where it was
mass produced in time for him to be gifted with a vial so he could
race off to Antarctica and save Scully's life!

"But does anyone thank me? Hell, no!" 

Skinner's eyebrows rose at that last bit of information. 

Krycek reached a new plateau of agitation and began striding back and
forth along the length of Skinner's desk. "Mulder has some temerity to
call *me* poison, when *I've* been the only injured party! I offered
him a chance to take down the Consortium and join the Alien
Resistance, but noo! Not Mr. Holier Than Thou! He'd rather butt his
head against a Consortium brick wall and cry 'pity me!' than sully his
lily white hands consorting with 'inveterate scum suckers whose moral
dip-stick is two drops short of bone dry.'

"He would've had an inside track to everything he's ever wanted to
know *six years ago* if he could have wrapped his warped little brain
around the concept of 'priorities.' But he'd rather hate me more
for--" here Krycek turned and pounded the desk, "--following orders
than he hates the men who gave me the orders in the first damned
place!"

He leaned forward, as if proximity would make him more believable,
even as his tone became more 'matter-of-fact.' "If the agents who
turned Sonny Gravano were as bone-headed about bringing down the mob
as Mulder has been about bringing down the Consortium, John Gotti
would be walking the streets of New York to this day!"

Krycek words struck Skinner like ballshot fired from a cannon directly
into his guts because, put into such prosaic terms, The Truth was
unavoidably and excruciatingly obvious: Krycek was right.

Krycek, too busy restoring his own composure to notice Skinner's
epiphany, pulled back, physically and emotionally regrouped, then
directed his ire at Skinner. "Well, I'm *done* dealing with Saint
Mulder! And I'm *damned* well done begging for help! You're on *my*
leash, now, Skinner, and you'll follow my heel or I'll choke you down
six feet and bury you for good! There will be *no*  weaseling out of
offing Kapustcha, *no* waffling between Smoky's agenda and mine, *no*
letting Mulder hare off on whatever snipe hunt the Consortium sows in
his path to throw him off the scent. It's do or die time, *Walt,*"
Krycek snarled tauntingly as he dug the palm pilot out of his jacket
pocket and thumbed the screen.

"You've got five seconds to say 'I do' or you'll be greeting your wife
on the flip side."

"I-I do!" Skinner stammered, still over-whelmed by his realization
that he had been wrong, that, instead of leading cool-headedly, he had
allowed Mulder's irrational hate and his own disbelief and petty need
for payback to rationalize his dismissing Krycek's offer out of hand,
when any fool should have jumped at the chance to run a mole, knowing
that the only way to defeat this particular enemy was from within.

Krycek curled his lip and tucked the device away. "I thought so. Make
the call."

Skinner dazedly buzzed his secretary. "Kim? Would you make an
appointment for me to see Deputy Director Kersh, ASAP, please?"

"Yes, sir."

Skinner leaned back in his chair as his thoughts carrouselled around
him. The past was past. There was no fixing it. As for the present,
all he could do for the moment was wait for an invitation or a
rejection.

He glanced at the pile of reports stacked neatly on the right side of
his desk; his informal 'in box.' Summarized therein were all
surveilled mob activities, fugitive statistics, and interstate thefts
that had occurred that week all across the country, accounts of white
collar, reservation, hate, and violent crimes, including the fifty to
fifty-seven serial killers at work at any given time in the U.S.

To Skinner, they were an almost personal blight on the Great Society,
and, thinking of that made him wonder if, beneath Krycek's gangster
chic exterior, there burned even one scintilla of just and righteous
fervor, or if he was strictly motivated by a thirst for vengeance?

Personally, he couldn't see the Ultimate Survivor he had always taken
Krycek to be risking his rising position in the nascent New Consortium
for vengeance alone, and it left him with the cynical, if gut-churning
feeling, that there were murkier depths to this affair, depths he did
not necessarily wish to plumb.

He steepled his fingers to keep them from diving into his reports,
reluctant to arouse Krycek's ire by ignoring him, so he did the next
best thing: he delved into the files Krycek had brought him, which
brought another matter to his attention. "Uh, Krycek? Little problem:
neither of these is an F.B.I. case. They're seemingly random homicides
that took place 13 years apart on opposite coasts. How am I going to
explain to Kersh how I knew about them, let alone put them together?"

"Oh, please, Skinner!" Krycek whined, sighing noisily. "New York City?
1988? You were there! Just tell Kersh you remembered the signature
--it's lurid enough-- then, tell him SAC Kesey happened to mention a
similar case when you called to confirm a few items in his monthly
report. The coincidence intrigued you, so you faxed the respective PDs
for copies of their case files, which just came in today."

"*I* faxed for the files?"

"Yep." Krycek pulled some papers out of his jacket's inside pocket and
tossed them on top of the opened files. "These are the original
requests, just in case you need them."

Skinner glanced at the papers. They were stamped with the code of a
Bureau machine and even had his signature. One thing you had to hand
The Rat, he knew how to cover his bases. "Very impressive."

Krycek beamed for a second, a genuinely sincere, brilliant smile,
quickly erased, that was somehow more disturbing to Skinner than any
threat Krycek had ever issued.

"Am I asking for Mulder alone, or his department?"

"Suit yourself."

"What if Kersh says: 'no'?"

"Call him a homophobe, then play to his sympathies for the underdog;
next, tell him it'll improve the Bureau's credibility in all minority
communities; then promise him that you'll owe him one --and ask
again."

Skinner snorted. It was a sound strategy. One that indicated just how
well Krycek understood Kersh. Skinner decided not to dwell on the
implications of that tidbit, or on how easily Krycek might be able to
play him, in turn, but, give the devil his due: "You would've made a
good agent, Krycek."

"I *was* a good agent, *sir,*" Krycek hissed. He tapped the files he'd
brought in with his index finger. "Just remember," he intoned
menacingly: "these are the only files you have, or have heard about.
Don't breathe word one about those other adventures in immunity
because, I swear, if Kersh blabs that info into the wrong ears, and
Smoky pulls Kapustcha out of the country, I will personally haul your
dead carcass to whatever bolt hole he's jumped into and use it to
stage the most compromising murder/suicide scene the world press has
ever gotten its sensational paws on. Understood?"

Skinner felt a peculiar twinge in his gut that wiggled its tingly
fingers throughout his entire body. //Krycek is warning me about
Kersh? Kersh is in cahoots with C.G.B. Spender? The serial killer was
Consortium?// Skinner waited for gravity to fail and fling him off the
face of the planet...but he remained staidly at his desk, calmly
contemplating career suicide.

Krycek wasn't pulling Mulder *off* a Consortium linked case, he was
putting him *on* one!

Skinner swore. "Biting the hand that feeds, Krycek?"

Krycek leered at him like a leopard gauging the best way of bringing
down its dinner. "With any luck. You keep chopping off legs and,
eventually, even a millipede goes lame."

"Funny, I would have thought you'd have preferred to run the
Consortium and be Big Man On Colonized World, not raze it to the
ground."

Krycek leaned onto the desk.  "I am one of three people who has been
possessed by the black oil and lived to talk about it. If *anybody*
understands what a global invasion by these creatures means, it's
*me.*

"My number one priority, since I got out of that silo, has been to
stop the alien invasion by whatever means necessary. If I get to bring
down the Consortium --and toast Old Smoky, once and for all, in the
process-- well, that's just gravy."

'How *did* you get out of the silo?' was on the tip of Skinner's
tongue, but the intercom beat him to the punch. "Yes, Kim?"

"The Deputy Director says he can give you five minutes if you can
squeeze them in now."

"Yes! Tell him I'll be right up," Skinner replied. He disengaged the
intercom.

"Well, looks like my cue to leave," Krycek said as he sidled towards
the conference room door.

"Not going to stay and find out what Kersh says?"

"I have faith in you, Walter," Krycek smirked, his tone both unctuous
and insulting. "I'll be in touch." With that, he was gone.

Walter grabbed the two files and the two copies of 'his' written
requests --just in case-- and exited through the main office door. He
asked Kim if there was anything he could pick up for her on the way
back. She said 'no.' He continued to the elevators where he punched a
car up to the eleventh, and topmost floor of the bi-level building.

Pauline, Kersh's secretary, waved him straight in.

"Well, Assistant Director, to what do I owe this pleasure?" Kersh
greeted.

"There's been a murder in San Francisco. It's not a Bureau matter,
yet, but I'd like to make it one. And, if there are no cases pending
for the X-Files, I'd like Mulder and Scully to handle it. This is
why." Skinner laid out the two files for Kersh's perusal. "I think
you'll agree that, given the time span and basic similarities, what we
have here is a serial murder case across two states. Definitely F.B.I.
jurisdiction."

"Hmm.... Have you run it through ViCap?"

"No. I only just received the files today."

"I see. Why the X-Files? There isn't anything supernatural about these
crimes."

"True. But, well, due to the time interval, I felt that assigning the
X-Files would be more expedient than assigning a regular BSU profiler.
Mulder is..., well, Mulder is Spooky. He might be able to break the
case where others would not."

"That explains Mulder's participation, not Agent Scully's."

"Well, Scully keeps Mulder grounded. Profiling tends to, er, unbalance
him."

"I see...." Alvin Isaiah Kersh, the first black Deputy Director and
third black Assistant Director in the history of the F.B.I., had no
love of Mulder or the X-Files, and the only thing that would have
given him more pleasure than assigning Mulder to a non-X-Files case,
was to assign him scut work on a non X-Files case  --or hand him his
hat, (or maybe his head).

A serial killer with two victims spaced thirteen years and three
thousand miles apart had a certain built-in frustration factor which
appealed to his sadistic sensibilities. He enjoyed watching Mulder
flounder. The edges of his lips twisted upwards into a tiny smile.
"Very well, Assistant Director. I'll see that they receive these files
tomorrow, after their debriefing on the Maleeni case."

"Thank you, Deputy Director," Skinner said sincerely. He nodded
politely and exited, returning to his own office, seven floors below.
There, with skills he had honed over a lifetime, he put Krycek's
appearance --and all it entailed-- out of his mind and read Unit Chief
Phillip's report. Then he phoned Phillips with comments. He got
through two more reports before Kim announced his next visitor, and
the day proceeded apace, until Krycek called him at 4:30 p.m.

"Time to go home, Skinner."

"I don't usually leave the office until ten," Skinner groused.

"Yeah, well, a miracle occurred and you're going to go home early,
like all the other bureaucrats on the Hill. Now, wrap it up --I don't
like to be kept waiting."

"But if I leave now, I'll hit the worst traffic."

"Suit yourself, Skinner. Just don't whine that I didn't warn you."

Walter felt the tickle of death wriggle in his veins. "Fine! I'm on my
way!"

Skinner was tempted to slam the phone down, but it would have been an
empty gesture, since The Rat had already hung up. He did, defiantly,
cram in his last meeting of the day before stuffing a handful of
reports into his briefcase to read whenever traffic stalled, and
managed to exit the Hoover by 5:06.

He had a fleeting pang of disappointment over missing his usual belt
of scotch and dinner at Casey's Bar and Grill, but then, he reasoned,
he'd be home well before he usually indulged and he had steaks and
scotch at home. No harm, no foul.

He reached the Vista Tower condominium complex in Crystal City, a
ritzy and exclusive section of Arlington, Virginia that catered to
well-heeled diplomats at 5:45, despite its being a little over six
miles from the F.B.I. building. //Thank you *so* much, Krycek,//
Walter thought ungraciously as he locked his car and headed for the
elevator that would carry him straight up to the seventeenth floor
entrance of the two-story 'townhouse unit' he'd called home since his
wife's death, a few weeks after the car accident which had ended their
eight month separation.

His forced march through the near grid-locked avenues and highways
that was Washington, D.C. at rush hour had taken its toll on his
already soured disposition, so, once he unlocked, entered, and
re-locked the front door, flipped on the light, shucked his coat and
gun and left them in the foyer closet, he made a bee-line for the
liquor cabinet in the livingroom and poured himself a stiff drink.

It was only then that he noticed the enticing aroma of Chinese food
that he had neither ordered nor received. He let it lure him into the
designer kitchen where four Chinese take out boxes decorated with red
pagodas and a tiny brown paper sack sat plainly on the near end of his
kitchen table.

He stepped to the table, set down his highball glass, and opened the
boxes one by one. Kung pao chicken, pork dumplings, shrimp chow mein,
Singapore-style fried rice, and, in the sack, packets of soy sauce,
Chinese mustard, disposable chopsticks, and the obligatory fortune
cookie.

Skinner left the food to investigate the other end of the kitchen
table, where an impressive foot high stack of manila folders was
topped by a note ripped out of a spiral-bound memo pad. 'These files
are not to leave this apartment. I know you have a document safe --use
it. *Don't* use this pager # unless you really need to, or I'll throw
it in the Potomac. Enjoy your dinner.'

//So much for the security in *this* building,// Skinner thought as he
pocketed the note and retreated to the food. The thought of poison
flitted through his mind, easily dismissed, since Krycek wanted
something from him. He sat and unwrapped the pair of chopsticks,
delving into the dumpling box first. "Mmm." //Perfection.// He decided
to cut building security a break. After all, if Krycek had no problems
navigating the guarded halls of the J. Edgar Hoover  building, how
hard could it be for him to gain access to a 'secured building'?

Skinner savored his dinner while it was still warm --and it *was*
still warm, so much so Skinner was half-surprised he hadn't met Krycek
in the elevator.

Once sated, he set his whisky glass on top of the folders, scooped the
whole of them up, carted them into the livingroom, and plopped them on
top of his double-tiered, walnut coffee table. Then he took the glass
back to the liquor cabinet, refreshed his drink, and went back to his
beige, faux suede sofa, where he kicked off his shoes and stretched
out comfortably, in order to digest dinner while he did his homework.

He fished out the two folders bound in the blue and white striped
paper tape of the State Department, broke the 'seals' --he'd let The
Rat worry about re-sealing them when he returned them from wherever
he'd stolen them-- and read them first.

The top file was from Boca Raton, Florida, dated Nov. '93. The second
was from El Paso, Texas, dated Feb. '96. That had been when the cases
were opened. The Boca Raton case had closed three months later when
dental impressions and a search of national dental records had led
police to their suspect. Kapustcha had been released inside of
seventy-two hours by a State Department flack named D. B.
Chesterfield. Kapustcha had been on a plane out of the country five
hours later.

The case in El Paso actually involved two bodies, the first discovered
in February, the second in October of that same year. Trace fiber
evidence found on both victims's bodies had linked Kapustcha's carpet
in his residence to a company van seen in the area at the time the
bodies had been dumped. The case had not closed until January the
following year. Kapustcha had been released before the end of that
month, this time by a man named Chester G. Morley