Up on the rooftop, Kapustcha waited until Skinner and Krycek had
exited before he stood, folded his paper, grabbed his coat, and took
the elevator to the lobby. He had the valet fetch his car, but hopped
impatiently in place as he waited for his car to be retrieved. He had
things to do, plans to make. He drove off happily, whistling with
anticipation.

### 

CHAPTER SIX

#
"Man is the most formidable of the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the
only one that feeds systematically on its own kind." --William James
#
The Stardust Ballroom, San Francisco, Ca.
#

Mulder and Scully circled the dance floor, composites in hand,
canvassing the regulars. They had made one circuit of the room
beforehand to make sure their suspect wasn't currently lurking about,
then they asked those who were there if they'd ever seen Kapustcha
there.

They'd already been to two other dance clubs tonight. Kapustcha
frequented lots of dance halls in the area, but he had a pattern of
attendance. If it was Saturday, and it was, Kapustcha would show up at
the Stardust, if he bothered to show up at all. Or, so said the
regulars.

Since this had corresponded with the comments of other regulars at
other venues, they hung around, alternately drinking iced tea and
soda, dancing, and taking turns in the bathroom. Finally, they were
closing the joint down.

Scully wanted to whisper into Mulder's ear. Unfortunately, her mouth
was just about level with his nipples. Not a bad thing, under other
circumstances, but it did not lend itself to conspiratorial
communications.

"Well, this was a bust," Mulder concluded sourly as he dropped
Scully's hands and stepped back to eye the band as they began cleaning
and casing their instruments.

"Maybe the funeral put him off schedule," Scully said with a sigh, a
bit disconcerted at how abruptly Mulder had ended the last dance. He
seemed to sense her disgruntlement, for he stepped back to her to lay
his hand in the small of her back and sort of push her towards the
exit.

Mulder dialed Skinner on his cell phone while they walked to their
rental. "Sir? Mulder. No contact...." He checked his watch. "OK."  He
hung up. "We're having a debriefing in Skinner's room."

"Did he say why? It's after midnight," Scully whined as Mulder drove
them back to the hotel.

"Ours is not to reason why," Mulder smirked. "Ours is but to dance or
die."

Scully snorted. "Sounds like the plot of 'The Red Shoes.'" 

"No, that was dance *and* die."

"Ah. I feel enlightened."

Mulder knocked on Skinner and Krycek's door while Scully stared
longingly over her shoulder at her own door. "So close and yet so
far," she muttered, as visions of bubble baths danced in her head.

Skinner opened the door and stepped aside to let them in. "Come on
in," he invited.

"Hail, hail, the gang's all here," Krycek muttered from his perch on
the headboard end of his side of the bed.

Mulder frowned. "There's only one bed?"

Skinner sighed. "Yeah. California King, no extra charge," he said as
if it was not the first time he'd explained the lack of a second bed.

Lloyd Graham and Stanley Wong were seated at the table by the window.
Two folding chairs awaited the tired agents, and they sank into them
gratefully. Skinner sat on the foot end of Krycek's side of the bed.

"We spent the last three hours cruising five of the local health
clubs," Skinner said. "And we haven't found anyone who recognized the
composite. Which brings us to a recap of everything you've discovered
tonight," Skinner said.

Mulder obliged. "We hit five of the clubs on the list of possibles. We
found patrons who recognized the composite at three, all identified
him consistently by three different names, all undoubtedly bogus, but
which established a routine for his appearances. For example, if he
does any dancing on Saturdays, he goes to the Stardust Ballroom to do
it. On Sundays he favors the Salsa Grill. While on Fridays he prefers
the Swing Time."

"We got to the Stardust at nine, and stayed till closing, no sign of
our perp," Scully said. "We did a canvas, however, and we're pretty
sure he did not make an appearance earlier in the evening."

"Which he should have," Mulder asserted. "Everything I know about this
guy screams for a return to routine. He kills on significant days:
Halloween and Shrove Tuesday. Oh, that's my latest discovery. I've
checked the dates and confirmed it. It was hard to grasp, at first,
because the dates change year to year due to the variablity of the
event itself, but all the victims were abducted in advance, usually on
the Friday or Saturday before, and killed on Shrove Tuesday.

"That being said, I still maintain that he has *got* to be feeling the
need to prove his manliness by wooing a female."

"Why Shrove Tuesday?" Lloyd asked.

Mulder sighed. "I'm not sure. Yet. Lent is a giving up of the flesh,
particularly of one specific pleasure of the flesh, until Easter."

"Are you trying to tell us he gives up killing for Lent?" Skinner
asked incredulously.

Mulder shrugged. "It's possible. Could be there's some other rationale
behind it. We know he bathes in his victim's blood. He may liken it to
cleansing *him* for Lent, or he may see it as renewing his purpose for
another year."

"But he thinks we're perverts," Krycek protested. "How could our blood
be cleansing?"

"His conscious rationale is that he is sealing his power over you. But
sub-consciously, he wants to rob you of your power over him," Mulder
explained. "He wants to control himself by controlling his victims.

"That's why he *should* have been at the Stardust ballroom tonight.
Dancing with a woman would prove to himself how much in control he is.
How attractive and pleasing he is to a real woman."

"So why didn't he follow his pattern of behavior?" Lloyd asked.

Mulder shook his head. "That's the thing: he has no reason not to
--unless he's seen K-cough! Mr. Tucci. And, so far as we can
ascertain, he *hasn't* seen Mr. Tucci," Mulder answered.

"That's the rub: that we know of," Lloyd said.

"Might the funeral have thrown him off schedule?" Scully asked.

"The only way it could have done that is if he had been there," Lloyd
maintained. "And we didn't see him. So unless we missed something, he
wasn't there. And if he wasn't there...where was he?"

"What were the aliases he used at the dance clubs?" Wong asked. "I can
run them through our data base and see if he's used them before."

"Yeah, OK," Mulder consented. "Yuri Urbanov; Jon Banacek; and Serge
Sandusky."

"Huh! A Russian, a Czech, and a Bulgarian," Krycek snorted. 

Wong's eyes opened wide. "All Eastern Europeans. That's important. He
must look or talk in an ethnically distinctive way. Can you remember
anything about the way he talked, Val? Did he have an accent?"

Krycek's mouth gaped open. Then he snapped it shut and looked pensive.
"...Yeah...kind of. I didn't think anything of it at the time."

"So, you're the language expert, what kind of accent was it?" Wong
asked.

Krycek gaped again. His eyes drifted. His tongue licked the corner of
his mouth. Suddenly, he grinned. "Polish!"

"Damn! That wasn't in the original reports," Lloyd said.

Krycek shrugged. "It's not a heavy accent. It's subtle. Noticeable,
but subtle. Like I said, I didn't really notice it at the time, but
Stanley's right, I *am* a language expert --now. And thinking back,
well...I'm positive this guy is a Polack."

"That'll narrow the search parameters, anyway," Wong said. "Since he's
using Eastern European aliases. One more condition to plug into the
search program."

"You guys are the best!" Krycek enthused. "We're gonna catch this guy.
I just know it!"

Wong beamed appreciatively. 

Lloyd shook his head, but it was tempered with a smile.  "It still
begs the question: what do we do now?"

"Until we can establish differently, I say we work the profile.
Continue doing what we've been doing," Mulder said, "checking out the
health and dance clubs. It may not be yielding any results at the
moment, but until we *know* he's broken his pattern, it wouldn't be
prudent to call the search off."

"I'll continue working on the routes and facilities program, and run
the medical personnel names through an Eastern European filter. That
might give us a location," Wong said.

"I think that's the best we can do, for the moment," Skinner said.

Lloyd sighed. "That's what I'm afraid of. That it's the best we can
do. Meanwhile, we have no idea what this perv is up to, or if he's
even in the country. If you Federales don't mind, I'm sending someone
back to Daly City with a composite. There has to have been some place
that hump could have been hiding out to spot Val yet not *be*
spotted."

"We *did* eat at Mabel's diner," Skinner said.

"I didn't see him, though, and I did check," Krycek said.

"Even so. I'm making sure," Lloyd said. "Any place else you lit?"

"Uhm, well...there was the gas station right next door to the Funeral
Home. I didn't go there, but we were considering it, so I was looking
in that direction. If he was filling up before heading over to the
Funeral Home, he might have seen me. There were a couple cars there at
the time," Krycek said.

Lloyd nodded. "I'll have my boys check all the businesses around the
Funeral Home, then. Looks like there might be plenty of places for a
whack-job to hide himself and still get his jollies."

Skinner nodded. "And it will put all our minds at ease, *and* reassure
us that we covered all the bases and are proceeding properly. A lot of
return for a little time and expense.

"Well, it's late. I say we call it a night. If your searches yield any
results, call a meeting, Agent Wong, Inspector," Skinner concluded.

"I will, sir."

"Sure thing," they said in turn.

The meeting adjourned, with Skinner seeing their guests out the door.
When they had all exited, Krycek stripped and climbed into bed. "That
was neat the way Stanley got me to dredge up Kapustcha's accent."

Skinner sat on his side of the bed with his back turned to The Rat,
carefully doffing his own outer wear. He grunted. "Yeah. We were so
afraid of letting his identity slip out we forgot one of the basics of
identifying criminals: distinguishing marks or behaviors."

"Well, 'yea for the locals,' I say....They ought to be able to get a
hit on him, now."

"Yeah. There's still a chance he could catch a whiff of the operation,
though. I frankly will not rest easy until he's in my sights," Skinner
said as he slipped under the covers and hovered on the edge of the bed
eyes resolutely focused on the wall.

Krycek grinned as he curled up on his side of the bed. "Nice to hear.
G'night, Skinner."

"Night, Val." 

It rolled so easily off his tongue, it took a full four seconds to
register in his brain. 'Val' was so much easier to like than 'Alex
Krycek.' The word itself was neutral, free of all of 'Krycek's'
unpleasant associations. He had no history, no rancor associated with
'Val.' And even if some of that history and rancor were, by his own
admission, of his own making, a product of his own mistakes, somehow,
being 'Val' made Krycek...more human, more likeable, less fearsome.

//It's all an illusion,// Walter told himself. A *delusion* if he
allowed himself to believe in it too fully. He had to remind himself
why he was here and what was at stake. And what would continue to *be*
at stake in the future. Humanity. His own continued existence.

Why did human beings have to be so complicated, so impossible to
pigeon-hole, so resistant to classification with neat, black and white
labels? He's good. He's bad. He's evil. The fact of the matter was: so
damned few of them were wholly irredeemable. Kapustcha would be one of
the latter. He would bet the farm on that.

Krycek, on the other hand, was just playing by his own set of rules.
With broad enough vision, he was a good guy in a white hat no matter
how you sliced it. Up close and personal, he was likeable, eager to
please, brave, courageous --all kinds and manner of admirable things.
It was just at a slight distance, beyond arm's length, that he was a
sneaky, dirty, ruthless, self-aggrandizing mercenary who would do
anything to see another day.

Problem was, Walter could understand that stand-offish assassin
perfectly. He'd felt the same way in 'Nam. The long term goals were
admirable --noble, even-- in theory. He and his buddies were good men,
loyal and caring. But in the trenches, on the front lines, they were
hell on wheels. As sneaky and dirty in their own way as ever Krycek
had been, and sharing the same short-term goal: to live to see another
day, and noble aims be damned.

So how, then, did one ultimately decide who was evil and who good? No
man calls himself a villain, yet all men were eager to point an
accusing finger at their transgressors. 'And by their deeds shall ye
know them' had never been so valueless a criterion as now, because the
world was way too screwed up to make such judgements anything but glib
callousness.

In the end, Skinner decided, it was a matter of chemistry. When he had
thought Krycek was a fellow agent, there had been an attraction, but
he had forced it into abeyance. When he had thought Krycek was the
enemy, he had sublimated his attraction to him, twisting it, in much
the same way Mulder had, into an irrational hatred.

Now that he thought he finally understood Krycek, the attraction was
back, stronger than before. He just plain wanted Krycek to be good so
he could justify his attraction to him, because no matter what name he
used, or what values he professed, it all boiled down to that
indefinable 'it' that led couples to pair off and commit.

But was it a one way reaction? He couldn't foresee a time when he
could even dare to reveal his feelings, not when doing so could cost
him his job, the respect of his fellow agents, and a likely rejection
by the object of his desires. He was not especially eager to expose
his vulnerability when the only thing he could conceivably gain from
it was heartache and ruin.

Skinner sighed. Better to just pine for 'could-have-beens' than
squeeze his heart through the ricer of rejection. His divorce had been
hard enough on his ego and libido, and he and Sharon had actually been
in love with each other, right to the end.

Krycek, he was pretty sure, was carrying a torch for Mulder. The only
way he would ever catch Alex's eye was on the rebound, and that only
if Alex decided to 'settle' for an older, bald 'bear,' as his type of
physique was known in the trade. He couldn't see one reason for Alex
to fall in love with him. What could he offer the younger man, anyway?
There were just too many cons and not enough pros to even consider a
relationship. Leastwise, that's what he told his twitching cock.

###

Skinner woke up facing Krycek, who was an arm's length away. Both of
them had migrated towards the center of the bed during the night.
Krycek was mewling in his sleep, the sounds full of distress, sounds
that altered in timbre and urgency when his hand, questing under the
covers with his Mayor McCheese toy in fist, touched Skinner's chest.
He rolled into the warmth of Skinner's body, nesting into the space
beside him, pressing his nose into the mat of hair on Skinner's chest,
cooed happily and silenced, seemingly content to spend the rest of the
night in Skinner's arms.

Skinner did not feel like obliging Krycek this morning, though,
especially since the embarrassing incident on the rooftop, yesterday,
and his rational review of the situation last night, so he
disentangled himself from Krycek's proximity, rolling over to slip out
of the bed, an early shower his aim. He rummaged in his dresser
drawers for a change of underwear, a pair of socks, and a fresh 
T-shirt, then turned to the closet, where his suits were hung.

Back in the bed, Krycek began wriggling about, in search of his lost
companion. When he reached the other end of the bed without success,
his rooting noises transformed to more panicky sounds. "Um? Um?
Mvv...? Viktor?.... Nnn.... Nnnh.... Nnnaaa.... Agh....AGH! AH! AH!
AH!" he began screaming.

Skinner dropped his clothing and rushed over to Krycek's side.
"Krycek! Alex! Val!"

Krycek bolted upright, shaking, gasping, eyes rolling wildly. "Agh!
Uh?" His eyes locked on Skinner's and it was if someone had opened his
skull and poured his sense back in. He sagged, breaking eye contact.
"Sorry." His toy-filled fist slid under the pillow and snuck back out
empty-handed, as if hoping to hide its existence from Skinner.

"Must have been some bad dream. Wanna tell me about it?" Skinner
asked. Krycek shook his head. "Hey, it's OK. You can tell me. It's not
like I'm going to laugh, you know? I've had my share of bad dreams.
Believe me. Sometimes it helps to talk about it. Chases the cobwebs
out, you know?"

For a moment, Skinner thought Krycek would just shrug him off, but he
stared at his toes and said: "I--  I was lost. I was looking for
Viktor. Only I couldn't find him. And --and then I was in the
silo...and I was trapped...and--.... It scared me."

Skinner frowned. Viktor? Where had he heard that name before? "The boy
you stole that hamburger doll from?"

Krycek looked as if someone had run over his puppy dog. "Yeah."

"Did something bad happen to Viktor?" Skinner asked.

Krycek shook his head. "I dunno... He was sick...just like Mama....
I'm pretty sure *she* died. I was so little --I think I was three,
though there's no way of really knowing. Which is to say, I don't
remember anybody coming right out and saying she was dead or
anything.... Anyway, Viktor took care of me and Mikey after Mama got
sick. When *he* got sick, too, everything went to hell.... I miss him
sometimes.... 'n' sometimes I wonder what would have happened if
he'd've never gotten sick."

"Have you ever tried to look for him?" Skinner asked.

Krycek snorted. "Where would I start? I don't know what *country* to
look in, let alone what city. I don't know my birth parents' given
names, or my real last name, or where or when *I* was born, let alone
when Viktor was." He shook his head. "It's hopeless."

"Maybe. What else do you remember about that time?" Skinner asked.

Krycek scowled. He drew his knees up and played with his toes. "Viktor
was already sick. I think that must be why, when we saw Mama the last
time, she told *me* to take care of Mikey. Before, she'd told Viktor
to take care of the two of us. Anyway, I promised I would. I never saw
her again. But lots of grown-ups came and took things, like teapots
and pictures. I...I think they took Vladimir, too, 'cause I never saw
him again, either. Not that I really cared. He's pretty vague, you
know? Like he wasn't very involved in our lives. I guess I should be
glad I remember him at all.

"Anyway, I thought everything would be OK once all the strangers left,
but Papa kept packing things or selling them. Before I knew it, we
were sleeping on and eating off the floors...even Viktor, sick as he
was. We had two blankets: one under us and one on top of us, and us
four kids slept in the same room in those two blankets....

"Then, Papa took us to McDonald's to meet a man, and he brought some
McDonald's toys along for us to play with while we waited. Mine was
the Hamburglar, but I didn't really like it. So, I stole Viktor's
Mayor McCheese and gave him the Hamburglar instead.... He was so sick,
I don't think he even noticed.... I never saw him again."

Skinner's eyebrows rose as the light dawned. "Viktor was your
brother?"

Skinner thought Krycek would deny it but, after a moment's
consideration, he nodded his head. "He didn't die in the McDonald's,
did he?"Skinner asked.

A cascade of emotions crossed Krycek's face. He bit his bottom lip and
stared at the covers. "No.... My father sold Vassily and Mikey and me
to the man he met for thirty thousand dollars. Cash. The man didn't
want to buy us at first. He told Papa Vassily was acceptable, but that
I was too young and Viktor was so sick he'd either die or infect the
other kids and there was no way he would take him.

"Papa said he had to have thirty thousand dollars to make a new start,
so would the man take Mikey, instead of Viktor? Papa told the man he
could feed us half rations until we could earn our keep. That way we'd
be no more trouble than one kid. So the man pulled out this big ol'
wad of greenbacks...and Papa counted it out and stuffed it in his
pocket. Then he picked Viktor up and herded us out to the parking lot
and told us to get in the man's car. Then Papa put Viktor in the
back seat of his car and drove off."

"What happened to you?"

"We drove to the airport and got on a plane. When we landed, the man
drove us to the Academy. Mikey and I were on half rations the whole
time we were there. I hated it!

"But, one day, Hans --he was a janitor there-- collared me like a dog
and walked me to the front gate and chained me to one of the big,
black iron rings that were mortared to the outside of the perimeter
wall. All I had with me were the clothes on my back and this toy. I'd
never been off the academy grounds the whole time I'd been there, and
I was scared, but Hans said to be patient,
because it was a happy day for me. 

"So I stood there for a couple hours, wondering what was going to
happen. Then this big, black car drove up, and this lady got out and
she called me son. She looked like my mother. She was even dressed
like my mother. And when she came up to me, she smelled like my
mother. So, for a minute, I thought she really was my mother. I was so
happy.... Then she called me 'Alexei'  and I was crushed.

"See, they kept changing our names at the Academy. Every month. They
said it was because they wanted us to hear only the names we were
using, so we'd act as if they were ours. If we reacted to any other
name, even the one we'd had the month before, we were caned.

"Anyway, I knew my real name wasn't Alexei, it was just the name I was
using that month. So when she called me 'Alexei,' even though she was
so much like my real mother, I knew she wasn't, and I got this really
bad pain in my stomach, like I'd been punched. She could tell, too,
'cause she pressed my face to her bosom and whispered that I'd better
play along with her, or she'd claim they'd brought out the wrong child
and leave me there.

"So I called her 'Mama' real loudly, and hugged her. Only, when she
unlocked my collar so she could put me in the car, I wriggled free of
her and squeezed between the bars of the front gate, back inside the
academy.

"That was when Papa Wintersoul got out of the car. He wanted to know
what was going on. I told him I hated the academy, but I would rather
live there than leave my brother, Mikey behind.

"She told him that I was crazy, that I didn't have a brother, that she
ought to know if she'd given birth to another child. So I told him
that she'd been really ill when she came here, so ill that when they
told me she had died, I believed them, so maybe they'd told her that
Mikey was dead, or maybe she'd been too sick to remember having him,
but he existed and he belonged with us, 'cause we were family."