The Missionary (07/30)
By Michael Aulfrey

A visitor to the FBI Academy at the Marine Base in Quantico would not
have to go anywhere near Behavioural Sciences to find the home of the
Laboratory Division. Ironic, she thought as she drove, that the two of
them came from opposite ends of the physical as well as the
philosophical spectra.  LD was at the other terminus of the main
Academy structure.  Behavioural Sciences nestled sixty feet below
ground.  LD was three storeys up, away from Hogan's Alley, the
gymnasium, the shooting galleries.  The smell of sweat might have been
sensed as a bitter tang here, but nothing more.  Which was not to say
that it was not produced by those working here; it was merely subdued
by the powerful air conditioners and scrubbers hiding away in dark
corners, rumbling at the edge of consciousness like distant storms.

Sometimes the rookies got lost on their way here.  Herself included.
Two years teaching at the Forensic Science Research and Training Centre
next door had reduced the risks somewhat.  There was a strange bubbling
in her heart as she went through the long-lost motions: listen for the
ping of the elevator, slip sideways through the too-slow doors, turn
lazily, reach a hand out without looking to thump the button for the
third floor and then the `door close'.

She'd been away too long.

The thought didn't surprise her, and it was followed with the first
faint nervousness she'd felt since returning from Barre.  Old thoughts,
old memories.  Old stressors.  But more than this, a feeling of being
familiar in a strange land.  Maybe Mulder had the same feeling when he
prowled the halls of Behavioural Science.  Unlikely, part of her
responded; from what she'd been able to glean of his time there, he
hadn't much liked it.  Being six jumps ahead mentally of fifteen-year
agents wouldn't have helped.  She'd never been faced with that danger.
She had taught here, but she hadn't been the finest of those who made
this their lives.  The man she was about to see confirmed the truth of
that.

She'd been surprised to find his name on the report, and even more
surprised when he called personally and asked to see her; her time here
per se had only been about two months, during the training, and even
then interspersed with other classes.  Even while she was teaching
here, she hadn't had much occasion to bump into him.

The elevator doors opened, and she stepped into the laboratory.  More
familiar sights and sounds: gleaming steel benches, arrayed with a
glass menagerie of beakers, flasks, and tubes.  Fluorescent light
overhead.  A dignified coolness tickling her palms, the air conditioner
set at a steady twenty-three degrees Celsius.  The faintest, tingling
smell of formaldehyde and some exotic mix of unidentified chemicals,
sunk into the metal, nuzzling at iron molecules.  The old feeling came
over her, from the temperature, but also from the mix of stress and the
thrill in discovery that this place seemed to hold over her like a
lover from her past.

"Agent Scully!"
She turned to her left and spotted him, coming out of one of the
cubicles towards the back of the laboratory that functioned as
makeshift offices.  He moved in short, sharp steps, shuffling his feet,
as though he was afraid to pick them up for fear of knocking something
over.  Which might have been justified.  Mulder was a good six feet,
but Michael Freeman could have played guard on him without straining.
At the top of the long, thin pole of his body was a heavy crest of grey
hair.  It furred out from, it seemed, everywhere on his face: chin,
upper lip, cheeks, sideburns, and the back of his head, long and wiry.
It hissed like a disgruntled serpent when he walked, trailing out
behind him along with the white coat.  She couldn't help but smile.
Nobody except Freeman had the privilege of long hair at the Bureau.
Nobody else had the brain necessary to demand it.

He walked over to her, his beard and moustache creasing grey in a
grin.  What colour his eyes might have been was hidden by the thick,
tinted TV screens of his glasses.  "It's good to see you again."
She was taken aback by it.  "I didn't think you'd remember me - I mean,
it would have to be six years or more now."
"Time kills memory."  He pumped her hand enthusiastically.  It hurt.
Slightly.  "Not quite as effective as alcohol, but it does the trick.
Come in, come in.  Can't have you standing there in the elevator."
He had already turned and was bustling deeper into the tubes and flasks
of his den.  She smiled behind his back.  The students called him
Speedy Gonzales, because he taught like the cartoon rodent.  On a
caffeine jag.
"Besides," he was saying, "when an MD with a physics degree comes
looking for lessons from a science postgrad, it's a point of honour for
me to remember it.  Might not ever happen again."
"Neither of us had much choice about it at the time."  She set her
voice in a mock-grudging tone.
He glanced at her through a halo of grey hair and grinned before
swinging round the edge of one of the benches, coat flowing.  She
winced as he brushed an erlenmeyer flask, but it only shifted by the
barest of inches.  He switched on an overhead lamp and picked up a
sheaf of papers.  Stared at them for a few seconds before looking back
at her.

"Now.  This screen you had me run."
"Yes.  I assumed you wanted to talk about this protein you found, but I
don't see why you had to call me down from Vermont to do it."
"All will be revealed, as the actress said to the bishop.  We looked
for all the usual suspects, alcohol, heroin, carbon monoxide -
negative, all of them.  Tedious.  I was wondering where the challenge
was."
"A challenge?"
Freeman shifted on his feet.  "There's been some rumours down here that
you're involved in some, shall we say, interesting work lately.  Just
thought I'd take a sneak peek."

She smiled as she looked at the report.  "Your tox screen came back
negative for all the usual contaminants.  So what's this other protein?"
"Yes, the mystery guest."  Freeman walked across to another bench and
plucked a piece of paper from a pile of neatly-stacked A4s.  He handed
her a chromatograph, a series of humps and spikes.  "Whoever your
unfortunate victim was, he had one redeeming feature about his blood: a
peak coming off the gas chromatograph at around eight minutes.  Pop
quiz, agent Scully.  What suspects are there for a peak at that level?"
She stared at the sheet above the peak, where a question mark had been
scratched in, reaching back, trying to remem-"Some kind of polypeptide,
maybe?"
"Very good. You get to keep your badge."
"This is an introduced substance?"
"Apart from the protein you're looking at, Mr. Shelley's blood is in
all respects normal."
She stared at the chromatograph, thinking.  "How long will it take to
identify its structure?"
For once Freeman looked thoughtful.  Deadlines he always had a problem
with.  "There's a boatload of OD cases they've handed to us - I can
probably have the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Mass Spectrography
done in a few days."  He was looking over her shoulder at the graph,
silently.  She read something in his expression.
"What is it?"
Freeman took off his glasses, laying them on the steel bench next to
him.  His eyes underneath were small but piercing.  She hadn't realised
how strong their colour was.  Come to think of it, she couldn't
remember seeing Freeman without his glasses.  Freeman chewed his lip
before answering her. "Actually, agent Scully, the real reason I called
you down here was because I don't think I'll have much difficulty
identifying this substance."
She felt her brow furrow, both at his response and at the
toxicologist's sudden slowing of speech, as though choosing his words.
"I don't understand."
"As you're aware, we don't get a lot of homicidal poisoning cases down
here.  They're something of a rare breed."
"Are you saying this substance is a toxin?"
Freeman nodded.  "I have to do the NMR and MS to be sure.  But if it's
what I think, then tentatively I can say yes."
"You've seen something like this before?"
Now he squinted, heavy wrinkles creasing around his eyes.  "Well, the
peak at eight minutes is unusual.  That's what set the alarm bells
off.  I saw the same set of peaks, coming off at eight minutes, on a
tox screen I ran - oh, it'd be about five to ten years ago now.  While
you were still with FSR-TC, I think."
"What was it?"
"Some kind of natural substance.  Very similar in both appearance and
composition to toxins found in amanita."
A name from the past.  So long now that - " - that's a fungus, isn't
it?"
"Mushrooms, to be exact, a whole family of them.  The most deadly of
the group are Amanita phalloides and Amanita virosa, more commonly
known as Death Cap and Destroying Angel.  Death Cap contains phalloidin
and amatoxins."

Scully was nodding as the knowledge returned.  "Alpha-amanitin is one
of the amatoxins.  It attacks the body's protein synthesis systems -
inhibits production of the proteins the human body needs to survive."
"Agent Scully, you have now entered serious contention for the Captain
Midnight Secret Decoder Ring."  His voice had regained that half-amused
colour.
She frowned.  "But amanitin takes days to kill.  Are you saying this
man died of mushroom poisoning?"
"Not exactly.  The substance in that old case was more amanitin than
anything else.  This stuff resembles that, but it isn't the same.  The
poison in your case did its work at a much, much higher rate of knots.
And my preliminary tests indicate there's another substance aside from
the amanita-one that doesn't readily spring to my mind as matching a
pattern on the database."
Which, given Freeman's long career and experience, was as good as
saying nothing would show on the database if they actually went to a
search.  "Could the unknown substance have been some kind of accelerant
to the amatoxin?"
"Possibly.  Why do you say that?"
"The autopsy on the victim in this case showed extreme necrosis of the
liver and kidneys.  Amanita might cause that.  But the speed at which
it kills - we're talking a matter of minutes, here.  If the
unidentified substance you found was some kind of biochemical
accelerant, that might go towards explaining it."
Freeman raised an eyebrow.  "I wasn't aware you had such an open mind."
She considered answering it, but didn't.  "Can you remember what those
previous files were?"
"No.  I looked around through our files here when it hit me what this
might be, but any record we had has been removed.  I think the original
request came from the Houston field office, but I couldn't tell you
more than that."
She nodded.  "Let me know as soon as you come up with anything."  She
handed him one of her cards and left.

			*			*

Lindley started when the hand came down on his shoulder.  He twisted
around in his seat, thinking of the impossibility, how his security had
assured him-but the figure bending over him was smiling with brown,
bloodless lips as it sat down next to him and took its hand away to
withdraw a cigarette box from a pocket.
"What in God's name do you think you're doing?" he spat, quietly; the
box seat, while shrouded in darkness, was only about thirty feet from
the stage.
His companion lit the cigarette, shielding the flame, before he
answered.  "I prefer to get people's attention before I speak.  It
removes the need to repeat myself."
"I don't imagine you're a great patron of performances like this."
"I haven't had the time recently."
"You would probably appreciate the production."  Macbeth, becrowned,
stalked across the stage, screaming and cursing at the empty chair of
the banquet table.  The other thanes looked at one another in
consternation.  The actor was very good; the madness in his character
billowed out across the audience.  Lindley smiled thinly.  "Though I
think for you Ford Theatre would have been a more appropriate venue."

The man took a breath from the cigarette.  "The Scottish stories are
inspirational.  Particularly `Braveheart'.  No doubt someone of your
pedigree would have had an ancestor or two consorting with the young
prince."
The Viscount disposed of his anger as quickly as it rose.  Loss of
control around this man was to surrender one of the only weapons you
had in your defence.  "You have something to discuss."
"There's been a new development in the matter of Shelley."
"And it couldn't wait until a full meeting could be called?"
"The full meeting would not like what I have to say."

On the stage, Lady Macbeth was trying to soothe her husband.  Because
of the venue's nature, her movements were exaggerated, but no less
convincing.  Her fear was rising.  "And what is that?"
His companion took a breath from the cigarette and exhaled before
continuing.  That peculiar mix of ashes and mint again.  "Some
documentation has gone missing from Shelley's house."
The theatre was dark.  It would be difficult to see the sweat beading
at Lindley's temples.  "What kind of documentation?"
The man leaned over.  Smell of ashes and mint.  "Documentation that I
had once recovered, and which I had believed stored away and
forgotten.  The ramblings of a madman."  He peered closer at Lindley.
"Documentation that had no business being in Shelley's hands."
Lindley slowly let his breath out, trying to remain calm.  "I've no
idea what you're talking about."

"Have you betrayed us?"  Lindley nearly turned and stared at him.  The
voice was friendly, even suppressing laughter; his expression held the
gaiety of a death's-head.  Lindley glanced down at his chest.  Saw the
red, glowing dot centred there.  He flickered a glance across the empty
space of the house, to the opposite box seats, but saw nothing.  The
man was good.  As all of his companion's men were, he admitted quietly
to himself.
"Your life wouldn't be worth the price of your trained Doberman's
bullet," he breathed, slowly turning to look again at the man beside
him.
"The value of your life at present approximates that," his companion
replied.  "I believe you were saying something about the Ford Theatre?"
Lindley turned back to the stage.  "If I'm to die, let me do it keeping
some secrets."
"Certainly.  I could kill you now, if I so chose.  For all your
position, there would be nothing you could do to stop me."
In spite of the fear, Lindley felt a giggle rising, blackly, at the
bottom of his heart.  Where did he get his speechwriter?
"You know, there's a good deal of admiration for the professional who
put Shelley down."  The man leaned back in his chair, took another drag
on the cigarette.  "The method he used was most ingenious in
circumventing Shelley's defences.  One might even say artistic.  Using
a father's own child against himself."

The giggle died instantaneously.  He felt his heart begin to race.  He
snapped his gaze back to his companion's face.  With his shallowing
breaths, the smell of ashes grew stronger.  He cursed; watched the man
watching him, measuring the effect of his words.
"You've had a long, full life.  Your children, though-"
"You murderous bastard."
The man took the cigarette from his lips, seemed to stare down at the
wall of the box seat for long seconds before nodding.  "True."  His
face, when it came up, had a sudden softness to it.  "I can sympathise
with what you're going through."
Lindley saw through it right away.  "My children at least know who
their father is."

The softness sloughed away like an old skin.  "Was."
Lindley searched in the man's eyes for something of the man who had
just departed.  He found none.  For a few seconds, competing desires
balanced.  Then he sighed heavily, and looked out at the stage again.
"Shelley was also working on a vaccine."
"With what? Don't tell me you actually managed to hide something from
the Russians when they wetworked Project Juliet."
"We had originally intended it as a contingency plan - an emergency
alternative to Project Juliet, should a scenario like the Tunguska
affair come to pass.  None of us could have expected the level of
infiltration and destruction that was caused."
The figure seemed to uncoil a little; took another drag from the
cigarette.  "So when the lovely doctor Charne-Sayre and her friends
were terminated, you panicked and moved your contingency option up to
operational status."

Lindley felt the rage swelling, again, at the mention of her.  He began
to rise.
"I wouldn't."
He wilted back into his seat.  The red dot trailed his heart.  The man
stubbed the cigarette out against the expensive carpet.  "Project
Juliet was ongoing for nearly thirty years.  I'd understood that the
damage done sets us back about that length of time, or perhaps more.
What makes you think Shelley could make it up?"
"Shelley is only part of the equation."
"Explain the rest to me."
"It would take several hours and several more whiteboards," said
Lindley, shaking his head.  "Even then, you could only understand a
taste of it."
"Don't patronise me!" his companion snapped.  "You've placed your life
in danger by leaving me out of the loop.  Don't make it any worse.
How?"
Lindley considered.  "Imagine Einstein-"
His companion snorted.
"Imagine Einstein, at his blackboard, working his calculations, so
close to the revelation he seeks that he can almost taste it.  He
derives the e symbol, the equivalency, the mass, and the speed of
light.  All he lacks -- all he must solve -- is that crucial indexation
of lightspeed to the power of two."

He felt the words restoring some of his calm.  There was a certain
resonance, a certain inner calm to science itself, not unlike
meditation: a calm that allowed him to speak without looking at the red
dot.  "But only minutes before he thinks of the square of lightspeed,
he is gunned down by someone not unlike yourself.  Leaving all his
equations intact, but also leaving unsolved the most difficult part  -
the indexation.  Now suppose that another brilliant group of scientists
reads through Einstein's blackboard.  They know what he writes is
theoretical, untested.  But they also know they must develop a war-
winning explosive device within six months, or else Germany shall do it
for them.  So the scientists start Einstein's work again, hoping that
in the brief time they have, they will be able to understand it, to
complete the equation.  To complete and validate Einstein's theoretical
work.  And, above all, praying that Einstein was right."

Lindley looked across at the man sitting next to him.  The cigarette
laid trails through the air.  Macbeth was deep into one of his
monologues.  "Shelley is one of those scientists.  Since you know the
documents that were removed, I think you also know who the Einstein is
in this little parable."
He held the man's gaze for long moments, through the blue smoke of the
cigarette.  There was thought there, he could see that, though the
man's face as always revealed nothing.
"Does Strughold know of this?"
Lindley scowled to himself.  Schoolboys.  At heart, they were no better
than a pack of spotty schoolboys: left alone in a classroom, shooting
their little paper pellets at each other, playing their little
wargames, one ear always cocked for the tread of Master Strughold's
feet on the boards.  He took a deep breath.  "Strughold doesn't even
know of the Tunguska affair.  Heaven knows what he'd do if he did.  No-
he's off in his prophet's wilderness, sowing seeds, raising bees.
Living like the farmer he always wanted to be.  You know him.  He's
still convinced we stand united on the issue of dispersion of the
vaccine."
"If there is to be a vaccine," the man amended.  He tapped at the
cigarette.  "Who does know about your contingency plan?"
"Myself.  Some of the others."
"Names."
"Pandeone.  I only know the other researchers.  Pandeone knows who else
in the Group itself."

He was pleased to see the brief flinch of irritation, but it was gone
like smoke, replaced by seriousness.  A flicker of motion from the
corner of Lindley's eye, and the red dot trailed downward and winked
out.  The man leaned back in his seat again.  "There's more."
"Oh, with you there always is."
"There's a mole inside the group."
It staggered him, pushed him back into his chair.  It wasn't possible.
They had dealt with problems at lower levels, certainly.  Once or
twice, in suitably brutal fashion, as was his companion's forte.  Those
few occasions, Lindley could stomach; disloyalty made one less than
human, your life's value reduced to less than that of one of
Strughold's insects.  But above all, the inviolability of the Group
itself was sacrosanct.  They might quarrel among themselves, but there
was the unwritten rule that they stood as one against outsiders.  He
looked back at his companion.  "How do you know?"
"I don't.  But Shelley was extremely circumspect in concealing the
documents concerned.  The assassin, or someone working with him, knew
where to look.  We're both aware there's only one kind of individual
who could provide that kind of information."
"It's not possible," Lindley protested.  "Everything we've done-who
among us would be mad enough to expose what we've done?"
"Croner was."

Lindley glanced at the man.  Was there a note of regret he had heard
there? The cigarette hung limp from two fingers, a thin trail vertical
in the air.  A line from Macbeth came back to Lindley: I am so steeped
in blood that to retreat now would be as gore as to advance.
He hardened his heart.  "Croner was your responsibility, your
propaganda machine.  He was never one of us.  For one of us to do this
thing - he'd be throwing everything away just to reveal his own
misdeeds."
"Fear makes us all do strange things."  A moment or two longer of that
vertical column of smoke, then he straightened.  "As I'm sure you
recall."
The years rolled back, for a moment, to the darkened room in
Kensington; his fall from grace.  Lindley gritted his teeth, and forced
the other images into his mind, calming the regret.  Images of
photographs of barbed wire fences and towers fifty years ago, with
their echoes in a recent Bosnia.  Images of the same, without humans
holding the whips.  He set his face impassively.  "There'll be much
more to be feared if the Project - or the contingency plan - is
exposed."
"Then we have to find the mole," said the man.
Silence.
"Why did you come to me with this?" Lindley asked suddenly.

The man seemed to smile as he stubbed out another cigarette and leaned
back to watch the stage.  "Are you so suspicious of my trust?"
"You have no trust.  Whatever it is you do have for me, I certainly am
suspicious of."
The man regarded him for perhaps twenty seconds before answering.
"That serves as reason enough."
"Rhetoric.  Save it for those committees you Colonials are so fond of.
Those fools will lap it up.  Or at least they did until you decided to
cut the Gordian knot of your friend Croner."
The man was expressionless.  There seemed to be a flickering of fatigue
across the features, but it was quickly gone.  "Then because you're
known for keeping your mouth shut.  And if only because our -
constituencies - share some common history.  I'd like to say it's
really because I find you very attractive, but I know your tendencies
in that direction."
Lindley let it pass.  "What will you report to the group?"
"Only that I'm aware that this was no ordinary assassination.  The
calibre of the-"

Their mobile phones went off together.  The occupiers of box seats on
either side of them glanced across annoyedly at the noise.  Neither of
them took notice.  They were staring at one another, wondering.  They
each answered.  Listened for a few moments to the other end.  Then hung
up, simultaneously.  The audience members took their attention back to
the stage.  Lindley watched Macbeth again.  The preparations were
beginning for the murder of Macduff's family.

He knew the story too well, could see the maelstrom of death coming:
Macduff's wife and children, slaughtered.  Blood on Dunsinane's
heights, no corner of Scotland spared the storm of death shrieking over
it.  He had the faintest taste of something unholy at the back of his
throat.  He barely heard his companion stand, slowly, and walk through
the curtain door behind them, his step slow, silent.  All he could
think of was the words from the other end of the phone, and one phrase,
from a TV miniseries he had the misfortune to watch one time in this
country.

Pale horse, pale rider.

END OF PART 07/30



The Missionary (08/30)
By Michael Aulfrey

Mulder didn't answer the door when Scully knocked.  For a moment, she
waited, glancing down at the broken police tape.  Nothing but silence
from within.  She got her own key out and opened it instead.  She chose
to ignore the straying of her own hand towards the holster at the small
of her back.  No creak from the hinges; only a light hiss of movement.
As she walked in, she wondered if he'd - but before she could complete
the thought, a faint smile wandered across her face unbidden.

He was slumped in a chair in the living room of his apartment, over a
collapsible card table, head resting on one arm, the other trailing on
the floor.  The table seemed to swallow up what remained of free space
inside.  Carcasses of manilla folders were strewn across the table, the
floor, and the leather armchair hiked back against the wall.  She
quietly closed the door behind her, hung up her coat on the dusty rack
behind it, and tiptoed over towards the table, avoiding the piles of
books hurriedly shifted from close to his desk to other parts of the
floor.  His breathing was deep and regular.  The several-days-old beard
was still growing; the visible patch of skin from earlobe to jaw was a
dark stretch of browning fuzz.

A bittersweet tang of old, cold coffee hung in the air; there was an
black, oversized clay mug at the corner of the table, quarter-full.
She noticed yellow letters on the exterior:  PSYCHOLOGISTS HAVE THE
NUTS.  She grinned to herself, glancing across at the TV.  Garish, pink
covers and unsheathed videotapes lay facedown around it.  There were
small photographs filled with bared flesh on them.  She was tempted to,
but didn't.

She put the folder she'd brought with her on the table.  Touched his
shoulder gently.  "Mulder?"
He drew a sharp breath, and she tensed, remembering the last time she'd
roused him from sleep like this; but he only jerked in surprise for as
long as it took to open his eyes and see her.  He groaned and rubbed at
his eyes as he sat up.  She saw him wince as he stretched his back.  He
hadn't showered; there was a musky smell from him, now that she was
close to him.
"Scully."  He exhaled heavily, stretching his arms.  She heard the pop
from his shoulder as he smiled weakly.  "I didn't expect you back in DC
for another day," he said, muddily.
"I noticed."  She glanced in the direction of the VCR.  He didn't rise
to it, instead rasping a hand across his face.  He squinted against the
light from the window.
"What time is it?"
"Nine-thirty.  Looks like you haven't had much sleep."

"I had some things to go through."  He glanced down at the folders.
"How come you're back early?"
"I sent samples of Shelley's blood to the labs at Quantico.  They found
something - unusual - in the blood.  One of the toxicologists there
wanted to talk to me about it in person."
He woke up rapidly, a cynical part of her noted.  He leaned back in his
chair, seeming to consider it.  She followed his glance down to one of
the files lying on the floor, though neither of them could read the
fine print at that distance.  When he spoke, he was not looking at
her.  "What did you find?"

The tone behind his voice had not asked a question.  "Some kind of
protein in Shelley's blood.  A kind of poison."  She paused, for a
second.  Weighing up whether she should take the next step.  Decided
for it.  "But you knew that before you left for Washington, didn't you?"
He didn't meet her eyes.  "I suspected it."

She was tired; she'd been up until one that morning, going over the
notes again at her apartment.  She might otherwise have pushed the
flaring annoyance down.  Instead, it came out in a tide.  "Mulder, just
what the hell is going on? First, you insist that we go to Vermont the
moment you're out on bail.  You spend maybe five minutes at the crime
scene.  You pull five closed VC files from storage.  You come back to
Washington just for those files.  And you have me perform an autopsy
you seem to know the results of already."

He stood up, abruptly, shuffling towards the kitchen, tiny scuffing
noises on the carpet.  Still saying nothing.  She gaped at him.  The
shock held back the first, angry thing she thought of.  There was, the
cynical part of her noted, another possibility.
"Mulder, this case, these files you pulled-"  She hesitated,
swallowing.  The question eddied in her heart.  For a few moments the
little child in her screamed not to ask it.  She didn't understand that
child, though she suspected that a child of similar age and temperament
toddled through Mulder's subconscious at times.  The child resisted.
But if it was something she had said or done that was causing it, she
had to ask it.  "Does it have something to do with my cancer?"

He stopped in the doorway of the kitchen, back turned to her, unmoving,
for a few moments.  When his voice came back to her, it was as if from
a great distance.
"No."
She sighed.  Whether in relief or disappointment, she couldn't tell.

He was turning, slowly, a hand lightly braced on the wall as though he
needed the support.  Physical exhaustion -- but there was also a deeper
weariness. She was used to seeing the weight of his sister's cross.
Her sister.  Her.  What she saw now was a different burden altogether,
some kind of beam the weight of which he had only recently been forced
to take.
"Then what?"  Her voice softened.  He raised his eyes to meet hers: the
hurt was hidden, but still there nonetheless.  He moved back to the
chair and sat down, peering around the table, rubbing his eyes.  He
found a folder next to where her hand rested on the table, and picked
it up.  Scanned it for a few seconds.  Then took a deep breath and
looked at her again.
"I've seen this killer before."
No great surprise there.  "Why didn't you tell the team while we were
there? The procedure-"
"No, wait, Scully.  Just hear me out."  He raised a hand, lowered it as
she subsided.  "Back in eighty-nine, while I was working in Violent
Crimes, Reggie Purdue got a request from the Houston field office.
They needed a couple of rent-a-goons to help them out on a case.
Reggie figured I'd been a good kid bringing John Barnett down, so he
sent two of us to enjoy the southern summer."  This was followed by a
weak smile, and his eyes shifted away.  The silence drew out for some
seconds.

"What was the case about?" she said, gently.  His hazel eyes moved back
to her own.
"A young woman named Christine Walsh.  Her father brought the case to
us after he received a death threat against him and his family.  Said
his daughter needed protection.  He was high up in the State
Department, and the SAC at the Houston office owed him a few favours.
Apparently Walsh had managed to piss off some well-heeled folks in Los
Angeles.  He believed there was a contract hitman out to get his
daughter.  So Reggie sent us down while Houston assigned a couple of
agents to watch her house. It was something of a joke at the time."
She sensed rather than heard the tightness in his voice, but said
nothing.  He was staring at the file in front of him again, index
finger leaning on his lips.  He closed his eyes for a second, then took
a breath and looked at her.  "Until agents Robbins and Greenaway didn't
make their four-hour call-in one night."

He stopped, staring down at the reports.  Her heart gave a peculiar
kind of ache.  Echoes.  Echoes, coming back to her: the ringing echoes
of the lecturer's amplified voice, in the three hundred-seat auditorium
at the Academy.  You don't feel you can take a bullet? Get up and walk
out now.  You don't think you can put a bullet in someone? Quit before
someone else does it to you.  You chase the dragon, ladies and
gentlemen, you be prepared to get your asses cooked.

She had chased the dragon.  Got singed several times.

The hardass routine of training on a Marine base created more than just
an inner strength.  It created interdependence.  It created Family.
And few people outside the Bureau knew how much of a surrogate family
it could be.  Mulder had told her about Skinner one time, raging at him
after Special Agent Weiss from the Syracuse office had been killed
investigating a case at Mulder's request.  It wasn't just anger at
Mulder having ignored protocol, or even that someone had died: the man
was acting like one of his own cousins had been executed.
Hurt one, you hurt all of us, one of her friends had once said.  "They
were murdered?"

He stared down at the pages.  "Robbins had his neck broken."  His voice
had gone stale, impersonal.  She read the lie to that in his eyes.
Then in his voice, as he continued.  "Greenaway - the paramedics worked
on her at the scene, but she'd - lost a lot of blood.  She -"  He
breathed in.  "Their killer took them down fast and professional."
Scully was silent.  Then remembered-"What about the girl?"
He looked at the reports for a moment before he answered her.  "Didn't
hear anything, didn't see anything."

A chill went up her spine.  "He was baiting you."
Mulder looked at her and nodded.  "The operational theory was that he
wanted more challenge than two babysitters in a parked car.  He wanted
the girl to be properly protected before he came to put her down."
"What happened?"
Mulder made a helpless gesture with his hands.  "What he wanted.  Half
a dozen agents were assigned to the case, aside from those already on
it.  And all hell broke loose.  Seven killings in the space of thirty-
six hours, the same MO as the two agents he already killed.  Unrelated
victims, no distinction between race, sex, background - everyone from
call-girls to a black civil rights lawyer on the right side of the
tracks.  Houston was scared out of its collective mind.  The city from
the mayor down was banging on the Bureau's door, demanding something be
done.  The only thing they could figure out was that it was the same
UnSub in each killing.  Short blade.  No hair, fibre or fingerprints.
An unidentified substance in the blood of each victim.  They revised
their profile, thought the killer was enjoying the rush he got in
killing two federal agents, and was going on to flaunt it against the
police."  He was silent.
"You thought different," she prompted.
"In Eastern martial philosophy, Miyamoto Musashi is more than
legendary.  He's almost a prophet.  His text on warfare, the Go Rin No
Sho - A Book of Five Rings - is his greatest work.  And he wrote it
only weeks before his death."
The sudden shift in topic threw her.  Profiling to eastern philosophy
wasn't an easy leap first thing in the morning.  "I've never heard of
it."
Scully winced as Mulder picked up the black and yellow coffee mug and
swallowed its contents.  "One of the techniques Musashi developed was
called To Hold Down A Pillow.  Restrict an enemy's useful movements
while encouraging his useless ones.  Basically, lead your enemy around
by the nose, and when he's totally bewildered, strike."

She thought about that.  "The killings were just to throw the Bureau
off the scent?"
He nodded.  "To weaken the defences around Christine Walsh again."
"But you just said he wanted the challenge of a fully-protected target."
"That was the operational theory.  My profile was that no killer wants
a protected target.  But a killer with an ego at least wants his
opponent to be on guard.  Otherwise there's nothing to prove his worth
against, there's no real defeat of his opponent.  Here, the killer got
both.  The Bureau was still responsible for Christine Walsh's
protection.  But he also had six federal agents combing the streets
along with a hundred cops, looking for clues on the other murders.  Six
agents who would've been doing better trying to beef up the protection
around the killer's real target."
"But if you had an alternative theory-"
"I didn't have a theory until the sixth victim turned up.  We were all
so busy looking for patterns we didn't see he had no pattern at all.
It was only when I re-evaluated the profile, noticed that we were
looking for someone with martial arts training, that I started thinking
about Musashi."
"Martial arts?"
"The skin of agent Robbins' neck hadn't been broken.  All he had was
serious bruising.  There's apparently some forms of aikido that could
have caused that injury."

She nodded, slowly.  "You started watching Christine Walsh again?"
"More like watching over her.  Me and my partner."  He rubbed a palm
across his lips.  "We took it in shifts.  She'd already been told we
might have to live-in, so she didn't have a problem with it.  We were
there on the third night.  We-"  He seemed to stop, think about
something.  "We had this - routine, a half-hour at midnight when we ate
at the same time.  It kept us from raiding the fridge."  His smile was
the faintest twitch of the corners of his mouth.  "He - my partner -
he'd forgotten to buy takeout, but I'd woken him up early.  We argued
about it.  He was a lawyer, before he joined the Bureau.  He was a good
arguer.  So we flipped for who should go for bagels.  I called heads.
I lost."

He took a deep breath, and seemed to focus on her for a moment, then
glanced down at the papers.  "When I came back, I found Christine Walsh
murdered in her bed."
--Short handled blade, executed in his bedroom-
"What about your partner?"
"He was - under the bed.  The killer had-"  He choked, coughed, and
raised his gaze to the ceiling before continuing.  "-He'd been cut
badly.  But he was - alive.  Somehow.  I don't know.  There was so much
blood I didn't think he'd survive.  I must've called an ambulance;
still can't remember doing it.  He flatlined - at Barrett Memorial, but
they got a pulse back after two minutes.  They stripped half a dozen
packs."
Her heart ached even as she recognised and was irritated by the false
conclusion he'd reached.  "It wasn't your fault, Mulder."

His head bowed.  Her hands were moving, reaching outwards.  Her
fingertips caught on his chin.  The skin there was rough; it prickled
on her fingers.  She gently raised his head to meet her gaze.  "You
know that, don't you?"
He gently pushed her hand down to the table, left his own resting over
it.  "I broke with the task force's action plan-"
"You've done that before."  She paused, hearing part of her amend her
words slightly.  "Both of us have, one time or another."
"Those times, I had a better solution."
"You also had one this time.  You picked where he'd strike next.  You
did your job."
He stared at her bleakly.  "We never caught him.  Paul Jefferson spent
six months in hospital and psychiatric wards.  He was brilliant before
Houston.  He came out barely a field agent.  He still has no memory of
what happened that night.  His back and front--after the killer
finished with him--if I'd stuck with the game plan-"
"She'd still be dead.  You said so yourself.  Jefferson -"  She
hesitated, knowing it wasn't fair for her to use the words.  " -
Jefferson's an agent.  He assumed the risks-"
"It was my actions that put him where he is now."
She took a long moment to consider that.  Maybe she was reading this
wrong.  "Is that why you didn't tell me about this case while we were
in Vermont?"
He didn't look at her, silence ruling for a few moments.
"You're afraid of making a mistake that might get me killed? Because of
what happened to Jefferson?"

He drew in a deep breath.  When he spoke, his words were quiet, almost
inaudible.  "After - Jefferson - I didn't work closely with any -
partners after that.  Until you walked in the door.  And - when Duane
Barry -" he trailed off.
She thought about that, and glanced down at the files.  Photographs,
written sheets of paper.  Leaves from his past.  Took a breath.
"Mulder, I think-no, I know-that you trust me.  But I'm telling you
that there's someone else you have to trust."  She put her other hand
over his; over hers.  "You."  She locked her gaze with his own, trying
to put every ounce of the belief she felt into that gaze.  "I know I
do."

But there was still the traitor's voice inside her, wanting to know who
his third partner had been.

He didn't move his hand, instead regarding her with hazel eyes that
seemed, in the light, to glow like the green of swamps again.  "There's
more to it than that."
"Mulder-"
"You have to know, Scully.  You need to understand that -"  He glanced
down at the files, his face grim.  At least that was an improvement
over the dark expression he'd had minutes before.  He looked back at
her.  "This man scares the living hell out of me."
It took her a full five seconds to process that.  She covered it by an
amicable shrug.  "It's understandable that you'd be-"
He was shaking his head, a weak grin on his face, as though he knew
what she was trying to do.  "Not for VCU alumni.  And especially not
for profilers."
She reluctantly conceded the point.  "All right: why?"
"This man isn't a serial killer.  In his own mind he's only responsible
for one death--Christine Walsh.  Maybe not even that.  Killing her was
his goal.  Everything else to him was simply an obstacle to that final
goal.  Even the lives of seven or eight other people."
"What are you saying?"
"This is beginning, Scully.  There's no reason, none, for leaving my
I.D. at a crime scene, unless he's planning on another assassination.
All that the production of the I.D. does is to bring me back into the
case, and bring up these earlier killings.  He wants to muddy the
waters."  Mulder shook his head.  "He's damn near the perfect killer.
Or as perfect as I've seen.  No compulsion to return to the scene of
his crimes, he's skilled enough to avoid detection, and he's organised
enough to engage in long planning with an eye set on his final goal.
Anyone standing tangentially in the way of that goal is a potential
target."
The calm admissions, coming from him, chilled her.  "So how do you stop
him?"
"I've thought about that, ever since we got to Vermont."  He bit his
lip.  "I don't know."

She slowly pulled her hands away from his and reached for the file she
brought with her.  "Well, you might have actually given us somewhere to
start."
"What do you mean?"
"This unidentified substance in Shelley's blood.  The toxicologist who
did the workup says he's almost certain it's partially a variant of
alpha amanitin."
"Alpha amanitin?"
"It's a poison that binds to RNA polymerase two in the human body."
He grinned weakly.  "I only got as far as reproductive systems in
biology."
She thought of the videotapes and quashed her first response.  "RNA
polymerase is a part of the body's protein synthesis system.  It's the
bricks and cement of carbon-based physiology.  Without them, the body's
matter to energy conversion process shuts down.  Alpha amanitin blocks
protein synthesis.  Usually we see a high degree of liver damage,
because the poison in the bloodstream flows to the liver to be
detoxified.  The liver needs a constant stream of enzymes to detoxify
it, though, and the amanitin prevents that."
"You found liver damage on Shelley?"
She nodded.  "In the extreme.  His liver and kidneys were just masses
of dead tissue.  But if it was amanita poisoning, the speed is all
wrong.  Even the most severe cases of amanita poisoning take days to
kill."
"How long did it take Shelley?"  Mulder leaned forward on his chair.

She stared down at her own file before answering.  "My outside estimate
would be twenty to thirty minutes."
Mulder settled back in his chair, his eyes suddenly bright.  "Is that
possible in nature?"
She gestured helplessly.  "I can't tell you one way or the other,
Mulder.  I've never seen anything like this poison before.  But if you
want me to say I found something, I don't know, like a triple helix in
Shelley's blood, you'll be disappointed."
"Anne McCaffrey."
"What?"
"The dragons' genetic code in `Dragonriders of Pern'.  A triple
helix."  He grinned.  "I read it after finishing `Lord of The Rings'
for the third time.  I didn't know you did."
The change in subject threw her for a moment, but she favoured him with
a smile.  He'd sometimes do this, when he thought she was getting
worried.  It irked her, but she was more glad that he was making the
attempt.  "She was Irish.  You read `Lord of the Rings' three times?"
"In a row."
They grinned at each other.

"Did you find anything else out from the autopsy?"
"No, not really.  I only had time to make a cursory examination and
send the blood off for analysis.  The substantive work was almost
finished by the time I got there.  Jefferson talked them into letting
me take a look."
Mulder nodded.  "How was he to work with?"
"Jefferson?"  She thought back.  The strange feeling of deja-vu that
had flowed over her was undeniable.  "It was weird - he was fine to
work with.  It just-"
"Scully?"  She could see a strange glint in his eye, something between
mischief and foreknowledge of her answer.
"Well, I was in the hospital one time, working on Shelley's body, and
the door opened behind me.  For a second I thought it was you.  Not out
of habit, but because you always seem to make the kind of sounds he did
when you burst in on me."  She noted his smile.  "It's - like there's a
lot of you in him."

He nodded.  "More the reverse, really."
She was surprised; he'd mentioned, a long time ago, that he had really
been trained in the Investigative Support Unit.  "I thought Patterson
was your mentor."
And even now, months later, she could still catch a brief flicker of
regret on his face.  "So far as profiling was concerned, yeah.  But
Jefferson - he's a different breed altogether.  Last of Jed Hoover's
generation.  He's no profiler; when he came through, it was about as
reputable as reading entrails.  Jefferson was brought up under the old
school, but even then, he was legendary.  They called him Sherlock
behind his back."
In spite of herself, the edge of her mouth had curled into a grin.
"'Sherlock'?"
"Let me put it this way.  When I first met him, he figured out I was a
psychologist, my middle name was William, I went to Oxford, and that I
was right-handed.  I was just carrying a box of my stuff in to my desk
in his office."
"He could've looked at your I.D."
"It was behind the box I was carrying."
"He could have looked you up before then, like you did me."
He smiled, counting off points on his fingers.  "I was wearing an
Oxford tie.  My box was initialled FW Mulder; William's one of the most
common English names.  I was favouring my right arm carrying the box.
He got confirmation when he noticed my issue holstered on the left side
of my chest.  The box was for photocopy paper for the ISU, and that
taken with the Oxford tie suggested to him that my degree had to be in
psychology."
She was impressed.  "Did he figure out your first name?"
"He thought it was Frank.  Not bad, when you think about it."  He
sobered.  "The man applied Gestalt theory to crime scenes as a matter
of instinct.  He could take minute pieces of a scene and put together
what had happened in almost perfect order, even if all the pieces
weren't there.  We all get that training, but Jefferson took it to the
next level.  He didn't need to get inside a subject's head; he could
trail a man over flat concrete just by deduction.  I think about five
hundred years ago he would've been an animal tracker.  I like to think
that while we were partners, he taught me some of how he did it."  He
was looking inward again.  "After - Houston ... well, he's still a good
field agent, but - not like he was."

"There's something else I found out while I was in Vermont."  A sudden,
stark thought went through her head: it hadn't been her.  It had been
Jefferson who had let her have the details of it.  She shook it away.
"Shelley was a high-technology industrialist, working for a company
here called Sato-Tomkin."
"You're kidding."
She looked at him.  The incredulity on his face reflected that of his
voice.  "Should I be?"
"Frohike once mentioned them a few times when I was out with them."
"Business or personal?" she asked archly.
"Sato-Tomkin's like Cray Research: always the next big thing in
computers.  Extremely advanced chip design.  IBM's been trying to get a
piece of their action for years."
"Well, as of yesterday morning the government wants a piece as well.
The company's trading has been suspended pending a CIA-NSA
investigation."
"Espionage?"
She let him have the pleasure of seeing a wry smile not unlike his had
been one time.  "The CIA and the NSA will not comment on the nature of
their investigation into Sato-Tomkin.  I tried Petros.  Nobody's
talking."
Mulder looked impressed.  Petros was the FBI's covert
counterintelligence team, though in reality so many operatives of the
Bureau and the Agencies passed back and forth it was more an ether in
the intelligence community rather than a specific division within one
department.  Petros' existence wasn't official, but it served an
important role: it kept lines of communication open so the three
government bodies didn't trip over each other's feet.  Much.  She
hadn't liked calling the Vader Boys, as they were known, but she had
been curious.
"So you think maybe this killing had something to do with Sato-Tomkin?"
he was asking her.
"This murder fits an assassination rather than a spree or serial
killer, Mulder," she reasoned.  "You said so yourself.  Maybe someone
at Sato-Tomkin will know why."
He nodded, wincing in distaste as he rasped his hand across his chin.
"Give me a minute or two to get cleaned up."
"Have you ever thought about growing a beard?"
The expression answering her was cautious.  "Are you serious?"
"No."  She smiled archly.  "I just wanted to see the look on your
face.  If that fuzz isn't off when you come out of the bathroom, I'll
cut it myself."
He leered at her, softened it with his most cheesy grin and stood,
moving over to the bathroom. "Promises, promises."

END OF PART 08/30


 The Missionary (09/30)
By Michael Aulfrey


EXTRACT, TAPE RECORDING
#7235679-FR
TOKYO, 1958
CLEARANCE YELLOW (FADE)
AUDIO: JAPANESE 100 PER CENT

DIRECTORATE TO CONFIRM INTEGRITY OF TRANSLATION

HAMAGUCHI: I take it you have heard.
MINYAMOTO: Yes.  The gaijin [tr?] came through our corporate offices
earlier today.
HAMAGUCHI: They found nothing?
MINYAMOTO: What they do not find, they create.  They created two suns
for us.
HAMAGUCHI: Nothing was found?
MINYAMOTO: [Pause] No.  But the direction of their interest indicates
they know.
HAMAGUCHI: How much, do you think?
MINYAMOTO: They went straight to our files covering our liaisons with
the various immigration authorities.  But there was no urgency to their
actions - as though they only sought confirmation.  Besides which,
there was little of use there.  We believe they know where most of our
- people - are.  [Pause] Why do you ask?
HAMAGUCHI: Iwakamu has gone missing.
MINYAMOTO: You think the gaijin--?
HAMAGUCHI: He was a competent enough warrior as well as a doctor.  I
think it cannot be otherwise.
MINYAMOTO: But surely not all?
HAMAGUCHI: Ishii they already know of.  And we saw to it he covered his
tracks well.  Who of the others could they not know?
MINYAMOTO: They do not know all of them.  This is a message to us.  A
sign of what they will do if we do not release the entirety to them.
HAMAGUCHI: [Pause] We must have time.  We cannot let the gaijin know
our plans.  If they were to perceive the Genyosha [tr?] -
MINYAMOTO: Then you want to sacrifice all of them.  Every one of them.
HAMAGUCHI: We are warriors.  Our country - our emperor - was a
warrior.  These men are not warriors.  They are tools only.  Not
warriors.  Warriors do not-
MINYAMOTO: You need not remind me.  So be it.  Let them know.  All of
them.

EXTRACT ENDS.

END OF PART 09/30


--
Michael Aulfrey                   X-Phile, Anti-Gump
Barrister & Solicitor              X-Fanfiction




The Missionary (10/30)
By Michael Aulfrey

"His story checked out?"
Scully drew a thin brochure from under her arm and opened it to page
four.  "Nicholas Linnear, CEO and one of the principal shareholders of
Sato-Tomkin Industries.  Born in Japan, emigrated to the US about 1970,
worked in advertising for several years before taking control of the
company."
Mulder stared at the portrait on the corporate profile and through the
one-way mirror at the Caucasian man in the interview room.  "He doesn't
look Oriental."
"His hair and eyes are different, but his cheekbones give it away, I
think.  Maybe he's half-Oriental."
Scully was gazing intently at Linnear.  After a second, she noticed
Mulder's scrutiny of her and shrugged.  "I spent a couple of years in
Japan with my family.  Ahab was posted there when I was young."

He nodded; winced as a barb of pain rattled around his mouth.  "Do they
teach everyone karate over there?"
"You sure you don't want to see a dentist, Mulder?"
"It's okay.  Besides, we've got him on assaulting a federal officer.
Don't want to compromise a good additional charge."
He saw Scully frown for a second.  "You think he killed James Shelley?"
He stared through the glass for a long moment, letting his feelings
sweep across the idea.  "No.  Something about-"  He stopped for a
moment, gathering the words.  "The man who killed Shelley wouldn't have
gotten caught like this.  It's too - messy.  Besides, he might be
telling the truth."
He stood there, trying to nail down the wisp of memory that went
through his mind.  Scully raised her eyebrows at him.
"This man's name sounds familiar from somewhere," he said to her.  "I
just can't quite place where.  Look, why don't you talk to him about
why we found him at the place?  I've got to check this out."
"So we're tag-teaming on records again?"
He grinned.  "Ask him what the better nightspots in Tokyo are.  I
haven't had sushi for a while."

He moved off down the corridor, leaving her holding the file and
staring at the man through the glass.  Linnear chose that moment to
look up at the mirror, and she once again had that peculiar sensation
that he could see her through it.  It was a common enough reaction, she
rationalised; there were enough alert people in the world who could
surmise the absurdity of a grooming mirror at a downtown Washington
police station.  But even the words sounded a little hollow to her.
His eyes looked at her.  At her.

She shook her head and opened the door of the interrogation room.
Linnear's stare was unbroken as she walked across the room, pulled the
chair out, and sat down opposite him.
"Agent Scully," he said, quietly.  She looked back at him; not the
greeting of a thug, who would have said nothing.  Not the greeting of
an innocent man, either, who would have met her entrance with fear.
"Part of your story checks out," she said, covering her surprise with
confrontation.  "What I'm more interested in is exactly where that fits
in with the bullet holes we found in the building you were at."
"Am I under arrest?"
Again, not the confrontational way she had expected that question to
come.  Merely a quiet, courteous interrogatory.  "You assaulted a
federal officer, Mr. Linnear."
"In a situation where he placed a gun barrel to my head.  He failed to
identify himself before doing so.  That could only constitute self-
defence.  My response was both reasonable and appropriate in the
circumstances."
She winced inwardly.  Oddly, she was more annoyed at Mulder's gaffe
rather than Linnear's calm statement of the facts; the man again had
that strange courtesy that seeped around aggressiveness.  "You sound
like someone who's resorted to that before."
"On some occasions.  Have I been placed under arrest?"
"Not as yet."  She leaned back in her chair.  "However, we would like
your assistance on the subject of the death of James Shelley.  And of
the bullet holes in your front window."
"The bullet holes I can't help you with.  I can only tell you the same
story as the one that I gave you on the way here.  I came to the
building, I found a door open.  I went in, I saw a couple of men
running out.  I went after them.  A bullet just about took my head
off.  Then you showed up."
"What about James Shelley?"
"Murdered about twenty-four hours ago.  An employee of my company."
"How do you know he was murdered?"
"Somehow I doubt a stabbing rates as a natural cause of death.  Or so
his relatives tell me."
She shrugged to herself; occasionally such a slip would come up with
something.  "Do you have any idea of who might have killed Mr. Shelley?"
"Not at present."
"You may know later?"
"If it hits the papers."
Time to play the ace.  Or king.  Or whatever.  "Your company's under
investigation by the CIA and NSA?"
"The FBI's jurisdiction doesn't include counterespionage, as you know."
"Did Mr. Shelley have anything to do with that investigation?"
Linnear didn't reply.
"Mr. Linnear, we can either do it this way, or I can go turn the video
recorder on and we can do this after placing you under arrest."
"Such a course of action would constitute an inducement and/or threat
to provide information.  No judge would allow the tape to be played."
Calm.  Keep calm.  "Are you still willing to assist us with our
investigation?"
"I've already told you just about everything I can remember already.
If you've got enough evidence, place me under arrest and let me have my
phone call.  Or offer me something more than twenty questions."
She felt her eyes narrow.  "Mr. Linnear, bribery-"
"-is a serious offence and it's not what I'm talking about."
"Then what?"
"Shelley's murder.  Tell me more about it."
"This isn't `Silence of the Lambs'."
"Agreed; I was thinking more of `The Naked Gun'."
The anger sprung up, unexpectedly.  She slapped a hand on the table.
"Goddammit, Mr. Linnear-"
"It's possible the killer is known to my organisation," said Linnear.
"The details could tell me one way or the other."

She stared into his eyes.  There was a disturbing feeling that came
when she did that; as though he was staring back, not just into her
eyes, but into her mind.  She weighed up the pros and cons.  There was
also that strange feeling that this man could see her thoughts as she
did so.  She dismissed the idea.  Something about this man-she shook
herself.
"James Shelley was murdered with a short blade.  Whoever killed him was
a professional.  The killer walked past several cameras and into a
secured house to do so."
"How did he get in?"
She considered again.  "He severed the hand of Shelley's daughter and
used her fingerprints to get past the front door security."

A sudden feeling of excitement ran through her.  She felt it.  Strong.
Nicholas hadn't moved, but - something - had moved within his mind.
Something about his posture.  Still sitting quietly, arms folded across
his Armani suit, but in some way, he was leaning forward, across the
table, looking at her more intently.  She glanced towards the elbows of
his suit; there was no tension in the material suggesting tightening
muscles.  And yet-

Suddenly the moment was gone again, the tension evaporating from him.
"That means something to you?"
Another unexpected reaction from him: surprise flickering across his
features before disappearing.  He glanced at the one-way mirror.  His
words drifted across to her.  "There are some groups such as the Yakuza
that specialise in the amputation of extremities.  As punishment."
"Do you know of any reason why James Shelley would chalk up a debt with
such an organisation?"

He focused back on her.  "I was thinking aloud.  There are none.
Shelley had no debts or vices.  We did our checking before hiring
him."  His eyes narrowed.  "No.  Not Yakuza."  He seemed to hesitate.
"-Mr. Linnear?"
"There is another group that severs body parts as a punishment process,
but it is an entire discipline rather than a gang of thugs.  You say
the house was secure?"
"Electronic and camera surveillance.  The guard was killed as well."
Linnear bit his top lip for a moment, regarding her silently.  "It is
possible that the killer was a ninja."
"Excuse me?"
"A practitioner of the art of ninjutsu.  A ninja."

Unbidden, the memory rose up: been watching too many kung fu movies,
Mulder? Nicholas must have seen it, because he seemed to settle himself
further into the chair, as though preparing himself for a long
argument.  Something held her first response back.  The memory of
Modell, perhaps.
"Mr. Linnear, while I could accept that Mr. Shelley's killer is well-
trained, I don't think we need to resort to myths to explain this
situation."
"It is only a hypothesis at this point."  She caught another slight
hesitation behind the words; wondered at it.  "But if that hypothesis
is correct, calling this man merely trained does not do justice to
him.  He is beyond that term.  His training, if you like, began in
childhood.  And never ends.  The skills he used are second nature to
him, as natural as walking or even breathing."

Maybe it was the echo of Mulder's words in Linnear's that irritated
her.  "You make him sound like death personified."
"If so, that's not what I intended.  I'm trying to-"  Linnear broke
off, staring at one of the walls for a second before turning back to
her.  "Look, a ninja is a man, but what he's made into is something
else entirely.  Western society is filled with stories of elite,
superhuman men - your Van Dammes, your Stallones.  We've become so used
to them we scorn the idea such a man could exist.  Not so in Japan.  We
may come from an MTV culture.  The Japanese do not.  There remains an
element of - mysticism tied in with their history.  The ninja has been
part of that culture for practically the entirety of its existence.
For the ninja, the martial arts -- the art -- is not just a way of
life, but life itself.  Certainly not just a few years tacked onto
military service."
"Mr. Linnear, I don't pretend to fully understand Japanese culture, but
half of the ninja's supposed power came from legend as much as any
specialist training."
"I'm not saying otherwise.  Not that I can expect you to understand it
right away.  I just hope it won't take more bodies before you realise
what you're dealing with."
"If it's a ninja."
Linnear upturned his palms in a gesture of surrender.  "I could be
wrong, of course.  But Shelley was very security-conscious; that much I
knew of him.  Taking that into consideration, there's only a few breeds
of men who could accomplish what you've described.  The ninja is one of
them.  In Shelley's case, I'd have to examine the grounds to be
certain."

There was a moment of silence as she leafed through the file she'd
brought with her.  When she looked up again, he was still gazing
steadily at her.
"What is it?" she asked.
"You don't strike me as the usual model of a federal agent."
She looked back into the file on Linnear.  "There's a model I should
follow?"
"Candidly admitting your ignorance on a subject unrelated to the
circumstances of a crime.  It doesn't fit with an interrogating
officer's usual mode of operation."
"You haven't been charged yet.  How do you know so much about the
ninja, if they're such a secret group?"
Linnear said nothing for a moment.  Eyes, looking down into her.
"There have been unsavoury characters I've dealt with over the years.
I've had to educate myself on the subject."
"You seem to have succeeded."  Her eyes flicked to the calluses on the
outside edges of his palms.  Other than that, his hands were smooth,
somehow young for the body they were attached to.
He noted the scrutiny without glancing down; folded his arms and
regarded her unblinkingly.  "I've learned a few skills."

Her cel phone trilled, and she left the room before pressing the
`Answer' button.  "Scully."
"Yeah, it's me.  Can you meet me out front?"
"What's going on, Mulder?"
"They've found another body out on Staten Island, New York.  NYPD heard
on the wire about Shelley's murder.  This one looks like it might be
the same guy."
"Do we have an ID on the victim yet?"
"Yeah.  A physicist named Felix Murchison."
A thrill of fear went through her.  Incredible.  That name-she glanced
through the one-way glass at Linnear.  He was looking at the opposite
wall, patiently waiting.  Something passed through her like premonition.
"Scully? You there?"
"Yeah.  Look, Mulder, we'll need a secure car."
"Why?"
She paused for a second.  "I'd like to bring Linnear along with us."
A silence for a moment on the other end of the line.  There was the
hiss of static in the background, incomprehensible voices singing.
Then-"Okay.  I'll meet you in about fifteen minutes."

			*			*

"Extremely elegant."
Lindley took a step forward, staring over the technician's shoulder.
"What do you mean?"
"The method of communication.  First they gave us a series of
successive prime numbers, repeated three times, right along the 1420
megahertz hydrogen line.  Basically the universal CB radio.  That was
followed by a series of binary numbers, interspersed with a checksum in
binary at regular intervals.  We had a little trouble with that until
we figured out that it's not actually code.  It's a two-dimensional
image."
"Of what?"
"The stars, as viewed from Earth.  Lastly, a series of six two-digit
numbers.  That clinched it.  They're a longitude and a latitude.  We
figured out this is an image of the stars as viewed from that
particular location."
"And how does that assist us?"
"Well, we can predict the location of the stars based on date and
time.  Any kids' astronomy program can do it.  And we can also do the
reverse: find a date and a time from the position of the stars at a
given location."

Which was, after all, the important part.  Lindley took a deep breath
and glanced around at the others.  Not so much consensus this time.
Some of them matched his gaze, their thoughts unreadable.  A few of
them were gazing upwards at the glass roof and beyond, the stars.  Of
all of them, the only one staring at the floor was watching flecks of
ash drift to the floor from the tip of the cigarette he tapped
thoughtfully.
"It's strange, being given a bottom line, isn't it?"
Lindley glanced across at Purcell.  The man's hands were in the pockets
of his suit, staring into the space directly ahead of him.  He blinked
as he realised the number of gazes directed at him, then smiled bleakly.
"Humanity, that is.  Mozart.  Picasso.  All the things our species has
done.  Come -"  He glanced at the display, where the numbers stared
greenly back at him.  "Come that day, it's all gone.  Tears in the
rain."
Pandeone's gaze dropped from Orion.  "We will survive."
Purcell snorted.  No words were spoken in response to the arrogance.
"And the high point of civilisation we are.  Rome falls, and Brutus
walks out."
"The consequences of our actions are well-known to all of us," snapped
Lindley.  There was a feather of resonance inside his heart, but he
squelched it.  "To you as well.  If you're having second thoughts-"
"I'll end up like The Raven, I suppose."  Purcell seemed grimly amused.
"William Mulder was dealt with because he endangered our security,"
said Lindley.
"It seems to me he's still doing so," said Purcell.  "Take the other
reason we've been gathered together."
Lindley felt his eyes narrow in puzzlement.  He flicked a glance across
at the others.  Saw the same expression reflected in his companions'
face.  Again, all except the one who was staring openly at Purcell over
his cigarette.  Those eyes flicked across at Lindley, and shifted to
the cigarette as he tapped more ash from the end, gathering the gaze of
the others as surely as rapping a gavel.
"Whoever killed James Shelley has now taken Felix Murchison," he said.
This time there was no disguising the exclamations of dismay from them
all.
"How does this concern William Mulder?" asked Pandeone.
"His involvement in Project Daedalus," said Purcell.  "Which cannot
fail to come to be known to his son, now that both Shelley and
Murchison are dead."
"Agent Mulder has glimpsed at a number of our projects.  He obtained
nothing of value from those, either."  The man crushed his cigarette
out.
"Barely," retorted Purcell, locking gazes with the man.  Lindley kept
his amazement from his face; few would have tried that.
"It's irrelevant at this point what agent Mulder knows.  The foundation
of our research is based upon the discretion and security we are able
to provide to our people.  Both have been compromised."
Lindley decided to play it out.  "And what do you suggest?"
"Our associate in Japan must be questioned.  Whatever else has been
discussed, it seems clear that Project Daedalus or its participants are
the target."
"And if we should find some complicity in our Japanese associate?"
The man lit his cigarette and smiled.  "Let's not discuss terminal
prejudice until the need arises."

END OF PART 10/30




The Missionary (11/30)
By Michael Aulfrey

He closed his eyes for a second.

Against the fear, rather than the smell as the bodybag's black petals
were unfurled.  Felix Murchison had only been dead for a good six hours
or so; there was the final, mocking epitaph of the smell of evacuated
bowels about his body, but decomposition hadn't set in.  The gnawing
coolness of the New York County Medical Examiner's offices had slowed
the process to a crawl.  He felt the hairs rising on the back of his
palms.  Wondered how much was temperature and how much emotion.

His closed eyelids only betrayed memories of Houston, and he opened
them again, letting the stirring in his stomach churn on.  He took a
deep breath as Scully pushed back the sides of the bag a little
further, peered closer at the man's chest.  Next to him, he felt
Linnear stir.  The man walked quietly around the end of the gurney,
making the gentlest of noises on the tiles, until he was opposite
Scully, studying what she was doing.

Scully gently probed at the most obvious wound with a clear-gloved
hand.  "Trauma to the chest region."  Mulder saw her glance at the tape
recorder to reassure herself it was running.  "Two vertical incisions
approximately ten centimetres in length, parallel in the centre of the
sternum.  Depth appears to reach halfway into the body.  Extensive
blood loss, suggesting either exsanguination or shock resulting
therefrom as the cause of death."
"I doubt that," said Linnear suddenly.  Mulder looked at him.  Saw
Scully reach out and turn the tape recorder off.
"What do you mean?" she asked.  In spite of the fear, Mulder felt
surprise register somewhere inside him.  An interruption at this point
by him would have earned him a sharp rejoinder, in any other
investigation.

Linnear folded his arms over his suit and exhaled heavily, still
looking at the body.  "I think you may find the incisions only appear
to penetrate vertically through the body.  A couple of inches in, the
wounds curve upwards, under the ribcage and into the heart, piercing
it."
"And on what do you base that diagnosis?" said Mulder.  He fought down
the sudden petulance.
Linnear looked at him: still that calm, implacable face.  "There's a
technique called The Rising Moon.  It's a finishing strike favoured by
masters of the kama."
"Oh, one ran over my dogma yesterday," said Mulder.  Wished he hadn't.
Still the calm face.  But now with an edge to the gaze.
"Kama means the sickle in Japanese.  It's a weapon about fifty to sixty
centimetres in length, like a miniature scythe.  It was originally used
by Japanese peasants, some five hundred years ago.  Like the nunchaku
and tonfa, it was later incorporated into bujutsu - the overall body of
martial arts.  In the hands of an experienced practitioner, it's one of
the most deadly hand-to-hand weapons in existence."
"A sickle?"
"Honed to razor sharpness, agent Mulder, and made of forged Japanese
steel.  No longer quite the farmer's tool it was, I can assure you.
You'll recall how I blocked your gun.  If I held a kama, you would have
had no hand.  The kama is as murderous in defence as in attack.  It
takes years to learn its balance.  Decades, to master."
Mulder tossed the envelope onto one of the steel benchtops and folded
his arms.  "So you're saying that this ninja you were talking about
might have done this?"
"More than might have.  I'm certain of it now.  The use of the kama
itself is rare enough.  But the Rising Moon is virtually unknown
outside Japan.  And within Japan itself, its use is rare.  Most ryu -
schools -- don't emphasise the killing strikes.  Most."
Mulder waited for a moment.  "And what about your ninja's alma mater?"
"The Fodo ryu, among others, specialised in the use of short and small
blades.  You've told me about the guard and James Shelley, and the
knives.  The kama was one of the ryu's disciplines as well, in
antiquity.  It is possible that your killer was trained at that ryu."
Scully zipped the bodybag closed.  Mulder glanced away, listening to
her words, staring at the envelope again.
"Did Felix Murchison have any association with James Shelley?" she
asked.
Linnear glanced at her.  "None that I know of.  Who is this man?"
"He was a physicist," said Scully, walking slowly across the room to a
handbasin.  "A Nobel laureate.  He did his work on the physics of atoms
in the context of a biological form.  I read part of his work while I
was doing my senior thesis.  What's his connection to a computer
company?"
"I don't know," said Linnear.  "But only - rarely - do these men ever
cause collateral damage.  Their sole aim is to get close to a target
and eliminate it."
The annoyance, combined with the fear, brimmed over.  "You've told us a
lot about this man's abilities.  If he is your killer."
Across the room, he saw Scully glance back at him, then at Linnear.
Nicholas folded his arms.  "Your point being?"
"What disabilities does he have?"
"The ninja have had four hundred years to iron out their oversights.
So if you mean blind spots, this man has none."
"I don't accept that.  He's still a man, isn't he? There must be
something.  You seem to know so much about them.  There has to be
something."
"Only this, then: the ninja won't use C4 or the long gun.  Oh, he knows
all of those things and how to utilise them, but his code precludes
them.  I suppose you could say that to use such methods would be -
crude.  In bad taste.  When he takes out his target, it has to be at
arms'-length," he nodded towards the bodybag.
"What if we surround his target with police?"
"The ninja are taught that if one cannot go around, one goes through."
There was an elemental coldness in the phrase that made Mulder's spine
itch.  Nicholas leaned back.  "Perhaps you would finish him.  But not
before lives are lost."
"I need more than that," snapped Mulder, feeling the fear rise again.
"I want this man.  He's killed a  girl who had nothing to do with
anything the victims might have been involved in.  Now, are you going
to offer us some real advice, or do we go ahead and arrest-"
"Mulder," said Scully, cutting across his words.  He gaped at her.  She
turned back to Nicholas, her own eyes hardening.

Linnear returned the stare for a long moment before replying.  "You
need to understand why he has chosen the targets he has.  Generally
these men are employed to conduct a single assassination, simply
because of the prohibitive cost involved.  He operates at a rarefied
level of funding.  The killing of more than one target suggests to me a
- personal involvement."

Mulder felt his stomach turn.  There was only one explanation, now.  He
knew it.  In his heart, there was no question.  But still he asked.
"As in revenge?"
"As in personal involvement - revenge, terrorism, something other than
the economics," said Linnear.
Scully was watching Mulder now, and he darted away from her speculative
gaze.  Too many questions and condolences in that expression.
"Is there something you wanted to tell me, agent Mulder?" asked
Linnear.  Not a mocking question.  A simple request, given gently.

The fear was hurting his guts.  He held Nicholas' gaze for a long
second, and then pulled a rubber glove on.  Picked up the envelope from
the bench and slowly opened it.  Thinking of another half-lit place, in
his mother's house, after his father had died-
"They found a photograph at the crime scene.  Stuffed into Murchison's
left pocket."
A hesitation in his fingers that he could not account for.  He overrode
it, gripping the edge of the weathered paper between thumb and
forefinger and sliding it out.  He let the envelope fall away as he
gently laid the photograph on the bench top, and took a step back to
give Scully room as she walked over to look at it.

Her back was to him.  She stood there for several long seconds.  He
watched her.  She was motionless for those moments.  Then she turned to
face him, so slowly for a second he thought she had not moved at all.
She held his gaze, motionless again.  Even as Linnear walked on quiet
feet between them to stand beside Mulder to stare down at the
photograph.

"Who are these men?"
Mulder jumped: the voice was not from Scully, but Nicholas.  Carrying
something akin to the feeling in his own guts.  His head snapped around
to look at the executive.  Linnear was staring openly at the
photograph, a look of grief and surprise Mulder recognised from a
mirror.
"Why?" said Mulder, faintly.
Linnear stared openly at him.  No mask to his apprehension now.  His
finger pointed at the right side of the picture.  Even with the ache,
he did not touch the paper.  He seemed to regain some of his composure
with the gesture.  "This man helped rebuild Japan after the end of
World War Two.  His name--"  Nicholas took a breath.  "His name was
Denis Linnear."

Personal involvement.  Nicholas Linnear, CEO of Sato-Tomkin
International.  A company from Japan, in a nation where outsiders were
rarely, if ever, trusted.  A nation where family links, particularly
direct lines of genealogy, were very important.
"Your father?"
Nicholas nodded, looking back at the photograph.  Narrowed his gaze,
then glanced back at Mulder again.  Once more at the picture.  He
would, Mulder knew, be looking at the left side of the picture rather
than the right.  "And it seems I might ask you the same question."
Mulder felt the fear edge up a notch, but tried to keep his tone
light.  "You read fortunes as well?"
"The family resemblance is quite strong."
"You don't recognise these other men?" asked Scully, gently.  A part of
Mulder's mind noted dryly that the question was directed at Linnear.
"No.  My father was part of the restoration of Japan.  In the wake of
World War Two, Japan's society had to be broken down and
reconstructed.  General McArthur had to find a way of ensuring Japan
would never be a military threat again.  He had to attack the rigid
class structure in Japanese society that midwifed the war.  So, the
Emperor admitted his humanity.  The Constitution was rewritten to an
American model of democracy.  Japan's army, navy and air force became a
self-defence force."
"You don't sound like it worked."
Linnear glanced at Scully.  "The attempt was made.  However, to achieve
it, the Americans had to enlist the aid of the zaibatsu - the massive
corporate bodies that led Japan to war in the first place.  All the
Americans did was place the zaibatsu back in control, admittedly
without military influence but still with political and financial
power.  But by then America's aim had changed.  They were more
concerned with making Japan their bulwark against Communism in the
East.  Thus the restoration was perverted.  Men like my father -
preferred the original plan."  Linnear took a breath.  "But that
doesn't explain why he's in this photograph."
"My father worked for the State Department," said Mulder.  He stared
down at the photograph.  Linnear's father was a careworn, aging man;
past his prime.  William Mulder stared out from the picture with
burning, intense eyes, youth and fire still in his body.  A pang of
regret swept over Mulder as he took the photograph, shoved it down into
a pocket.
"What's his occupation?"
"He died."
"I'm sorry."  Linnear paused for a moment.  "Did he ever travel abroad?"
"I was - very young," said Mulder.  Memories again of a time after his
father's death, pressing against his heart.  "He'd go on the road.  I -
never knew where-"

The gurney saved their lives.  The door to the theater was made of
heavy wood, about twenty feet away across an otherwise uncluttered
space of open floor.  As it was kicked open, Mulder went for his
pistol, but Nicholas was ahead of him.  One suited leg swung out in a
short arc and overturned the old, steel-based stretcher, spilling
Murchison's body onto the floor with a loud clatter in the direction of
the door.

"Down!" Linnear yelled as the two dark-suited men spilled into the
room, raising familiar shapes of Uzi semiautomatic rifles.  Part of
Mulder's mind was watching in disbelief as Linnear leapt towards one of
the benches lining the room's walls.  Rather than behind the gurney.
He forgot Linnear.  Tackled Scully just as the charnel-house roar of
gunfire came.  Felt the slipstream of a bullet as it passed his face.
Then they were on the floor with the wide gurney between themselves and
the gunmen.  Scully's scream registered somewhere in the back of his
mind.  Too busy.  He'd landed on his left side, and was trying to roll
onto his back and pull the pistol from its shoulder mount at the same
time.  Shards of glass beakers and wall plaster rained down over him.

He finally cleared leather just as two more screams rang out.  Not
Scully this time.  And not covered by the roar of gunfire but above
them, cutting through at an elemental level that made Mulder flinch.  A
second or two, and the gunfire abruptly cut off, followed by a second's
silence to his battered ears and the final clatter of metal falling to
the floor.  He felt movement above the precarious cover of the gurney.
Drove his torso upward.  Snapped the gun over the gurney's edge-

A fist clamped onto his wrist and pushed the gun out of the way.  He
registered Linnear, crouched over, blocking the pistol.  The CEO's eyes
were glittering, and yet there was the calmness of a prehistoric stone
in them.  Mulder's hand was aching from the strength of Linnear's
fingers.
"Come on," said Linnear, and straightened, helping Mulder to his feet.
He turned to the door, raising his gun-but the two suited men lay face-
up on the floor, blood trickling from their noses.  One had dark eyes,
part of Mulder noted blankly.  Their weapons lay atop them.
"How did you-"
"No time.  Move!" Linnear was already getting Scully to her feet and
over the gurney.  That voice snapped out command.  Mulder sidestepped
to the door, pistol in both hands, arms down.  He looked down at the
two shooters again.  As plaster dust rained from his hair, he saw what
Linnear had seen: headsets with microphone attachments.  There would be
others.  He reached for his cel phone.  Remembered the battery had run
out on the way here.

Scully was stripping off the gloves and surgical garb.  The blue
material fell away like an old skin.  Before it had reached the floor,
she had pulled out her own pistol and had it clasped between her hands
in a position identical to Mulder's.  He took a quick glance out the
door in both directions; a long passageway in both cases.  To the left,
double doors about fifty metres further along.  To the right, curving
around a corner twenty metres out.  Nobody in sight.  Right now.
Scully exhaled sharply and shoved her mobile phone back in her suit
pocket.  "No carrier.  Maybe there's some interference from the
structure."
Linnear reached down and plucked the headsets off the two gunmen.
Swiftly patted down one of the bodies, pausing on one of the legs.  He
straightened, threw the headsets across the room.
"Fire exit," he said, nodding left, in the direction they'd originally
come to this room.  A green glow from a fluorescent light beckoned.
"It'll be watched," said Mulder.
"Not optimal," agreed Linnear, glancing back up the corridor, "But
somehow I doubt we'll be walking out through the front door."
Scully was crouched over the still forms of the gunmen now, looping the
Uzis' straps off the two men and over her own shoulders.  "Any chance
we could wait for the cavalry?" she said.
Mulder felt his fear return, and something deeper add to it.  "I've got
a feeling the cavalry won't be coming this time."

The passage to the right echoed with noise.  A door crashed open.  A
shouted command, then hollow sounds like something falling out of a
tube.  Two steel canisters rolled to the wall from the end of the
corridor and bumped against it, silvery fog seeping out like steam from
a dying kettle.  Mulder broke for the fire exit, sensed the others
right behind him.  Maybe Linnear knew tear gas when he saw it.  Maybe
he just knew the right thing to do was to follow two agents running for
their lives.

He shouldered the fire exit door open, sidestepped and crouched,
bringing the pistol up as he looked to the upper floors.  The fire exit
was a spiral of staircases made of concrete, the walls whitewashed.
There was a void at the stairwell's centre.  The upper floors were
clear, at least for the moment.  He motioned them across and down the
stairs, pulling the door closed behind Scully.

Linnear's shoes were silent on the stairs as he took two at a time, a
knife grasped backwards in his right hand, the blade flat against his
wrist.  He passed a red four on the wall.  Scully followed, glancing
back at Mulder a few steps down.  She tapped one of the slung Uzis with
a finger.  He nodded, holstering the Smith and Wesson as he jogged
after her.   She passed him the Uzi.  Level three.  Two.  Excitement
counterpointed the fear beating in Mulder's mind.  Maybe they'd make it.

Somewhere above, one of the doors crashed open.  A second or two later,
the gunfire.  Sparks flew ahead of Linnear, and he shrank back against
the wall, glancing around.  Mulder snapped the Uzi up and squeezed the
trigger.  The weapon's thunder was overpowering in the echoing space.
Their pursuers stepped back a pace.  Scully and Linnear were moving
again.  Mulder fired a couple more rounds and ran after them.

The hollow thumping sound came again.  Behind Mulder there came a clink
as of champagne glasses before two or three small silver canisters
passed them by, dropping down the void in the centre of the stairwell.
The gunfire returned in force, driving the three of them back against
the wall.  Distantly, Mulder heard the tear gas canisters exhaling at
the bottom of the stairwell.  Scully ducked out for a moment, offered a
burst of fire upwards, and slammed herself back against the wall again
as sparks traced her path.  There was a sudden oath from upstairs, and
a momentary silence.
"Basement level's blocked," she breathed.  "We'll never find our way
through tear gas, without masks."
Linnear peered cautiously down into the gloom.  "Something's moving
down there.  We don't have much time."
Mulder glanced around, thinking furiously.  "There.  First floor
door."  His gaze snapped to the upper levels.  Black-suited movement.
He opened fire.  "Go!"  Followed them as the movement vanished.

They slammed the door behind them.  Mulder scanned the room.  A heavy
rosewood boardroom table and the chairs around it were sliced into
lines of shine and shadow by the afternoon sun from wide windows, cut
down by thin venetian shades.  At one end of the room a matching
bookcase held dozens of law texts, perpendicular to a plain, grey
door.  He and Linnear moved around the table.  It took some effort to
start, but they managed to push the heavy desk flush against the fire
exit.  They crossed over to Scully, who was standing with the second
door slightly ajar, the Uzi raised in one hand.  "What's the story?"
She peered out.  "Offices.  Small cubicles.  Can't see a doorway from-"
She slammed the door, rolling back away from it flush with the
bookcase.  Explosions of plywood erupted where she had been standing.
Mulder dived and rolled, splinters flying past him.  Scully drew a
sharp breath, wrenched at the doorhandle and thrust her arm around the
doorframe with the Uzi, spraying several shots in that direction.  She
pulled her arm back in just as more gunfire tore away the wood around
the doorhandle.

Mulder got to a crouch next to her.  "How many?"
"Four, maybe five.  I couldn't tell just from looking."  She must have
noticed him staring at the Uzi's clip.  "We can't win a gunfight."
"Not against tear gas, anyway," said Linnear.  Mulder jumped; one
moment, the man had been by the fire exit door, the next, within
striking distance of Mulder's back.  Linnear nodded at the window.
"That's our only option."
Gunfire chewed at the fire exit door.  Splinters of rosewood ricocheted
off the walls.  It was echoed by a short fusillade at the door leading
out into the offices.  Scully crouched down, put her arm around the
door and let another few rounds go.  There were shouts from that
direction.  Even so, the click of her weapon's hammer against an empty
chamber was louder.  She pulled the Uzi back in and drew her Smith and
Wesson again, glancing up at Mulder.

Mulder raised the Uzi's muzzle and bled it dry against the
windowpanes.  The glass cracked into a tinted spiderweb.  He tossed the
gun to the floor and grabbed one of the roller chairs.  Gunfire
chattered at the grey door once more.  Scully replied with three quick
rounds, the noise more deep-throated than her previous weapon had
been.  Mulder heaved the chair at the glass; it was followed by one of
the others from Nicholas' hands.  The glass exploded, showering
outward.  A warm breeze whipped into the conference room.

Linnear jogged over to the edge.  The breeze ruffled at his straight
hair.  He took a second to stare over the edge.  Another set of rounds
from the grey door rattled; the doorhandle fell away.  Linnear crouched
and dropped over the edge.  Mulder tapped Scully on the shoulder, and
she moved over to the edge, hesitated for a moment, looking back at
him.  A round of gunfire tore at the fire escape, and the door shivered
on its hinges.  He heard her yell as she jumped.

Mulder snapped his hand around the grey door one last time.  He
squeezed off four rounds before he heard the hollow thump of a canister
launcher again.  But different this time.  A heavier sort of thump,
somehow.  Like the canister was heavier.  He realised.  Pushed away
from the jamb and went for the window, legs stretched out, pumping for
maximum distance.  He remembered his first sprint at college.  He'd
been half-dead after it was over.  It felt like the race had come back
to haunt him.

He rolled over the side as the fuse of the grenade ran out, detonating
just inside the grey door.  A hot wash of air rolled over him.  Thunder
broke across his ears.  But he was falling, it seemed forever,
tumbling, glass rain falling around him, and as he fell, he realised
the blast had flipped him in the air, over and over, even the short
distance that he fell and-

He landed in a surface that was half inviting, half sharp and hard.
Pain washed over him, making him cry out in spite of himself.  Smells
assaulted his nose.  Rotted and dead things.  Disposed things.
Garbage.  The first thing he thought of.  Then hands were at his
shoulders, pulling him up.  The pain lanced through him again, and he
cried out again, the world spinning for a second.
"Mulder, are you okay?"
Mulder.  Yes.  Mulder.  That was his name.  Before the pain had
started.  Someone.  Woman.  Asking his name.  Was.  He.  Okay.  That
took a little longer to work out.  He squinted against the pain in his
shoulder and stared up.  The woman

[scully]

was asking the question.  Next to her, Linnear was glancing upwards and
behind him.  Mulder noted movement in his hand.  The knife was out.
Mulder noted that the blade had been carbonised black to prevent a
reflective flash.  The two of them were pulling at him, trying to get
him up.  He began to move his right shoulder-

The pain lashed out, hazing the world red for a moment.  He felt
wetness on his forehead.  Heard words.
Linnear: "His shoulder?"
A brief, tentative brush against the pain.  He bit his lip and tried to
stop from crying out.  "I think it's dislocated."  That was Scully.
A sound like dry rubbing: an organic rasping.  "Stand back a moment."
"Wait, Linnear, what are you doi-"
Pain burst like a bomb of fire in his head, and he couldn't avoid the
screaming this time.  Waves of pain for a long second, and pressure,
unrelenting pressure.  Then a click he felt throughout his body, and
the pain began to fade off, replaced by a feeling of looseness in his
shoulder.
"Hell of a party," he coughed.  Saw Linnear's eyes grin just a little.
"He'll be all right," said the CEO, and then the man was hauling him
up, pressing on the shoulder.  Mulder winced against the pain once more
but refused to cry out.  It was rapidly fading, and he began to gain
his own feet.  He was looking around.

It was an alley below the conference room.  A monstrous pile of garbage
had accumulated over years and unrepentant city administrations.
Mulder saw they were stumbling towards a T-junction, the bright-lit
street at the far end, the T-branch leading off to the right, further
into New York's maze of backstreets.
"You should cut down on the Lethal Weapon movies," said Mulder to
Linnear.
"First chance I get," promised Nicholas.
Scully and Nicholas were supporting one shoulder each.  Mulder gently
shrugged the two of them off.  "I'm okay now.  Just let me get my
breath."
Linnear glanced back at the first floor.  "All right.  But hurry.  We
haven't got much time before they figure out-"

Mulder hadn't thought of snipers, either.  The bullet took him in the
right leg.  The pain burst out a split second before the report of the
rifle reached them.  Nicholas had already swung Scully to the ground in
the T-branch, around the corner.  Mulder felt the leg collapse under
him.  The pain had returned.  Hi, honey, I'm home.  Another shot
blasted brickwork from above his right ear.  He scramble-crawled to a
spot behind three garbage cans on the opposite wall.  Pain washed in
waves across his eyes.  The blood was soaking through the trouser leg.

"Mulder!" he heard Scully shout.  She got one shoulder out past the
cover of the wall before Nicholas' supple hand yanked her back.
Another report of the rifle and the clay bricks exploded where her head
had been.  Another shot.  A garbage can in front of Mulder dented
inwards.
He snapped his gaze back to Scully.  She was being held back by
Nicholas in a powerful grip.  She was struggling to free herself.  For
a second, his fear rose.  Then he met Nicholas' eyes.  There was
understanding.

Mulder drew his pistol.  "Get out of here!"
"Mulder, no! We can't-"
Another shot's whine off the wall drowned out her words.  He stuck a
shoulder and head over the garbage can and squeezed off a few shots in
what he thought was the general direction of the shooter.  Ducked
back.  Looked across at Scully.  Nicholas had pushed her up against the
wall.  He couldn't hear what the CEO was saying.  The gunfire had
drowned it out.  Linnear's mouth was moving frantically.  But he could
hear the scream of skidding tyres from further up the alley.  A Ford
LTD pulled around the corner as he looked that way.  Glanced back.

Linnear was a few steps further up the alley than her, caught half in a
beam of light.  Looking back at Scully.  She stood at the midway point
between the CEO and Mulder, pistol half-raised.  Eyes were filled with
indecision.  And more-
"Go, dammit!"
His words were drowned out by the rattle of automatic fire from the
conference room above.  Brickwork turned to powder around him.  He
closed his eyes for a second.  Opened them.  Scully was a fading shadow
down the alley, following Linnear's indistinct shadow.  They were
running.  He allowed himself a grin.

The team from the conference room at that point decided that further
pussyfooting around wasn't necessary, and dropped another grenade into
the alley from the first floor.  This time the fuse was considerably
shorter.

END OF PART 11/30




The Missionary (12/30)
By Michael Aulfrey

Normally Michi had control over his dreams.

Or rather the person who had put on Michi like a mask had control.  He
suspected that his somnolent mind's musings might have been a side
effect of taking on his identity.  They had said nothing of such a
thing in the ryu; merely hinted only at total concentration being
required to create the necessary total control for the assumption of
another person's being.

The concentration he had eliminated.  His control over the false
identity was complete in the physical sense.  From one step to the next
he could be Michi or his true self, no trace of the other remaining,
requiring the barest force of will.  Perhaps Michi was kami in some
way: summoned back through the blood of his ancestors from a dead time,
to live again in his mind.  A ghost in search of a home.

However, the dreams were his own.  A part of him pondered this, even as
the dream unfolded and he felt the salt water wind from the east ruffle
at his hair.  He opened his eyes to Hokkaido.  The house was behind
him, blocking the sun, but he knew from the spilling of the colours
that it was sunset.  Crimson and gold filmed the Pacific's waters like
the blood of a god.  The wind probed at him again and stirred the
leaves of the cherry blossom closer to the water, sending saltwater
scent through him.  Some of his colleagues found silence in the raising
of bonsai; he preferred the full shadow of the four metres he had
raised from its germination.

Michi removed from the sash of his kimono the delicate ricepaper he had
received.  He had not read it; its words were known to him.  Even so,
he had taken the hour since receiving it here, kneeling on the ash
boards of the house's eastern porch.  Meditating.  Bringing back
memories he would need.  He opened the folded paper with hands as
delicate as the paper, stronger and more supple than the wood of the
cherry blossom.  Lowered his eyes to the black brushstrokes of formal
kanji.

Felt the emotions rise, and let them ride out their storm inside him.
He stopped.  Considered.

When he had finished, he looked up at the cherry blossom.  The wind
rippled at his black kimono.  Rippled at the blossoms, which bent,
hesitated a moment, and then shattered, beginning to fall, petals
carried on the breeze.  Michi opened his hands and let the ricepaper
go.  The wind tugged it along and over the porch's edge, falling,
disappearing.

There was a scrape of movement from the house behind him.  He did not
come on guard.  It would be Akemi, quietly moving in her wonderful
liquid way across the tatami mats.  She would see his shadow on the
porch against the ocean's reflected light.
"Kensu," she called softly.

The man called Michi woke up.  The disorientation faded quickly, and he
was on his feet once more, dark eyes flicking from one shadow to the
next.  Not out of fear for what it might contain; he had long passed
that point.  Rather, only to look at the subtle signs he had placed to
tell whether anyone had been close to this point of temporary refuge.
He expected none, and found none; but his training was too ingrained to
ever ignore this.  He made his final confirmation when he tested the
door of the carriage and found it untampered.

He took a final gaze around the mouldering space of the abandoned
subway car, and moved out into the darkness.  He carried no lamp or
flashlight.  Required none.  The items he had recently obtained negated
that necessity.  The circumstances of his gaining them caused a sudden
pang.  Michi savagely put the feeling down.

"Kensu," murmured a voice from behind him.

A blade was in Michi's left hand with a flicker of motion.  He spun in
the form of Heron Takes Wing, used when close quarters and tactical
considerations demanded space.  Nothing moved.  Elapsed time less than
three seconds.  Kensu stood still for a full minute after that.  His
breath stilled.  Heart rate dropped to eliminate the noise from his
ambient hearing.  Nothing.

Nothing.

The blade disappeared up his sleeve like a conjurer's trick.  Calm
restored, he moved further into the inkblack tunnels and crevices of
New York's subway system.

			*			*

Staring out at the white gold of high-altitude cloudbanks, Nicholas
decided that it was time.  They had been over the Atlantic for a good
three hours now, and there had been no signs of pursuit that the pilot
could detect.  Nicholas was not inclined to be paranoid; even so, he
had quietly left a copy of the Lear's flight plan with Senncraft should
the occasion arise.  Now it was simply a matter of waiting.  The
thought reminded him again of the other difficulty.

Nicholas nodded at the pilot and closed the cabin door behind him.
Sato-Tomkin's private jet was as roomy as could be comfortably achieved
without resorting to opulence.  Most of the money had been spent on
minimising engine noise.  The Lear was a whispering giant below
Nicholas' feet.  The aircraft's interior was done in beige and off-
white; the harsh sunlight at this altitude, streaming through the
windows, had turned the seats a pale orange as they sprinted east, away
from the sun and towards night.

He noted a shift of movement from the rear of the plane; saw the
sunlight slide from Dana Scully's auburn hair.  She had not moved since
takeoff, staring out of that window now at the northern skies.  It was
a peculiarly Japanese way of handling grief, a part of him noted
silently.  And at this moment it is killing her.

He felt his gaze flick to the closest seat to him and the long, thin,
black shape lying there, the lacquered wood gleaming.  There was magic
in a Japanese-forged blade.  Even his cousin Saigo's katana; the weapon
of his enemy, and yet the sword seemed to sing to him from its wooden
sheath.  The felt-wrapped hilt called for his hands.  The carbon-black
square of the handguard promised him protection.  Wield me, it asked.
Later, he promised, against his hopes, as he moved slowly down the
aisle.

Too easy to remember the thrill, quickly suppressed, as he'd taken the
weapon off the wall at his house at West Bay Bridge.  A thrill perhaps
heightened by his anxiety over the stolen car he had parked for a few
moments outside.  They would be looking for it soon; but he only would
need a few more hours at that time to get clear.

He had tossed a billfold into the long duffel bag he'd gathered,
glancing surreptitiously at Scully, standing by the window.  No time
then to address the myriad of emotions she must be feeling.  They'd
both heard the explosion of the grenade from further up the narrow
street, and more automatic gunfire.  For a second,  with the grenade's
detonation, she had turned, but he had yanked at her arm and they were
running through the alleys once more.  He hotwired the first car they
came upon.  Throughout the event, her eyes had stared from the
windshield.  She hadn't shed a tear.  There was only a dark set to her
face as though she had her teeth gritted.

The Lear shifted course, sending a band of light across Saigo's
weapon.  Nicholas dragged his gaze from the katana to Dana Scully once
again, and felt the compassion rise.  Perhaps to a Westerner she was
emotionless; he could read her better than that.  He knew the east; had
been born there, raised there.  The shrouding of pain was not an alien
thing there.  He had learned its signs.  She was suffering.

There was more than grief there, though; betrayal had graven lines on
her face.  Their flight to Japan was the best thing he could come up
with on short notice, given that the FBI was involved in the attempt to
kill them.  She had stated that coldly as they were driving.  Regular
FBI SWAT teams used M-16 rifles or variants; the Uzi handweapon was
eminently more suited to the FBI's special branches - specifically,
Petros.  He did not recognise the name, but appreciated the point.  Not
to mention the fact that both of the agents had to log where they were
taking Linnear when they first left for New York.  Linnear could resort
to none of his more powerful allies in the U.S.  A stony wall of
silence had dropped over them in the few hours prior to the attack.
The only option, he realised, was Tanzan Nangi.

Japan, against his wishes, despite all his efforts against the tide of
karma, had called him back again.

They were due at a quiet French airport shortly, where they would
refuel and then continue eastward.  Out across the deserts of Arabia
and Africa, across so much distance he would feel the slip of Western
civilisation from the earth beneath them and the ascendancy of the
Eastern in his blood.  Nearly eighteen hours from now, they would land
in his homeland.

There was much more to agent Mulder's investigation than she was
telling him.  The thought struck him in stark simplicity.  The FBI did
not kill their own.  Unless, in common with most large organisations,
there was a level of knowledge in a lower member that threatened the
higher members.

There was a darkness at Dana Scully's nose.  She wiped hurriedly at it
with the edge of an index finger; crimson, not black.  He lengthened
his stride over the last few steps to her seat, rummaging in a pocket
for his handkerchief.  She noticed the movement and shook her head as
he held the cloth out.
"I'm fine."
"I can ask the pilots to take a lower altitude, if that would help," he
offered.
"It's nothing to do with-no.  Thank you anyway."  She wiped hurriedly
at her nose again.  The blood had turned a dark shade of brown on her
finger.  "When do we land?"
It did not occur to Nicholas to press her on the subject; it was not
the way he was.  "About another ninety minutes.  From there, another
sixteen hours or so to reach Japan."
She turned to him in her seat, away from the sunset.  "How long has it
been since you were there?"
There was something in his voice, he realised, that she had detected.
Something to justify the expression of faint curiosity.  "The better
part of a year.  I have - friends - there."

That was a mistake, he realised: it brought back the sudden pain,
covered over quickly, and she looked back out the window.  For a second
it brought Justine's eyes back to him: dark, brown, with red motes
floating in her left eye.  On the other hand, Justine's eyes were a far
cry from this woman's.  Eyes the colour of a sea of tempered steel.
Steel with its weakness, he reminded himself.  She turned back to him
after a few moments, her face composed.
"Can you trust these people you're running to?"
"Tanzan Nangi.  My business partner.  As I said, he's a friend."
Neither of them said anything for a few moments.
"Agent Scully, I know this - is a difficult moment for you, but I can't
protect you in Japan unless I know exactly why it is you are
threatened."
"I don't recall asking you for protection."
"No."  He took a deep breath.  "You did not."

And she remembered Mulder's final cry across the alley.  Get out of
here.  Get her out of here.  The hundred emotions of the past few hours
rose up.  Goddamn you, Mulder.  Your Japanese research, the research we
both did on Modell's case, the research about giri, the unwavering duty
a Japanese person owes another, and how you've charged Nicholas Linnear
with protecting me, owing you giri, with your last-and the grief
overtook her thoughts at that point, the anger dissipating.  She pushed
the emotion from her face.  Felt the muscles twitch around her lips.
Ordered them to stand still.
"I don't know why they're after me," she said, finally.

He could read her thoughts, it seemed; he picked up on the taint of
suspicion in her voice.  "I'm not trying to deceive you," he said,
spreading his hands.  "All I am trying to do is fit the pieces
together."  Seeing no response from her, he ticked off points on his
fingers.  "Agent Mulder's father and my own worked together on
something.  Something in Japan, and obviously something important.  I
know you probably recognised Felix Murchison's and James Shelley's
faces from the photograph.  So it is important enough to reach back at
least until 1963, or even earlier.  Perhaps as far as World War Two."

The touch of the blood's tear from her nose was warm, but moist.  She
reached up and hurriedly wiped it away.  She had a sudden thought, as
clear as it was insanity.  She looked at him; was surprised

[excited]

she pushed the thought aside when she saw him regarding her keenly.
"What?" he asked.
"Have you ever heard of a company called Seichin Electronics?"
He frowned for a long moment.  "I've heard the name somewhere before.
I can't place it."
"It's a Japanese computer chip company.  Are you absolutely sure you
don't know where it comes from?"
"I deal with hundreds of companies every year.  But this name does
sound familiar for some reason.  If we had dealings with it in our
Japanese operations, Nangi will know from where."

She was disappointed, but the excitement came back.  Seichin
Electronics.  The name was in her mind like a separate heartbeat.
Seichin.  Simple little name.  Others came back to her.  MUFON.  Penny
Northern.  Shiro Zama.  Betsy Hagopian.  Pendrell.  A pang of regret
there; it had only been a few months since he'd died for her.

And she remembered another time: in a laboratory, when he had shown her
a chip with lithography so complex as to be barely this side of science
fiction.  A chip that came out of her neck.  A chip made by a Japanese
company.  Seichin Electronics, which Pendrell offhandedly named in an e-
mail sent to her about five days later.  The regret bloomed again, for
a moment, but was replaced by a sudden feeling of anticipation.

But Nicholas was watching her carefully now.  Waiting for an answer to
his question.  She thought about her response.
"Agent Mulder's father had some dealings with government medical
research in the fifties and sixties.  Agent Mulder - believed - that
there was some long-standing conspiracy to hide the results from the
public."
She had expected him to press her on the point, but he merely settled
back in his seat.  "Does this have anything to do with the substance
found in Shelley's blood?"  She must have looked surprised; he smiled
gently.  "You and your partner spoke a lot together on the way to New
York.  I overheard some of it."
The pain rose up, threatened to claim her.  She fought it down with
pretended apathy.  It couldn't matter now.  "No.  It was a different
matter.  We found something like a natural substance in Shelley's
blood."
"What kind of natural substance?"
"Shelley was poisoned with a strong dose of amanita toxin.  Mushrooms
like Death Cap carry it.  It killed him very quickly."

Nicholas breathed deeply, focusing on his heartbeat, ordering it to
slow from its hammering pace.  He willed away the cold sweat surging
towards his skin.  He would not dishonour himself in this way.
Belatedly, he reached for getsumei no michi and found it, but it was
not quite enough to fully escape the shock.

The mushrooms she had mentioned had different names in Japan.
Particularly when they were brewed into a variant of doku, the ninja's
poison, made from various natural sources and as deadly as any
synthesised poison known to man. The creation of the substance was one
of the dying arts even in the East.  Only a tiny few knew how to
manufacture it.  The mushroom variants were used for slow
assassinations, where the target was required to die over a long
period.  Part of him analysed and quailed, even as another saw the pain
rise in her eyes when he saw her think of her partner.

"How long had the two of you worked together?" he asked, gently.
Carefully compartmentalised and detached himself from the fear once
more.
"Four years," she said without looking at him.  Her voice was even, but
he was adept in the nuances of the kiai; could pick up the trembling
beneath.
"You were partners," he said.
She looked back at him.  Deep grief there.  Had she been more Western,
perhaps her eyes would be brimming, but they did not.  "He was my
closest friend."
"I'm sorry," he said.  The most useless phrase ever uttered, he noted
sadly, but it sometimes had to be said.
For a moment he thought she would cry; instead, there was a whisper of
flame in her eyes.   "What I want are answers."
Many shadings to her words.  "To what?"
"Who are you?"
There was an elemental force in her eyes now; something that took the
question beyond the banal; something that cut right to his core,
pushing at the veils of stories he could tell her.  Part of him was
amazed and wary.  Another part, deeper in him, seemed to exult in the
emotion, here is something you can understand, the spirit of the bushi-

But the code, always the code, in his head-one must be strong-one must
know-one must dare-one must keep silence-rolling over and over in his
mind, in a cadence, like a heartbeat.  For long moments, he listened to
its silent rhythm.  Orange light in the cabin faded down the spectrum
towards crimson as he looked out of her window.
"I told you there are many different ryu, schools, of ninjutsu.
Fundamentally, though, they can be classed into two different -
families.  Styles.  Philosophies.  All of these words could be used.
There isn't quite an expression for it in English."
He had expected an interruption, but she was silent.  Her eyes were
piercing him.
"One of the two philosophies is kan-aka-na-ninjutsu.  Black ninjutsu.
Not black in terms of black magic, if you wanted to use a primitive
term like that.  But - the first principle they teach, the guiding
principle, is that in darkness there is death.  It's my belief that
James Shelley's killer comes from this group."  He took another
breath.  No choice now.  "I believe that because there is another
philosophy.  Aka-i-ninjutsu, or red ninjutsu.  The art is the same, but
the focus is different.  A book of shadows, instead of a book of
night.  Since the time when ninjutsu first found its way from China to
Japan, aka-i-ninjutsu and kan-aka-na-ninjutsu have been opposed to one
another."  He gave a deep sigh.  "I know, beyond any doubt, that
whoever killed these people was not of aka-i-ninjutsu."

He could see the understanding seep into her: comprehension, followed
by shock, then by the horror, and lastly by the protective disbelief.
She shook her head; but the movement was weak, as though her mind
heard, but her body could not accept it.  A last time the code surged
up inside him; but he owed her.  Giri.  Duty.  She had honoured him by
listening to him, in the New York Medical Examiner's offices, even over
the objection of her partner.  Giri demanded that she know.  More than
giri, part of him replied.
"I know it," he said, softly, "because I am a ninja, too."
He felt the shift in her sense.  For a moment, he prepared himself for
the punch she had been about to throw at him, but her intention
vanished as suddenly as it came.  She stood, pushed past him, and
strode towards the forward part of the airplane, away from him.
Nicholas closed his eyes.

And thought about what he had not told her: that the use of this
particular variant of doku was taught by adepts of aka-i-ninjutsu.
Specifically, the ninja of the Tenshin Shoden Katori ryu.

His ryu.

END OF PART 12/30


 The Missionary (13/30)
By Michael Aulfrey

Lindley's college chapel services came back to him in only half-
remembered hymns and broken phrases, making a chaotic music in his
head.  It was appropriate.  At the other end of the open hangar, the
light's descent was a shriek like the curse of Lucifer at the moment of
creation.  He shook himself inwardly, even as the wind brushed at his
hair and the sound began to die away.

His companion, standing rigidly next to him, misread his expression.
"There is no other way."
Misread his expression, but not the misgivings.  Lindley was careful
not to let his expression change in the light from the hangar's end.
"You're mad.  Never mind the dangers to the ongoing research-we're
circumventing half the foundations of the charter.  This will cause
absolute chaos."
"The Group is already in chaos."  For once his companion had elected
not to have a lit cigarette in his hand.  The packet was in one of his
pockets, along with the hands.  Lindley suspected one of them might
have already crushed the packet.  "It's making my work extremely
difficult."
Lindley said, "We've dealt with insurrections by members before."
"But not combined with independent action by one of our own.  You know
as well as I do how important Mulder is to the equation.  The hamfisted
work in New York is only a symptom.  There's a much deeper cancer at
work here."
"A very appropriate metaphor," sneered Lindley.
His companion was calm.  "Your training should provide you with the
same conclusion.  The world no longer has a wall to hold it in two
manageable halves.  Large alliances falter over time.  Why should we be
any more immune? Representative, as we are, of humanity's finest?"
"And what would you propose as a cure for this malaise?"  The light had
gone quiet, its song sinking to a barely perceptible humming.  "Kill
another Japanese associate as well as the one we just did?"
His companion's smile was a pair of lips over a death's head.  "I don't
believe there is a cure.  The Group will shatter.  We are just waiting
to see whether anarchy or salvation arrives first.  To use an example
from your history, we're on the beach at Dunkirk."  The man's grin
faded.  "Therefore the Group cannot be trusted.  It has been
compromised.  And therefore its security has also been compromised.  An
independent force has to be employed to guard the work you started.
One that has the ability to hold off the assassin that has been sent
against us."
"So of all the other options for security around the search for another
cure, you choose-!" But at that moment Lindley noticed a silhouette
against the light, and was silent, turning to watch its approach.

It seemed born of the light; as it strode towards them, its features
came into focus, its shape became more clearly defined, as though the
fall from grace were somehow maturing it.  Lindley squeezed his eyes
closed for a moment to clear the thought from his mind.  He scanned the
figure.  Tall; humanoid.  At least in this form.  The face was quite
familiar.  He had encountered the blond, blue-eyed features before.
The form was naked, the build male.  Lindley's eyes flickered to the
groin; he saw nothing but a smooth, hairless dome of skin.

Despite the expected things, this one seemed different.  It was more
heavily-built than the others; musculature was more clearly defined on
the body.  The eyes were as piercing as the others, but there seemed to
be a different motive in them.  The others had a certain cunning to
their eyes, an unearthly way of seeing through things.  This one had no
cunning, but something darker.  Not even animal instinct; the term
implied a lack of intelligence.  If there was any deficiency Lindley
could accuse it of, it was only that the intellect behind those inhuman
eyes had been channelled-engineered-towards strategy and pain, rather
than reproduction and concealment, as the others had.

It halted three steps away from them, regarding them impassively.  "The
task?"
The voice was unrefined, as though they'd only taught it the rudiments
of sound propagation, without wasting time with trivialities such as
pleasant harmonics.  Lindley remembered anthropology films he had
watched: films of ant colonies, where thousands of worker ants swarmed
in ordered paths, flanked by larger, more specialised forms, mandibles
gigantic against any worker's.  Forms that barely moved at all, but
contained in their stillness the promise of the hawk's dive, the
panther's leap.  Warrior caste, his mind whispered to him.  This was,
Lindley realised, a warning.  To him and the rest of the Group.  A
warning of what they had not shown to them.

Lindley barely heard his companion begin to speak, staring instead at
the shape of things to come.

			*			*

--he lifted the pistol in the direction he'd come, reached out with
eyes, ears, every sense, desperately probing for some idea of what his
most primitive cells knew was on its way, nothing, only the recurring
impression of arachnid legs, wandering through his mind-

"No," he heard himself say, and in that alone was confused and afraid.
Before he had not been able to speak.  The dream continued to play
itself out regardless.

--stems snapped out, the ends diving into flesh, puncturing, blood
sprayed as one pierced the temple,  others writhed over her, one into
her arm, another to the hip, her eyes flew open, sudden pain was there-

"No!"

And this time he was able to lift the pistol, raising it, to eye level,
and suddenly the room was gone, and he stood on a darkened Houston
street at midnight.  He turned once, looked down the empty road.
Turned back.  Dark eyes enveloped him.  The bloody impact forced him
through levels of consciousness to delta, awakening.  The pain rose as
the darkness fell back and he ascended into sickly light.

Blurred sickly light.  The pain renewed itself with each heartbeat,
centred in his leg.  He squeezed his eyes closed.  Thought itself was
muddy, in keeping with his eyesight.  He concentrated.  The room slowly
began to swim into focus.  He recognised a gleaming steel rail
suspended in the air, and then the curtain hanging from it.  Hospital,
a part of his brain said tiredly.  Hospital room.  A private, single
room, not a ward.

There was a stirring of darkness at the corner of his eye, and the
adrenalin and pain rose in one nauseating tide before he could turn his
head that way.  Then he realised that the movement was simply dark
clothing in the manner of a suit, and began to relax.  The figure
glanced at the door for a long second, and then turned, softly walking
over to the bedside.  A flash of white on black at the temples in that
motion.  Dark, sad eyes looking into his own.

Words were difficult: his throat felt like anthracite.  But he somehow
forced the word upwards.
"Paul?"
Special Agent Jefferson nodded slowly.  He essayed a brief smile as he
sat down.  "Glad to see you awake, Mulder," he said.
"Where am I?"  The dizziness was rapidly falling away, replaced by the
gnawing pain in his right leg.
"St. Luke's Hospital, in Harlem," said Jefferson.  "For the moment."
"What do you mean?"
"I checked you in here as a John Doe.  But I'm assuming that after you
hear what I tell you, you'll want to get back to Washington."
Too many facts.  He closed his eyes for a second.  Then a stark thought
drove the clouds in his mind out.  "Scully-"

Jefferson was shaking his head.  "I didn't see her."
Mulder felt the anxiety edge closer to his heart.  Scully, missing-then
he remembered Linnear, in her shadow as the two of them fled.  The
anxiety eased slightly with sudden, unexpected reassurance.  For a
second, he tried to analyse the emotions.  Something about Nicholas's-
his way of moving as though anchored to the floor.  Years of -
something - were in that movement.  Something that soothed Mulder's
fears.  A little.

"How did I get here?"  Even as the thoughts went through his mind,
other parts of him were calculating.  Particularly the presence of a
man who was not privy to the investigation he and Scully had pursued.
Consciously, he kept his voice carefully innocent.  For a second he had
a hot sting of embarrassment, as though he'd tried to sneak money from
his father's wallet.  Jefferson had taught him that mode of appearance.

But if the older agent saw it, he chose to ignore it.  "You took a
graze from the bullet, but they dropped a concussion grenade on you a
few seconds before I got there.  I brought you here in my car."
Mulder thought back to the alleyway.  A sound like a coke can crushing,
and then sweeping blackness in a second.  No, before then - the LTD
that had come from around the corner - but so many questions arose out
of that thought alone.  He focused on his old teacher more intently,
judging anew, asking questions without saying any words.  Even as he
did so, he had a pang of fear: for the one other person with whom he'd
had this level of unspoken communication.  There had been a time when
he and Jefferson had known each other's ways so well they could step
around one another in a darkened room.  It was a strange feeling, but
he kept his gaze sharply on his old mentor.

This time Jefferson did look away.

Mulder sighed heavily.  Wheels within wheels.  The further he went on,
the more certain he was that all he was doing was peeling onion skins;
heading towards a core of nothingness.  How many more, he wondered.  He
considered the most caustic question he could ask; but the memory of
the past restrained him; investigations and late nights back in VCU.
Houston.  He glanced up at the ceiling for a second.
"Who are you working for, Paul?"
Jefferson leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, a long breath
coming out of him like air from a dying balloon.  "What do you know
about Petros, Mulder?"
Mulder bit his lip, squeezing out the trepidation.  "It's the Bureau's
counterintelligence team."  A sudden thought struck him: the weapons
Scully had carried from the County Medical Examiner's office.  The pain
lanced up.  Jesus.  A Petros team had tried to assassinate them.
"Not any more, it isn't."  Jefferson's face was grim.
"What are you talking about?"
"Petros, as you probably know, is an ether in the intelligence
community.  The CIA, NSA, and FBI - even DOD, for Christ's sake - they
all use and maintain Petros.  So no matter what the jurisdiction, each
federal body has a fast-response team capable of dealing with matters
falling within the definition of national security."
"What's this got to do with you?"
"I'll get to that.  The problem with having a group like Petros is that
while it's extremely flexible, the level of potential compromise is
huge.  You don't have to infiltrate all of your enemy's institutions
anymore.  You infiltrate Petros instead.  And suddenly you have access
to covert operations in all of those groups.  Which, now," Jefferson
took a breath, "one of our enemies has."
Mulder sighed heavily, shaking his head.  He could see the
implication.  "You're out chasing the Red Peril?"
"I didn't say it was Russia."
"Then who?"
"We don't know.  Certain of our operations have been compromised, and
we tracked the leak back to Petros.  No particular political group was
represented in those operations.  We don't know who that leak is
working for.  But men's-agents'-lives have been lost as a result of
whoever controls the source.  That makes them our enemy."
Had it been anyone else, Mulder would have been concerned about
Jefferson's tone.  But he'd worked with the older agent longer than
that.  Jefferson was a patriot, but with limits; a man who knew where
to draw the line between nationalism and the cost required to defend it.
"And who is we?"
"About four years ago, the Office of Professional Responsibility
decided it was time to divorce the Bureau from Petros, or at least firm
up the safeguards against information passing from the Bureau into
Petros.  To do it, they covertly recruited several agents in the
Bureau's various branches."
"You've been working for the OPR?"
Jefferson smiled wryly.  Even that expression had sadness in its
background.  "VCU got boring after you left.  What's so funny?"
"No, it's nothing.  It's just - I haven't exactly fitted in with the
OPR's Golden Rules of Professional Comportment."
"There's more than a few gray hairs up there because of you, I hear."
Mulder was silent for a few seconds, considering Jefferson's words.
"Someone from inside VCU gave Petros our location."
Jefferson looked pleased.  "I was only recently reactivated in my OPR
role.  Because they think there's only one FBI source in the domestic
branches left to plug.  That source is in VCU."
"Then the hit wasn't sanctioned by the Bureau?"
"Petros works independently of the Bureau.  So far as we know, the
Bureau's upper echelons haven't been infiltrated.  So, no."  Jefferson
took a breath.  "But I didn't get you out of there for that reason
alone."

The fear he'd felt in the CME's office returned; he was startled to
find that part of it had been talking this over with Jefferson.  Not
just the efficiency of the man they were seeking.  "Then what?" he
asked faintly.
Jefferson absently rubbed a thin line on his chest from the left
shoulder to the top of his ribs.  He glanced over at a nearby window.
"It's him, isn't it.  From Houston."
Mulder closed his eyes.
"I appreciate your trying to keep me from it, Mulder."
"It wasn't because I-"
"Forget it.  I want this one just as much as you.  And I don't care who
wants to cover it up."  Jefferson's voice was trembling.  It scared
Mulder more than anything since he had woken up.  The older agent
fumbled in his pocket for a second, and then produced a photograph.  It
was the one Mulder had shown Linnear and Scully in the CME's office.
"I presume this has something to do with it.  The doctor found it in
your suit pants when you got here."
Mulder looked at the photograph again, feeling the old, familiar pain
rise up.  Nothing else to be done.  He looked at the photograph, at his
father's face, for a long time before answering.  "I think it's a list
of targets."  He told Jefferson where the photograph had been found,
and most of the detail surrounding the deaths.

Except for Linnear's theory.  He didn't know why he did it, but
something-
"If that's correct, there could only be two more targets," said
Jefferson, sad eyes taking it in with equanimity.  "I see six men in
this photograph.  One is your father, this one is Denis Linnear.
That's James Shelley there.  I heard about Felix Murchison; his picture
was faxed to me.  He is also in this photograph.  That only leaves
these other two."  He frowned in a familiar way.  Mulder's memories
rose again for a moment, not as strong as deja vu, but not weak enough
to dismiss entirely.  "The last time, he had a target, and he wanted us
to know it.  This photograph has no names, no date.  Leaving this
photograph doesn't serve the purpose of finding out who these men are."
"Unless the killer assumed I'd know-or Nicholas Linnear would know-who
these men are."
"No.  This man is too careful for that.  He didn't rest on assumptions
when he penetrated Shelley's residence.  Your father is dead, as is
Denis Linnear.  You and Nicholas were children when this photograph was
taken, if that.  The killer could not assume that you or Linnear would
know all, or any of these men.  No.  This photograph is a puzzle
piece.  There must be other material available to us to bring this
matter into focus."
Mulder shook his head slowly.  "To bring some matters into focus-" He
broke off.  Looked at Jefferson.  "You got a phone?"

END OF PART 13/30





The Missionary (14/30)
By Michael Aulfrey

Kensu stared down at Michael Drayman's corpse.

And wondered.

He remembered the journey downward, into the heart of New York's
abandoned maze of subways, tunnels, and service ducts.  He had not
needed the emeralds then, even taking into account the houseless
occupying these oubliettes.  They knew their tunnels well, no doubt.
From his  observations, meticulous as an anthropologist happening on a
lost tribe, he could see their familiarity with darkness and with
senses other than sight.  Yet he had still found the journey down
effortless.  They were familiar with darkness; he was one with it.  In
the initial stages of his descent, some had encountered him at his
design.  His response had ensured that fear as much as stealth kept
them from his path.

He could also remember his original destination, shining like a jewel
at the heart of a mine.  A jewel made of steel and moulded plastic.  It
had been even easier for him to slip into the installation.  The
sentries were not of the houseless.  They had infra-red night goggles,
but the ryu had long cultivated a plant which, when mixed with the
right ingredients and smeared over flesh and clothing, made him
invisible to that.  He could have killed them as he went in, but that
would only serve to raise the alarm, and he had no intention of doing
that until he had found his target and was gone.  The houseless
imprisoned here were of less concern to him than the guards were.

He recalled finding Michael Drayman and shadowing him from the
facility, up, on a small articulated vehicle which had been modified
for transport through the tunnels.  He had followed; the vehicle had
been slow.  And finally, when they at last came to one of the upper
tunnels, he had taken his moment.

More than this was a falsity in his mind.

When memory returned, the two armed occupants of the vehicle were dead
from kama strikes, and Michael Drayman's body lay before him in the
darkened cavern, a hundred cuts on his form and the blood-printed
papers in Kensu's hand.  He registered the pattern of wounding as the
same as that he had worked upon Shelley; knew also that the doku would
have been coursing through that blood while it still pumped.  At some
point he registered the blood over his own body.  In place of the
memory of his method was only the memory of Japan, and of Akemi.
Beckoning him with gentle, delicate hands.  And, newly risen, the
memory of the ryu.

Running out of time.

He shook away the thought angrily, and cursed himself for the very
emotion.  Felt his hand clenched around the sixteen emeralds in his
other hand, the edges of the facets cutting into skin.  Wanting.
Wanting to go deeper.  No.  Not yet.  Silently, he recited the code in
his mind, then the Hannya-Shin-Kyo - what is death - death is the
body's silence - yet we are silent, how is it that death is while we
are alive - the life is the master of death in silence - what is
silence - silence is the heartbeat of darkness - therefore in darkness
there is silence - in darkness there is death - each phrase repeated
with a heartbeat, rolling over and over in the consciousness- breath
slowing, heartbeat synchronised with each word - in darkness there is
death -

Slowly, the anger drained away, replaced by assurance.  He would have
time.  Time enough for each of them.  He shuffled through the papers,
running through their contents.  He had no difficulty reading them in
the dim light.  They confirmed what he already knew.

There only remained Alexander Chamberlain.  In terms of the work he had
been required to do.

And the price.

He breathed deeply, letting the Void fill him once more.  Stretched out
his hand, and opened it to let the emeralds fall from his hand.  In the
darkness, his eyes could not have gauged their colour, but the sixteen
black stones were to him glowing with their own inner fire.  They
halted in their fall, arranging themselves into a complex, three-
dimensional pattern.  Gleaming as a beacon.  They held, hovering there,
for a moment, as though accusing.  Then drifted down towards the ground
like the gentlest of featherfalls.

He felt rather than saw the heat rising from them as they burnt their
way into Drayman's body.

			*			*

All was light.  From nightclubs, in neon and fluorescence; restaurants,
from bulb and even candle in some places; stores; office towers;
billboards; she ran out of building types.  And light in an array of
colours - every shade of the rainbow, it seemed - here, the blue of
steel and twinkling gold of a flashing display; there, the garish pink
of another nightclub.  Down one alleyway, the subtle beckon of red
above a doorway.  Light and colour of every kind, as though the Tokyo
night's darkness were something to be feared, even with the famed
Japanese rate of prosecution and conviction for violent crimes and the
sidewalks a swarming sea of humanity.

Scully inhaled slowly, her nose picking up nothing of the smells that
must have accompanied the activity on the street below.  There was only
the refined coolness of the hotel suite, not so different from that of
the airplane.  She closed her eyes against the light and colours.
Reassuring darkness on the back of her lids, and the meditative hum of
airconditioning.  She took solace in it for a moment, and then opened
her eyes again and looked across at the man sitting opposite her in one
of the delicate chairs, himself gazing out at the Tokyo night from a
good twelve storeys up.

Curiosity struck her, even with the pain tightening around her heart.
Nicholas Linnear's expression was one she could not classify.  She took
a few slow steps towards him, away from the wide plate-glass window.
One part of his expression was calm assurance, as of someone who had
seen all of it before.  But another part was something like sadness,
like faint regret.  The pain eased long enough for her to feel a touch
of unreasoning sympathy pass by.  Then the pain rose again, conquering
all else, and she felt anger descend.  She checked it; but not enough
so that he did not catch a glimpse of it as Nicholas looked back at her
and then down between them, his eyes directed inward.  Knowing eyes.
Attractive eyes.
"Why did you become a ninja?" she snapped, to cover the thought.  She
was painfully aware that it had been her first words to him in all the
hours since he had told her of what he was.  Nicholas stared at the
ground for a moment longer, then back at her.
"Destiny," he said.
"It was your destiny to kill?"
"Karma's a more appropriate word, I suppose.  I wasn't sure if you knew
the meaning.  But I didn't seek it for killing," he said.  "I sought it
to defend myself."
"How can an assassin's art be one of defence?"
He broke their gaze.  Nicholas' eyes were unlike Mulder's in many
ways.  With Mulder, there was always a questioning in his gaze, a kind
of careful wariness driven by a deeper well of need.  Nicholas
Linnear's eyes had no questions in them; they were pools of knowledge.
Both men's eyes contained confidence; it was just the way it was
expressed that differed.  Nicholas reached over next to him and picked
up the long, black scabbard lying on the couch.  "You're wondering
whose this is."
"Actually, I'd assumed it was yours."
"Only by default.  Originally it belonged to my cousin, Saigo.  He was
- what I am."
"Another ninja?"
Nicholas nodded, laying the katana down again.  "He and I - well, our
fathers were in opposition to one another.  Perhaps it's trite to say
our choices were made long before we were able to make them-"
"No," she said.  The words surprised her; but the flash of anger was
fading.  "Not really," she said, thinking of Mulder.  And the pain rose
again, thicker this time.

"There was a debt Saigo's father - Satsugai - owed to my father.  It
precluded Satsugai from moving against my father openly.  Instead,
Satsugai sent Saigo to learn the kan-aka-na-ninjutsu.  To make him into
a weapon against my family."
She understood the direction he was headed in, but doubted it.  "Your
father sent you to learn a martial art to defend yourself?"
"No.  That came afterwards.  I had studied bujutsu by then, of course;
but that was a personal choice.  By then, my father had already died at
Saigo's hand.  Saigo and I had already come to blows over - a woman.
When we fought, then, he half-killed me."  Nicholas breathed in.  "I
had to travel Saigo's road because he would be back for me.  To finish
the job.  So - aka-i-ninjutsu."
She waited, but he said nothing further for long moments, falling back
to an inward gaze.  She tried to fit the pieces together.  "You think
this ninja is your cousin?"
"No.  Saigo died two years ago."
She felt the sickness rise, combined with something more: something
like compassion, at the way his eyes were.  The words were cold, but
the eyes -"You killed him."
"He came for me.  His contract was to kill Raphael Tomkin, a man I was
hired to protect, but in reality, I was his main target."
The anger rose up.  "You didn't talk to the authorities?"
There was an answering flicker from his eyes.  "As a matter of fact, I
did.  I wasn't heeded, and a number of people died.  Some of them were
my friends.  To this day, I wonder about the wisdom of involving them
anyway.  Hasn't anything of what you've seen made any impact? Are you
even aware of what you're dealing with?"

There was a knock at the door, taking away her response.  She turned
towards the door, but Nicholas had already stood and was moving across
the floor.  Again, against her judgement, she was entranced by his
motion: as though he were anchored to the earth, movements, muscles
flowing like a gentle stream.  Nicholas turned the doorknob and glanced
briefly out before opening the door to admit the person there.

A small, wizened man, dressed in a well-tailored suit shuffled into the
room, leaning heavily on a horn-headed cane.  As he came closer, she
noted his grim, neutral expression, and the milky whiteness of his
eye.  A moment's gaze was directed to her, and then he was looking at
Nicholas.
"Nangi-san," said Nicholas, bowing perfunctorily.
The man returned the bow quickly.  "A pleasure, Linnear-san."
She was surprised by the use of English; his accent was very difficult
to detect, only the slightest use of `r' in place of `l'.  Nicholas
indicated her with a slow motion of his hand.  "This is Agent Scully,
whom I spoke of.  Agent Scully, meet Tanzan Nangi."
"A pleasure," repeated Nangi.  She heard the tightness in his voice;
remembered Nicholas' brief words to her before they had arrived here.
She was gaijin, here; a foreigner.  It was the risk of loss of face to
Nicholas that prevented Nangi from ignoring her entirely.  He would be
working hard to overcome the old prejudices, Nicholas had said.  She
gritted her teeth, gave a bow as best she could.  It would not do to
alienate this man.
"I'm honoured," she said.  "Linnear-san has spoken highly of you."

Nangi's expression did not change, but he seemed to straighten
slightly.  He looked over at Nicholas.  "You require refuge?"
Nicholas nodded.  "For a short period of time, I hope."
Nangi's gaze was searching.  Scully had another sudden feeling of
isolation from the two men, as she had with Mulder and Jefferson.
Something was passing between them that she was not privy to.  Nangi
sighed heavily and cast his gaze to the floor.  Nicholas rubbed at his
face.  Finally, Nangi looked at them again.
"And I believe Senncraft-san also mentioned some information you
require?"
Nicholas nodded.  "On two subjects.  Firstly, there is the matter of
James Shelley."
"Our east coast manager?"
"Yes.  He has been murdered."
"Mother of God," said Nangi.
"But I believe he has also betrayed us.  The designs for the T-PRAM
chip are gone.  I need to know exactly what business he has been
transacting in Japan.  I know he came here frequently on business
visits.  We need to know what he was doing here."
Nangi nodded.  Scully believed there was shock there, but it was well-
concealed.  "And there was a second subject?"
"This matter concerns agent Scully.  A firm called Seichin Electronics."
Nangi frowned.  "The name is familiar."
"I know," said Nicholas.  "I know we've dealt with that firm before,
but I don't recall where.  Or when."
"What do you need to know?"
"Everything," she said suddenly.  Both men looked at her with faint
surprise.  She kicked herself inwardly, but decided to press on.  "Who
runs it, who was involved with it - whether it had any international
affiliations."
Nangi regarded her for a long moment before turning back to Nicholas.
"It will take some time to put this information together," he said.
"We'll be here," said Nicholas.
She had not caught much of the unspoken conversation between them, but
she did notice Nangi's glance across the room to the couch, where
Saigo's blade accused.  Nangi looked back at Nicholas for a long, long
time, before bowing slowly and leaving the room once more in the
shuffling gait he'd entered with.
"Does he know about your hobby?" she asked.
"Since he became my business partner."  Nicholas' voice had tightness
to it.  He looked at her again.  "Look, agent Scully, I am what I am.
If you have a problem with that, I'm sorry.  I don't ask you to
understand."  He picked up the katana and walked to the doorway,
turning back to look at her.  "I'll be in the next suite over.  There's
a hot tub in one of these rooms, and the room service here is very
good."
The noise of his closing the door behind him was not loud.  She felt
her heart give a little ache as it did.  She stared around the room.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.

Which was worst of all.

			*			*

The side door slid back on its runners, punctuated by a heavy, steel
clang.
"You boys knock over the Smithsonian again?"
Frohike's grin was a glimmer in the rumpled bedsheet of his face as he
stepped from the truck's doorway and folded his arms.  "She'll kick
your Ford P.O.S.' ass any day of the week, Mulder."
The truck was an old refrigerator on wheels: rectangular overall; thin
across the axles, long from front to back; the finish off-white in
principle, areas of the paintwork crudely daubed with less-than-perfect
shop skills.  The battered cab in front was almost an afterthought.
Mulder recovered from his reverie as the truck's headlights went out.
Frohike stepped out of the way, and squinted at Jefferson as he
followed Mulder up into the truck.

Inside, there was little space.  The truck's interior had been gutted
and then overrun with loose wiring, sound equipment, and the eyes of
television screens.  Mulder sensed motion from the front of the truck;
turned in that direction to see Byers clambering from the driver's seat
into the rear of the vehicle.  The black jacket and T-shirt was an odd
substitution to the ex-FCC man's usual suit and tie.  The clatter of a
keyboard drew Mulder's gaze to the rear of the van.  Langly's glasses
were blue mirrors in the light of the screen as it warmed up.

Langly took a second's attention away from the screen only to
scrutinise Mulder's companion.  "He the narc, Mulder?"
Mulder ignored Jefferson's glance at him, careful to hide his grin by
faking a wince from his bandaged leg.  "Boys, meet Special Agent
Jefferson of the FBI."  He indicated each of the trio in turn.  "Paul,
this is Langly, Frohike, and Byers."
"Sheez," said Frohike, slamming the door behind him.  "You're on a
first name basis with him?"
"I didn't catch yours," said Jefferson carefully.
Frohike eyed him for a long moment.  "Mister."
Byers was moving past them in the cramped interior towards Langly's
seat.  "Paul Jefferson?"  He looked back at the two agents.  "You were
Mulder's teacher?"
Mulder shrugged uncomfortably as Jefferson raised eyebrows towards him.

Byers was nodding as he moved up next to Langly.  "We've heard a lot
about you, agent Jefferson.  Er, public sources as well as Mulder, that
is."
Jefferson squinted in the dim light.  Mulder could see him find his
feet, despite the strange environment.  That analytical gaze dropped
back into place.  He was sizing the truck, the men up - sizing Mulder
up again, too, maybe.  "Anything recent?" asked the older agent.
"Not directly concerning yourself," said Byers.  "But there's a lot of
confused obituary writers around town regarding you, Mulder."
"How did they cover up the incident at the County Medical Examiner's
office?" asked Mulder.
"Terrorist attack," said Frohike, disgust evident as he pushed towards
the rear of the van.  "Goddamn slipshod, you ask me.  You'd think they
could come up with something a little more original."
"From everything we've been able to put together since you called us,
they're not sure whether you're dead or alive," said Byers.
"What about Scully and Linnear?" asked Mulder.
Byers and Langly looked at each other uneasily before Byers answered.
"We tried police and ambulance radio bands once we got into the New
York area.  Also a light probe of the local police precincts' custody
lists.  We didn't hear either name mentioned."

He felt a thin sliver of relief as he closed his eyes.  He heard
Jefferson next to him:  "The police lockup muster-you hacked a police
computer?"
"Definitely a narc," said Langly.  Jefferson shot a look at him.  He
engrossed himself in the screen again.
"So what's the deal, Mulder?" asked Frohike.
"How well do you guys know a company called Bracewell Security?"
Jefferson was staring openly at Mulder now.  Mulder avoided his gaze.
"It's a corporate security firm based on the east coast," said Byers,
cautiously.  "Most of its work is private commercial and residential."
"They specialise in physical property protection," said Langly.
"Recently they started branching into computer security systems, too-"
His eyebrows drew together, and he flicked a glance at Frohike.  The
dawn of comprehension on the two faces was like watching a child
hearing about Christmas Day for the first time.  "Whoa."
"Just for the suggestion, we won't make you pay for the gas we used
getting here," said Frohike.  There was a disturbing note of awe in his
voice.

Jefferson had a hand on Mulder's arm, and was leaning towards the front
of the truck.  "Mulder, a word, please."
He held the startled gazes of the Gunmen for a second, then followed
Jefferson through the side door.  The older agent was staring up at St.
Luke's hospital.  He turned as Mulder gingerly touched down on the
ground.
"Why," said Jefferson, in a voice of gentle madness, "are you
suggesting breaking into Bracewell Security by computer?"
Mulder took a breath to cover his frantic search for an answer.  "It's
a hunch."
"Try me," snapped Jefferson.
"Bracewell Security handled James Shelley's residence.  Their guard,
Max Harris, was killed the same night as Shelley.  Our killer seemed to
know the security systems of his victim's house.  Intimately.  He knew
exactly which monitors to turn off to make his escape.  He knew how to
get around the motion sensors, and he knew he'd have to beat the
fingerprint recognition in the front door."
Jefferson's comprehension was a quick flicker across his face, followed
by continuing disapproval.  "All right.  So the killer was employed by
Bracewell Security, let's suppose.  Why in God's name do you want to
find out this way? There are things called search warrants, you know."
"I would've thought that would be obvious now."
Jefferson said nothing.
"Look, Paul, right now I'm still a dead man to most of the planet.  I'd
like to use that advantage while I still have it.  It's clear somebody
doesn't want us to get to the bottom of this case.  If that someone is
the leak in VCU, we don't have any other choice."
Jefferson threw his hands up.  "I just-are you sure about the Marx
Brothers back there?"
Mulder lowered his voice.  "They're up there with the best, Paul.  They
hacked the Bureau's database back in eighty-nine."
"That's a pretty wild claim."
"I thought so too.  But after they printed out a copy of my own file
for me, I didn't have a lot to say."  Mulder grinned at Jefferson's
expression.  "I guess now you can see why OPR's got grey hairs."

Jefferson was shaking his head as Mulder stepped back into the truck
and hobbled towards the rear.  "Let's do it."
"Way ahead, big man," said Frohike.  Next to him, on the sole benchtop,
a large electronic device buzzed and whirred in counterpoint to the
galloping of Langly's hands over the keyboard console.  "This is one of
Langly's ideas, modified a little by yours truly."
"Unnecessarily," said Langly.
"It's a precaution, in case anyone's watching the connections," said
Frohike.
"Got it," said Langly.  "We're in."
The screen of the computer blackened for a moment, then displayed a
neat, attractive title page headed BRACEWELL SECURITY.
"Cute," said Frohike.
Langly tapped at keys, and then frowned.  "Foul ball, guys.  They've
got another layer of protection here."
"Can you go superuser?" asked Byers.
"No," said Langly after several seconds.  He seemed deflated.  "We
can't become God on this particular system, only Lucifer."
"What do you mean?" asked Mulder.
"This system is protected," said Byers.  "We can penetrate through the
standard back doors.  On most systems, that's enough to let a hacker go
superuser - give him full access to the system, including wiping it out
completely.  We call it being God on a system."
A small light flickered on Frohike's anti-trace device.  "So what's the
situation here?" asked Mulder.
"Sometimes a system manager will leave the back doors open
intentionally, and allow a level of access higher than the standard
user's.  The thinking is that with the information the hacker can get
from this level of access, they'll be satisfied, and won't try to
become God on the system.  This level of access is called being
Lucifer-"
"One step below God," said Mulder, nodding.
"But why give them that doorway? Why take the risk of someone
penetrating at all?" asked Jefferson.
"There's a rule," said Langly.  "Well, a guideline, maybe.  If you get
into a system, where it's clear the system manager's left it open for
people like you, you can have fun in there, but you don't try to alter
or destroy the system in the process."
"Take the money, just don't wake the kids?" Jefferson sounded as
sceptical as he looked.
"I didn't say everyone followed it," said Langly in a wounded tone.
"There is another purpose for leaving the standard back doors open,"
said Byers.
"What?"
Frohike ran a hand gently down the side of the anti-trace device.  "If
you want to catch a burglar, make it look like nobody's home.  And
while he's looking around, take the chance on a phone trace coming up
with the goods, by triggering it on use of the back door."
Mulder felt his anxiety notch up.  "They're tracing your call?"
"They're trying to," said Frohike, pointing at a small display.  "But
first they have to follow the call back through telephone exchanges in
South Africa, Sweden, a communications satellite above the North
Atlantic, and assorted parts of southeast Asia.  Before they hit the
digital scrambler."
"Reach out and touch someone," said Langly.  "What information were you
looking for?"
Mulder felt his grin melt away.  "Can you get access to a list of
clients?"
Langly tried entering Shelley's name into an obliging window that
popped up.  INFORMATION UNAVAILABLE-REF. TO HARDCOPY.
"It makes sense," said Byers.  "They work for the government, and they
probably don't want everybody on line knowing who comes to them for
help anyway.  They keep the client list off the computer."

Jefferson moved forward, peering at the screen.  He pointed at a menu
option that read TIMESHEET UPDATE.  "Try that one."
Langly clicked on it.  Took a few seconds to read through the results.
"Okay-we've got options for billing code keys and other neat stuff.
Now what?"
"Billing code keys.  Take that path," said Jefferson.
Langly clicked on the button.  A small table appeared.  The list was
large, but all of the same nature:

SRVC		Servicing unspecified
ARS1		Thermal Imaging Camera System Model 120-A2
AZR2		Infra Red Laser System ELO-33
MTH78		Motion Sensor Systems PPPR-30
HFGF		Car Alarm 1
HFGC		Car Alarm 2
HG33		Recognition/Keyless Entry Micrographix LNR-KZ 2000

"What is all this?" asked Mulder.
"I was a lawyer before I joined the Bureau," said Jefferson.  His grin
was faint as Byers and Frohike edged away from him.  "Timesheets are
the lifeblood of an attorney.  You record what type of work you did
during each hour of the day on a sheet of paper, and for which client.
Later, the sheets are collated and billing done on your timesheet.  We
would use codes-billing codes-for each type of work done."  Jefferson
tapped the screen.  "The same system is being employed here."
"Go back into TIMESHEET UPDATE," said Mulder.  This time he managed to
look at the screen:

TIMESHEET UPDATE

A.  Add timesheet
B.  Update timesheet
C.  Billing Code keys
D.  Search timesheet

"Take option D," said Jefferson.  A series of boxes appeared, with
date, address, and billing code above each one.  "155 Abbey Road,
Barre, Vermont.  And under billing code, insert SRVC."  Langly
clattered on the keys.  The system was silent for a moment.  Then a
list came up.

13/4/94	13:20	1.0	Jack Torrens
18/5/95	14:40	1.0	Martin Camillero
18/2/96	13:10	1.0	George Dumas
24/2/96	09:10	1.0	Joseph Michi
14/3/96	08:50	2.0	Joseph Michi
14/4/96	11:20	2.0	Joseph Michi
18/4/96	12:00	2.0	Joseph Michi

Jefferson pointed at each column in turn.  "Date.  Time.  Hours spent
at residence."  He paused for a moment.  "And employee.  The work done
was regular servicing of the security systems.  And, before 24 February
1996, was done annually.  Each other service has been done by the same
man: four visits in three months."

Silence descended, broken only by the meditative clicking of the anti-
trace device.  Mulder felt a lump form in his throat; swallowed.
"Michi is a Japanese word."
Byers looked at him.  "Meaning what?"
"Path.  Or journey.  Or a number of other things."  Mulder smiled
weakly.  "Too much Yojimbo."
"Check the payroll records," said Jefferson.  His voice had taken on a
stillness which was disconcerting in the quiet of the van.

A long list of names reflected in Langly's glasses.  He scanned quickly
through them.  "Here it is.  Looks like the only Oriental name on the
list.  Current address is an apartment in New York.  In-"
"Chinatown," said Jefferson.

END OF PART 14/30