From: LoneGunGuy Date: 15 Jul 1999 07:07:19 GMT Subject: The Tiger Complex (1/19) by LoneGunGuy Summary: While investigating a gruesome catastrophe in the Amazon rain forest, Mulder and Scully struggle against a mysterious killer, their own suspicions and the unforgiving jungle itself. Rating: R for language and violence Classification: XA Feedback: Anything and everything to lonegunguy@aol.com Spoilers: Minor references to Terma, Quagmire, Field Trip Archive: Gossamer, and anywhere else with permission. Also available at http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html * * * "In the rain forest, death wears many faces. [Here] if one stares at an object for long enough, it will eventually metamorphose into something else. A patch of withered bark becomes a butterfly. The pile of leaves at one's feet is a fer-de- lance waiting to strike. Everything is hidden, camouflaged. Soon reality can no longer be trusted. One sees a tiger lurking in every pattern of shadows. Some call it paranoia. I call it the tiger complex." -- from the private journal of Fox Mulder * * * The jungle thrived in darkness. Sundown came with the familiarity of an old blanket, curling itself around boughs and surrendering itself to the night: but in the interim, a thousand gleaming eyes blinked themselves awake, hooded birds singing like spirits of the dead, jaguars emerging from the shadows to feed. The old man Quassapelagh had been hunting pacas since early evening, his arrow notched and at the ready. He was a big Tirio, broad at the shoulders, with the quiet step that came from years of moving through the undergrowth: you walked on the balls of your feet, careful not to make a sound, knowing that one hot snap of a broken twig would send your game fleeing like a clutch of four-legged puddings. It was tedious, patient work. Once he might have become frustrated after ten minutes of this hide-and-seek and struck before the pacas had strayed sufficiently from the river; but age had taught him the importance of patience so far as these rodents were concerned. They were not stupid beasts. So when he had drawn close enough for the kill, he froze, crouching behind a ceiba tree whose trunk loomed above him like the monumental neck of an apatosaurus, buried up to its shoulders in the loose sandy soil. Not breathing, the old Tirio drew his bowstring taut, keeping the edge of the arrowhead perpendicular to the ground. Fifty yards away the pacas nosed, snuffling, for fallen figs. The one closest to him was a large boar, perhaps twenty pounds in weight, its earth-colored flank spotted with whiteness, its eyes like bright stones. Quassapelagh marked it. Measured the distance. Aimed carefully, almost intuitively, at that mystical juncture where the jugular boiled close to the surface -- and loosed his arrow. It flew ninety feet in blur of hoko feathers and buried itself in the paca's throat. Blood burst forth. The paca fell squealing to its knees, dry sandy dust puffing up around its flailing haunches. Screaming, the herd broke apart, crashing towards the river in panic. Ignoring them, the old man drew another arrow in a movement more fluid than water, let it fly, feeling his pulse quicken as the dart plunged deep into the wounded animal's side. He readied another shaft but held back. Watched. The dying paca rose, staggered blindly forward, collided with a tree and fell to the ground, stunned and whimpering. After a moment it grew still. Shouldering his kill, Quassapelagh turned and headed home, the rain forest uncoiling before him like the entrails of some prehistoric beast. His eyes gleamed like those of an oilbird. He was naked except for a breechcloth, some straggling designs of berry juice sliding in ancient tessellation across his chest, muscles rippling as he walked, burnished snakewood bow slung across one shoulder. The dead paca swung from his other hand. He had tied the piglike rodent's legs together with a vine and looped the knot over his fingers, holding it carefully against his side so that the carcass would not drip. For many minutes he pressed onward, his strong body parting unseen curtains of damp. The paca's flank scratched his thigh as he swung it, the hairs bristly or soft depending on which way they rubbed. In an odd tactile way, he found this fascinating. He was tired, content -- and did not immediately notice the light shimmering above the distant treetops. But once seen, it could not be ignored. The old man stopped beneath the trees. The light lay perhaps fifty miles to the south. It was not fire. It flamed in cold phosphorescence, a single coronal finger rising from the forest, blazing with electricity. Rooted to the ground at some unseen spot, it danced in limpid watercolor hues, red and milky yellow: a ribbon of light, a dragon's tongue. A sterile flame emerging from the canopy. Almost without thinking, he dropped his catch and bow and shimmied up the nearest tree, his sensitive hands finding and gripping minute depressions in the bark. Fifty feet up, he found a sturdy branch and hoisted himself onto it, clinging with his knees to its smooth thickness. Now Quassapelagh had a fine view of the jungle, the ocean of treetops broken only by the alien luminescence flickering against the sky. As he watched, the light became the color of blood. It climbed halfway to the moon and fell back, languid, almost lazy -- yet deadly, too, and luminous, a fine, heart- rending, palpable glow. He was high enough to feel warm breeze against his back. It made the hairs in his nostrils bristle. Below him, the herd of pacas was coughing with fear. Watching the wings of fire glistening above the hylaea, Quassapelagh knew. It was the Mai d'agoa. The cycle had begun again. Squeezing his eyes shut to that ancient brilliance, to the pale fire that rose from the trees as somber and unwavering as a knife, he slid down the tree. He retrieved his kill and ran back to the village, back to the shells of huts and thatches deserted by his people, leaving him alone to remember the secrets that this dark forest kept.... And when, in the days that followed, man after man began to float downstream, their bodies strapped into rafts and cocooned in plastic like bugs smothered in the chrysalis, the old Tirio was not in the least surprised. * * * Mulder paced across the roof of Fort Gambaro, the sooty tar paper crinkling beneath his feet. The cell phone at his ear. "You're at the Embassy?" he asked. "No, at TeleSur. The telecommunications company. It's the only place you can make a decent phone call in this godforsaken jungle." Doyle's voice was creased with static, like a scrap of newsprint that had been folded too many times. There was a gulping sound. "Listen, we need to talk." "So talk." "Nuh-uh. I don't trust these phones. I'm talking to you face to face." Doyle's voice was soft, with the trace of a lisp, but now it had an edge of suspicion. "Maybe I'm paranoid," he said, "but we've probably got someone listening to this friendly conversation of ours. You know that." Mulder paused. From the rooftop he had a fine view of Paramaribo. It was a haphazard city, thrown together at random in the shadow of the rain forest. Multistory buildings stood alongside thatched huts. Hindu temples flanked high- rises and corrugated metal shacks. "I know that." "I'll bet some asshole is listening right now." Doyle's voice rose, no longer addressing Mulder but shouting at the hypothetical eavesdropper at the end of this hypothetical wiretap: "You hear me, fucker? Think we don't know you're there? Think we give a shit? Jesus Christ -- " "Jesus, Doyle, cool it for a second." Mulder turned away from the view, his hair wisping in the hot breeze. "What did they tell you at the Embassy? You can say that much over the phone, right?" "Not much to say. This whole process is shit from the top down." Doyle took another pull from his water bottle. "Here's the deal. We couldn't free Baker even under normal conditions -- maybe we could see him, talk to him, make sure he was all right, but he'd still be a prisoner of the state. But this quarantine screws everything over. Our hands are tied. We can't even see Baker until this Aquino guy or some other Surinamese high roller gives us the good word." "Is that what they're calling it? A quarantine?" "Yeah. It's -- " "That's total bullshit," Mulder said. He shifted the cell phone to his other hand, waved an arm at the edifice beneath his feet, as if Doyle could see the gesture. "We've got twelve dead bodies lying in a fucking meat locker and they're worried about keeping the one survivor under lock and key? If there was a hot agent involved, this whole fort would be a disaster area by now." "You think I don't know that? I know what's happening. It's a fucking con game, man." Doyle blew air. "That's what it is. These jungle dictators are screwing us over big time." "Maybe they are." Along this side of the fort ran the River Suriname. It sparkled like molten metal. "Why?" Mulder finally asked. "Why what?" "Why are they screwing us over?" "You want to know?" said Doyle. "Meet me in an hour and I'll tell you a few things." Mulder checked his watch. It was eleven o'clock. "I can't. I'm going with Kovac to meet Aquino. Kovac said he'd meet me here once -- " "Now? Mulder, listen to me. Shit." Brief silence on the other end of the line. "You can't stall them till I get there, can you?" "I doubt it. This is Aquino's domain." Even as he said the words, Mulder felt how false they were. This was no man's domain. He lifted his eyes from the river and saw the rain forest stretching out beyond the city limits, extending onward until the trees became a blur of green and orange and black at the horizon. The jungle enveloped everything he saw -- omnipresent, inescapable, the foaming flowers, acalyphas, morning glories, thickets of bamboo, toucans, bellbirds, a riot of color and sound. Mankind was only a visitor to this corner of the world. Even with all the bureaucratic bullshit you had to wallow through, you couldn't forget that. Doyle was speaking again. "Listen, can you do me a favor? Just do something for me." "Go ahead." "Find out what Baker told them. Don't be obvious about it, but send out some feelers. Get a reading on what Aquino knows. I mean, Baker's a good man, but -- " He stopped. Laughed nervously. "Shit, you know what I'm talking about. I wouldn't put anything past those sons of bitches. You know what went down in that building, right? In Fort Gambaro, after the coup?" Mulder knew. In the old days Fort Gambaro had been used as a detention camp for political prisoners. They had been tortured here, and worse -- you could almost feel it in the walls, the residue of ten years. That was why he was on the roof. He didn't like to remain in those rooms, absorbing ancient pain from the woodwork. "I seriously doubt they've been shoving bamboo strips up Baker's fingernails," Mulder said. "Or even -- " He broke off. Kovac was coming towards him, his boots drumming against the rooftop. Mulder lowered his phone, asked: "Time?" Neil Kovac nodded with a hint of impatience. He was in his forties, gaunt but solidly built, with enormous granite cheekbones and thinning hair. "Time," he said, his voice like sandpaper. "Is that Doyle?" "Yeah." "Hang up." Kovac lit a cigarette, shook out the match. In the heat, the smell of tobacco was acrid and sharp. Mulder turned back to the phone. "Doyle, it's time. Call me back in an hour." "I will." Doyle lowered his voice. "Listen, don't forget what I asked. This guy Aquino is going to paint you the picture he wants you to see. You know the quarantine is bullshit. Remember that." There was a gulping sound as Doyle finished his water, then the click of a telephone settling back into its cradle. Kovac was looking at him. "Everything all right?" Mulder snapped his cell phone shut, slid it into the back pocket of his shorts. "Yes." "Let's be off, then." They went inside. Kovac opened the rooftop door that led to the stairs and Mulder found himself among dank smells and old dust. The stairwell was poorly lit. He extended a hand, felt nothing but raw brick. The Dutch had built Fort Gambaro in the seventeenth century, using European bricks and mortar. It towered above the river like a monolith of dried blood. It was perhaps the ugliest building he had ever seen. "Doyle's worried," Mulder said. "Yes, well, I believe we are all worried at the moment." Kovac had a clipped, precise way of speaking that made it sound as though English wasn't his first language -- it was too formal, somehow, and flat, as if he were reading a printed transcript. The ember of his cigarette bobbed in the darkness as they made their way downstairs. "Do you have a shield?" "A what?" "A shield," Kovac repeated. "An FBI badge which you can attach or clip to your person." "Yeah, I do," said Mulder, pulling the ID from his pocket. "You want me to wear it?" "Yes." Kovac opened another door. They stood in a corridor of paralyzing brightness: it might have been a hospital were it not for the stifling, oppressive heat. Despite the fans in the ceiling, the building sweltered. "I'm trying to lay our cards on the table," Kovac explained, glancing at Mulder's clothes. "It would have been good if you had worn a dark suit or FBI fatigues." "It's a hundred degrees outside, and not much cooler in here," Mulder said, clipping the badge to his belt. "I'm not going to asphyxiate myself for the sake of some half-assed show of force. What is this, anyway? You trying to intimidate someone?" "Something like that. What about your weapon? Where is it?" "Confiscated. I guess they have problems with people who carry guns into the heart of the Surinamese military-industrial complex." Mulder stopped in the middle of the hallway. "Level with me. What's the point of trying to set me up as this big bad dude?" "The point?" Kovac checked his pocket watch. "The point, Agent Mulder, is that we have little bargaining power at this point in time. We are weak. And when you are weak you create the illusion of strength. That's an elementary law of survival in the rain forest. It's called the flash and dazzle approach. You use bright colors and shapes to startle the predator. This is what we are attempting. We are flashing our eyespots at Aquino and hoping that he blinks." "And if it doesn't work, what then? We play dead and hope he goes away?" The tightest flicker of a smile. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." "With all due respect, fuck this. I didn't come to scenic South America to play the heavy in some confidence game. If all you wanted was a Bureau-approved paper tiger, I could have named a number of agents who are significantly more physically intimidating than I can be." "Beginning with Agent Scully?" "That's right, beginning with Agent Scully." Mulder shook his head, amused in spite of himself. "Come on," he said. "What's this all about?" "You tell me," Kovac replied. "What do you think this is about?" "This is what I know." Mulder glanced from side to side, then leaned in close. "Two days ago an undulating stream of light emanated from the jungle in the immediate vicinity of your plantation, a reddish-orange eruption rising in a long continuous ribbon from within the rain forest." "And this is why you came?" "It was what first attracted my attention. This light. It's known as the Andes glow. There are similar sightings in South America every few years. We don't know what it is, or what causes it." He paused. "But within eight hours after this latest glow was seen, twelve men died in the jungle. Your men. Americans. Of the thirteen individuals who were at your plantation two days ago, only one made it back to the city alive. I'm rather interested in hearing what this man has to say. Because this has happened before." Kovac was silent for a moment. Then he nodded his head sharply to the left. Mulder turned, saw a red door standing at the end of the hallway. It was unmarked, smooth, like the entrance to a broom closet. Kovac said: "You want to hear what that man has to say? He's right there. All you need to do is get him released." He turned. "Follow me." They went to the door and Kovac knocked twice. At the second rap the door swung open. Mulder looked inside and realized that he was staring at nothing. No one stood there. For one crazy instant he thought that the door had opened on its own, like something from a haunted house. Then he looked down, and realized his mistake. * * * End of (1/19) Date: 15 Jul 1999 07:08:50 GMT Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative The Tiger Complex (2/19) by LoneGunGuy http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html * * * The satchel was a part of her life. It was a black valise with silver clasps, like a doctor's bag, except when you looked inside you knew that these tools had been designed not to heal but to eviscerate those who were beyond any help. Dana Scully had bought it in Washington a few months after joining the Bureau, and now the leather was battered and worn from being tossed into trunks and glove compartments, squeezed into knapsacks or her good Samsonite bag, hauled, mangled, splattered with fluid. But she had kept it throughout six years of abuse, and after a while she brought it with her wherever she went. You never knew where death might be waiting. Scully set the satchel on the restroom sink and opened it. Her knives were strapped to the inside flap -- the scalpels, the long prosector's knife -- but she ignored them for now and brought out the button mask and gloves and goggles and scrubs, all rolled up and wrapped in sterile paper. She slipped on the scrubs, then looked into the mirror. The woman looking back at her seemed tired -- there were pale crescents under her eyes -- but she didn't feel tired, no, Scully never allowed herself to feel tired going into an autopsy where she had twelve bodies to disassemble. If you were exhausted when you began a job like that, you would collapse like a pile of rags before you got to your third cadaver. Cutting was hard work. The muscles in her forearms and biceps would be aching like hell before the morning was over. She put on the button mask and the goggles. Tied back her hair and fitted the surgical cap to her head. This bathroom was old and poorly lit and the toilet was of the ancient pull-chain kind. The walls smelled of mildew. She pulled on her gloves. Scully tucked the satchel beneath her arm and stepped into the corridor. She was in the basement of Fort Gambaro. It felt like a catacomb, a crypt, the ceiling fans chopping like the blades of a blender. There was a woman in the hallway. She had been marching briskly, arms swinging like those of a Prussian soldier, but now she stopped. She was young, with blonde hair framing delicate features. She produced a badge, held it up for Scully to see. "The name's Haniver," she said. "FBI." Scully's ID was in a pocket on the front of her satchel. "Scully. The same." She tugged down her mask so that Haniver could see her face. "A pleasure. Here to do the autopsy?" Haniver glanced down at Scully's celery-colored scrubs. "Silly question, right? Come on," she said, resuming her rapid walk. "We've got twelve little Indians lined up in a row." "We?" "Yeah." Haniver halted again. "They didn't tell you? I'm from the terrorism division. Chemical weapons. This is what I do." "You're a doctor?" "I went to medical school. I went to law school, too, but that doesn't make me a lawyer. I hope you aren't -- " "The jealous type?" Scully said. "No. If you want to assist, pull on some scrubs and lend a hand, by all means." She offered Haniver her satchel -- but the other agent smiled, lifted an orange nylon knapsack. "I brought my own. Give me a second to change." Haniver went into the restroom, propping the door open so that they could talk. Scully stood in the corridor, waiting, staring up at the hypnotic revolutions of the fans. "How long have you been in Suriname?" she asked. Through the bathroom door, Haniver's voice echoed across the tiles. "I landed an hour ago. Looks like your office got the word before mine did." "Barely." Scully fussed with her gloves, pulling the latex tight. "In all honesty, I'm not sure why I'm on this case." "Twelve American citizens were the victims of terrorism on foreign soil. It's the FBI's jurisdiction, isn't it?" "You think we're looking at a terrorist attack?" "Like I said, this is what I do." Haniver emerged in green scrubs, tucking her blonde hair beneath a surgical cap. She was perspiring. "It's too damned hot in this dungeon," she said. "But I hear they stored the bodies in a -- what was it again?" "A meat locker." "Oh. Why?" Scully started down the hall. "Officially it's because the University Hospital couldn't handle the overflow. Really it's because someone wants to keep an eye on these bodies." "Graveyard politics. Jesus." Haniver snapped on gloves. "A meat locker. You sure it's at the right temperature? "I called ahead." They stood before the big steel door. Scully put her hand against the metal -- she could see it reflected faintly in the dull surface -- and saw that the lock was a simple one, a pin on a chain. But someone had taped seals across it. The seals were on slick paper, with the flag of Suriname and a dense Dutch text that Scully couldn't decipher. She fitted a blade to her scalpel handle and was about to slice through the seals when Haniver took her by the wrist. "No spacesuits?" she asked. "Not unless you feel the need," Scully replied. "Even if there were some threat of contamination -- just look around you. We've got fans in the ceiling. Ventilation ducts. This isn't an airtight facility. Whatever our victims carried with them must be halfway to Brazil by now." She cut the seals and gripped the handle. The door swung slowly open, like the entrance to a mausoleum. The whisper of cold and death in their faces as they pulled on their masks and went inside. Twelve bodies lay before them like dark Christmas presents, zipped into black bags and lined up on a pair of wooden tables. Some pork loins still sat on the corner shelf, waiting to be breaded and baked in the cafeteria on the second floor. "And then there's Baker," Haniver was saying. "Excuse me?" "Nick Baker, the one survivor. He's been in quarantine ever since -- well, you read the report. He ferried these bodies up the river and he's been under observation ever since. If he's still alive and shows no sign of infection -- " "The danger is probably gone, right." Scully turned to Haniver. Only her blue eyes were visible above the mask. "Let's look at our first victim." "This is where we're doing the autopsy?" "It's either here or the hallway floor. Either way, this is going to be a hell of a mess." Scully looked around for her dissecting table, finally saw the steel slab lying just inside the doorway. The tabletop was curved like a shallow basin to keep fluids from dripping down. An old-fashioned hand-pump rested on top. "Fill this with water from the sink in the bathroom," Scully said, handing the pump to Haniver. "I'll prop the door open and try to set the thermostat to a reasonable temperature." When Haniver returned, Scully had already managed to lift the first body onto the steel table. Its tag read "Albert DeFillips." The locker was warmer than before but Scully still shivered slightly, scalpel at the ready, as Haniver unzipped the body bag and pulled its halves apart to reveal the cargo it contained. The two women stared at the body inside. "Shit," Scully finally said. "Yeah." Haniver looked up. "Looks like we got sloppy seconds." Scully couldn't take her eyes off the man inside the bag. Albert DeFillips was a white male in his middle thirties, balding slightly, with that odd expression of tranquillity and calm that often characterized the faces of the dead. He had already been autopsied. The familiar forked incision ran up his belly, but it had been sewn back together. Scully could smell feces from when his intestines had been emptied. He had been disassembled and reassembled by hands other than her own, and she didn't know who had done it. "I can't believe this," she murmured. "Wait," said Haniver. "The brain." "What?" "Did they take his brain or leave it? That's what I need to know. Look at this." Haniver took one of DeFillips's hands and showed it to Scully. "He's got blue fingernails. And look here." She dropped the hand. Lifted the dead man's eyelids. The irises were brown but irises were all he had: the only blackness was a microscopic spot in the center, like the dot of a pencil. "Blue fingernails. Pinpoint pupils. You know what that says to me?" Scully did. "A nerve agent." "That's right. We need to take a look at the brain. Open up his skull and see if they left anything." "Hold on." Scully examined DeFillips's head, pushing apart the soggy brush of his hair. Sure enough, the incision was there, a deep stitched cut running from ear to ear across the top of his scalp. Scully used the point of her knife to cut the stitches one at a time. A small amount of coagulated blood oozed out beneath her blade. She frowned and tugged the skin down the dead man's face, laying bare the smooth ostrich egg of his calvarium. The skull had already been sawed open. Scully removed the top of DeFillips' brain pan. She wasn't sure what she would find. The question of what to do with the brain after an autopsy was often taken as a gauge of the cutter's personality. Back in the States you cut it open on the spot, or you stuck it in formalin to let it harden, or you slid it back inside the skull when you were done, or you did a number of other things. Scully had no idea what they did in Suriname. "What the hell?" Haniver said. A strange damp membranous substance tumbled out from DeFillips's skull. Scully reached down, took a bit of it between her fingers. It was very thin and pulled easily apart. "What is it?" "It's brown paper. They stuffed his skull with crumpled brown paper." Scully paused. "I know where the brain is." With her scalpel, Scully cut open the incision in the corpse's chest, then unfolded him like an origami doll. "Jesus," said Haniver. The man's insides were a mess of organs. His heart, lungs and bowels had been dropped back inside without any care for order. His brain had been laid on top, like a rare garnish. When Scully spoke again, her voice was grim. "This was a rush job. You cut someone open, fine, but when you're done you put the pieces back together. It's hard to fit the brain back into the cranium, though, so when you're in a hurry you just toss it into the chest cavity, like this. Whoever did it was pressed for time." "Someone was trying to finish before we got here." Scully nodded. "The other bodies. Are they the same?" Haniver walked over to the long tables, unzipped one bag after another. "Yes." "I can't believe this," Scully said again. She felt a sudden rush of anger. After working as a federal ghoul for six years she had developed her own set of values, her own strange sense of violation. Getting stuck with the leavings of someone else's postmortem was a violation like that. "These were American bodies," she said. "If the Surinamese cut these men open on their own, there'll be hell to pay." Haniver zipped the cadavers back up. "I don't think the Surinamese did this." "No? Then who did?" But Haniver didn't say anything. Instead she came back, her thoughts locked securely behind her deep gray eyes, and helped Scully lift the viscera from within the desecrated corpse. * * * Ferdinand Aquino, the unofficial opposition leader of the Republic of Suriname, leaned back in his wheelchair and lit a cigar with a wooden match. "Rubber," he said. "That's where it all began, you know." Aquino was a tiny Dutchman with a sharp beard and a head of bushy red hair. His ruined legs were like broomsticks, but his upper body was wiry and strong. Standing, he couldn't have been more than a shade over five feet tall; when he answered the door in his wheelchair Mulder had looked right over him and seen nothing, which was why the FBI agent had thought, briefly, that the door had swung open of its own volition. Now Aquino tasted the smoke thoughtfully. "Until 1876, the Amazon was the only place in the world where you could find rubber trees. The Indians knew about them for ten thousand years before the first colonists landed on these shores. For most of the nineteenth century, rubber was currency to us. We manufactured tires for half the world." His eyes misted over with nostalgia, as if he had seen the marvels of which he spoke. "The rubber industry was in Brazil," Kovac said. He and Mulder sat at the other end of Aquino's desk, which loomed before them like a solid acre of polished wood. The cigar irritated him. Aquino had made him extinguish his own cigarette before entering the office. "It was in Amazonia." Aquino waved his hand dismissively. "Borders do not concern me. Let elected officials worry about where to draw the line, or how to inscribe a triangle within a semicircle. I look to the larger picture. In 1876 an English botanist stole seventy thousand pounds of rubber fruits and planted the seeds in Indonesia. He stole rubber from the Amazon. Like Prometheus. Today, if you want to deal in rubber, you must be able to speak Bahasa." Kovac did not make the obvious point, that Aquino was a white male living in a nation that had been colonized and recolonized so many times that the official language was Dutch, the predominant religion was Hindi and the majority of the population was black. Instead, he tried to get his bearings. The office in which they sat was ostentatious and somewhat vulgar compared to the rest of the building: like Paramaribo itself, Fort Gambaro seemed to have been assembled from the spare parts of other civilizations, its spaces ranging from the sterile white corridors of the upper level to the museum on the ground floor, and the dark catacombs below. It almost reminded him of the jungle, with its many layers and understories. This office, then, was the canopy, the only place where light could shine. A skylight had been set into the ceiling. Through it, the sun beat down like the mantle of God Himself. "What's the point of this story?" Mulder asked. "The point is that the theft of rubber began the long process of technological espionage which has plagued our continent to the present day," the general said. "A process which you seem eager to continue." "You believe that we have stolen something from Suriname?" said Kovac. "I do not believe anything." Aquino sighed and steered his wheelchair from behind the desk. He moved the wheelchair the way another man might play an idle game of cat's cradle: Kovac imagined Aquino tracing unseen patterns on the thick carpet, diamonds, criss-crossing lines, like the marks on the back of a fer-de-lance. "I do not believe, I do not assume, I do not make conjectures or indulge in speculation. I know. I know that you are trying to cheat us, my friend." "I am only a private businessman." "That does not absolve you from suspicion. On the contrary, it heightens it. I don't pretend to trust Americans; I do business with them because my country demands it." "We have been through this many times," Kovac said. He knew that Aquino wasn't listening but went through with it anyway, talking in his clipped, precise manner. "My company is a manufacturer of cosmetics. In our industry we utilize many exudates from tropical plant species, including the oil of the copal tree, or the tree of heaven. Two years ago we approached your Ministry of Natural Resources with a proposal to set aside one hundred acres of rain forest for the harvesting of copal oil. This proposal was approved and we have not reneged. We have paid your country generously for the use of your land. In return, you have always granted us unimpeded access into the interior. But now you refuse it. Why?" By now the cover story had become almost second nature to Kovac, and he rattled it off like a professional. He watched Aquino carefully, looking for a response. The general puffed on his cigar, then wheeled back behind his desk. "They say that nature works imperfectly," Aquino said. "Like an artist with a hand that trembles. I hear that tremble in your voice, Kovac, and I know that you are lying." Kovac kept his face perfectly still, like some clay that was hardening to stone. He was not dismayed or even surprised. He had anticipated this, and he knew what needed to be done. His mind began to turn in a new direction. Apparently satisfied, Aquino turned to Mulder. "And what of you? What interest does the United States government have in these matters?" "I'm not here as a representative of the United States government," Mulder said, his voice formal. "I'm here to investigate the deaths of twelve American citizens. I have no interest in any transactions that Mr. Kovac has made with you or your government except as it relates to my investigation." "In that case, why are you here?" "There is a man," Mulder said quietly. "His name is Nick Baker. Two days ago he airlifted twelve dead bodies into Paramaribo after ferrying them down the river from a plantation deep within the interior. He was alone. Immediately after landing at Pengel International Airport, he was arrested and taken into custody here, at Fort Gambaro, ostensibly for a quarantine but really so that you, General Aquino, could detain and question him at your leisure." Mulder leaned forward. "I want to talk to this man. He is the sole survivor of a disaster which took place somewhere in the rain forest, a disaster the nature of which remains unknown." A brief silence. "Not so unknown," Aquino said. He reached beneath his desk and pressed a hidden button. Kovac heard a hiss of static, a mechanical cough, and then the room was filled with the sound of a man's voice, scratchy and filtered through wave after wave of interference. Kovac recognized the voice immediately. "This message was intercepted two days ago," Aquino said above the din. "It was transmitted by radio from your plantation to an office building in Paramaribo, a building that has been rented in your name, Kovac, for the past two years. We haven't been able to identify the speaker for ourselves, although I'm sure you know who it is." Kovac nodded. "James Lifton. We hired him to perform graft work on the copal trees." Then he listened to the recording for what seemed like the thousandth time, his pulse no longer quickening as the voice rose in intensity from a whisper to a whimper to a scream, only to shatter itself to pieces, in the end, on the head of the shortwave beach.... The voice said: "Hello Parbo, Parbo, BFDP headquarters in Paramaribo come in please...we've got two men dead, at least two, maybe more...can't go outside...from where I'm standing I can see Albert lying on the ground...he's covered with the little flames...fire on the trees...urgent situation...they're dead, they're all dead, and something's coming...Jesus there's fire on the trees but they aren't burning, everyone's dead and there's fire on the trees...it's all around me...listen to me, please, please listen, listen to me -- " And then came an enormous crash and a strangled scream, and all was silent except for the low faint whine of feedback and the hum of wind through the treetops. * * * End of (2/19) Date: 15 Jul 1999 07:10:30 GMT Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative "The Tiger Complex" (3/19) by LoneGunGuy http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html * * * "There is something exquisitely depressing," Haniver said, "about cutting these men open for the second time." They were on their seventh corpse. The routine was numbing. Once each autopsy was done, Scully would roll the body away and Haniver would take the hand-pump and wash the residual blood and bile from the slab, letting the fluids trickle through holes in the table to the basin beneath. She could hear the dripping sound it made. The meat locker was still very cold and they were tired. At one point Scully almost cut herself, the scalpel blade slicing neatly through the latex on the back of her hand but somehow not scratching the skin. Their discoveries were monotonous. Each body had pinpoint pupils and fingernails with a bluish cast. Their lungs were clotted with mucus. Haniver wanted to get a tissue sample beneath the microscope as soon as she could. But there was more than enough for a diagnosis. Albert DeFillips had told them himself. Some kind of nerve agent had entered his blood and crossed the lining of his brain and he had convulsed and lost consciousness and suffocated to death as his respiratory system short-circuited and his legs beat out a tuneless rhythm on the white jungle soil. Eventually the results became so familiar that the FBI agents no longer had to discuss them aloud. They could speak of other things. "Depressing," repeated Haniver. "They're all jumbled up inside because someone has been here first. It's a mess. It isn't how this is meant to be." "No, it isn't." Scully was up to her elbows inside a black man with rippling muscles and a gray mustache. "I don't know about you, but whenever I open someone up there's usually that thrill of anticipation. You know? Because you never know what they'll look like on the inside." Haniver spoke as one would speak of a pleasant memory, a stroll through a meadow or an art museum. The inside of the human body was a museum that few were allowed to explore. "I've been in the morgue," she said, "when they've taken apart mundane bodies and flabby figures and revealed the most beautiful viscera you could ever imagine...." Scully nodded. "When I was in medical school I had to take the subway home each day. I would look at my fellow travelers and dissect them in my mind. I would take comfort in what lay beneath the surface, even when I was looking at a drunk, or some craven teenager." She lifted out the dead man's organ tree. "You see? We're all different on the inside. The heart or liver is as individual as a face." She pointed to the delicate webbing of arteries. "The branching vessels always ramify in their own way. But you need to take apart hundreds of bodies before you start to see it." They finished the seventh body. They were more than halfway there. The two women were bringing the eighth victim to the table when Haniver said: "Listen, I've only been assisting so far. How about letting me be prosector on this one?" "Sure." Scully stretched, cracked her knuckles. "I'm tired of this. You want the knife?" "No thanks," Haniver said. "I brought my own." She kneeled, opened her orange knapsack and from a leather sheath drew a blade so striking that Scully jumped slightly backward at the sight of it. It was at least ten inches long, with a smooth edge and a strangely twisted handle that Haniver had wrapped with black friction tape. She lifted the knife and brandished it in a showy way that made Scully more nervous than the weapon itself. "That's a big knife," Scully finally managed. "It's a catalogue item," Haniver said, letting it play with the light. "They make it from a steel railway spike, the hardest steel in the world. I can't work with standard prosector's knives, you know -- the blades are too narrow and too long." She turned with her knife to the next corpse. "Shall we resume?" "We shall." Scully unzipped the body bag and wondered whether Haniver knew how to use the knife the way it was meant to be used. She looked down. This corpse was different. Scully had gone through every external examination with care and knew for a fact that the other victims had been unmarked except for the occasional scratch or bug bite. But this man -- young, sandy-haired and rather good-looking -- had a broken head. His skull had been bashed in like crockery. "His name's James Lifton," said Haniver, reading from the tag. "Looks like he had a pretty bad break." A man's voice from behind them: "Looks like they all had a pretty bad break, Jenny." The two women turned. Mulder stood in the entrance to the meat locker, peering inside, his hands in his pockets. Scully opened her mouth and was about to say something when Haniver cut her off: "Fox?" she said, her face radiating nothing but delighted surprise. "Holy Jesus, Fox!" Then Haniver ran to him and hugged him with the big knife still clutched in her hand. After a moment Mulder hugged her back, looking sheepishly at Scully over the other woman's shoulder. Scully just stood there. She didn't know whether it was a flicker of jealousy or a feeling more profound than that, but something about this sudden show struck her as wrong. False. As if Haniver were putting on a show for Mulder's benefit. Then the feeling passed. Scully stripped off her gloves, went to the others. Haniver was still talking. "Jesus, Fox, I haven't seen you in -- shit, it must be five or six years. How's that assignment of yours going? And your partner? What's -- " She broke off and turned to Scully. Her eyes were huge. "Oh my God!" Haniver said, smiling in crazy disbelief. "You're Dana Scully!" Scully smiled back. * * * "But you've got to understand," said Haniver, "that this woman is very distinguished-looking." "That's right." Mulder took a swallow of coffee and grinned into the cup. "That's right, she would walk into the store with this gray scarf over her head, and her expensive gray gloves -- " "Let me finish this one, all right?" Haniver turned to Scully, settling into the story. "So this very proper, handsome woman goes up to the clerk behind the counter at the diamond boutique and says, 'Excuse me, miss, I'd like to see a 1.25 carat diamond with a round cut, please.' Because she's engaged, and her fiancee wants her to shop around for the ring." "She even shows the clerk a picture of the lucky husband-to- be," Mulder said. "So she takes the diamond," Haniver continued, "and looks at it for a bit, asks about the price, then goes 'Thank you very much,' hands it back and walks away. And the clerk forgets all about it until she totals up her inventory that night and discovers a small weight discrepancy. Just a fraction of a carat. This fraction of a carat is missing. So what do you think happened?" They sat in the cafeteria on the second floor of Fort Gambaro, paper cups of coffee in their hands. The room was deserted except for them and a handful of sunburnt Dutch tourists reading manga comic books. Scully drained the last of her coffee. "I don't know. What happened?" "In San Francisco," Haniver said, "this woman purchased a small diamond, maybe half a carat. Then she drove to Seattle. In every large city along the way she would stop at a diamond boutique and ask to see a stone of the same cut and a slightly larger weight. Then, when the clerk wasn't paying attention, she'd switch the two diamonds, keeping the larger one and leaving a stone that weighed a few points less. After twelve cities she'd doubled the size of her diamond and quadrupled her original investment." "The Bureau got involved because she crossed state lines," said Mulder. "It was Haniver who tracked her down. She called every diamond boutique on the west coast and asked if they were short a couple of carats. Then she plotted her path on the interstate system and nabbed her the following week." "Not quite so glamorous as catching a serial killer. But when I arrested her in the store, the bitch fought me. I mean, she got her nails in good." "You were in the paper for that. I clipped the article." Haniver shrugged. "I was slumming. That was after that mess in Tokyo. They took me off chemical weapons for six months and had me busting little old ladies for grand larceny." Her face clouded briefly; then she grinned at Mulder. "You clipped the article, huh?" "I did." "Why the hell didn't you give me a call? Back at Quantico we were the best of friends." "Back at Quantico we had our share of trouble. The marksmanship instructor said you had the strongest hands he'd ever seen. I believed him, because half the time they were wrapped around my neck." Haniver smacked him on the shoulder. "That's because half the time you were a stuck-up son of a bitch." "I guess some things never change." The conversation fell into a lull. Scully toyed with her cup, peeled the paper out into a long corkscrew helix. They'd managed to finish the rest of the bodies fairly quickly, working on two at a time, Haniver and herself hacking away while Mulder watched in silence. Near the end it had been almost dreamlike. She had watched her own hands slicing stitches, her lips puffing vapor, her mind wandering. Her mind was wandering now. Mulder had said something. "What's that?" "I said there's something wrong with this case." Mulder told them about his meeting with Aquino, the accusation that Kovac was lying, the taped radio message, the refusal to release Baker. "If this investigation is stalling," he said, "it's because the Surinamese don't trust Kovac. Frankly, I don't blame them." "What do you mean?" "Kovac says his plantation was harvesting copal oil for use in cosmetics. I can buy the first part. I've seen the documentation, I've seen the pictures, and there's no doubt they were growing copal trees down there. But...." He trailed off. Hesitated. "But if they were using the trees for something else," he said, choosing his words carefully, "something more interesting, they would have every reason to conceal it. Suriname treats its land as the patrimony of the state. When a foreign investor comes to them with a plan for natural resource exploitation, he deals directly with the government, as a joint venture. Under such circumstances, someone like Kovac might be less than candid about his reasons for going into the rain forest." "What do you think is really going on?" Haniver asked. "I don't know. But in fifteen minutes I'm meeting with someone who probably does." "Who?" "Isaac Doyle. You know him?" When Scully and Haniver shook their heads, Mulder explained. "I've been talking to him on the phone for a while now. From what I gather, he's been part of Kovac's team from the beginning -- he was here in Paramaribo when they got the emergency transmission. I did a background check. Doyle changed majors twice in college, from psychology to entomology, then from entomology to his current field. He's a geneticist." Scully raised an eyebrow. "You think we're dealing with some kind of bioengineering program?" The sharp ring of a cell phone prevented Mulder from answering. The three agents checked their phones simultaneously, bringing them out like soldiers on a rifle drill. Mulder was the winner. He spoke briefly with the caller, hung up, turned to the others. Drummed his fingers on the table for emphasis. "That was Doyle," he said. * * * There were layers upon layers. In 1991, when Suriname finally returned to democracy after a decade under military rule, the army abandoned all but the topmost floor of Fort Gambaro. Ferdinand Aquino still held court in his well-feathered canopy nest, but the lower levels remained empty and unused. Eventually the building was renovated and exhibits were brought in, gourds and arrows and yellowing charters, and the first two floors became a museum of the history of Suriname. But beneath the surface the catacombs remained, and the crypts: a museum of a secret history, a secret language, where tourists did not walk and cameras were not permitted. Stepping inside, Mulder's first thought was that he was back in the gulag. "It does kinda look like that, doesn't it?" Doyle said. "It's our common legacy. Take all the countries in the world, all the governments, peel away the surface and you'll find something like this. The cages in the basement. Thank God for the underlying unity of the fucking human race." The corridor was long, lit by a naked bulb that swung from the ceiling. On both sides stretched a series of cages, tiny cubicles hammered together from piping and chicken wire, their hinges smashed, the doors hanging. Inside each was barely enough room to stand upright. This was the lowermost level of Fort Gambaro, far beneath the earth, where the political prisoners had been brought during periods of military dominion. It reminded Mulder of the complex at the rear of the zoo where lions and tigers prowled at night, sleeping on concrete floors in cages that were far too small, breaking their teeth on the bars. He said so. "I know. It creeps me out, too." Doyle hooked his fingers through the fencing that made up the walls of the nearest cage. The dust left dark gray lines on the palms of his hands. "But with all this chicken wire, there's no way they can tap our conversation. Too much interference." Doyle was thin and bearded, his hooded black eyes never seeming to focus on one object but skidding smoothly, like bits of ice on a skillet. Mulder thought he looked a little like a dried-out Persian prince. "You have something to tell me?" Mulder asked. "Hm?" "On the phone you said that the government of Suriname was trying to screw us over. Those were your words, Doyle, not mine." Doyle fished a matchstick from the front pocket of his shirt, began to chew on it. His motions were precise, maybe a little too quick, like someone who was good with his hands but rarely had much to do with them. "This is a fucked-up country, Mulder," he said at last. "You've got to realize that. These people are grabbing at whatever they can." "What do you mean?" "You know anything about Surinamese history? Fuck it, of course you don't. This is a pissant nation by any standards. We're shoehorned here between Guyana and French Guiana, a pimple on the back of Brazil. You think the United States gives a shit about what happens here? Suriname has precisely one thing going for it, and that thing is going down the tubes as fast it can." "What is it?" "Bauxite. For making aluminum. As long as they've got bauxite mines, the United States will return their phone calls. But they're mining themselves out. They'll be able to last maybe five, ten more years, but after that....?" Doyle flicked his matchstick away. "They're desperate," he concluded. "They've been experimenting with diamond or gold mining, shrimp, timber, but it's hopeless. Their infrastructure is shot to hell. Dutch aid is all that keeps them going." "But this thing with Kovac could change all that. Is that what you're saying?" Doyle gave a little shrug. "It's not cosmetics, is it?" "You might call it that." The geneticist giggled. "Cosmetics. We're painting a new face on our project -- the face we want Suriname to see. But the mask is cracking. If we don't get Baker out soon, the whole operation could be in deep shit." He fixed Mulder with his odd wandering eyes. "That's why I need your help." Mulder met the stare. "What are you talking about?" "I need you to get Baker out of quarantine before he kills the whole deal. You're with the government, you must be able to do something -- " Doyle was giving him credit for more power than he had. Mulder might have said so, but something held him back. The thought that he might be able to force Doyle's hand. "Maybe I can," he said, leaning against a cage. The wire sagged, creaking, beneath his weight. "But you've got to level with me first. Kovac isn't in the cosmetics business, is he?" After a moment, Doyle shook his head. "No." "Tell me what he does." "He's with the DOE." This was unexpected. "The Department of Energy?" Mulder asked.. "He works for the government?" "Didn't you feel the strings being pulled? That pressure was coming from on high, man. This isn't about twelve dead men, this is about the technology and money we've poured into this fucking project for the past two years. I'm not going to let the Surinamese take it all away from me. They knew about it, they were ready to pounce, they had our plantation under fucking satellite surveillance for the last six months -- " "Wait." Mulder grabbed Doyle by the shoulder. "Are you saying that there are satellite photographs of the plantation? That they were still taking pictures when this disaster happened -- when these men died?" "I'm saying more than that," Doyle said, freeing his shoulder from Mulder's grip. "I'm saying that they were responsible. I'm saying that Aquino and his coalition killed those men. They killed them and now they're getting ready to take over the whole fucking country, just like they did twenty years ago." He grinned. "What do you think of that?" Mulder didn't respond. Around them, the cages seemed to close in like jaws. * * * End of (3/19) Date: 15 Jul 1999 07:12:01 GMT From: LoneGunGuy Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative "The Tiger Complex" (4/19) by LoneGunGuy http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html * * * Nick Baker opened his eyes. For a second he didn't remember where he was. There was canvas beneath his back, a sour taste in his mouth. Above him, the mottled wasteland of the ceiling. In his dream there had been a sky exploding with billions of stars. He had tried to count them all and his brain had short- circuited beneath the suffocating weight of zeroes, the numbers crowding away his memories, pressing against the inside of his skull. Then a great irregular shape had risen against the sky, blotting out the heavens, and he awoke. Now Baker sat up and looked around. The room was bare and depressing and dark. The bathroom was to his left, its walls stained a vile green. He tried to concentrate, to gather his thoughts. He was not alone. In the middle of the room was a table, and at this table sat Ferdinand Aquino. The crippled general had a blue surgical mask tied around the lower half of his face, hiding his nose and mouth. Baker knew that it was only pretense. If Aquino were really worried about some kind of infection, he would have worn goggles to protect the membranes of his eyes, and probably gloves as well. The mask was only for the sake of decorum. Best to deal with him directly. "Good morning, Aquino," Baker said. He rose from the cot and sat down at the table. The package taped between his shoulders pressed urgently against his back. "Good morning," the general said. There was a tray on the table between them, a dish with some fruit and a jug of water. It had been there since yesterday. Aquino gestured to the platter, his eyes glittering like shards of quartz. "You haven't touched your food," he said, his mouth working behind the mask. "I'm not hungry." Baker rubbed his eyes. Aquino had been waiting here for a long time, he knew, hoping to catch him off- balance when he awoke. He needed to focus. "Thank you anyway." The general clucked his tongue. "I must say, we are beginning to worry. You have been fasting for two days. Is it stress, or an upset stomach? Do you dislike the meals that we have provided?" His fingertips danced gleefully across the tabletop. "Or you afraid that we might try to poison you?" Baker suspected that this conversation was being recorded, and spoke accordingly. "I'm worried you might try to feed me something without my knowledge or consent. I like to know what medications my doctors are prescribing. I can name a number of drugs you may decide to use. Sodium amytal is odorless and tasteless, and it loosens the tongue. That's what you want, isn't it?" Aquino shook his head, amused. "I have never met anyone more paranoid than you." "I have reason enough to be paranoid." "Even if we wanted to introduce a drug into your system, there is more than one way of doing so." Aquino smiled, the mask bunching around his face. "We could slip a needle into your arm as you slept, for example." "No," said Baker. "You wouldn't do anything that might leave a mark. I'm going to be released eventually." "But of course. We have no plans to keep you any longer than necessary." "Then let me go." "I am afraid that is impossible. You are in a state of quarantine. Whatever questions we ask are merely intended to further our investigation into certain medical matters." Aquino leaned forward. "You brought twelve dead bodies into our city. Certainly you must have expected that your actions would inspire curiosity and concern on our part." There was a wet spot on the mask from where the general had been speaking. For some reason Baker couldn't look away from it. "I've told you everything that you need to know," he said. "And the rest is silence, I suppose." Baker stood. "I need to use the bathroom." Aquino only looked at him, murderous good humor dancing in his eyes. "Then use it." * * * Incredibly enough, there was a lock on the inside of the bathroom door. Baker did his morning business, washed his hands and stared into the basin for a long time. There was a voice in the back of his mind. He tried to ignore it but soon it became impossible. The package between his shoulder blades. He needed to look at it. For the past two days it had been hidden away in the small of his back. There was a place midway up the spine that allegedly went unnoticed in a routine pat-down search; he had read about it years ago, in some true crime paperback bought for an airplane ride, and in the rain forest he had secured the package there with a crooked X of duct tape. It was his cross to bear. Baker pulled off his shirt. He had been wearing these clothes for longer than he cared to remember, and the smell of death had permeated the fabric. When he raised his arms, he stank like a lion. He looked at himself in the mirror, looked at the purplish bruises blossoming angrily across his chest, the shallow red scratches where he'd cut himself without feeling it. "Hell," he said. The trip back to the airstrip had been a difficult one. He had carried the bodies one by one through the undergrowth, and by the end had been quite ready to lie down and take his place among the dead. Now Baker reached behind him and peeled the duct tape from his skin, wincing as a few hairs came away with the package. It was in his hands. It was a stack of Polaroids held together with a rubber band and wrapped inside two plastic bags. He had not examined the pictures when he took them, and he wasn't sure why he needed to look at them now. For some reason Baker thought of Quassapelagh. The airstrip in the jungle ran along the edge of a Tirio village, and in that village there lived a man. He was an old Indian with gleaming black eyes and a face like a dried apple, but he was still strong and graceful and at home in the world, hunting the pacas, growing manioc and cassava in his garden, living alone with a shelf of books and the murmur of wind in the treetops. For Quassapelagh was a bit of a Thoreau. He had worked during his youth on boats and ships throughout the hemisphere, learning the way of ropes and sails, and later of the great propellers and engine rooms. By night he had educated himself with battered paperbacks and secondhand textbooks, moving from Paramaribo to Port-au-Prince, from Caracas to Puerto Cabezas, and from there ending up somewhere in Louisiana. He spent two years in America and decided to return home; but when he came to his village again, he found an abandoned shell, empty of people, eroded by insects. There was no mystery here, no ominous light above the trees: Christianity and the allure of quinine and tennis shoes had civilized the Tirios and destroyed, in a generation's time, a way of life older than the pyramids. And so Quassapelagh had taken it upon himself to remain in the jungle, maintaining the old ways. Standing there in the bathroom, the photos in his hands, Baker thought of the long conversations he had shared with Quassapelagh. Whenever the BFDP team needed to send someone into Paramaribo for a few days, Baker usually got the assignment, mostly because he was fluent in Sranan Tongo and the various Indian dialects one might encounter along the way; and as a result, he had spent many nights as the old Tirio's guest. He remembered one night in particular. They had been sitting in the dusty clearing at the center of the village, stirring the embers of the fire, when Baker had offered to show Quassapelagh some pictures of his family. Quassapelagh had politely declined to look. Baker had asked why. The Indian had rested quietly for a moment, lying on the sandy soil. "Have you ever wonder, Baker," he finally said, "why my people refuse to have their pictures taken? No doubt you have notice. For we do become rather upset when you bring out the camera." "I had noticed that, yes." "Know why?" Baker had stared into the reddish coals. "I always assumed it had something to do with beliefs about the spirit -- that there was concern that the camera could take a person's soul away. Or that by possessing a man's image you somehow had power over him...." But Quassapelagh had frowned. "Without meaning to offense, I must refer to that as James Frazer bullshit. The white man always thinks that the Indian has primitive idea of the soul, that it escapes from one's mouth as one sleeps and wanders through the jungle, or that it can be sucked away like water or air. But we have a more interesting idea of the soul than you do." "What do you mean?" "We understand how it fit with the body. European man either drowns his flesh with physical pleasure, fats and gravies, or he whip it into submission to bring himself close to God. But the Tirio live in the open. We are confident in the strength of our flesh, and in the strength of the soul also." "So you don't think a camera can take your soul from you." "Course not." "Then why do you object to photographs?" "Because we understand change, and we cherish it. Maybe you not understand. But the human face is always evolving. I do not mean over the centuries and millennia, but on a moment by moment basis. Your face changes as I look at you, like sea anemone or sand dune. It is very wonderful. The face of the earth is the same. You look at a tree and see it standing like a pillar, but it is not a pillar, and it holds up nothing but itself. The change is the pattern of the world. And a photo kills it more savagely than death itself." Quassapelagh's eyes had reflected the fire, his pupils dots of red. "Even a dead man is changing. His expression on the second day is different from the first. There are minor distortions of the skin. He looks maybe a little sadder and more thoughtful as the time passes by. But when you take picture, he stops changing, and this is an obscenity to us." Now Baker slipped the bag from the bundle of photographs and began to flip through them, a sour taste at the back of his throat. There were perhaps thirty photos altogether. He had taken pictures of the men and the damaged communications shed and the trees with the bodies lying beneath. Here was DeFillips on the ground. There was a smear of dirt on his face. His eyes were half-open, as if peering out sardonically from beneath the lids. The next photo was of James Lifton, his forehead a bloody wreck. The light was bad and the colors dull like Polaroids always were, flesh tones overexposed until they resembled the inner rind of an orange, everything slightly out of focus. The next photo. The next. And the next. Baker looked at each picture for a long time, as if expecting the faces to move, the men to rise and walk again. But he knew that Quassapelagh had been right. It was an obscenity. * * * "You know, Doyle's right about one thing," Mulder said. "The army wouldn't take over Suriname until they were assured of economic self-sufficiency. Whenever the military seized power in the past, they were forced back to democracy within a few years because the economy couldn't handle the change. They need money from the Netherlands. If they return to military rule, Dutch aid will cease and they'll be left to their own devices. The whole process is doomed from the start, unless they find some way of supporting themselves." He and Scully stood in the museum on the first floor. This level was partitioned into many galleries, many rooms, a pasteboard labyrinth in which every chamber had its own theme, its own parceled bit of Surinamese history: the Hall of Agriculture, the Hall of Science, the Hall of Colonialism. This was the Hall of Primitives. The walls were hung with feathers, blowguns, woven hammocks. The mannequin of a Waiwai tribesman stood near the entrance, wilting in the heat. Behind a red velvet rope was a Tirio killing box -- a bamboo enclosure the size of a telephone booth in which a hunter could await the approach of a jaguar. There was a slit in the door for the arrow. Mulder opened the door, looked inside. The killing box was empty except for a crumpled candy wrapper written in Hindi. The interior smelled of hay and dry rot. "So do you buy Doyle's theory?" Scully asked. "That Aquino killed these men to get his hands on whatever they were doing in the rain forest?" "No," said Mulder. "I don't think anything human was responsible for what happened there." Mulder had his hands on the red velvet rope, on the heavy metal stand, hooking and unhooking it as he spoke. The brass clip made a clicking sound in the silence. Around them, the room was deserted. "So what are you thinking?" she said. "I'm thinking about the Andes glow." Scully remembered Mulder sitting in the basement yesterday morning, going through a stack of photos, a fuzzy finger of luminescence blazing up through the middle of each: now blue, now yellow, now red, like the afterimage from a burst of sunlight, towering high above the hills or treetops. "It isn't an isolated phenomenon," he said now. "There have been at least twenty authenticated sightings in South America since 1931. It's a diffuse electrical discharge phenomenon, a pillar of light rising from the mountaintops -- like the Brown Mountain lights." Scully shuddered at the memory. "But there were no mountains in this case." "It doesn't matter. This is an atmospheric force." "I'm afraid to ask what causes it." "Promise you won't laugh?" "No." But Mulder's eyes had that teasing gleam they got whenever he was about to venture anything particularly bizarre; Scully sensed that something good was coming. "Doyle gave me the idea," Mulder said. "He mentioned that the Surinamese had been keeping the plantation under satellite surveillance." Doyle was beginning to sound more paranoid than Mulder himself. "Do you believe him?" asked Scully. "Not really. But it got me to thinking. In all likelihood, any such satellites would have been launched from French Guiana. Look." From his back pocket Mulder produced a rumpled map, unfolding it and spreading it across the bench behind them. He jabbed it with his finger. "The European Space Agency has maintained a launching station at Kourou for years, right across the border from Suriname. It's a standard rule of thumb. When you want to build a satellite tracking system, you put it as close to the equator as possible." He straightened up and turned to Scully, still with that mad gleam in his eye. "So?" he said, waiting for her response. Scully held out her hands. "So...what?" "The Andes glow and similar discharge phenomena are often associated with sightings of unidentified flying objects," Mulder said patiently. "I think the rain forest outside of Paramaribo is a major hotbed of alien activity." "You think that aliens are monitoring satellite launchings in Kourou?" Scully asked, incredulous. "No," Mulder said. "I think that the aliens are launching satellites of their own." She looked at him. He was grinning but serious. For some reason she thought of Jenny Haniver. He and Haniver had gone through Quantico together, first as rivals and then as friends -- and nothing more, he had assured her, but she had her doubts. Had they spent long afternoons together over cups of coffee? Had Mulder dangled these strange theories before Haniver's eyes? If so, how had Haniver responded? Scully tried to put herself back in time, tried to imagine a younger, more innocent Fox Mulder, perhaps with the beginnings of a mustache curling nervously on his upper lip, hashing out Kierkegaard or Ted Bundy over a steaming cappuccino, and found that she couldn't.... But then Mulder seemed to go crazy. One moment he was standing there calmly, waiting for her reply, and then he was grabbing her by the arm and pushing her by the small of the back towards the killing box. Scully was too surprised to protest or struggle, and before she knew it Mulder had unhooked the red velvet rope and flung open the killing box door and shoved her inside. Then he squeezed in after her and closed the door behind them. Inside it was dark and musty and cramped -- the box had been designed to hold one person at a time, and she and Mulder were uncomfortably close. The bamboo dug into her back. Scully hissed: "Mulder, what the hell -- " Mulder clapped a hand over her mouth. In the darkness, Scully's eyes went wide. For a second she thought that he was going to do something sexual and her mind raced, trying desperately to find a dignified way out of this situation. Then she heard the voices. Mulder was nodding his head toward the arrow-slit in the bamboo door. Nudging her toward it. The slit was at her eye level. The voices. Scully heard who was speaking. In a flash, she understood. She managed to turn halfway around inside the box, scraping her arm painfully in the process, until she was in a position to look outside. The arrow-slit was rectangular and trimmed with some kind of animal fur. Looking out was like staring through a camera viewfinder. At first she didn't see anyone. Then Neil Kovac stepped into her field of vision. She had met him at the airstrip that morning, and recognized him even though his back was turned. He was standing next to the mannequin at the other end of the room, speaking in his cold, formal tone to a man whom Scully had never seen before. He was young, Semitic, with a small dark beard. The two men were arguing. Scully listened. * * * End of (4/19) Date: 15 Jul 1999 07:13:21 GMT From: LoneGunGuy Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative "The Tiger Complex" (5/19) by LoneGunGuy http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html * * * "We must look at this situation with some degree of objectivity," Kovac said. "Even if Aquino grants us free passage into the rain forest, this does not mean he has lost interest in what we are doing." Inside the killing box, Scully felt the pressure of Mulder's chest on her back as he leaned forward, trying to get a better look at the two men. Finally he rested his chin on her shoulder and they peered through the arrow-slit together, breathing slowly, regularly. Though the faint perfume of mold and dried grass came another odor, one that Scully immediately recognized. It was her partner's curiosity. It wafted up from his body, as palpable as sweat. Kovac came closer to the box, still talking. "Once we leave, I believe that Aquino will follow us in three or four days' time. When this comes to pass, we must be prepared to conceal our work." "No." The other man followed Kovac across the room. A matchstick dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Fuck this. I say we fuck Aquino, fuck this whole deal. We've spent too much time -- " "Do not curse me, Doyle." "And fuck you too, all right?" Doyle said. "Listen, you wouldn't be here if it weren't for me. Remember that. You're a fucking bureaucrat, Kovac -- you don't know anything about your own processes. There's major technology at stake. We've already invested -- " "Spare me your bullshit." Kovac lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. Scully strained to hear him. "I was working in this jungle before you could cross the street by yourself. There are issues here of which you have no knowledge." The two men were less than six feet away from the killing box. Scully could see a vein pulsing its way up Doyle's forehead like a larva. "I know enough, goddammit," Doyle said. "I know the DOE has poured more than two hundred million dollars into this project so far. They're gonna want results." "We have given them results." "We've given them shit, Kovac. I can be on the phone in five minutes. I can tell them you want to torch the place. What do you think they'll say to that?" "They trust my judgment. If we must burn the plantation to keep it out of Aquino's hands, so be it. We can begin again somewhere else." "We've been here for two years. By the time we get BFDP up to speed again, someone will have busted a cap in our ass, maybe the Brazilians, or the Costa Ricans, it doesn't matter -- but someone will have a viable feedstock system within two years." Doyle's matchstick snapped in two. He spat out the pieces, flicked the rest of it away. "And I guarantee it won't be us." Scully was ransacking her memory for these terms -- BFDP, feedstock -- when her eyes crossed. Something yellow and glittering had appeared less than an inch from her face. It was a spider. She stiffened. It was the size of her thumb and was lowering itself from the roof of the box on a length of white silk. She could see each of its spindly legs etched against the light. She hadn't thought about the bugs. The killing box was made of bamboo and vines and dried grasses and it probably harbored insects by the hundreds. Outside, the conversation continued. "That would be an expensive loss for you, wouldn't it? How much money have you invested in feedstock since the project began?" Doyle's voice: "That's none of your fucking business." "On the contrary. Are you afraid for your investment? You stand to lose just as much if our plantation falls to the Surinamese. It might have been burned for all the good it will do you then. Worse, because Suriname will have the feedstock and the process will be lost." Now the spider was almost touching her nose. She prayed desperately that it wouldn't decide to disembark on her face. But it did. Scully couldn't move her arms, couldn't do anything but hold herself like a statue, the sweat pouring down, as the spider brushed against her cheek. She couldn't see it anymore but she could feel the tickling. It crawled along her jawline. Jesus Christ. "That's why we need to bring in the fucking cavalry," Doyle said. "Ferdinand Aquino killed these men. If we can prove he did it, we can indict that son of a bitch and keep him away from BFDP." "Then prove he did it," Kovac said. "That's the FBI's job." "Then let them do it. They are the professionals. We have five days, a week at most. After that, we must be prepared to destroy everything we have worked to accomplish." The spider was on her chin. If it crawled down her shirt she would scream and claw open the door and fall in a heap on the ground. Very professional. But Kovac's voice was growing fainter. "You don't own anything," he said, "until you can throw it away. When the Lycians were about to be conquered by Persia, they herded their wives and children and slaves into the citadel and burned it to the ground. They died fighting. The sacrifice I ask of you is puny in comparison...." His words faded away until they were lost. Scully ventured a look outside. The men were gone, and the Hall of Primitives was empty again. In an instant they were outside. Scully had flicked the spider away from her chin and was brushing her T-shirt and jeans with both hands to dislodge any unseen occupants when Mulder took her by the arm. His face was flushed, his hair sticking up in the back. "We need to follow them." "What?" "Something's happening. C'mon, Scully, live a little." He grinned and was off. Scully stood there for a moment, trying to think of an adequate comeback. In the end, she muttered something under her breath and followed him, brushing imaginary cobwebs from her hair. Mulder stood at the entrance to the Hall of Primitives, peering around the corner. "I think they're about to split up," he said without looking around. "I'll follow Doyle. Keep an eye on Kovac. He just walked into the Hall of Agriculture." They parted company. Her heart was beating faster than she liked. She strode through the Hall of Colonialism, glancing at neither the fragrant model of a three-masted ship to her left or the framed documents of conquest to her right. The museum was almost empty. Scully got to the far wall, flattened herself against it and leaned forward just far enough to look into the next room. Kovac was there. He went past the iron plows and photographs of terrace farming and through the next doorway, his steps purposeful and quick. Scully counted to three and followed. As an afterthought, she reached into her pocket and switched her cell phone to silent mode. The next room was a corridor with two stairwells and an elevator. Scully got there in time to see the elevator doors slide shut. She looked up at the old-fashioned dial, saw the arrow tremble and begin to move -- Kovac was going up. She dashed to the stairwell, flung open the door, took the steps two at a time. There were five floors to choose from. Instinct told her that he was headed for the top. Scully was in good shape and was only slightly out of breath when she emerged at her destination. She opened the door a crack, looked out. Saw a hallway of spotless hospital white. Kovac was already halfway down the corridor, his boots clicking against the tiles as he headed toward a red door at the far end of the hall. When he finally reached it, he stood there for a full minute, hesitating, his wiry, callused hands clasped behind his back. Finally Kovac knocked. A few seconds later, the door swung open, and he went inside, shutting the door behind him. Scully stepped into the hallway. She was about to examine the door more closely -- it was unmarked, and there was no knob on the outside -- when her cell phone vibrated warmly against her hip. She answered it. It was Isaac Doyle. * * * Ferdinand Aquino allowed Kovac to talk for a long time, and when he had finished, the two men sat in silence. It five o'clock, and the sun no longer shone through the skylight like a net of hammered gold; it hung above the horizon, red and ripe, leaving the office heavy in with shadow. The Dutchman took a cigar from the humidor on his desk but did not touch a match to it yet. He produced a small penknife, cut off the end with one careful slice. The blade of the knife was made from sharpened crystal. Aquino was a fastidious smoker, and he disliked the taste that steel left behind. "So what price do you expect me to pay for this knowledge?" he asked when he was done. Kovac leaned back into the softness of his chair, his legs crossed. "I think you already know." The blue spurt of a match. "You will be granted passage into the jungle," Aquino said, toasting the end of his cigar. "I want more than that. First, a guarantee that you will not come charging after us for five days. Second, some information." Kovac straightened up. "I have been honest with you," he said. "In many ways I have been honest beyond my own best interests. Now I demand some honesty in return." "I did not kill your men, if that is what you want to know," Aquino said flatly. Kovac ignored the denial. "If you did," he said, "I bear you no ill will. I only want to know how it was done." "I did not do it." A long pause. "There is something else, then." "Yes." Aquino opened one of the smallest drawers in his great desk, removed a flat box the size of a sardine can. He slid it across the polished wooden surface. Kovac took the box without looking inside. Pocketed it. It made a small bulge in the front of his vest. "I will give you another thing," said Aquino after a moment. "Something for which you did not ask." He parceled out his words with care. "If I suspected someone of killing twelve of my countrymen, even if they were men for whom I held no love, I would do no business with him. Perhaps I would kill him where he stood." He hesitated. "This arrangement of ours tells me that you serve something other than your homeland. My advice is to weigh your allegiance carefully." In the dim evening light, Kovac's face looked more like granite than ever. "Is that all?" he asked. "Yes." "In that case," Kovac said, rising, "I want to see Baker." * * * "They're called the trees of heaven," Doyle said. "Imagine it. Imagine that you could plant a tree that yielded gallon after gallon of high-quality diesel fuel, natural oil that could be poured directly into an engine, running more smoothly than refined gasoline. Then imagine planting thousands of these trees. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. And leasing the technology to the nearest developing nation." "Start over," said Haniver. They stood in the basement of Fort Gambaro. Empty cages stretched on either side like the husks of a previous life, the loosened skins and chrysalides of some unimaginable metamorphosis. Scully heard water rushing through the pipes above their heads. The three FBI agents faced Doyle, the harsh shadows of chicken wire criss-crossing the floor between them. Doyle ran both hands through his hair. "I've already explained this, for chrissake. I bioengineered the trees myself. I was working at Oak Ridge at the time but I got hired by the DOE when they saw the results I was getting. No one had ever thought of it -- although it's so obvious in retrospect. Copal oil is naturally rich in hydrocarbons. All I did was raise the yield. I had something big, I knew it, even before Kovac took the trees and cloned them and raised them in bulk to see if they were feasible as a commercial energy source." "Diesel fuel. You were processing these trees as sources of diesel fuel?" asked Mulder. After all the buildup, all the doubletalk, this solution seemed absurd. "You'd better fucking believe it," Doyle said. "The DOE was investigating the potential of copal oil as an alternative energy source. They've been doing this for years. It's called the Biofuel Feedstock Development Program -- " Scully made the connection. "BFDP." "That's right." "Is biofuel really such a hot item?" "Let me put it this way. This plantation may be located in Suriname, but our real target is Brazil. 150 million people. Half the land area of South America. But their fossil fuel reserves aren't worth shit. Their oil is being drained drop by drop and their coal is mostly sulfur and ash. Right now they're desperate for alternatives -- which is where we come in. If we can supply Brazil with a working source of energy before anyone else, it'll be a sweet deal for all concerned." "So you bought a hundred acres of savannah in Suriname, telling the government that you were harvesting the copal oil to manufacture cosmetics," Scully said. "Progress was good, until -- " " -- until all hell broke loose." "Fine," said Mulder. "But why lie to us? I can understand why you might want to feed the Surinamese a load of bullshit, assuming that you were going to cheat them out of their one real chance at economic self-sufficiency. But why give us the same cover story?" "We needed plausible deniability. That's the phrase you federal spooks like to use, right? Plausible deniability. We knew that you and Kovac were going to face Aquino together, so we fed you the same line we gave the general." "But we're here to investigate," Haniver said. "If you lie to us -- " "Investigate?" Doyle snorted laughter. "Let me tell you about our priorities. My first concern is making sure this plantation doesn't go belly-up like a fucking porpoise. If we find out who killed those guys in the jungle, terrific. If we have to settle for a segment on 'Unsolved Mysteries,' then so be it. But if the plantation goes down, everybody loses." "Have it your way," Haniver said. But there was a cold edge to her voice. For a moment her good-natured demeanor peeled away. "But if we find out you've lied about anything else, we're hitting you with obstruction of justice. We're hitting you hard. Because you aren't the only one with priorities." "I came clean." "You came clean because you couldn't trust Kovac anymore," Mulder said. "I know what's going on. If Kovac had his way, you'd torch the plantation and start again somewhere else. Given what happened there, that's probably a good idea. But you can't let him do that, because you've invested your own money in the project -- " "How the fuck did you know that?" Mulder grinned. "I'm a federal spook." "Jesus." Doyle turned away, shaking his head. "You act like I'm the only one who ever twisted the truth to save his own ass. Get used to it. You're standing in a part of the world founded on convenient fabrication. What do you think colonialism is all about, anyway? That's the way things work here. Whenever the government of Suriname changes hands, it's always in a bloodless coup. They don't have the guts to fight a real war. Deceit is power. Except maybe in this room." "This room?" Scully asked, not sure where this monologue was headed. "Yeah. Look around you." The cages. The partitions. It was a labyrinth of wire and shadow, a place where unpersons were brought, desaparecidos shackled to the walls to await interrogation. An image came to Scully, a vision of herself here, not among the prisoners but among the guards, truncheon in hand, her boots shiny and black. Or Haniver. Haniver with her interstate diamond thief chained to the ceiling, asking questions, hanging the woman from her regal gray scarf.... "You know what this is?" Doyle asked, gesturing to the rows of shattered cells around them. "This is the museum of clear ideas. You step outside this room and it's all lies, man, it's all fucking lies. The Dutch colonists made a landfall and took the jungle from the Indians piece by piece, and then the French stole it from the Dutch, and the English from the French -- because you can't make honest war in the rain forest. There's nowhere to fight. It's all camouflage, all mimicry. You sneak around and break treaties and never show anyone your true face. Except here." Doyle kicked one of the cages. It rattled beneath the blow. "Here you had prisoner and torturer eye to fucking eye. They didn't pretend to be anything they weren't. You want honesty, you strap someone to a table, bring out the electrical prod. Outside this room there's nothing but suspicion, or imagination." It was time to go. They went back upstairs, leaving the cages behind. Scully felt the beginnings of a headache gathering inside her skull. She thought about the forest that was waiting outside. The mad multiplication of growth, trees crowding trees, vines and funguses weaving together until the entire jungle might be one enormous organism.... They were on the first floor again. The museum, the Hall of Primitives. Kovac was approaching them. His eyes seemed to narrow at the sight of Doyle with the three FBI agents -- perhaps a trace of suspicion crawled across his craggy face -- but the shadow was gone as quickly as it appeared. He smiled. Scully sensed that something big was on the way. "I have good news," Kovac said. * * * End of (5/19) Date: 15 Jul 1999 07:14:42 GMT From: LoneGunGuy Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative "The Tiger Complex" (6/19) by LoneGunGuy http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html * * * The window overlooked the jungle. Mulder lifted the blind and gazed out at that endless immensity, the ranks of trees stretching silent and impassive to the edge of the world. Beyond the glass and brick of Fort Gambaro lurked something primitive, unknowable, a forest that constantly rebuilt itself into ever more enormous and mysterious shapes. A great mottled hawk hung motionless in the sky. The clouds above were pregnant with rain. Mulder turned back. The room was empty except for a table and two chairs. Nick Baker sat there. Baker was a large man, bearded and muscular, his eyes unnaturally sharp and watchful. His hands were folded on the tabletop. He was waiting. "Can I get you a glass of water?" Mulder asked. "We may be here for a while." "I'm all right." Baker's voice was soft. Mulder sat down across from Baker. "In that case, the first thing I'll need to do is....Hold on." A battery-operated tape recorder sat on the table between them. Mulder popped a tape inside, pressed a button. He leaned down to speak into the microphone: "This is Special Agent Fox Mulder deposing Nicholas Baker in Paramaribo, Suriname on the date stamped above, sworn and attested." He rewound the cassette, played it to make sure it was recording. "Mr. Baker, I -- " "I'd like to see your badge," said Baker, not taking his eyes from Mulder's face. Without expression, Mulder dug the ID from his pocket and handed it over. Baker examined the Bureau seal, the laminated photograph. "You know, I have no idea what an FBI badge is supposed to look like," he commented. "But you think this may be a fake." "If I were Aquino, this would be the first thing I'd try. Bring in some Dutchman whose accent wasn't too bad, give him a tape recorder and a fake ID and have him claim to be an FBI agent who was here to take my testimony." "You don't believe I'm an American?" "Prove it to me." "I saw the Orioles play the White Sox three days before I left Washington," Mulder said without hesitation. "Ripken singled in the bottom of the ninth to drive in Belle for a 7-6 win. It put Baltimore five games back in the AL east." "I don't follow baseball nowadays," said Baker. "I suppose you wouldn't." Mulder fiddled with the tape recorder. "You know, when they suspected someone of being a German double agent during World War II they would administer a cultural literacy test. Questions only an all- American boy would be able to answer. Like who won the World Series in 1937; or the name of Mickey Mouse's girlfriend." Baker smiled wanly and asked to see Mulder's wallet. The collection of debris among the credit cards and Virginia driver's license -- receipts, ticket stubs and a few hard pods he recognized as sunflower seeds -- was convincing enough for him. "Fine," he said, handing back the billfold. "Let's get started." "First I'll need to ask you some questions about your physical condition," said Mulder, repocketing his wallet. "You were in Surinamese custody for almost forty-eight hours. You were treated humanely?" "Yes." "No cuts or bruises? Nothing we might want to photograph?" "No." "All right." The preliminaries complete, Mulder reach down and switched off the tape recorder. "Before we get to what happened in the jungle, there's something I should clarify," the FBI agent said. "I don't like this arrangement any more than you do. This deal with the tape and the deposition makes it look like I'm collecting evidence to send to some grand jury or smoke-filled room back in Washington, I know, but that isn't the case. I pick my own assignments, and I'm only here because I'm interested and concerned. Understood?" "Understood," said Baker. "Good." From his briefcase Mulder pulled a battered legal pad, flipped to the middle. He uncapped a felt-tip marker and switched the tape recorder on again. "Let's start at the beginning. You're an employee of the Department of Energy?" "I'm a consultant," said Baker. "I've been on the payroll for two years now, but I wouldn't consider myself an employee -- I've yet to see the inside of a federal building." "Why were you hired?" "Mostly because I knew the jungle well, and because I spoke Tirio and Sranan Tongo. I'm an ethnobotanist," Baker explained. "For the past ten years I've been working with native peoples, researching their traditional herbal medicines, trying to record this information before it disappears." "You're a conservationist." "You might say that." "But you were working with the DOE on a project that could have meant the mass exploitation of the Amazon rain forest," Mulder said. "Didn't you have some doubts about what you were doing?" Baker looked down. For some reason his eye was drawn to the tape recorder. He could see the cassette through the transparent plastic window, the spindles turning spools of filament. It was a whirlpool, a wheel. He had a sudden vision of Indians winding rope around a gigantic winch, dragging a battleship up the side of a mountain. "I didn't think their research would amount to anything," he said, clearing his throat. "The plantation did no damage to the surrounding hylaea. We planted the trees in an area that had been naturally cleared of cover. This wasn't a slash and burn operation." "It doesn't matter. I'm not trying to make a point." Mulder doodled on his legal pad without looking down, shapeless whorls and circles emerging from beneath his pen. "You were serving as a consultant for the DOE," he said. "You'd been working on the project for almost two years. But you weren't at the plantation when everyone died." "No, I wasn't." "Where were you?" "I was several miles downriver at the time." "Why?" "We'd been suffering from a minor insect infestation. Butterflies were on the copal trees, laying their eggs there, and the caterpillars were eating the leaves. The pesticides seemed to be working, but when I radioed Doyle about it, he was pretty pissed off. I was supposed to fly back to the city and bring a few sample chrysalides so we could figure out how to control the bugs in the long run." "So you were on your way to Paramaribo." "Right. The way it works," Baker said, "is that you have to take a raft up the river for thirty miles or so. At that point, there's an abandoned Tirio village with an old airstrip, about a hundred miles from the city. You need to charter a plane to pick you up from there." "Why was the plantation founded so far off the beaten path?" asked Mulder. "There were a number of factors. The first site we tried had a layer of gravel just beneath the surface. The roots couldn't penetrate. So we were forced to move the entire operation thirty miles upstream." "Okay. So you were at this abandoned village when you saw the Andes glow, the light above the treetops. And you decided to return to the plantation to investigate." Mulder turned to the front of his legal pad, checking a detail. "This is what you told the pilot, by the way, the one who flew you back to the city with the bodies -- he confirms that you spoke to him about an unusual glow." "Yes," said Baker, although in truth he remembered nothing about his flight back to Paramaribo beyond the faint odor of decay and his own numb horror. He felt something like that now. Even the smell seemed to have returned. It came back to him in a rush, the stink, the heaviness of death in his arms, the slipperiness of the soil. The kernel of darkness waiting to sprout. Baker sighed, looked at Mulder, waited for the question that would unlock the rest. "And what did you find at the plantation?" Mulder asked. * * * It was May 22, near the end of the rainy season. Even from two hundred yards away Baker could sense that something was wrong. Between the BFDP facility and the surrounding forest stood a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire; there was a chained gate, a padlock. He could see the light glinting off the dull steel. The rain was coming down hard; he was wearing a cagoule, a rain jacket that hugged his knees like a penitent's cloak. For ordinary hiking, the cagoule was too goddamned hot. By the time he got to the gate, he was sweating rivers. He didn't see the bodies until he was almost close enough to touch them. The rain had buried them face-down in the mud. He unlocked the gate and pulled the chain away, the pulse pounding in his forehead, unable to look away from the three lumps on the ground. All the spit in his mouth had dried up. His tongue felt like a piece of leather. Baker staggered over to the corpses -- his mind gone, his body moving like a shambling automaton, a golem -- and turned one of them over. The face was caked with dirt. He wiped it away. It was Albert DeFillips. The sand had left a pattern on his forehead. Baker screamed. He turned over the next corpse. Daniel Kwon. Alongside him lay John Fuller. His mouth was filled with black sputum. They had been running for the gate when they died and their legs had kept running even after they hit the ground, spasming and kicking up the soil and digging into the dust. Baker was sick. He vomited over them, oh Jesus, he vomited right on Fuller's shoes. It felt like his heart and stomach were going to come up with the puke. For a long time he thought that he was dying, that he'd caught whatever had killed these men. He prayed for something, didn't know what, felt only an incoherent yammer bubble up from his soul. Somehow he was on his feet and shouting. Calling names. But nothing answered him except the thundering downpour, the sound of water coursing across millions of leaves and exploding into droplets on the earth. He walked down the gravel path. Twenty yards down he found David Harris. The shock was beginning to wear away. When he stumbled across Jonathan Kinski -- staring up at the flat iron sky, his eye sockets brimming with water -- Baker didn't even pause. He stepped over the body and shut his eyes with grim certainty: he was dead or dreaming or insane. Dimly Baker felt hands tearing at his hair. They were his hands. At the southernmost end of the plantation lay six cinderblock buildings with roofs of corrugated metal. Three or four bodies were scattered on the ground, like dolls on a playroom floor. There is a limit to the amount of horror that the human brain can experience and still survive. After a certain point, the emotive functions shut themselves off. Baker kept waiting for that internal click, that detachment, but it never came. He knew that this march would never end. He peeled his cagoule off and left it on the ground, hoping in some dim way that the rain would obliterate him. He was at the point where the rows of copal trees began. The trunks were slim and evenly spaced so he had no trouble looking between them and seeing two more corpses lying in the orchard, sheltered somewhat by the branches. He screamed again because a voice in the back of his mind had been making a tally -- two bodies here, three at the gate, four at the cinderblock compound, Harris, Kinski meant that there was one more, oh God, there was one more -- "Jesus," he whispered. A moment ago, he had seen something. It had passed unnoticed beneath the haze of his consciousness but now it resurfaced and sent fear rocketing into his heart. He turned back to the cinderblock buildings. He was soaked. It felt like the skin of his torso was sloughing off. Five of the buildings were intact. The sixth was in ruins. The walls had caved in and the roof had collapsed, sagging impotently, sluicing the rain down to the ground. It was the communications booth. It had been rammed repeatedly until the blocks had crumbled and splintered like broken earthenware. Baker's shoes crunched the concrete as he stepped beneath the overhang. The radio had been demolished. There were leaves on the ground. James Lifton lay across the lacerated threshold, his head smashed like a melon, the water pouring across his face and filling the depression in his skull. Lifton was the last one. They were all dead. Everyone in the plantation was dead. Baker sat down. After a while, the storm stopped and the sun came out again. The sun had been blazing for almost fifteen minutes before he began to think clearly. He was alone in the forest without any means of communication, surrounded by bodies that would begin to decay in the heat very soon. His eyes swam at the thought of the task ahead of him and he sensed that he was about to faint. He bit the heel of his hand hard enough to draw blood. That seemed to help. A moment later he got up and went to work. There was a Polaroid camera in the lab, and some orange plastic flags the researchers used to tag the trees. Baker took picture after picture and stuffed them into his pockets before they had a chance to develop; then he marked the spots where the men had fallen and took the dead into his arms and carried them one by one to the riverside. He was a strong man, but near the end his arms trembled. The bodies had already gone stiff. He wrapped them in plastic and laid them into the rafts like vikings, but instead of setting the boats afire he chained them together and set off down the river. He was Charon. His eyes burned as if they were ringed with flame. * * * Baker watched in silence as Mulder flipped through the thick stack of photographs. The last picture was of Lifton, his ruined face soft and bloated from the water. It was strange how the act of documenting the bodies seemed to kill each victim a second time. Death always meant humiliation, no matter what form it took. "You understand why I need to go back," he said when Mulder was done. Mulder set the photos down. "I don't think that's such a good idea." "But you're going into the jungle. You wouldn't be here unless you were planning some kind of expedition with Kovac and Doyle and the others. Tell me." "We're leaving tomorrow," said Mulder. "But I don't think you have any obligation to come along." "No. Listen to me." Baker's voice was filled with urgency but it was tired, too, tired and broken from the horrors he had survived: "Twelve men died at that plantation. They were struck down by something I can't understand or explain. The same thing could happen if you follow in their footsteps." "I'm well aware of the danger." "Let me ask you a question. Are you sure of your own ability? When you're in the rain forest there's nothing between you and death except your own strength and intelligence. Do you have perfect faith in these things?" "I don't think anyone is capable of perfect faith. Questions like that tend to degenerate into Jedi master bullshit." Mulder shook his head. "But if I weren't at least somewhat confident in my own ability, I wouldn't do some of the things I do." "Then you're in a better position than I am. You've got no reason to be afraid. There's danger, yeah, but you can face it on your own terms -- you can depend on yourself. If you walk into danger on your own two feet you can trust them to bring you out again." Baker paused. "But I have every reason to be afraid. If you leave me behind, I'll understand the danger and I won't be able to do a damn thing about it. It's the waiting I can't stand." He clasped his hands together. "A few years ago I was living with the Arawaks, trying to learn their recipe for arrow poison. They took me hunting. When we were a few miles from the village, one of the men I was with accidentally nicked himself with an arrow. A scratch, nothing more. But he knew that the curare was in his system. He dropped his bow and stretched himself out on the ground, very calmly, and said good-bye to us. Then he died, and there was nothing I could do." Baker looked up. "It's a bitch to be the survivor." "I know." "Then take me with you. I have no hidden agenda. If you think that Kovac or Doyle have anything in mind except their own concerns, you're dead wrong. They're good men, but they're more interested in protecting their investment than anything else. Kovac cut some kind of a deal with Aquino to set me free and grant him access to the rain forest. I'm sure of it." Mulder switched off the tape recorder. "What kind of a deal?" "I don't know. But when a disaster like this takes place, the wheels start rolling before the bodies have even cooled. More than one deal was made over the last two days, and not all of them will work to your benefit. Ultimately, I'm the only one you can trust." "Why's that?" "Because for the last two days," Baker said, "I've been in quarantine." * * * The video image was small and grainy, and after a while Haniver felt her eyes going out of focus. She sat in the bathroom on the sixth floor of Fort Gambaro, the door locked and bolted behind her. The bathroom window was small, set close to the ceiling, with a crank that swung the frosted glass away from the side of the building: she had stood on the toilet to clip the antenna to the windowsill, running the wire down to the transmitter itself. She placed the transmitter on the porcelain lid of the toilet tank and sat backwards on the commode to face it, her thighs almost hugging the sculpted base. It was a small gray box with a keyboard, a microphone and a square LCD screen. On the screen was the faint image of a man. "We recently heard from Kovac." The man's image was refreshed once every second. It was like looking at a succession of still photographs. As he took the cigarettes from his inside pocket and stabbed one into his mouth, his movements were jerky, erratic. "It appears that he has been making substantial progress, which is more than I can say for you." The quick spark of a lighter. "I need time," said Haniver. "I can't compete with Kovac in the city. Once we enter the jungle -- " Her correspondent took a delicate drag of smoke: that is, she saw the cigarette frozen midway to his lips, then a snapshot of the inhalation, then a wreath of pixellated smoke encircling his head. "Kovac has obtained satellite photos of the plantation at the time of the accident, did you know that?" he asked. "He has made arrangements to send them to us in Washington." She inhaled sharply. "I didn't know." A sour smile creased the man's wrinkled face. "I would advise you to find these photos and examine them yourself. That is, of course," he added, voice amused, "if you want to stay in the game." Haniver fumed silently. She knew when she was being toyed with, when she was being strung along for someone else's advantage. She knew that whatever new information she fed them would be relayed to Kovac immediately, if only to keep them both bitter and suspicious and ever more eager for the prize. But it wasn't her place to complain. When you lived in the museum of clear ideas, you got used to the company you kept. "I'll find the photographs, Mr. Spender," Haniver said. Her hands gripped the edge of the toilet tank. The porcelain was feverish to the touch. "Believe me, I will...." * * * End of (6/19) Date: 15 Jul 1999 07:15:59 GMT From: LoneGunGuy Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative "The Tiger Complex" (7/19) by LoneGunGuy http://members.aol.com/lonegunguy/x-files.html * * * Together at last. The six members of the BFDP expedition team sat around a conference table on the topmost floor of Fort Gambaro. The pitted wooden tabletop was covered with a thick topsoil of topographical maps, sketches and aerial photographs of the plantation, itineraries, equipment lists, folders, transcripts. Another inch or two and it would go to mulch, Haniver thought. She wondered where Kovac had hidden the satellite photos, and how he was planning to transport them back to the States. Kovac was not the sort of man to trust the Surinamese postal service, she thought, especially if he had received the photos from Aquino in some illegal transaction. The problem nagged at her, made it difficult to focus on the task at hand. Her mind kept wandering. "I don't think we're dealing with an organic pathogen," Scully was saying, the autopsy results spread before her. "These men were running from something, something they could see or feel or taste. Judging from the condition in which the victims were found, I'm guessing that it was some kind of nerve agent. We're sending samples back to the States for toxicology, but the lethal dose may be too low for us to find anything concrete. Haniver?" It took a moment before Haniver realized that she was being prompted. Eventually she agreed. "We're prescribing pyridostigmine and diazepam tablets for all of us, starting tomorrow. They'll help shield the brain from any immediate dihabilitation. It isn't complete protection, but it should increase the treatable interval by a minute or two." "But it's a messy death," said Scully. "Vomiting, involuntary defecation. The victims were in a lot of pain when they died." At some point in the evening, someone had produced a bottle of tequila. The thought of the next day's labors was enough to dissuade most of them from drinking, but Mulder had a shot in his hand, apparently forgotten, and Doyle was calmly working his way towards inebriation. Currently the geneticist was slumped across the table, gazing blearily at the bottle. "Fuck." "Have we got the necessary protective gear?" Baker asked. "I'm talking about space suits, disinfection rigs, biohazard detectors -- " Kovac nodded. "Most of our equipment has been shipped into the rain forest already. When we arrive at the Tirio village tomorrow morning, the rafts and biosuits will be there. Under ordinary circumstances, we would then take the river directly to the plantation -- " "But not tomorrow," Mulder said. "Tomorrow we're treating this as a biochemical disaster area. Once we're half a mile downstream, Scully and Haniver will disembark and sweep the buildings. If the place is clean, we'll proceed from there." Mulder finally seemed to notice the glass in his hand, swallowing the alcohol at a gulp. "Jesus," he said, coughing and clutching his throat. Haniver ignored him. "I want the bodies shipped to the CDC in Atlanta for further testing," she said to Kovac. "Arrangements have already been made. The exception is Albert DeFillips; he will be sent to Washington instead. His estate has demanded an independent autopsy." "I'm not sure I approve of that," Scully said. "I do not blame you," replied Kovac. "But we have twelve corpses and twelve potential wrongful-death lawsuits on our hands. I have no choice but to cooperate with these families." Doyle straightened up suddenly. "You are absolutely right. It's a sacrifice that needs to be made. Like Joan of Arc, or those fucking Greeks." He tried to pour himself another shot and missed by several inches. "What were they called? The ones, you know, who locked their wives in the citadel and set the fucking place on fire. What did you say they were called?" He was very drunk by now. "The Lycians." There was perhaps the trace of a smile on Kovac's face. "They were called the Lycians. Herodotus, Book I. They bound themselves by terrible oaths and were slaughtered by the Persians." And that was all it took. Haniver felt a twinge of revelation, as simple and sweet as the act of plucking a lemon from a tree: and like that, she knew where Kovac had hidden the photographs. Her mind buzzed with excitement but she fixed her eyes on the slush of papers scattered across the table, not looking at Kovac or anyone else, desperate not to betray herself. She needed to get downstairs. The thought hammered itself into her skull again and again. She needed to get downstairs. She counted to twenty and rose from her chair. "Excuse me," she said, leaving the table. There were sleeping bags and foam pads lying on the floor around them: they would be spending the night here. Her orange knapsack was tucked away beneath a pile of other equipment. Her knife was inside the front pocket. She would need the knife. She picked up her knapsack, headed for the door. "Where are you going?" Mulder asked, turning halfway around. "To the bathroom," Haniver said, and then she was out. * * * Into the hallway, glancing quickly from side to side. The fort was dark and apparently deserted but there were sounds filtering up from the lower floors, voices and the distant clank of moving objects. A ghostly murmur of activity beneath her feet. She hoisted the knapsack onto her shoulders and headed off. Between the fourth and fifth floor Haniver ran into a couple of Surinamese soldiers. She heard them coming up the stairs and ducked out of the stairwell, into the hallway, moving on until she was around the corner. Then she peeked into the corridor. The two soldiers stood less than thirty feet away, dark- skinned, their short-sleeved uniforms the color of the desert. Rifles slung across their shoulders. They spoke softly in Dutch. One of them laughed, showing his bad teeth. She didn't know what the soldiers would do if they found her. Probably nothing. But something about the situation bothered her deeply. Haniver waited until the soldiers had turned and gone down the hall, their boots clicking softly in the darkness. Then she crept back into the stairwell, careful not to make any noise as she descended. There was light on the third floor. Haniver hesitated. A heavy door led into the hallway, a bright but somehow secret illumination shining through its rectangular window. Haniver knew that she needed to reach the basement before anyone saw her; but like the girl in the nursery rhyme, she had to look. She peered through the square of dusty glass. In the corridor there were many soldiers, leaning against the clean white wall, smoking, talking quietly among themselves. There were packages lying at their feet -- and that was all she saw before withdrawing and heading downstairs again, her heart pounding. Something was happening. There was no doubt about that. Haniver allowed herself to wonder about it for the next two flights. After that, the task at hand forced all other considerations from her mind. For now she stood before the door of the meat locker, the dull surface of the steel shimmering in the darkness. She pulled the pin and took the handle in both hands, turning it and pulling back: then came the caress of freezing air on her forehead as she stepped inside, shivering. It was colder than she remembered. The bodies were stacked on the long tables, all in a row, like stones lining a cemetery path. She could see her breath. She dropped her knapsack on the metal floor and unzipped the front pocket. Lifted out the knife. Clipped the sheath to her belt. Albert DeFillips was the first body on the far left, according to the tags. She unzipped the body bag and looked for a second time into those blank brown eyes, eyes like marbles, their pupils sucked up and swallowed by dead irises. Haniver glanced down and saw what she had expected to see. The stitches on the corpse's belly had been disturbed. She unsheathed her knife and cut the threads with the tip of the blade, one by one, relishing the soft snap as she inserted the point below each X-shaped loop and sliced upward. Softly the flaps of skin spread apart. She donned a latex glove, folded the flaps back -- they were triangular, limp, like sails that the wind had abandoned -- and looked into the bloody mess of DeFillips's insides. She switched on a flashlight and peered into that darkened cave, that rich clotted jungle of chaotic eviscera. Beneath the limp sac of his stomach she found what she was looking for. The flat metal case had been sealed inside a plastic bag, nestled snugly among the tired organs and sweetmeats. She took the bag between her forefinger and thumb, lifted it out. Peeled off her bloodstained glove, let the box slide into the palm of her hand. Opened it. Inside the box was a spool of microfilm, coiled up like a tapeworm. Haniver let out a long sigh of satisfaction. According to Herodotus, the Persian general Harpagus had once sent a secret message through enemy lines by sewing it up inside the paunch of a dead hare. Kovac probably thought that no one else read the Greek historians except for him, the arrogant bastard -- Behind her, the door of the meat locker swung shut. "Shit!" she cried, dropping her flashlight. It struck the floor. The bulb broke in a burst of sparks and suddenly she was in darkness, surrounded on all sides by the frozen dead. The blackness was total. She couldn't see a goddamn thing. Her breaths went short and panicky -- she tried to control it but couldn't -- and the cold entered her lungs, stinging the back of her throat. The fragile bones of her elbow and forearm felt like they had gone to ice. Haniver backed up slowly, feeling for the table. Her left hand plunged into something clammy and wet. "Oh God," she whispered. She was wrist-deep in the open gorge of DeFillips's chest. The edge of his broken ribcage caught her wristwatch as she yanked her hand away, the stickiness still on her fingertips. Haniver wiped them on her jeans and stumbled back to the door of the meat locker. Here it was. Haniver ran her hands across its cold smooth surface, felt droplets from her breath condense on the metal: but even before she got there, she knew. There was no handle on this side, no fingerholds. Nothing. The door was as featureless as a mirror, or a frigid pond crusted over with ice. She was trapped. She tried to think. If she screamed now they might hear her. There were ventilation ducts in the hallway just outside the meat locker; she could bang against the door, shout, and perhaps she would be found. But something inside her blanched at the thought. She didn't want to be rescued like this. Especially if the soldiers found her first. Perhaps if she waited, she could find some other way out. The cold was bad, but it wasn't unbearable; and there was enough oxygen here to last for hours. But then there were the dead. The frozen eyeless dead. Somehow that was the worst part. Haniver had visions of the cadavers rising from their wooden slabs, unzipping their body bags from the inside. Twelve dead bodies. Jesus Christ. Here in the darkness, almost anything seemed possible. She felt the skin begin to crawl on the back of her neck, and for a second it felt like cold fingers were brushing across her shoulders, the dead rising calmly and casually with their clouded marbles for eyes -- Haniver pocketed the microfilm and unsheathed her big knife. That made her feel a little better. But the fear was still there. If there was anything she hated, it was this feeling of weakness and helplessness and irrational dread. It plagued her. It had always plagued her. "Inferno," she heard herself say. While she was at Quantico, she had been taught how to deal with fear. Fear came from the innermost core of the mind: there was a mammalian brain built over an avian brain built over a reptilian brain, and at the very center lurked a fishy core of consciousness from which fear rose like a sulfurous bubble from the bottom of the sea. To kill the fear, you had to force yourself to be human. There was more than one way to do this. Haniver recited poetry. Now she searched her mind for something, anything. Something structured, rhythmic. She knew that structure was opposed to dread: dread arose from open spaces, from infinity, from the vacuum whistling around your ears as you stared into the abyss. Divide it up and parcel it out. Conquer it. Haniver cleared her throat, felt the ice there, hesitantly murmured some Dante against the dark: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," she said, "mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita -- " And as if by some poetic incantation, there was a rasp of metal against metal and the door of the meat locker swung out into the hallway. Haniver stood there, astonished, the last syllable dying on her lips. In the corridor, a shadow. A man. She strained to see a rifle or uniform. It was Mulder. When the light from the hallway illuminated her face and he saw her standing among the bodies, he stepped back in surprise. "Haniver? What are you doing here?" Haniver tried to seem as unruffled as she could. "I might ask you the same question," she said. Mulder stepped into the freezer. "I don't think you're in a position to trade accusations with me, Haniver." They locked eyes for a moment, each daring the other to speak first. Haniver was conscious of the knife in her hand, of the blood on her clothes, of the particles of ice that were forming deep inside her skull. Finally Mulder broke his own silence. "I'll be honest with you," he said, "but only if you do me the same courtesy." "You're looking for something," she replied. "So are you. Odds are we've got the same thing in mind." "Try me." Another silence. Then Mulder took a photograph from his pocket. It was one of Baker's photos of the dead men. It was Albert DeFillips. He pointed. "Look here." Haniver saw something protruding from the breast pocket of the corpse. A silver of red cardboard with a spiral binding. A notebook. "It's his project diary," Mulder said. "Baker recognized it. He claims he didn't touch anything when he ferried the bodies back to Paramaribo, but we have a box upstairs with the contents of DeFillips's pockets, and the notebook isn't there. It's missing." "You think the diary might be down here?" "Unless you've already found it." "I never saw or heard of that notebook until now," Haniver said defensively. "Is that right?" Mulder gestured to the body on his left. "DeFillips looks a little worse for wear, wouldn't you say? Looks like you've been doing some digging on your own time. Tell me why." "I needed to check something." "And it isn't anything I need to know, is it?" When she didn't say anything in response, Mulder shook his head. "You know, Haniver, you haven't changed a goddamned bit since the Academy. Jesus. You were always after the brass ring -- " " -- and you weren't," Haniver said. "That was why we parted company." "I know. When I heard that you'd gone into chemical weapons, I knew why. Terrorism detail is the most direct way to the top of the Bureau." He paused. "Until that shit in Japan a few years ago. I heard about that. They sent you there to investigate the subway bombing. It could have been your big break. But you stepped on some Japanese toes, clashed with the local police. They filed a complaint and you've been working penny-ante assignments ever since. Am I right?" Haniver smiled bitterly. "Word gets around fast in the FBI. I had a hunch you could hear everything from that basement office." "You went your way, I went mine," he said. "And now we meet again in the rain forest." "Funny how the world works, isn't it?" "Yeah, it's funny. But I know why you're here. You're here because you think this could turn into a high-profile case. Twelve Americans, a terrorist attack. This could be your ticket to the top floor." Mulder paused again. "I don't want you working against me, Haniver. I know that the glory needs to be divided in the end, but I'm not here to take anything from your personal rising star. Do we understand each other? I need your trust." Trust. Standing there with her knife in one hand and the square bulge of the microfilm pressing hard against her thigh, Haniver reflected that few words were more devoid of meaning under such circumstances as these. She remembered what Doyle had said. You can't make honest war in the jungle. Outside the museum of clear ideas, you never show your true face to anyone. "We all have our motivations," she said. * * * As a student at Georgetown, Haniver had worked in the Smithsonian on weekends, and as a result she had a good sense for the layout of most museums. She found a supply closet on the first floor of Fort Gambaro and picked the lock in less than thirty seconds. Inside she found what she was looking for -- a microfilm viewer that clipped onto a modified flashlight. She brought it upstairs, avoiding both Mulder and the soldiers who still prowled the hallways. The bathroom on the sixth floor. As before, she closed the door and bolted it behind her. With trembling fingers she pulled the metal box from her pocket. Opened it. Took the spool of microfilm, threaded it through the viewer and turned off the lights. Haniver switched on the flashlight, projecting the satellite photographs onto the faded yellow ceiling. They were rather primitive monochrome photos but the resolution was good. She adjusted the brightness. Here. The first picture had been taken six days ago. Haniver could see the gray rectangles of plantation buildings, the cinderblock barracks where the DOE team had lived and worked. The copal trees were planted in an orderly formation beyond the compound, the neat rows of feedstock hemmed in by denser and more chaotic rain forest on all sides. Haniver sat down on the tiles, moved to the next picture. It was dated three days ago, just before the distress call. Nothing had changed. Impatient, she scrolled through the next six or seven pictures. Apparently this was a selection from some larger archive. Judging from the timestamps, the Surinamese had been taking snapshots of the plantation every hour or so. Now she reached the day of the catastrophe. The first three or four pictures were, again, maddeningly monotonous. In one photograph Haniver thought she could see bodies scattered on the ground, but she wasn't sure. Then she saw something. The building at the far end of the compound was flattened. Misshapen. She remembered Baker's testimony. The sixth cinderblock structure -- the communications booth -- had been demolished by some unknown force. Something big. But it wasn't right. There weren't any roads leading through the rain forest. If anything larger than a car had driven into the plantation, there would have been signs of it. Uprooted vegetation. A hairline change in albedo. But as Haniver searched the satellite photos, running her eyes across the shadings and contours, she realized that there was nothing of the sort. The surrounding jungle was untouched. Which meant that any attack on the plantation had to have come from the air. "The air," she whispered. Haniver saw it. On the northeast corner of the satellite photograph there was a shadow, an elliptical gray patch slightly darker than the surrounding forest. She scrolled to the next picture. An hour later, the shadow was gone. She scrolled back and stared at the image. It could have been almost anything, a cloud, a surface irregularity on the lens of the satellite itself. But she knew that it wasn't. She could see wings, something that could have been a fuselage -- but it wasn't an airplane. She didn't know what the hell it was. But she knew what it meant. Just as the men were dying, just as the communications booth was being destroyed, something had flown above the BFDP plantation. Something extremely large. She could estimate its size by comparing it with nearby landmarks. For a full minute she calculated mentally, assuming that the object had been flying close to canopy level when the snapshot was taken. When she finally arrived at a figure, she couldn't believe it and tried again, sitting there among the stale bathroom smells, the flashlight hot in her hands. But no matter how many times Haniver rechecked her work, she always came to the same goddamned conclusion. The object flying above the plantation had been at least one hundred feet long. Maybe more. * * * End of (7/19)