It took just short of forever to get back to the island, partially because they were fighting the currents every stroke of the way, and partially because both of them had been exhausted before they'd started this little adventure. Gilligan kept up a stream of chatter most of the way, which, to 222's complete and utter shock, actually helped him keep alert and focused. Helped quite a bit, in fact. Was that intentional? Hard to say, but once again, 222 realized that either by design, by chance, or by God's inexplicable grace, there was a lot more to Gilligan than appearances would seem to warrant. 222 still could not decide which of the three it was, and he suspected that he never would. But either way, it got them both back to the lagoon, which is all that really mattered.

They dragged each other the last few yards to shore, then collapsed like twin rag dolls, gasping for breath. Gilligan was the first to try to stand, but, then, he was the more motivated. 222, who might have liked a little more time to rest, nevertheless followed suit, and in fact had to help Gilligan to his feet.

"We've got to save my friends," Gilligan said. "Your Commandant's probably got them tied up or something else even more awful. Let's go!"

222 frowned thoughtfully. "Not… yet," he said, and turned towards the bushes. "First I must find something; I know it was somewhere around here."

Gilligan, somehow, had not lost his cap. He wrung it out in a quick, nervous motion, then twisted it in the opposite direction as he shifted his weight from foot to foot like a schoolboy. "Is it that stupid pocket knife? Come on, 222; we can find that later. This is important!"

"Not pocket knife. To hell with pocket knife," 222 snapped, still searching. "Be calm."

"I am being calm! We don't have time for this!"

"We have time. What we do not have is weapon—ah!" 222 brandished the knife he'd been using, either a hundred years ago or that morning, depending on how you counted time. The one Gilligan's frantic tackle had knocked from his hand. "Now we can go."

Gilligan had a few nagging doubts about the efficacy of pitting a single fish-gutting knife against a handgun, but, he reminded himself, he was not an international spy, and there were probably a great many things he did not know about hand to hand combat. Besides, if it made 222 happy, then it was worth it. He just nodded, and turned towards the path back to camp, 222 close at his heels.

OoOoOoOoO

The Commandant, having finished his mango, began desultorily searching the huts; none of the castaways even bothered to protest, not even when he dumped out and examined the contents of a laundry basket containing, among other things, several bits of silk and lace that were not usually intended to be seen in mixed company. Mary Ann blushed furiously, and Ginger gave him her haughtiest glare, but that was all. He seemed a bit disappointed not to get more of a reaction, but he didn't pursue it any further, just kicked the unmentionables aside and began to investigate a tackle box.

Mary Ann turned away from the window and walked to the very back of the hut, where she did not have to watch the Commandant's depredations, and, equally important, where he could not see her face as he rummaged through the scraps and makeshifts of their lives.

And she managed not to gasp when something sharp poked her in the small of her back. She spun around to see what it was, and the light flashed on the very tip of a knife, which was sawing through the tough, braided grass cords that held the wall together. A small section of grass fell away, revealing a pair of sea-blue eyes she had not expected to see again.

Smiling tightly, he continued hacking at the cords. "Shh," he murmured.

She nodded, her heart pounding in her ears, then bit her lip. "Which one are you?"

He gave her an unreadable look, then pulled away another handsbreadth of grass, revealing the mirror image standing beside him. "I'm the one who's getting you out of here," said the first Gilligan.

The other one nodded. "Yeah. He is. And so am I," he said, in precisely the same voice, and with the same grim, wary expression on his pale face.

To her dying day, Mary Ann was never sure which one was which.

At that moment, the Commandant, empty-handed and irritable, emerged from the Howells' hut and saw the two of them. Bellowing what sounded like some very unpleasant Russian imprecations, he charged.

The first Gilligan reached in through the hole and slapped the knife, hilt-first, into Mary Ann's hand. "Get yourselves out! We'll distract him!" Backing away from the supply hut, he shouted, "Hey you! Commandant! Try to catch me! Third time's the charm, right?"

The second one kept pace with him. "Third? Try fourth, or fifth, or hundredth! He couldn't catch a cold, let alone a castaway!"

The two men ran, ducking and weaving through the trees and out of sight, with the Commandant not nearly far enough behind them, as the Professor snatched the knife from Mary Ann's hand and sliced through another strand of cord.

"We've got to work together on this. Gilligan and 222 can't fight him alone. Okay; once we're out, Howell, you take the ladies to the storage cave and stay put. If that lunatic comes back, they'll need protection. Professor, you'll take the lagoon; they might have brought back that boat. I'll go inland; Gilligan might be trying to lead him away from us. None of our guns have any ammo left, but carrying them anyway might slow him down for a second, and we do have the machetes and fish spears," the Skipper ordered. "This has got to end here and now. We're not going to get a third chance."

The Professor tore a large section of grass paneling from the framework by main force. "Got it, Skip," he said briefly. "Beg pardon, Mary Ann, but you're the narrowest…" With no more warning than that, he picked her bodily up and lifted her through the tiny hole in the wall; she ran around the hut and unbarred the door.

The Skipper pushed past her to get to his own hut, returning with the machete once more at his waist and a pistol in either hand. Giving them to the Professor and Mr. Howell, he said, "Let's go get Gilligan back."

*.*.*.*.*.*

222 had memorized a map of the island before he'd ever set foot there, and had learned a good deal about the unmapped details of the terrain since, (usually the hard way,) but it was Gilligan who took the lead. Gilligan, after all, knew every blade of grass, was intimately familiar with each stick and stone, had every inch of this island engraved somewhere in his mind, in his heart. He ran as though he had eyes in his feet, as though the trees themselves stepped out of his way. 222, an imperfect, inadequate copy, simply followed in his wake, trusting that his counterpart knew what he was doing, and followed him up a gently sloping path, one he did not recognize, that spilled them out on a stark plateau high above the churning sea.

There was no way out, except for the path they had taken and the sheer drop into nothing that surrounded them. 222 looked at Gilligan, and nodded slowly. Yes. Gilligan had known exactly what he was doing. Soon enough the Commandant would find them. Three men would stand atop this barren cliff; one, at least, would not leave it. Perhaps two men would climb down that narrow path to the ground, or else only one, or perhaps none at all. 222, bracing himself for the final showdown, found himself smiling a bit. "Has been an honor, tovarisch," he said. "I only wish things could have been different."

"Me too," Gilligan agreed. "But I'm glad they're different now, anyway."

"Da. I am sorry. For everything."

Gilligan never got the chance to reply to that; the Commandant came up the path. In unpracticed unison, one of them broke left, the other right, and each scooped up and threw a rock at him. One hit his torso, the other his knee, but, maddeningly, he didn't fall, and he had the gun, which he aimed unerringly at one of the two Gilligans.

The Commandant cocked the pistol. "You have disappointed me greatly, Agent 222," he said. "You have disappointed your country. No more chances."

He wasn't sure which was which, but it didn't matter any longer. He didn't care. He would kill them both, then complete Phase Four, disposing of the other six, and then, somehow, he would get back to the sub and sail away from this miserable island, and he would never think of it again. Arbitrarily, he trained the gun on the Gilligan on the left, and he fired.

The Skipper, who had already, he thought, been running as fast as he could, found that he had been wrong. There was a gunshot; a few moments later, there was another. Two shots, two enemies, two Gilligans… he was almost afraid to find out who or what he would find when he made it to the scene, and even more afraid to slow down, lest he arrive just that split second too late. He came charging up the incline like the entire Light Brigade, then stumbled to a stop as he reached the peak.

One man—slender, dark haired, dressed in red—was kneeling on the edge of the cliff, looking over the edge, looking distraught. He was alone.

"Gillig—wait, which one are you?"

"I'm me, Skipper," he said, still staring into the surf. "He—222 and the Commandant, they both went over the cliff. He saved my life. It's just me left."

The Skipper hesitated. It was too pat, too perfect; too much the way he wanted things to have happened to seem entirely real. Gilligan exhaled sharply, one huff of painful half-laughter that wasn't quite a sob and wasn't quite not one. "You don't believe me. That's okay; you don't have to take my word for it," he said, digging in a pocket and pulling out the last few, slightly grubby, seeds. He stuck one in his own mouth, proffered the rest. "Here. I'll prove it."

The Skipper looked at him, looked at the utter devastation in his expressive face, and now he was sure that this was his crewman; who else would be mourning for a mortal enemy? "No, little buddy," he said soberly. "I don't need it. I know who you are."

But he took the seed anyway, swallowed it quickly, and concentrated on transmitting his relief, his soul-wrenching gratitude that his friend had been returned to him, had been spared. His affection—love—for a man who was at once friend and comrade, brother and son. He focused on the enormity of his pride in his crewman, his genuinely awed respect for his strength under fire. All the things he would never—could never—say aloud, or even put into words; he was not a man with a particularly extensive emotional vocabulary. But they were true, and he meant them, and he wanted them heard.

And in return, he saw the whole scene through Gilligan's eyes, in a jumble of quick, horrifying images—the two men, mirror images, running in tandem. The Commandant. The gunshot; Gilligan, reflexively, knocking the spy over, out of its path. 222 returning the favor, leaping for his former superior and wrestling the gun from his hand, shooting the Commandant point-blank through the head, mere seconds before the ground crumbled under their feet. Gilligan himself, scrambling to the edge in a doomed attempt to catch him, and helplessly watching a man with his face vanishing among the sharp rocks and churning foam.

"We were getting to be friends, Skipper," he said quietly. "Really. We were. He said I had guts."

"He was right," the Skipper said, looking into the surf. "Didn't need some Commie murderer to tell me that, though."

"Don't call him that," Gilligan said. "He was just… doing what he had to. It wasn't his fault."

"How can you defend him? You'd have been hip-deep in snow by now if he'd had his way!"

The telepathy was fading, but the Skipper got one last burst of images. 222, with a rare unguarded expression on his face. A five-word apology that encompassed a lifetime of regrets. The Commandant's cold, calculated violence; he was a man who would hurt you because he had decided that you should be hurt, for the greater good, which was somehow more terrifying than a blow dealt in anger. The long years 222 had spent under his tutelage, under his command, under the gun.

"Because… because someone had to be on his side. Nobody else was. Nobody else ever was. He didn't have… what I got. He never had anyone like you, or the other castaways. Not ever." Gilligan licked his lip, which was bleeding again. "Someone had to be his friend."

The Skipper took a deep breath, then another. He looped an arm around Gilligan's shoulders. "Well. If he was going to have a friend, he was lucky it was you, that's all. Come on; let's get back to camp and tell the others, okay?"

"Okay, Skipper," Gilligan said softly. He took one last look over the cliff. Nothing. The Commandant was gone. 222 was gone. His captor, tormentor, double, ally, betrayer, foe, friend… they were all gone. The hungry sea had swallowed them; their part of the story was over, and he didn't know anymore what was supposed to happen next. "Let's go home."

OoOoOoOoOoO

The sub, as ordered, remained in position for thirty-six hours. When the Commandant failed to return, either with or without a dark-haired, slightly built young man who might or might not have been a double agent, his second-in-command made the unilateral decision that there was no reason to loiter in the Pacific chasing ghosts and fish stories. They returned to Soviet waters and less quixotic missions. The Commandant, a reasonably useful scapegoat, was widely disparaged as a fool for having wasted time and resources; he was posthumously stripped of his rank and denounced on all sides by former supporters who had no desire to rehash their own parts in the whole ridiculous debacle. Alexei went on to enjoy a relatively peaceful career that at no point involved double agents or endless verses of the Bottles of Beer song. And another agent was given the designation 222, though not the plastic surgery that the original possessor of that code number had endured. Operation Coconut, and everything that went along with it, was deliberately forgotten. And life went on.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Several days later, Gilligan and the Skipper stood in the lagoon, fishing desultorily. By unspoken consensus, they had all gone back to as close an approximation of 'normal' as possible, avoiding the entire subject, but the Skipper was very much on his guard. He hadn't forgotten Gilligan's response to the cap-slap, and he was queasily certain that there was a great deal more to the story of his captivity than Gilligan had told him. He suspected he didn't really want to hear it, and it was obvious that Gilligan had no desire to relive his experiences, but it was still there, the elephant in the room. The Skipper respected his privacy, but he did want it clearly understood that he was there when and if he was wanted. He cleared his throat.

"So… little buddy?"

"Yeah, Skipper? What is it?"

"Do you want to talk about it?" The Skipper rebaited his hook with a bit more attention to detail than the task really warranted.

"Talk about what?"

The Skipper shot him an 'are you kidding me' sort of look.

"…Oh. That," Gilligan said, reeling in his line. "No, I don't think so, Skipper. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday. But not now."

"Fair enough," the Skipper said, and cast his line. "You know that none of this was your fault, right? You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yeah, I know," Gilligan said. "I just wish it hadn't happened. I don't like to think about it."

"Can't blame you there. But, hey—you know where I live if you ever do want to talk about it, all right?"

"Thanks, Skipper."

They fished in silence for a few minutes.

"Hey, Skipper?"

"Yeah? What is it?"

Lying on the floor, gasping for breath, retching up red-stained water, until one of them—he couldn't see which—hauled him up by his collar, dragged him to his knees, and held the gun to the back of his head. Kneeling there, drenched, freezing, waiting, waiting, and his hands were so tightly bound that his fingers had gone numb and the gun didn't waver and he could feel the tears trickling down his cheeks. The tears were so much warmer than the icy water still dripping from his hair, almost hot enough to burn. Waiting, praying that this time, this time, when the gun went off, it would not turn out to be loaded with blanks, please, not again, because nothing mattered anymore, and reality was spinning again, too fast to see, too fast to understand, and nothing was true, nothing was real, nothing except the pain that had swallowed the rest of the world… and the peace that the gun promised.

And then the Commandant was kneeling beside him and cupping his chin in his hand, gently, so gently, and asked, sounding so sad, so kind, "Why you are making me do this? Come now, American, why must we be enemies? Talk to me. Let us be—how you say?—buddies, and talk like men."

And that was enough; the world snapped back into place, or as much of it as he needed, anyway. That was perhaps the one word left in the language that had any real meaning, and he clung to it. I have a buddy, and you're not him. He looked up. Everything was going dark around the edges, but that didn't matter, because he couldn't really focus his eyes anyway. Pushing words through his raw throat was agonizing, but he rasped, "Eh… eh… eight-sixty… f-f-forty-two…"

No. The Skipper didn't need to know about any of that. He would never need to know about that. As of right now, none of that had ever happened. It was far better forgotten.

"I, um… I think you've got a bite."

OoOoOoOoOoO

It might have interested certain Soviet intelligence operatives to know that, not long after Operation Coconut had been so abruptly, quietly, and definitively shelved, a young man, half-dead from exposure and thirst, was found clinging to a piece of driftwood in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He explained, in a flawless east coast American accent, that he was an amateur sailor, vacationing in the tropics, who had somewhat overestimated his own abilities, and he gave his name as Boris Peterson. Once safely on shore, he retrieved a cache of money and a set of expertly forged identity documents in that name that were, it must be admitted, technically government property, or would have been, if his superiors had known they existed. He felt entitled to them, though; the agency would never miss it, and anyway, it was still coming out ahead, as he took them in lieu of the combat pay he would not be collecting for this disaster of a mission.

The newly dubbed Boris used some of the cash to acquire a plane ticket back to the mainland, a haircut, and a few changes of clothing that didn't include either rugby shirts or Dixie-cup hats. (He might have ended up with Gilligan's face, but he retained his own fashion sense. Bozhe moi—if he never had to see these clothes again, it would be too soon!) He moved to Brooklyn, where he promptly found himself an apartment, a job, and a diner that served decent borscht. He also enrolled himself in night school, with the intention of studying medicine, and got on with his life.

But not before seeing to it that a message was delivered to the Secretary of the Navy via a series of untraceable dead drops, in a code he knew the CIA had long since cracked. It read, in part: The pleasure craft SS Minnow, wrecked in the south Pacific some years ago, was not without survivors, including two Naval veterans. They can be located on an uncharted island at the following coordinates. He was a man who paid his debts.

The Secretary might even have done something about it if he had not chanced to spill his coffee over the note before reading it, and in the fracas, the now-illegible note was thrown away.

Fin.