Chapter 21

"Oh my God! Arthur! You are alive! I can't believe you are alive!"

After her initial, apparent shock, that woman rushed to the bed and hugged Hannibal, kissing him all over his face.

"The name is Margaret," she whispered on his ear. "Come on, do something! You are acting like a corpse!"

It still took Hannibal a few seconds to react, and then he did, embracing her tightly, crying without tears, in a superb, over-emotional performance fit for a Hollywood A-list star.

"Margaret! I thought I would never see you again! Thank God you're here!"

Hannibal looked at Major Lockhart while blinking false tears away, peeping over that woman's locks as she cried on his chest. Lockhart looked so cross he could self-combust on the spot at any moment.

"Madam, are you sure this is your husband, General Arthur M. Everson?"

"What do you mean?" that fierce woman said, lifting her head off Hannibal's chest to look at the major. "Of course he's my husband! Why on earth did you bring me here if you thought he wasn't him?"

"Are you sure, Mrs Everson?" Daniels said, producing a file with the general's picture at the front. "I know you haven't seen him in sixteen years, but this man hardly looks like the man on this photo."

"Let me see that," she said, snatching the file. "This is an awful picture of my husband. You could have done better than that." She shoved the file into the ambassador's chest and returned to Hannibal's side, grabbing his head between her shaky, bony hands. "He is my husband. Of course he is. My Arthur." She kissed him then, deeply, and Hannibal responded to that kiss, embracing her.

B.A cleared his throat then and grabbed the handles of Murdock's wheelchair.

"Come on, guys. Let's give them some space. Let's get out of here."

They all walked to Murdock's room, with a couple of soldiers watching them closely, and only the major and the ambassador stayed there.

"Do you mind going out as well? I would like to have some privacy with my husband, thank you," Margaret said, looking at them, and then at the door.

"What about him? Even if we go, you won't be alone," Major Lockhart said, pointing at Face.

"I don't care about him hearing us. He was in that prison with him, wasn't he? Sorry, young man, it will only be a moment." She closed the privacy curtain then, dragging it all around Face's bed.

"Don't mind me at all. As if I'm not here," Face said from behind the curtain.

"Now, you two, go away, and let me talk to my husband. I want some privacy. Go away."

That woman walked them to the door and closed it on their backs to be left alone with her husband.

"Now, mister, let's cut the crap. I know who you are. And you are not my husband!" she said in a low voice, staring at Hannibal's concerned blue eyes with anger firing hers. "Why are you doing this? Why?"

"Believe me, ma'am, I thought about this, about the pain this charade would cause to the families of these unfortunate soldiers, raising false hopes, but I didn't have a choice. I'm sorry."

"You will never understand how disappointed and furious I am right now!"

"I know, and I'm so sorry. But I'm also very grateful because you didn't blow my cover. Thank you for that."

"I may still do."

"I hope you don't. But, excuse me, what exactly did you mean, saying you know who I am?"

"You are Coronel Smith, from the A-Team. And he is Lieutenant Peck," she said, pointing at the curtain. "Don't try to deny it!"

"I would appreciate if you keep that believe to yourself," he said, lowering his voice even more.

"Why would I? I came all the way from California thinking my husband was alive, after all these years, only to find you, this… impostor. I'm so angry I could smother you with that pillow!" the fiery little lady said then, pacing the room to calm down.

"That would not be too difficult in my condition," he said sheepishly.

"Don't tempt me!" she said, stopping to look at him. Then she added, in a much softer tone, showing some concern. "All right, what exactly happened to you two?"

"Trouble with a helicopter. Well, no, two different ones, actually. He crashed the first one, and I fell off the second one."

"Thanks for reminding me, Hannibal," Face said from behind the curtain. Margaret drew that side a bit, so he could see them.

"If you must be on the conversation, young man… Please, join us."

"Thanks ma'am."

"But don't worry, Mrs Everson, we are on the mend now," Hannibal said. "How do you know about us?"

"You helped my friend Ann Bailey a few years ago. That's the only reason why I haven't rat you out yet."

"Ann Bailey… Bailey…" Hannibal said, thinking.

"I think she's that lady from Fresno, is that right?" Face said. Margaret nodded.

"Yes, that's right," Hannibal said. "She and her husband John had a recycling business. How are they doing? Any more problems with the Carlson brothers?"

"No, they've been fine since you left. Those thugs learned their lesson. Never bothered them again."

"It's good to have a follow up on our cases," Hannibal said, with a wide smile. "Hey, I think I remember something now… Yes, I didn't make a connection with the name before, but if I remember correctly, Mrs Bailey asked me if I knew a General Everson in Vietnam."

"Yes. When I found out she had hired your team, I begged her to ask you if you had any information about my husband. And you said no. You probably don't remember me, but I saw you briefly in her house one afternoon, as I left, when you came in."

"No, sorry, I don't remember you. And I didn't know your husband then. Unfortunately, I still don't, and I never will. I'm so sorry to be the one telling you this: your husband is dead."

"That's the feeling I had for a while, yes," she said, wiping off some stray tears.

"We helped the last three POWs to escape, but I'm afraid your husband died when he tried to escape from that prison seven years ago, along with several others. Major Conley, one of the men that was here before in this room, got re-captured during that failed escape attempt, and he lost one eye as a result. You should talk to them, Captain Harlow and Major Conley. And you should also talk to Quang, the Vietnamese healer, who was the last man to see your husband alive. Yes, you should have a chat with them all. I'm so sorry to have given you so much hope, coming here, I really do. And I'm specially sorry because we didn't know what was going on in those prisons. We should have got there sooner."

"The government knew! We, the families at the National League of POWs and MIAs, we kept telling them to do something about it, to try to find our men and bring them home! But they ignored us."

"Well, as you know, I'm not in the Government's good boys list anymore. I haven't been for a long time."

"I don't blame you for that. But you must understand how disappointed and angry I feel now, with the whole world. For what you are saying, Arthur died seven years ago, so he was in that prison for at least six years after the war ended. That should not have happened! And nobody did anything about it!"

"I agree, and as I already said, I am very sorry. I hope you can forgive me one day."

"Don't worry. I have already. But nothing can take away these feelings of despair."

"I'm sorry."

"Thank you. Now, what's going to happen to you and your men? When are you coming back home to the US?"

"I don't know." Hannibal said.

"Probably never, if they manage to run those fingerprints before we heal and are back on our feet," Face said, shaking his fractured arm a bit. "And that's going to take a while."

"No, you can't wait that long. You should request a transfer to an American hospital. Now. Before they find out who you really are. I'll pull some strings."

Hannibal looked at her again, puzzled, tilting his head.

"Who are you, again?"

"The wife of someone who would have been proud of helping you. And, disappointed as I am because you are not him, bringing you guys back home it's the best thing I can do to honour his memory. As least, that way you could carry on helping people, like you did with Ann and John, and like you did with the lucky men that you rescued from that camp."

"Wow. Thank you, ma'am. I'm impressed."

"You will be, when I finished with that slimeball of Major Lockhart. The nerve he had, bringing me all the way here to break my heart only to confirm that you are not my husband! I bet he expected witnessing a public meltdown!" She grabbed the clipboard hanging at the end of the bed, with Hannibal's medical record and the hospitalization sheets, and had a quick look through the papers. "Besides, they are morons. My husband was O negative, the universal donor type. I know that because he gave blood regularly. You are A positive. They should have spotted that, rather than trying to prove you are not Arthur only because I say so!"

Hannibal couldn't help but laughing them, heartedly. That little, witty lady was a handful!

AAA

"What's going on, Major?" Ambassador Daniels said at the hospital's corridor, upset. "You insisted we should not go public with this, because these men are a fraud, and now we have a positive ID from one of the widows!"

Major Lockhart was cross, very cross. He had tracked the surviving relatives of the POWs, and so far, he had contacted only General's Everson's widow, for "damage control". And he was sure that poor woman would be in shock, because there was no way she could recognize that man as her husband. However, she had just done that, insisting that man was indeed the general! How on Earth did that happen?

From their arrival in Thailand, there was a delay to find their files, but finally, a condensed, brief copy of the military records arrived by fax on the second day. As he suspected from the first day, the details on the POWs didn't completely fit with these men, with some discrepancies on physical attributes, like age, height and eye colour, for example, and some of them didn't look much like the men on the pictures. Only Conley and Harlow did, but he already knew that would be the case. But, that incomplete copy of the files didn't include a picture of their fingerprints, or their blood type.

The whole search for their records had been a shambles, a total fiasco, as the original files of those soldiers had been misplaced, still to be found, and the fingerprints never made it into a computer, or into the file copies. Nobody had bothered to transfer the prints of dead people into the system, and now, they couldn't find the original files.

Besides, these men had all alleged foggy memories that didn't allow them to remember important details of their lives before the war, and the psychiatrists had dismissed Lockhart's claims that these men could not really be the POWs they claimed to be, based on their inability to confirm basic data from the past. To his annoyance, the psychiatrists had put it all under the umbrella label of "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder", and they had stated those discrepancies could be normal and didn't prove anything either way.

These irritating men should have been identified within 24 hours, at the most, and it had been six days already since their arrival. However, without a positive ID from a fingerprint match, he couldn't do much. And now he had a very strong-willed woman, certified as "sane" by a US psychiatrist prior to travelling to Thailand, claiming that man was indeed General Everson. What an unexpected backfire!

"Major?"

"It cannot be, it simply cannot be," he mumbled. "She must be lying. Why? I don't know."

"Major, find me a positive ID on these men, and do it by tomorrow! This is beyond a joke! The president is waiting. We are all waiting!"

AAA

"What about our families, Major?" Harlow said when they got back to the Thai Military Base, at one of the meeting rooms. "Where are they? Have you contacted them?"

"Yes, we have enquired about your relatives. I don't have good news, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean? What happened? Where's my wife?" Conley said, sitting opposite to him on that large table.

"I'm very sorry, but your wife died of cancer five years ago. Your mother died last year, of pneumonia, and your only surviving relative is your father. He is in a nursing home. He suffers from advanced Alzheimer's. It's very unlikely he will recognize you."

Conley was silent for a moment, dealing with the devastating news. Harlow stood up and lay a hand on his shoulder, for support.

"What about my sister? Why did you say my father is my only surviving relative?"

"She died on a traffic accident three years ago. I'm very sorry."

That piece of information finished him off, and he broke down in tears. All that time and all that suffering with the hope of seeing them again, for nothing.

While he cried, Harlow looked at the major with apprehension, but with a clear question in his eyes: what about my family?

"Your case is a little bit more complicated, Captain."

"Where's my wife? And my daughter. Are they alive?"

"Yes, they are alive. They are fine."

Harlow sighed deeply then, still with his hand at Conley's shoulder. While he wept, Conley tapped at that supportive hand. At least his friend would be alright.

"Why are they not here then?"

"Because we haven't contacted them."

"Why not? You contacted Ha… General Everson's wife."

"Yes, but as I said, your case is more complicated."

"Why? What do you mean? For Christ sake, Major, tell me what's going on! Stop beating around the bush and tell me what's wrong!"

"You were declared missing in action, and later officially dead. She re-married six years ago and has a new family now, with two other kids. That's why we haven't contacted her, until we talked to you first. We only found out this afternoon. We had trouble tracking her due to her new maiden name," he lied shamelessly, but Harlow bought it. He had known for three days already.

Harlow stood there, not moving, totally shocked. The only reason why he had been able to endure all the years in that prison was the hope of seeing his wife and daughter again. And now he could see them, but not having them back. His whole world had flipped upside down.

"I'm sorry, but you insisted on knowing. And now that you do, you should think carefully about your next step: do you want to upset your wife, and burden her with the knowledge you are still alive, or do you want to let her carry on with her new life? Your daughter won't even remember you. She was too young when you got captured. In my opinion, it would be quite selfish to burst into their lives now. I know it will be hard for you, but knowing now, in her new situation, would be even more taxing on your wife."

Harlow just looked at him, stunned, unable to react, until he swallowed hard and nodded slightly.

I got you! Yes, because we really don't want anybody knowing you two are alive, Lockhart thought.

AAA

When Daniels took her back to the US Embassy, Margaret Everson asked for a phone and got on with the task of calling her contacts. She called the National League of POWs families, asking for the details of Captain Harlow's wife, and she also called some of her husband's high ranked military friends, to ask for the repatriation of the injured soldiers ASAP.

"General Stockwell?" she said when the secretary put her through.

"Yes."

"Hunt, is that you? This is Margaret. Margaret Everson."

"Maggie! How are you? I haven't heard from you for a long time. Is everything alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm in Thailand, and I need your help."

"Yes, sure. What can I do for you?"

AAA

That evening, Lockhart went through all the files and all the info he had, again, over and over, combing every detail. He stopped at the mention on an A-Team in relation with General Fulbright, the one Tia kept claiming was her father, but everybody had dismissed that detail as a fantasy. That general was still missing, and the A-Team was a group of Special Forces renegades on the run, chased by the military police in the US.

Special Ops. They would fit the profile of these men acting on their own and without backup in Vietnam.

But the search of their fingerprints against the military database had not yielded any results, so how could they be them?

He got on the phone and made some calls. Soon, he was fuming. The search has not been done against the whole database, only against the POWs database! No wonder he was waiting for results that would never arrive!

"Someone will pay for this gross incompetence, I'll make sure of that!" he shouted to that military clerk. "Run the fingerprints against the whole military database right now, as it should have been done from the beginning!"

"Yes, Sir. Right away!" the orderly at the other side of the Pacific said.

"Wait! Run it first against the members of the A-Team."

"The A-Team, Sir?"

"Yes. Coronel John Smith, Lieutenant Templeton Peck, and Sergeant B,A Baracus. And Captain H.M Murdock as well. And send me their complete files right now!"

"Yes, Sir, you should have them in the next half an hour. I'll fax them to you as soon as I get them."

"Good. I'm waiting."

Lockhart hung up, slamming down the phone. He could not believe that stream of "coincidences". The original files got lost, the copies he had were incomplete, and searches had not been done properly. To him, it looked like someone had been tampering with the investigation, hampering his efforts to identify those men. And that had to be someone with great influence. Someone at the top, a big fish. But, who?

AAA

Hunt Stockwell looked at the file still in his hands. Right before Maggie called, he was pondering what to do with these men retained in Thailand, and how to bring them home without raising suspicions, after he had blocked the attempts for identification as soon as the red flags came in.

He had plans for them. Very promising plans, because he could put the skills of the A-Team to good use. But first, he had to bring them back to the US and persuade them to work for him, and that was exactly what he was thinking about when Mrs Everson called him. What a wonderful coincidence!

He was a good friend of Arthur, and he knew he had remained in a Vietnamese prison after the war ended, an issue that had always bothered him while he got in a position of power in the shadows. He was cross when in 1980, he got access to evidences that pointed out to Arthur's death in 1979, too late to rescue him now that he could launch an undercover operation. He never told Maggie because that would mean acknowledging the fact that other POWs were still prisoners in Vietnam, and nobody wanted to do that. And, as Arthur was already dead, he didn't feel the need of risking a botched operation and an international conflict to rescue a handful of men he didn't personally know.

Margaret didn't tell him the men to be repatriated were the A-Team. Instead, she insisted they were POWs that had escaped from a Vietnamese prison, and she feared for their lives. But it didn't matter, because he knew perfectly well who was at that hospital in Bangkok. And she had just provided the perfect excuse to bring them home: a concerned civilian that made impossible any cover-up to the problem. They could always make a scandal about the false POWs later on, once everybody was in the US, and then he could blackmail the A-Team to work for him. Perfect.

He left the file on the table and pressed the button on the intercom.

"Carla, put me through with the White House, please."

AAAAA

A.N – the muse inspired me to get Stockwell involved in this. As this story is based on the last episode of season 4 and he appeared in season 5 out of nowhere, I thought it was a fitting way to link him in. I love it when a story comes together! LOL

I hope you like the new twists. Nearly done now.