Disclaimer: Same as Chapter I, etc.
Chapter V Alexandria, VA0945-July 19, 2030
Will Black slowly opened his eyes and threw his hand to pick up his phone, which was ringing off the hook. Rather, was ringing off the nightstand on which it was kept. Picking it up, he put it to his head, and mumbled, "Hello?"
"Special Agent Black?"
His mind kicking into gear upon hearing his name, he answered, "Speaking, who is this?"
"This is the Assistant Director Doggett's office, and I'm informing you that you have an appointment at one this afternoon."
Secretary, a stuffy middle-aged bitch, Will thought to himself. Sighing, he answered, "Is the AD aware I'm currently on leave? That I'll be going before…"
"The Assistant Director has told me to tell you that you are to be here at one this afternoon to discuss your upcoming review by the Disciplinary Board."
Will was curious why he was about to be called out on the carpet by somebody that wasn't even in his chain of command. Of course, the moment that thought occurred to him the lady on the other end bid him good day and hung up. Hearing the dial tone at the other end, Will sighed, and plunked the phone back on to its cradle. Sitting up, he rotated his neck, and swung his legs out of the twin-sized bed he maintained in his apartment, pushing aside the blue-green pattern sheets and comforter. Blinking quickly, he rubbed his eyes and made his way into the bathroom, and turned on the water, not really bothering to let it mix before getting in.
In there, he stood and let the water beat the hangover he was nursing from a bottle of Coors and half a bottle of Beefeater Gin he had consumed the night before. Leaving his eyes closed, he leaned against a wall and tried to sort himself out, picking up a bottle of Pert Plus from the edge of the bathtub and got to work making himself presentable. Part of him, a tiny part, was dreading the ass chewing he was about to receive before he finally got the ax. Will was far from stupid, and knew that the powers that be, while they appreciated his work in finding the traitorous bastards within the Bureau, had very little love for him at all. He had known that they would have been looking for an excuse to throw his ass out at the drop of a hat, but that hadn't stopped him from rearranging that bastard's face in Morley's Pub.
Will knew he had lost it when the guy wouldn't shut his mouth about how fucked up things were being handled in China, and how wrong it was for the US to occupy Shanghai and have Hong Kong under British rule again. To a China War veteran, he hadn't appreciated the sentiments, and he had politely told the man he would appreciate it if he would just shut the fuck up about something he didn't have the first clue about. Said man had then retorted that Will was a fucking Nazi, and hoped that his kind suffered long and hard for what they did.
Will Black had gone ape-shit then, smashing the glass tumbler he had been drinking Jack with into the cunt's face. No longer had he been in some pub in the nation's capital, he was back in Siberia, Al Boatner screaming as the sadistic fuckers had used slowly ran knives along the soft portions of his body. Things had degenerated from there, and that was the only thing he remembered before waking up to see his supervisor, Helen Cardigan, slapping him awake in a DCPD (Alexandria having long fallen into the command of the DC Police Department around 2018) drunk tank. It had been fortunate that his boss had been there meeting with the precinct captain about some case when three of DC's finest had dragged him, kicking and struggling, in to be processed.
He had been pretty battered and bruised, and his boss hadn't been amused to say the slightest. She had dropped him off at his house with the warning to keep his nose clean until the Disciplinary board contacted him. Cardigan had icily told him he was fortunate that he hadn't been armed or carrying his ID when that happened, otherwise things would have gotten far, far worse. As it was, the DCPD had let him go because they thought he was nothing more then a snitch for the Feds, and they had washed their hands of him as a personal favor to her.
Scrubbing himself fiercely, he rinsed off, and turned the water off. Gingerly, not wanting to fall on his ass, he stepped out of the shower, and toweled off. Wrapping the thick cloth around his waist, he took out a razor and other toiletries, and started shaving. Within a few minutes, he was done, and as he usually did, he took a moment to look at his reflection in the mirror. Every morning he would look at his face, the clean lines unmarked the way his right arm and chest were by scars, the swelling and marks of the brawl long gone. Will was five ten, and still pretty fit considering he was no longer a twenty two year old rifleman. Running a hand through his dark hair (auburn though dark enough that it was almost chestnut brown with a few highlights of red), he absently wondered if he should have kept up the blonde dye he had been forced to use in Russia. Deciding against it, he went to his bedroom, and opened his closet. Inside, a habit from his time in the Marine Corps, was his wardrobe, organized with every button closed, and zipper fastened. Will's last (indeed only) partner had called it his Men in Black wardrobe, for everything was either black or white.
There he removed a lightweight black suit, with a white button down short-sleeve and black tie, from it and he quickly got dressed. Picking up his jacket and shoes, he sat on the edge of his bed (unmade since he had gotten back) and put on a pair of black nylon socks. Glancing at his watch on the nightstand, he saw he still had a good two hours before he had to be at the Hoover Building. Even if traffic were pretty bad (it was a Friday, and every civil servant in town was going to be making a run for it), he would still have an hour to burn once he got there. Will didn't think cooling his heels in a goddamn waiting room for an hour was going to do him much good…
Still, Will thought to himself, you never know with this town, so get your ass moving. His tie held in place by a gold-plated tiepin that he had used in the Corps, he put on a black leather belt, and clipped on it his issue SIG and magazine holster. Over this he threw on his coat, and took a look at himself in the bathroom mirror. It felt strange, but Will knew that was only because he was breaking habits he had been practicing since last September. Instead of slicking back his hair with gel, it hung on his head relatively short, not touching his hears, yet long enough to part. He didn't smell of three hundred dollar cologne, only of Irish Spring, the powder deodorant he favored, and Old Spice. Instead of bootleg Italian suits, he was dressed in Dillenger's and the tailored suits he had got at Brooks Brothers using his savings. Most important of all, one that bothered him more then anything else, he didn't carry any of the weapons he had carried on his body the whole time he was undercover. Will didn't have the small knife he had carried on his left forearm (that was in Russia) nor the length of shoestring he had kept in his pocket should the need for a garrote arise. All he had on him was his SIG-Saur P226, just like every other field agent in the Bureau.
Unplugging his cell phone from the charger in the wall, he slipped it into a pocket, and picked up his watch, wallet, and credentials. The last two he slid in with his cell phone inside his jacket pocket, and turned towards his door. Before he left, he took a look around his two-bedroom apartment. It wasn't much, and it showed the sort of life he lived: nothing really to tie him down, rather Spartan, and the only signs of the person occupying this apartment having a life at all was the small study he had set up in the second bedroom, and the usual mess of bachelorhood. Empty beer and water bottles on the coffee table, the other night's DVD rental from Blockbuster next to a small entertainment system of TV-Cable-DVD Player, and a hamper of laundry that he had been debating taking care of as part of his work for the day was about the extent of the decorum. Nonetheless, all of it didn't give much to identify it as the home of William Black, former Marine and Special Agent, FBI.
Just as that thought occurred to him Will's eyes darted back to nightstand close to his bed. There, besides a lamp half-falling apart he had picked up at a yard sale in Georgetown, was a single framed photograph. Unlike other photos he had, which he kept in a small cardboard box in the closet of his study, this one was something special. It was a semi-professional one, taken at a fellow agent's wedding in NYC when he had worked the Counter-Intelligence desk for NYC, and it showed Will his face set in a casual smile, his arms around a short, dark-haired woman who had beamed a brilliant smile at the camera. The same woman Will had loved for pretty much his whole career in the Bureau.
Coming from his background and childhood, and having seen just about everyone he let get close to him end up either dead or crippled, he had found himself, without realizing it, falling for the woman in the photo. It probably had something to do with the fact the two had known each other for little over six years. An additional factor may have been that both had been partners since the Academy as part of a personnel experiment to see if pairs of agents who had worked together over a long period of time were more effective, particularly in the Criminal Justice division.
Will had had only realized how much he had loved her when they had been separated, when she had been transferred to Washington two years earlier, and he had been sent to the Big Apple. Physically, Will had always been attracted to her, but over the years they had worked together Will had kept things absolutely platonic. Since he could count the number of living friends on one hand, he hadn't wanted to fuck anything up. Outside of flirting, which Will had started to wish he had decided to build, both had kept their hands to themselves.
Then she had come up both to attend the wedding of her friend (the bride, a fellow acquaintance from the Academy), and, as she had revealed when they had been dancing, to see him. They had danced, and while they had been dancing, Will enjoying getting close to her to the tune of 'Tears in Heaven' she had surprised him by telling him how she felt. Will's partner apparently had loved him, cared for him deeply ever since they had met. Will had been gladdened, for her feelings totally mirrored his own. Indeed, he had thought earlier of working up the guts to try and establish a more, personal relationship (he spent as much time in DC coordinating the cases in New York as he did in the city of New York itself, to the extant that he maintained an apartment in DC and rented an even more Spartan place up there). Yet he had frozen on that dance floor, only smiled hugged her, and wound up leaving her when his boss Ed Gavin had gone up to him as soon as the song ended. Gavin had sent him over to see Helen Cardigan, once she had explained the suicidal assignment they had in mind the adrenaline junkie within had taken over. He hadn't even gone back to say good bye, instead taking a back door to a safe house where he had been prepped for the operation in total secrecy.
Black had turned the keys to his apartment and his '25 Pontiac sedan over to Cardigan for safekeeping, and for all intents and purposes dropped off the face of the earth. Needless to say, he had lost touch with the woman in the picture, and had given up on her. Odds were, she had probably found someone, someone who could probably offer more then he could, and while he found that line of thought painful, it was comforting in a way he felt he deserved after the way he probably had broken hers. After all, he had survived his fair share and then some of combat, not to mention the constant danger during his undercover work, because he thought of himself as a gambler with nothing left to lose. His life, if one could call his current existence that, was in his book nothing.
Exiting, and locking his door, he took the stairs to the parking lot and got in his sedan. Backing out, his thoughts turned to his former partner, the woman whom he readily admitted was one of a very, very small body of people he trusted completely. Will, with a double bachelor from UCSD in Poli-Sci and Psychology, and masters in Psychology from Georgetown, had to wonder just what the hell had been his malfunction. There had been a mutual attraction (or so he believed), he trusted her, both knew each really well, yet he had frozen, not telling her his feelings…And then Cardigan had asked him to volunteer for that undercover assignment from hell, and he had grabbed it with both hands. The only reason he had deduced so far for treating her that way was that he was, not putting a shine it, a coward who didn't want to settle down and build the dream had had secretly nurtured for years. Either that, or the combination of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he knew he suffered from China and Korea and those three years in VCS getting into the minds of such sterling characters as the Atlantic strangler and other assorted evils had left him a very fucked up individual with major issues concerning his value as a human being.
With those pleasant thoughts on his mind, it took him a good hour and a half to make it to the parking lot. As he had feared, everybody in Sodom on the Potomac had been making a mad dash out of town as soon as lunchtime hit. Swearing, he slammed the door to his car shut and tried to think of something, anything that would get his mind off of what was about to happen. Walking quickly, his pass clipped to the front of his jacket, he made his way in and to one of the elevators. There wasn't anybody he recognized, and nobody so much as gave him a second glance as he took a spot in the back of the elevator. Seeing his floor already punched he tried to relax some, but instead, he wound up analyzing, well, just about every event that got him to this point, to include the beginning.
He was twenty-three years old, and getting ready to graduate from UCSD with his masters. After the war, he had spent the remainder of his term with the Corps at Twenty-Nine Palms, and had more then enough time to work on a degree, both Bachelor and Master's. He had gotten out just in time to finish up the rest of his credits as a full-time student. Will hadn't a clue what he wanted to do with his new degrees, maybe go back to Mother Corps and become an officer through OCS. Then, there had been that time in the middle of one his Psychology classes, right as he was finishing up his masters, an agent came up to him with an offer he couldn't refuse. It seemed the Bureau was looking for people just like him, and would offer him the same pay and somewhat better living conditions. To Will, who had spent the better part of a year freezing and baking in such Club Med spots as Pyongyang, eastern Siberia, and Manchuria, the decision had been pretty easy to make. Few friends (the live ones were scattered all over the wild, wooly world), no family, no significant other…it had been a pretty easy choice to make.
Spotting the number for his floor on the elevator monitor, he got off quickly and made his way to the AD's office. Around him other agents were busy trying to get their work done before the weekend, one or two on the phone with the wife and kids, or husband or boyfriend or girlfriend plotting their weekend getaway. Reminders, Will thought to himself, of a life outside of a bottle of booze and an adrenaline rush. A sign perhaps from the Powers Above to go forth and get a life, perhaps... Nah, he thought to himself, don't kid yourself you worthless fuck. Spotting the door with "Assistant Director John Doggett" stenciled on it, he straightened his tie, ran a hand through his hair, and entered. A prim, gray-haired secretary was sitting at the reception desk, typing away when he entered. She looked up and asked, "Special Agent Black?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Please take a seat for a moment."
Thanking her, Will continued to stand, and looked out of the window to get a nice view of the Beltway. He didn't have much time to wait as the secretary told him, "The AD will see you now." Thanking her again, he took a deep breath; he paused at the outer door, and knocked twice. "Enter". For a minute, Will had a weird sense of déjà vu of the time when he and two of his buddies had been called out on the carpet by the Battalion Sergeant Major, the top, and their platoon sergeant. Come to think of it, it had been for almost the same reasons, though instead of a bar, it was a glass-house in Seoul before they had gone on the line in the Land of the Morning Calm…
Stepping in briskly, he strode until he were three steps away from the desk, facing the AD. He stood tall, and with his arms behind him, he answered, "Special Agent Black reporting as ordered." Doggett didn't mess around, ordering him, "Take a seat." Will did so, and no sooner had his ass touched the padding when Doggett held up a plain, brown folder. "You know what this is?"
"No, sir." Will didn't know per se, but if he had to guess it was probably the file containing his various sins and misdeeds, the ones that would see his ass thrown out of the FBI.
Doggett opened it and perused through it for a moment before he answered. "This, Mister Black, is the report I received from Special Agent Cardigan concerning your activities at Fitzgerald's, a sports bar about a block and a half from your apartment in Alexandria. It says you were in physical contact of a violent nature with no less then ten patrons of the bar, and no less then six metropolitan police officers. Of those last six, they had restrain you using a stun gun and that subsequent testing revealed you to have a blood alcohol level three times above the legal limit for drunkenness." Doggett set the folder on the table, and flipped through several of the pages. "It's stated that nine of the patrons involved were treated for various cuts and bruises, and three for an assortment of broken bones. Of the cops one is minus two of his teeth thanks to you."
Another pause, and Doggett spoke again, "I also have here a report from one of the people involved in your debriefing at the embassy in Moscow. The report states you struck a fellow agent in the face with a pot of coffee, and scalded him rather badly. Care to explain that?"
"No excuse…"
Will didn't get the chance to finish before Doggett barked back. "Don't give me that bullshit! Give me a reason why."
Doggett took a moment to stop, and took several deep breaths. Will did almost similar as he really, really didn't want to think too much of the incident in Moscow. Some asshole he had worked with in New York, some dickhead who thought he was hotshot because he had been on some major crime task force and gotten into a few gun-battles. The smug son of a bitch had done nothing but rag and snicker at the Intel he had spent a long time and a lot of pain and trauma to get at. What had set things off was when he had cracked some joke about 'Doctor Ice back at the Hoover office', his former partner, and Will had taken the coffee pot that had been next to his elbow and decorated the smug bastard's face with it.
His old platoon leader Stan Green and Tom Marlboro wound up having to restrain him yet again, this time handcuffing him to a chair for the rest of the session and from then on during the debrief.
Will's lack of response created a long stretch of silence, as both men wound up trying to stare the other down. It was a moment before Doggett, his voice emotionless compared with the dark rage of only a moment earlier, spoke, "Do you know what I intend on doing with this?" Will had a wild urge to yell that he was going to use it to fuck him over like a lot of other people. Yet he didn't, only shaking his head, gritting his teeth.
Doggett stared at him, face expressionless, and held the folder in one hand. With the other he ripped out the black plastic burn bag that was attached to the underside of his desk, for those communiqués and documents he wanted destroyed and not just thrown out. The file he threw in the bag, sealed it, and set it on his desk. Doggett slapped the intercom, and ordered his secretary to replace the burn bag, that he had something he wanted destroyed immediately.
It took Will a few moments when the Secretary was clearing away the bag to get it through his head that he wasn't about to be thrown out of the Bureau just yet.
He vaguely heard the AD talking to him, but didn't catch it.
"Sir, I'm sorry, I didn't follow you…"
AD Doggett glared at him, and asked sarcastically, "Woolgathering, Mister Black? Don't they teach you at the Island to pay attention when you walk point? You fucking pogue. No wonder Mother Corps threw you out like a used rubber, you limp-dick motherfucker." Will grabbed the armrests of his chair and threw himself up to his feet. His voice had hit command decibel level before he was through standing, Doggett's contemptuous voice having sliced into him like a blade..
"You go fuck yourself up the asshole, Doggett. If you want to throw me out of the Bureau on my dick go ahead and fucking do so, but don't you fucking talk about shit you don't know about you cum drinking cocksucker!"
Will had his hands balled into fists, and had to restrain himself from drawing his sidearm, and filling this cold-hearted prick with enough lead that they could use him for radiation shielding. He had to remind himself that he was no longer running and gunning for the Russian mob, that he was back in the real world where you took what shit was thrown at you, ate it up with a spoon, and asked for seconds with a grin.
Doggett then did the unexpected: he smiled, and nodded his head. "Sit down, Black. I still have words with you that you'll want to hear. And for what it's worth, I got out after Lebanon for what I guess is similar reasons." He slapped the intercom, and ordered coffee for both of them. Will wanted just a cup of black, no sugar, milk or cream, pure caffeine to perhaps settle him down.
After Doggett's secretary had delivered the coffee, the AD turned to him, mug in hand, and told him, "My apologies for the little charade, but I wanted to see if you were a legitimate case of being misunderstood, as opposed to being a piece of trash that got lucky. I know it was a low-blow calling you a pogue, but once a Marine."
"Always a Marine," Will finished as he shrugged to the Doggett's apologies. He was still hyper, but the practical man in him was telling him that now was the time to shut up, sit down and listen.
"Sir, will that be all or…"
Doggett took another sip of his coffee, and began, "No, I called you in to tell you of your next assignment. Your boss, Helen Cardigan, was one of my agents when I ran the Charlotte office. She told me you about your last assignment and of what you've had to go through. Helen wants you to lie low for a little bit, as you got two factors that are going to really hurt you. The first and foremost is that even with the intel you brought out of Russia, nobody knows how far the rot has gone, and we don't know if anyone is going to burn you down quite yet. Second, and a factor to a degree from the first, is that she fears, and so do I, that you will be hurt in a situation not unlike that of the goose that laid the golden egg. You'll be rewarded, but at the same time everybody and his uncle here in Washington will be making an effort to stab you in the back over this."
"So where will I be assigned? Fargo, Minot, Wounded Knee?" Will named some of the more remote outposts the FBI had, as what Doggett was proposing was quite like what he had envisioned his own reward would be.
Doggett shook his head, and asked him, "You'll still be here in Washington, though in a capacity that will both silence the detractors, and make you a hard enough target for the Mob as to be untouchable. In addition, your duties will undoubtedly keep you on the road, so you will be both maintaining a low profile here, and more often then not be out of sight." Black had a sneaky idea he was going to be given a desk job, maybe assigned to run background checks on the janitors working in the Hoover Building…
"Ever hear of a unit within the Bureau called the X-Files unit?"
Will nodded, much to Doggett's surprise, and explained, "I was given a study assignment at the Academy to examine a case file on the Bureau's handling of investigations on military installations, and I found the summary sheet from one in 1993 outlining of the disappearance of several test pilots at an Air Force base in Idaho. What got me was the facts the agents involved came from Washington as opposed to the Bureau's field office in Boise." Black paused, as though he were thinking for a moment before he continued, "In addition, the file intrigued me for the SAC was Fox Mulder, whom we were instructed was one of the Agency's better profilers during mid 80s, but then dropped out of sight around the early nineties. As I recall he was one of the agents who worked the Green River case in its early stages, to include writing the profile that eventually nabbed the perp in question."
Doggett nodded, apparently impressed by Black's knowledge. "You aware then of what the section handled in terms of cases?"
Will laughed then, and nodded, "They handled the weird, and unwanted cases the Bureau had a mandate to look into, but didn't want to. From what I gathered, anyhow, that was how it appeared." His eyes flickered for a moment, and then asked, "I understood when I asked about the files that they were…"
"Shut down since July 1, 2002." Doggett filled in for him, and explained, "I worked the X-files for about two years at the turn of the century. Before me and my future wife, who was then Agent Reyes, it was Agents Mulder and Scully though for a short time before my wife and I showed up it was two others." He paused again, "As of last week, I have been given the go ahead to reactivate the X-files. You, and one other agent will be the new X-files team."
Will let the new information sink in, secretly and pathetically pleased that he wasn't being shut into some closet of an assignment where the most fascinating thing was to watch the paint peel. The cases might be weird, but at least they would be interesting in a way a circus freak show was. Maybe that was all he needed, a bit of comic relief in his life…Not to mention he would probably be able to swing it so that he would be out of town half the time…
Doggett continued, oblivious to what was going on in Will's head, "Same as it was before, two-agent team, one drawn from the technical side of the house, the other from the field. You answer only to me, and operate as low-key as possible. Is that understood?"
"Like crystal, sir. Will our mission be the same as it was before?"
"Yes and no. Yes in that you will be handling cases of that nature, and no in the sense that you will only be handling those cases in the future. The first case you are going to be assigned to is rather important, and I have received orders from the Director's office that it is to be…" Doggett's secretary rang up then, her voice cutting in.
"Sir, Special Agent…"
Doggett slapped the intercom, and ordered, "Send her in." He looked over at Will, "Your new partner. I believe you two may have…" A knocking on the door, and Doggett gave the same gruff, "Enter" as he had used with Will. Will leaned back in his chair, as a slight bit of fear started worming in the base of his stomach. There was no way, it couldn't possibly be…
His thoughts were interrupted as woman, shorter then him at five-four with shoulder-length, dark brown hair, and wearing a suit of black blouse and slacks entered. She stopped in front of the AD's desk, and reported, "Special Agent Nina Cross reporting as ordered." Will got up, Nina saw him, and Will could see the surprise in her eyes. Doggett motioned with his right hand. "Agent Cross, agent Black. I believe you know each other. You two will be working together on the X-files." Will nodded and held out his hand, and the two shook. Despite himself, he found his hand lingering, and noticing how warm and soft it felt…
Nina smiled at him, and Will found the shell, the poker face he had had to wear twenty-four seven for the past nine months and still wore out of habit breaking. "Will," She said, and he broke it off, a bit more curtly then he intended, "Nina." Doggett then began telling her what he had told Will just a few minutes earlier, informing her of the kind of work involved with the X-files.
Will wasn't paying attention to him, instead looking at the wall behind Doggett, his thoughts on Nina. True, he had been dealt many a strange hand of cards in his life. However, this had to top all of it as the photo of his last partner, the one on his nightstand, the woman whom he had, for all intents abandoned rather then face the music in his heart, was once again before him.
Nina Cross was that smiling woman in the photo on the nightstand. The woman whom Black knew whose heart he had smashed with his own in New York all those months earlier…