Episode One: Killer

Chapter Ten

The next thirty minutes saw the IMF agents furiously preparing to leave Europe. A lot of their equipment would be taken care of by the London agents and, where necessary, sent to them later. They would take only what they could—the essentials.

"Grant, don't lift that, it's too heavy."

"I can carry my own computer, Nicholas, I brought it in here."

"We just don't want you straining your back," Casey jibed, taking the computer out of his hands before he had time to protest. He watched her carry the computer outside, and when he looked back, Nicholas was laughing.

"Uh huh," said Grant. "Better laugh it up now, pal, because someday soon, you're going to get kicked in the shin and I'm going to convince everyone on the team that your leg is broken."

Nicholas only smiled wider.

"I'm supposed to be the official medic on this team, remember?" Grant complained. "I mean, did everyone forget that?"

Nicholas's smile abruptly died. The look he threw Grant spoke volumes. They weren't a team. They'd been brought together for one mission and one mission only.

The illusion of the alternative was enticing. The ability to think as a team had come about so easily that it already felt like a reality. And because it was so easy to think about, it was easy to joke about.

Grant stopped and returned the look.

Max's call over their communicators interrupted the silence.

"Go ahead, Max," Jim said coming down the back stairs.

"Irony of ironies, Jim," said Max. "Drake just purchased a ticket back to San Francisco."

"Interesting news," affirmed Jim. "What about us?"

"Our plane is waiting on the runway now. All you have to do is get here."

"You heard the man," Jim said. "Let's go."

With a last look at Grant, Nicholas nodded quickly. He picked up the brown supply box and headed out.

The final item in the room was the IMF copier, already folded into its case and ready to move. Grant reached for the handle but Jim beat him to it. The younger agent exhaled, exasperated, but it didn't seem to bother Jim. He looked just as amused as Nicholas had earlier.

He set a gentle hand on Grant's shoulder. "Grant," he said, giving his shoulder a squeeze, "sometimes you've got to learn to accept… a little help from your friends." Then, looking around the empty room with a satisfied nod, gave Grant's shoulder one last pat and followed Nicholas out the back door.

"You've been waiting for someone to betray you," Nicholas restated. "Is that why you're here?"

Tom looked down, running a finger along his jaw.

Nicholas wasn't sure he had the right to push, but he did anyway. Tom was obviously telling him all this for a reason. "Has it ever happen?"

"Not as I thought it would," said Tom. "See, I always thought it would be someone inside the IMF… someone who would have the means and the experience to do it right. I used to dream about it, before every mission… what it would mean if one of the agents turned on me, on all of us... on the mission. What would it mean if they weren't who I thought they were? I worried that if I got too close to any of them, I'd lose my objectivity."

"But why would they?" Nicholas asked. "Unless... you must have had reason to suspect?"

"They wouldn't," Tom said. "I suppose that's what I've been most wrong about."

"But someone has betrayed you. Someone else then? Someone outside IMF?"

"Yes," said Tom. "Someone… someone I've known for a long time. Someone I thought I knew well. Someone I thought I could trust."

"Tom, whoever this person is, you can trust me," Nicholas said simply, worried that the effort Tom had extended in coming here might be lost in purpose if he didn't say it. "I'll do whatever I can to help."

Tom smiled solemnly, looking over at him. "I was hoping you'd say that."

"Nick? Nicholas? Nicholas? Are you alright?"

"What?" Nicholas tore his gaze from the scenery outside the car window, meeting Grant's frowned expression.

"I asked if you were okay, man. You looked a little out of it."

"Tired I guess," he answered. "It's been a long few days… for everyone."

"Yeah," Grant seemed to accept the answer. "We've got a long flight ahead of us too, before this is over. Hopefully you can sleep on the plane. Not to criticize, but you didn't really look rested when you showed up at Jim's."

"Look, Tom, you're telling me you believe someone close to you is really Scorpio—a known, or rather an "unknown" known criminal mastermind. Someone you've looked up to. I'm willing to follow up on the information you've given me, but it doesn't leave me a whole lot to go on, nor does it explain why you flew across the continent to ask someone who is more or less a complete stranger to check it out for you. I'd just like a little more information if I'm going to back you up. I don't like the idea of you going into this alone." Nicholas had the sudden eerie feeling that if Tom left now, without telling the whole story, without identifying Scorpio, he'd be stepping right back into his weary world of self-reliance and suspicion. Self-reliance, suspicion, and paranoia that had apparently turned out to be justified.

"Like I said, I've read your file," said Tom. "You're the best disguise artist IMF has to offer, amazing with languages, and a master of information and intelligence. And you're the kind of person Jim Phelps would work with any day. If I had a set team, you'd be on it." Tom stood up to leave, clamped a hand to Nicholas's shoulder, and looked suddenly like he didn't have a care in the world. He looked determined and confident and like going after Scorpio was going to be the time of his life. "I just need someone I trust to know what I'm taking on… in case things go south."

Tom smiled then, but it just didn't feel right.

Nicholas stood from his chair, trying to think what more he could say to stop him. Trying to get Tom to just tell him who Scorpio was. That would at least give him the chance to back him up whether he wanted it or not. "Tom," he said.

The team leader paused at the exit to stage left, waiting to hear what Nicholas would say.

"Please. If you need help… if you need my presence on this, I'm here. Hell, I can come with you now."

"I know," said Tom. "Thank you."

"Nicholas?"

Nicholas realized Grant was still watching him, waiting for some sort of furthered explanation for why he'd looked tired from day one of their job. "I don't always sleep well on planes," he hedged, shrugging, then considered Grant with a critical eye. "You look kind of tired yourself."

"Like you said, man, long few days for all of us."

Nicholas nodded his head toward the front seat of the car they rode in. Cut off from their conversation by the taxi partition, they could still see Jim at the wheel and Casey looking tired in the passenger seat. "For Jim most of all… I'm not sure he's really slept at all."

"How could he? If I lost someone I cared about that much, it might just be the thing to break me."

"We're IMF agents," said Nicholas. "They choose us because we're hard to break."

Grant flashed a half-smile. "Not broken unless you stop caring - my dad used to say."

"I like that," said Nicholas. "I imagine if you're anything like Barney, you'd be hard to break anyway."

"Yeah," said Grant, flashing another smile. After a silent moment, his grin broke wider. He looked left, out his window, to see they'd arrived at the airport. Max waiting for them at the entrance of a private gate.

His distraction cost him, and he missed the sly and calculating look Nicholas gave him as the car stopped. "Unless of course you get blown up again," Nicholas threw at him suddenly, "—kidneys can only take so much."

Grant's jaw dropped. Turning away toward his open door, Nicholas grinned. On the other side of the car, Max looked in Grant's open door. He'd obviously overheard the comment, because he set a hand on Grant's shoulder and asked seriously, "Are you hurt?"

"He bruised his back in the explosion," Casey explained as she stepped out of the car.

Jim popped the trunk and Nicholas started unloading the supplies.

"Is he okay?" Max asked.

"As long as he keeps icing it, he should be," answered Jim, moving to help Nicholas. Nicholas looked out at the co-pilot who was jogging across the tarmac to join them, and kept his gaze pinned to the approaching figure, eyes averted from Grant's, pretending to be completely focused on other things.

Grant scowled deeper, glaring at Nicholas over the car's roof. "Will you all just drop it already?"

Nicholas laughed.

The private jet carried the five IMF agents all the way to San Francisco. A long flight, and though Jim had encouraged his agents to rest, he knew none of them had got much sleep. He himself managed to doze less than an hour in all. Each time his mind began to settle, the residue of his elusive and lingering dream would rise up around him.

The hours he spent awake weren't much better. His agents hardly spoke.

Jim wasn't sure if they were trying to allow each other to sleep, were lost in their own contemplative thoughts, or if returning to California so soon had also given them a too literal reminder of the dead man's job they were finishing.

The past reached out to Jim. Tom was still haunting him and he just had to hope that one way or another it would all be over soon.

"Jim, when are you going to stop lecturing me on choosing a team?"

"When you finally choose one," Jim retorted.

"Aren't you the one who is always telling me that not adapting or allowing change weakens your ability to lead? So, I work with a lot of different agents, but I've learned more about adapting and change than ever."

"This isn't the same concept," he reiterated. The argument was already old between them, and had long since slipped passed the intensity it used to carry. They now passed their opinions off to each other casually—the true intensity of their feelings slipping in just below the surface. "Accepting change doesn't mean changing all the time," repeated Jim for what felt like the millionth time. "There's a balance to it. You can't stare into the past and wait for it to come back to you anymore than you can try pushing into the future by not building a present."

"You're starting to sound like a fortune cookie," Tom complained.

Jim smiled. "Adaptation and change doesn't mean being alone, Tom."

That finally seemed to bring Tom's silence. "I do think about building a team," he admitted. "But when I do, I want to make sure I do it right."

Jim gave him a knowing look. Tom had always been a bit too much of a perfectionist. It made him a top team leader, but it also worked against him. "Mistakes are always made, Tom—"

The phone in Tom's kitchen started ringing.

Throwing Jim a shrug, Tom left to answer it, leaving Jim's final phrase unheard. "When you have a team, you don't have to do it all—or do it all right—because someone is there to cover the angles you're bound to miss." The words were swallowed into empty space, the only reply being the distant murmur of Tom's telephone conversation.

Jim shook himself. He dismissed the intense thoughts. Tom would somehow find his own way.

"Jim," Nicholas gripped Jim's shoulder to get his attention. "The pilot says we'll be touching down in about twenty minutes.

Jim blinked, staring into Nicholas's face. The superimposed image of Tom he'd placed over the actual young man before him was fading. Whatever familiarity resounded between the two individuals in his mind was vanishing into the background and allowing him to see… just Nicholas. He wondered absently if he'd been doing exactly what he'd told Tom not to—ignoring the reality of the present by looking for the past. "How far behind us is Drake's plane?" he asked, sitting up straight and buckling his seatbelt.

"Over two hours," Max answered, from the seat adjacent.

Nicholas resumed his own place next to Casey, buckling his seatbelt as well.

"When Drake's plane touches ground we should have plenty of time to take position and track him," Max added next.

Jim nodded.

A few short hours later proved Max was right. By the time Drake's plane touched down, the team was more than ready to effectively follow his movements, tracking him as he hailed a cab from the airport, and though this one wasn't driven by an agent, Grant tapped into the dispatcher's feed and using two different cars they followed the yellow cab easily.

They weren't far into the journey before Jim realized where they were probably going to end up.

Sure enough—and not quite long enough later—they were standing at the base of the building where Tom had been murdered. Jim wasn't sure if the other agents knew. They knew how he had died, but would they know this as the building from which he'd fallen?

Nicholas stood silently next to him at the building's base while Max continued to track Drake inside, hoping to pin down his precise destination. The way Nicholas kept alternating his stare between the top of the building and the blacktop of the silent parking lot, convinced Jim that Nicholas knew exactly what had transpired here.

Max jogged up to them shortly. "Drake went in a few minutes ago," he told them.

Nicholas stared upward again and Jim saw Max throw him a curious glance.

"This is where Tom Copperfield died," Jim said aloud, not certain if he were explaining to Max, or trying to wrap his own brain around the reality. Tom really had been close to Scorpio—too close.

Nicholas turned his compelling gaze toward Jim. "Alfred Chambers lives in the penthouse," he explained distinctly, an edge of bitterness to his voice. "He was supposed to be Tom Copperfield's friend."

Jim heard clearly the hidden inferences Nicholas was making as well as the emphasis he placed on the word friend.

He realized, Nicholas had been doing his own investigating into the lives of those surrounding Tom Copperfield and clearly knew quite a bit about Alfred Chambers. If the tone of his voice indicated anything, it was that Alfred Chambers hadn't just been a pretend friend of Tom-the-undercover-agent, but a supposed real friend of Tom the man.

Thinking through the information, Jim realized that Alfred Chambers had been in attendance at Tom's funeral. The awareness sickened him. Jim shook his head in disgust. He gave Nicholas a questioning glance, wanting to know what else he'd found out about Chambers and why. He suddenly wanted to know everything Nicholas might - why he'd investigated Chambers, how long he'd suspected him, and why he'd remained silent about it until now.

Nicholas swallowed, keeping his eyes on Jim. "The preliminary investigation cleared him of any involvement," he explained, and that answer alone revealed a lot. Whatever hunches Nicholas might have had regarding Chambers at the initiation of the case, they'd already been disproved by investigators. He'd done what Jim would've. He'd been smarter to wait and see where their own investigation led them. He'd been smarter to wait and see if it would confirm his suspicions or discount them, rather than risk rash accusations that could potentially skew the focus of their team.

Jim accepted the simple statement, thinking, the police might have cleared the man of involvement but—"Maybe Mathew Drake didn't," he concluded aloud. "Police?" he asked Max.

"Yeah, they're on their way."

Jim would have to be satisfied with that. Whatever justice Scorpio had coming to him for the murder and betrayal of Tom Copperfield would be measured out by his own assassin. In truth, Jim could think of nothing more fitting.

Nicholas stared up at the penthouse again and Max joined him—as though they thought by staring they'd somehow be able to see what was actually going on.

Alfred Chambers ambled slowly from his bedroom into his large study. He didn't bother to turn on any lights—he knew the way—and to be honest, he didn't mind the dark. So many people panicked when the lights went out, figuratively or literally, it didn't matter. He'd amassed an entire fortune by simply not being afraid to walk in the shadows the rest of the world feared—letting his eyes see what others couldn't or wouldn't see, entertaining possibilities they wouldn't consider.

Nostalgically, he recalled thinking that young Tom was a lot like him in those respects, seeing the possibilities, accepting the reality of shadows. It had been a shame to have to kill him, but he knew, somehow, Tom had started to suspect. He couldn't trust what the young man might do with the information because while Tom saw the shadows as much as he did, he'd still lived in the light.

Foolish boy.

Chambers unbuttoned his smart-looking, white suit coat and sat down in the large chair behind his desk. Using his elegant lamp to counteract the dimness of the room, he started making the final calls of the day. "Barry? This is Chambers," he stated briskly when the other end of the line was picked up. "I want you to put the heat on that amalgamator crap. I want him out of the game now, okay? Get back to me on it." He hung up the phone and readied to make his next call.

He never got to.

Drake shot the poisoned dart with ease. He watched Chambers clutch at his neck where the poisoned dart struck him. He watched the realization of what had just happened to him dawn on his face, just as it had dawned on the face of Tom Copperfield.

Denial resonated in Scorpio's eyes, panicked in a way Copperfield hadn't allowed his to be.

"I'm breaking a golden rule with you," Drake explained to Chambers coldly. "I'm killing you the same way I killed Copperfield."

"Why?" gritted Chambers, still in denial.

"Call it a lesson in loyalty," Drake bit out and saw something flash in Chambers eyes—perhaps he'll die with a bit of fight after all, he thought. He simply grinned when Chambers pulled the gun from his desk and tried to fire it at him ineffectually. "What do you think I am?" he scorned. "You think I'm stupid?" Removing the bullets was the first thing he'd done.

Horror was starting to fill Chambers' face. The drug would soon completely take over. Drake relaxed. He wasn't going to leave quickly like he did all the others. He was going to stick around and watch this one… to the bitter end. And he'd enjoy it.

Chambers was tilting off balance, clutching at his desk to keep himself upright. The motion seemed a natural reaction to the drug. Drake didn't see Chambers' fingers close around an ornate, and sharp, letter opener, and was doubly surprised when—on the brink of losing total control to the drug—Scorpio found the strength and power to hurl it at him, sticking him right between the ribs.

Drake still got the pleasure of watching Scorpio go mad and take a flying leap from the balcony, but his view of the spectacle was from the floor where he gasped for breath while his blood seeped out of him. The only joy he felt when his victim finally jumped was the certainty that he'd soon be seeing Alfred Chambers in hell.

Police sirens were ringing in the distance when Max and Nicholas's vigilant staring was finally rewarded. "Jim," they whispered simultaneously.

Jim looked up to see Alfred Chambers leap from the balcony. He set his jaw grimly when the body struck ground, closed his eyes and wondered silently if Tom would think of this as justice or irony.

"Do we have an identity on the dead man?" a cop could be overheard saying as the IMF agents congregated near the edge of the police tape, all of them feeling the need to see this particular job through to the end.

"Alfred Chambers," another cop answered excitedly. "It's crazy! Three weeks ago a guy jumped from the penthouse. Now the guy who lives there takes a dive after getting some other guy with a knife!"

Letter opener, Jim silently corrected.

By this point, police had tapped off the entire area and covered Chamber's body with a sheet. Jim felt the need for a final look. He walked carefully over to where Chambers lay and shifted the covering from the man's face. He wasn't sure it meant anything but he thought abruptly that Alfred Chambers looked quite a bit like him.

Max and Nicholas followed, standing next to him. If they noticed the resemblance they didn't say anything. Jim flipped the sheet back in place then moved over to where the paramedics where loading the injured but alive Mathew Drake into an ambulance.

If he survived his injury, Drake would be spending the remainder of his days in prison. IMF would make certain of it. Not to mention several other countries who would be vying to prosecute the man for crimes in their own nations.

As far as justice went, it would have to do. Even so, Jim wanted to look the man in the eye—wanted him to somehow know how methodically he'd been taken down, if not why. He wanted him to know all his carefulness and random planning hadn't kept him from paying for his crimes.

Max and Nicholas flanked him where he stood in front of the stretcher. Jim was pleased to see Drake's eyes, pleased to see them settle on each of them in turn, no doubt wondering how two London cab drivers and a hotel concierge had come to be with him in San Francisco.

His eyes widened even more when the trio was joined by the man and the woman he'd killed less than twenty-four hours ago.

It was then Jim saw it—the realization that he'd been set up and would spend the rest of his life trying to figure out how.

"It's over," Jim stated, not certain if he were speaking to Drake, to his team, or to himself—certain only that the sticky sense of incompleteness was finally leaking out of his system. He was weary with relief and grounding himself in the knowledge that all he had left to him now was the mourning for a friend.

"Tom Copperfield's job is finished."

tbc

Side note: I don't remember the original series well enough to know if they used it then, but it may be of interest to you that the phrase, "Accept a little help from your friends," or, "With a little help from my friends," is used throughout the 1988 series… or more appropriately stated, phrases that play off the song, "I get by with a little help from my friends," are used with varying degree in nearly every episode.

I don't have a complete running catalogue, but I believe the phrase is most often said by Grant and Jim. One example includes an episode where Nicholas asks Jim if he can make it out to their car after he's been shot. Jim immediately responds, "With a little help from my friend." After which Nicholas helps him out to the car. In another episode, Jim asks Grant if he can complete a particularly difficult request and Grant answers quickly, "With a little help from my friends."

I'm not sure who thought of it, or when it first showed up on the series, or how using the phrase got started, but it's a fun quirk of the series I enjoy. I couldn't help but add it to this "episode." I also feel like it epitomizes the Mission: Impossible universe, and is the key component missing from the movies (mwah, I might stop whining about that one of these days).

Hope you are enjoying the read.