Chapter 3

WASHINGTON MONUMENT

12:48 P.M.

Skinner had tried to look into the taskforce that Cooper was in charge of and had run into the same stonewall that everyone else did. It was a little more polite than usual - Cooper wasn't Alvin Kersh - but the answer was still the same. It didn't matter. Skinner trusted Mulder and Scully, and he saw the same news they did. The moment he called Skinner, he was willing to give his favorite agents pretty much carte blanche.

He therefore was a little disappointed when Mulder didn't ask for nearly as much as he could've. He told Skinner he wanted three snipers covering the area, and four plainclothes agents watching the crowd. "Ressler and Keen work for the Bureau. They know what the standard tactics are and are trained to look for them. "

"Then how do you intend to beat them?" Skinner had asked.

"I want to know what they know. Then we'll figure out what our next move is."

As of right now, it wasn't entirely clear they had a next move to make. The agents had just completed their fifth sweep, and there was still no sign of Keen, Ressler, or anyone else who he even looked suspicious.

"Reddington's face is on a wanted poster," Scully told Mulder. "I really don't know why you expected him to show up on the front steps of one of our most popular tourist traps."

"The man has a certain style to his method. I wasn't putting in past him doing just that," Mulder reminded her. "Or did you not read the same file I did when you joined the Bureau?"

"The man knows our methods inside and out. We have to make the assumption he's at least five steps ahead of us." Scully countered.

"Then why bother having Keen call and say the meeting was on?"

Scully didn't have an answer to that. About twenty seconds later, she did.

Because there was Elizabeth Keen. Alone. "I'm a little disappointed," Mulder said. "And I figure you have to be too, considering the FBI basically just let you walk right up to me, and didn't say boo."

Keen was not amused. That was fine. Most people didn't get Mulder's wit. "I was asked to hand this to you." Keen told them. She took out a burner phone.

Mulder took it from her. It rang. "Publisher's Clearing House," he answered.

"They actually let Fox Mulder back into the Bureau," a voice that was nearly as cheerful said on the other end. "You'd think after all of the terrorist attacks, they'd have raised their standards a little for readmitting people."

"Well, who knows? Maybe the statute of limitations ran out on me. I've got some pull now. Maybe I can convince them to let you in. Come out, I'll personally give you an application."

"You know very well that's not going to happen, Agent Mulder."

"You know how the procedure works. Every decade or so, I have to at least try to bring in a major case." Mulder hesitated. "I assume this phone is untraceable."

"You know how the procedure works as well. I assume the luminous redhead is the delightful Agent Scully."

"That would be more charming if you didn't have access to my FBI file." Scully spoke up for the first time.

"You have to forgive my partner." Mulder told Reddington. "All these years of chasing monsters, she still has a problem with violent sociopaths who think they can pull our strings."

"I seem to be a little better at it than she thinks. You're here aren't you?"

"Curiosity's always been my Achilles heel." Mulder told him. "Well, as you probably know, I've been never been a huge fan of foreplay. Can we skip to the part where we start fucking each other?"

The vulgarity had been delivered so casually that Scully and Keen were both a little shocked what had been just told, very directly to Reddington. "The foreplay's the part that's the most fun, Agent Mulder," Reddington seemed remarkably unfazed.

"Not in the movies I used to watch." Mulder told him. "There are five minutes left, Raymond. Unless you show your face or set up your terms, I'm going to hand the phone back to Keen, and walk away."

"You're not even a little curious as to how I know about our mutual acquaintance?"

"Maybe you bummed a smoke off him twenty years ago, and that's what led you to a life of crime" Mulder said slowly. "Frankly, I couldn't care less how you know him, of what he does, his relationship to the Bureau, or even the fact that the bastard's still alive. The fact that you had Mrs. Keen come to me in the first place means you're truly scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to leads. Ergo, you need me far more than I need you." Mulder looked at his watch. "Three minutes, Raymond, or your next step might as well be the Freedom of Information Act."

There was actually a pause on the other end. "A woman who works with me is going to be walking up to you," Reddington told her. "If we're going to go forward with this, you'll hand over your service weapons, phones, and all other communication devices to her the second she shows up."

Keen stood aside as a very short woman with brown hair and thick glasses appeared. "Agents, if you please."

"What happens if we don't do as you say?" Scully asked.

"Then I follow Agent Mulder's instructions, and we never set eyes on each other." Reddington said. "But considering all the trouble that we've gone to for this meeting, it would be a disappointment for all parties concerned, wouldn't you say?"

There was a long pause, in which Scully was somewhat stunned to find that Mulder was obeying the woman's instructions to the letter. "Mulder."

"I think its in our interest to do what Mr. Reddington told us to do."

Scully had not worked with Mulder just shy of a quarter-century without being able to pick up on his tone of voice. Without another word, she handed over what Reddington had asked for. It was clear that Keen was a little shocked by this as well, but she kept her poker face.

"Walk approximate three hundred yards to the brown Mercedes," the woman told them.

"Mulder, why are we walking into what is almost certainly a trap?" Scully asked as they started going.

"Two reasons." Mulder said slowly. "First, I was telling the truth; I'm more than a little curious to see why the Concierge of Crime would want to talk to the FBI's least popular division."

"What's the second reason?" Scully asked, as she spotted the vehicle in question.

"The woman who Reddington sent to get our weapons." Mulder said as cheerfully as he could manage. "It's been awhile, so my memory may be playing tricks on me, but I'm pretty sure she's Satan."

Scully had no time to react to this before the door to the car opened. "Get in." For someone of her appearance and size, there was a certain level of menace to this woman. Nevertheless, Scully was still a little stunned that Mulder was willing to get into a car without weapon with one of the most notorious criminals of their time.

It was a fairly big car. Mulder and Scully were instructed to sit on one side: Keen joined Reddington on the other.

"Well, here we are," Mulder said as the car began to drive out. "And you're not nearly the devil that everyone in the world seems to think you are."

The briefest of expressions passed over Reddington's face. Anger? Disapproval? Was it possible that Reddington actually felt hurt by her partner's words?. Whatever the reason, the expression was gone in an instant.

"I suppose, given the things that you've seen over your life, a mere criminal must seem like small potatoes." Reddington told him.

"That woman you had take our weapons, she didn't bother to introduce herself." Mulder went on. "Would it be impolite to ask?"

An even odder expression passed Reddington's face. Now Keen was genuinely astounded. Mulder's attitude had been hard to measure ever since she had met him, but she was pretty damn sure that no one who had ever been in the same space with Raymond Reddington had dared to treat him with this level of indifference. Certainly not someone from law enforcement.

"I really feel we should get down to business," Reddington told them.

"That assumes we have any business to transact," Scully replied. "And that business starts with what you would want with the X-Files."

This at least Reddington could deal with. "There's a man that you and Agent Mulder have been chasing for more than twenty years." Reddington began. "Despite the fact that federal laws have been passed prohibiting it in government building, he chain-smokes endlessly. He is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people towards an illegal agenda that allows for the experimentation on hundreds of thousands of Americans."

"So far, you're not telling us anything we don't already know." Scully said slowly.

"Among the people who's deaths he is responsible for are his wife, Agent Mulder's father, and your sister."

It took a lot for Scully to subdue her reaction. "What's his name?"

"I only know him by an alias, which he only used a couple of times." Reddington said slowly. "C.G.B. Spender."

"Where exactly did you meet the woman that you work with?" Mulder asked casually. "I can't place her accent. New England?"

Now Reddington was pissed, and he didn't bother to hide it. "Agent Mulder, could we possibly focus on the business at hand?"

"Oh, I'm focused. I'm just not sure what your business is. You haven't told us anything we don't already know. If this was supposed to wow us with your incredible power, mission un-accomplished." Mulder told him calmly. "So let's try this again? Why do you want to meet up with him? To exchange war stories?"

Liz had seen people challenge Reddington before in the last two and a half years. Usually those people ended up with bullets in them shortly thereafter. There were all kinds of problems with him doing it this time, not the least of which was that Mulder was a federal agent. "Maybe we can try to talk rationally about this."

"Rationally?" Mulder chuckled. "Try working six weeks on the X-Files. My line of work doesn't go anywhere near 'rationally.' You were aware of that when Reddington sent you to be his errand girl, right?"

Any other time that would have been insulting. Mulder, however, just sounded curious. At this point, deflecting Mulder seemed like a wise course of action. "Your work mainly dealt with things that were unexplained," she ventured cautiously.

"That's the blandest possible description of what we do," Mulder said slowly. "Monsters, that's what we dealt with. Not the kind that Reddington claims to be, of course. But actual monsters. The kinds of things that horror novelists pitch to their publishers have been winding up in my files for decades. Which does kind of beg the question: what would a rationalist like Raymond Reddington want with those files?"

Liz looked at Scully. "The thought has crossed my mind as well," she asked. "You described what the Smoking Man did. Do you happen to know who he worked for?"

Another expression crossed Reddington's face. It took Liz a moment to place it because she'd never seen it there before He was genuinely baffled by this. "He's involved in a series of kidnappings of thousands, perhaps millions of people over the decades to experiment on them biologically. Mainly for the purposes of testing on them to create superior soldiers."

"You're right in principle." Mulder looked dead at Reddington. "Except you got one key word wrong. You mean 'abductions'.

"What's the difference?" Liz asked.

"When you were going over the files you had on me, you surely have to have seen what happened to me in 2000. And what happened to Scully six years before that? Weren't you at least a little curious as to what kind of creatures could do that to another human being?" Mulder looked at Reddington. "We showed up, which meant we were willing to go down this rabbit hole. What about you?"

Reddington was showing a certain look of exasperation at this point. "That's not why we're here," he told them.

"Then why are you here? You knew about me and Scully, you knew about the X-Files, you know about Cancer Man. Therefore, you have to at least have a suspicion as to what the man has been doing for decades." Mulder paused. "Now I'm all for telling you about him. I'm just curious, what do you intend to do if we find him?"

Reddington clearly hadn't expected this meeting to go this way. His natural bonhomie was slipping into irritation. "That's my business."

"Put a bullet in his guts? Push him down a fight of stairs? Find out whatever building he's working in, and blow it to smithereens?" Mulder seemed nearly as cheerful as Reddington usually did. "I'd love nothing better. But here's the thing. They've been done to him. And he seems to keep coming back like the fucking Energizer Bunny. This is not a scenario that's going to be resolved by your usual methods of conflict resolution."

Reddington, as always, maintained his poker face. Liz, however, was a little more astonished at this, and it must have shown. Scully looked at her. "I don't want to believe it, either. I was hoping and praying that he was wrong. But if all this is true, then you're going to have a lot of trouble bringing this bastard to ground."

"Which is why we were hoping we could help each other." Reddington seemed to be trying to bring this back under some level of control.

"Again I ask: how?" Mulder told him. "Until yesterday morning I had presumed his body was a moldering in the grave. Even if it isn't, the last time I saw him was May of 2002, just prior to some of this government's helicopters blowing the adobe he was staying to atoms. If you were coming to me for help on finding him, I wouldn't know where to look."

Reddington looked at Mulder. "I might be able to help you with that."

"In exchange for what?" Scully asked. "Controlling interest and first refusal on our souls?"

"Hardly that." Reddington chuckled.

"It's not like we have much else to offer." Mulder said slowly. "Nothing that I can't imagine, you couldn't have access to yourself."

"You are right about my reach, and how I manage to get the things I need." Reddington told him. "But there are some places even I can't get into."

"You have a division in the FBI devoted to helping you." Scully told them. "You couldn't have asked them first?"

Now Liz needed to keep her poker face. Mulder had hinted very strongly that he knew who she and Ressler had been acting with; it was something else altogether for Mulder and Scully to know that the FBI was working with Raymond Reddington. And it clearly rattled him. "Who told-" Raymond started.

"Don't think because I've been out of the Bureau for fifteen years that I don't still have friends in low places." Suddenly, it seemed Mulder was in complete control of what was happening. "Oh, don't worry. There's no leak in your ship. But don't think that just because you're Public Enemy Number 1 that you're invincible."

"Greater men than you have tried to bring me down," Reddington told him.

"You misunderstand. We have no interest in bringing you down." Scully said. "We've been chasing the Smoking Man far longer than you even knew he existed. We're well aware of the extent of his crimes. Maybe even more than you'd be willing to admit, considering you don't seem to want to acknowledge what they are."

There was a lot in that statement to take in. Liz managed to recover first. "So you'll help us?" she asked.

"Again, you misunderstand. We'll help your taskforce." Mulder told them. "If you're willing to help us bring this man to face justice, we'll be more than willing to give you all the interagency cooperation we can. If we see Reddington, anyone in this car, or anyone else who looks like he works for his organization, this arrangement will be done. We'll take our chances in finding Cancer Man ourselves without the Red Baron."

Reddington clearly didn't seem to approve of being nicknamed, certainly not by a man named Fox. "You chased this man for seven years. You clearly believed he was dead. How do you expect to find him without my help?"

Mulder heaved a great sigh. "Raymond, I've had my share of shadowy informants over the years. None of them were ever capable of taking me from point A to point B anyway other than with a squiggle. I was willing to jump through hoops twenty years ago; I'm not going to do it now." He turned to Liz. "And a word of advice to you and your taskforce. He's never going to tell you everything he knows. He'll say the right things like its for the greater good or that 'it's safer that you don't know', he may even believe what he tells you, but its all lies. You know the real reason why I think he wants to find Smokey? I think there's some part of his operation that you can use."

It was clear that Liz that Reddington was incredibly pissed, but he didn't issue a blanket denial. "There are people far worse than me out there."

This time, Scully didn't let him finish. "You ever read Dante's Inferno, Mr. Reddington? Hell as a series of concentric circles, each layer, worse and worse villains greeting you. You get to the final circle. And there frozen in ice is Satan himself."

"Which am I, Brutus or Iscariot?" Reddington asked impatiently.

"Neither. That's the point. Compared to the monsters I had to face in nine years on the X-Files, you're not the devil. You're not even in the one of innermost circles. Hell, compared to some of the creatures I've had to face down, Virgil would not give you the time of day."

"We've been tracking far worse conspiracies over the last two years." Liz started.

"Now you're missing the point, Mrs. Keen." Mulder told them. "You think that the people we chase care about such petty things as criminal enterprises or political office. If those are the people Reddington has had you chase the last two years, you've been wasting your time."

There had been numerous people over the past couple of years who had not been impressed by the work their task force had done. To hear it dismissed as insignificant so cavalierly - especially considering the government strings that Reddington had had to pull just to get Liz her life back - was terrifying in its scope. Liz looked at Reddington, and it was clear he was a little unsettled by what Mulder and Scully were saying.

"What have you been chasing?" Liz finally asked.

"Not while he's in the car." Mulder told her again.

"This is important, Agent Mulder." Red was finally starting to lose his cool. People who angered Raymond Reddington frequently got kneecapped next.

"Frustrating, isn't it?" Mulder either didn't know he was playing with fire or didn't care. "Being tantalizingly close to answers, but so far away?"

"A bit," Red acknowledged.

"Join the fucking club. That's how I felt during my first tour on the X-Files." Mulder added. "Half the time I wasn't sure what I was chasing; the other half, I had answers but no one wanted to believe them. So once again, Mrs. Keen, do you accept our terms?"

They were ignoring Raymond Reddington. Mulder and Scully were sitting in the car with one of the most wanted criminals in the world, and they didn't seem to care. They were either brilliant or crazy; quite possibly both. In either case, she had to follow this a little further. "You have to give us a little more than that," she finally said, not looking at Reddington.

Neither Mulder nor Scully had given any indication that they were going to give them anything. Which is why it came as such a huge shock when Scully spoke up. "You're being watched."

"Excuse me."

"People assuming the auspices of national security have been maintaining surveillance on you for decades."

"There's nothing new about that." Reddington said.

"This predates Snowden, it predates the Patriot Act, it may even predate the NSA." Scully looked at her. "May I have my phone back, please?"

Reddington seemed a little puzzled at this, then looked to the front seat where Mr. Kaplan was sitting.

Kaplan handed Scully her phone. "Someone we have a lot of faith in managed to obtain these by hacking one of the NSA's accounts." She looked at Liz. "Until we have your assurances, we're not going to reveal their identity."

Scully handed Liz her phone and tapped a file. "We wish we could tell you how they're doing it, but there are limits to our knowledge."

Liz hardly heard the next few words. There in a series of still photos were the last three days. Her visit to McLarney's pub, her going to and from her apartment, her visiting the vendors around her house, her and Ressler going to the FBI, her and Tom... "How long has this been going on?"

"A very, very long time." Scully told her gently. "This probably won't make you feel any better, but they were doing the same to me and Mulder as well."

"Do they know about the task-force?" Liz managed to say.

"They may." Mulder told him.

"Then why the fuck haven't they..."

"Like I said, bigger fish to fry." Scully told her. "But I'm guessing that Mr. Reddington knows this too."

Again Reddington maintained his poker face. "I've been taking counter-measures," was all he'd say.

"'If they want you, they'll take you." Mulder said calmly. "I realize this is a lot to lay on you, but if we're going to move forward, we need to know. So I ask you again..."

"I accept." Liz didn't even realize the words had come out of her mouth.

"Contact Skinner later today. We'll set up a time and place for our next meeting." Mulder looked at Reddington. "I really hope you know what you're in for, Red."

"Why do suddenly look like the cat who ate the canary?" Reddington said, with a slight irritation.

"You've just become an informant to the X-Files." Mulder told him. "Now maybe you don't remember following my work, but all of my informants, they tend to end up dead. Usually in excruciatingly painful ways."

The car stopped. Mulder and Scully got out. As Mr. Kaplan began to hand them back their weapons and electronics, Mulder snapped his fingers. "Milford Haven! That was the name of the town."

Kaplan didn't give anything away. "Excuse me."

"You were a substitute biology teacher. Pennock, Paddick, something like that. You were really handy with a snake."

"Agent Mulder, I can assure you I have no idea what you're talking about."

"That's right, have to keep secrets. Especially from the big guy." Mulder put his service weapon away. "Well, goodbye. It's been a pleasure working with you."

"We haven't started yet." Now Liz was getting irritated.

"I wasn't talking to you."

Liz had been shocked that Reddington, having gotten absolutely none of what he wanted, not only let Mulder and Scully out, but let them walk away. Part of it may have been due to the fact that they reported to the Bureau. But Liz was beginning to think that, for the first time in a very long time, Reddington had been outside his comfort zone. Swallowing her urge to demand answers, she looked at him: "Did that go the way you thought it would?"

"You know, Fox Mulder was in the Bureau the same time I was." Reddington said almost wistfully. "A year ahead of me, I believe. He may have been even more of a prodigy than I was. He managed to design the profile that caught Monty Propps less than a year out of the VICAP. They thought a bright future was ahead of him. Turns out, we both managed to piss away a brilliant career in law enforcement."

"Only they let him back in," Liz told him.

"You never forget what they teach you." Reddington said slowly. "You try, you may even be able to bury it for awhile, but it never goes away. He clearly hasn't forgotten how to interrogate a hostile."

"Ressler and Cooper told me what the X-Files was responsible for." Liz told him. "To an extent. Mulder and Scully have been dancing around it for the last couple of days, but if we're going to go any further, I think its time you level with me. At least on this"

For a long time, Liz thought that Reddington wasn't going to answer at all. "Aliens" he finally said.

It was one thing to have it hinted at; it was another to hear it said out loud. "Excuse me?"

"Mulder and Scully spent the better part of seven years, trying to prove one way or another, that aliens exist, and that agents of our government have been conspiring with them for purposes unknown." Reddington managed to say this with a straight face.

"You can't really believe this."

"You didn't ask me whether I believe it. I don't. I'm not completely certain anyone else outside Mulder's immediate circle believe it either." Reddington told her. "But he does. He even made it the cornerstone of his trial for murder, even though he knew his life was on the line. And if you're going to work with them, you're going to have at least try to believe it."

Even given everything she'd learned since she'd started this long spiral with him, this was almost too much to bear. "What does the Smoking Man have to do with all this?"

"Everything I told you about is true, or at least accurate." Reddington told Liz. "I have been operating under the assumption that Spender, or whoever the hell he really isn't, was working in concert with a consortium of men to engage in these kinds of biological experiments. I never knew who else he was working in concert with, and most of these people did die at El Rico."

"What is your interest in him?" Liz asked. "And this time, answer the question. This man may be evil incarnate, but Mulder was right when he said you never do anything without a reason."

Mulder had pegged Reddington correctly; he never gave straight answers, sometimes not right away, usually not at all. She didn't think he was about to start now.

"There's a woman. She was the Special Representative for the Secretary General of the UN. Which meant that she did a great deal of the busy work floating between international borders." Reddington told her slowly. "I had occasion to negotiate with her on more than one occasion when I was beginning to find my feet. She was invaluable in those early days. Which is why it came as a huge shock that she disappeared off the face of the Earth in March of 1998. "

"What was her name?"

"Marita Covarrubias. Eventually, she resurfaced around November 2000. But she's never been willing to meet with me since. The last coded transmission she sent me was that international crimes weren't big enough for her to be dealing with anymore."

"And she has a link to this Smoking Man." Liz asked, rather amazed Reddington was being this candid.

"I had to turn over a lot of rocks in order to find this out. But she was one of the same subjects of the biological testing that I told you about." Reddington shook his head. "Mulder was right about the bastards being willing to turn on their own."

"And you're sure that Mulder knows this woman?"

"I still have contacts in the military. I couldn't get my hands on the X-Files, but I found the transcript. Mulder was right, it was a kangaroo court. But one of the witnesses he called was Covarrubias."

"She apparently didn't do him much good." Liz said.

"She took the Fifth Amendment. Even though his life was on the line, Mulder never pressed her." Reddington looked at her. "I have no idea why."

"That was fourteen years ago. How do you even she's still alive?"

"There have been records of her making flights to Africa and throughout Eastern Europe over the last decade. Mostly under aliases that not even I could've fathomed if I hadn't been as good as I was." Reddington told her. "Whoever she's working for is an expert at their craft. We find her, we find the Smoking Man. To find her, we need Mulder and Scully."

"You heard their terms." Liz argued.

"And I have no doubt that Mulder and Scully mean every word. So, brace yourself Elizabeth, I'm actually going to play ball."

"They know how long your reach is. And given the amount of shit they've had to crawl through to get back in the government's good graces -"

"They were always bastions of integrity, no matter how much easier it would've been to do things through unofficial channels." Reddington told them. "Your colleagues should be honored to be working with them."

Liz knew that she had been lucky to get what she had out of Reddington. She knew he'd find a way in. He always did. She decided to deal with something far more pertinent. "Were they telling the truth about the surveillance?"

"Probably." Reddington said almost casually. "These kinds of programs have been going on for decades; the Patriot Act just gave them government cover."

"AND YOU NEVER THOUGHT TO TELL US THIS?" Liz was shocked to find herself shouting.

"There's only so much I do, especially to the NSA. I've done everything I can to keep you and the rest of the task force protected, but you know how deep their roots are."

Liz swallowed. "Is that why we're always meeting in the middle of nowhere?"

"There is no middle of nowhere anymore." Reddington held up a hand. "One conspiracy at a time. Hopefully, the X-Files can help bring some of this to light."

Reddington was relying on a government division to save them? The world as Liz Keen knew it went even madder. "All right, I'll take this to Cooper. But you'd better hope Mulder and Scully don't have anymore friends in low places."

She got out of the car, much more pissed off than these encounters of Reddington usually left her.

Reddington knew that there were a lot of more complicated things for him to be doing right now, but he had one immediate concern. "Renee," he said to Mr. Kaplan. "You have any idea what Mulder was yammering about meeting you before."

"He must have me mistaken with someone else." Kaplan said softly. "I've never been a substitute teacher before, certainly not in New Hampshire."

Raymond would've let this go, but his mind worked fast. "Mulder never said that Milford Haven was in New Hampshire."

Kaplan didn't respond immediately. "You have your extracurricular activities, Raymond. And I have mine."

Raymond would have pressed the point, except that for the briefest of moments, his instinct had told him that there was a presence in the car. Not someone. Something. And his instinct were now telling him very strongly that he would best be served never asking that particular question ever again. Besides, there were other, far more pressing issues to deal with.