CHAPTER 8

SCRANTON FIELD OFFICE

Scully had known that the man she loved had changed a lot over the last decade and a half, but ever since they had returned to the Bureau, she was having a lot harder time recognizing the man she had followed for so long.

Mulder had spent his entire career flaunting Bureau policy. He had nearly gotten kicked out half a dozen time before Kersh had finally dropped the ax on him. But for all that, he'd always been willing to play by a certain code. In that, it had not been much different from the oath that Scully had taken when she had become a doctor. It had been one of the many things she had loved about him.

But ever since they had gotten involved with the taskforce, Mulder seemed determined to undermine every protocol that he'd been maintaining. Maybe it was because, despite everything he said, he really couldn't trust people who were so deeply in bed with the Concierge of Crime. She'd had no problem with the first move they had made; frankly, given what Reddington was asking, it wasn't a huge shock.

But Mulder had never any use for 'enhanced interrogation'. He'd been very public about it on any number of websites since 9-11, and he'd told Scully about it any number of times. Yet he had basically persuaded her to go against her oath, and torture Dr. Calderon. She had done worse things with the Bureau - the face of Donnie Pfaster had haunted her dreams even now - but somehow doing this had seemed far worse. Calderon had done unconscionable things to people - hell, he had violated her - but a part of her had been repulsed at how easy it had been to do it.

And now, he was willing put Calderon's life up as bait to try and get the conspiracy to move against them. Again, there was nothing new about this - hell, the Syndicate had probably done it more times than they could count - but for Mulder to engage in this - openly and with malice of forethought, it worried her in ways that she didn't want to admit.

So, in the middle of their next shift, she finally got a chance to pull him aside, and ask him what the hell was going on.

"What makes you so sure I'm doing the wrong thing?" he tried to play it a little glibly. "Given the recent shifts in our government's policies, I thought you'd be happy I'm playing by the rules for once."

"I don't give a damn about whether you go before some stupid review board." Scully admitted truthfully. "But this isn't how you did things before."

It was clearly the wrong thing to say. "You're right. I played by the rules. And look where it got me. Friends and family murdered. I get kicked out of the Bureau. Then they sentence me to a lethal injection. I thought my victories mattered, but it turned out no one kept score. Skinner told me having an alien shake hands with the President wouldn't change a thing. But the truth was never enough. So now, I'm going to play the way they do. Maybe winning dirty is worse than losing clean, but when you don't win at all, maybe you've got to change the game."

Mulder managed to say this all in a perfectly level tone, but it was clear he was furious. And she couldn't tell him that he was altogether wrong. He'd always said that her science kept him honest, but it hadn't stopped either the dying or the conspiracy. Would things have been different if he'd just stuck a gun in that monster's mouth and pulled the trigger? Would Melissa still have been alive? Would they still have...

She stomped hard on thinking about William, even though she knew that had to be at the crux of Mulder's reasoning. "What are you going to do if we end up catching him?" Scully asked instead.

Mulder thought for a second. "You're assuming that's even a possibility." he reminded her. "After all this time, I'd be shocked if this does anything but lead us to another dead end."

"Then why, Mulder?"

"Because Raymond Reddington cannot find this man before we do." He held up his hand. "We may have the federal government, but I'm well aware of his resources. Right now, we are in a race, and I don't want Smokey to spend even one minute in this man's company."

Scully couldn't help but agree there. Still, she had to ask: "And this justifies what we're doing with Calderon?"

Mulder laughed bitterly. "We've tried using 'the full weight of the federal government' to protect witnesses before, and you know how well that's gone. At least this time, we know we have a shit hand, and we're trying to play to whatever advantage we can."

According to Mulder's instructions, they had put Calderon's name in the system an hour after they had gotten the information on Wiegraf and Garrett. They had then moved him to a 'secure location', knowing full well that somebody in the Smoking Man's pocket would make a move on this 'cooperative witness' .

"And what happens when whatever assassin they send gets caught?" Navadi had asked Mulder.

Mulder had withheld the opinion that they would necessarily capture that person - telling her that shape-shifting alien bounty hunters might be involved was going to add to their credibility. But he didn't think whoever they did send would have a cyanide capsule in his mouth either; when you have to keep your circle narrow, good help was hard to come by. (It was the only explanation he had why Krycek had lasted as long as he did, despite betraying every side he worked for.)

"If we successfully capture whoever they send," he told the taskforce, "it's very likely they will send someone who outranks us. Probably someone above Cooper's paygrade, too. They'll take custody of the killer, claiming some national security clearance or something, and we'll never see either of them again."

Mulder had expected to get some argument from the taskforce and was surprised that he didn't. Had he been aware that the Cabal that was priority was inside the White House, it probably wouldn't have impressed him; he remembered all too well Smokey's words the first time he'd stuck a gun in his face. Politics was the least of these people's concerns.

"So, if we can't hold whoever they send, what's the purpose of this exercise?" Ressler had asked.

"Information. Whoever they send we'll have something, no matter how small, to tie them to the conspiracy. We have to get to that and hold it before they disappear in the ether."

Again, he got no argument. Had he known that Reddington had been giving them similar argument for the last three years, it wouldn't have impressed him, either. At least he had come across whatever answers he had gotten about the conspiracy through trial and error, not criminal acts. (Scully would've known better, but she too didn't trust Reddington's approach.)

Just then, Keen came into the room. "We may have something."

They had monitoring from a building a quarter mile away. None of the agents in the X-Files would've put it past the conspiracy to just blow the building to hell the moment he had been secured, even though they had swept the building themselves beforehand. (Memories of Dallas haunted him, even more than seventeen years after the fact.) Despite that, they had insisted they monitor from a distance, and the taskforce had agreed.

So they had been watching via a closed circuit feed, and approximately one minute ago a man had driven up to the building and walked up to the posting with government papers to remove Calderon as a federal witness.

The second his ID had been posted, it ran through their computer scan, identifying him as U.S. Marshal Timothy Rayburn.

"He look familiar to you?" Keen asked.

"Most of the people the Syndicate hire end up dead. " Mulder countered. "And they've had fifteen years to get new help. Anyway, after a while all those Men In Black just start to look alike to me."

Scully took the question a little more seriously. "How certain are you of his credentials?"

Aram told them that the ID and all the files they could find said that this man was who he said he was.

"I think what Agent Scully meant was, are you sure he doesn't also work for a certain third party?"

Mulder was being perfectly serious for once.. He was certain that the people working in this taskforce weren't the only government employees on Reddington's payroll. Elizabeth Keen had acknowledged that Reddington's reach was global, and that he had barely shared half the secrets he had with them. As far as he was concerned, Reddington was just another side of the coin Smokey was using.

"What do you want us to do?" Keen asked.

"Get ready to move in." Mulder told them. "Slowly."

Liz wasn't certain Reddington would be this Byzantine just to get hold of someone who might be able to lead them to their Blacklister. On the other hand, he was basically out of the loop right now. And Reddington hated that. Still... "Let him through." she told the men waiting.

The security feed was fine, and Marshall Rayburn made no effort to do anything suspicious as he walked towards the room where Calderon had been 'secured'

"Go. Now."

The agents moved out. Navadi and Agent Reyes headed out. As Liz started to head for the door, she noticed that neither Mulder or Scully were moving. "This is your show," she pointed out.

"And I've seen enough performances to know how it ends." There's was a resigned nature in Mulder's tone that Liz hadn't heard before. That in itself worried her far more than any simple attack or gunshot would have.

Liz began to run towards the safehouse. "Move! Move!" she shouted.

Scully was actually more concerned than Liz was. "Would you be doing this if you were sending them against an alien?" she demanded.

"There's no aliens, no faceless rebel, no supersoldier." Mulder said in just as resigned a tone. "Just good old-fashioned assassination."

And as if to confirm this, the moment that 'Rayburn' approached the door, the security cameras outside and inside the room Calderon was being held in went out.

"Funny, I've seen the aftermath of these kinds of things so many times, you'd think that actually seeing it happen would have more... shock." Mulder said in an almost distracted tone. "All right, we might as well head out now."

Scully had already bolted. Mulder slowly got to his feet and took out his weapon.

He hadn't gotten out of the building when he heard the gunshot.

Even though the agents guarding Calderon had done exactly what Cooper had told them to do, it didn't change the fact that they had let an armed man into a building with a federal witness who he had just shot in the head. The only positive was that they had managed to disarm him before he could commit suicide by cop, which had to be part of his exit strategy.

Liz was screaming at the sentries, while Navadi had grabbed 'Rayburn' and was about to try interrogating him. Agent Reyes looked pissed but not surprised at all. By the time Mulder and Scully had arrived, they both had similar looks on their faces. It was an expression that apparently members of the X-Files were used to having.

At this point, Liz's frustration with this Blacklister, with the X-Files, with this whole mess that she had gotten stranded in without Reddington to act as her compass had gotten so complete that she turned her wrath on Mulder.

"What the fuck?! This is what you mean by handling things your way!" She was practically screaming at Mulder, whose face remained even more immobile than Reddington's could.

"I told you this was going to happen! I gave you and Director Cooper every chance to override me. You decided to go along with it! So don't go crying to me now that things are happening exactly the way I said they were."

Everything Mulder had said was correct, of course, and at least he sounded angry about it. It was almost refreshing after nearly three years of Reddington's utter calm in the face of things constantly going askew. It didn't change the fact that they were going to get fucked over this.

"Everybody in the bureau hierarchy is going to want your ass on a plate," she reminded him.

Mulder actually managed a smile at this. "I spent my entire career at the Bureau getting reamed out for things I didn't do," he reminded her. "Considering what your taskforce does, I'm a little stunned you haven't reached that stage either."

Again with a twist of the knife. For the first time, she began to seriously consider if maybe he had a point. She didn't think Reddington had any connection to Roush or any of the other companies that Mulder had mentioned, and he certainly wouldn't have killed someone who would get him closer to his target. And as bad a person she knew the man to be, there were just some things she knew that he wouldn't get involved in. There was no reason for him to try and get involved in abductions and interrogations of woman and children. There was no profit in it.

"This isn't the kind of evil he dabbles in," she told Mulder. "Your Smoking Man did this to try and clean up a mess."

"Then I suggest we start questioning this marshal before the shadow government decides to send in the cavalry.

RABAT, MOROCCO

Raymond's international connections were legendary within the black market, gray market and every other market. This time, however, Dembe's assistance had been much more vital when it came to tracking down the fake Alex Krycek.

Dembe had connections throughout the east coast of the country - the African Internet he had called it, decades before the actual Internet had become vital to everything. In this case, he had used connections with a professor Amina Ngebe at the University of Cote D'Ivoire who'd had some business within this particular community. She had managed to find connections involving the actual Krycek's last known whereabouts - a prison in Tunisia, where Covarrubias had supposedly arranged his release in May of 2000. In June of 2005, the man had resurfaced in Malagasy - even though it was clear that the two Kryceks bore only the barest of resemblances.

This was solid intel, but what was even more surprising was that this professor wasn't asking for any favors or recompense. She just wanted to make sure whoever this person was 'suffered when you found him'.

"You know how wary I am about looking gift horses in the mouth," he had reminded Dembe.

Dembe considered this. "In the summer of 1999, Amina was working in concert with a Dr. Solomon Mekallen. He discovered a metal fragment on the beach. She never saw it, but Dr. Mekallen was apparently working in concert with a professor in DC to try and translate the writing on it."

This was a new story and a familiar one. "Did they ever translate it?"

"Amina never found out. Within a week of the discovery, both Mekallen and the American professor were murdered. But before she learned that a craft was up on that same shore covered in the same writing." Dembe was as much a realist as Raymond, so he could tell how much this was disturbing his friend. "They found more of the same writing on the craft. Only when they translated it, they found text from the Bible, the Koran, the Ramayana, text from Ancient Sumerian, and almost every other world religion. Amina was as rational as you or me, Raymond, but she could not begin to explain how that was possible."

There were clearly some element Dembe was leaving out. Raymond wasn't certain whether it had anything to do with discretion or simply because Dembe was struggling with this as much as he was. "What happened to the craft?" she asked.

"By the time the authorities came in, it had somehow been washed back out to sea.. But that was not the end of the story. About three months later, her office was burgled. No money or valuables taken. Only the rubbings she had made from the craft. The day before, she saw a man who looked exactly like Krycek asking questions around the university."

Raymond didn't want to believe in this alien talk, but it was becoming increasingly clear that a lot of powerful people - Spender in particular - did and were more than prepared to kill for it. "Was she the one who called the authorities on him?"

Dembe nodded. "She never believed they'd listen to her." He paused. "Those were the same rubbings that were in the files. That's where Mulder and Scully got them."

To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, these were deep waters. "She believes these people had Mekallen killed."

"She knows it." Dembe still wasn't telling him everything, but he decided not to press him. There was clearly something he wasn't ready to reveal. "Raymond, neither of us believe in alien life. Or the existence of God. Any of them. But if any of this is true, if even a fraction of it is, we may be in far deeper than we ever expected we would be. "

Once again, the demon that Raymond feared the most - uncertainty - began to haunt him. The Cabal was a frightening force, but he could understand their goals, however much he abhorred them. What Spender was into - what the real Alex Krycek had only hinted at - that was something he just didn't want to believe in. That he refused to acknowledge. Dembe was admitting as much when he kept referring to the object as a 'craft' - he couldn't bring himself to utter the word 'spaceship'.

Using his immense self-discipline, he turned to Dembe. "Well, the one thing I do have in common with them, is that I want to know the truth. Our colleagues have tracked this man down. Let's see if he can give us some answers."

Using the connections he had throughout the Gold Coast, he had managed to get a hold of a lead on an alias that Krycek had used when he been in Russia - Ivor Arntzen. By going through a series of backchannels, they had managed to track down his last known location - which, frankly, made even less sense that the word of God on an UFO - a series of farming communities in the desert. One of the more negotiable militia had been more than willing to track down 'Arntzen' when it was known that his colleague Reddington wanted to find him.

Under normal circumstances, it would've been impressive that Reddington had managed to find someone believed dead for a decade less than thirty-six hours after learning he was still alive. But as Raymond shook hands with Yemi, promised him a bottle of twenty-year old Gleddenfinch in addition to his usual fee, he had the distinct feeling that this meeting wasn't going to go much better than the one he'd had with Mulder and Scully a little more than a week earlier.

Part of it was the presence of the man he was dealing with. There was a strange mix in his facial features that was utterly foreign and strangely familiar. His dark hair, though cut short, had a ruffled curly type that he had seen somewhere. His eyes were dark grey that went with a stare that looked like it had seen too much. And the suit he was wearing was way too expensive. It didn't take Raymond too long to realize what he was looking at.

"You know, I'm the kind of person who loathes the use of the common cliché. I find them just something that the average person uses when he has nothing better at hand." He sat down before his prisoner. "But there's no other way to put this. You're the spitting image of your father."

Jeffrey Spender looked harshly at him. "Is that supposed to be a compliment?" he said with a rasp.

"Merely an observation. Try to open a dialogue."

"You had your men stop me an airport and beat me when I tried to leave." Jeffrey told them. "I'd say I have more than an idea of who you are, Raymond. So let's dispense with the pleasantries."

Another one who was all business. Raymond could foresee difficulties ahead. "I suppose it would be pointless to try and convince you to cooperate."

Jeffrey gave a laugh that sounded way too much like a smoker's cough. "You're nothing like my father."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"He would've snuffed me out before I even got into the airport. But then, he never had much use for me even when I was working for him." Like Mulder, he was looking through him. "And don't try to pretend you're in his league, just because you wear a fancy suit and have thugs to do your bidding."

There was no glibness like with Mulder, only certainty. "I think that I've already demonstrated my capabilities."

Another laugh. This one sounding like a caw. Jeffrey reached up behind his collar. "There's been a long of improvements in plastic surgery over the years." There was an unsnapping sound. "The doctors did the best they could to make me look presentable." He removed a wig. "But there's only so much that modern medicine can do."

Raymond had seen some truly horrendous things in his life - he'd been the cause of more than his fair share. But it took a tremendous amount of self-control to look at Jeffrey Spender's face and remain absolutely stoic.

For it was hideous - there was no question of that. His eyes were sunken in. His cheeks were practically non-existent. There were incision marks running up and down both sides of the face. His mouth looked like it belong on a man twice his age.

"This is what my father did to me. Apparently shooting me in the chest and letting me bleed out wouldn't have been fitting enough. He subjected me to hideous experiments for more than two years. The same kind of experiments he subjected my mother to. The only reason they stopped was because I managed to escape." He stared at Raymond. "And this is what he did to people he was supposed to care about. Try doing those kinds of things for decades, and maybe, maybe I'll consider you in his league."

This was the second person in little more than a week who'd called him an amateur. Come to think of it, hadn't there been an implication in the files that Mulder was in some way related to the Smoking Man as well? There were definitely implications here that he did not like.

"This may be one of the few things you and I agree on." Raymond told him. "That I'm not nearly the monster everyone thinks I am."

"I didn't say you weren't a monster. I just said you didn't measure up to my father." It was hard to read any kind of expression on his face, but there might have been pity in that look. "Which is why I have no interest in forming any sort of alliance with you. I know the kind of business you're in, Mr. Reddington. And you have no chance in the world of killing my father."

"I have alliances that can get close."

"They tried to kill him three separate times. The last time, they fired three Tomahawk missiles at the building he was. Somehow he managed to worm his way out." Jeffrey shook his head. "I don't know what kind of alliances he still had in the shadow government, but somehow, they found him in that building, practically a skeleton and a pair of lungs. And like the fucking six-million dollar man, they rebuilt him. Piece by goddamn piece."

Again Raymond had to mask his surprise. He'd known that Spender had survived his last assassination attempt, but this was a revelation that he hadn't expected even considering the talk about aliens. "How the fuck was that possible?"

Jeffrey shook his head, clearly in pain. "He's got to be more machine than man by now. Of course, that's assuming he ever was a human being. If I'd known where they'd been keeping him, I'd have put an air bubble in his oxygen tank myself. But by the time I'd learned any of this, he'd vanished back in the ground he loved to crawl out of."

"So you don't know where he is."

"I've spent the last decade doing everything in my power to lay waste to what he spent his life building." It was hard to tell but he seemed to be staring outward. "By using the connections of the few people left who worked against him, I've been tearing town whatever remains of the project he and his people spent a lifetime trying to do."

Here it was. "So what is it?"

Another cough. "You know what it is. You're just afraid to admit it."

"I'm many things, Mr. Spender, but I've never been afraid."

"Then prove it. Say what you weren't willing to tell Elizabeth Keen."

Raymond wasn't going to admit it. Not to his father, and certainly not to this wretch of a man. "This has nothing to do with why we're here."

Jeffrey sighed - at least it sounded like one - and began to put his face back on. "I appreciate the beating. Reminded me of old times. But I think we're done. You have two choices, Raymond. Bring me back to the airport or kill me. Because unless you're willing to take my father and his threats seriously, you'll never be able to stop him."

This wasn't how he expected this meeting to go at all. He'd been willing to play these kinds of games before, but Raymond still had problems negotiating with the dead. Jeffrey hadn't died yet, but he was damn close to it. The Concierge of Crime never admitted he was out of his league.

So he decided to try and fall back to slightly safer territory. "About twenty years ago, when I was in the middle of forming my empire, I made the acquaintance of a man named Peter Watts. He was also ex-FBI, and he represented an organization you may have come across in your travels. You're familiar with the Millennium group?"

Jeffrey Spender blinked once. "Continue."

"I could never get a clear read on their interests. One associate send they were former law enforcement trying to solve crimes that normal law enforcement wouldn't touch. But there were also people who believed they were an organization that had been around for centuries, believing in prophecies mired in Judeo-Christian end times. " Raymond poured a glass of scotch. "Only organization I know to put a fatwa out on Dan Brown."

"Is there a point to this story?" Jeffrey asked.

"You were still in the Bureau in '98? So you probably remember an outbreak of what was known as the 'blood plague' on the West Coast in June of that year. Nearly a hundred people died, but fewer no just how big a bullet we dodged." He looked at his scotch. "It was an outbreak of the Marburg virus, mutated into a form that could have easily wiped out the entire continental United States." Raymond downed the glass. "The rumors I heard was that was the Millennium groups work. Is that the kind of thing your father was trafficking in?"

Jeffrey seemed to consider this. "He was very concerned when that happened," he admitted. "Yes, that's the territory he's working in. Are the other people on your blacklist, are they that ambitious?"

That was the question. If he had been facing Elizabeth, he probably would've hemmed and hawed, or changed the subject. Only the direct approach was going to work with Jeffrey Spender. "Not even close. Destroying the world isn't good business for them. It's not good business for me, either. That's practically the only thing I have in common with them."

By now, Jeffrey had put his face back on. "Modesty isn't a good fit on you, Raymond. And you're still not completely right. My father wants to control the world, too. He just wants to destroy it first. Then rebuild it in his image. Can you understand why I've spent the last decade trying to make sure that doesn't happen?"

It was a lot to take in. And Raymond didn't have the time to do it. "Will stopping your father bring about an end to it?" he asked.

"You know better than to ask that question. Getting rid of him may not even slow it down much. But he is the head of the operation. Taking him down before has pushed back the date at least five years. If we were to get rid of him altogether..." He shrugged. "What does it matter to you? He's just a name on a list."

They were talking about the destruction of mankind as if they were discussing a lunch order. Even Raymond was a little amazed by the scope of this conversation. "You make it sound so futile."

"The Millennium Group is still active." Jeffrey told him. "They may not have been able to bring about the end of the world in 2000 or 2001 or 2012, but that doesn't mean they've given up. These plans have been in motion long before you and I were born. Considering that, what can any man - even if he's the head of a 'criminal empire' - do against it?"

"Then why are making such an effort?"

"It's personal for me. And its personal for Mulder and Scully, too." Raymond could've sworn he'd left his face totally blank, but Jeffrey must have learned something from his father. "You wouldn't have known about me if you hadn't read the X-Files. Fuck, you wouldn't even have come here if you didn't follow their bread crumbs. So, here's the question: are you going to invest?"

If he lied to this man, he would know. He'd already prevaricated and Jeffrey had been willing to face certain death rather than deal with it. "I have plans for the immediate future. I can't have the world come to an end."

"You can't charm your way out of this, Raymond. Answer the question."

"You want my help. I'm willing to give it to you. That is as far as I'm willing to go."

Jeffrey actually gave a laugh that sounded deceptively normal. "I can live with that. Many of the people I work with would be willing to accept that." Now he fixed Raymond with an accusatory glare. "But Mulder and Scully, they don't do half measures. They probably wouldn't accept your help if you were to offer complete support. What do you think they'll do if you offer such a half-assed approach?"

For a man who had spent his entire career railing against the X-Files, he sure seemed willing to support them now. Reddington supposed this was what real loyalty looked like. Now was not the time to tell them that Mulder and Scully had told him to go fuck himself when he'd offered his hand the first time. He decided to do what he always did when this happened: change the subject to something that he could negotiate for.

"That's my concern. Not yours. Do we have a deal?"

"If only so I can have a front row seat to those two tearing your life apart." Jeffrey pushed a button and spoke with his normal voice. "All right. How may I be of assistance?"

"By giving me information that will lead to the woman whose been getting you all of your diplomatic access." Trying to maintain his usual air of self-confidence, he poured a glass of scotch in front of Jeffrey.

"I need to speak with Marita Covarrubias."