Chapter 10

WASHINGTON DC

MARCH 10, 1952

"In just 24 hours polls will close in the state of New Hampshire where voters will cast ballots to see who will be among the choices for the nominees for President. At today's press conference President Truman, who has not yet decided if he will stand for reelection was asked his opinion of Senator Kefauver's campaign. In the typical blunt speaking he made it clear that any man who dares to campaign against an incumbent President should be tried for treason."

"Now why couldn't somebody like that be running for President when we're growing up?" Snart said with a smile. "I might actually have voted for him,"

"Isn't that just talk?" Mick said. "Given what I read in the paper, I don't think his own party wants him to run again. Guys worn out his welcome."

Snart lowered his voice. "Of course, if you believe what's going on behind the scenes, he doesn't have any real power at all."

Mulder had made it very clear where their tour of the past was going to end but he also knew that there was one more stop they had to make before they got there. And he had information that wasn't actually in the original files about that.

"I got led to the X-Files almost by accident," he told the Legends. He relayed about the strange death of Edward Skur and how his last words had been his father's name. That had led him to a run-down apartment where he'd met an old man in a bathrobe named Arthur Dales. Dales had spun a story about his days in the Bureau when he'd been arresting Communist sympathizers with a sense of duty and a clear conscience. That conscience lost its shine when Skur killed himself – and then had led him into a rabbit hole he had never come out of, his partner killed, his career ruined, his idea of what reality was gone forever.

"Dales was sent to the basement for the next several years. He washed out in 1959. How he managed to survive as long as he did is beyond me but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have known about The X-Files without him," Mulder said.

"What's interesting is that not once during that story he spun did he mention extra-terrestrials, the supernatural or anything that was remotely resembling monsters," he told them. "What he talked about - xenotransplantation – was in fact something that Nazis did to Germans during the war and there were Germans connected to it who were granted amnesty."

"Probably the same ones that the government granted amnesty to in Paper Clip," Stein posited. "You think it was the early attempts at the biological experiments that men like Klemperer were responsible for?"

"According to the files Mulder managed to find that's correct," Scully said. "Skur was one of three men, Gissing and Oberman were the other two. They were veterans who came back from the War having thought they'd seen the worst of humanity. They didn't know they were going to become subjects of it firsthand."

"And you really believe that everything involving the Red Scare was a cover for it?" Stein asked.

"That's where things get tricky," Mulder admitted. "Obviously the Soviets had infiltrated our government as early as the 1920s, maybe earlier. There were spies in the State Department, the War Department, the Manhattan Project, it's not like there wasn't a threat to the government from them."

"But not in Hollywood," Sara reminded them.

"I'm still trying to reason that part out," Mulder shook it off. "Dales reminded me that they found practically nothing. And maybe nothing was what they hoped to find. I didn't understand what he was talking about."

"The irony is, I think all of us did even without knowing anything about HUAC," Jefferson said.

"History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme," Stein agreed. "You're relatively certain the foundation of the conspiracy was laid during the Red Scare or at the very least, given cover."

"I know that my father was involved at least that early," Mulder said. "Dales told me as much. And given what he did, he must have been pretty deep even then."

"I'm not entirely thrilled by the company your father kept, even outside the Syndicate," Sara said bluntly. "First he's granting amnesty to Nazis, now he's having lunch with Roy Cohn and giving cover to Joe McCarthy. Even without the whole world domination crap, he's not exactly making me anxious to see him as a young man."

This was harsh for Sara Lance, or maybe it wasn't. Considering how much time she'd spent among Ras Al 'Ghul and everything she'd gone through with Slade Wilson; she had little patience for tyrants and megalomaniacs. And that was before you considered the lesser-known, but far more horrible, scare that both of those men had would lead just a short time after Arthur Dales was working for them.

"I don't blame you for your feelings," Mulder said. "Scully and I worked at the Bureau when it was under a fairly liberal government after decades of reform. And it's not like I ever felt entirely clean even when I heard some of the things that were going on while I was coming up."

Scully couldn't exactly argue. Places like Ruby Ridge and Waco loomed very large in the Bureau's history when she had been starting out as an agent and those were just the public disgraces of the FBI. "We never got a lot of respect when we showed our badges the people back then," she said. "I thought it had to do with the X-Files, but maybe too many people just saw the nightly news. And if that was our reputation then, I can't imagine how horrible it must have been with Hoover was in all his ugly glory."

"Hoover was awful just based on what the public record shows," Stein reminded them. "Do you think he was actually involved in the Syndicate?"

"That's part of the reason I want you to go back to 1952 in the first place," Mulder told them. "We need to find out the source of the illness and according to Arthur Dales, that's as close to a starting point as we can find with the Bureau."

So they'd made clear where their penultimate stop was going to be: March of 1952, a full three months before Arthur Dales found out what HUAC was all about. Mulder wasn't sure of the details but he was pretty sure that a lot of the agents had their lunch at bars like the ones they were staying at.

"Now here's a reason to love the fifties," Mick said. "It's weird if you don't have a beer with lunch."

"Little light on entertainment, though," Snart said. "And the clientele bears a strikingly similar appearance. Meaning it's not going to be as easy to spot a Fed as it was when we were doing this in our time."

"It is a bit harder when no one's even heard of Casual Friday," Mick said.

"They do. It probably means you wear suspenders of a belt," Snart joked. "On the plus side, photo IDs aren't going to be invented for another thirty years and computers are still human beings. We could probably just walk into the Bureau without much trouble but why take chances?"

According to Dales' story, a lot of agents had meals at the Hoot Owl. And because this was 1952 Snart had just asked the bartender if Hayes Michael and Arthur Dales were regulars here and he'd gotten a resounding yes.

"You friends of theirs?" the bartender asked.

"Sort of," Snart said. "We were in the same training camp before we shipped out."

"Eastern or Pacific?" the bartender said.

Snart grinned sheepishly. "I was a quartermaster in Burma. Got there in '43 and spent the entire war behind a desk. Closest I got to action was paper cuts requisitioning grenades for the GIs who went into combat."

"Hey at least you got to the front," Mick said. "I ended up a supply ship outside of the Balkans the entire war. I signed up to kick the Japs' asses after Pearl Harbor, closest I ever got to a battleship was when we were delivering K-rations when they came to port."

"Seriously?" the bartender said. "The two of you look like you could take on a battalion of Krauts singlehanded. What the hell was Uncle Sam waiting for?"

"If there was one thing I learned about my time behind a desk, it's that when you're building an entire army they must have quadrupled the bureaucracy doing so," Snart said.

"I thought Byrnes was supposed to have fixed all that," the bartender said.

Mick blanked. Snart remembered his briefing. "He was domestic. Once everything got overseas…"

"Besides, didn't someone say an Army marches on its stomach?" Mick said. "At least that was what I kept telling myself. I sure as hell wasn't eating any better than the guys on the front. I should know, I had to eat that same shit every day."

"Anyway I'm working out of Baltimore since V-J Day. They got me working on the docks." Snart said. "I heard from Hayes a few months ago. Apparently he landed at the FBI which didn't sound his speed when I knew him. Guy was a man of action. I couldn't see him stuck behind a desk all the time."

"Yeah, he complains about it a lot," the bartender said. "Of course that was before he and his partners got transferred to HUAC."

"No kidding," Mick said. "He lock up anyone famous?"

"If he did, he wouldn't tell me," the bartender said. "Why you a friend of his?"

Now was the time for Mick's part. "Nah, I'm trying to track down a friend of mine from the Navy. You know a guy named William Mulder?"

The bartender gave him some thought. "I know most of the Fibbies but I don't remember any Mulder's."

"He's federal but he's not the Bureau. Last I heard he was working out of the State Department." Mick said.

The bartender chuckled. "Most of those guys are too good to drink in a joint like this. My guess is he'd be at Foggy Bottom, probably at some of those swanky restaurants."

Arthur Dales was going to meet William Mulder at this very joint in the next few months but there was no point telling him that. Instead they'd decided to hang out and wait to see when Dales or Michel showed up.

Of course they didn't plan to be in the Hoot Owl when it happened.

"That the guy we're looking for?" Mick asked as a heavy set man with a mustache that wasn't uncommon for the era walked towards the bar.

"It is," Snart said. "Time for us to see if the Bureau changed in half a century.

FEDERAL BUILDING

Snart could see how the Smoking Man could have picked up the habit when he did. Everyone seemed to have a cigarette in their mouths.

And there was barely any security worth a damn. The two of them had come in with the kind of ID badges that were common for the 1950s – no photographs, just a serial number and with no computer to track it. They were basically waved in.

"We were born in the wrong era," Mick whispered. "If this is what one of the biggest law enforcement facility in the government has for security we could probably just stroll into a bank of our choice and help ourselves to the money."

"Jefferson was right," Snart said. "All you had to be was a white man and you could walk into anywhere during the 1950s."

"And considering where we want to go, we might not even need to do that much," Mick said. "You do it you've always been the more charming one."

Snart walked up to the front desk where an attractive blonde woman who could have been an extra on Mad Men was sitting. "Pardon me, miss. I'm here to see an old friend."

Naturally the woman opened a compact and began to powder her face. "Oh, who might I say is calling?"

"Now that would be telling," Snart smiled. "I just wanted to know if Dorothy Bahnsen was working today."

The smile dimmed but didn't disappear. "And how to do you know Miss Bahnsen?"

"We have a mutual friend. Or two."

"She usually has her lunch in the file room. Heck, that's where she spends most of her nights too. I'm beginning to wonder if she sleeps there."

"She must really love her job."

"That may be the only thing she loves." That was almost too low to hear but both Snart and Mick heard it. "Look, I can call her if you want but I've known Dorothy nearly three years and I know one for sure: neither of you are her type."

There was an implied undertone there – or perhaps there would have been thirty years later. Neither man was thick enough to imply it. Certainly not here, and not now.

"Could you tell us where the file room is?" Snart asked.

"Third floor, fourth left," the secretary said. "And who did you say you were?"

"We didn't." Mick said as they started walking.

"Was that necessary?" Snart couldn't help but ask.

"Hey, when else was I going to get a chance to say something like that?"

FILE ROOM

"Excuse me, we're looking for Dorothy Bahnsen," Snart said.

"And if I saw her who should I say was calling?"

"I'm Agent Banachek. This is Agent McCloud," Snart said, showing the badges they had. "We understand you handle the files here."

Bahnsen fixed the two of them with the kind of look that women in this decade weren't supposed to show men who claimed authority. "Do either of you do work for the Bureau?"

"We answer to another authority," Snart said.

"Well the Bureau signs my paychecks and they're not exactly thrilled when I let perfect strangers go rifling through our file system without permission," Bahnsen said sternly.

"You really should watch your tone, missy," Mick was play acting: he actually admired Bahnsen's attitude. "We could get your boss down here; get you fired and get someone else to find what we're looking for."

"My mother would be thrilled if you did that," Bahnsen said, matching their looks. "She's been trying to match me up with our next door neighbor for ten years."

There were several approaches to try here. Snart decided to use tact. "How much do you like your job?"

"The hours stink, but on the upside the pay is terrible," Bahnsen said.

"And of course you meet the loveliest people such as me and my friend." Snart said.

"At least you know my name. I've worked her five years; I'm pretty sure no agent in this department knows my first or last name."

"I imagine Bogey would have a better way of saying it but it begs the question: all the places to earn a living, why here?"

"Fewer people pinch my ass that at the diner," Bahnsen replied. "On the plus side, none of the agents comes down there unless they have to so I have a lot of time to read these files."

"And your boss doesn't frown on it?" Mick asked. "Isn't that sensitive stuff?"

"I think eighty percent of the bosses here don't think girls can read. Makes you wonder why they put me in a job that involves the alphabet so much," Bahnsen asked. "And considering that I don't think any agents know this room exists, why did you come looking for me?"

Time to switch gears. "I don't think you need to be told how charged this whole city is," Snart said. "Half of my friends are checking under their beds for Commie spies before they go to sleep and the other half do after they get up in the morning."

"We have to protect the country. I know what a mess the world is and I'm not supposed to," Bahnsen said.

"Which is bad enough. Thing is in a few months we're gonna have an election. Which means things are gonna get even uglier. And there are people at State who are starting to get worried about certain people getting a hold of information that could make other people in the corridors of power get nervous." Snart said.

Bahnsen lowered her voice. "The Bureau is above politics."

"We're in DC, Miss Bahnsen. The barbershop isn't above politics." Mick growled. "Besides if you really believe that then this smart mouth thing is an act and we're pretty sure it isn't."

"Do you know how much trouble I could get in for talking with you?" Bahnsen whispered.

"I thought your mother would be thrilled if that happened," Snart said with a smile.

"She would. I wouldn't." Bahnsen said.

Snart paused for a moment. He remembered what the secretary upstairs had said. "Look just between me, you and my partner you might want to consider getting another job sometime soon anyway."

"Why on earth would I want to do that?"

"What I'm about to tell you cannot leave this room. Indeed there's a very good chance that if I tell you I'll probably end up losing my job or worse end up on the back end of one of those subpoenas the directors been handing out as if they were birthday cards in the near future."

"Then maybe you shouldn't tell me at all."

Mick suddenly picked up on what his partner was getting at. "He absolutely shouldn't. Which is why I'm going to."

"I don't want you get hit by it either," Snart said horrified.

"I'm beginning to have my issues with this job. Besides I never liked government work." Mick walked over to her. "They're saying that in the next year McCarthy's going to go after even bigger game."

"He's already going after the State Department and the Pentagon? What's next, the moon?" Bahnsen said almost sarcastically.

Mick walked up to her. "He's actually gonna go into people's bedrooms."

He let that stand for a moment.

Bahnsen considered this. "Whatever you're going to say, you can't say it here. I'm going to go out to have lunch on the park bench. Meet me there in twenty minutes. But only one of you."

DRUITT HILL PARK

1:15 pm

Snart had agreed to be the one to do this. Technically this was messing with the timeline but he also knew that Bahnsen wasn't going to risk revealing what she knew. He'd gambled right.

Bahnsen was already there. "You're sure this isn't going to be suspicious?"

"Not if you're seen with me." Snart said. "I have no idea if this will actually play out the way I think it will. But I can do math and it's been twenty years since a Republican held the White House."

"Truman's probably not going to run again," Bahnsen pointed out.

"Won't make a difference. Like it or not, if the Republicans don't win the Presidency this time out they may go into extinction and that's bad for the country anyway." Snart said. "They've got a winning hand no matter who they get at the top of the ticket. And when they do there's a plan for a new campaign. Something that wreaks of the hypocrisy you can only find in this town."

"Your friend, he was serious."

"The project is called Lavender. They will be looking for the 'deviants and perverse who have infiltrated our government at the highest level'. And none of this will ever see the inside of a Senate hearing or a courtroom. They know too well what they're doing."

Bahnsen shook her head. "You know what they call McCarthy, Schine and Cohn in private? Bonnie, Bonnie and Clyde. I don't know what's worse: their bigotry or their hypocrisy."

"It's not like this town isn't heaping with both," Snart said. "There's going to be a series of slaughters and no one's even going to care about the victims. The only thing we can do is prepare ourselves. And I hate to tell you how ugly that's going to be."

Bahnsen whispered. "Why are you coming to me about this? I'm nobody."

"Which is exactly why they'll come after you. You have no apparent means defend yourself. You'll be easy to grind into the dirt. The only way to stay safe is to have the means to defend yourself. And until Lavender begins, you have two benefits. You have access and you're invisible."

Bahnsen wasn't going to argue with this. "What are you asking of me?"

"They've given you a nothing job. But that nothing job has put you in a position to help us with information that might be important in the years to come. And fortunately, it's in the kind of files that nobody, not even the beloved director, would ever want to look."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"There are some case that are in the dumping ground. Unsolved cases, that the Bureau doesn't want looked at too closely." Snart deliberately had no intention of using anything that resembled the letter X in his reference. "In them, there may be names of men who in the years to come will have influence and for that reason will not want their name to become part of any public record."

"I think I know the files you're asking about." Bahnsen said. "I have to say I've looked at them from time to time; it's hard for me to know why the government wouldn't want to look at them."

"That's what people like you are supposed to think, unfortunately," Snart looked at his watch. "I don't know how long your lunch hour's going to be so I'll make it quick."

He reached into his trench coat lining. "These are the names of three men who have access to, shall we put it, sensitive information. At least one of them is currently employed by State though that's his unofficial heading. We're not sure of the other two."

He handed her a piece of paper. "I'm trusting that your memory will be good enough so that after you read them you can burn this piece of paper. You'll have to be the one who looks for them personally; none of your colleagues in the secretarial pool can hear about this."

Bahnsen took the piece of paper. "Even if I find the names you're looking for, I can't just walk out of the Bureau with the files."

Snart smiled. "I'm not asking you to. I want you to look through the files, find whatever information you can about them and come back here for your next lunch hour tomorrow. I won't be here but my friend will. Take whatever precautions you feel you need are warranted."

"What are you going to do with this information if I find it?"

"You're better off not knowing," Snart said sincerely. "You'll need deniability if something happens to me or my partner afterwards."

"You're not going to promise to protect me?" Bahnsen asked.

"Would you believe me if I said I could?" Snart countered. "I can't even say for sure that I'll be safe in the months to come. What I know is that whatever information you find can only be helpful, perhaps not now but definitely for the future."

"How did you even know about me in the first place?" Bahnsen asked. "Like you said, I'm nobody."

Now was the big sell. "Because you have a friend in the Bureau. Someone who speaks very highly of you. Someone who you've been helpful to in the past and will be again. You may think he never noticed you because you're just a secretary and he carries a badge. But that doesn't mean you aren't important to him. And someday when you least expect it, he'll thank you for it. And it will matter to many other people, even if he doesn't know it."

"You seem to know an awful lot about this," Bahnsen said.

"Like I said, I have access to a lot of sensitive information at the highest levels."

WAVERIDER

"You sure we're not messing with the timeline that badly with what we revealed?"

"I think you and I both know even if Bahnsen wanted to shout this information to the rooftops, in 1952 there isn't a paper, radio or TV station in the world that would make it public," Mulder said sadly.

"Sad but true," Sara Lance said.

Mulder had known that it was going to take some convincing for a woman in any position at the Bureau in 1952 to pass information on. He wasn't entirely certain Hoover didn't have every place in the Bureau wired for sound; no one in the agency when he worked there was willing to talk about how the man the Bureau was named for had operated. And in the era where the entire country was seeing Communists everywhere no one could be friendly.

But in his conversations with Arthur Dales Mulder knew that Dorothy Bahnsen had been one of the links that had led to the X-Files being discovered. He had no idea what could have been in them in 1952 but he was inclined to think that most of them had to do with the kind of experiments Dales had been talking about rather than anything involving the actual alien conspiracy. From his own perusals he'd found files having to do with the supernatural and the weird but there was nothing that had to do with aliens until the early 1960s. There wasn't anything before that, even dealing with Roswell.

Mulder also knew that his father had been working at the State Department not long after he came back from the war. Smoking Man had told him that they'd been involved since the crash at Roswell in 1947 but no matter how many times he'd heard that he was never going to take it as gospel. Besides that was going to be their final stop. Dales' word was far more reliable and there was newsreel footage of it as well.

He knew they couldn't get involved before Dales was to have his life-changing meeting with Edward Skur but he also knew that there was a window before that. Bahnsen was the bridge between those two era and she was the most likely person to have access that Dales wouldn't think to look for.

Bahnsen's information had been as simple to locate by going through the Bureau's payroll. She'd been hired to work there when the Greatest Generation was overseas and there was a manpower shortage. She'd held on to her position until 1973 – retiring just a few months after Hoover dropped dead to the relief of everyone in DC with perhaps the exception of the occupant of the White House and his circle.

If he'd been half the agent he would be a few years later Mulder would have tracked her down immediately afterwards. But he was still reeling from everything Dales had told him that day. A few months later he would enter the basement for the first time and not really leave for a decade. It wasn't until he saw Dales again not long after getting put back on the files that it even occurred to him to try and track down Bahnsen for no other reason than to send her a thank you card. Only then had he learned she had passed away in 1996, ironically of lung cancer.

Bahnsen was married with three children and several grandchildren but even then Mulder knew that meant nothing about her sexuality: well before he joined the Bureau he knew that people lived double lives for reasons that had nothing to do with government conspiracies. What made him think that there might be something more to the story was that Bahnsen was the only person in Dales's entire reminiscence that he spoke with genuine affection for – even his own partner hadn't received such glowing reviews.

When Dales had ended up out of the Bureau, he made it clear the only regret he ever had was losing touch with Bahnsen. "In a way she made it impossible for me to ever go back," he told Mulder. "In another she opened my eyes and helped me see things I never could. Perhaps someday you'll be blessed to know someone like Dorothy. She was ahead of her time in many ways and she had a moral compass that was far more accurate than many of us ever get."

"After you left the Bureau," he'd asked. "You ever try to track her down?"

"I didn't want her to get in trouble. Back then, even women like her could get a bad reputation if they stayed around persona non grata like me."

"I thought that was true for all women," Mulder said.

"In Dorothy's case, it might have helped more than it heard." That was all the taciturn old agent would say about the subject but it had implied something that Mulder had been willing to let go. He had more pressing things on his mind.

"Even if this won't affect her personally," he told them. "From what I was told Bahnsen has integrity. Something that may have been nonexistent in the Bureau during that era. She'll want to do the right thing."

"You sure about that?" Jefferson asked. "Considering the era, she might very well go to her boss and tell her she was approached by a foreign power and tell them where they can find him the next day. Hell, for all you know, she was followed and she might end up getting thrown into whatever the 1950s version of Guantanamo is."

"We definitely can't rule out the latter," Mulder admitted. "Sadly that was the way things worked for the shadow government – basically forever. But there's no way in hell Bahnsen's going to go to her superiors and tell them what happened. Because that was ensure she ended up getting thrown into oblivion."

"Hard to argue with you," Stein said. "Especially for a woman. She'd be considered a foreign agent just for talking to a superior at all. And even if they did believe her, she'd be in a different hell once it became clear she did inform."

"I thought they liked people who named names," Sara said.

"Not in any circle that mattered," Mulder said. "Besides, with friends like Cohn and Hoover, who needs enemies?"

"You told us Hoover was involved in this," Stein said. "What about the rest of them?"

"You're familiar with the phrase useful idiots?" Scully asked. "The Cold War provided more than its share of cover for the worst aspects of humanity on an international level. I'm betting that the domestic part had its share of ramifications. Just using the label of being 'soft on Communism' was the kind of thing that had immense power when Mulder and I were growing up. My guess is that the biggest red-baiters helped keep a certain amount of cover on the domestic front in the early years."

BOARDING HOUSE

March 10th, 1952

9:47 PM

"So you think everything involving HUAC was, what, cover to what the government was really up too?" Mick asked.

"Dales thought so. And it's not like future events haven't demonstrated how much our government will use threats from without to mobilize our worst aspects of our humanity." Mulder said.

Neither of them could argue with that. "That explains the Red Scare. What about Lavender?" Snart asked.

"I've thought about that, particularly given the nature of so many of the players involved," Mulder said. "My guess and don't hold me to it, some combination of projection and hubris of everyone involved."

Everyone there had fought enough villains to know that most of them did have that combination of flaws. Snart would never say so but he'd been guilty of it from time to time himself in his early years.

"I hate to tell you this, but I think we may not have been as discreet as we hoped," Mick said, glancing out the window. "I have no idea what model car that is, but it's circled the block at least three times in the past half-hour."

Snart walked up to the window. "I guess you don't need security cameras or wiretapping in an era when everyone's paranoid already."

"Or maybe we said something that gave ourselves away to that barkeep," Mick said.

"He was probably just being friendly," Snart said. "These days that's enough with the wrong people."

Well, this is the part where you guys throw away the plan, Mulder said into their headpiece. "I have to admit I'm curious how you're going to handle it without destroying the timeline."

"Given when and where we are, I really regret that part," Snart said sincerely. "All right, we're in 1952. These people are relying solely on brute force. What kind of weapons do G-Men carry these days?"

"They'll be issued .38s at best," Scully said.

"All right, they're not going to kill us until they find out what we're doing here." Snart said. "But this is the 1950s, they don't have to bother with those pesky Miranda warnings and they can beat the crap out of us in the name of national security if they want."

"Back then, we'd have made great feds." Mick considered this for a moment. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

""Yes, old friend, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a back-up plan when this one goes off the rails," Snart said. "That said, you fit the bill better for decoy this time then me."

Mick nodded. Then the phone in their room rang.

"They're testing the waters," Snart said. "Give me twenty seconds, then pick up."

Mick waited until his friend was out the hall door. Then he went to the phone.

"They pay you guys too much," he said when he picked up the phone. "I knew you were out there an hour ago."

There was a moment of silence.

"Well, are we going to do this or not?" He hung up.

Ten seconds later, he heard the front door to the boarding house burst open.

10:01 pm

Snart was pretty sure how this would play out. He suspected someone would be waiting in the side alley on the far end of their temporary base. So he had gone up a floor, burst open the door of a room, didn't even look around as he ran to the nearest open window and jumped out it.

He didn't even break a sweat doing it or break stride when he hit the pavement.

He was also certain that even in dark ages, law enforcement's methods of guarding the perimeter was no different than before. He knew that they'd be watching the alley but he also thought they'd be spread very thin. He knew they'd be fit and that they'd be fast on their feet. He'd have no trouble losing them under other circumstances, but those were not the ones he had in mind today.

His job was to see who'd follow him and if it was a familiar face.

He'd managed to cover nearly two blocks when a shot rang out.

"Next one goes in your head!"

He wasn't a hundred percent which one of the three men it was who had tracked him down yet. But he could tell it was very early in their career. Because he could detect the kind of nervousness that he'd gotten used from patrol officers their first week on the job.

So he paused, knelt on the ground and put his hands behind his head in a position he wasn't sure had been invented yet.

"You're faster than most of the people I've dealt with," he said with a smile as the man in question walked around him. "I guess you haven't started yet."

There were a lot of reactions he had been told to be expected from the man who would one day be known as the Cigarette-Smokin Man from the history. He did not expect what would happen next.

He took out his gun and cocked the hammer.

"Give me one good reason not to kill you right now."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Historical notes

The dates in this chapter are accurate historically. Harry Truman didn't seriously consider running for reelection in 1952 - the recently passed 23rd amendment did not directly affect him but he wasn't sure any President should run for a third term. (He'd actually opposed FDR's run in 1940 initially.) Estes Kefauver was a Senator from Tennessee and he did run in the New Hampshire primary against Truman while he was still deciding. Truman's opinion in that radio report is pretty close to what he thought.

Much of the original movement of McCarthyism and the Red Scare was tolerated by Senate Republicans as a campaign tactic against the Democrats in the aftermath of Truman's upset victory in 1948. Some involved, like Richard Nixon, were hoping to use it for higher office. In 1952 the Democrats had held the White House for 20 years and many did feel if a Republican didn't win, the two-party system might collapse.

It's not clear when exactly the plan for what was known as the Lavender Scare was considered by many in Republican leadership. Officially it began after Eisenhower's election but it had been talked about in some circles before it. The hypocrisy Bahnsen says about the three men at the center of it was very accurate. Roy Cohn's homosexuality is well documented and it was rumored he and David Schine were lovers. McCarthy was a 'confirmed bachelor' until 1953 and there were rumors about his sexual preferences in Wisconsin, though they have never been officially confirmed.

Now for the X-Files:

Much of what is discussed in this episode about Arthur Dales is based on the fifth season episode 'Travelers' which tells the story of the first links between the Mulder family and the conspiracy. Hayes Michael was Dales' partner and The Hoot Owl was where he had his drinks. Dorothy Bahnsen was the secretary who told Dales about the X-Files in the first place. (In a great in-joke, all of the unexplained files are filed under 'X' because there's always room in those files as opposed to 'U'.) We don't know much more about Dales history of the Bureau except in this episode so I'm allowed some creative license. (He is an alcoholic when we meet him and that never changes.)

I have a feeling in the 1950s security was as lax as Snart and Rory discuss it for the Bureau and that basically all you needed to be was to be a white man and carry yourself with authority to get into the FBI. Hoover was everything they say about him in The X-Files and somehow more disgusting.

Even if you allow for the possibility of Bill Mulder being Fox's real father, he never comes across looking that good. He makes an appearance in Travelers as someone who's already pretty willing to cave to the slightest pressure and completely spineless. We will be meeting him in this story, but I figured someone had to call him on it.

The Smoking Man? Trigger happy? Well, we don't know anything about him from this period at all. That will allow for some artistic license on my part.

Thank you for being patient during the long hiatus. Hopefully the next chapter will take less time to get up. Keep reading and reviewing.