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10 X 3: MA QUY
Rating: R for language and racial terms that may be offensive
to some. |
Skinner was driving not out of deference to
Kersh’s rank within the Bureau, and not because
Kersh was any more exhausted than he – the battery of task force
meetings in Sacramento, the prospect of tomorrow’s strategy session in L.A.,
and the acrid but potent coffee that had flowed all day had left them both
wired, restless, occupied.
The deadhead downstate car ride, especially together, had been the dreaded
culmination of a battering day. The FBI’s restructuring in the wake of whistleblower
allegations of Bureau ineptitude pre-9/11 had drawn attention to operational
budgeting in the media, Congress, and the more expensively appointed offices
of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. It was decreed that Deputy Director Alvin
Kersh and Assistant Director Walter Skinner could
set an excellent example of fiscal responsibility for the troops by taking
a staff vehicle, rather than a jet, to the City of
“How you doing there, Skinner?”
Kersh inquired. It was the first full sentence
either had uttered since they’d departed the state capitol four hours earlier,
and Kersh’s question rang of official conscientiousness
rather than any real concern. “Find a place, and I’ll take a turn at the wheel.”
“I’m fine,” Skinner murmured
as the lights of a mid-sized town beckoned.
“Nonsense,” Kersh said. “It’s been a hectic
day, and you’ve been driving for hours. You must be beat. Find a spot; I’ll
take the next shift.”
Skinner began scouting the broad avenue ahead for a gas station or restaurant
parking lot. It was easier simply to let Kersh
have his head than to argue over such a trivial matter. A
minimart loomed, fluorescent light exploding from its high glassed
front. Skinner angled in in front of a bank of
newspaper machines and shifted into park, engine idling.
“Need a pitstop,” Kersh
announced, “and a large cup for the road.” The director
unbuckled and marched, stiff-legged, toward the automatic doors.
Skinner swallowed a sigh and locked up. He’d elected to drive as an excuse
not to engage in any smalltalk, and in the hope
Kersh would drop off for a few hours. Of course,
Kersh had remained rigidly awake, staring silently
out at the
Skinner didn’t like Kersh, whom he considered
an officious coward, a good Nazi who answered to power rather than conscience,
a tiny man who in the one seemingly courageous act of his bureaucratic career
may have committed an unpardonable act of personal and, possibly, human betrayal.
Since Mulder’s escape from a government death
sentence, abetted by Skinner and Kersh, the deputy
director had become even more distant, more withdrawn. Did
Kersh’s distance signify the anxiety of a foot soldier-turned-rebel,
or the calculating stoicism of the traitor awaiting his next marching orders?
Skinner knew Kersh cared little for him, as
well. Skinner had given Mulder and Scully wide
latitude in pursuing their paranormal prey – in Kersh’s
view, a waste of manpower and resources in the service of an insubordinate,
mentally unstable UFO-chaser. Skinner had tacitly aided Doggett and Reyes
in their attempt to implicate Kersh in a shadowy,
possibly otherworldly conspiracy. And then Skinner proved his true colors
with his fervent science-fictional defense at Mulder’s
military tribunal.
Skinner planned to fake a nap as soon as possible after they returned to
the road.
**
“Good evening!” a cheerful voice shouted from the front
counter as Skinner’s entrance activated an electronic “chime.”
“How you doing?”
The assistant director glanced at the smiling, elderly Vietnamese man, bracketed by racks of Morleys and Camels and a counterful of cheap breath aids, diet capsules and dietary supplements, lighters, and Lotto ticket dispensers. Skinner had done a tour in country, and knew by the cadence of his speech, the turn of head, his facial physiognomy that the owner/manager was Vietnamese, rather than Chinese or Thai or Japanese.
“Hi,” Skinner smiled back, breezing past the man toward a back wall crammed
with refrigerated sodas, teas, and sports drinks. Kersh
already had disappeared into the men’s john next to the nacho cheese machine.
Skinner kneeled before a display of ornately bottled teas laced with gingko
biloba, ginseng, echinacea
, and other modern miracles of nature designed to enhance health, memory,
and energy and reduce stress and fatigue. He didn’t buy into the New Age hype,
but they came in larger bottles and tended not to taste quite as chemical
or bitter as the big brand iced tea at the top of the case.
“YOU GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!” Skinner turned toward the
frantic voice of the Vietnamese man, still in a crouch but going for his shoulder
holster. He peered around a long rack of potato chips and pretzels.
The owner/manager had a shotgun leveled at a medium-height, medium-weight
man in a polo shirt and khakis. The man’s arms hung at his side – not rigid,
as if in terror; not loosely, as if he were drugged or in a posture of surrender.
The man murmured something Skinner could not hear, in
a calm, almost amicable voice. The old man tightened his grip on
the gun.
“YOU GET OUT NOW! I KILL YOU!!”
The man seemingly chuckled.
Skinner heard a click to his right, and swiveled to see
Kersh exiting the men’s room. As the deputy director gaped at his
armed associate, the A.D. roughly grabbed his suit coat and yanked him to
the scuffed linoleum.
“What the hell is going on here, Skinner?” Kersh
whispered hoarsely.
“Maybe a robbery in progress, but I don’t know. Guy doesn’t seem to have
any weapon out, and he’s just talking to the owner.”
Kersh craned around the snack
rack. “Looks like the owner has things in hand.
You take this aisle, I’ll come around to the right, ‘case this guy’s got
something going we can’t see or the owner goes squirrelly.”
Skinner nodded, and crabwalked along the chips
as he’d learned in Basic and at Quantico. Three-quarters of the way up the
aisle, he sprung to his feet, piece gripped in both hands.
“Hands on your head, Mister.”
Showing no alarm and not turning toward the agent, the man slowly raised
his arms, as if about to fly. His palms rested gently on each side of his
cranium.
“Sir, you can lower your weapon now,” Skinner advised the old Vietnamese
man as Kersh materialized with his weapon to Skinner’s
right flank. The owner/manager’s aim didn’t waiver, his wrinkled fingers
did not loosen on the trigger or barrel. “Sir, put away the gun. Everything’s
under control now.”
“Tell him to go,” the old man ordered quietly, staring only at the man before
his counter. “You tell him to go, I put the gun away.”
Skinner glanced at Kersh, who wore an expression
of confusion. Both agents kept their guns at 45 degrees. Skinner nodded at
the deputy director, and stepped forward slowly. He patted the “robber” down
from calves to shoulders.
“This man doesn’t have any weapon, sir,” he told the owner/manager. “I’m
reaching into my jacket for my ID – I’m with the FBI, and so is this man.”
The Vietnamese man made
no move toward Skinner, and ignored the ID sleeve he held at arm’s length.
“Sir,” Skinner said more emphatically. “This man can’t harm you. Let’s put
the gun down before somebody gets hurt.”
“He leaves now, nobody gets hurt. You don’t know.”
“What don’t I know?”
The owner/manager looked annoyed for a second. “He is, ah...” the old man
began to utter a vaguely familiar Vietnamese phrase, then sputtered with frustration.
“He is evil.”
“He doesn’t look evil now,” Kersh said tensely,
gun aimed at the counter.
“No, no,” the man breathed. “He not evil man.
IS Evil.”
**
Skinner blinked
and looked to Kersh, who shrugged. “What do you
mean, he is evil? You mean like he’s the personifica
--, that he’s some sort of evil entity, being?”
“For God’s sake, Skinner,”
Kersh growled.
“He is...” the owner/manager repeated the Vietnamese phrase.
“Like demon, devil. Freddy the Nightmare Man.”
“Freddy Krueger, like in the movies,”
Kersh offered, incredulously. “What’s your name, mister?”
Skinner now considered the silent “robber” fully for the first time. He
was Caucasian. And that was about it. The A.D. searched for any distinguishing
feature, any scar or blemish, an outsized nose or jug ears. The man was average,
if anything over-average. And he did not seem alarmed
at the shotgun trained on his forehead or outraged at the show of weaponry
occasioned by his unarmed presence.
“John,” the man finally supplied.
“Full name,” Kersh barked.
“Smith...”
“Aw, shit,” the deputy director sighed.
“...John Smith.”
**
“I’m going to call 911,” Skinner informed the owner/manager,
his left hand snaking into his jacket for his cell phone. “We’ll take him
to the police station and sort all of this out.
OK?”
“NO!” the old man yelled. “You don’t call
nobody! He fool you. He
escape police.”
“Sir,”
Kersh began. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Tran, Tran Li Nguyen.”
“Mr. Nguyen, this man is obviously unarmed. What leads
you to the conclusion that he poses any threat to you?”
The old man’s glance flickered to
Kersh and back to John Smith. “Two weeks ago, he
start coming in. Cigarettes, Lotto, beer.
He ask questions about Tran, Tran’s family.
He know things, but don’t say.
Things about Tran’s village, about war.”
“That right, Smith?” Skinner asked.
“Smalltalk,” Smith explained in a smooth, average voice.
“My older brother, he was in ‘Nam. I was just exploring our common bonds.”
“You got a problem with Asian-Americans, sir?”
Kersh said, low and intent. Skinner could see a vein working in his
colleague’s jaw. “Maybe you don’t like Mr. Tran here coming into your neighborhood
here, running an honest business.”
The man turned with a sardonic smile, hands still on head,
to face Kersh.
“Yeah. That’s it. I don’t like the slopes
and the gooks taking food from our mouths. I thought your kind didn’t cotton
to them much, either.”
Kersh smiled coolly at the
man’s mocking redneck parody, at his attempt to bait the African-American
agent.
“No,” Nguyen snapped. “He try
to fool you. He not that way -- he make you think he is.”
“Just what is your problem?” Skinner asked Smith. Smith
turned.
“Just a faithful customer. I
value loyalty. Semper fi
, know what I mean??”
Skinner’s eyes widened, and his gun dropped a quarter inch.
“How did--? What did you mean, ‘Semper
fi?’”
“It’s written all over you, Soldier,” Smith said. “By your
age, I’d guess you probably spent a little time in Tran’s backyard, pissing
napalm and shooting little yellow people.”
Skinner’s eyes narrowed. It could have been a guess, or
maybe, if the man actually had a brother who’d been in country...
“Kind of like a class reunion, huh, Agent?” Smith continued.
He turned to Kersh. “Don’t suppose you were over
there with the big guy? Didn’t think so.”
“You got a clever mouth for someone in the middle of an
NRA convention, don’t you?” Kersh
said, his face expressionless, his gun at a rigid 45 degrees from
his body.
“Kersh,” Skinner said slowly.
He probably did project Uncle Sam and olive drab, but the jab at
Kersh’s essential insecurity, his invasive probings
into Nguyen’s ... “Mr. Nguyen. Put the gun away, and we’ll settle this
with the local police. If this man’s been harassing you, we can make sure—”
“What? He leave me alone?” Tran
glared hatefully at Smith. “He never leave me alone.
You don’t see. I got no choice.” The gun raised a notch.
“Convince me,” Skinner said suddenly. “I can’t let you
kill this man. Convince me. Then we can figure out how to deal with this
situation.”
“Skinner,” Kersh warned.
Nguyen’s gaze shifted to Skinner. “What he say.
It true? You were soldier?”
“Yes.”
“You hear of ma
quy you over there?”
“It sounds familiar.”
“That what he is –
ma quy, demon,” Nguyen said, gesturing with
the gunbarrel toward Smith. “He
come here. For me.”
**
Skinner had been practically a boy when he’d served his
hitch in country. Even so, he’d quickly
learned that despite the French colonization, the Communist incursion, and
the ensuing battle for hearts, minds, and resources of Southeast Asia, the
Vietnamese had preserved a rich folklore laden with fairies, devils, ghosts,
and legendary characters who personified their loftiest virtues and darkest
vices. Faithfulness, family honor, and duty – these were the major values
upon which they had constructed their folk culture.
“You know how it was there,” Tran Nguyen explained, eyes
unwaveringly on Smith. “Everything mix up, confused, nobody know who will
win. Whoever win, they’re in charge, they control.
I must protect my family, wife and daughter. I am counterintelligence with
your CIA.”
Skinner was surprised, not shocked. A South Vietnamese
spy chief, one of the best in his day, ran a clothing alterations shop near
the Capitol. Professorial credentials, financial acumen, social or familial
title – these had bought most Vietnamese little opportunity when they arrived
on U.S. soil except a fresh start.
“Also I work for...them,” Nguyen added silently. Skinner’s
brow rose. “We do not know. I must protect family.”
Skinner felt none of the anger or judgment many vets might
have felt. He’d been in Nam ostensibly to rescue the
Nguyens and their countrymen but it had taken him just a few short
weeks to understand that rescue was a relative concept. After blowing the
head off a 10-year-old boy who’d entered his camp covered with grenades, Skinner
recognized the cost for these people of the U.S.’ rescue mission.
“So you’re saying Smith here followed you to the U.S. because
of your...”
“Disloyalty.” Nguyen spat the
word, as if it were a bitter piece of meat he was forced to consume. “I am
disloyal, and he come so I not forget.”
Kersh sighed, his gun hand
growing stiff. “So you say this, this demon, waited, how long, 15, 20 years
to walk into your store. Where’s he been?”
“He must wait,” Nguyen said. “The Viet Cong, your CIA,
they will not protect me. I leave with my wife, my daughter, nothing more.
Luckily, have family, friends here. They find work for me, I save. He must
wait.”
“For you to become successful,” Skinner said. “You can’t
squeeze blood out of
a turnip.” Nguyen frowned at the American idiom. “He can’t take what
you don’t have.”
“Yes. Yes, that is right.”
“Please,” Smith snorted. “Maybe you buy this horsecrap
, Semper Fi, out
of G.I. Joe guilt, probably. But surely the civvy
here doesn’t believe this load of
“Just shut up, Smith,” Kersh snapped. “Unless
you want to piss him off enough he blows your head off just to stop your yapping.”
“You leave,” Nguyen told Smith. “I don’t want to blow heads off. Just leave
me. I know what I did – I have pain enough. You leave; I won’t hurt you.
Promise.”
Smith smirked. “You won’t hurt me. If I was a demon, like a demon would
choose this body, what makes you think that shotgun would make a dent in
me?”
“Don’t test him, Smith,” Skinner said tensely.
“You believe him, don’t you?” Smith laughed. “Jesus, they
must’ve done a job on you over there – you must’ve sniffed too much napalm.
Right, Alvin?”
The agents froze, and Skinner’s heart began to pound. He’d
used Kersh’s last name earlier, but had made no
reference to his first. It was too stupid a blunder on Smith’s part to be
unintentional. “Smith” was playing with them, flexing his muscles.
“Enough of this shit,” Kersh
said evenly. “Put the weapon down, Nguyen. This can only end badly if you
don’t.”
Nguyen smiled oddly, his shoulders shifting slightly but
the the shotgun remaining rigid. Smith’s face
went blank, and he slumped to the floor.
“How badly you want it to end,
And the lights went out. Skinner fell instinctively into a crouch.
“Kersh!!”
“Don’t fucking move, Nguyen!!”
Kersh roared. He was answered by a sharp explosion and the sound
of a display of chips splintering behind him. A silhouette rushed from behind
the counter, crashing through the plate glass to the left of the counter and
slapping across the minimart lot.
The agents crunched through the pebbles of glass onto the tarmac. “Nguyen!”
Skinner shouted, targeting the dark shape headed for the street. But the figure
was too fast – far swifter than the elderly man who’d sold beef jerky and
Lotto tickets behind the minimart counter.
Skinner and Kersh pursued the figure for three
blocks before it turned onto a side street, and they lost sight of him. The
street dead-ended a half-block past an alley, and
the agents peered into the inky blackness of the alleyway.
“Let’s split up,” Kersh ordered. “But watch
your ass, Skinner.”
Kersh disappeared, and Skinner,
gun tight in both hands, plunged into the darkness to his left.
**
“Here, boy.”
Kersh whirled around, disoriented.
It was the kind of disorientation that occurred when a coworker materialized
at a neighborhood block party, when the guy down the block pops up at the
same hotel during a vacation a half-continent away. Except this was a dual
dislocation, occurring in time as well as space.
Kersh had been only a child
when he’d heard the voice, and he had heard the voice only once, while in
a state of profound terror. But the cheerfully belligerent voice, young and
stupid but full of a sort of ancient hatred, had remained logged in the back
of Alvin Kersh’s brain.
He was standing by a spattered, fragrant restaurant Dumpster,
smoothing back his tangled, overlong hair, one hand jammed into the pockets
of his vintage jeans. The jeans weren’t the stone-washed, two paychecks’ worth
of denim jeans you bought at the gap, but the deep-dyed blue jeans
criss-crossed by orange thread that teens today would howl at or howl
at being forced to wear. The boy who called to Kersh
had been only a few years older than the agent – when the agent had been
a 10-year-old living on the razor’s edge of fear and hope that for black
Americans had been the late ‘60s.
“I thought coons could see in the dark,” the boy jeered.
Kersh could now see that his other hand held a
large and wicked switchblade. “See King Nigger got his last night.
You goin’ to the funeral, boy?”
Kersh remembered the hormone-cracked
adolescent voice for two reasons. He’d met the smirking youth the morning
after Walter Cronkite had informed his weeping mother and father that Dr.
Martin Luther King had succumbed to gunshot wounds delivered by an unknown
assassin.
“Who are you?” Kersh could
barely get the words out. His gun was aimed at the youth’s chest, and the
kid’s “pigsticker” was no match for his Bureau-issued
armament. But the deputy director’s gun hand trembled slightly.
“That all you can say?” the punk sneered. “Or the cat got
your tongue now that the King Nigger can’t talk for you?
Not so sassy, now, huh, boy?”
“I don’t even know you,” Kersh
murmured. It had been precisely what he’d said more than three decades
before, when he and Franklin Joyner had been cornered by this boy and three
more like him. Fed no doubt by years of evening suppers filled with racial
scapegoating and paranoid speculation about
the rising stock of the Afro-American, the stupid white boys were riding
high on King’s death, and Alvin and Franklin happened to be the first Afro-Americans
unfortunate enough to cross their paths that day.
Kersh wondered inanely where
the rest of them were – the other three silently menacing, acne-pocked bigots
and his friend Franklin, who could never keep up with
“Did a number on your fat coon pal,” the boy cooed, playing
with his knife blade. “They found him the next day next to the
tracks, they figured it was the Klan. Course, you
was probably hiding under your bed, makin
’ chocolate in your pants, at the time.”
Alvin and Franklin had both been duly warned it would be
like this that day, and, in fact, Alvin’s mother had practically begged him
to stick around the house until “things had settled down a bit.”
However, per parental instructions, Alvin and Franklin
kept their mouths shut, and did nothing to provoke a response from the older
boys. They kept walking toward the safety of a neighborhood the white boys
did not dare enter – an act which only enraged the thugs. Verbal taunting
soon escalated to an exchange of epithets, and when the smirking boy spat
in
Over dinner that night, he was uncommunicative and unreceptive
to what amounted to a funereal meal. When Mrs. Joyner called regarding her
missing son’s whereabouts late that night,
Kersh had never shared the
secret of his friend’s brutal murder with anyone. Though mentally he had
managed to compartmentalize the escape that had saved his life, introspective
moments brought to the surface feelings of profound shame at what adult
“Well?” the teen snapped. “You wanna
stand up like a man this time and take your medicine?”
“What...What are you?” Kersh
asked.
“I’m Donald James Gulik, the
man shishkabobbed your nigger
buddy while you was leaving a piss-trail down
Cleland beamed brightly and transformed into a grim, scowling
older man with thinning hair and an icily dignified bearing. The alien regarded
Kersh clinically. “How long do you think you can
run, Kersh? We’re onto you – we know about your
covert act of disobedience with Mulder. When
you no are longer of use to us, you will make an excellent lab specimen. A
scared white rat forced to watch as organ after organ is removed from his
flabby human shell...”
An explosion rocked the quiet California night. It was
only in the middle of the next five shots that Kersh
realized he was unloading his weapon into the alien-
Gulik-Cleland. It took a few moments longer for him to realize he
was alone in the alley, shaking uncontrollably.
**
Skinner heard the shots, coming in a rapid succession the
assistant director recognized as a likely panic reaction. Though the sound
echoed through the deserted neighborhood, he thought he could pinpoint the
source, and he sprinted toward it.
Skinner was first struck by the acrid scent of burning
tobacco. A cloud of cigarette smoke trailed down the narrow alleyway, growing
thicker and more pungent as it culminated in a black open doorway under a
scripted sign heralding “The Nail Nook.” The smoke had an odd greenish tint
to it as it swirled in the doorway. The A.D. tightened his grip on his weapon,
and slid into the inky shop.
He faltered his way through what was obviously a storeroom,
toeing boxes out of the way as he located a sliver of light at the bottom
of a door. He sought the cool metal of a knob, and entered the front of the
salon.
Skinner’s nostrils were assaulted by foul, faintly organic
chemicals, and, silhouetted against the streetlit
front window were two rows of heavily laden work tables, a cash register,
sign-in kiosk – and a seated man whose head was wreathed in smoke. A red dot
moved before the face and settled at the end of the intruder’s arm.
“Ah, Skinner,” the man greeted with an effete dryness the
A.D. recognized at once. “How are you, my old friend?”
“What...What the hell are you doing here, Spender?” Skinner
growled, drawing a bead in the center of the silhouetted head. “You have something
to do with all of this?”
“Careful, my friend,” the Cigarette Smoking Man chuckled.
“You’re beginning to sound as paranoid as Mulder
. Except we both now know that paranoia is merely
the cold breath you feel on the back of your neck before the lions lunge.”
“Answer my goddamned question,” Skinner roared. “What’s
this all about? Is this some kind of trap? Is Kersh
in on it?”
“Kersh?
My goodness, Walter. Oh, Walter,
Kersh is even more in the dark than you or your flunkies Doggett
and Reyes. He’s no longer a true believer – he’s come to realize just who,
or what’s, pulling the strings on this cosmic puppet show. Now all he can
do is pray the cat doesn’t develop a taste for his particularly breed of
mouse.
The cigarette swung in a lazy arc to the shadowy man’s
head, and flared as Spender sighed gratefully. “You are in far more of a
dilemma. Kersh’s god was the Book, the Bureau.
Yours’ is far more powerful and much more ungainly. Your insignificant role
in that little drama we staged in Southeast Asia; your belief that somehow
you’ve been preserving order and decency, shuffling paper and occasionally
perpetrating some act of civil disobedience in the name of Walter Skinner’s
Personal Code of Honor. But your ‘religion’ is a slippery thing, isn’t it,
Walter? You deny anything beyond the four walls of this wet, dying planet,
despite your little day pass into the Great Beyond.”
Skinner’s arm straightened. “How do you know about that?
The only person I—”
The cigarette waved impatiently. “Yes, yes. Agent
Mulder was kind enough to share your little war memoir with me.
As well as many other things, over the years.”
“You’re full of shit!”
The silhouette chuckled again. “Think about it, Walter.
How better to keep tabs on our independent-minded assistant director than
to co-opt him in policing the eccentric Agent Mulder
? The cat watches the mice while we bell the cat.”
Skinner snorted. “That the best you can do? Get up, Spender,
slowly.”
The A.D. saw the shadow’s shoulders shrug, and the man
rose from the chair. Skinner gasped as a stripe of streetlight illuminated
his wrinkled Asian features. Nguyen took a puff on his cigarette and smiled.
“Morley Extra-Cool,” the minimart
owner piped. “Special promotion, two carton for one. You like?”
Skinner was momentarily frozen,
even as he heard a round being pumped into the chamber at the man’s feet.
Nguyen brought the shotgun up; Skinner for a second glimpsed the black hole
that led into eternity.
The shop rang with explosive force, and Nguyen crashed
back into a worktable, sending polish, remover, and implements flying.
Skinner pivoted. Kersh’s face,
behind his newly fired weapon, was gray, beads of sweat twinkling in the light
that leaked in from the street.
“What the hell is going on here, Skinner?”
Kersh whispered.
“Green smoke,” Skinner murmured absently, grabbing a towel
from a nearby table to swab his face.
“What?”
Skinner looked up. “Green smoke.
In ‘Nam, after a mission, after a raid, Airborne’d
drop green smoke bombs near the casualties to let
Medevac know the coast was clear, they could come in and retrieve
the wounded. When I came in the back, I saw green cigarette smoke. Like a
joke. Aimed at me, specifically. Like the way
it, he, taunted each of us back at the minimart
. Preying on our security, on our trust.”
Kersh was silent for a moment.
“We’re going to have to call the locals, though I have no idea what—”
The deputy director had been glancing toward the body.
Skinner turned.
The bare, bloodless linoleum gleamed in the halogen lights
of the deserted street...
**
Three squad cars and a plainclothes unit were illuminating
the minimart lot as Skinner and
Kersh trudged back toward the light. Neither man had any idea how
they conceivably would explain the circumstances of the “case.”
A hefty man in a T-shirt, jeans, and windbreaker broke
from a conversation with a uniformed cop and strode purposefully toward the
pair. “I don’t ‘spose you two are the FBI guys?”
He looked fiercely annoyed
“Deputy Director Alvin Kersh
, Assistant Director Walter Skinner,” Kersh
rapped out, flashing his ID. He nodded toward the garishly lit market. “You
check out the scene in there?”
The cop silently studied the agents. “Yeah, let’s talk
about that. You sure this is the minimart? You
couldn’t be confused? They all kinda look alike...”
“What are you saying?” Kersh
asked, glancing quickly at Skinner.
“C’mon,” the cop snapped, marching across the tarmac.
**
The electronic “chime” greeted the cop and the agents.
It surrendered to the hum of refrigerated cases and fluorescents, and Skinner
reconnoitered the store. Cigarettes, air fresheners, lighters were all neatly
arranged at the counter. The floor was scuffed with the rubber of thousands
of shoes but gleaming and free of blood or human tissue.
A uniform and a deeply bronzed man with glossy black hair
shoved through the stockroom door at the back, the latter clearly agitated
and hurriedly dressed – shoes with no socks, shirttail hanging outside sweatpants.
“Anything missing, damaged, Mr. Patel?” the plainclothes
cop called.
“Everything appears to be in order, but I would like some
explanation for this disruption,” the man said, controlling his tones in obvious
deference to the authority surrounding him.
“Sorry about having to haul you outta
bed,” the detective said. “Mr. Patel, these guys are FBI agents, and they
say there was a shooting here tonight, maybe an hour ago.”
“We close promptly at
“Tran Nguyen,” Skinner interrupted. “That name familiar,
maybe an employee?”
“We are family run entirely,” Patel swelled, as if taping
a commercial for the
“Yes.”
Patel rubbed fretfully at his immaculately groomed mustache.
“My father, he bought this market from a Vietnamese gentleman. Nguyen may
have been his name. I would be delighted to check our records. However, this
would have been 10 years ago, and the Vietnamese gentleman was very ill. This
is why he sold the store – this I remember.”
Skinner and Kersh exchanged
looks, and Kersh looked away.
“You fellas look like you seen
a ghost,” the detective observed.
J.
Four days later
Kersh was sitting at his desk,
fingers templed, deep ridges in his forehead,
as Skinner entered the office. No busied shuffling of papers designed to intimidate
or reemphasize the command chain. No penetrating stare – the calm before
the storm. Just reflection and concern on
Kersh’s face.
“Please have a seat,” Kersh
invited, and Skinner settled in before the desk. The deputy director sat
back and considered his colleague. His right hand floated to a folder on his
desk. “I’ve read your report of the incident in Santa Teresa. It reads like
a bad Stephen King story. Do you really believe that this is an accurate and
rational account of the evening’s events?”
Skinner leaned forward. Kersh
held up a hand.
“Because,” the deputy director drawled, “while you and
I may differ in our approach and philosophies and we may have had our run-ins,
you remain a valuable resource to the Bureau. The records on
Mulder’s hearing are sealed, and so only a handful
are aware of your wildly speculative conspiracy theories. This report--”
Kersh tapped the folder. “This report could undo
much of what you’ve accomplished here at the Bureau.”
“As well as what you’ve accomplished,” Skinner added quietly.
A smile played at the corner of his lips. “You may choose
to believe what you believe – I will concede that I have no desire to wind
up in some basement office, sorting through tales of aliens and phantasms.”
“You know,” Skinner reminded him, more intensely. “You
know what’s out there. You’ve seen it. You’ve--”
“That boy’s psychic fairy tale about
aliens walking among us?” Kersh murmured.
“You know,” Skinner’s voice rose. “You even risked you
career, your life...”
Kersh’s chair
straightened, and his palms met his expensive desk blotter. “Assistant
Director Skinner, I am going to do you a great professional and personal favor,
and not allow you to destroy your life, your career. Whatever happened that
night – collective hallucination, fatigue, whatever – I will not accept this
report.” He pushed the folder across the desk. “You dispose of this however
you see fit, but I would recommend you dispose of it.”
Skinner and Kersh stared intently
across the desk for a moment, and then the assistant director reached for
the folder with a grim smile. Skinner lifted his muscular frame from the leather
chair and turned for the door. Kersh’s brow
rose as the A.D. turned, a frown creasing his face.
“Kersh,” Skinner began, “just
between us, two men, not FBI agents. I had an experience in ‘Nam. I was 18,
and we were on patrol. My company was ambushed, and I was hit pretty
bad. I left my body, or at least it seems I did – I could see my
corpse on the ground, as the Cong looted me. I was technically dead; they
had me in a body bag. They brought me back, but I had seen – things. Until
recently, I was afraid to look beyond that experience. I now accept it, that
there are things we don’t know, things bigger than humanity or maybe even
our universe.
“Until now, I shared that story only with Agent Mulder
. But Nguyen, Smith, whatever you choose to call him or it, knew about my
near-death experience. Just tell me. It won’t leave this office. Just tell
me: When you and I were separated back there, did he talk to you? Did he know
things he couldn’t have known?”
Kersh sat rigidly behind his
desk, eyes locked with Skinner’s. The deputy director sighed. “I’m sorry.
I had no such encounter.” He looked back to his papers. “That’s all, Skinner.”
Skinner nodded and carried his folder to the door. As he
gently clicked the door shut, he spotted Doggett waiting in the outer office.
“Agent,” he greeted, passing briskly through to the hallway.
“Sir,” Doggett responded automatically. The agent frowned
and moved to the inner door.
“John, sit down,” Kersh muttered,
leafing through reports. Doggett waited patiently in a sort of ingrained parade
rest, until the deputy director looked up. “I have a special assignment I’d
like you to take on. One that I believe requires your unique insights.”
“An X-File?” Doggett queried.
“Nothing so exotic,” Kersh
said drily. “No, I’m referring to your empathy,
your desire to see the victimization of innocence avenged.
Specifically, the victimization of a child.”
Doggett’s face hardened, whether at the obvious reference
to his own personal tragedy or at the thought of innocence victimized,
Kersh had no idea. The deputy director handed him a freshly compiled
casefile.
“Franklin Joyner, 10, found beaten to death in a railway
yard back in 1968, case never solved,” Kersh said.
“I can’t reveal the source of my information, but it’s come to my attention
that a man named Donald James Gulik may have had
some complicity in the murder. You’ll see that Gulik’s
had a string of arrests for white supremacist and militia-related activities,
but no convictions. I want you to look into this, see if you can make him
for the homicide.”
Doggett bit his lip as he studied the
casefile, and he looked up quizzically. “This happened more than
30 years ago, and the local cops basically shoved it under the carpet, as
I guess was the practice back then. And you’ll pardon me, but didn’t you
grow up in this area?”
Kersh’s face grew solemn, and
his eyes focused tightly on the agent. “Agent Doggett, I owe you neither explanations
nor details. However, since it may aid in your investigation and underline
the importance of this case, yes, I was personally familiar with this crime.
Joyner was a close friend of mine, and I remember his death vividly. But
what’s of paramount importance here is that we have an opportunity to bring
felony charges against a dangerous and destructive man while bringing a measure
of closure to Franklin Joyner’s family. You can understand that, can’t you?”
Doggett pursed his lips and nodded. “I’ll catch the first
flight out.”
Kersh relaxed.
“Very good. One more thing: You know an Agent Robert Cleland?”
An expression of suppressed displeasure crossed Doggett’s
craggy face. “Yeah. I know him.”
“He’ll be working with you in the field. I specifically
requested his involvement, and I want you to keep him apprised of every detail
of the case. Agent Reyes will have plenty to do in your absence. That’s all.”
Doggett knew better than to question or object to the directive.
He nodded again, and turned to leave.
“John?” Kersh
called, all tension and gravity seeping from his voice.
“Yeah?”
“How are you doing these days? With
respect to the revelations regarding your son’s death?”
Doggett looked curiously for any sign of subterfuge or
subtext, but saw none in Kersh’s slightly bothered
expression. “I’m fine, sir. I mean, of course I think about Luke, about the
men who killed him, about how things might have been... I guess I just take
it one day at a time, like they say – I hold onto the good parts, and live
with the rest.”
Kersh seemed to be somewhere
else. “And your current assignment. It’s changed
you, I’ve seen that. John, would you say you believed in demons?”
The agent’s jaw dropped slightly open, and he considered
an answer to this uncharacteristic inquiry. “Well. Probably not in the supernatural
sense, little guys with pitchforks and red eyes and wings. But I suppose I’ve
come to see that the evil men do comes back to haunt them.
That our own doubts and secrets can choke us or even bury us alive.
That probably ain’t what you mean. You’re
gettin’ too deep for me, Director.”
“I doubt that,” Kersh said.
“I doubt that very much. Uh, that’s all, John. I appreciate your cooperation
on the other matter.”
Doggett looked down for a second or two longer at
Kersh, who seemed perched on the edge of some emotional or ethical
precipice. But the deputy director was temporarily lost to this world, and
the agent left him to his thoughts and whatever demons rested on his shoulders.
Mahfoud
Alhabad cruised gracefully into the curb before the Palmer Hilton,
National Public Radio and a spicy aroma of incense wafting from the windows
of his cab to merge with the warm Chicago evening.
“Ruth Chris Steakhouse,” the man ordered, sliding into the backseat. He
placed his expensive leather briefcase on the cracked vinyl beside him and
smoothed his summer Armani slacks. “You know where that is, don’t you?”
Mahfoud nodded.
“Used to be every Chicago cabbie knew the city like the back of his hand,”
the man lamented. “Now, you practically have to get behind the wheel and help
them find their ass. No offense.”
Mahfoud shrugged slightly.
The man sat back and peered out at the great stone buildings and narrow storefronts
of the Loop, and the driver headed for the river.
At the steakhouse, the man absently told Mahfoud
to keep the change. Mahfoud handed him an expense
receipt and a card. “You call me; I’ll come right over.”
He doubted the businessman would use the card – the
But this man was made of far weaker stuff than “Skinner.” It was what made
him steal from his employers, what made him a faithless husband and an apathetic
father. They would have a long talk about faithfulness and trust and loyalty.
It was, quite literally, what he lived for...