Lone Gunmen Fic: The Geek Rock Series, Part 1
Title: The Geek Rock Series
Fandom: The Lone Gunmen
Summary: John Byers has one hell of a mid-life crisis, complete with fast cars, fast women, action/adventure, leather pants and a doomed affair with a hot blonde (or two). (AU after Tango de los Pistoleros)
Rating: PG-13(ish)
Characters/Pairing(s): Byers/Susanne, Jimmy/Yves, Byers/OC(s), subtext-y hints of Jimmy/Byers and vaguely humorous references to Langly/Frohike
The prologue is here. Also, since this is AU, I've taken some vague liberties with Yves' backstory. And it's not really like they explained it much to begin with.
In this installment, Byers does his best Bob Woodward impression, Yves lurks in parking garages and leaves cryptic messages in the New York Times, Frohike gets outed as a Parrothead, Jimmy is much-mentioned but never actually present and Langly is relegated to saying occasional, inflammatory things that advance the plot.
1. Flagpole Sitta
Summary: "I wanna publish zines and rage against machines."
I wanna publish zines
and rage against machines
paranoia paranoia
everybody's coming to get me
just say you never met me
I'm going underground with the moles
It was a nearly universal truth that at any given time in the nation's capital someone, somewhere, was lurking in a parking garage.
It wasn't the first time Byers had been that guy, and wasn't likely to be the last. That night, he even wore a trench coat for the occasion. Of course, it was late March and drizzling sluggishly, which at least partially explained the coat. He was waiting in a moodily-lit parking structure on the District side of the 14th Street Bridge, carrying a cheap attache case and looking for all the world like a minor player in the film adaption of a Tom Clancy novel.
He checked his watch for the third time in as many minutes, and looked up suddenly at the sound of a soft footfall.
"I heard you were looking for me," Yves said, emerging from the shadows between two parked SUVs.
"That's right," he said, deciding not to ask which of his methods had been successful at reaching her. He didn't want to antagonize her -- yet.
"I suppose you know how foolhardy that is?"
He sighed. "What's with the cloak and dagger act, Yves? You used to just drop by whenever you felt like it."
"I got sloppy. It was a mistake."
She looked tired and drawn, thinner than he remembered. The last year had taken some kind of toll on her. He looked a little too long, searching for answers. She noticed, shifting uncomfortably and taking a small step back toward the shadows.
"Well?" she said, trying to sound brisk, businesslike. In reality, it just came out irritated, almost petulant.
"I need your help," he said.
"And that would be new how, exactly?"
"Well, you haven't been around lately to ask, for one thing."
She took a breath, as though trying to gather her patience. "What's the job?"
"I need you to find someone."
Yves shook her head, and turned slightly as though she was about to leave. "Use a phone book."
He reached out a hand and, none too gently, stopped her. She looked down at his hand on her arm, then up at his face, a little shocked. "You know better, Yves," he said. "This isn't some joke, some easy job. I went to the trouble of finding you for a reason."
"I see some things have changed since I left." She pulled her arm out of his grasp. "Fine. Who do you need me to find?"
"A woman named Susanne Modeski -- though you won't find her under that name. She was last seen in Manhattan last September."
"Last September?" Yves asked, starting to look suspicious. "Which day last September?"
"The 11th."
"Oh, fabulous." She folded her arms across her chest, turning away from him and exhaling sharply. "Guess what, Byers? Mystery solved. I think I might know what happened to her..."
"It isn't what you think. She wasn't in Lower Manhattan. I was with her that day. She was flying out later that morning. I don't know whether she ever made it."
"All right. I'm listening..."
"I need someone with connections, someone with experience at this sort of thing. Most importantly, someone who can be discreet." He paused. "I can't pay you, of course, but I hope you'll at least consider helping. You're my last resort."
One eyebrow quirked up, a standard Yves response. It made him realize that he'd actually missed her presence, in some curious way. "If you found me," she said, "something that's no easy feat, let me assure you -- why don't you just go look for her yourself? Then money wouldn't be an issue at all."
"I think-" He hesitated. "I think maybe I'm afraid to know. I think I might not do everything required to find the truth."
Something that almost looked like sympathy crossed Yves' face, but was just as quickly gone again. "And you were counting on what? My heart of gold?"
"There's always blackmail, of course," he said mildly, "but I hope it won't come to that."
She actually laughed at him. "Whatever it is you think you know about me, I can almost assure you that it isn't the actual truth."
"You might be surprised," he said, but it was mostly a bluff. None of what he knew about her was concrete. He'd been able to discover enough hints to scare her a little, maybe, but then he'd never had a particularly good poker face.
"There's no need for that," she said, relenting. "I'll see what I can do -- just this once, as repayment for past favors. I'm not promising much, though. No one knows about this but the two of us, understand? No one."
"Fine. Agreed." He dug a thick file of out his bag and handed it over. "Here's everything I've been able to find out so far. As far as I can tell, she wasn't on any of the flights used in the attack. I've accounted for all the passengers who fit her description. It's always possible that she was on foot that day, I suppose, but that doesn't match what she told me before I left for LaGuardia."
"What did she tell you?"
"That she was catching a morning flight, probably around the same time as mine. I assume, though, that she was leaving from a different airport. Possibly even going somewhere by train first. I have no idea what her final destination was."
"So, it's highly unlikely that she was hurt or killed, albeit not entirely impossible." She studied him for a moment. "Or am I wrong?"
"No, you're right. The likelihood is that she's still alive."
"And yet that doesn't seem to make you happy." It wasn't quite a question.
"If she's alive..." he said. "If she's alive and free, then why hasn't she contacted me? It's been almost seven months."
Yves gave him a look that seemed to say she knew exactly why someone might want to disappear that way, but she pressed her lips together and kept silent.
"It's a distinct possibility that she was detained by the authorities," he continued. "That's where I would start, if it were me."
The eyebrow arched up again. "But it isn't you." She slid his papers into a leather satchel slung across one shoulder. "Out of curiosity, how did you find me?"
He might not have been a good bluffer, but that didn't mean he was about to show his hand. "It wasn't easy. I had to call in a few favors -- not all of them mine."
"How is-" she hesitated, "everybody?" When he didn't reply, she added, "Go ahead and lie to me, Byers. That's really what I want to hear, anyway."
"All right then. They're fine. Everyone's fine."
She nodded once, briskly, and then back to business, "I'll contact you when I find something. In the meantime, don't try to contact me this way again. It could be dangerous, for both of us."
"How am I supposed to-"
"You aren't, for now. I'll let you know when and where to meet me, and we'll come up with a better system then, depending on what I find."
"All right, Yves," he said, seeing that this was the best he was going to get from her. "I'll wait to hear from you."
*
In the aftermath of the attacks, U.S. Airways had put them all up at the Airport Sheraton near LaGuardia. The Sheraton opened up their kitchens, providing free coffee and food round the clock to all the stranded travelers. Nobody really ate much, though. The hotel was packed, the staff setting up cots in the lobby for the overflow. No one who needed a place to sleep was turned away that first night.
He'd wound up sharing his room with a pharmaceutical rep from Atlanta and a pair of college students from Maine. There were two queen beds and the sleeper sofa pulled out into a double, so they flipped a coin to see which one of them would have to share. Not that any of them actually slept. They brought coffee up to the room and sat in front of the t.v. for most of the night, the light flickering unevenly across their faces as the sun rose.
Communications were spotty for days, even weeks, afterward, but on the 12th he'd managed to log onto his email long enough to reply to Langly and Frohike to let them know that he was all right. They thought he was in Philadelphia visiting an old college friend, something he felt vaguely guilty about under the circumstances. He promised himself he'd tell them the truth when he got back.
While the connection was still there, weak and anemic as it was, he let each of his hotel roommates email their loved ones from his machine. He hadn't let another living soul, who wasn't Langly or Frohike, touch his computer in more than ten years.
That afternoon his cellphone rang, sounding incredibly, unnaturally loud and breaking the steady background rhythm of CNN's anchors speaking in hushed and serious tones. He reached for it, half-expecting (or maybe hoping) that it was Susanne. It wasn't; it was his ex-wife.
"John? John, it's Meg." Her voice sounded strained, a little hoarse, as though maybe she'd been crying. She wouldn't have been the only one. "I'm so glad you're all right! Where are you?"
"New York," he replied, wondering vaguely why he was telling her the truth.
Meg had been his college girlfriend, his first real love, his first real broken heart. Of course, eventually, he'd broken hers in return, so he guessed they were even. He hadn't heard from her in at least two years.
"It's stupid, I know," she said, "but I've been calling everyone: Mom, Dad, my sister, Penny from college. Just to see whether they're okay."
"That's not stupid. It's not stupid at all."
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and the others shifted slightly away from him, concentrating more intently on the t.v., giving him space.
"I'm glad you're all right," she said again, then lapsed into silence as though unsure what to say next.
"It's good to hear from you," he said, because it was. "I'm glad you called."
"Why are you in New York?"
"Visiting a friend." It wasn't exactly a lie. Not really the truth, either, but not a lie.
"Did you see...?"
"No. I was at the airport. We saw it on t.v." He paused. "Are you all right? Is everything...?"
"I'm fine," she said. "They keep acting like we're lucky here... by comparison, I guess. I've been avoiding Arlington. It's not like anyone is moving around much right now, anyway. I'm not even sure whether the Metro is running again yet."
"It's probably better to stay put."
"I know." She sighed slightly.
They'd spoken for a few more minutes, Meg extracting a promise that he would keep in touch until he got back to D.C. When he hung up, he hadn't been sure exactly what to feel. He'd missed Meg since they split, obscurely, but not enough to reach out to her, to make an effort. She had tried at first: an occasional phone call, an invitation to dinner with mutual friends. He'd always found some excuse, and after awhile (longer than maybe it should have taken) she stopped asking. He'd had other priorities at the time, so being free of those distractions had allowed him to focus on his work, the mission, changing the world.
"You're broken, John," she'd said to him when she left. "You break a little bit more each day, and I don't know what's causing it or how to stop it."
She'd been right, though he hadn't been able to see it at the time. Eight years after the fact, he'd finally begun to notice the tiny stress fractures in his psyche, building up over time.
Driving toward Takoma Park after his meeting with Yves, he felt broken, as though he could almost feel himself straining and creaking under the pressure.
For the first time in his life, he felt old.
He pulled into the alley and turned off the van. The ancient parking brake squeaked in protest when he set it, the van lurching slightly as the engine settled to a stop. Frohike was the only one still awake when he got inside. The place was a disaster, pieces of equipment and the guts of computers littering the worktables. The physical mess just added to the psychological one, the pressure in Byers' chest, the feeling of not quite being able to breathe.
Frohike looked up from whatever he was examining under his magnifying glass. "Hey, buddy. Where've you been?"
"Out." Frohike raised an eyebrow, and Byers relented, "Following up a lead. It might be nothing, though."
"You okay, man?"
He went over to the fridge, without really thinking about it, and pulled out a longneck Sam Adams. He waved the bottle in Frohike's general direction. "You want one?"
"Sure," Frohike said, pushing the magnifying glass away and coming over to sit with Byers at the kitchen table.
Once both bottles were open and they were sitting with their hands cradled around the slightly damp glass, Byers said, "It's just been one of those days, you know?"
Frohike grinned. "There's another kind?" Then, after a long drink, "You want to talk about it?"
"Not particularly."
They sat without speaking for a few minutes, both sipping their beer.
Breaking the silence, Frohike finally said, "You ever think about taking a vacation, Byers? Take a week, go down to Aruba or PV or someplace? Get good and wasted, work on a tan, chat up some hot young thing in a bar?"
"Never."
"Maybe you should. Even Mulder used to run off to Graceland every once in awhile."
"Hey, we went to that Jimmy Buffet concert you wanted to see..."
"That was two years ago, Byers, and seeing Buffet -- while the man is arguably a genius -- doesn't count as a vacation. And neither," he said, cutting Byers off before he could even contemplate getting the words out, "does Vegas. If there was ever anything less like a vacation..."
"All right, all right."
"Besides," Frohike continued, "I'm not talking about the three of us. I'm talking about you, getting away from all this for a couple days."
Byers took another drink. "The last time I did that terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center."
"Running off to see Susanne doesn't count, either. I thought we'd covered that with Vegas?"
"I'm not really sure what you're getting at."
"I'm saying that you should take some time, get some distance -- from us, from her, from the quest, but especially from her. You're like the walking dead, man. It's way worse this time than it was after Baltimore." He finished off his beer and set the bottle on the table with a determined clink. "I think we all need a little space, maybe a different perspective."
Frohike was staring past Byers' left shoulder, looking unusually serious. A sudden, horrible thought occurred to him. "You're not thinking about quitting, are you?"
"Nah." Frohike shook his head, looking at Byers again. "But it might not hurt us to re-evaluate things a little. It's not the same world it was six months ago."
"Everyone keeps saying that, but I'm not even sure what it means anymore." Byers finished his own beer and went to get another.
"Sure you are. You've been weird ever since New York -- weirder than usual, that is. You might be able to tell yourself that all this moody, existential angst is about Susanne or facing down your fortieth birthday..."
"Which isn't for another year and a half, thanks." He twisted the cap off and neatly dropped it into one of the clearly-labeled recycling bins before sitting back down.
"You think that's what it is, but it isn't," Frohike continued without missing a beat. "Not entirely, anyway. I'm feeling it, too. So's Langly. We just don't externalize the way you do."
"Externalize? Since when did you turn into Dr. Phil?"
Frohike ignored him. "You're a piss-poor bluffer. Everything you're feeling is right out there for the whole word to see -- and you feel everything. It's part of the reason you're a nice guy. But over the long term? It's bound to give you a stomach ulcer."
"I don't see how a week in some tourist trap is going to stop that."
"And that, my friend," Frohike aimed his empty bottle in the general direction of the recycling, "is exactly the problem."
"Are you going somewhere?" Byers asked. "To the mountaintop, to find yourself?"
"Now you sound like Langly. Sarcasm doesn't work as well on you. Besides, if I were going to go on a vision quest, it would be all about Mardi Gras. Or Pamplona. Somewhere with blood, love, wine and wild women."
"How very Hemingway," Byers replied dryly.
"Look, just say you'll think about it."
"I'll think."
Frohike sighed and got up. "Are you heading to bed any time soon?" Byers shook his head. "Well, turn the lights off when you're done, then."
*
Sunday mornings were surprisingly sleepy and uneventful, largely by Frohike's decree. He'd ensured compliance with this rule early on in their partnership, by virtue of being the first out of bed on Sundays, heading to the kitchen and cooking the sort of breakfast that could break any man's will. Blueberry waffles had a way of pushing away all thoughts of work -- or, for that matter, all thoughts of anything beyond reading the paper and possibly taking an early afternoon nap.
All of which, of course, went exactly according to Frohike's plan.
When they'd started out together, Byers had still been at the FCC. He'd known he couldn't continue on working for the government, but had been afraid to leave the safety of his job. He hadn't had much in the way of savings, and hadn't expected (rightly) that his parents were too likely to be pleased by a move like that. Langly and Frohike had pooled their resources and set up shop in an old storefront near the U Street and Cardozo metro stop. Back then, that part of the city had been full of crumbling warehouses and abandoned industrial lofts. Within a few years, the area had undergone an 'urban renaissance' and they were no longer welcome among the high-end fitness clubs, antique shops and vegan restaurants. In 1989, though, it had just been them, surrounded by ancient PCs and a Xerox copier in that old store. With a full-time job during the week, Byers would head over there on Friday evenings and fling himself headlong into work all weekend: researching leads, checking facts, combing through de-classified reports. Sometimes he wouldn't even bother to sleep. After about a month of this, Frohike had turned up one Sunday morning to find Byers in the shirtsleeves and loosened tie he'd been wearing since the previous Friday and Langly passed out on a cot in the corner with a floppy disk clutched in one hand.
"I'm putting my foot down," was all he'd said, and disappeared for the better part of an hour.
He'd returned with coffee, egg-and-chorizo breakfast burritos, salsa fresca, home fries and a video cassette.
"Both of you are officially insane." He threw the video onto Byers' makeshift desk. "Put that on, wake Langly up and then find clean cups for the coffee."
A little surprised, Byers had complied. The video turned out to be All the President's Men, and the burritos had been fantastic. And so, a long-standing tradition had been born. No all-weekend work benders were permitted, except in the most dire of circumstances. Frohike kept them honest via huevos rancheros, freshly-squeezed juice and maple dutch babies. It had worked for going on twelve years, and that Sunday morning was no exception.
In the two weeks since Byers met Yves in the parking garage on 14th Street, he hadn't heard a thing from her. The morning's Eggs Benedict and hash browns had ensured he wasn't going to be worrying about it much until the following day, though. Not bothering to change out of his bedroom slippers, he propped his feet up on the couch, leaned back and began sorting through the newspapers delivered that morning.
"Has anyone seen my New York Times?" he asked, frowning and flipping through the stack of papers.
"Oh, yeah," Frohike said from the kitchen, brandishing a soapy skillet in his direction. "Jimmy must've finished the crossword puzzle."
Langly snorted from across the room.
"You two are really too hard on him..." Byers began.
"And you're too soft on the kid, but now is not the time to have that argument again. And, no, I haven't seen the Times. You're pretty much the only one who reads it."
Byers got up, his full stomach and tryptophan-buzzed brain protesting a little, and went to look for it. He found the paper sitting next to his computer, folded neatly. As he shook it open, he noticed something scrawled in the lower left-hand corner of the front page: a 'B6' written in block letters and red marker. Who on earth would leave a message like that on their copy of the New York Times? His New York Times, he realized and sat down. The subscription for the Sunday Edition was in his name, and none of the others ever read it -- something that wouldn't have been at all hard for Yves to find out. He opened the paper to section B-6, his foggy Sunday brain finally catching on. He laughed, a little sharply, under his breath. At least she knew her history; he had to give her that.
The message was brief. A time and place.
It was going to be tricky, getting out of there without being noticed, especially on a Sunday. But he couldn't risk missing whatever it was Yves had to tell him.
He folded the paper up and tucked it under one arm as he walked back over to the couch. If he were meeting anyone but Yves, he'd just call Jimmy and ask for a ride. They occasionally went and grabbed a beer together, so it wouldn't arouse any suspicions. Frohike would probably just lecture him about indulging Jimmy too much, as though Jimmy were a spoiled, favorite nephew and not their sole source of venture capital. As it was, though, he couldn't risk bring Jimmy anywhere near Yves. If there was one thing guaranteed to make her bolt, it was Jimmy's presence. Byers had his own theory about why that was the case, but had no doubt Yves would vigorously deny it.
"Hey, Byers," Langly said, looking up from his computer. "I'm going to meet our snitch from the DoD on Tuesday afternoon. He says he has proof that the CIA is trying to pin 9/11 on Saddam Hussein. Want to come?"
"I can't. I have lunch plans."
"With that mysterious source of yours?" Frohike asked.
"No. I'm meeting Meg." He hadn't mentioned her phone call in New York, or any of their subsequent meetings. Langly and Frohike hadn't known her all that well to begin with, so he hadn't really seen the point.
"Seriously, man? When did that happen?"
"Nothing's happened. It's just lunch."
"I thought she hated you, dude," Langly said bluntly. At Frohike's exasperated look, he said, "What? Don't most divorced people hate each other?"
"She seemed like a nice enough kid," Frohike said, ignoring him. "From what I remember, anyway. It's been awhile."
"9/11 shook her up pretty badly. She wants to make peace, be friends again."
"Can't say I blame her," Frohike said. "Good for you, Byers. It's not ten days in the Caymans, but it's something."
He grinned as he said, but Byers felt unaccountably annoyed with him.
"Are either of you planning on using the van tonight? I have some errands I need to run."
"On a Sunday? What are you doing?"
'Dry-cleaning," he lied. "I have a little extra change, so I'll fill the van up. I thought I might pick up some groceries, too. We're running low on milk, and beer."
"Sure, okay. Pick up some bagels, too, if you remember," Frohike said. Langly just shrugged.
"Thanks, guys."
*
The rooftop bar at Perry's was a staple of the Adams Morgan scene, and had been as long as Byers could remember. Not that he'd ever been much-inclined to go. The crowd was as trendy as the decor, a crush of bright, bold, beautiful people against a backdrop of color and the setting sun. Warmer weather had blown up from the Carolina coast earlier in the week, bringing with it the first signs of a D.C. spring and ensuring that Perry's was packed to its limits, even though it was Sunday night.
Yves sat alone at a table for two, looking entirely at ease and blending effortlessly with the college kids and young hipsters in the crowd. A jewel-toned cocktail in a highball glass sat on the table beside her, even though it didn't look like she'd actually touched it. The young men at the bar kept shooting exploratory looks her way, but she ignored them. He couldn't blame them. She looked pretty, deceptively soft. He hadn't seen her wear a dress since Miami. It suited her.
"This is an interesting choice," he said, walking over to the table and taking a seat. "You blend in well, though."
"You don't," she said shortly.
"Thanks for the reminder."
"You might at least have dressed the part. I did." She leaned forward a little, smiling at him. "Now, pretend we're friends."
He smiled back. "I doubt I own anything that wouldn't look out of place here. I let my subscription to Maxim lapse a long time ago."
"Oh, I'm sure you only looked at it for the pictures of half-naked girls, anyway."
"That's more Frohike's department, actually," he replied tartly.
"Signs of life!" she said. "Thank god. I thought this was going to be boring." She smiled at him again, and this time he actually thought it was genuine and not just for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. "I ordered sushi. And a scotch. You drink scotch, don't you?"
"Yes, I do," he said, impressed in spite of himself. "I don't eat sushi, though."
"I know that. I thought it was time to expand your horizons."
She shifted slightly in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, tilting her head to one side. Anyone watching them, he reflected, would probably think they were on a date.
"Why scotch?" she asked conversationally. "Did your father drink it?"
"What makes you say that?"
She shrugged. "Most men who drink scotch picked it up from their fathers. At least, that's been my experience."
"Shouldn't we get down to business?" he said, not especially wanting to discuss his father.
"I was always taught that the best business was conducted with hospitality."
And who taught you that? Your father? he thought, wondering about the hints of her past he'd been able to uncover. Or are you just talking?
Aloud, he said, "All right."
The server brought his scotch, neat. He wasn't enough of a connoisseur to tell by taste what label it was, let alone what year, but it definitely tasted expensive.
The sushi arrived not longer after, and he took a tentative bite of something orange and shiny.
Yves leaned back and said, "Now we can get to business. I've found a possible lead." She reached into her deceptively small bag, a beaded square of sapphire blue silk fastened with an antique clasp, and took out a folded piece of paper. She smoothed it flat on the table and turned it toward him. "A woman fitting the description you gave me was detained at the Philadelphia airport on the morning of September 11. There's no record of her ever being released."
"What was she charged with?"
Yves gave him an inscrutable look. "They don't have to charge you with anything. They can simply detain you, make you disappear. You ought to know that better than anyone." There a was a moment's pause. "She's a ghost."
"I thought you said you thought she was alive...?"
"'Ghosts' are off-the-record prisoners. Completely unofficial and invisible. Not allowed access to legal representation, to any outside communication -- including medical or human rights groups. If asked, the government would deny that they had her."
"As you say, hasn't the government always done that?"
"Under special circumstances, yes. But now, particularly with cases relating -- however obliquely -- to terrorism, it's become much more commonplace." She paused, frowning. "One might even say popular."
"I guess it cuts down on all that annoying paperwork, if nothing else."
"And opens up avenues for, shall we say, 'alternative' methods of interrogation," she said grimly. "This woman is designated Detainee #10013 in the files I was able to access, but I haven't been able to find any detail beyond that. I don't know where she's being held, or even whether we're on the right track. Getting that information may be slightly trickier."
"When you say 'trickier,' what exactly do you mean?"
"I mean, there's no complete electronic record. Those systems are too easily compromised. All this information is held in a storehouse in Crystal City; hard copies only, using an old-fashion filing system."
"Meaning?"
She smiled at him and finally took a sip of her drink. "We'll have to break in."
*
He suspected that Meg picked the Rock Bottom for lunch on purpose. For one thing, it was neutral territory. For another, the way he'd been feeling lately, the name seemed suspiciously appropriate. The pub was a throwback to the sort of place they would have gone together in college, a life so far removed from the person he'd become, it almost seemed like it had happened to someone else. The Rock Bottom also tended to play a lot of late-eighties alt-pop, capitalizing, no doubt, on the cultural no-man's-land inhabited by the late Baby Boomers and early Gen-Xers that made up the restaurant's lunch crowd.
The greater D.C. area wasn't exactly known for its bistro culture: opening up a CitySearch listing on the city returned upwards of twenty TGI Friday's as the top search results. Neither of their tastes ran to trendy spots like Perry's, and even those were fairly few and far between. But they'd managed to find a few decent places, though most of those had been up in Baltimore. They studiously avoided anywhere they might have gone together as a married couple, even though neither one acknowledged the fact out loud.
The idea to rekindle their friendship had been Meg's initially, born in the chaotic, bewildering days following 9/11. After that first phone call, he emailed her each day at her request, right along with Langly, Frohike, Jimmy, his father. Adding her to his email address book was like an unofficial, high-tech welcome back into the family. He'd stayed on in the city for a few days afterward, allowing others who more desperately needed those airplane seats to go home first. He and Greg, the Atlanta pharmaceutical rep, met some firefighters at a local coffeeshop on the 13th, and asked what, if anything, they could do to help. Greg had been a volunteer firefighter at Georgia Tech and was quickly deputized and put to work. Byers, though, was relegated to fetching coffee and bagels. He suspected the firefighters had taken pity on him a little, recognizing their own frustration in him. It didn't matter. At least he'd been able to do something, however small.
Flying back into D.C., the 737 had banked sharply, following its unfamiliar, national security-imposed flight path, eliciting gasps from nervous passengers. Byers just leaned his head against the window and looked down into Arlington, where the Pentagon was still smoking slightly, one of its imposing walls crumpled in on itself. That sight, almost more than the Trade Towers, shook him to his core. For as long as he could remember the Pentagon had symbolized strength. It hadn't always been positive strength, but the kind of power that represented the country at its individual best and collective worst, a symbol of honor and service, secrecy and almost insurmountable will. When it was abused, there was nothing more terrible and destructive. He'd pledged his whole life to battling that abuse, in whatever way he could. But what now? The entire world seemed suddenly and abruptly unfamiliar.
"Glad you're back," was all Frohike said when he'd walked in the door. Langly just nodded vaguely and went back to his computer. He hadn't really expected much more. He knew them well enough by now to see how relieved they truly were. Jimmy, though, enveloped him in a rib-cracking hug and nearly lifted him off the ground.
The first thing he'd done, after tossing his garment bag across his bed, was to dig his cell phone out of his carry-on bag and call Meg.
"I'd like to see you, but I understand if you don't want to," she'd said. "I just feel like I need to reconnect with people."
"Even me?" he'd said, a little wryly in spite of himself.
"Maybe especially you, John. I didn't cut you out of my life on purpose, you know. We just... drifted."
He'd drifted, he thought. But that had been the problem in the first place, hadn't it?
Even so, they'd managed to have lunch together eight times since September.
"One for every year we were together," she'd joked the last time, "and one for every year we've been apart."
"Sixteen years? You really know how to make me feel old, don't you?"
"And that doesn't even count the three years we were apart the first time."
They'd run into each other again in 1990, in the wake of Susanne and Fox Mulder, barely two months after he'd finally given notice at the FCC. He'd seen Meg again, for the first time since college, at an old friend's wedding. She'd been a bridesmaid, and he could recall sitting in the uncomfortable pews of a stuffy old church in downtown Columbia watching her try not to trip over the hem of her dowdy, teal green dress. At the reception, he tried to keep his distance. The truth of it was he'd never quite forgiven her for breaking things off the way she had.
At that point, fate, as seemed to happen so often in his life, intervened.
Meg caught the bouquet toss (despite her best efforts to the contrary), caught her heel on the hem of her ugly dress and went sprawling into the nearest table. He stood up and caught her, an automatic reflex. The whole scene was captured on tape by the wedding videographer, of course, and was hauled out at least once a year for the next four.
By that next summer, they were married. They'd had an intensely private ceremony at a small inn up in the mountains in Pennsylvania, only inviting family and close friends. Carol and Meg's friend Penny made up the entire wedding party. His mother had been there, of course, but his father had pointedly stayed home. Langly and Frohike hadn't even been invited. Back then he'd still been attempting to keep his work separate from his personal life. Of course, back then he'd still actually had a personal life. Now, even in his privatest moments, he still didn't think of Susanne as 'personal,' exactly. The distinction was too difficult to make. She was too tangled up with the cause, the mission, with what he was trying to accomplish and the man he'd become.
Thinking about Susanne, he noticed a slender blonde standing at the bar, chatting with the bartender. Dressed in the standard uniform of a young D.C. professional -- charcoal grey suit in summer-weight wool, silk blouse, a briefcase resting on the barstool by her right hand -- she was teetering on skinny high heels and trying not to sweat through her long-sleeved Ann Taylor shirt. She didn't look like Susanne, exactly, but was definitely reminiscent of her somehow, a similar type. He tried not to stare, but his gaze kept drifting over to her.
"I wish I'd known you'd developed a taste for bombshell blondes," Meg said, from somewhere above his left shoulder, causing him to start guiltily. "I'd have gotten a dye job years ago."
She took the seat across from him with a slightly knowing smile, shrugging out of her jacket and signaling to the waiter.
Meg was thirty-six, smooth-skinned, petite and brunette. While not exactly pretty by traditional standards, she was open and sweet-looking; there was something altogether appealing about her. People liked her instinctively.
"It's crowded in here today," she said, waving imaginary cigarette smoke away from her face. "I was in Seattle last year. You know, people don't smoke in restaurants there? It's not like there's a law or anything, they just don't. I wish that would catch on here."
"It'll never happen. Virginia is tobacco country."
"Is this going to turn into a conversation about the unholy alliance between special interests in the tobacco industry and our 'so-called representative government'? Because, if so, I'm going to need a lemonade first."
As though summoned by her words, the waiter appeared, taking their drink orders and letting them know that the day's specials included a chicken cheesesteak sandwich and a wood-fired Thai shrimp pizza.
When he left, Byers said, "I'll spare you the tobacco industry lecture this time. Although, they are completely insidious..."
Meg smiled and shook her head. "I'll give you this, you don't change."
"Coming from my ex-wife, I'm fairly sure that isn't a compliment."
"You might be surprised," she replied mildly, and changed the subject. "How's your dad?"
"Still hiding in a cabin in Wyoming or somewhere, as far as I know. We only speak occasionally."
Their drinks arrived: an iced tea for him and a raspberry lemonade for her. She frowned at the garnish clinging wetly to the rim of her glass and dumped it unceremoniously onto the bread plate. "That's still an improvement, isn't it?"
"Over ten years of pretending we weren't related? Sure." He picked up her discarded lemon and squeezed it into his tea.
She smiled at that, and took a drink of lemonade through her straw. "I was actually surprised you didn't sue, with the morgue misidentifying that car thief as your dad."
"Lawyers," he said. "Why is your first instinct always to sue? Besides, it wouldn't have been worth it. I was just glad he was alive." He felt a brief flash of guilt. Another lie in a long string. No wonder she'd left him.
"Lawyers play a vital role in the functioning of a free society. After all, where would you be without the Freedom of Information Act? Lawyers did that, you know-" She broke off as her cell phone began to ring. "I'm sorry. I thought I turned that thing off." She picked it up and looked at the display. "Oh, it's just Jack." She muted the ringer. "He'll call back. Besides, it'll do him some good to wonder where I am."
"And who's Jack?" he asked, in what he hoped was a casual manner.
"Just someone. Well, maybe no one... but possibly someone... You know what? Ask me next week." She laughed, blushing slightly and dropping her phone into her bag. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her blush.
"It's a little strange, isn't it?" he said before he could stop himself. "You and me, talking like this. About our lives, relationships, other people."
"You mean talking like friends?" she said, her smile fading a little.
"Yes."
"We were friends in the beginning, remember?" she said. "If it's up to me, we'll always be friends. I still care about you."
"Do you? I'm a much different person than I was back then."
"In some ways," she said, "but not in fundamentals."
He wasn't so sure about that anymore.
*
Looming just outside the District, Crystal City boasted the closest approximations to actual skyscrapers in the metro area. Across the Potomac, D.C. sprawled, squat and flattened by city ordinance; but Crystal City, a natural outgrowth of Arlington's military presence, built by necessity during a 1970s explosion of defense contractors and government offices, soared up toward the clouds. The buildings, though, were all fairly non-nondescript, as though their designers had feared overshadowing the city's more famous and distinctive structures.
Yves had parked their borrowed maintenance van in the shadow of one of those tall buildings, wedged into a corner of the uncomfortable, cramped triangle formed by the Hyatt Regency on one side and the two adjacent federal buildings. They were in the back of the van, the rough carpet biting into Byers' knees. Yves was sitting Indian-style, with wireless communications equipment spread out in front of her.
"This has to be quick: in and out, nothing fancy," she said, handing him an earpiece and fiddling with frequency on her own.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Byers could practically hear Frohike making an off-color remark in response to that, but all he said was, "Fine. I understand. I'll follow your lead." He paused. "Though wouldn't it be more effective for you to go in alone?"
"There are two reasons I want you with me. One, you know what to look for better than I do. And, two, I think you ought to risk your own skin for this at least a little, don't you?"
"It's not a matter of cowardice, Yves. I'm just not very good at this sort of thing. I'm usually the one who waits in the van."
"Like I said," she looked down, strapping something to her belt, "it's time to expand your horizons. Besides, I seem to recall something about you breaking into a fertility clinic awhile back..."
"That was a fairly unusual situation. Plus, I very nearly got us killed."
"That isn't the way Jimmy tells the story." She got to her knees, reaching over and clipping something to his belt in turn. "Don't lose that."
"And since when do you take Jimmy at his word?"
She sat back on her heels, hands on her hips. "While I'm aware that Jimmy fairly worships the ground you walk on, the story didn't seem altogether far-fetched."
It was the first time she'd mentioned Jimmy by name since Byers had found her again.
"He never talks about you," he said abruptly, watching her for a reaction.
She didn't give him one, not a twitch. Instead, she said, "Don't you want to know why I'm helping you?"
It was a fairly smart strategy. He challenged her boundaries, so she feinted at his.
"I don't really care." He'd anticipated this kind of give-and-take, but, even so, the edge in his own voice surprised him a little. "I don't care why you're doing it, as long as you do it."
"Can you hear me on this thing?" she asked, speaking softly into the tiny mouthpiece. He nodded.
"I figured it was partly self-preservation, anyway," he said, after a moment, his voice echoing through the equipment and feeding back slightly with an electronic hiss. "With a background like yours, the last thing you want is for certain people to look too closely at you -- especially these days."
That got a reaction from her, slight but definitely there. "Perhaps I misjudged you," she said. "You're more ruthless than I thought."
"I haven't got a whole lot to lose anymore."
"Who does?" After a moment, she said, "Of course, if we get caught, none of that will matter. We'll both disappear, down to Cuba or to Riyadh. Or possibly somewhere even more unspeakable."
"So, I guess you're damned if you do, damned if you d-"
"I don't believe you'd turn me in, Byers. Not yet. If it were a choice between my life and this Susanne's? Maybe then. But it isn't -- again, not yet." She looked up, out the window, and then down at her watch. “Get ready.”
As she spoke, a light went off on the third floor of the leftmost building.
“That will be the last clerk leaving. Security will make a last sweep to ensure that everyone's out of the building. After that, we have twenty-five minutes before they come back through. Be quick, be quiet, and do exactly as I say. Understand?”
He nodded.
“All right. We go in five minutes then.”
In what felt like far less than five minutes, they were out of the van and making their way toward one of the side doors. Inside, Yves said, was an emergency stairwell. As they reached the door, she pulled out a tiny electronic lock-pick and attached it to the push-button keypad that armed the door.
It was the only visible lock on the entrance.
The building was vintage 1970s, and the security didn't appear to have been updated much since then, either. That realization sent a shiver down his back. What if they had the wrong place? He said as much aloud.
Yves just smiled grimly. “Just because there are new regulations for security, it doesn't mean there's actually any budget to fund them. This is the place, Byers. Just relax.”
She finished with the key-pad and the door opened with a soft click. Pulling a small roll of electrical tape from a pocket, Yves smoothed a piece over the locking mechanism to hold it open.
"Low-tech, but effective," she said, grabbed him by the sleeve and took off at a brisk walk through a darkened corridor and up the stairs.
Illuminated only by glowing 'Exit' signs, they crept quietly up to the third floor landing. Yves did her magic with the keypad and duct tape again, and they were inside.
It felt way too easy.
The sort of breaking and entering he'd done in the past, with Langly and Frohike, with Mulder, had always seemed much more complicated and usually involving tangling with harnesses and high tech gadgets.
At least so far, he preferred Yves' way.
They walked through the reception area, Yves taking a tiny penlight from one pocket. The archive room was just beyond, it was windowless and Yves twisted the little light to life once they were inside. A desk stood to one side of the room, an uncomfortable 1960s-era office chair pushed against a file cabinet behind it. A dart board hung on the wall opposite, the paint around it pockmarked from years of missed shots.
“What a horribly boring job that must be,” he whispered.
“Not everyone can lead lives of danger and excitement like ours,” she said, and he couldn't quite tell whether she was joking or not. “You go left. I'll go right.”
He took out his own flashlight, playing it across the carefully cataloged boxes of files. The boxes appeared to be in order by identification number. Each box had tiny squares of white paper fastened to the front and labeled with the sequence of file numbers inside.
This first one read '8850 - 9100'. They'd been at this a long time.
He took off down one of the long aisles, trying to get his bearings.
“Byers.”
He mostly controlled his urge to jump at the sound. Mostly. Somehow Yves had managed to sneak up behind him. He turned to face her.
“Byers, look at this. Make sure it's what you're after.”
She handed him a stack of thick files. He flipped the folder open and looked at the first page.
File #10013. Female. 37 years old. Detained in Philadelphia on 9/11/2001. Previously wanted in connection with crimes against the U.S. Government. Initially presumed dead.
No name, no other details. But it was enough.
“Yes,” he said, forcing himself to whisper. “Yes, this looks like it.”
“Good. Let's get out of here.”
He followed her back through the office, putting things back exactly as they were. Boxes replaced, doors locked, tape removed. It looked as though they'd never been inside. It might be months before anyone even noticed the file was missing.
Back downstairs, Yves ripped the final strip of tape from the outside door and let it close softly. Before he knew it, they were back in the van and headed toward Arlington, the files still clutched in his hands.
“That was... easy,” he said. “Is that why you agreed to help me? Because you knew it wasn't a difficult job?”
“Any job can be difficult, given the right circumstances,” she replied, turning the van onto Route 1 and heading toward Alexandria.
“Where are we going?”
“My place,” Yves said, and didn't speak to him again until they pulled up to the drive-through window of an Arby's along the way. At his look of surprise, she simply shrugged and said, “I'm starving. You want to split an order of jalapeño poppers?”
Unsure what else to do, he nodded. He'd never pegged Yves as a mocha milkshake type, either, but just chalked it up to learning something new every day.
Yves' place turned out to be a small but well-appointed brownstone just off Duke Street. She parked the van a suitable distance away and got out. Byers hiked after her, toting the files and a bag of curly fries.
“You live here?” he said when they were standing on the front stoop.
“This month,” she replied, opening the door and letting him walk in first. He turned and watched her fasten the locks. He noticed she had almost as many as they did at home.
Sliding the final deadbolt home, she said, “Have a seat.”
She deposited the bags of fast food on a low coffee table and switched on a lamp. The apartment was nicely furnished if spartan, the rugs and furniture fine quality but nondescript. Yves didn't appear to own any artwork or photographs. She did, however, have a plasma flat-screen television hanging on the wall above a small entertainment center that housed an Asian prototype media PC and wireless keyboard.
He spread the files out on the thick carpeting. Yves tipped a handful of ketchup packets onto the table and sat down beside him, taking half of one of the sandwiches in one hand. She leaned over the papers, reading as she ate.
“Well,” she said, looking up after a moment, “now you have a location. At least, as of last month.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And what are you going do now that you know where they're holding this woman?” she asked.
“Go there. Find her. Bring her home.”
Yves sighed slightly, setting the sandwich down and wiping her fingers with a paper napkin. “As plans go? That isn't a particularly good one, Byers.”
“But it's what I have to do.”
“You're also aware that we don't know for sure whether this particular prisoner is the woman you're looking for?”
“I am.” He picked up the other half of the sandwich and took a bite.
She watched him for a moment. “Why is this so important? Who is this woman?”
“Shouldn't you have asked me this before you agreed to help?”
“I'm curious now,” she said, picking at one of the ketchup packets. “Who is she? A lover? Sister? Friend? Sole remaining witness to the Kennedy assassination?”
“Funny,” he said, shortly. He finished the sandwich and crumpled up the waxy wrapper. “Anyway, I would have thought you'd know everything by now.”
“I know who Susanne Modeski is. Or was, according to all official sources. What I want to know is, who she is to you, and why you're risking your life for her.”
Yves was watching him intently. She leaned back against the table, the papers and remnants of fast food scattered between them like they were college kids on a study date.
“I love her,” he said at last. “But it's more than just that.” He held up a hand “That's all you get to know. That's all you need to know, for now.”
She seemed to struggle with her curiosity for a moment, but finally nodded. “You're going to need a better plan.”
“I know,” he said.
“In fact, the best plan of all would be to forget about this. Or find another way to help her.”
“I know that, too.”
“But you're determined to do it this way?” She looked away from him, resting her arms on her knees.
“I am.”
“And I suppose you're going to want help?”
“I'd rather. But I'll do it even without you.”
She sighed again. “Come on then. I'll drive you home. We'll figure something out tomorrow.”
(Continued in Part 2.)
Fandom: The Lone Gunmen
Summary: John Byers has one hell of a mid-life crisis, complete with fast cars, fast women, action/adventure, leather pants and a doomed affair with a hot blonde (or two). (AU after Tango de los Pistoleros)
Rating: PG-13(ish)
Characters/Pairing(s): Byers/Susanne, Jimmy/Yves, Byers/OC(s), subtext-y hints of Jimmy/Byers and vaguely humorous references to Langly/Frohike
The prologue is here. Also, since this is AU, I've taken some vague liberties with Yves' backstory. And it's not really like they explained it much to begin with.
In this installment, Byers does his best Bob Woodward impression, Yves lurks in parking garages and leaves cryptic messages in the New York Times, Frohike gets outed as a Parrothead, Jimmy is much-mentioned but never actually present and Langly is relegated to saying occasional, inflammatory things that advance the plot.
1. Flagpole Sitta
Summary: "I wanna publish zines and rage against machines."
I wanna publish zines
and rage against machines
paranoia paranoia
everybody's coming to get me
just say you never met me
I'm going underground with the moles
It was a nearly universal truth that at any given time in the nation's capital someone, somewhere, was lurking in a parking garage.
It wasn't the first time Byers had been that guy, and wasn't likely to be the last. That night, he even wore a trench coat for the occasion. Of course, it was late March and drizzling sluggishly, which at least partially explained the coat. He was waiting in a moodily-lit parking structure on the District side of the 14th Street Bridge, carrying a cheap attache case and looking for all the world like a minor player in the film adaption of a Tom Clancy novel.
He checked his watch for the third time in as many minutes, and looked up suddenly at the sound of a soft footfall.
"I heard you were looking for me," Yves said, emerging from the shadows between two parked SUVs.
"That's right," he said, deciding not to ask which of his methods had been successful at reaching her. He didn't want to antagonize her -- yet.
"I suppose you know how foolhardy that is?"
He sighed. "What's with the cloak and dagger act, Yves? You used to just drop by whenever you felt like it."
"I got sloppy. It was a mistake."
She looked tired and drawn, thinner than he remembered. The last year had taken some kind of toll on her. He looked a little too long, searching for answers. She noticed, shifting uncomfortably and taking a small step back toward the shadows.
"Well?" she said, trying to sound brisk, businesslike. In reality, it just came out irritated, almost petulant.
"I need your help," he said.
"And that would be new how, exactly?"
"Well, you haven't been around lately to ask, for one thing."
She took a breath, as though trying to gather her patience. "What's the job?"
"I need you to find someone."
Yves shook her head, and turned slightly as though she was about to leave. "Use a phone book."
He reached out a hand and, none too gently, stopped her. She looked down at his hand on her arm, then up at his face, a little shocked. "You know better, Yves," he said. "This isn't some joke, some easy job. I went to the trouble of finding you for a reason."
"I see some things have changed since I left." She pulled her arm out of his grasp. "Fine. Who do you need me to find?"
"A woman named Susanne Modeski -- though you won't find her under that name. She was last seen in Manhattan last September."
"Last September?" Yves asked, starting to look suspicious. "Which day last September?"
"The 11th."
"Oh, fabulous." She folded her arms across her chest, turning away from him and exhaling sharply. "Guess what, Byers? Mystery solved. I think I might know what happened to her..."
"It isn't what you think. She wasn't in Lower Manhattan. I was with her that day. She was flying out later that morning. I don't know whether she ever made it."
"All right. I'm listening..."
"I need someone with connections, someone with experience at this sort of thing. Most importantly, someone who can be discreet." He paused. "I can't pay you, of course, but I hope you'll at least consider helping. You're my last resort."
One eyebrow quirked up, a standard Yves response. It made him realize that he'd actually missed her presence, in some curious way. "If you found me," she said, "something that's no easy feat, let me assure you -- why don't you just go look for her yourself? Then money wouldn't be an issue at all."
"I think-" He hesitated. "I think maybe I'm afraid to know. I think I might not do everything required to find the truth."
Something that almost looked like sympathy crossed Yves' face, but was just as quickly gone again. "And you were counting on what? My heart of gold?"
"There's always blackmail, of course," he said mildly, "but I hope it won't come to that."
She actually laughed at him. "Whatever it is you think you know about me, I can almost assure you that it isn't the actual truth."
"You might be surprised," he said, but it was mostly a bluff. None of what he knew about her was concrete. He'd been able to discover enough hints to scare her a little, maybe, but then he'd never had a particularly good poker face.
"There's no need for that," she said, relenting. "I'll see what I can do -- just this once, as repayment for past favors. I'm not promising much, though. No one knows about this but the two of us, understand? No one."
"Fine. Agreed." He dug a thick file of out his bag and handed it over. "Here's everything I've been able to find out so far. As far as I can tell, she wasn't on any of the flights used in the attack. I've accounted for all the passengers who fit her description. It's always possible that she was on foot that day, I suppose, but that doesn't match what she told me before I left for LaGuardia."
"What did she tell you?"
"That she was catching a morning flight, probably around the same time as mine. I assume, though, that she was leaving from a different airport. Possibly even going somewhere by train first. I have no idea what her final destination was."
"So, it's highly unlikely that she was hurt or killed, albeit not entirely impossible." She studied him for a moment. "Or am I wrong?"
"No, you're right. The likelihood is that she's still alive."
"And yet that doesn't seem to make you happy." It wasn't quite a question.
"If she's alive..." he said. "If she's alive and free, then why hasn't she contacted me? It's been almost seven months."
Yves gave him a look that seemed to say she knew exactly why someone might want to disappear that way, but she pressed her lips together and kept silent.
"It's a distinct possibility that she was detained by the authorities," he continued. "That's where I would start, if it were me."
The eyebrow arched up again. "But it isn't you." She slid his papers into a leather satchel slung across one shoulder. "Out of curiosity, how did you find me?"
He might not have been a good bluffer, but that didn't mean he was about to show his hand. "It wasn't easy. I had to call in a few favors -- not all of them mine."
"How is-" she hesitated, "everybody?" When he didn't reply, she added, "Go ahead and lie to me, Byers. That's really what I want to hear, anyway."
"All right then. They're fine. Everyone's fine."
She nodded once, briskly, and then back to business, "I'll contact you when I find something. In the meantime, don't try to contact me this way again. It could be dangerous, for both of us."
"How am I supposed to-"
"You aren't, for now. I'll let you know when and where to meet me, and we'll come up with a better system then, depending on what I find."
"All right, Yves," he said, seeing that this was the best he was going to get from her. "I'll wait to hear from you."
*
In the aftermath of the attacks, U.S. Airways had put them all up at the Airport Sheraton near LaGuardia. The Sheraton opened up their kitchens, providing free coffee and food round the clock to all the stranded travelers. Nobody really ate much, though. The hotel was packed, the staff setting up cots in the lobby for the overflow. No one who needed a place to sleep was turned away that first night.
He'd wound up sharing his room with a pharmaceutical rep from Atlanta and a pair of college students from Maine. There were two queen beds and the sleeper sofa pulled out into a double, so they flipped a coin to see which one of them would have to share. Not that any of them actually slept. They brought coffee up to the room and sat in front of the t.v. for most of the night, the light flickering unevenly across their faces as the sun rose.
Communications were spotty for days, even weeks, afterward, but on the 12th he'd managed to log onto his email long enough to reply to Langly and Frohike to let them know that he was all right. They thought he was in Philadelphia visiting an old college friend, something he felt vaguely guilty about under the circumstances. He promised himself he'd tell them the truth when he got back.
While the connection was still there, weak and anemic as it was, he let each of his hotel roommates email their loved ones from his machine. He hadn't let another living soul, who wasn't Langly or Frohike, touch his computer in more than ten years.
That afternoon his cellphone rang, sounding incredibly, unnaturally loud and breaking the steady background rhythm of CNN's anchors speaking in hushed and serious tones. He reached for it, half-expecting (or maybe hoping) that it was Susanne. It wasn't; it was his ex-wife.
"John? John, it's Meg." Her voice sounded strained, a little hoarse, as though maybe she'd been crying. She wouldn't have been the only one. "I'm so glad you're all right! Where are you?"
"New York," he replied, wondering vaguely why he was telling her the truth.
Meg had been his college girlfriend, his first real love, his first real broken heart. Of course, eventually, he'd broken hers in return, so he guessed they were even. He hadn't heard from her in at least two years.
"It's stupid, I know," she said, "but I've been calling everyone: Mom, Dad, my sister, Penny from college. Just to see whether they're okay."
"That's not stupid. It's not stupid at all."
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and the others shifted slightly away from him, concentrating more intently on the t.v., giving him space.
"I'm glad you're all right," she said again, then lapsed into silence as though unsure what to say next.
"It's good to hear from you," he said, because it was. "I'm glad you called."
"Why are you in New York?"
"Visiting a friend." It wasn't exactly a lie. Not really the truth, either, but not a lie.
"Did you see...?"
"No. I was at the airport. We saw it on t.v." He paused. "Are you all right? Is everything...?"
"I'm fine," she said. "They keep acting like we're lucky here... by comparison, I guess. I've been avoiding Arlington. It's not like anyone is moving around much right now, anyway. I'm not even sure whether the Metro is running again yet."
"It's probably better to stay put."
"I know." She sighed slightly.
They'd spoken for a few more minutes, Meg extracting a promise that he would keep in touch until he got back to D.C. When he hung up, he hadn't been sure exactly what to feel. He'd missed Meg since they split, obscurely, but not enough to reach out to her, to make an effort. She had tried at first: an occasional phone call, an invitation to dinner with mutual friends. He'd always found some excuse, and after awhile (longer than maybe it should have taken) she stopped asking. He'd had other priorities at the time, so being free of those distractions had allowed him to focus on his work, the mission, changing the world.
"You're broken, John," she'd said to him when she left. "You break a little bit more each day, and I don't know what's causing it or how to stop it."
She'd been right, though he hadn't been able to see it at the time. Eight years after the fact, he'd finally begun to notice the tiny stress fractures in his psyche, building up over time.
Driving toward Takoma Park after his meeting with Yves, he felt broken, as though he could almost feel himself straining and creaking under the pressure.
For the first time in his life, he felt old.
He pulled into the alley and turned off the van. The ancient parking brake squeaked in protest when he set it, the van lurching slightly as the engine settled to a stop. Frohike was the only one still awake when he got inside. The place was a disaster, pieces of equipment and the guts of computers littering the worktables. The physical mess just added to the psychological one, the pressure in Byers' chest, the feeling of not quite being able to breathe.
Frohike looked up from whatever he was examining under his magnifying glass. "Hey, buddy. Where've you been?"
"Out." Frohike raised an eyebrow, and Byers relented, "Following up a lead. It might be nothing, though."
"You okay, man?"
He went over to the fridge, without really thinking about it, and pulled out a longneck Sam Adams. He waved the bottle in Frohike's general direction. "You want one?"
"Sure," Frohike said, pushing the magnifying glass away and coming over to sit with Byers at the kitchen table.
Once both bottles were open and they were sitting with their hands cradled around the slightly damp glass, Byers said, "It's just been one of those days, you know?"
Frohike grinned. "There's another kind?" Then, after a long drink, "You want to talk about it?"
"Not particularly."
They sat without speaking for a few minutes, both sipping their beer.
Breaking the silence, Frohike finally said, "You ever think about taking a vacation, Byers? Take a week, go down to Aruba or PV or someplace? Get good and wasted, work on a tan, chat up some hot young thing in a bar?"
"Never."
"Maybe you should. Even Mulder used to run off to Graceland every once in awhile."
"Hey, we went to that Jimmy Buffet concert you wanted to see..."
"That was two years ago, Byers, and seeing Buffet -- while the man is arguably a genius -- doesn't count as a vacation. And neither," he said, cutting Byers off before he could even contemplate getting the words out, "does Vegas. If there was ever anything less like a vacation..."
"All right, all right."
"Besides," Frohike continued, "I'm not talking about the three of us. I'm talking about you, getting away from all this for a couple days."
Byers took another drink. "The last time I did that terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center."
"Running off to see Susanne doesn't count, either. I thought we'd covered that with Vegas?"
"I'm not really sure what you're getting at."
"I'm saying that you should take some time, get some distance -- from us, from her, from the quest, but especially from her. You're like the walking dead, man. It's way worse this time than it was after Baltimore." He finished off his beer and set the bottle on the table with a determined clink. "I think we all need a little space, maybe a different perspective."
Frohike was staring past Byers' left shoulder, looking unusually serious. A sudden, horrible thought occurred to him. "You're not thinking about quitting, are you?"
"Nah." Frohike shook his head, looking at Byers again. "But it might not hurt us to re-evaluate things a little. It's not the same world it was six months ago."
"Everyone keeps saying that, but I'm not even sure what it means anymore." Byers finished his own beer and went to get another.
"Sure you are. You've been weird ever since New York -- weirder than usual, that is. You might be able to tell yourself that all this moody, existential angst is about Susanne or facing down your fortieth birthday..."
"Which isn't for another year and a half, thanks." He twisted the cap off and neatly dropped it into one of the clearly-labeled recycling bins before sitting back down.
"You think that's what it is, but it isn't," Frohike continued without missing a beat. "Not entirely, anyway. I'm feeling it, too. So's Langly. We just don't externalize the way you do."
"Externalize? Since when did you turn into Dr. Phil?"
Frohike ignored him. "You're a piss-poor bluffer. Everything you're feeling is right out there for the whole word to see -- and you feel everything. It's part of the reason you're a nice guy. But over the long term? It's bound to give you a stomach ulcer."
"I don't see how a week in some tourist trap is going to stop that."
"And that, my friend," Frohike aimed his empty bottle in the general direction of the recycling, "is exactly the problem."
"Are you going somewhere?" Byers asked. "To the mountaintop, to find yourself?"
"Now you sound like Langly. Sarcasm doesn't work as well on you. Besides, if I were going to go on a vision quest, it would be all about Mardi Gras. Or Pamplona. Somewhere with blood, love, wine and wild women."
"How very Hemingway," Byers replied dryly.
"Look, just say you'll think about it."
"I'll think."
Frohike sighed and got up. "Are you heading to bed any time soon?" Byers shook his head. "Well, turn the lights off when you're done, then."
*
Sunday mornings were surprisingly sleepy and uneventful, largely by Frohike's decree. He'd ensured compliance with this rule early on in their partnership, by virtue of being the first out of bed on Sundays, heading to the kitchen and cooking the sort of breakfast that could break any man's will. Blueberry waffles had a way of pushing away all thoughts of work -- or, for that matter, all thoughts of anything beyond reading the paper and possibly taking an early afternoon nap.
All of which, of course, went exactly according to Frohike's plan.
When they'd started out together, Byers had still been at the FCC. He'd known he couldn't continue on working for the government, but had been afraid to leave the safety of his job. He hadn't had much in the way of savings, and hadn't expected (rightly) that his parents were too likely to be pleased by a move like that. Langly and Frohike had pooled their resources and set up shop in an old storefront near the U Street and Cardozo metro stop. Back then, that part of the city had been full of crumbling warehouses and abandoned industrial lofts. Within a few years, the area had undergone an 'urban renaissance' and they were no longer welcome among the high-end fitness clubs, antique shops and vegan restaurants. In 1989, though, it had just been them, surrounded by ancient PCs and a Xerox copier in that old store. With a full-time job during the week, Byers would head over there on Friday evenings and fling himself headlong into work all weekend: researching leads, checking facts, combing through de-classified reports. Sometimes he wouldn't even bother to sleep. After about a month of this, Frohike had turned up one Sunday morning to find Byers in the shirtsleeves and loosened tie he'd been wearing since the previous Friday and Langly passed out on a cot in the corner with a floppy disk clutched in one hand.
"I'm putting my foot down," was all he'd said, and disappeared for the better part of an hour.
He'd returned with coffee, egg-and-chorizo breakfast burritos, salsa fresca, home fries and a video cassette.
"Both of you are officially insane." He threw the video onto Byers' makeshift desk. "Put that on, wake Langly up and then find clean cups for the coffee."
A little surprised, Byers had complied. The video turned out to be All the President's Men, and the burritos had been fantastic. And so, a long-standing tradition had been born. No all-weekend work benders were permitted, except in the most dire of circumstances. Frohike kept them honest via huevos rancheros, freshly-squeezed juice and maple dutch babies. It had worked for going on twelve years, and that Sunday morning was no exception.
In the two weeks since Byers met Yves in the parking garage on 14th Street, he hadn't heard a thing from her. The morning's Eggs Benedict and hash browns had ensured he wasn't going to be worrying about it much until the following day, though. Not bothering to change out of his bedroom slippers, he propped his feet up on the couch, leaned back and began sorting through the newspapers delivered that morning.
"Has anyone seen my New York Times?" he asked, frowning and flipping through the stack of papers.
"Oh, yeah," Frohike said from the kitchen, brandishing a soapy skillet in his direction. "Jimmy must've finished the crossword puzzle."
Langly snorted from across the room.
"You two are really too hard on him..." Byers began.
"And you're too soft on the kid, but now is not the time to have that argument again. And, no, I haven't seen the Times. You're pretty much the only one who reads it."
Byers got up, his full stomach and tryptophan-buzzed brain protesting a little, and went to look for it. He found the paper sitting next to his computer, folded neatly. As he shook it open, he noticed something scrawled in the lower left-hand corner of the front page: a 'B6' written in block letters and red marker. Who on earth would leave a message like that on their copy of the New York Times? His New York Times, he realized and sat down. The subscription for the Sunday Edition was in his name, and none of the others ever read it -- something that wouldn't have been at all hard for Yves to find out. He opened the paper to section B-6, his foggy Sunday brain finally catching on. He laughed, a little sharply, under his breath. At least she knew her history; he had to give her that.
The message was brief. A time and place.
It was going to be tricky, getting out of there without being noticed, especially on a Sunday. But he couldn't risk missing whatever it was Yves had to tell him.
He folded the paper up and tucked it under one arm as he walked back over to the couch. If he were meeting anyone but Yves, he'd just call Jimmy and ask for a ride. They occasionally went and grabbed a beer together, so it wouldn't arouse any suspicions. Frohike would probably just lecture him about indulging Jimmy too much, as though Jimmy were a spoiled, favorite nephew and not their sole source of venture capital. As it was, though, he couldn't risk bring Jimmy anywhere near Yves. If there was one thing guaranteed to make her bolt, it was Jimmy's presence. Byers had his own theory about why that was the case, but had no doubt Yves would vigorously deny it.
"Hey, Byers," Langly said, looking up from his computer. "I'm going to meet our snitch from the DoD on Tuesday afternoon. He says he has proof that the CIA is trying to pin 9/11 on Saddam Hussein. Want to come?"
"I can't. I have lunch plans."
"With that mysterious source of yours?" Frohike asked.
"No. I'm meeting Meg." He hadn't mentioned her phone call in New York, or any of their subsequent meetings. Langly and Frohike hadn't known her all that well to begin with, so he hadn't really seen the point.
"Seriously, man? When did that happen?"
"Nothing's happened. It's just lunch."
"I thought she hated you, dude," Langly said bluntly. At Frohike's exasperated look, he said, "What? Don't most divorced people hate each other?"
"She seemed like a nice enough kid," Frohike said, ignoring him. "From what I remember, anyway. It's been awhile."
"9/11 shook her up pretty badly. She wants to make peace, be friends again."
"Can't say I blame her," Frohike said. "Good for you, Byers. It's not ten days in the Caymans, but it's something."
He grinned as he said, but Byers felt unaccountably annoyed with him.
"Are either of you planning on using the van tonight? I have some errands I need to run."
"On a Sunday? What are you doing?"
'Dry-cleaning," he lied. "I have a little extra change, so I'll fill the van up. I thought I might pick up some groceries, too. We're running low on milk, and beer."
"Sure, okay. Pick up some bagels, too, if you remember," Frohike said. Langly just shrugged.
"Thanks, guys."
*
The rooftop bar at Perry's was a staple of the Adams Morgan scene, and had been as long as Byers could remember. Not that he'd ever been much-inclined to go. The crowd was as trendy as the decor, a crush of bright, bold, beautiful people against a backdrop of color and the setting sun. Warmer weather had blown up from the Carolina coast earlier in the week, bringing with it the first signs of a D.C. spring and ensuring that Perry's was packed to its limits, even though it was Sunday night.
Yves sat alone at a table for two, looking entirely at ease and blending effortlessly with the college kids and young hipsters in the crowd. A jewel-toned cocktail in a highball glass sat on the table beside her, even though it didn't look like she'd actually touched it. The young men at the bar kept shooting exploratory looks her way, but she ignored them. He couldn't blame them. She looked pretty, deceptively soft. He hadn't seen her wear a dress since Miami. It suited her.
"This is an interesting choice," he said, walking over to the table and taking a seat. "You blend in well, though."
"You don't," she said shortly.
"Thanks for the reminder."
"You might at least have dressed the part. I did." She leaned forward a little, smiling at him. "Now, pretend we're friends."
He smiled back. "I doubt I own anything that wouldn't look out of place here. I let my subscription to Maxim lapse a long time ago."
"Oh, I'm sure you only looked at it for the pictures of half-naked girls, anyway."
"That's more Frohike's department, actually," he replied tartly.
"Signs of life!" she said. "Thank god. I thought this was going to be boring." She smiled at him again, and this time he actually thought it was genuine and not just for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. "I ordered sushi. And a scotch. You drink scotch, don't you?"
"Yes, I do," he said, impressed in spite of himself. "I don't eat sushi, though."
"I know that. I thought it was time to expand your horizons."
She shifted slightly in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, tilting her head to one side. Anyone watching them, he reflected, would probably think they were on a date.
"Why scotch?" she asked conversationally. "Did your father drink it?"
"What makes you say that?"
She shrugged. "Most men who drink scotch picked it up from their fathers. At least, that's been my experience."
"Shouldn't we get down to business?" he said, not especially wanting to discuss his father.
"I was always taught that the best business was conducted with hospitality."
And who taught you that? Your father? he thought, wondering about the hints of her past he'd been able to uncover. Or are you just talking?
Aloud, he said, "All right."
The server brought his scotch, neat. He wasn't enough of a connoisseur to tell by taste what label it was, let alone what year, but it definitely tasted expensive.
The sushi arrived not longer after, and he took a tentative bite of something orange and shiny.
Yves leaned back and said, "Now we can get to business. I've found a possible lead." She reached into her deceptively small bag, a beaded square of sapphire blue silk fastened with an antique clasp, and took out a folded piece of paper. She smoothed it flat on the table and turned it toward him. "A woman fitting the description you gave me was detained at the Philadelphia airport on the morning of September 11. There's no record of her ever being released."
"What was she charged with?"
Yves gave him an inscrutable look. "They don't have to charge you with anything. They can simply detain you, make you disappear. You ought to know that better than anyone." There a was a moment's pause. "She's a ghost."
"I thought you said you thought she was alive...?"
"'Ghosts' are off-the-record prisoners. Completely unofficial and invisible. Not allowed access to legal representation, to any outside communication -- including medical or human rights groups. If asked, the government would deny that they had her."
"As you say, hasn't the government always done that?"
"Under special circumstances, yes. But now, particularly with cases relating -- however obliquely -- to terrorism, it's become much more commonplace." She paused, frowning. "One might even say popular."
"I guess it cuts down on all that annoying paperwork, if nothing else."
"And opens up avenues for, shall we say, 'alternative' methods of interrogation," she said grimly. "This woman is designated Detainee #10013 in the files I was able to access, but I haven't been able to find any detail beyond that. I don't know where she's being held, or even whether we're on the right track. Getting that information may be slightly trickier."
"When you say 'trickier,' what exactly do you mean?"
"I mean, there's no complete electronic record. Those systems are too easily compromised. All this information is held in a storehouse in Crystal City; hard copies only, using an old-fashion filing system."
"Meaning?"
She smiled at him and finally took a sip of her drink. "We'll have to break in."
*
He suspected that Meg picked the Rock Bottom for lunch on purpose. For one thing, it was neutral territory. For another, the way he'd been feeling lately, the name seemed suspiciously appropriate. The pub was a throwback to the sort of place they would have gone together in college, a life so far removed from the person he'd become, it almost seemed like it had happened to someone else. The Rock Bottom also tended to play a lot of late-eighties alt-pop, capitalizing, no doubt, on the cultural no-man's-land inhabited by the late Baby Boomers and early Gen-Xers that made up the restaurant's lunch crowd.
The greater D.C. area wasn't exactly known for its bistro culture: opening up a CitySearch listing on the city returned upwards of twenty TGI Friday's as the top search results. Neither of their tastes ran to trendy spots like Perry's, and even those were fairly few and far between. But they'd managed to find a few decent places, though most of those had been up in Baltimore. They studiously avoided anywhere they might have gone together as a married couple, even though neither one acknowledged the fact out loud.
The idea to rekindle their friendship had been Meg's initially, born in the chaotic, bewildering days following 9/11. After that first phone call, he emailed her each day at her request, right along with Langly, Frohike, Jimmy, his father. Adding her to his email address book was like an unofficial, high-tech welcome back into the family. He'd stayed on in the city for a few days afterward, allowing others who more desperately needed those airplane seats to go home first. He and Greg, the Atlanta pharmaceutical rep, met some firefighters at a local coffeeshop on the 13th, and asked what, if anything, they could do to help. Greg had been a volunteer firefighter at Georgia Tech and was quickly deputized and put to work. Byers, though, was relegated to fetching coffee and bagels. He suspected the firefighters had taken pity on him a little, recognizing their own frustration in him. It didn't matter. At least he'd been able to do something, however small.
Flying back into D.C., the 737 had banked sharply, following its unfamiliar, national security-imposed flight path, eliciting gasps from nervous passengers. Byers just leaned his head against the window and looked down into Arlington, where the Pentagon was still smoking slightly, one of its imposing walls crumpled in on itself. That sight, almost more than the Trade Towers, shook him to his core. For as long as he could remember the Pentagon had symbolized strength. It hadn't always been positive strength, but the kind of power that represented the country at its individual best and collective worst, a symbol of honor and service, secrecy and almost insurmountable will. When it was abused, there was nothing more terrible and destructive. He'd pledged his whole life to battling that abuse, in whatever way he could. But what now? The entire world seemed suddenly and abruptly unfamiliar.
"Glad you're back," was all Frohike said when he'd walked in the door. Langly just nodded vaguely and went back to his computer. He hadn't really expected much more. He knew them well enough by now to see how relieved they truly were. Jimmy, though, enveloped him in a rib-cracking hug and nearly lifted him off the ground.
The first thing he'd done, after tossing his garment bag across his bed, was to dig his cell phone out of his carry-on bag and call Meg.
"I'd like to see you, but I understand if you don't want to," she'd said. "I just feel like I need to reconnect with people."
"Even me?" he'd said, a little wryly in spite of himself.
"Maybe especially you, John. I didn't cut you out of my life on purpose, you know. We just... drifted."
He'd drifted, he thought. But that had been the problem in the first place, hadn't it?
Even so, they'd managed to have lunch together eight times since September.
"One for every year we were together," she'd joked the last time, "and one for every year we've been apart."
"Sixteen years? You really know how to make me feel old, don't you?"
"And that doesn't even count the three years we were apart the first time."
They'd run into each other again in 1990, in the wake of Susanne and Fox Mulder, barely two months after he'd finally given notice at the FCC. He'd seen Meg again, for the first time since college, at an old friend's wedding. She'd been a bridesmaid, and he could recall sitting in the uncomfortable pews of a stuffy old church in downtown Columbia watching her try not to trip over the hem of her dowdy, teal green dress. At the reception, he tried to keep his distance. The truth of it was he'd never quite forgiven her for breaking things off the way she had.
At that point, fate, as seemed to happen so often in his life, intervened.
Meg caught the bouquet toss (despite her best efforts to the contrary), caught her heel on the hem of her ugly dress and went sprawling into the nearest table. He stood up and caught her, an automatic reflex. The whole scene was captured on tape by the wedding videographer, of course, and was hauled out at least once a year for the next four.
By that next summer, they were married. They'd had an intensely private ceremony at a small inn up in the mountains in Pennsylvania, only inviting family and close friends. Carol and Meg's friend Penny made up the entire wedding party. His mother had been there, of course, but his father had pointedly stayed home. Langly and Frohike hadn't even been invited. Back then he'd still been attempting to keep his work separate from his personal life. Of course, back then he'd still actually had a personal life. Now, even in his privatest moments, he still didn't think of Susanne as 'personal,' exactly. The distinction was too difficult to make. She was too tangled up with the cause, the mission, with what he was trying to accomplish and the man he'd become.
Thinking about Susanne, he noticed a slender blonde standing at the bar, chatting with the bartender. Dressed in the standard uniform of a young D.C. professional -- charcoal grey suit in summer-weight wool, silk blouse, a briefcase resting on the barstool by her right hand -- she was teetering on skinny high heels and trying not to sweat through her long-sleeved Ann Taylor shirt. She didn't look like Susanne, exactly, but was definitely reminiscent of her somehow, a similar type. He tried not to stare, but his gaze kept drifting over to her.
"I wish I'd known you'd developed a taste for bombshell blondes," Meg said, from somewhere above his left shoulder, causing him to start guiltily. "I'd have gotten a dye job years ago."
She took the seat across from him with a slightly knowing smile, shrugging out of her jacket and signaling to the waiter.
Meg was thirty-six, smooth-skinned, petite and brunette. While not exactly pretty by traditional standards, she was open and sweet-looking; there was something altogether appealing about her. People liked her instinctively.
"It's crowded in here today," she said, waving imaginary cigarette smoke away from her face. "I was in Seattle last year. You know, people don't smoke in restaurants there? It's not like there's a law or anything, they just don't. I wish that would catch on here."
"It'll never happen. Virginia is tobacco country."
"Is this going to turn into a conversation about the unholy alliance between special interests in the tobacco industry and our 'so-called representative government'? Because, if so, I'm going to need a lemonade first."
As though summoned by her words, the waiter appeared, taking their drink orders and letting them know that the day's specials included a chicken cheesesteak sandwich and a wood-fired Thai shrimp pizza.
When he left, Byers said, "I'll spare you the tobacco industry lecture this time. Although, they are completely insidious..."
Meg smiled and shook her head. "I'll give you this, you don't change."
"Coming from my ex-wife, I'm fairly sure that isn't a compliment."
"You might be surprised," she replied mildly, and changed the subject. "How's your dad?"
"Still hiding in a cabin in Wyoming or somewhere, as far as I know. We only speak occasionally."
Their drinks arrived: an iced tea for him and a raspberry lemonade for her. She frowned at the garnish clinging wetly to the rim of her glass and dumped it unceremoniously onto the bread plate. "That's still an improvement, isn't it?"
"Over ten years of pretending we weren't related? Sure." He picked up her discarded lemon and squeezed it into his tea.
She smiled at that, and took a drink of lemonade through her straw. "I was actually surprised you didn't sue, with the morgue misidentifying that car thief as your dad."
"Lawyers," he said. "Why is your first instinct always to sue? Besides, it wouldn't have been worth it. I was just glad he was alive." He felt a brief flash of guilt. Another lie in a long string. No wonder she'd left him.
"Lawyers play a vital role in the functioning of a free society. After all, where would you be without the Freedom of Information Act? Lawyers did that, you know-" She broke off as her cell phone began to ring. "I'm sorry. I thought I turned that thing off." She picked it up and looked at the display. "Oh, it's just Jack." She muted the ringer. "He'll call back. Besides, it'll do him some good to wonder where I am."
"And who's Jack?" he asked, in what he hoped was a casual manner.
"Just someone. Well, maybe no one... but possibly someone... You know what? Ask me next week." She laughed, blushing slightly and dropping her phone into her bag. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her blush.
"It's a little strange, isn't it?" he said before he could stop himself. "You and me, talking like this. About our lives, relationships, other people."
"You mean talking like friends?" she said, her smile fading a little.
"Yes."
"We were friends in the beginning, remember?" she said. "If it's up to me, we'll always be friends. I still care about you."
"Do you? I'm a much different person than I was back then."
"In some ways," she said, "but not in fundamentals."
He wasn't so sure about that anymore.
*
Looming just outside the District, Crystal City boasted the closest approximations to actual skyscrapers in the metro area. Across the Potomac, D.C. sprawled, squat and flattened by city ordinance; but Crystal City, a natural outgrowth of Arlington's military presence, built by necessity during a 1970s explosion of defense contractors and government offices, soared up toward the clouds. The buildings, though, were all fairly non-nondescript, as though their designers had feared overshadowing the city's more famous and distinctive structures.
Yves had parked their borrowed maintenance van in the shadow of one of those tall buildings, wedged into a corner of the uncomfortable, cramped triangle formed by the Hyatt Regency on one side and the two adjacent federal buildings. They were in the back of the van, the rough carpet biting into Byers' knees. Yves was sitting Indian-style, with wireless communications equipment spread out in front of her.
"This has to be quick: in and out, nothing fancy," she said, handing him an earpiece and fiddling with frequency on her own.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Byers could practically hear Frohike making an off-color remark in response to that, but all he said was, "Fine. I understand. I'll follow your lead." He paused. "Though wouldn't it be more effective for you to go in alone?"
"There are two reasons I want you with me. One, you know what to look for better than I do. And, two, I think you ought to risk your own skin for this at least a little, don't you?"
"It's not a matter of cowardice, Yves. I'm just not very good at this sort of thing. I'm usually the one who waits in the van."
"Like I said," she looked down, strapping something to her belt, "it's time to expand your horizons. Besides, I seem to recall something about you breaking into a fertility clinic awhile back..."
"That was a fairly unusual situation. Plus, I very nearly got us killed."
"That isn't the way Jimmy tells the story." She got to her knees, reaching over and clipping something to his belt in turn. "Don't lose that."
"And since when do you take Jimmy at his word?"
She sat back on her heels, hands on her hips. "While I'm aware that Jimmy fairly worships the ground you walk on, the story didn't seem altogether far-fetched."
It was the first time she'd mentioned Jimmy by name since Byers had found her again.
"He never talks about you," he said abruptly, watching her for a reaction.
She didn't give him one, not a twitch. Instead, she said, "Don't you want to know why I'm helping you?"
It was a fairly smart strategy. He challenged her boundaries, so she feinted at his.
"I don't really care." He'd anticipated this kind of give-and-take, but, even so, the edge in his own voice surprised him a little. "I don't care why you're doing it, as long as you do it."
"Can you hear me on this thing?" she asked, speaking softly into the tiny mouthpiece. He nodded.
"I figured it was partly self-preservation, anyway," he said, after a moment, his voice echoing through the equipment and feeding back slightly with an electronic hiss. "With a background like yours, the last thing you want is for certain people to look too closely at you -- especially these days."
That got a reaction from her, slight but definitely there. "Perhaps I misjudged you," she said. "You're more ruthless than I thought."
"I haven't got a whole lot to lose anymore."
"Who does?" After a moment, she said, "Of course, if we get caught, none of that will matter. We'll both disappear, down to Cuba or to Riyadh. Or possibly somewhere even more unspeakable."
"So, I guess you're damned if you do, damned if you d-"
"I don't believe you'd turn me in, Byers. Not yet. If it were a choice between my life and this Susanne's? Maybe then. But it isn't -- again, not yet." She looked up, out the window, and then down at her watch. “Get ready.”
As she spoke, a light went off on the third floor of the leftmost building.
“That will be the last clerk leaving. Security will make a last sweep to ensure that everyone's out of the building. After that, we have twenty-five minutes before they come back through. Be quick, be quiet, and do exactly as I say. Understand?”
He nodded.
“All right. We go in five minutes then.”
In what felt like far less than five minutes, they were out of the van and making their way toward one of the side doors. Inside, Yves said, was an emergency stairwell. As they reached the door, she pulled out a tiny electronic lock-pick and attached it to the push-button keypad that armed the door.
It was the only visible lock on the entrance.
The building was vintage 1970s, and the security didn't appear to have been updated much since then, either. That realization sent a shiver down his back. What if they had the wrong place? He said as much aloud.
Yves just smiled grimly. “Just because there are new regulations for security, it doesn't mean there's actually any budget to fund them. This is the place, Byers. Just relax.”
She finished with the key-pad and the door opened with a soft click. Pulling a small roll of electrical tape from a pocket, Yves smoothed a piece over the locking mechanism to hold it open.
"Low-tech, but effective," she said, grabbed him by the sleeve and took off at a brisk walk through a darkened corridor and up the stairs.
Illuminated only by glowing 'Exit' signs, they crept quietly up to the third floor landing. Yves did her magic with the keypad and duct tape again, and they were inside.
It felt way too easy.
The sort of breaking and entering he'd done in the past, with Langly and Frohike, with Mulder, had always seemed much more complicated and usually involving tangling with harnesses and high tech gadgets.
At least so far, he preferred Yves' way.
They walked through the reception area, Yves taking a tiny penlight from one pocket. The archive room was just beyond, it was windowless and Yves twisted the little light to life once they were inside. A desk stood to one side of the room, an uncomfortable 1960s-era office chair pushed against a file cabinet behind it. A dart board hung on the wall opposite, the paint around it pockmarked from years of missed shots.
“What a horribly boring job that must be,” he whispered.
“Not everyone can lead lives of danger and excitement like ours,” she said, and he couldn't quite tell whether she was joking or not. “You go left. I'll go right.”
He took out his own flashlight, playing it across the carefully cataloged boxes of files. The boxes appeared to be in order by identification number. Each box had tiny squares of white paper fastened to the front and labeled with the sequence of file numbers inside.
This first one read '8850 - 9100'. They'd been at this a long time.
He took off down one of the long aisles, trying to get his bearings.
“Byers.”
He mostly controlled his urge to jump at the sound. Mostly. Somehow Yves had managed to sneak up behind him. He turned to face her.
“Byers, look at this. Make sure it's what you're after.”
She handed him a stack of thick files. He flipped the folder open and looked at the first page.
File #10013. Female. 37 years old. Detained in Philadelphia on 9/11/2001. Previously wanted in connection with crimes against the U.S. Government. Initially presumed dead.
No name, no other details. But it was enough.
“Yes,” he said, forcing himself to whisper. “Yes, this looks like it.”
“Good. Let's get out of here.”
He followed her back through the office, putting things back exactly as they were. Boxes replaced, doors locked, tape removed. It looked as though they'd never been inside. It might be months before anyone even noticed the file was missing.
Back downstairs, Yves ripped the final strip of tape from the outside door and let it close softly. Before he knew it, they were back in the van and headed toward Arlington, the files still clutched in his hands.
“That was... easy,” he said. “Is that why you agreed to help me? Because you knew it wasn't a difficult job?”
“Any job can be difficult, given the right circumstances,” she replied, turning the van onto Route 1 and heading toward Alexandria.
“Where are we going?”
“My place,” Yves said, and didn't speak to him again until they pulled up to the drive-through window of an Arby's along the way. At his look of surprise, she simply shrugged and said, “I'm starving. You want to split an order of jalapeño poppers?”
Unsure what else to do, he nodded. He'd never pegged Yves as a mocha milkshake type, either, but just chalked it up to learning something new every day.
Yves' place turned out to be a small but well-appointed brownstone just off Duke Street. She parked the van a suitable distance away and got out. Byers hiked after her, toting the files and a bag of curly fries.
“You live here?” he said when they were standing on the front stoop.
“This month,” she replied, opening the door and letting him walk in first. He turned and watched her fasten the locks. He noticed she had almost as many as they did at home.
Sliding the final deadbolt home, she said, “Have a seat.”
She deposited the bags of fast food on a low coffee table and switched on a lamp. The apartment was nicely furnished if spartan, the rugs and furniture fine quality but nondescript. Yves didn't appear to own any artwork or photographs. She did, however, have a plasma flat-screen television hanging on the wall above a small entertainment center that housed an Asian prototype media PC and wireless keyboard.
He spread the files out on the thick carpeting. Yves tipped a handful of ketchup packets onto the table and sat down beside him, taking half of one of the sandwiches in one hand. She leaned over the papers, reading as she ate.
“Well,” she said, looking up after a moment, “now you have a location. At least, as of last month.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And what are you going do now that you know where they're holding this woman?” she asked.
“Go there. Find her. Bring her home.”
Yves sighed slightly, setting the sandwich down and wiping her fingers with a paper napkin. “As plans go? That isn't a particularly good one, Byers.”
“But it's what I have to do.”
“You're also aware that we don't know for sure whether this particular prisoner is the woman you're looking for?”
“I am.” He picked up the other half of the sandwich and took a bite.
She watched him for a moment. “Why is this so important? Who is this woman?”
“Shouldn't you have asked me this before you agreed to help?”
“I'm curious now,” she said, picking at one of the ketchup packets. “Who is she? A lover? Sister? Friend? Sole remaining witness to the Kennedy assassination?”
“Funny,” he said, shortly. He finished the sandwich and crumpled up the waxy wrapper. “Anyway, I would have thought you'd know everything by now.”
“I know who Susanne Modeski is. Or was, according to all official sources. What I want to know is, who she is to you, and why you're risking your life for her.”
Yves was watching him intently. She leaned back against the table, the papers and remnants of fast food scattered between them like they were college kids on a study date.
“I love her,” he said at last. “But it's more than just that.” He held up a hand “That's all you get to know. That's all you need to know, for now.”
She seemed to struggle with her curiosity for a moment, but finally nodded. “You're going to need a better plan.”
“I know,” he said.
“In fact, the best plan of all would be to forget about this. Or find another way to help her.”
“I know that, too.”
“But you're determined to do it this way?” She looked away from him, resting her arms on her knees.
“I am.”
“And I suppose you're going to want help?”
“I'd rather. But I'll do it even without you.”
She sighed again. “Come on then. I'll drive you home. We'll figure something out tomorrow.”
(Continued in Part 2.)