TITLE: BLUE BOYS, 4/5
AUTHOR: kateswan
EMAIL: kateswan@triton.net
RATING: PG-13, minor language
DISCLAIMER: Carter, Gilligan, Shiban, Spotnitz ... did you love them as
much as we do? So long, and thanks for all the characters.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: I don’t believe in delayed gratification. I want it, I
want it now ... Dedicated to all the Gunfen, you know who you are; and
to the programming poohbahs at Fox Broadcasting, this is for you and the
horses you rode in on. My take on what happens after the TO BE CONTINUED
whopper flashed across the screen following the final minutes of The
Lone Gunmen: All About Yves.
“Okay. Skinner graciously consented to break into Yves’ apartment with
us, and be the test subject in the Morris Fletcher look-alike contest,”
Frohike continued.
“And *I* had to be home when you called,” Doggett shook his head. “I
have to be crazy.”
“I’m beginning to have my suspicions,” Mulder laughed. “I must say,
you’re a good man to go funky poaching with, Doggett.”
Doggett’s face froze in an expression of distaste. “Do me a favor,
Mulder. Never explain that term to me. Or use it again in my presence.”
“So you broke into my place and figured out how to use the prosthesis
modeler? I’m impressed, boys.” Yves raised her eyebrows and fixed
Frohike with a stare. “You’re forcing me to do some significant
reevaluation about your character and ability.”
Frohike took a bow. It had been obvious, but it was nice to hear her
admit their kung foo was the best. “The worst part of the operation was
sitting in the van outside the Fenix Atlantic warehouse, listening to
Fletcher trying to feed us the clues. They handed everything up on a
platter to Langly, on line. Then Fletcher spends ten minutes insulting
and teasing Langly about his blue face -- like we hadn’t figured out by
that time exactly why that booby trap had been planted in the apartment.
Fletcher wanted to lead us, in easy stages, toward a foolproof method of
getting inside ... that he thought we would think was the result of our
own cleverness. It was painful. We had to sit there and take it, and
sell the same bull back to him. By the way, Byers ... you’re getting to
be a great actor. ‘Chroma-key ... that’s the answer!’ All big-eyed and
innocent, full of discovery. You killed me. I wanted to applaud.”
“Your turn to bow Byers,” Mulder said.
“It was nothing.” Byers sketched a nod with his head. “I knew we could
swing the facial recognition software. But we still didn’t know exactly
why Fletcher wanted us down there. We figured he was after Yves, but
there was still a possibility that he might want to rip off his own
people. We couldn’t rule that out, and we couldn’t pass on the chance.”
“When Fletcher told us he was staying in the van ... well, chances we
were headed for the mother lode of useful information seemed to
increase. We had our backup plan in motion, and we knew Big Brother was
watching. We went in.” Frohike reached down and tickled the bottom of
Fletcher’s foot. “Are you getting all this, Mr. Majestic? Mr. MIB?”
“Don’t *do* that, you nasty little troll.” Fletcher tried to retract his
feet.
“I came up behind him just in time to see you three disappearing through
the gate, and hear Fletcher say “Three blue mice, headed toward the
cheese” into his cell phone. It was the last thing he said for a while,”
Skinner said with some satisfaction. “Agent Doggett and I stripped him
down, trussed him up, and stuffed him in the trunk of my car. We’d just
finished when Mulder drove up, and cautioned us there was a convoy
headed in our direction. I greeted them as Fletcher, and we followed you
into the warehouse.”
“Then you showed up, Jimmy. Mulder and I nearly had to bounce your butt
out of there,” Doggett said. “Who was the little squid with you?”
“Kimmy. But Yves did it for you.” Jimmy tipped his head and smiled at
her with his best harmless puppy dog expression. “She was willing to
sacrifice herself ...”
Frohike rolled his eyes. “And see how useful *that* was.”
“It worked out okay, Frohike. Give her some credit,” Jimmy insisted.
“I give her credit.” Frohike turned away from Fletcher and faced Yves.
“Time to belly up to the bar, Yves, and put your money down. We’ve
already got a pretty good idea what you are, where you came from, and
what you’ve been doing.”
“Thanks in part to Fletcher’s smug clue about Eva Peron,” Byers said.
“’A man of action is one who triumphs *over* the rest. A woman of action
is one who triumphs *for* the rest.’ All that money you’ve been ...
liberating. It’s going to help women and children, orphans, poor
families ... isn’t it?”
“Yves.” Jimmy was glowing. “I knew it. I knew it. Why didn’t you just
tell us?”
“You make it sound so easy.” Yves wrapped her arms around her legs and
rested her chin on her knees. “Maybe if the story had been all mine, I
would have told you. How did you find out?”
“I took a look at your computer,” Langly said. “Only a quick one,” he
added as she directed a killer look his way. “Hey, you’ve seen ours, it
was only fair we should see yours. Anyway, you have a pretty scary
setup, so I only peeked. In and out, with a couple of bits we could
backtrace from our end.”
“I guess I’ve done the same thing to you.” Yves looked at Skinner. “You
still have the trank gun?”
“Yeah.” Skinner nodded, pointing to Fletcher’s overcoat.
“Would you mind?” Yves motioned toward Fletcher. “I don’t believe he’s
on a need to know basis.”
“It would be a pleasure.” Skinner found the gun and left his seat.
“Don’t you dare.” Fletcher began to thrash. “No ...” The hiss of the gun
left him limp and quiet, his hands flopping bonelessly over the cuffs.
“I’m guessing your father was KGB.” Frohike met her eyes across the
room, and for the first time he saw the shadow of a smile.
“You are a charming and annoying man, Melvin Frohike.”
“You left out brilliant.” Frohike ignored the various noises that
emerged from Mulder, Langly and Skinner. “So tell us.”
“They don’t really want me at all,” Yves said. “They want my father.
Dmitri. He never told me his full birth name. He invented the prosthesis
modeler, their compressed air weapons, and so much more. As you say,
father worked for the KGB. He also worked, at various times, for MI6,
the CIA, and others.”
“Free agent?” Skinner shook his head. “I’ve never heard of anyone who
crossed the line that often.”
“There has never been anyone like Dmitri.” Yves resumed staring at an
invisible point in the air. “Until I was 12, I thought my father had
died in a rail accident shortly after my birth. Mother raised me, in
London. I never missed having a father. Mother was beautiful, talented;
she filled my life with music, literature and art. When I got old enough
to think about it, and compare my life with the few other children I
knew near my own age, I thought we must be rich, and mother eccentric
and smart enough to prefer home schooling. I didn’t mind the difference.
Every day was an adventure.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Jimmy said softly.
“I loved her very much.” Yves bit her lip. “When I got older, I also
started wondering about mother’s monthly trips alone. She said she was
visiting a friend in a retirement home, and I knew she had to take a
train to get there. But she never told me the friend’s name. Since we
had no family that I knew of, I used to fantasize she had a crazy
brother or sister that mother’s sense of duty forced her to visit. I was
reading Bronte at the time.”
“She was visiting your father?” Frohike saw her nod.
“I think so. When I was 12, she was killed in a rail accident, returning
to London. Two of mother’s woman friends took care of me for the next
week. When they didn’t think I could hear, they would comment on the
cruel irony of losing both parents in the same manner, years apart, and
wondering what would become of me, and who would take care of the
finances. Mother’s estate was, it turned out, substantial.
“They took care of the funeral arrangements, and the night after the
funeral one of them asked me if I’d like to live with her until I was
old enough to care for myself. She was a nice woman, truly I don’t think
her offer was motivated by financial considerations. I told her I’d
sleep on it.”
Smarm groaned again and rolled over. Yves’ eyes and jawline hardened as
she looked toward him. “When I woke up again, I wasn’t in London
anymore. I was on a yacht, with a man who claimed to be my father. It
took me time to understand, and accept. The years that followed were
every bit as rich and varied as the time I had with mother, but on a far
broader scale. We went around the world, and back again. When I was old
enough to appreciate the facts, father told me about his life in the
select community of what he called special government agents. He never
used the word spy; father thought it was vulgar, and imprecise. He felt
‘spy’ implied a voyeuristic act, while what he and most of his peers did
was active. The men he knew didn’t just tour the orchard, they raked,
weeded, pruned, and occasionally burned entire stands of trees.”
“Was he still active while you were with him?” Doggett asked.
“No.” Yves shook her head. “He’d removed himself from the business
before mother’s death. The world was changing, he told me, and not for
the better. Men who should have known better, powerful men who told him
what to do, were putting the entire world at risk. The face on the
opposite side of the power coin was responsibility, father used to tell
me. He made a decision, packed his toys, and went into hiding. He was
fortunate to be one of a very few clever enough to pull it off. The
prosthesis modeler was a useful tool in his ability to remain low
profile. Unfortunately, others knew the modeler existed, and father had
been working on a significant piece of software for the Russians when he
evaporated.”
“That’s where you learned your hacking skills,” Langly said. “He must
have been good. I wish I could meet your father.”
“You and so many others.” Yves laughed, a sound suspiciously like a sob.
“Failing that, they’d like to have his inventions and papers. I haven’t
seen father for three years now. They shot him, and he nearly died. When
he was well enough to leave, he told me goodbye. He’s an old man; if he
isn’t dead, he’s close. They should just let him go.”
“That’s what Smarm is after? You and the toys?” Frohike asked.
“Smarm? Him?” Yves smiled. “That’s a good name for him. I’ve never met
him before, but his type is obvious. Yes, he’ll take as much as he can
get. Me, the equipment, any clue where my father might have gone.”
“How did you hear about Fletcher in the first place?” Langly asked.
“That’s been bothering me.”
“Street rumor.” Yves looked toward Mulder. “It was a stupid, impetuous,
non-lucrative endeavor. I suspect Smarm may have planted other such
tidbits, in the hope I would eventually go after one of them.”
“What I’m still wondering is how you knew so much about her, Frohike,”
Byers said. He’d been absentmindedly stroking his beard and listening to
Yves with a frown of concentration.
“And we still don’t know her real name, or what’s up with the Lee Harvey
Oswald thing,” Langly chimed in.
“I’m still surprised he remembered my face,” Yves said, shooting a
haughty look in Frohike’s direction. “Father insisted I obtain legal
American citizenship, under my birth name. He knew it was a risk, but
wanted me here clean. It was at the swearing in ceremony; I noticed a
garden gnome leering at me. I think that’s when he first pegged my
brassiere size.”
Frohike grinned and waggled an eyebrow. “You were wearing a white knit
turtleneck and a little black skirt. Very nice. And I remembered your
face perfectly; your legs, too. Very nice.”
“What were you doing there, Frohike?” Jimmy asked. He looked slightly resentful.
“I was with a friend who was going through the process, an ex-Cuban woman.”
“Not ...?” Byers looked at him, interested.
“No.” Frohike said, shortly. “I looked at the register after the
ceremony, just idle curiosity.”
“You are a dirty old man, Frohike.” Mulder had found a pen somewhere,
and was writing on Fletcher’s leg. “And her name is?”
“Eva. My name is Eva Lee Harolds.” Yves laughed at their varied
expressions, a moment of real humor lifting the stress lines around her
mouth and making her look young, beautiful and carefree.
She needed more moments like this, Frohike thought, watching the joy
fade too quickly.
“Father was a fiend for word games. He never spoke about mother much,
but he told me she’d named me on her own, and he teased her later about
hitting on a near perfect anagram for a famous scapegoat. He said it had
brought him up short. The Oswald frame was one of the turning points in
his career.”
“He knew it was a frame?” Byers leaned forward, excited. “What did he know?”
“He was working for the KGB when Oswald applied for Soviet citizenship.
Oswald was quite a joke among them, this foolish Americanski trying to
defect *to* the USSR. It wasn’t father’s department, but his curiosity
was boundless. He tagged along on one of the first interviews another
agent did with Oswald; they posed as journalists seeking information
about his grand intention.
“Dmitri said Oswald was no killer, just another lost citizen looking for
a perfect country that didn’t exist. Father moved on to other things,
and probably wouldn’t have thought of Oswald again except for an
overheard conversation between two agents some months later. Competition
from “the other place” was interested in Oswald.”
“CIA?” Byers shook his head. “Surely there was no direct communication
with the KGB.”
Yves arched her eyebrows. “Dmitri said there’d been a directive to begin
applying pressures to Oswald, to encourage him to return to America.
Normally, father said, such a directive was enforced with the finesse of
a tap-dancing elephant. Oswald’s case was handled by the invisible ones.”
“The invisible ones?” Skinner sounded intrigued. “Some division of the
KGB we’ve never heard of?”
“Not KGB. I suspect they’re the Russian equivalent of Mr. Morris
Fletcher,” Yves said. “Father hated them.”
“You’re suggesting that someone in America planned in advance to use
Oswald,” Frohike said.
Yves shrugged. “Father thought so. It turned into one of his life’s
obsessions, to never be used again. The time I lived with him he spent
atoning for things he’d done in his youth. There were clinics, nursing
schools, orphanages, food banks, housing projects ... in various parts
of the world, not just Russia, although Dmitri’s heart bled for his
native soil. When he left, I promised to carry on for him. I have. It’s
expensive.”
“Whew.” Doggett broke the lengthening silence. “That’s all interesting,
and I think I’m glad that we saved your butts ... what are we going to
do with the bodies now?”
“I can’t wait to hear your answer, Frohike.” Skinner crossed his legs
and swung one foot idly. “There’s no way I’m taking either of them back
to the bureau.”
“Probably not a good idea,” Frohike agreed. He looked toward Mulder.
“What the hell are you doing with Fletcher’s leg, you pervert?”
Mulder looked up and grinned. “Anagrams. How many words can you make
from Morris Fletcher? I’ve already got thirteen.”
“It’s always up to me,” Frohike grumbled. “I’ve got an idea, but Yves
may not like it.”
“I’m sure I won’t.” Yves stood, a defensive reaction. “What do you have
in mind?”
Frohike grinned what he hoped was his most disarming, charming grin. “It
strikes me that we’ve got a perfectly good brainwasher right here.
Fletcher could enroll Smarm in one of his little Reticulan Clinics. That
should take care of his credibility, maybe his sanity.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Mulder said. “Look at me.”
“It should work,” Skinner and Doggett said, together.
“How are you going to talk Fletcher into cooperating?” Langly got off
the floor and stretched. “He strikes me as the backbiting traitor type.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s the part Yves won’t like.” No use putting it off,
Frohike thought. “I need my bag from the car. And I need you to copy
that disc, Langly.”
“I’ll get your bag,” Doggett offered. “*I* need some air. I probably
won’t keep walking.”
“Thanks. I’ll come with.” Frohike followed him down the stairs. He
stopped Doggett by the front door. “I know this is strange stuff for
you. I just want to say how much we appreciate your help.”
“If you really appreciate it, think about changing your life-style,”
Doggett said, opening the door. “You may have lived a full life, but
your friends could still put in decades if they moved to the normal side
of the road.”
“Hey! I could still put in decades ... at least a couple.” This guy
definitely wasn’t a Mulder clone, Frohike thought. Nice enough, and
potentially easy to guilt into helping out. Frohike wondered if Doggett
was more imaginative than they’d first thought.
“So what’s the plan have to do with Yves?” Doggett asked casually as he
reached into the car for Frohike’s bag.
“I’d better tell her first. She’s really going to hate it.”