Value & Honor
by Forte
(Forte1354@aol.com)
Please see Chapter 1 for rating, summary, disclaimer, etc.
Looking for prior chapters? They're available at
http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/diaz/705/forte.html.
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- Chapter 10a -
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Georgetown
Washington, DC
Saturday, 2:18 p.m.
"What do you want, Diana?"
Scully watched Mulder's body language as he responded to the call
>from Diana Fowley: tight, taut, curled inward. She was surprised by
how much it pleased her that Mulder was so angry. Well, how about
that? It was certainly turning out to be an... unusual day, even
for them. Mysterious messages from Kurt Crawford, an early visit to
the Gunmen, a wrenching morning finishing the Jack Morse case
report, an emotional roller-coaster of a meeting with Mulder at the
Potomac, declaring her loyalty to him and their work in ways that
left him speechless -- twice in one hour.
And, less than a minute earlier, she had been wrapped in Mulder's
arms. She'd known that he would appreciate the poster, as well as
the sentiment behind it, but... the embrace had been a surprise.
The good kind, thankfully. God knew she -- =they= -- could use a
few more pleasant surprises in their lives. Diana Fowley certainly
had miserable timing, though. But... at least it was just a phone
call and not a damn bee. Not a stupid little bee. Not a
disease-carrying, miserable, interrupting little...
Before her ruminations could go further, Scully caught movement out
of the corner of her eye. Mulder had shifted position, leaning
against one of the stuffed chairs of her living room, and now his
frustrated gaze was lifted in her direction. She thought the
frustration was due to his conversation, but gave him an apologetic
grimace anyway and rebuked herself for daydreaming. -- her mental breath caught on
the word --
Scully felt a chill and wrapped the coat she was still wearing
around herself in a quick hug. She turned towards the kitchen,
flushed with embarrassment at having been caught standing there,
even though her rational mind told her that she was in her own home.
If Mulder really =wanted= privacy he could have moved to another
room. Besides, she hadn't been paying attention to what he'd been
saying. Still, she felt like she was intruding; this was Mulder's
conversation, not hers. The considerate thing would be to give him
some solitude.
Okay. So... Scully looked around the kitchen, regaining her
composure, and spotted the phone on the wall. They were waiting for
a call from the Gunmen... this would be a good time to check in with
them. She'd use her bedroom phone, reinforcing her intent to give
Mulder some privacy.
She moved back into the living room. She thought she heard Mulder
mutter, "I can't -- " before stopping abruptly, as though
interrupted. He stood in profile: head bowed, jaw clenched,
eyebrows arched, free hand poised on his hip. Apparently sensing
her entrance, he looked toward Scully again; she gestured toward her
bedroom with one hand and mimed holding a phone receiver with the
other. Mulder managed to nod his understanding of intentions and
shake his head at his cell phone in exasperation at the same time.
As she walked down the hall toward her bedroom room she heard
Mulder's voice, muffled but obviously irritated.
Scully entered her bedroom and shut the door. She sat on the edge
of the bed, sinking into the down comforter, and reached for the
phone on the nightstand. Before she could lift the receiver, a
muffled trilling came from her coat. She dug her hand into the
pocket and pulled out her cell phone, bringing it to her ear and
thumbing it on in one fluid motion.
"Scully."
"Agent Scully?" Frohike's voice over a speakerphone was
unmistakable. "Is everything okay? We just tried Mulder and got
his voicemail."
"He's here, but he's on his cell phone." Scully's words came out in
a rush; she felt her body tense in anticipation. "What's going on
-- did you decipher the messages?"
"Yes," Byers said, more emphatic than necessary. "Do you want them
over the phone, or do you and Mulder want to come back here for
them?"
Scully paused, knowing that the cell phone wasn't secure. But
without knowing what the messages were, she couldn't judge whether
they could afford the extra time to go back to the Gunmen's. She
glanced at the corded phone on the nightstand... a safer option, at
least. "I'll call you right back," she stated, thumbing off the
cell phone without waiting for a response. She shoved it back in
her coat pocket, and punched in the Gunmen's number on the other
phone.
"Lone Gunmen," came Langly's voice, still through a speakerphone.
"Yeah, it's me." Scully reached for the pad and pen next to the
phone, then hesitated again. "Just a minute." Should she pull
Mulder away from his call...? She reached behind the nightstand and
pulled out the neatly coiled wire that connected the phone to the
wall jack. She knew from experience that the extra-long wire would
extend to the end of the hall. She tossed the coil on the floor,
then picked up the phone from the table. "How were you able to
break the encryption?" she asked, rising and moving towards the door
she had just closed, feeling the jittery effect of adrenaline
running through her bloodstream.
"We'd been expecting something very sophisticated, but it wound up
being simple -- so simple we never thought to try it earlier," Byers
replied. "You recall that the encryption was a long string of
letters -- some lower case, some upper case -- that appeared to be
generated at random."
Scully opened the bedroom door, stepped into the hallway and strode
toward the living room.
"It turned out that it wasn't the characters themselves that
matter," Langly broke in, "it was whether they were lower case or
upper case. We created binary strings by changing all of the lower
case characters to zeros, and all the upper case characters to
ones."
At the end of the hall, Scully peered into the main room. Mulder
was still on his cell phone, looking no less annoyed, speaking too
low for her to judge how much longer he would be. He would probably
welcome an excuse to end the call, but... Scully was loathe to
interfere when her partner's attitude toward Fowley seemed one
hundred percent negative. Decision made, she turned around to
return down the hall.
"We took those binary strings and converted them into new text,"
Frohike continued. "Then we had upper and lower case characters
again, and some numbers. But now everything lower case is gibberish
-- just filler -- and the numbers and upper case letters are the
real message."
Scully re-closed the bedroom door behind her and sat on the bed
again as Langly finished the Gunmen's story. "Once we had one
message broken, the rest were easy."
Scully set the phone at the back of the nightstand and dragged the
pad of paper and a pen toward her. She inked a test doodle on the
pad. "All right, go ahead. What are the messages?"
"The first message is a name, 'George T'," Byers reported. "The
man's name, and then the letter 'T' like an initial."
"George T," Scully repeated, recording the word on the pad.
< Whoever =he= is.>
"The second is also one word: Saturday."
Her pen scratched deeply into the paper. "Saturday." < Today.
Great.>
"The third message is a sequence of numbers," Frohike continued.
"Actually, it's two identical sequences. The entire original
message was duplicated, including the gibberish parts." He recited
the numbers, Scully transcribing. When he was finished, she frowned
at the numbers on the pad.
10301613
10301613
< An address? Part of a phone number? Flight information?>
Langly interrupted her thoughts. "We assume that means ten thirty
p.m. 'P' and 'm' are the sixteenth and thirteenth letters of the
alphabet."
Scully jotted '10:30 p.m.' next to the numbers but continued staring
at them, searching for any additional, hidden meaning. "Why is it
duplicated?"
"We don't know that," Frohike admitted. "It's probably just a
transmission glitch. Happens sometimes with e-mail."
Her brow wrinkled. "All right. What's the last message?"
"The last one made the least sense, at least to us," Byers
responded. "It's three words: red, green, park."
"Red, green, park?" Scully mused, copying the words to paper.
"Does that mean anything to you?" Langly asked.
"No, not in particular," she responded, tapping her pen on the pad
like a metronome. "It could mean a lot of things." She shook her
head slowly, as if trying to get the jumbled clues to fall into
place. "Anything else?"
"No, that was everything," Frohike responded.
"All right." She pursed her lips, eyes narrowed, still staring at
the writing on the pad.
After several moments of silence, Byers spoke up with a gentle
prompting. "Is there anything else we can help with, Agent Scully?"
"No," Scully replied, startled out of her thoughts. "No, I don't
think so. Thank you -- all of you -- for your help on this. We
appreciate it."
"Let us know if you need anything else," Langly spoke up. "We like
a challenge."
The corners of Scully's mouth turned up at the comment. "We'll be
in touch," she assured them. "Thank you again." She heard their
speakerphone click off and slid her own phone back onto its base.
She sat another moment staring at the messages. Then she tossed
the pen back on the nightstand, scooped up the pad, and hurried out
of her bedroom.
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- end Chapter 10a -
Next: Chapter 10b
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