Value & Honor
by Forte
(Forte1354@aol.com)

Please see Chapter 1 for rating, summary, disclaimer, etc.


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- Chapter 8b -

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Office of the Lone Gunmen
Saturday, 11:14 a.m.


With his focus on Friday flights from the Northeast to DC-area
airports, Mulder's search for names of women from the MUFON group
had gone much faster.  That just meant his disappointment had come
sooner: he found no matches.  After that, tired of staring at the
PC's monitor, he'd printed the passenger manifests for all of the
Friday flights.  His next task would be to manually search for any
name that looked like it might have been used by Kurt Crawford.

< That's why they put the "I" in FBI.>

But now he'd been staring at the black and white pages for so long
that the text was starting to swim.  Mulder rubbed his eyes with the
heels of his hands.  Time to take a break.

Mulder stood and stretched, looking around the room to re-focus his
eyes.  Byers and Langly were still working on deciphering the
e-mails.  Frohike was not in sight.  He had been alternating between
working at one of the computers, making an occasional suggestion
regarding the encrypted messages, and disappearing into a back room.
 Mulder assumed that that was where he practiced the art and science
of creating bogus ID's.

Mulder stifled a yawn, then decided a good stiff dose of caffeine
was in order.  He went to the kitchen and made himself a cup.  He
picked up a donut when he returned, wolfing it down in half a dozen
bites.  Might as well get wired on sugar, too.

While he finished his coffee, Mulder watched Byers and Langly work
on the four messages.  A thought struck him.  Could any more
messages have been sent to them in the past few hours?  He went to
one of the other computers and checked all of his personal e-mail
accounts.  Nothing new.  Then he pulled out his cell phone and
checked his home answering machine and FBI voicemail.  Nothing
there, either.

Well, no news was... what?  Good news?  Just not bad news?  If he'd
had any Gunmen-inspired doubts that the four messages were from Kurt
Crawford, those doubts were all but gone.

< Unless this whole thing is a hoax.>  No, no, no.  Not going there. 
He was certain that it had been Kurt.  And as he'd told Scully, Kurt
could have harmed them or forced them to go with him if he'd wanted
to.  No, his story must have been on the level.  Those e-mails must
have been from Kurt.

Now they just had to get them translated so he and Scully would know
where to go meet him.

Jesus.  Scully.  Mulder set down his empty coffee mug and rubbed his
eyes for a second time.  She was at the Hoover Building, dealing
with those autopsy files again.  And she'd wanted to be alone while
doing it.  Scully kept her emotions in check, but this case was so
hard for her that she had to physically distance herself from him to
deal with her pain.  It was just like Emily's death, when he'd
offered to stay with her but she'd asked to be alone.

Emily.  They never talked about her.  Hell, they never talked about
a lot of things, but they especially never talked about Emily. 
Until the conversation they'd had the day before, after their
meeting with Kersh, the last time Scully had mentioned Emily had
been... when?  During the case involving the four sisters who had
died under mysterious circumstances?  Scully had told him she'd seen
Emily in a vision.  He'd all but told her she was crazy.  No wonder
she never talked about her daughter.  Good work, Mulder.  Real
understanding of you.

And now this damn case with Jack Morse, the autopsy files Kersh had
asked Scully to look at, just compounded the fracture in her soul. 
Then the bullshit from Diana, and the whole matter with Kurt
Crawford, her abduction, her stolen ova...

< "You have hope, Mulder, and I don't have a damned thing.">

He wished there was something he could do for her, to ease her
anguish, to give her hope.  Something besides finding Kurt Crawford,
anyway.  But he couldn't think of anything.  And if he asked what
she needed, she'd say she was fine.  Damn it all.

"Earth to Mulder."

He nearly jumped at the sound of Frohike's voice, then realized he
was still holding his cell phone.  He must have been staring at it,
not really seeing it while he was lost in his thoughts.  He placed
the phone on the closest flat surface and turned to the Gunman.

Frohike held out two sets of driver's licenses, credit cards, and
passports.  "All set.  Finest forgeries money can buy."

Mulder took the ID's from him and shuffled through them like playing
cards, admiring them.  "You're another Michelangelo, Frohike.  A
true artist."

"Flattery will get you nowhere.  I'll send you a bill for my
services."

< Bill? >  "That reminds me.  I need to make a withdrawal from our
account."

"How much do you need?"

"How much have we got?  I haven't checked our balance lately."

Mulder left the ID's by his jacket, then followed Frohike to the
Gunmen's sleeping area.  Frohike pulled up the corner of one of the
mattresses.  Short stacks of twenty-dollar bills, held together by
rubber bands, waited there.

Mulder and Scully had realized years before that there would be
times when they needed quick money for emergencies.  At such times a
large withdrawal might be inadvisable (not wanting their withdrawals
to be traced) or impossible (due to daily ATM withdrawal limits, or
the Consortium finally turning the economic screw by freezing their
accounts).  So both had started putting aside small quantities of
cash on a regular basis, leaving it with the Gunmen for safekeeping.
 They were able to set aside amounts small enough that no one
watching their bank accounts would ever notice.  The Gunmen were
careful to de-magnetize the strips in the bills so they couldn't be
traced through metal detectors.

Frohike counted the piles of cash and did a quick mental
calculation, knowing each bundle held two hundred dollars.  "Close
to $4,000.  All of it's been de-magnetized."

Mulder grinned, recalling Scully's anti-counterfeiting argument for
the strip when she'd first met the Gunmen.  He wondered if she'd
ever gotten back the twenty-dollar bill that Byers had ripped in
two.  She'd later pronounced his friends as "paranoid"; he knew she
now saw that their concerns were often well-founded.  His grin
disappeared as he realized that she'd lost her innocence -- and a
hell of a lot more.

"Give me twenty-five hundred," he said, re-focusing himself to the
task at hand.  "That should be plenty to pay cash for plane tickets,
renting a car, hotel, whatever.  I just hope we don't have to go
into Canada.  I don't want to have to screw around with crossing a
border."

Frohike raised an eyebrow as he handed him some of the bills.  "You
doubt the quality of my forgeries?"

Mulder shook his head.  "No, just the fewer checkpoints and security
cameras we have to deal with, the better."

Frohike nodded his understanding, passing him more of the cash. 
"This is a lot of money, Mulder.  It's gonna be bulky."

"Yeah, well, I'll find an impressive-looking place on myself to hide
it."  He took the piles as Frohike handed them to him.  "You know, I
never got my free toaster when I opened this account."

"I'll have it delivered tomorrow," Frohike said, handing him the
last of the requested money.  "And Mulder, since you're so loaded
now..."

"Yeah?"

"We're growing boys.  We need to be fed.  Deciphering encrypted
messages and creating fake ID's takes a lot of energy, you know."

"Fine," Mulder nodded.  "You guys keep working on those e-mails. 
Tell me what you want, and I'll get the food and bring it back
here."


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- end Chapter 8b -

Next:  Chapter 8c

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