"How's that?" asked Mulder cautiously.

"Standing around holding your yank while bombs are exploding."

The stranger laughed as Mulder turned and eyed him. "Do I know you?"

"No. But I've been watching your career for a good while. Back when you were just a promising young agent. Before that…"

"You follow me out here for a reason?"

"Yeah. I did." The man turned so that his back was to Mulder and unzipped his own pants. "My name's Kurtzweil. Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil."

Mulder frowned, trying to ignore the intru-sion. He zipped himself up and turned around, ready to leave.

"Old friend of your father's." Kurtzweil looked over his shoulder and smiled at Mulder's bewil-dered expression. "Back at the Department of State. We were what you might call fellow travel-ers, but his disenchantment outlasted mine." Kurtzweil waited, as though giving Mulder the chance to let this all sink in.

Mulder's expression grew stony. Quickly he took the last few steps to the door and jerked it open.

Kurtzweil finished heeding nature's call, zipped up, and followed Mulder inside. He caught up with him at the coat rack by the door, where the younger man was fumbling with his jacket.

"How'd you find me?" Mulder asked. He sounded more weary than angry.

Kurtzweil shrugged. "Heard you come here now and again. Figured you'd be needing a lit-tle drinky tonight…"

"You a reporter?"

Kurtzweil shook his head and took his own raincoat from the rack. "I'm a doctor, but I think I mentioned that. OB-GYN."

"Who sent you?"

"I came on my own. After reading about the bombing in Dallas."

Mulder stared at him measuringly, taking in Kurtzweil's rheumy, intelligent eyes and wry mouth. "Well, if you've got something to tell me, you've got as long as it takes for me to hail a cab," he said, and started out the door.

Before he could hit the sidewalk, Kurtzweil grabbed his arm. "They're going to pin Dallas on you, Agent Mulder." His tone was not accusatory. If anything, he sounded apologetic, even sorrowful—the trusted family retainer bringing news of a death. "But there was nothing you could've done. Nothing any-one could've done to prevent that bomb from going off—

"Because the truth is something you'd never have guessed. Never even have pre-dicted."

Mulder stared at him, his face twisting into rage. He pulled away and stormed down the sidewalk as Kurtzweil followed him doggedly. "And what's that?" Mulder snapped.

Kurtzweil hurried until he was alongside him. "S.A.C. Darius Michaud never tried or intended to defuse the bomb."

Mulder paused, teetering on the edge of the curb. Around them L'Enfant Plaza was a wasteland of rain-slicked streets and empty newspaper machines. In the near-distance ugly government buildings loomed, and a few Yellow Cabs hopefully trolled Constitution Avenue for customers. Mulder looked around in disgust, turned to Kurtzweil, and said in rhetorical disbelief, "He just let it explode."

Kurtzweil tugged at the collar of his rain-coat. "What's the question nobody's asking? Why that building? Why not the federal build-ing?"

Mulder looked pained. "The federal build-ing was too well guarded—"

" No." Kurtzweil's voice grew agitated as Mulder stepped into the street, raising his hand to hail a cab.

"They put the bomb in the build-ing across the street because it did have federal offices. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had a provisional medical quarantine office there. Which is where the bodies were found. But that's the thing—"

The taxi pulled over. Kurtzweil sidestepped a puddle as he followed Mulder to its side. "—the thing you didn't know. That you'd never think to check."

Mulder was already pulling the door open, lowering himself to slide inside. Kurtzweil gazed at him, his eyes no longer sad but fierce, almost challenging. "Those people were al-ready dead."

Mulder blinked. "Before the bomb went off?"

"That's what I'm saying."

Mulder stared at him for a moment. He shook his head. "Michaud was a twenty-two-year veteran of the Bureau—"

"Michaud was a patriot. The men he's loyal to know their way around Dallas. They blew away that building to hide something. Maybe something even they couldn't predict."

Kurtzweil leaned against the cab and looked at Mulder, waiting. The younger man shook his head, no longer quite disbelieving but as though slowly teasing out the answer to a puzzle. "You're saying they destroyed an entire building to hide the bodies of three fire-men?"

Kurtzweil banged the top of the cab tri-umphantly—the right answer at last! "And one little boy."

Without a word, Mulder got into the cab and slammed the door. He looked at the driver.

"Take me to Arlington." He rolled down the window and stared up at Kurtzweil.

"I think you're full of shit," he said.

"Do you?" Kurtzweil asked evenly. He rapped the taxi's roof and stepped away, watch-ing as it sped away. "Do you really, Agent Mulder?" he repeated to himself thoughtfully.

Inside the cab, Mulder leaned forward, frowning. "I changed my mind," he said to the driver. "I want to go to Georgetown."

Dana Scully lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Despite her exhaustion, she hadn't been able to sleep; hadn't been able to do anything, really, but lie there and endlessly replay the events of the last two days: the explosion in Dallas and its after-math, the interminable meeting that had led to the termination of her career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Outside the rain beat at the windows, a noise that she normally found reassuring, but which tonight sounded only like another reprimand, another reminder that some-how she had come up short, in the Bureau's esti-mation and—what was even worse—her own.

And Mulder's. At the thought of her partner, Scully sighed and closed her eyes, fighting back a despair that went even deeper than tears. It didn't even bear thinking about, that this was the end of it—

Don't go there, a voice echoed inside her skull, trying to put a wry spin on it. But Scully only bit her lip.

I'm there, she thought.

The rain battered the walls of her apart-ment, the wind sent branches rattling against the roof; and then she heard something else. She sat up bolt upright, cocking her head.

Someone was pounding at the door. Scully glanced at her bedside clock. 3:17. She grabbed her bathrobe and hurried into the living room. At the door she hesitated, listening to whoever was on the other side pause, then begin to bang even harder. She peeked through the peephole, stepped back, and sighed, her relief tinged with annoyance. Then she removed the safety chain, unlocked the door, and pulled it open.

Mulder stood there, his clothes wet and hair disheveled. Despite his disarray, and the hour, he looked strangely, even disturbingly, alert.

"I wake you?"

Scully shook her head. "No."

"Why not?" Mulder breezed past her into the apartment. As he did she caught the sweet-sour reek of tequila and the fainter, stale smoky scent that all bars have at closing time. "It's three A.M.—"

She closed the door and stared at him in disbelief. "Are you drunk, Mulder?"

"I was until about twenty minutes ago."

Scully crossed her arms against her chest and stared at him coolly. "Is that before or after you got the idea to come here?"