“Taking Samantha Mulder was partly insurance to keep her father from talking.” The boss opened a new pack of cigarettes and flicked his wrist, freeing one from the box. “And we all had to make sacrifices. But it would break Bill if we took his son, too, and right now we need him. The Project is at a critical stage that requires people with specific skills, and Bill Mulder is one of them.”
He lit the Morley and continued talking, with the cigarette tucked in the corner of his mouth. “So we have to keep an eye on Bill and his son. Follow the boy around and let me know if he does anything interesting. We’re also assessing Fox for potential recruitment.”
Tailing a teenager during spring break was a crap job, but Reggie wasn’t high enough in the food chain yet to complain about it. Instead he asked, “Who the hell names their kid Fox? His parents must hate him.”
“Bill and Teena are too busy hating each other. They were barely speaking when Bill moved out of the house in the fall.” The boss stared out the window, tracking Fox Mulder’s progress down the street. “The timing was perfect, actually. We stepped in and relocated Bill from Martha’s Vineyard to DC so he could work on the Project full-time. Fox came with him.”
“I’m surprised the kid’s mom let him go,” Reggie said. “My aunt and uncle divorced when I was young, and they butted heads about everything.”
“If I gave you the impression that I want to swap childhood memories, let me clarify. I don’t.” He took a long drag from his cigarette, and a new funnel of ash began to form. “Interestingly enough, sending Fox to live with his dad was Teena’s idea.”
“Doesn’t that seem strange?” Reggie asked, ignoring the insult.
“It does.” The boss exhaled, and a ribbon of smoke curled its way toward Reggie, who finally coughed and reached for the window handle. The boss snapped his fingers and pointed at the glass. “It stays up.”
Reggie ignored the burning sensation in his throat. He refused to appear weak in front of a man who had once referred to weakness as a disease during a debriefing. “Do you think Fox’s mom knows something?”
“The jury is still out. But when the verdict comes in, I’ll deal with Teena Mulder personally.” Another trail of smoke snaked from the boss’s chapped lips. “You focus on Fox. Update me directly—and only me.”
“So no reports?”
“Keep them to a minimum. We don’t want to leave any bread crumbs. So from this point on, you no longer have a name.
“Sign your reports as ‘X.’”
CHAPTER 2
Woodrow Wilson High School
3:47 P.M.
Fox Mulder stared at the C written at the top of his history test as he walked down the sidewalk with Gimble. His friend hadn’t stopped talking since the bell rang at the end of sixth period, officially signaling the beginning of spring break. That was the thing about Gimble—nothing fazed the guy. He would never waste his time worrying about one lousy grade, but Mulder couldn’t let it go.
After three tests that had all followed the same format—thirty multiple-choice questions taken directly from the textbook and twenty short-answer questions—their history teacher had thrown the class a curveball and switched to essay questions.
“I don’t get it.” Gimble glanced at Mulder’s paper. “Didn’t you read the chapters?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what gives?” Gimble asked. “With that superpower of yours, you should’ve aced the test.”
“A photographic memory isn’t a superpower. It’s an anomaly.” And a social curse, Mulder thought.
The fact that Mulder could remember every word he read annoyed people at school—his classmates, because even if they spent days studying for a test, Mulder would still score higher; and his teachers, because they hated the fact that he knew more than they did.
So Mulder didn’t tell anyone about his memory if he could avoid it. But it was hard to hide from Gimble once they became friends. After Mulder quoted whole pages from Starlog magazine, word for word, he gave himself away.
But his photographic memory couldn’t have helped him today. Mulder crumpled up the test and stuffed it in the back pocket of his jeans.
Gimble noticed and seemed to take it as a sign that Mulder was stressed about his grade. “Maybe it was just an off day and your circuitry got crossed?”
“I don’t have off days.” At least not because of my memory, Mulder thought. “That’s not the way it works. I remember everything from the reading.”
“Then how did you end up with a C?”
“American history textbooks are biased,” Mulder said. “Lots of information in them is inaccurate.”
Gimble smacked a palm against his forehead. “Dude? Tell me you didn’t write that on the test?”
“When did the delegates of the Continental Congress sign the Declaration of Independence?” Mulder asked without missing a beat. “Give me a date.”
“This is obviously a trick question.” Gimble frowned, concentrating. “We’re talking about the Declaration of Independence—the one signed by fifty-six men, with John Hancock’s famous signature on it?”
“That’s the one.”
“Easy. July fourth, 1776,” Gimble said confidently.