by Ben Mezrich
“Maybe there’s been some progress in the search for Julian Kyle,” she said, hopefully. She and Mulder had sent out an international APB on the fugitive scientist, and had transferred his stats to Interpol and the Southeast Asian division of the CIA. Still, despite her hopes, she doubted Kyle would be apprehended anytime soon. Kyle was ex-military, and assuredly had the resources to hide in Asia indefinitely.
“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Mulder commented, putting voice to Scully’s thoughts. “From what the search teams reported after hitting Fibrol, I’d say Kyle planned for this contingency a long time ago.”
Scully sighed, straightening her slacks as she pushed off the fence. Mulder’s sentiments were accurate; there was little hope of finding Kyle or, for that matter, any evidence of a connection between Paladin’s work and Fibrol International.
Three FBI search teams had descended on Fibrol’s main complex just hours after Scully and Mulder had reported their findings to Skinner. Every office and laboratory had been thoroughly searched, every file cabinet and computer processor scoured for evidence. No links to Paladin or his experiments were found. Nothing to indict either Fibrol or Julian Kyle, and no indication that anyone at the company had previous knowledge of Emile Paladin’s faked death or continued existence. Fibrol’s board of directors had stood up to twelve hours of direct questioning—and not one member of the executive staff had shown evidence of the slightest deception, or any knowledge of Kyle’s possible whereabouts. Paladin and Kyle had obviously been working alone. If, as Mulder maintained, they had been funded by sources within the Defense Department, the paper trail had long since vanished.
Still, the raid on Fibrol had not been a total waste of time. While going through Julian Kyle’s office, the search team had found an unlabeled phone number in a locked drawer in his desk. The number had been traced to a studio apartment in Chelsea. The apartment had been deserted for at least a week, but the forensic specialists had found a number of hair and skin samples in the sink and shower drains matching similar samples taken from the cave at the base of See Dum Kao.
According to preliminary DNA matches, the apartment had belonged to Quo Tien, Emile Paladin’s son. Twenty minutes after the search team began to scour the apartment, they made a chilling discovery. Beneath a hinged tile in the apartment’s bathroom, they had found a small vial of clear liquid and two specially manufactured, spring-loaded miniature syringes. Scully had recognized the description of the syringes from a New England Journal of Medicine article on microsurgery; they had been designed for intercapillary intrusions during microscopic surgical procedures. That in mind, she was not surprised when the clear liquid in the vial was identified as a rare viral sample suspended in a supercooled chemical base. The search team had solved the mystery of the encephalitis lethargica outbreak.
“Kyle’s long gone,” Mulder continued, as he and Scully started toward the runway, intending to meet Skinner halfway. “And he took Paladin’s skin with him. We’re left with twenty-five unknown soldiers, a trail of brutal murders, a medically exonerated Perry Stanton—and, of course, a pair of tusks. In retrospect, I guess it’s a pretty good ending to a three-hundred-year-old myth.”
Scully avoided looking at her partner. They had been over the subject a dozen times. The tusks had been transported to the FBI headquarters along with Scully and Mulder’s case file. Preliminary molecular dating had placed the age of the objects at approximately three hundred years—a fact that, on its own, was inconclusive. Elephants and wild boar were indigenous to the region, now as well as three hundred years ago. Although DNA analysis had not yet found a species match, there was a good chance the tusks belonged to a strain of elephant or boar that had since gone extinct.
“Maybe that’s what Skinner wants to talk about,” Scully finally responded, her voice low. They were now only a dozen yards from the assistant director, closing fast. “Maybe he wants to donate the tusks to a museum. Or better yet, sell them to pay for our little excursion.”
“I’d rather mount them on the wall of my office,” Mulder said. “A memento of our romantic journey to Southeast Asia. What do you say, Scully? We could split the pair.”
“Thanks,” Scully responded, her face stiffening as they met Skinner at the edge of the runway, “but I think they’re more your style.”
About the Author
BEN MEZRICH has published nine books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House (set to be a Sony picture in March 2008 starring Kevin Spacey). He is a columnist for Stuff magazine and Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine (U.K.). His most recent book is Rigged, and he lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
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The X-Files
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THE X-FILES: SKIN
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Credits
Cover illustration by Hamagami/ Carrol Associates
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE X-FILES: SKIN. Copyright © 1999, 2008 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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