It was the only thing on his mind, leaving. It was shitty of him, he knew, such a short time after the baby had been born, but it had nothing to do with his recently acquired fatherly duties. He had to get away, had to think for a while. Everything had been going mach ten for the past few months, and he'd had very little control over it all. Bad news for a control freak like himself.

He downshifted into fifth gear and watched the speedometer climb to 120. The Viper hummed beneath and around him, mastering the speeds easily. He wondered distantly when the cops would try to catch him. It was, after all, Asshole Valley, where the police pulled people over in teams. Goddamn yuppie bastards.

The sirens began behind him mere seconds after he'd thought of it, and the lights flashed like a psychedelic Christmas tree in his rearview. A small grin spread across his face, and he gunned the engine. It had been way too long since he'd made some noise, torn up the landscape.

Thoughts of the Punk crept into his mind again, alone with the child, worried about where he was. His escape had been rocky at best. He'd hoped to leave a nondescript message on the pad beside the phone. He remembered the good old days where he hadn't had to leave a message at all. He came and went of his own accord, with no stress about someone he didn't trust finding the note before anyone else. Now, he did such things without hesitation. It was amazing how he'd adapted so quickly, when it came down to it.

"When are you coming back?" she'd asked.

"Later."

"Great. Wonderful. I need help, Bill... and running away, like usual, won't help a damn thing."

"I can't help it... I gotta think. I'll be back as soon as I can. Okay?" He'd stopped in front of her. The look on his face had to have been desperate, because she backed down almost instantly.

"All right... just be careful, okay?" She sounded less than happy with it all, but knew she couldn't fight him, because he'd do it anyway. He realized this and compromised, something he'd learned to do in recent times.

"I'll take my cell. Just don't call unless you hafta, okay Punk?"

She'd only nodded, sad-like, and he'd left before he could think about it. Hell, he'd done everything on instinct since he'd left the house. He'd escaped to think, and he hadn't done a bit of it. All he wanted was to do something that didn't demand a damn thing of him.

150 mph. There were two cars behind him. The grin grew wider.

-----

Bill never put the box away. It sat by the side of the bed like a reproach, like one of Ryan's devices, only there was nothing elegant or whimsical about it. It was squat and ugly, holding as it did the contents of one human life. It should have looked more important than it did.

Sam and Bill never discussed a thing. Jade and I were of the private opinion that both of them could be just as happy never mentioning it again. They circled one another warily and showed an exaggerated disregard that didn't fool anyone over five. Ryan was on constant watch, ready to step in with angry Irish and large fists. Elmore was simply ready to step in, and as he was bursting with health and pent up energy it was doubtful that the two older war-horses would be able to resist for long. Age and treachery would generally triumph over youth and enthusiasm, but nobody ever mentioned what happened when a person was faced with both.

Finally Bill did everyone a favor and took his show on the road. I didn't like to see him wandering around on a bad leg, but there was no way he could think properly when his first concern had to be avoiding the random fist in the face. It was noisy in the house, what with Mick and Nuala doing Mick and Nuala-things and being egged on by Three, who had come to live with us after New Year's. Rainer added to the racket, Ryan and Elmore clattered in and out, the dogs used most of the house as a racetrack... it simply didn't lend itself to thinking. Even the basement wasn't a good choice--there was laundry being done, and the cellar was where Mick and Three chased Nuala until she yelled. Add all of that to the prospect of facing Sam, and he had no choice but to retreat. I had no idea where he'd gone to or how long he'd be away, but I had no reason to believe he wouldn't return. There was Rainer, a potent draw, after all.

He had left his box in the bedroom and I didn't need to be told twice to read what I could as fast as I could. There was no way Bill would ever be able to discuss these things with me--he wasn't that sort of man, as I had learned the hard way. Giving me access to the box was his way of telling me without answering questions.

I spent every spare minute digging through the files. It wasn't going to take me nearly as long to go through the documents as it had Bill. I wasn't interested in the mission files or the fitness reports or the disciplinary memos or award citations. I wanted to know where in hell the United States Government had gone with Eliot William Gerard.

I skimmed through the microfiched copies of birth and health records, elementary and secondary school files. Bill had been the second of three... er... Eliot had been the second of three, earmarked from birth for the military as brother Samuel had been steered inexorably toward the law. The only surprise had been the service he'd chosen--the Navy, as represented by his admission to Annapolis. It had been left to Brother Sam to follow their father's footsteps, decline his college draft deferment and serve with the Army.

Eliot had gravitated naturally to Intelligence and field operations. The CIA had expressed an interest but the young man had refused. He'd made his plans--career Navy, with hopefully an Admiral's stars before his retirement. He was having a hell of a time in the field, but there was no way he wanted to make a life of it.

Attached to one of the many files from this period was a small glassine bag. It contained an Annapolis graduation ring and for a minute I thought I'd lost the one Bill had given me. It was identical in every way except for one, as I found when I examined it more closely. The engraving inside read 'To Eliot W. Gerard, with the sincere thanks of a confident nation--Richard M. Nixon, 1968.' The ring I wore around my neck said exactly the same thing, with the exception of the graduate's name. He had entrusted the ring to his unit commander--such a large piece of jewelry would immediately identify him anywhere he went. And when... Bill... left the unit, 'his' ring was returned to him.

The next several pages explained it all. Eliot had been compromised, had been captured by the NVA and held in one of their prison camps for almost two years. Records indicated that Eliot had suffered some sort of head trauma, just what they didn't know. An exchange had been arranged, with the proviso that Eliot leave Vietnam, and the US forces received him back with open arms, to discover that his memory was gone. He didn't know Eliot Gerard from the man in the moon, let alone associate that name with himself.

The CIA saw their chance, and Eliot didn't have a prayer after that. The Missing in Action status was officially amended to Killed in Action and Eliot's parents got the dreaded telegram. Meantime, Eliot had been flown from Southeast Asia to the Shop in Virginia where, unbeknownst to himself, he was placed in the care of his handler, Casey Ryback.

Eliot's parents received a coffin and a nation, now grateful instead of merely confident, laid their warrior son to rest in an Ohio cemetery. The Navy thoughtfully provided the information that the coffin had been filled with 122 pounds of brick and firmly packed sand, to simulate Eliot's weight at the time of his recovery. The funeral was closed casket, and nobody attending the ceremony, not the grief stricken parents, nor the stoic Army brother nor the stunned kid sister, ever knew the enormous bill of goods they'd been sold.

I flipped through more paperwork into the ops files. I didn't care what they'd done specifically to eradicate Eliot and create Bill. There were depressing mission orders that read like something out of Mission Impossible, there were even more depressing statistics--Bill was damned efficient at killing, only some CIA clown was partial to phrases like 'deactivation of personnel' and 'liquidation' and 'reduction of oppositional units.' It all came down to the simple fact that Bill Strannix completed mission assigned to him at any and all costs. He became a field trainer, but every offer of promotion was turned down. Eliot Gerard had wanted nothing to do with a career as an operative, Bill Strannix wanted nothing else.

I found the Missouri file--it was the only one of these files that interested me even vaguely. The entire operation had been an elaborate hoax cooked up by Ryback and Strannix as an attempt to bring a number of international terrorists to the surface. It had worked incredibly well--there was a commendation signed by Tom Breaker and countersigned by President Shrub himself. Apparently the whole thing had been a cakewalk--the Missouri had been slated for decommissioning, the submarine had been 'sold' to an 'undisclosed buyer,' and the enlisting of the rest of the 'Bailjumpers' had been slicker than shit through a goose. Even bringing Krill in at the last minute hadn't caused a flicker of instability in the plan; Bill had suspected him and Ryback had no qualms about trusting Bill's ability to handle a loose cannon. Breaker had rubberstamped the entire plan. It was his final bit of skullduggery before moving on to a job in the private sector. Bill's 'trial record' was included in the file. The proceeding had been entirely for purposes of confusion--'disinformation' as the Shop liked to say. Harvey Dent received official credit for some snappy legal work to get Bill acquitted. In fact, the same results could have been achieved with J. Fred Muggs as defense attorney and Mortimer Snerd as presiding judge. There was never any intent to convict Bill of anything. As it happened, some Federal level charges against Harvey had been dismissed, and the two of them had received a tidy little fee for services rendered out of the deal.

Further down in the box, somewhere, was the mission file covering his last trip out. Part of me thought I should get in there and find out, once and for all, what had happened to him. But the other half of me, the half that didn't want to know, couldn't stand to know just yet, won out in the end. I didn't think Bill would be throwing away the box anytime soon, and I had no doubt that he would let me read the file, or as much of the file as he thought I needed to see, when I felt like I could stand to see it.

I didn't wonder that Bill had been so preoccupied.

I was boxing the files up again, preparing to let Sam have them, when a sheet of paper slipped out and fell to the floor. On a piece of Justice Department letterhead, Ryback was informed that Federal Racketeering charges against one George Cole were being dropped per request, quid pro quo, Casey, blah-blah-blah.'

What did that mean? And why was it in the box?

-----

They never caught him. In three hours Bill was in Duluth, the cold being the only thing slowing him down. Somewhere, he'd find a place to crash, and then he'd let the walls come down. He figured he should have brought the Suburban. It handled the weather better. Fortunately, the roads were pristine, and he'd gotten his speed rush. Now he just wanted something painfully practical, just in case the weather turned bad.

Dad.

Not Wally Strannix, but Michael Gerard, career military man in the Army who had risen to the rank of General before he'd gone on his first tour in 'Nam. Michael was painfully practical himself, his favorite saying being, "Don't fix it if it isn't broken."

And mamma... not dead? Yet the memories were vivid. He pulled off to the side of the road, barely making it before he closed his eyes, his hands gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. He could still smell the antiseptic hallways of the hospital, see his mother's face, yellow and thin and shrunken with the cancer that had riddled her body. He remembered the morphine he'd had to give her by injection, holding her shaking, bony hand... had none of that been real?

Abigail Gerard... he remembered her as if he'd seen her the day before. The face was the same, but when he'd left for Vietnam, she'd seen him off, alive and vibrant. He remembered saying goodbye for the last time to both his mother and his father. In one memory, they were both alive, and in another, they had died horrible, tragic deaths.

"What in the holy hell is going on?!?" he wailed.

The walls had come down too damn soon. He hadn't even made it to a motel.

Memories flooded back to him in a rush. He and his big brother, racing down the street on their bikes, trying to see who would get to the corner store first to buy baseball cards and a Coke with money their mamma had given them for doing yard work. Listening to football games on the radio and arguing which team was the best, the Bears or the Cowboys. Seeing his baby sister for the first time. Watching Sam leave to go to boot camp and counting the days until he could enlist in the Navy. All of it had been lost... until he'd gotten the Box.

That damn box...

All that, yet it hadn't been complete. A year and a half was missing from the file. Two years after he'd been captured by the NVA he was found, but it was reported, by the papers in the Box, that Eliot Gerard was non-responsive, and had no memory of anything, including his name. That was where the information stopped. The earliest information after that was a year and a half later, in a memo which mentioned 'codename Strannix'. He had no idea what had been done to him, nor how he'd obtained so many memories that weren't his own.

Or were his own... it was all so damn confusing. Images came and went, things that hadn't inhabited his conscious mind in decades... but there were still holes.

The memo had originated in the Pentagon, but there was sender name, nor a recipient.

No one to blame.

His head was aching. Realizing that he was bouncing his head off the steering wheel, he stopped and pried his stiff fingers from the wheel. He was breathing hard, angry with himself, with his 'superiors', with the whole fucking world.

Only one name seemed to penetrate. Someone he had needed to pay a visit to for going on half a year.

Casey Ryback.

He started the Viper, pulled it onto the road, wiping his eyes and shaking himself into motion. He got off on the next exit and headed south, towards the twin cities, towards the airport. Someone was gonna tell him what in hell was going on, and if he had to go all the way to D.C. to get the questions answered, so be it.

It was, at least, a start.