Copyright:  Thursday, March 10, 2005 01:07:28 PM       EXCLUSIVE GENTLEMEN’S CLUB NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK MID-AFTERNOON - DAY 3                Thick carpeting muffled the Well-Manicured Man’s footsteps as he hurried down a long, opulent hallway. A uniformed valet ushered him into a familiar library, then quietly closed the door behind him.           He hesitated for a moment, glancing around the well-appointed room. Many times in the past, he had met here with a select handful of influential men to decide the entire world’s fate.           One by one, through accident and attrition over the past decade, their numbers had steadily decreased. Today, only one man shared the elegant room with him. Conrad Strughold, the de-facto head of their once-powerful Syndicate.           No one man could entirely control that shadowy organization. But like himself, Strughold was both feared and respected. His word held great power, even among their assembly of supremely important men.           Strughold turned as the door swung closed, and his keen gaze pierced the shadowed gloom. "So it really is true," he murmured, his accented voice rough with suppressed emotion. "You are still alive."           Smythe’s deep-set eyes glittered in the dim light. "Happy to see me, old friend?" he queried, a faint smile curving his weathered lips. "It has been a very long time."           Abruptly Strughold strode across the room, and gripped the Well-Manicured Man’s lean shoulders in a fierce welcoming hug. "Too long!" he vowed, beaming up at his former associate. "For nearly five years I have suffered, believing you dead! And you have been hiding all this time...where?"           Smythe hesitated for one brief instant. Over the years, he had learned to trust the stocky Belgian with many deadly secrets. But complete anonymity had been his only protection for a very long time. It felt strange enough to be here again, to be clasping Strughold’s hand in friendship. Could he trust his long-time comrade with this vital piece of information?           "I had no choice," he hedged, moving restlessly across the room. "Certain members of our organization disagreed with my refusal to blindly accept alien Colonization. You and I both know who they were."           "And now they are all dead," Strughold interjected, a bitter scowl on his face. "Killed by those faceless rebel fighters when we met our end of the bargain, and delivered Cassandra Spender to the El Rico Air Force Base in exchange for our long-missing children. Only a few of us managed to escape being burned to death that day."           The Well-Manicured Man turned away from the window, a troubled expression on his long, dignified face. "I know. It was a tremendous blow to our Project."           Strughold’s gaze sharpened on Smythe’s silhouetted profile. "You have found ways to stay in contact, then," he speculated aloud.           The tall British operative felt his nerves tighten with apprehension. Firmly he shook his silvered head. "Had it been safe, I would have contacted you," he assured his shorter colleague. "But until our treacherous cigarette-smoking friend had passed on to his well-deserved damnation, that was impossible--for reasons of which you should be well aware. I would have been endangering your safety as well as my own."           Strughold absorbed his evasive denial in silence. Then he spread both hands wide in a weary shrug. "Well, the past is past," he concluded. "Only the future should concern us now. Have you come back to us for good, Alistair Smythe?"           The Well-Manicured Man hesitated again. That had not been his original intention, and yet...           "First I must ask you a question," he temporized, moving away from the window again. "Yesterday in the Triangle, a small charter plane was struck by lightning in an unusual electrical storm. It crashed halfway between Miami and Bermuda. NAS divers began recovery of the plane last night. Their preliminary reports suggest that the hull separated in three distinct places, rather than fragmenting upon impact. They have no explanations for this anomaly."           Strughold’s eyes narrowed, but his voice remained suspiciously bland. "My own sources concur with yours. It was a most curious event. Your question is...?"           Smythe straightened to his full imposing height.  "Did the Syndicate have anything to do with this accident?" he demanded.           Strughold arched an incredulous bushy white eyebrow up at him. Then sadness lined his round face, and he slowly shook his head. "The Syndicate as we once knew it has all but ended, my friend. There are too few of us left alive, too few left to carry the torch. That is why we need you to return, and join forces with us again."           "You know who was aboard that plane," Smythe retorted, his cultured voice harsh. "Revenge has tempted lesser men. Revenge, and hatred for the loss of a lifetime’s work."           Strughold’s eyes began to glitter with anger. "Had I arranged such an ‘accident,’ my targets would have been utterly destroyed," he snapped.           There was no question but that he was telling the truth. Smythe felt his tensed muscles ease with heartfelt relief. If Strughold had suspected he was still alive, destroying that charter would have been the perfect way to lure him from hiding.           But if the Syndicate was not behind this maneuver...          "Other than our organization, who has the capability to cause such an ‘accident’?" he urged, his high forehead creasing with anxious concern. "Such a fine degree of weather manipulation requires tremendous resources!"           Strughold met his troubled gaze with a pensive frown. "I do not know," he conceded. His shoulders sagged as he turned away. "The aliens were here long before our primitive race took its first upright steps. Even now, we have no real comprehension of their full capabilities."           The Well-Manicured Man soberly nodded. Then his eyes widened. "You suspect they may have intercepted the charter? For what purpose?"           Strughold shrugged. "Again, I cannot say. It may have been a random encounter. But I can assure you that I was not responsible."           A long moment of silence passed. Then he straightened and reluctantly met Smythe’s hooded gaze again. "I have been forced to realize that we made a grave miscalculation in our dealings with the aliens," he confessed, his clipped voice thick with regret. "All those years, you and William Mulder urged us to consider active resistance to the upcoming apocalypse. But in our arrogance and illusions of invulnerability, we would not listen.           "Now we have seen, to our great dismay, that the aliens and their hybrid supersoldiers have no intention of honoring their agreement. We will not be spared from the coming worldwide destruction. Nor will our families, and all we hold dear." His eyes were haunted as he averted his weary face.           Smythe’s white eyebrows rose in mute surprise. He, like the others, had been lured by the aliens’ promises of unbelievable wealth and power, nearly sixty years ago. After all, why should they not benefit from the inevitable, since humanity had no weapons to forestall the aliens’ lethal Colonization plan? At least by cooperating with their would-be conquerors, they could protect their own families and financial interests.           At the time, they had naively believed that the aliens intended merely to colonize Earth with their own species. Wholesale war could be avoided if each Syndicate member manipulated their government into a firm policy of non-resistance. Human-looking hybrids, the successful outcome from their ultra-secretive Project’s merging of human and alien DNA, were intended to gradually replace existing political leaders without causing widespread panic throughout the human population. And in the end, both species would peacefully coexist--with the aliens and Syndicate members jointly controlling their now-profitable world.           Only young Bill Mulder had doubted the aliens’ veracity. His urgent warnings had impressed the Well-Manicured Man, who cared greatly for his own newborn son, and was determined to protect him at any costs. Together they had met privately numerous times, devising and discarding a hundred plans to protect humanity, should the aliens break their word.           That first decade had gone well, and each Syndicate member had enjoyed tremendous increases in prosperity and power. Subtle manipulation of the world’s economy had increased their personal fortunes beyond imagination. The aliens had supplied them with technology capable of genetic experimentation, and had even provided viable alien embryos for their experiments.           Then, perhaps because they had suspected Bill Mulder’s and his growing misgivings, they had demanded hostages. Each Syndicate member was ordered to deliver one immediate family member to the aliens for safekeeping, or face instant death.           Three Syndicate members had refused. Despite their attempts to flee, they and their families had been captured and summarily executed. The others had capitulated. Bill Mulder’s young daughter, Samantha, had been only one of several children to mysteriously disappear when the aliens had arrived to collect their unwilling captives.           Smythe had committed a terrible crime that awful night. First he had drugged his own infant son, and hidden him in an empty dilapidated cottage on the outskirts of his vast estate. Then he had stealthily kidnaped one of his tenant’s boys, and slipped the peacefully sleeping child into his son’s bed. When the deadly Alien Bounty Hunter had arrived, Smythe had offered a token protest, then stepped back and watched an innocent babe vanish into the darkness, never to be seen again.           His own son had been sent to live with a distant relative, and many years had passed before Smythe had dared to re-establish contact. By that time, the boy had grown into a powerful, autocratic adult. Infuriated by his father’s apparent abandonment, he had legally changed his name, and disavowed his vast inheritance.           The Well-Manicured Man still ached inside for the poor child he’d doomed--for over time, they had all come to understand that their loved ones would never be returned. He’d ached for his estranged son, who flatly refused to acknowledge his existence. And he’d ached for humanity as he watched the aliens’ altruistic promises, one after another, subverted by lies and treachery.           Once again, Bill Mulder had confronted his powerful associates with pleas to devise some defense against the aliens’ nefarious plans. The Well-Manicured Man had openly backed his efforts. Yet when their comrades had refused to face grim reality, and it became clear that dissension was costing him valuable political power, he had verbally acceded to the majority vote--but secretly continued to support Mulder’s efforts.           A chance meeting with several Soviet scientists, through one of Mulder’s former State Department contacts, had provided their first ray of hope. But Mulder, increasingly disillusioned by the breakup of his marriage and his colleagues’ refusal to take action against the aliens, had eventually resigned his post, and withdrawn into solitary bitterness. Smythe had continued the dangerous job of recruiting their new Russian allies to their cause alone.           As if he could follow the aging British lord’s private thoughts, Strughold abruptly spun back to face Smythe. "All along, you objected to our Colonization plans," he marveled. "I suspected then that you possessed knowledge the rest of us lacked. If that information can save our doomed planet, Alistair, I beg you to share it with me! With those of us who are left to fight for our future! Our time is limited. We need your help, more than you realize."           Without another word, he turned and left the opulent room. Smythe stood rooted to the floor, shocked by the change in his once-autocratic colleague. The Conrad Strughold he remembered had been strong, powerful, decisive. He had never before begged anything from anyone.           Was their situation even more dire than he had suspected?           The puzzle pieces were falling together in an intriguing pattern--and he alone knew the ultimate pattern they might eventually form. Perhaps it was time for him to return. If his hunch was correct, he might very soon be in control of the very weapon they needed to permanently repel their would-be alien invaders.           It was the challenge of a lifetime--with an entire world at stake.           He preferred those odds.           They helped to keep him alert.           They helped to keep him alive.