The Cigarette-Smoking Man (No. 113)

A Blacklist/X-Files Crossover

By DavidB226Morris

Summary: Upon returning to the Task Force after being on the run for three months, Red sends Elizabeth after their most potentially dangerous adversary yet. One so deadly that they need special assistance in bringing him out. But not even Raymond Reddington suspected that their best hope was back in the FBI...or just how far this particular conspiracy would reach

Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully and all of those delightful characters that were part of the X-Files universe are the property of Chris Carter and the rest of those diligent workers at Ten-Thirteen Productions. Elizabeth Keene, Raymond Reddington, and all of those who work in the world of The Blacklist are the property of Jon Bonnenkamp and the rest of the crew. I am just a humble scribe who wants to play with them for awhile.

Author's Note: In comparison with the last couple of fictions I've written, the timeline's fairly easy to keep track of. This takes place in the middle of Season 3 of The Blacklist, after Red negotiated Elizabeth's freedom, but before she learned she was pregnant. This takes place just after the X-Files revival began - Mulder and Scully have been reinstated, but have yet to begin fully investigating cases again. And there is no connection to any of my previous fanfiction that featured Mulder and Scully in the 24/Alias universe - this is an entirely new and different animal.

Rating: This is going to me mainly a 'T' level story. There's going to be stronger language than we were used to seeing on either show, and there's going to be a certain level of violence, but really, nothing that shouldn't turn the hairs of anyone.

All right. Let's get this party started.

PROLOGUE

WESTERN PENNSYLVANIA

4:31 P.M.

To the typical observer, like the adolescents who had been watching them run for generations, it would seem like nothing had changed. The Eastern line from Philadelphia to Allentown for the twentieth century was still making its runs through the cities and rural locations throughout the town.

The parents still pointed to their children when the crosswalk came down, and the train passed by. The conductor still came out at every stop to wave at the passerby. It seemed like something out of an earlier era - where everybody knew their neighbor, when you didn't have to lock your doors at night, when Starbucks was known as the first mate of a Herman Melville novel.

And as far as the children and their parents and the passengers and even the conductors and engineers knew, that's all the railroad did. There was nothing any more sinister about it than a game of tag or the Muppets. And if the train occasionally picked up a boxcar that didn't have a shipping label, it was just a clerical error.

Why should they? The only people who had known about it had been a consortium who had all disappeared or died in February of 1999. The companies had been shut down. The people involved were all dead or gone, and almost no one had known who they were before or after their horrible deaths. And even if people had worried about the consequences of that, so what? The date had passed, and nothing had happened.

Things were normal.

Yeah, right.

The train had come to its final stop an hour earlier. As had become routine, the trains final boxcar was released by the engineer in/to a yard nearly ten miles away from the nearest city.

The trainyard hadn't been used since 2001, another victim of a series of cuts to the infrastructure was the excuse given,_frankly, so few people had worked at this yard even at its peak that no one complained when it happened.

It [stood deserted for a very long some reason, no one bothered to tear it down or sell the metal for scrap. It just stood there, a metal graveyard to an earlier era though again, almost nobody knew just what era had been a key part of it. And no one seemed to know why there were still some fairly high level security cameras still around the entire trainyard.

Someone had wanted it there, just in case.

In 2009, a biotech company known as Roush Pharmaceuticals had been one of the more obscure companies that the United States Government had considered 'too big to fail'. Of all the companies that Congress had debated giving a bailout to in that horrible period, they had devoted the least amount of floor debate to this one. The cynics in the media said it was because of the number of lobbyists that had been former members of Congress. They didn't know that the real reason this had been the only company that every member of the finance committee knew had to survive even if the country was plunged into another Great Depression, or that every nation on the UN Security Council had been pledged to finance even at all cost.. The ones who were still left knew that there were bigger problems than if the world economy fell apart.

So Roush had gotten its money. And one of the first things that it had done was invest a huge amount in infrastructure. Again, there were bigger concerns as to why a biotech company would want to buy dozens of trainyards across the country. A very few people knew that there were no bigger concerns, but they sure as hell weren't the kind of people who would comment to the New York Times.

And one of those people was waiting at the trainyard at 11:45 P.M. a few hours after the boxcar had been let out. But he sure as hell wasn't going to tell anybody about that. He knew that the only reason he was being entrusted with this particular mission was because he was one of the few members of this group who, by pure chance, was still alive. There wasn't much in the way of a retirement plan for this project.

The only way you left was if you got a bullet in the brain. And that was one of the more pleasant ways to go. In fact, he had ]nearly left the world because of a very important mission regarding some 'stolen property' that he had been charged with getting/retrieving. Even now, nearly eighteen years after the fact, he couldn't clearly figure out how he managed to lose that property, and managed to keep his job. The people he worked for didn't tolerate failures. (They didn't tolerate success sometimes, either, but that was beside the point.)

So now, here he was, fast approaching sixty, with very little to show it but a couple of scars, and his life. But then, considering the fates of many colleagues, he was more than willing to consider himself 'lucky'. Hell, people in his position might consider this job little more than busy-work. He was more than willing to consider it a good night's work.

Here they arrive din the large black limousine. One could lecture them on their being less conspicuous, even at this time of night, but then you had to consider who they were and how valuable they were to the who they were and how vital, facts had to be tolerated. Especially that so many of their allies [when it came to this area] of the work were increasingly harder to come by.

For one thing, the man who emerged from the car was one of their prize projects a middle-aged Belarusian expatriate who had been one of the few who'd apprenticed at the Soviet doctors when they had been at the height of their powers. Twenty years ago, they wouldn't have even let him get a glimpse of what they were doing. Now, he was one of their top specialists in his field. Though really, this is where you had to go to find anybody useful

"Mr. Garrett?"

Even though he was expected here, he was very surprised to hear his name being used. Most of the people associated with the Project never let their proper names be spoken even in private. It was as if to emphasize that there was no inner circle, that no one in this business trusted even the people they worked closest with. Then again, by the standards of their business, this man was a newcomer to the field.

"Dr. Wiegraf." Better to respond in kind. No need to make sure that anybody felt comfortable given the nature of the job.

"Is the merchandise ready?"

God, more code words. Everyone knew that they were doing this work for a higher purpose, but did they have to make everything they were discussing, even among themselves, sound so benign? Even the causal facilitation of what they were doing would qualify as a war crime... if, of course, you didn't keep in mind that the people responsible for these actions, were responsible for drafting those same laws.

And was he actually thinking about these things? He might be getting too old for field work.

"Right this way, Doctor."

As Wiegraf stepped out of the limousine, the remainder of his medical staff followed behind him. Unlike Wiegraf, they were either Chinese or Japanese. It didn't really matter that much - at least it should have mattered to Garrett. His job was simply to take the medical staff to the merchandise, and provide security. Though considering what he and his people might still be up against, the AK-47s they were carrying wouldn't provide much protection. This was not something you complained about if you wanted to stay active.

He walked over to the boxcar. The three men in fatigues saluted him, even though he held no real rank. That's what seniority got you.

"Usual protocols. Maintain surveillance. Anyone without authorization gets within two hundred feet, the use of lethal force is required. Assume positions."

The soldiers nodded, and without a word, went to the perimeter. The few, the proud, the quiet.

Garrett went to the optic scanner. That then authorized the keypad, where he punched in his individualized eleven-number code. The light went from red to green, and he opened it.

Inside, there they were - nine women, ranging in age from nineteen to thirty five. All of them were restrained, not that it was going to be necessary. Garrett didn't know what was used on the subjects to keep them immobilized, but in a decade of monitoring these session, he had never so much as heard a peep out of one of them. And considering what was going to be done...

He shook it off. Best to keep it compartmentalized.

"Go ahead." He told the doctors. "Do your work."

Garrett walked over to the security monitors. That was his one concession. He had to be here. That didn't mean that he wanted to be up close and personal.