Abigail Mercer looked out at the evening traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue from her office, high up in the J Edgar Hoover building.  Like the cars and drivers stuck in their cars thirty five floors below, she was restless, ready to leave as soon as circumstances allowed. 

She sighed and dropped the blinds on the outside world, sparkling Christmas lights still visible through the beige blades and returned to clearing out the drawers of her desk.  It had been a short run as Temporary Assistant Director, a very special assignment that no doubt had various tongues wagging within the labyrinth of the FBI's Washington headquarters and beyond.  There was a time she would have cared what others thought, but her white knight had finally arrived to carry her away and the Bureau and its politics would soon be memories rather than daily reality. She picked up the picture of her fiancée, crouched with one arm around her and the other round his red setter.  ‘To my two best girls' was the dedication and it made her smile.  She put the picture in the box and sat down to go through the files on her desk.

Senior Special Agent Anderson's report was a work of Bureau art, all extraneous language and ambiguity removed.  It was like Sergeant Joe Friday used to say every week in Dragnet - ‘Just the facts, ma'am'.  They had met briefly here and she could tell from the way the big shambling southerner talked and refused to look her in the eye that some terrible things had happened in Cairo.  Things best put in a lockbox of memories in the hope that the sands of time would ultimately bury them until the owner began to wonder if they had ever really happened.  That of course was optimism speaking.  She knew full well from her own experience that those sorts of memories never faded, never truly went away.

Sand - that's where all this had started.  More specifically the sands of Iraq and a civilian massacre covered up by a media conscious military.  US Marine Staff Sergeant Gage Locke was now in Federal lockdown while psychologists evaluated his fitness to face trial.  It was just an exchange of prisons as he had been incarcerated by an altogether darker and supernatural jailer for over a month. As he had watched through a sniper's scope the events in Iraq, so this power had made him watch as he blasted skin, flesh and blood from his victims - relatives of the marines who had sent him down a bloody trail of revenge and into a pact with a dark God.  Locke's assessment would take months and chances are it would be years, if ever, before he faced a jury but all that mattered was that ‘UNSUB 45783 dubbed ‘the Shredder' by less responsible members of the press, now had a name and a face and the masses could live in peaceful contentment in the belief that another nightmare had been put back in its box. 

Mercer looked at the man's face - once a true national hero, now a broken, disposable one.  Did it matter that in truth he was innocent?  Probably.  Yet, all directions of the moral compass had long been confused and now she could see him in the same light as the average plane crash fatality - just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The luck had finally run out.  If he ever got the needle, she was glad she would not have to be there to see him die.  She signed the official release papers from the FBI to the US Marshals service and closed the file, unaware of the silent shadow that watched through the crack of the door to her outer office, until his leather clad glove rapped softly on the lacquered wood.

Mercer looked up with a smile at the old man in the thick heavy overcoat, still large and imposing despite his age.

‘Joseph, what a pleasant surprise'

‘Abi', he said, voice deep and gravelly. ‘Just thought I would check in and say goodbye.'

‘Oh really?' she smiled wryly and passed the old man the file she had just signed off.  He accepted it with a shrug ‘Well, doesn't hurt to make sure all the peas are in their pod'

‘You're the last of your kind, Joe'

‘It's people like you that are making sure of that Abigail,' the old man replied with a grunt as he fished a pair of reading glasses from the top pocket of a tweed jacket and read through the reports as Mercer continued to box Bureau files.

‘Sanitised enough for you?' she said after he gently placed the file back on her desk. He looked at her and nodded.

‘A fine piece of obfuscation.  Faroud will play ball and keep the Egyptian side of the story under wraps.  Those boys have only just recovered from all the tourist bombings five years ago.  They don't want any more negative coverage.  What about the team?  Is everything okay?'

‘Anderson was fine.  A little shaken perhaps but that's understandable.  I am going to recommend him for the Inspectorate - it'll bump him up a grade and mean he'll retire with a better pension.'

‘How long has he got?'

‘Six years until mandatory but the suits could put him out to grass at any time.'

‘No country for old men, huh? Well having an Inspector would be useful - they have a lot of free rein,' the old man said with a knowing smile.

‘Chang and Landsdell?'

‘They'll get distinguished service commendations.  Should keep them here in D.C. at least for a year or two longer until some ambitious SAC starts looking for quality starters.'

The old man winced.

‘No commendations Abi.  I don't want their profile elevated any higher than needs be.'

‘They have careers too Joseph.'

‘What they got done here was more important than any damn bullshit handshake and a plaque.  They know that by now.'

‘You want to tell Pierce that?'

‘The outsider? I thought Anderson was going to bring him in.'

‘I guess he'll have to. Same with that liaison from NCIS - Martikian.'

The old man grunted ‘Looks like he already got the right ideas - Military boys usually do.  I've seen his report - would do the old OSS proud. We'll keep an eye out but he has too many friends in bad places for us to make him any more than a friendly.'

‘And Chance?'

‘She's an interesting development.  We'll be keeping an eye on her.  She could be the best news this organisation has had in years.  Of course, she could be the worst too. Only time will tell.'

            A silence followed as the old man's eyes drifted to Mercer's desk and the picture in the frame.

‘Is he a good guy?'

‘The best'

‘He'd better be.  All the shit that's going on, it drives me nuts that good troops are pulling themselves out of the firing line before their time.'

Mercer pursed her lips before replying.

‘No one makes a promise of forever Joe.  You, of all people should know that.'

‘Doesn't mean I have to like it though.  You know Abi, you can't just close a door and walk away.  It won't leave you alone once you've let it all in.'

Mercer got up and walked back to the window and peered back through the blinds.  It looked as if nothing had changed on the streets below except that a light fall of snow had begun to fall.

‘Doesn't it ever end?' she whispered, aware of the new life deep within her.  She turned round when only silence answered her but the chair was empty and the old man was gone.  She could only hope she'd never see him again.