The X-files
Unrequited
Episode: 4X16
First aired:2/23/97
Written by:Chris Carter, Howard Gordon
Directed by: Michael Lange
A
crowd gathers at the U.S.
Capitol Mall, near the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington, D.C. As the re-dedication ceremony begins,
General Benjamin Bloch steps
up to a podium and delivers his speech. A short distance away,
Mulder,
Scully and other
FBI agents feverishly hunt down an
armed man making his way through the crowd.
When Mulder attempts to focus on the suspect, he seemingly
vanishes.
As the story unfolds in flashback,
Lieutenant General Peter MacDougal is gunned down
at close range in the back seat of a limousine, a
Death Card at his side. Though the
murder weapon is never located, the General's driver, who has ties to a
radical
paramilitary group called the
Right Hand, is held on suspicion of murder. But the driver,
who maintains his innocence, passes a
polygraph test, and
lab tests reveal he did not
fire a
weapon. With dozens of high-ranking military officials arriving in Washington for
the re-dedication ceremony, Skinner assigns his agents to investigate the Right Hand
movement, and its leader, an
ex-Marine named Denny Markham.
Markham gives the
FB a photograph of a man named Nathaniel Teager, a
Green Beret
captured by the enemy in 1971. Markham's group liberated Teager from a
POW camp in
1995. When U.S.
government commandos attempted to kidnap Teager, he suddenly
disappeared. Scully suspects Markham's story is a cover-up for
an elaborately
orchestrated conspiracy plan. Meanwhile, Teager approaches a woman, Renee
Davenport, as she views the
Memorial. He informs Davenport her husband is still alive
and gives her his dog tags as proof. Suddenly, Teager disappears.
Davenport positively identifies Teager as the man she saw at the memorial. Scully takes
Davenport to an
ophthalmologist when her eye
hemorrhages. She is diagnosed with a
floating blind spot-but the cause is undetermined.
Mulder learns that MacDougal was one of the
original military officials who signed
Teager's
death certificate (even though forensic evidence was
inconclusive). Mulder
assigns two
FBI agents to guard General Steffan, one of MacDougal's counterparts (who
also signed the
certificate). But Teager slips by the agents and murders Steffan.
A
security camera captured Teager's image passing through a
metal detector at the
Pentagon.
Skinner is outraged. Mulder tells Skinner that Teager has the ability to hide
himself from a person's
field of vision. He notes that, during the war, U.S. soldiers
reported that Viet Cong
guerrillas had the ability to appear and disappear at will. He
speculates that Teager learned this trick during his 25 years in the POW camp.
Mulder believes the only way to stop Teager is to find his
next victim. Marita
Covarrubias tells Mulder that MacDougal, Steffan and a third general headed a secret
three-man
commission that covertly disposed of
South Vietnamese soldiers who
cooperated with the U.S. government during the war. Covarrubias reveals that
testimony
from the generals could have been used in the
calculation of reparations. Mulder
realizes the government wanted the generals dead
all along. Covarrubias gives him the
name of the third general: Bloch.
Bloch is rushed from the
podium at the re-dedication after the agents spot Teager in the
crowd. Skinner escorts Bloch toward an awaiting
limo. Mulder, however, realizes
Teager is hiding inside. Skinner tackles Bloch moments before
gunshots flash from
inside the limo. Teager puts the limo in gear and attempts to make a getaway. Agent
Hill opens fire, killing him.
Important Quotes:
Skinner -- "Right now
I'm flying by the seat of my pants."
Mulder -- "You mean there's no procedure outlined for
an invisible assassin?"
Back to The X-files: Season 4