When I worked as a profiler with the Millennium Group, I had a special connection to their resources..."Intranet," is what they called it. I'm still not quite sure about the exact terms, but even then, I had a feeling that it would catch on with the public at large and make Warhol proud.
Back in '96, the Internet had yet to catch on as a household fixture. People had to get creative if they wanted their fifteen minutes.
In fact, there was this one nutjob who liked to set up bombs in buildings and...I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? Let me take this from the beginning.
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"I am responsible for everything...except my very responsibility." --Jean-Paul SartreI was in bed that night, and I couldn't sleep a wink. In my desperation, I picked up the remote and started channel surfing. A "Doctor Who" rerun on PBS--crap. "Gilligan's Island" on Nick at Nite--crap. Some stupid movie on HBO--crap. Basketball...Sonics vs. Rockets--crap.
The nightly news...breaking from Washington, D.C. I stared at the screen, transfixed at the carnage before me: A pub in the DC area called The Queen's Arms, a favorite of British diplomats, went up in a fiery explosion. God damn...The whole front of the pub was completely gone. So many people, burned, bleeding, broken, and in complete agony...that is, if the explosion hadn't already killed them.
The last thing I saw on the screen before I set out was a pretty ordinary-looking guy--little doughy around the cheeks, thin moustache, I'd say mid-late 40s--holding one of the waitresses and calling for a medic. Nothing too remarkable, but I filed it away for later.
I was on autopilot as I packed an overnight bag and made arrangements for a flight to DC. The next morning, I arrived at the Joint Task Force's headquarters. There was Peter Watts, who greeted me in his usual way, by blinding me with the light that reflected off his gleaming bald head.
We reached the conference room. It was an alphabet soup of just about every agency I could think of, and even a few I didn't. Not only that, but it also looked like some kind of mad-scientist setup, with all sorts of recording equipment, VCRs, and a bunch of other gizmos I couldn't name.
Our first group conference began as Agent Jack Pierson filled us in. The Washington Post got a call from a pay phone somewhere close to the pub.
(Before you ask, I don't even know who "Agent Jack Pierson" really is, or what he's an agent of. For all I know, he could be a travel agent with delusions of grandeur. I've met so many different people on my journeys that I ended up going along with it.)
Where was I? Pierson, that's right. He played a recording of the call that the Post got. There were a few, come to think of it, and the first one had a man's voice ranting about "Agents of ZOG" and "Abolish the IRS" and "The Turner Diaries." Typical militia stuff. Someone chimed in that there'd been no recent militia activity, and I could smell the stink of a red herring on that first call.
The second one was a little more convincing. The voice explained that the Abu Nidal Organization, some Middle Eastern outfit I'm not aware of, would carry out the attack. Nice try, but the call went out well after the pub went blooey. Another red herring, but this one didn't smell so bad.
The third one went out ten minutes before the bombing. Pierson commented that it sounded like the bomb codes used by the Irish Republican Army. No ranting voice; no threats; just six tones that sounded like "5-2-2-6-6-6."
You'd think the "666" would have been a religious reference, but it was just a stupid pun. Write down those numbers and the letters you see above them on a touch-tone pad, and what do you get?
"K-A-B-O-O-M."
We're dealing with the worst kind of nut: one with a sense of humor.
The next morning, at about 10:15 or so, I joined Watts and Pierson for a drink at the pub. We would've had a drink, but there was almost nothing left of the place. I wandered over to the back of the pub, the center of the explosion. Ugh...I could practically see the regulars caught in the middle of it, hear their screams.
A bomb-squad guy came in with a piece of detonator in an evidence bag. The thing had too many wires on it--backups in case one of them failed. Smart and funny...He'd be a real catch if it weren't for the whole "mad bomber" gig.
He pulled out another evidence bag, this one with a briefcase's three-digit combo lock (the briefcase was made in Egypt). The guy's a genius for engineering the bomb, but an idiot for where he put it--anyone could have found it. From the way he made the detonator, I suspect he just didn't care.
Outside, Pierson was talking to a woman from the ABC network. Seems "Nightline" wanted someone to explain the mad bomber's mind. Pierson looked at me, and I said, "I have a job." That's the last thing I need, to go on "Nightline" and make Ted Koppel look handsome.
A multi-level parking garage caught my interest. Intuition told me that he watched the explosion from on high, away from the flying debris. (Probably got more enjoyment out of that than he would from seeing my craggy features on "Nightline.")
There were six cigarette butts on the ground. Must have been a British brand...of course, he got them at a British pub.
There were a few other things, but I'd rather leave it at that before I make myself sick. Take my word for it: He definitely got a thrill from all this, if you know what I mean.
Back at HQ, Pierson gathered us for the noon meeting. We'd all gathered a lot of evidence: fingerprints; serial numbers on the parts from the bomb; the works. I took all of it in, and told them that we're not dealing with a terrorist.
1. A terrorist would try to stay unseen, put the bomb somewhere sneaky. This one was actually inside the pub.
2. A terrorist would get out of Dodge as soon as possible. This one stuck around, watching from a parking garage.
3. A terrorist would make a simple bomb. Doesn't matter if it goes off or not, it'll still send a message if someone finds it. This one made his bomb specifically to go off. It was intricate, overly complicated.
I warned them: He's obsessed, and he'll be living this fantasy he's created as much as possible, for as long as possible. He'll be listening in on us with the latest gadgets, like RF detectors and cell-phone cloners.
After all that, Pierpont set a new commandment in stone: "Land-line communication only." That meant nobody except for me could use a cell-phone to talk about this case. I half-expected someone to accost me for special permission, but to my surprise the issue never came up. I guess they figured what I already knew: Pierpont had a trap set, and I was the bait.
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Later that day, Pierson and I were out on a prowl. He'd go into a phone booth, and I'd chat with him about the case on my cell phone. We'd go at it for a while, then find a different reception site. It was like fishing in a way, except we couldn't drink beer or play cards.
There was no need for either. My cell rang, and I heard those six tones: "5-2-2-6-6-6."
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We went back to HQ, where Agent Sullivan was demonstrating some equipment. I resolved to call him "Q" from now on at the sight of all this stuff.
The overall purpose of this setup was to triangulate his position from the cell phone's signal. Never mind, of course, that he'd use a bunch of cloned cell phones. Sullivan assured us that that would make him difficult, but not entirely impossible, to track. All we had to do was keep him talking. It's an old trick, just made new with fancier toys.
Suddenly I remembered that I'd been up and about for 37 hours straight.
And then my cell rang. There it was, "5-2-2-6-6-6."
I answered.
He responded.
"Who is this?" I asked.
"A star," he said.
Click.
Good. Let him call me back.
Sure enough, he did. Bastard's full of himself...taunting me.
I demanded that he prove himself.
He did, rattling off the specifics of his bombing.
"I want to help you," I said, knowing that he didn't want my help. Whatever, I just want to keep him talking.
"I need a name," I said. "What do I call you?"
"I already gave you my name," he said.
"Your name's 'Kaboom?'" I asked. "Like the little green guy from 'The Flintstones'?"
Click.
Sounds pretty uneventful, I know, but Sullivan got a trace from all of that.
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Watts, Pierson, Sullivan, myself, and a few other agents convened in an alley. We'd split into two groups, each taking a black van.
Watts' group would go south to the Rock Creek area; I'd join Pierson and Sullivan's group and go north to Mill Creek Cemetery. Once established, we'd cast our lines and wait for a bite.
...And wait...and wait...and wait. Awful lot of swimmers, but none of them hungry. For the past three hours, we got those same six tones every fifteen minutes. He's burning us out on purpose. We've got no choice but to wait him out--we know his game.
At 5:17, my phone rang. Could this be the big break we were waiting for?
No, but it was Catherine. I smiled to myself a little as I answered. She was about to say something, but I told her I'd call her right back and hung up...and then called from a different phone.
She was about to read me the riot act, but I very gently interrupted her and told her that my cell is monitored. She continued on, explaining that Jordan had a nightmare about me. I was about to reply when my other phone--the monitored one--rang. I couldn't just hang up on her, so I left "her" phone on the line while I answered the other one.
"Getting any sleep, Frank?" the taunting voice asked.
"Shouldn't let it keep you from calling Catherine."
Big mistake, Sonny-Jim. That's the one thing you don't do--you don't bring Catherine into my work. All right, I'll play your game.
"You must be pretty tired yourself," I said. Rule number one of the game: I don't rise to his bait
"No rest for the wicked," he shot back.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," I said.
The van started to move. Sullivan must have gotten a signal, because I noticed him talking into a receiver, feeding coordinates to Watts' van.
The bomber prattled on, explaining how he was an artist, and how his work touched people in a deep, life-altering way. His words exactly. Of course it's a life-altering way--if I were caught up in one of his explosions, I'd say my life had been pretty well altered!
Still, I kept on buttering him up, agreeing with him about the high caliber of his art, about how the anticipation builds and leads to...the moment of impact, of fire. I was on a roll! Never heard myself talk so much in my life! He said something that left me more than a little rattled: He said that I'd be as famous as he is, once I'd caught him.
And then he told me his next move: 9:00 tomorrow morning.
Click.
At least we were in the right area, but it would still be a needle in a haystack, and we only had three hours to find it.
At 6:30 in the morning the next day, Pierson set two search parties out into the Mt. Vernon area. Each team took half the town to search and notify businesses and civilians alike.
And I...oh, damn, the exhaustion's catching up with me. Watts took one look at me and said, "You need sleep, Frank." I agreed with him, and confided that I wish I knew what he wanted. "It's more than a thrill," I said to him. "First he alerts the authorities there's a bomb. After a day he needs more...so he has to contact us? He taunts us to the point of near-capture?"
I couldn't stop thinking about his earlier comment, that I'd be a star after I captured him.
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I went into an office building to let the receptionist know about the bomb threat. Might as well do my part, just in case.
And then I saw a parking garage, just like the one across from the pub. On a hunch, I went up to one of the higher levels. Sure enough, I found the same kind of cigarette butts I found earlier.
As I ran out of there, I called Jack Pierson and told him to get a bomb squad to 2300 Oglethorpe, north of my location. I was nearly out of there when I felt the shockwave of a huge explosion. I was thrown to the ground, my phone flying out of my hand. It wasn't even 9:00 yet.
The phone rang. I crawled over to it and answered. "Just warming up," the voice said. "Third floor."
I ran like a maniac into that building. The stairwell was full of smoke, alarms, and agonized screams. Some would run away in terror, but it only gave me the strength to keep going. I urged those who could still move to get out before the other bomb went off.
Finally! The third floor! Next thing I knew, some idiot practically ran me over in his haste to get out. No time to holler at him: from my new vantage point, I saw the suitcase bomb. Another guy shoved me out of the way before I could move an inch. He said, "Don't worry, I'll get you out of here."
Fade to black.
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I was in the building. A bomb had just gone off, and the halls and stairwells were crowded with people. I saw two women about to be caught in the worst of it. I grabbed their shoulders to drag them to safety...and saw my wife and daughter's terrified faces, engulfed in a blinding, white light. There was a rapid, high-pitched beeping noise, which I assumed was another bomb...
...and then I woke up. I was in a hospital room, and Catherine was there. She explained that she entrusted Jordan with a close friend of hers, and came to be with me in person.
Cath always did worry too much about me, but I never thought she should stop.
And then she said something that worried me a little. A man came to see how I was doing...the guy who pulled me out of the explosion. I just looked at her with a blank expression, and she turned on the news to jog my memory.
The evening news was ablaze with the story. The Fox-affiliate's coverage showed a pretty young woman out in the field. She was interviewing a pretty ordinary-looking guy--little doughy around the cheeks, thin moustache, I'd say...mid...late...40s...
That's the same guy I saw in the news coverage of the Queen's Arms bombing.
With that, I completed the jigsaw puzzle. He was trying to make himself look like the hero and me the villain...and I walked right into it.
"How does it feel to be a star?" the reporter asked.
He said: "I just did what anybody in my place would have done."
Words fail me now as sure as they failed me then.
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Jack Pierson practically laughed me out of the room when I told him about my idea. In a way, he's right: there was no way for him to bring in a local hero--twice over, I might add--without an absolutely air- and watertight case against him.
I elaborated: Ray Dees engineered the two bombs he used in that building so that he could easily survive it unscathed. Being a janitor at that building, he knew just where to be, in the right place and the right time. People have died because of his actions, but he doesn't directly want to kill...that's just a side effect of his sick obsession.
Pierson considered it, and then Watts showed him a sheaf of recently-faxed papers: Ray Dees' military records from eleven years ago. Turns out he was an explosives expert, and he'd been in Egypt, which explained the briefcase remains from earlier.
I saw Pierson's eyes light up in horror as all the pieces fell into place. He ordered two SWAT teams to go to Dees' apartment and get whatever they could find, and we followed their lead.
One thing was for sure: he left in a hurry. Almost nothing was left of his little operation, save for a room full of electronic gear, still going. On a nearby display, I saw...my own cell number and present frequency. He's smart--he knew we'd be coming.
My legs almost gave way under me, and I grabbed hold of a table to steady myself. Pierson told on of his men to take me back to the hospital...I'm probably still uneasy after the explosions, I reasoned. Still, I assured everyone that I could make my own way to the hospital, but I'd need a ride to my rental car.
Everything was just fine as I got into the car...and then my phone rang.
5-2-2-6-6-6.
"I've been waiting for you, Frank."
Dees. He just couldn't resist one last confrontation.
"You can't move and you're just waiting. You know it's going to end, but you don't know how."
No, and that scared me. I played my last card. At this point all I could do was buy time.
"Raymond, do you know precisely what happens at the moment of detonation? You lose your power. You lose your control. Raymond...you're a hero. A star. Are you going to throw all that away?"
I heard his voice grow agitated. He accused me of trying to take his fame away from him, and said that he'd get it back by taking me out.
Raymond, Raymond...You just don't get it.
"It's time, Frank."
I heard a gunshot.
I just sat there for what felt like hours. Finally, I got out. There he was, as dead as a fried oyster.
Watts told me later on that Dees' detonator was a fake, and that my car was not, in fact, rigged to explode. My face burned: I realized that we practically gave him what he wanted on a silver platter.
Later that night, Ray Dees got the fame he wanted on the ten o'clock news. My only victory out of all this? He's known as a mad bomber, not a hero.
All that work he did? All that planning? It all went...kaboom.
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On the surface, "522666" doesn't seem to have a lot going for it. In fact, its "race against time to catch the mad bomber" narrative could work as an episode of NYPD Blue or another series. That being said, its details make it unmistakably Millennium. Let's take the episode apart and "profile" it.
1. STORYTELLING: Millennium makes excellent use of television to tell this narrative. From Frank's insomniac channel-surfing, to the news coverage of the bombings, to his Nightline invitation, television serves as the most important recurring theme.
While we're still on that subject, let's take it one step further: News coverage serves as the episode's most important recurring theme. My first impression of its villain, Raymond Dees, is that he'd be a perfect reality-show contestant. One problem: "522666" came out a few years before shows such as Big Brother and Survivor found their footholds on American boob-tubes, so I can't make the case that "522666" is anticipating reality TV....or can I? Believe it or not, the most basic form of reality television is the local news, which Dees makes full use of by tending to injured people in the aftermath of his explosions.
At the beginning, in the pub, we see him clearly. At that point, nothing says "mad bomber" about him; he's a perfectly ordinary if somewhat off-kilter Joe Schmo whose only flaw is that he tends to get lost in his thoughts. Speaking of his thoughts, when he imagines the moment of detonation, his surroundings look like grainy film stock, as if he were watching a lurid exploitation movie from the 70s. Since it's revealed later on that he derives sexual release from watching his bombs go off, it's a perfect if really creepy visual metaphor.
One other thing I noticed: Compressed-time storytelling in cop and detective shows is so commonplace that people sometimes jokingly complain, "Why can't real cops solve the case in an hour?" (Because that hour represents the edited highlights of several days, that's why.)
"522666" exaggerates that device by having its story take place over one to two days. (It also foreshadows another, later Fox hit, 24, whose hour-long episodes took place in "real time.")
2. CHARACTERS: "522666" has three regulars--Frank, Peter, and Catherine (Jordan is mentioned, but not seen)--one villain, several one-shot "joint taskforce" agents, and a lot of miscellaneous civilians.
The lion's share of the characterization goes to Frank and Ray Dees. For the first time, there's a feeling that hero and villain are truly opposed to each other.
It begins with tiny details: Dees stands at the parking garage, obsessively watching the pub; meanwhile, Frank irritably flicks through a series of channels, and when he gets to the news report, he lingers for only a moment before setting about his packing. The biggest moment, though, is when the lady from Nightline asks Frank if he'd like to appear on that night's edition and explain the bomber's motivation. His reply: "I have a job." Dees wants nothing more than to live out a fantasy as a hero on televised news; Frank wants nothing more than to stay out of his enemy's fantasy.
Moving on to Ray Dees, he's unusually three-dimensional. The Frenchman was a straight-up nutter; "Gehenna's" villain was practically nonexistent; the Dead Letters Killer was a homicidal gadfly; and the Judge was just...the Judge.
This time around, he's got a clear motivation. He wants to be a star, just like any of us, but the way he goes about getting this makes him a Bad Guy. Being a hero and helping people in the aftermath of an explosion is one thing; doing the same in the aftermath of an explosion which he himself engineered is entirely different.
More than that, though, he considers himself an artist. As the Joker said in the 1989 Batman movie, "I make art until someone dies." While on the phone with Frank, he poetically describes the effects of a bomb exploding:
3. A SIGN OF THE TIMES? I'd really, really rather not think about it, but I can't help but draw parallels between this episode and the Oklahoma City bombing, which no-one references...and I'm okay with that, because it would have been too soon. Indeed, there's a very strong line drawn between fantasy and reality: Timothy McVeigh performed a vile act of political domestic terrorism; Raymond Dees made and planted bombs solely for his own puerile self-gratification.
In the end, it's perfectly all right that Millennium doesn't match note-for-note with current events. It only needs to convey the emotion of the time, because, again, its main goal is to dramatize the unraveling of society as we know it.
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(Millennium copyright 1996, Ten Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Television. All screenshots are property of Ten Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox Television. All rights reserved. Special thanks to Millennium--This Is Who We Are for episode transcripts, which helped me adapt the episodes.)
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