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Name: Aleksandr Krycek Rank: Special Agent, FBI (currently wanted for treason and murder) Background: deep-cover Soviet agent Specialty: Killing people when they're not looking |
Alex Krycek, looking uncannily like the fresh-faced Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, was first paired with Fox Mulder in 1994 after Scully was abducted. Like Cooper, Krycek seemed too good to be true. And he was: he was working for the Cigarette-Smoking Man. Mulder locates Augustus Cole, a man with psychic powers, and tries to get him to testify against the Army, but Krycek kills Cole, saying he saw a gun in his hand. Krycek then reports to the Cigarette-Smoking Man that Mulder has found another source to replace Deep Throat, and that Scully is a much larger problem than the Cig Man thought she was ("Sleepless").
Krycek helped Mulder chase Duane Barry when he kidnapped Scully, but he made sure to inform the Cigarette-Smoking Man of Mulder's every move. He strands Mulder on a cable car to keep him from reaching Duane Barry before the Cigarette-Smoking Man's agents do; Mulder reaches Barry anyway, but Krycek gets in to see him and induces a cardiac arrest, killing Duane Barry. ("Ascension").
Krycek has asked the Cigarette-Smoking Man why they just don't kill Mulder, but the Cigarette-Smoking Man told him they would risk "turning one man's religion into a crusade." ("Ascension"). However, he didn't hesitate to kill Mulder's father ("Anasazi"), and Scully's sister ("The Blessing Way"), to cover up Project Paper Clip. Later in the Project Paper Clip affair, Krycek and some associates pick up Skinner and plan to eliminate him, but Skinner escapes ("Paper Clip).
However, Krycek's willingness to kill for the Cigarette-Smoking Man is not remotely connected to any form of loyalty. The Cig Man was willing to go to great lengths to keep Mulder from publicizing the contents of the Majestic tapes, but Krycek was trying to sell these tapes to J. Kallenchuk, a Hong Kong broker. Mulder forces Krycek to bring him the tape, but Krycek is rescued by Joan Gauthier, at the cost of having his eyes fill with the same dark cloud that infects Gauthier's eyes. Krycek eventually coughs up the alien oil, which crawls into a UFO buried in North Dakota. He is entombed in an abandoned missile silo ("Apocrypha").
Presumably, someone let him out, because he turns up again at a white supremacist compound in North Dakota, selling them bombs. Mulder captures him and forces Krycek to tell him about a Russian courier bringing more black alien oil to the U.S. ("Tunguska") We learn for the first time that Krycek is the son of Cold War immigrants from Russia, that he speaks fluent Russian, and at the end of the episode, that he has enough influence to summon a superhumanly competent Russian hitman from retirement to kill everyone who knows about the black oil ("Terma").
There is no way Krycek can have that kind of influence in the Russian intelligence heirarchy without belonging to them body and soul. In which case, we must assume he has been a "sleeper agent" all along, pretending to be a loyal American right along. It makes a certain sort of sense; after all, if the Russians know about the Cigarette-Smoking Man, the most secret of American secret operatives, they'd want very much to have someone on his staff. Krycek could probably write his own ticket with the KGB. Unfortunately, with the FBI and the Cigarette-Smoking Man's Conspiracy turned against him, Krycek is going to have to rely on his Russian contacts now, because he can't worm his way back into the American spook corps.
Krycek has his left arm cut off by well-meaning Russian villagers; in his last appearance, he is seen dipping his teabag with a wooden hand. But he'll be back; well, most of him.
Text by Steve Johnson
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