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 FBI 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.