Born Micheaux, Bill was a follower of Rambaldi, who got involved in decryption work for the organisation Prophet Five. In 1972 they gave portions of the code to a number of different individuals, but when the work was nearly completed, Bill realised that Prophet Five were killing the others. Managing to warn fellow targets James Lehman and Luc Goursaud, they fled with their families and changed their names, although Michael Vaughn was too young to remember this. Bill then joined the CIA, but was killed by KGB agent Irina Derevko in 1979, when Michael was 8 years old.