This chapter did not go quite as I planned…it was supposed to be a little more lighthearted, and not to go into epic Sophie backstory, but…I guess my brain just felt like it should provide backstory for her. Yes, it might take only one comment from canon to make it totally wrong, but that's the risk we all run writing for a show that's still going (and don't get me wrong, I want it to keep going!)
Chapter 4- London
His last day in London, Nate had lunch with Gavin Donovan. Donovan had retired from Interpol about three years before, but they'd struck up a pretty good working relationship over the few years they'd ended up coming at the same cases from different directions. Donovan had started his career as a London cop fifty years before. He was smart and he missed nothing, and back when he'd been new to the job, Nate had realized there was a lot he could learn from Donovan. Plus, he liked the man's blunt, no-nonsense manner and his taste in pubs.
The trip to London had been good, which meant it had been uneventful and he was going home on time. Which meant Maggie wouldn't be angry at him. Which made his life a great deal more pleasant. Which was why he couldn't figure out exactly why he felt a slight, nagging disappointment. Or maybe he could figure it out and didn't want to. And that's why he called up Donovan and invited him to grab a beer.
He arrived to see Donovan already seated at the bar with a Guinness. The older man slapped him on the back and gestured to the waitress. "He'll have what I'm having. I didn't even know you were in London Nathan," Donovan said.
He shrugged. "Nothing interesting, just a hedge fund manager and some landscapes, there was just no one else who could get away. I only got here Thursday."
"How is your lovely wife? And your boy?"
"Maggie's fine," he said. Donovan had met her at a cocktail party shortly before he retired, and been enchanted, as everyone was. He also knew Donovan had a grown son, and was genuinely interested in Sam. "Sam too, he just started t-ball. First step to playing for the Red Sox.
"And what possessed you to call me up on your day off? Shouldn't you be doing something touristy and American? See the crown jewels or something?"
Knowing Donovan would see through, and not like, any excuse but the truth, he was honest.
"There's a woman…" and at Donovan's sharp look, wondering if he was cheating on Maggie, he shook his head quickly. "No, not like that. She stole a Degas out from under me, almost literally, in Prague. Then I caught her in Damascus, and she just…walked away."
He didn't mention Paris.
Donovan took a sip of his beer, and chuckled. "Ah, so you've met Katherine."
"That's…not the name she gave me."
"No, it's not her real name, or maybe it is, who knows. It's the name she was using when I encountered her. Dark hair, eyes that drag you under, amazing figure, and a voice that's music and poetry and Shakespeare all at the same time?"
"That's her."
"Well, don't feel bad son, she's…wait, did you say you caught her in Damascus?"
"Well, briefly. In the split second I looked away she was off. And took my wallet."
Donovan gave a low whistle. "What was she after?"
"A Braque, a Duchamp, and a Matisse."
"Passing your client fakes and keeping the originals to sell, I presume."
He nodded. "Very good fakes."
Donovan shrugged. "Well, I can give you some names…well, actually, one name, two are in jail…of forgers who specialize in that period, but I doubt that will get you anywhere."
"Probably not, I got the client the originals anyway, so he was satisfied, but Hell, Gavin, she's good at this. How does no one know about her?"
"Oh, people do. Just not the sort of people a nice kid like you would know. She's good for the same reasons she got away from you, Nate. Twice. She's either charming as hell and people have no idea what hit them, or smooth as hell and they never see her slip away." Donovan gave him a shrewd look. "Be careful, son, she seduces people for a living. The whole point is to make you feel like you're different from all the others, but that's how she gets what she wants."
The conversation changed then to sports, to politics. Two hours, a meal, and three beers later Donovan left, but Nate lingered, ordered another. His flight was not until the next morning, and he had no particular plans for the afternoon, so he might as well enjoy an hour reading the paper in the warm, congenial atmosphere of the pub rather than in his hotel room. The weather was exactly what one would expect from London in March, so he certainly wasn't interested in going anywhere.
It wasn't that he'd expected to see her in London, except that…he had. This trip had nothing to do with her, she hadn't stolen anything since the Van Eyck (well, she probably had, but nothing relevant to IYS) but he had still expected to see her.
Fifteen minutes later, she slid into the seat next to him, took a sip of his beer, made a face, and ordered a glass of wine. He folded up the paper and studied her for a moment. She was wearing a dark red coat and boots. When she slipped off the coat, she was wearing a grey dress, conservative, though it hugged every curve, and pearls. Very British. Her hair was longer than the last time he'd seen her, curling over her shoulders.
"And what brings you to London, Miss Devereaux?" he asked, mentally going through special exhibits currently running, but then it was London, like Paris, priceless things were on permanent display all the time.
"Maybe London is home," she said, thanking the waitress and taking a sip of the wine.
"Is it?"
She shrugged. "As much as anywhere. I'm going to the British Museum. Come with me."
"I'm not going with you to steal something from the British Museum, Sophie."
"I'm not going to steal anything," she protested, sounding deeply offended.
He raised an eyebrow.
"Today."
He raised the other eyebrow.
"This afternoon."
"So, you're…wait, what did you steal this morning, then?"
"That's not relevant to this conversation, Nate."
"So you're asking me to go case the British Museum with you?"
"I want company, and I'm guessing this is the extent of your plans for the afternoon," she gestured around the pub. "It will be educational for you."
Of course he eventually agreed, they had both known he would.
As they wandered through the British Museum, he wondered what she was planning to take, but she was subtle enough not to focus on any one thing. He noticed her dark eyes flashing around, taking in guards and cameras and motion sensors as well as exhibits, but to anyone else they looked like any other couple killing a rainy Sunday afternoon.
They were in a room full of sculptures taken from the Parthenon, and she started to say something about Athens, ask if he'd ever been there and seen…he never heard what, because suddenly behind them someone said, "Anna?"
Nate felt her stiffen, and she muttered something that sounded profane in a language he couldn't identify. She'd had an arm looped casually through his, but as she turned around to the person who'd spoken, her fingers were digging into his arm.
"Christopher!" she said, "What a…surprise."
Nate noticed the slight…very slight…change in her accent. Apparently "Anna" was Scottish, a hint of a brogue under the flawless British public school speech.
"I thought it was you!" the man said, looking genuinely pleased to see her, while judging by the bruises she was leaving on Nate's arm, she was less thrilled. Not that you could tell from her reaction, she smiled warmly.
Nate studied the man. He was probably in his late thirties, maybe early forties, extremely good-looking, and everything about him spoke quietly of wealth. Nothing showy, nothing ostentatious, but if you knew what to look for, the suit was hand-tailored, the shoes were Italian, and the watch was Patek Phillipe.
"It's good to see you," she said, and then, "Oh, where are my manners? Nate, this is Christopher Leighlan. Chris, Nathan Ford."
So apparently he got to use his real name. He shook the man's hand. "Nice to meet you," he said.
"Oh, you're American? Nice to meet you as well."
"So you and…Anna…are old friends, I presume?" he asked, since Sophie seemed rather at a loss.
The man chuckled. "You could say that. We used to be married."
And Nate found he really had nothing to say to that.
"So you're back in London?" the man went on, to Sophie.
"Oh, no, no, just visiting," she said quickly, and Nate saw a flash of disappointment in his eyes, the way he looked at her. He was still in love with her…or still in love with whoever Anna had been.
"Are you living in the US, then?" he asked, and Nate saw the question behind the question: were they together? Sophie slid up against him, slipping an arm around his waist, under his jacket. Even knowing it was an act, knowing exactly what she was doing, it was impossible not to react at all, and Nate hoped the man didn't notice his quick intake of breath.
"Yes, for now. Nate lives in Los Angeles," she said, pretty clearly answering that question.
The man nodded slightly, understanding. "Well, I need to be going, I have dinner plans. It was nice seeing you again, Anna. Next time you're in London-"
"Yes, we should catch up," she agreed. It was the sort of thing people always said and never actually did.
"Nice meeting you as well, Nathan," he added, with a nod and a slightly less warm look.
"You too."
He looked at her again, with a trace of longing. "You look good, Anna. Take care."
"You too, Chris," she said gently, and he turned and left. They were both silent for a moment, and she slid away from him, wrapping her arms around herself, as though she was cold. "We should go, they close at five anyway."
"Sophie-"
"I need a drink."
They ended up at a small, rather generic Italian restaurant near the British Museum. It was small and nondescript enough that it didn't draw a big tourist crowd, so it was quiet, but the food was decent. He waited until she'd had half a glass of wine.
"You never said you'd been married."
"I never said I hadn't. There's no reason to mention it, it was a long time ago. I was young. Too young."
He knew that wasn't what bothered him. A lot of people married too young, and grew up a bit, and found out they didn't work. That was so common it was a statistic.
"You married someone who didn't even know your name."
"How do you know my name isn't Anna?"
"It's not."
She traced a finger around the rim of her wineglass. "No, it's not. I was nineteen. I was supposed to be playing him. I got in too deep. He's not a bad guy. Massively entitled, but inherently a decent man. I knew it was wrong, but I just got caught up."
"He's still in love with you."
She didn't meet his eyes. "I know that. That's why I disappeared, that's why I leave him alone."
"Did you love him?"
It was an intensely personal thing to ask. Out-of-line maybe, but for some reason he needed to know. He was Catholic, and while he questioned a great deal of it now, he still took his marriage vows seriously. He still considered some things sacred.
"I don't think I need to justify my relationships to you," she said, eyes narrowing. "Pot, meet kettle."
That was a hit. For all he told himself it was about work, that he needed to get close to her to stand a chance at doing his job, he also hadn't told Maggie a thing about her.
The rest of their meal was relatively quiet. Her face showed nothing, but then it never did unless she wanted it to, so he couldn't tell if she was upset or angry at his questions. But she was definitely unsettled by the meeting, and he couldn't quite shake Donovan's words from earlier that afternoon- "the whole point is to make you feel like you're different from all the others, but that's how she gets what she wants."
Sophie could feel Nate's eyes on her as they ate, and she could feel him thinking, realizing that sometimes her cons went beyond pretending to be an aristocrat's daughter or a sheikh's widow…sometimes people got hurt.
Not often. Usually she could justify the things she did. She stole from spectacularly wealthy people…no one had ever been left unable to feed their children or keep their house because of her. She tried not to hurt people and she hadn't killed anyone (well, maybe she had, she'd shot people before, but usually just to slow them down. Only once, she'd aimed to kill. She hadn't stayed around to see if she had been successful.)
People assumed she'd had some kind of tragic childhood, but in fact it had been shockingly average. Her parents, though typically English and undemonstrative, had loved her. They had been nice, normal, middle-class. She had, as most people guessed, gone to a boarding school, but on a scholarship, because even as a child, she had been smart. She had a gift for reading people, and the day she arrived at that school she knew that her classmates- the children of princes and dukes and business magnates- would eat her alive if they knew who she really was.
By the end of the first day, she had learned to mimic their accent. By the end of the first week, she had become someone else. She couldn't change her name back then, of course, but it was before the internet, and she played her role so well no one ever thought to question it. She became one of them, sent there because her parents were too busy jet-setting around the world. Cairo one week, St. Lucia the next. She had a well-tuned sense of how far she could go, never overplaying the role, and by the time she'd been at school for a month, it was second nature.
The stealing, well, it began as a way to keep up that person she had invented. That girl who could afford all the most fashionable clothes for weekends and holidays. That girl whose parents would send her extravagant gifts from around the world.
Her mother died when she was fifteen, her father a year later. Over that Christmas holiday, when she was sixteen, instead of going to her oldest brother's dreary flat, she lifted a wallet on the train, and found so much cash that she bought a ticket to Paris. She learned in the next two weeks that she really could be anyone- she was a Spanish heiress, an up-and-coming Russian model, the spoiled daughter of a Texas oil tycoon, an aspiring dancer in Paris to study ballet.
She learned that when she chose the right role, she could make people simply give her anything she wanted.
During that winter holiday in Paris, she considered not going back to school. Why should she, with all of Europe laid out before her like a playground. Any one of the men she'd met during those two weeks would take her anywhere she wanted. The sunshine of the Italian Riviera, the glitter of Monte Carlo's casinos, the warmth of Greek beaches, she could have any of them just for the asking. Sun drenched resorts and haute couture and breathtaking jewels could all be hers, but she decided they would be in the future, not yet. She knew she would not be sixteen forever, and not everyone would be taken in by long legs and bedroom eyes. So she went back to school, threw herself into her studies (and, yes, seduced her art teacher, cliché as it was), and finished early with exam scores that took her to the Sorbonne to study art history. She was good at becoming whatever she wanted, but the art was a constant, something she loved no matter who she was that day.
She hadn't been forced into a life of crime, she had chosen it, and she had very few regrets.
Unfortunately, Nate had just met one of them.
He was still quiet as they took a taxi back to his hotel, and then as they got near, said suddenly, "What do you want from me, Sophie?"
She almost answered with a quip, something funny, to brush off a question that she knew, from his tone, he was serious about. The taxi drew up in front of his hotel, and despite the driver there, he waited for her to answer.
"I don't know," she said simply. "I just want to see you."
She could tell that surprised him. He reached out like he was going to touch her, but then just tucked a bit of hair back behind her ear, so lightly she hardly felt it. "Good night, Sophie."
And he was gone. He didn't look back as he walked into his hotel, and she found that her voice shook slightly as she gave the driver her address. She wondered if she'd ever see him again.
A week later, in his sunny Los Angeles kitchen, he was drinking coffee and Sam was eating frosted flakes when Maggie commented on a small article in the newspaper's international section, a few lines about the theft of a collection of ancient coins from the British Museum during a fundraising gala. Nate found himself smiling, despite himself.
