Chapter Seven
Combining the Stories
I am sitting on the roof top balcony sipping my morning ambrosia in the clouds. As I watch, the sunrise is reflecting off of the buildings surrounding June's and reflecting its colorful light all around me. The beauty of the night melting away and the morning breaking over the horizon is a sight that I have always enjoyed. When possible, I enjoy being on the water this time of day to combine my love of the sunrise with my love of water, but as I am needed to be here playing Caffrey, I have to make do with good coffee and a lovely sunrise.
While I move onto my breakfast the early morning fog is melting away and the noise escalates as it disappears. The change of the morning reminds me of how Operation Caffrey moved from a small operation with Nate working to bust a few of Bennett's old cohorts to a multiplayer role with an international enemy in the Antagonist as well as other smaller opponents like Adler.
After the work with the FBI began, the first big problem for Caffrey was the death of Kate, which was faked of course. We had gotten to Fowler first and set him up with a deal. He helped to fake Kate's death, and we gave him a deal for his crimes. For Kate, she disappeared from the field work side of the operations and settled in behind a desk. This wasn't her favorite place to be, but as she and Nate would be having Benjamin Joe within the year, it was a safe place for her.
When Adler came into play again, things got nasty. While Caffrey was chasing Adler for Kate's death, the rest of us were going after him for his past crimes and possible links to the Antagonist. We started to get close, but we spooked him. Sadly, Mozzie paid the price and was shot by Julian Larssen, which was a warning to back off on all fronts. As expected, we didn't listen and only put more people and effort into protecting our players. There were a few more sticky situations but with the help of the White Collar team, and a single shot from Peter, the whole case was finished. With the death of Adler all agencies descended and the frenzy quickly had all cases reliant upon him closed.
To follow up with the Adler issue, Mozzie just had to go and steal the treasure, which eventually brought Matthew Keller back. This caused El and Peter to be put in danger and brought a lot of strain to Caffrey's relationships in the office. We could have done without the extra trouble this caused on all levels, but we managed to overcome. Keller was taken down, the treasure returned to the people it had originally belonged to, and the relationships within the office remained shaky but everyone was pulled through safely.
Due to the shaky relationships and the suspicions that Caffrey had been responsible for the treasure theft, Peter brought in his old mentor. Agent Kramer was definitely involved with the Antagonist and had no good intentions for Caffrey from the start. From his perspective, Caffrey was the fake replacement paid off to be a decoy for the real forger who had gained a position working for the Antagonist. He believed that if he could get him away from the influence of Peter, and paid him off well enough, he would be willing to be a stooge. Caffrey would be pulling off crimes for the Antagonist in the shadows while being Kramer's Consultant in the open and taking his closure rates to a whole new level. This was too good of a deal for Kramer to pass up, so he fought hard and dirty. In the end he had done so well that we couldn't get past him.
Rather than send Caffrey to be a virtual slave in DC, Peter gave the permission and heads up for Caffrey to run. We took Caffrey for a nice little tour of the islands with Mozzie and they set up shop on one of the Cape Verde islands. In Mozzie's mind, they were cashing in on retirement, but for Caffrey it was a working vacation. Their location was a main information hub for the Antagonist as well as the secret hide out of Rob MacLeash. When Peter came into the picture we had to move up the time table on the Antagonist research, and used MacLeash's take down as a means of bringing Caffrey back. The trip proved extra helpful though, as the research Caffrey uncovered brought up the existence of a leader at the top of the ten divisions of the Antagonist. We had discovered the spider in the web.
With Caffrey's return to New York, Ellen came out to help advance the case against Bennett as he was the last non Antagonist opponent on the target list. She had given up her career, the life she knew, and was willing to give up her life to take down the man who betrayed her and the men behind him who gave the law she upheld a bad name. After several years, she kept her promise and gave us the evidence to prove Bennett was dirty.
Of course it couldn't be a direct "Here you go," but instead turned out to be a treasure hunt. It was fun to solve, and the race against Peter was just icing on the cake! The closer we got, the more danger there was and before we reached the end Ellen was killed and Peter took a hit of a different variety.
Senator Pratt combined with Bennett turned out to be mixing fire and gasoline. There was the accident and then the almost cincher to Peter's career when Bennett made him the fall man for Pratt's murder, a crime which Bennett had committed. We had been using Operation Recovery to keep Peter and the others safe, but now we had a new front to defend him from, the justice system its self. While Peter was doing his stint in orange, or in jail to be less color oriented, Caffrey and the FBI pulled a man hunt for Bennett.
They were completely unsuccessful. Why? We had arrested Bennett as soon as he was away from June's and out of sight.
The surface story was that Bennett called in to clear Peter's name, only to be later discovered that Caffrey and Mozzie faked the recording. Really, we had cameras that recorded the incident and with the evidence stacked against him Bennett confessed, it was recorded, and Caffrey pretended to create the recoding that was heard at Peter's indictment hearing. Peter was released and things seemed to pick up back to normal.
It didn't take long for Peter to get suspicious of Caffrey again, with good reason too. Behind the scenes, Caffrey had made a deal with Hagen and was doing assorted crimes with Mozzie to get the blackmailer off of his back. These crimes were meant to help the Antagonist as they had people pulling the strings from out of sight. They thought they had finally gotten their stooge and Caffrey was just another of many criminals under their thumb. Well, the jokes on them because we were using their jobs to get the upper hand and eventually used it to find the last keys to their eventual demise.
As more crimes were committed, the distrust grew stronger, and eventually some of the truth leaked out. Peter took measures into his own hands to rectify the problems that Caffrey had caused and emotionally distanced himself from the man who had become his best friend. This was a good thing, because as nasty as things had gotten in the past, things were about to get a whole lot worse.
With Caffrey's abduction we put Casey into the FBI office to "Aid in the international search" for Caffrey. After all, when your chasing spies, why not have the help of spies? Actually, he was just the temporary replacement for Caffrey tasked to keep everyone safe until we could get our usual man back.
It was rather interesting to see the meeting between Peter and Casey. On Casey's part he put up a show of mentally belittling the FBI because it was expected of him, and it fit his general opinion of other agents anyway. Peter, he was distrusting of this agent who, in his mind, had no reason to care for his friend's personal wellbeing and was likely more concerned with catching the culprits than anything else. In addition, there was the clash of wills, each was used to being in charge, having their orders followed without question, and each had different means of getting to the same end.
As Casey got himself integrated into the office he further set himself at odds with the other agents by using Caffrey's desk. This ruffled some feathers but, in the interest of finding Caffrey as soon as possible, it only brought up dirty looks, not subtle reminders of who the desk belonged too, and an open dislike for his very presence. It annoyed the agents even further when his general responses were short sentences or his famous grunts. Needless to say, things didn't get off to a very good start, but for Casey to protect them it was beneficial that he be by the door and Caffrey's desk provided the best means.
Peter started the search by looking in the case files. Being Caffrey's handle it was his responsibility to look into his old enemies, the cases they had worked together, and the usual start points that have to be looked into in the event of a disappearance.
The rest of the search consisted of pulling up Neal's tracking data for the last several days, tracking camera feeds where possible, and analyzing anyone who appeared to be suspicious. Casey took lead on this assignment and personally focused on watching the feed and analyzing any suspects. He was intense in his research and seemed rather nosy as he was always watching who came in the door, what they were carrying, and what they did while they were in the office, a puzzling mix to the agents watching him.
Casey found a clue when he got to the footage of Caffrey leaving the hospital after visiting Mozzie. There was a man leaning against the wall reading a newspaper. What raised a suspicion is how he hadn't turned the page in twenty minutes, followed by how he watched Caffrey leaving. Combining his face and his distinctive grey cowboy boots it was fairly simple to use the cities cameras to track him. He was following Caffrey's every move which made him the prime suspect.
FBI facial recognition didn't have the suspect in the database so the picture was ran through every database connected to the Operations Dominoes and Recovery. No luck, the last resort was to bring Chuck in with the Intersect. Casey took a snap shot of the image and texted it to Chuck. Since the entire office saw this there was an uproar of questions. Peter quieted the agents and asked the question himself.
"What did you do that for?"
"I work with the team that guards the nation's largest database. My team mate will run the picture against the database and see if he tags something."
It worked, within five minutes Casey's phone went off alerting him to Chuck's answer. The mystery man was a part of работорговцев, or the Antagonist's project that was involved with human trafficking. This group was used to move people from place to place and they could make Caffrey disappear to any location in the world. Obviously a problem. Luckily, Chuck also had information as to where Caffrey would have been taken. There was a base hidden in South America, in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Caffrey was in a tight spot and his rescue was going to be rather difficult. It turned out not to be necessary though.
While everyone was scrambling to plan an international rescue, Caffrey showed up. Not in a good way of course. Peter received a message with coordinates to a warehouse location on the edge of the city. Upon arriving the teams discovered that there were traps laid everywhere to add to the challenge of finding what the building contained. Casey led the way clearing traps and the teams eventually made it into the main area. In the middle of the room there was a tarp with the expected message pinned on top. The warning was that if the diamond wasn't handed over to the person who would be contacting Peter within the next twelve hours, Peter would be next. With trepidation, Casey and Peter unwrapped the tarp and the straps, like a present, to find Caffrey. He had been tortured and was a bloody mess.
After the ambulance had carried Caffrey to the hospital, with Peter at his side, Casey and the remaining agents covered every inch of the warehouse looking for clues. It was spotless. Leaving the rest to continue follow ups and look into how to handle the diamond situation, Casey switched to getting Chuck on hand immediately. It was time to bring the Intersect in before things went downhill any farther.
"'In nature, everything has a job. The job of the fog is to beautify further the existing beauties!' Mehmet Murat Ildan."
"Morning Mozz, care to join me?"
"Who would pass up the pleasures of a beautiful morning with a great coffee and a close friend to enjoy it with?"
As he sits down and pours himself a cup of the coffee I have been leisurely working my way through, I speculate as to what has put him into such a good mood. He notices my studying him but remains aloof, simply watching the fog disperse and the sun's rays growing brighter and warmer as the morning progresses. Eventually he decides to break the silence and begins to tell his tale.
Recently, he received a message from Mr. Jeffries. There have been people poking around and asking him about Mozzie. They have a story about a baby boy, of Mozzie's description, going missing a long time ago. New evidence had surfaced in the last few years allowing the trail to finally be connected from DC to Detroit, and the trail had gone cold again in the area. The theory was that the abductors had decided to abandon the baby and maybe he was left at the orphanage. Nothing was confirmed yet, but for Mozzie the idea that he wasn't abandoned was new. He now had hope that his parents were out there looking for him, and had been all along only to be stymied by his abductors skills of disappearing.
I congratulated him and hoped that things would come together for him, it was obvious that despite his many statements to the contrary, Mozzie wanted to meet his family and have a connection. After discussing some theories of our own we sat back and simply enjoyed listening to the rest of the city progressing through their weekend, each lost in our own thoughts and hopes for the future of Mozzie's identity.
Again, I would like to thank the three guest and Quinis for your reviews as I enjoy hearing what people think about my story :D
