Chapter Eleven
"Elizabeth," Peter began, "How did you find Neal?" He had been back in New York for two days, had shaved and was feeling almost back to normal. The debrief at the FBI building with the State Department had been draining, and more so since he was keeping a big part of what he knew to himself. After the initial homecoming, he and Elizabeth hadn't really had a big opportunity to talk. His appearance, even though he had insisted on some basic clean up before he ever saw her, had caused her great alarm. She was insistent that he would be back to his target weight sooner than later.
To that end, she was chopping peppers for whatever dish the evening's menu called for. At his question, she glanced at little Neal, busily coloring in his high chair and looked back at Peter innocently. He was not fooled. He smiled. "I mean the other one."
She raised her eyebrows. "You made me promise not to, remember?"
He took the knife from her hand and turned her gently to face him, "I know you did it, Elizabeth. I know you told Neal that Cordero had me."
Her attempt at innocence moments before evaporated. "I'm sorry Peter," she whispered, "I had to try, I was desperate, and no one was doing anything to get you back."
"How did you find him?" Neal hadn't told him it had been Elizabeth, but Peter had known that it had to be. It could have been no one else.
"Diana got me in touch with Mozzie," she explained, "She understood that I needed help and after all, second to Neal, Mozzie would be a good go to person."
"So Mozzie led you to Neal?" That sounded strange, but then again, Mozzie had always had a soft spot for Elizabeth, or Mrs. Suit as he called her. And Peter guessed a tearful, desperate Elizabeth had been more than Mozzie could refuse.
"I'm sorry, Peter," she said again, "I know you told me about Neal under the strict rule that I never contact him, but…." Her eyes again showed her desperation. Part of the torture of being held prisoner had been knowing how Elizabeth would be suffering.
It's okay," he said taking her into his arms. "I understand." He paused before continuing, "That promise, I made it to myself, too. After everything, he deserved a new life and to do that he had to leave the old one behind."
She pulled away from him, and the look of her face had changed. The lines of her mouth were hard, and there was anger in her eyes.
"He's done that," she spat, "I told him you were in trouble. I went all the way to Paris, and he wouldn't help; he wouldn't even try." He kept his silence, and she continued, bitterness clear in her voice "He said Neal Caffrey was dead and since he was out of the con man game, there was nothing he could do."
"Elizabeth," Peter couldn't help the smile that had started to creep across his face. "Nathan Clay is a pretty good con man himself apparently."
"What are you talking about?" She looked at him.
"He conned you, El," he said gently. "How do you think the Venezuelan authorities got intel that Cordero was holding stolen relics?"
Understanding dawned in her eyes, "You think it was Neal?"
"Who else could assemble a collection of stolen art and get Cordero to put it in storage in the same hallway where he was holding me? Cordero isn't even an art person, El; Neal conned him, set him up and then called in the Venezuelan authorities to get me out of there."
"But he said…." She began, then looked at Peter sharply, "Are you sure it was Neal?
"Actually, no. It was a French art dealer named Nathan Clay," he smiled. "I had a nice conversation with him. Strangely enough, we were both on the same flight out of Caracas."
"You saw him? He was there?" Her disbelief evaporated at Peter's look. She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, dinner now forgotten. "Okay, Peter, tell me everything."
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Little Neal was having his afternoon nap, and he and Elizabeth were having a cup of coffee. The topic of Neal/Nathan had been the conversation ever since Peter had shared the truth with Elizabeth the evening before. She had been surprised, and then not surprised as he explained the lengths Neal had gone to make sure he came back to her.
"You know, I've went over what I said to him in Paris a hundred times while you were gone. I kept wondering what I could have done or said, to have gotten through to him, gotten him to help."
"He did help, Elizabeth," Peter reminded her, "You did get through to him, he just let you think you didn't."
"He was worried about you, Peter, I knew he was. He went pale when he saw me, but he went more pale when he realized you were in trouble." She recalled, "His mind was spinning, you know how he looks when he is confronted by something he didn't expect, and he's trying to figure his way around it?" Peter nodded. He had seen that many times himself. "But then, it was like something changed."
"Probably when a plan clicked into place and he decided to con you into thinking he wasn't going to help," Peter suggested.
"No," she shook her head, "there was a point when he asked me what I thought he could do that the United States Government couldn't," she paused, "and I said something like, they have to do things the legal way and …. And you don't." She looked down, embarrassed by the memory.
"El," Peter began. It had been a reoccurring theme when Neal had been a part of their lives. More than once, both he and Elizabeth had depended upon Neal's lack of adherence to the rules to accomplish things that would otherwise have proven much more difficult. Peter hadn't been proud of that once he realized how very hypercritical it was. And Elizabeth now felt the same.
"The way he looked at me when I said that, Peter, it was almost as if I had hit him or something." She said quietly. "Then he said he couldn't help, that he wasn't that person anymore and I was so angry with him, Peter, " She stopped, adding quietly "I told him he was dead to me. I slapped him and stormed out."
"Neal understands, Elizabeth," Peter assured her. "He understood then. He said all that to make you angry enough to leave Paris. If you had known he was going to help me, you would have wanted to know details, know the plan." He squeezed her, grateful to be home. "He just wanted to keep you safe; safe from knowing what was going on."
"Plausible deniability?" She smiled. "That sounds like something Mozzie would say. I guess he was in it, too, wasn't he?"
"I am sure he was," Peter admitted. "Neal didn't say, but then again he didn't tell me you were the one who wound him up and sent him to South America, either."
She took a sip of her coffee. The smile had faded, and she looked at Peter thoughtfully.
"When I thought back to the way he looked when I said that," she said softly, "I understood for the first time why he needed a clean break; why you said we should never go look for him."
"Why?"
"Because as much as we berated him for being who he was, for not following the rules, when push came to shove that was who we asked him to be. Time and time again. It was really very unfair, Peter."
"I know." Peter had come to the same realization during his year of soul searching when he thought Neal was dead. He was afraid he had unknowingly put Neal in a no-win situation from the beginning, and that in the end, Neal's desperation to escape that situation had cost him his life. And it had, just not in the way Peter had initially thought.
"And as much as I thought about him, wondered how he was, I didn't get on a plane and fly to Paris until I needed something from him. I needed him to be Neal Caffrey again, and when he refused, I accused him of not caring, of not being your friend. But what kind of friend did that make me?"
It hurt Peter to hear self-recrimination in her voice, but he understood it. He had been over the same ground himself the past days. Neal had risked everything to go to Venezuela to save him, and yet he had been afraid of what Peter would think of his methods. They had given him so many mixed messages over the years. Still, when Elizabeth showed up at the café in Paris and told Neal that Peter was in trouble, he hadn't given it a second thought. Less than seventy-two hours after talking to Elizabeth, Nathan Clay arrived in Venezuela. He hadn't even taken the time to create an alias to safeguard the life he had spent two years building. Without regard to what impact his course of action might have to his life, he had rushed to Peter's rescue.
"I got to tell him a lot of what I have wanted to tell him a long time, El" Peter said, reaching over and squeezing her hand, "I told him he is a good man, and that all of us know that, and that we care for him. I told him that I am proud to call him my friend."
"Did you ask him to come back?" Peter looked at her in surprise; she smiled. She knew him too well. "I know you want him too, Peter, I just wondered if you told him that."
"Actually, I did," he admitted, "and if I had pressed him I think he would have come."
"Really? And you didn't?" She studied him, "Why not?"
"It wasn't right to press him, El," Peter continued, "It was hard for him, for both of us, having to say goodbye." He shook his head, "It wouldn't have been fair of me. If he comes back I want it to be because he makes that decision for himself, not for me. "
"So," she said, "You said what you needed to say and you can leave it at that?"
"Yes," Watching Neal walk away in Bogota had been difficult but somehow, even then, Peter knew that it wasn't going to be forever. Neal wanted to come back to New York but it was going to take time for him to work that out for himself.
"Well, I can't. I've got some things to tell him too," She said firmly. "I am going to. I am going back over there and I am going to thank him for bringing you back to me. And I am going to apologize for ever asking him to be anyone other than who he is."
"Exactly who are you saying all of that too? Neal Caffrey or Nathan Clay?" Peter asked, amused by the dilemma.
"Which ever one of them that will forgive me."