Neal waited to let Mozzie check out the hangar.
"It's clear."
For a microsecond, Neal got cold feet. He wore a tracking anklet, and Peter would know where he had been. And he was trespassing. Then curiosity took the doubt away, and he joined Mozzie. They stood up on the balcony and watched the pieces of the blown-up airplane arranged on the ground below them.
"Come on," Mozzie said, and they walked down the stairs.
As they got closer, the burnt skeleton of the airplane got to him. It still smelled as it did when it was on fire when Peter had pulled him back.
"You okay?" A justified question, Neal realized. He was leaning forward, hands on his knees.
"Yeah," he rose. "Kate was sitting on the left side..." he pointed and walked 'inside' the plane, "by the window."
He sat down on his heels by Kate's chair. It was black as charcoal, only the metal left. Still, he was afraid he would see something of her there.
"Definitely no accident."
Neal glanced up at Mozzie.
"Did you ever think it was?"
"No."
"A mechanical failure wouldn't cause an explosion by the door." Neal was no flight engineer, but there were not that many places on an airplane that could generate an explosion.
"I bet it was set to explode the plane in mid-air," Mozzie said.
"It went off early."
"Or… someone… set it off early." Moz studied what was left of the cockpit.
"What about the black box?"
"The whole tail's missing."
"Excuse me!" a voice called out. "Who are you?"
"You said the guard's route takes 15 minutes," Neal whispered to Mozzie.
"That's not the guard," his friend whispered back.
"All right. Just follow me on this one." He rose.
"What are you doing in here?" the man asked.
"Morning. We're with Sterling Bosch." Neal glanced at the man's id, hanging around his neck. FAA Security, Roy Disson. "You're Roy?"
"Where you been, Roy?" Mozzie said, stepping out of the cockpit. "Unlike you, we're on a schedule here."
"Sterling Bosch? Insurance?"
"Yeah," Neal confirmed.
"No one told me you were coming. I thought Wentlow Sterlings was handling the claim."
"They were. Where's the cockpit voice recorder?" The trick was not to linger on sensitive issues.
"That's been logged in with NTSB in Washington." Ouch. That was out of his reached. Not even Peter would get it out of there.
"I hope you made a backup." He turned and wanted to give the impression that he returned to what he was doing.
"Insurance?" Moz whispered.
"Trust me on this one." Neal placed his hands on his hips. He did not have Peter's physics and would never make such an imposing impression as him, but it posed someone confident and of authority.
"Listen, how'd you guys get in here?"
"We walked in!" Mozzie said. That was the truth, alright. "Your security is abysmal."
"We have one guard for four hangars." And you just told the trespassers, Neal thought. Great move, Roy.
"Good to know," Moz nodded.
"Listen, We made a copy of the voice recording," Roy said. "I only handle the physical evidence. I don't have access to the recording."
"When's our flight leave?" Neal asked Moz.
"Two hours."
"I can have FAA send a copy to you," Roy offered.
It would have to do. There was no excuse for insisting on getting it right away.
"That would work," Mozzie confirmed.
"Yeah, I guess that would work." Neal realized he pushed his chest out to look more like Peter.
"I'll have them send it to Sterling Bosch," Roy said. "What's your name?"
There was a slight panic in his friend's eyes. Neal pulled out Sara Ellis's card from his pocket.
"You know what, why don't you have them send it to my insurance investigator Sara Ellis." He handed Roy the card.
"I can do that."
"Great. I'll follow up with a call tomorrow morning."
"All right. Ask for my assistant. I'll give her a heads up."
"Thanks, Roy."
"Yeah," Mozzie mumbled. "Bye, Roy."
Roy left, and they were alone again. Mozzie pattered him on the shoulder.
"We'll get it. Who's Sara Ellis?"
"You weren't at my trial," Neal explained. "She was."
"Oh," Moz nodded. "For which item?"
"The Raphael."
"Bet she was rather upset."
"Called me a sociopath."
"That was highly uneducated," Mozzie pointed out. "You need to be antisocial for a start, and if you were, you wouldn't be able to steal the Raphael in the first place."
"Yeah." He had not checked it up, but he was sure his friend was right. They walked out of the hangar. "Have you ever wondered if you have a diagnose?"
Mozzie glanced at him.
"No. I believe in freedom to be however I want to be, without forced on labels telling me how to behave." Of course. "Have you?"
"Sometimes," Neal admitted.
"Mon frère, the only 'diagnose' you have is being highly intelligent. Nothing tells otherwise."
"It would be no shame to have a diagnose." He could live with a mental function variation if that were what it was.
"I'm not saying this to stop you from putting yourself in a box if you feel comfortable being in it. I say it because it's the truth."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I read, remember?"
Neal smiled. Mozzie had read books about mental health. Maybe he had tried to find answers after all.
Peter picked up Neal with his car the next morning. The young con-man was not his usual smiling self. He made a mental note to check the kid's anklet for yesterday afternoon.
"So, what's the matter?" he asked and guessed Neal would re-bounce with a question in return. To his surprise, Neal did not.
"Sara Ellis said, 'see you tomorrow, Caffrey'."
"So?"
"Will she be working with us?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"As long as it takes." Peter glanced at the kid. He had worked with Sara before. That she was not Neal's type was not the issue. He drove into the Bureau garage.
"Is there a problem, Neal?" he asked in the elevator up.
"There might."
"What?"
The elevator door opened on the 21st floor.
"She testified against me."
Peter blinked. Was that a problem? They walked into the office.
"I testified against you," he reminded the kid. And would still, if he had to.
"That's different," his pet convict said, but Peter could not see the difference. "How can I work with her? I'm the cunning art thief who slipped through her fingers."
"I don't think she used those words."
"No, but she looks at me and sees dollar signs. She's gonna come after me again for that Raphael."
So that was what troubled him.
"Do you have it?" he asked, straight to the point. Neal just gave him a long look. He was not going to answer that question. He had hoped that the kid would say something like 'what if I did?' and they could work out some kind of arrangement, maybe, but silence did not help his case. Well, then he had to deal with it on his own. "Okay," Peter said. "There's a hundred million stolen bonds out there. She knows this case better than anybody. Right now, we're on the same team, so play nice."
"She—" the kid started, but Peter would hear nothing of it. He had given Neal his chance.
"No."
"But—"
"No."
"Fine," the kid snapped.
"Good."
He guided Neal up the stairs and through the door to the conference room where Sara was already working with Diana, Jones, and a few other agents.
"Start a conversation," Peter encouraged the kid and pushed him in the direction of Sara. The kid was no stranger to that advice and approached her.
"Sara, I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. Let's start over."
"You want to be friends?" Sara answered with a smile.
"Why not?"
"What? Coffee? Grab a bite?" Sara had her charm turned on, Peter noted, and wondered if Neal took it as the same warning as he did.
"Sure," the kid said, taken off-guard, it seemed.
"How about dinner?" Sara continued like she could not wait to get inside his pants. "Or maybe a movie? You like classics, right?"
"Good memory," Neal noted, probably aware of where this was leading.
Diana, beside him, watched the scene too.
"Are you worried about her and Neal?"
"Not at all," Peter grinned. Diana smiled.
"You name the date, Neal," Sara flirted. "I would love to spend time with you. Anything to keep you talking." She grabbed for a small dictaphone on the table.
"You're recording me?"
Peter had a hard time not laughing. He would have loved to see the kid's face, but he stood with his back turned. He exchanged a look with Diana, who was equally amused.
"Everything you say to me can, and will, be used to nail your ass to the wall and recover my painting."
Peter had interrogated Neal for hours. Made everything he could to make him slip. And he was trained for that sort of thing with years of experience. If Sara succeeded, well, then Neal deserved to go back to prison for pure stupidity.
The kid turned away from Sara.
"Everything okay, Neal?" Peter asked. The kid seemed like a fish on dry land. "What's that?" Neal put on a wide dentist grin and made a thumbs-up.
"I could get used to this," Diana laughed.
"Okay, people," Peter called everybody's attention. Neal leaned against the wall like a wet rag. "You know Sara Ellis, from Sterling Bosch. Thanks to her Intel, we have subpoenaed coded e-mails between an alias we think is Edgar Halbridge," Peter said as he walked around the table and handed out files to everyone, "and a man in Hamburg he calls Mr. Black. The e-mails use a public-key encryption. We've cracked most of them. We believe Mr. Black is a courier. Halbridge has paid him a one-time fee to enter the U.S. and get the bonds out of the country."
"The bonds are transferable?" Neal asked.
"No title," Diana answered. "Whoever holds them owns them."
"Each certificate is worth two hundred grand," Jones added.
"So a stack of a hundred million dollars is this thick?" he asked, measuring with his thumb and index finger. "Halbridge is taking a huge risk using a courier," the kid told Peter. He did not believe in the theory.
"I'd take the risk," Sara smiled in return. Peter frowned, not sure what to make of that.
"Our plan," he continued, "is to intercept Mr. Black when he transfers planes in Toronto. Then we put Neal into his place here in Manhattan."
"Thank you," the kid hissed, "for the heads up." Sara rolled her eyes. "You said you cracked most of the e-mails. What's in the one's you haven't?"
"Don't know."
"Halbridge won't recognize Mr. Black?"
"From the vernacular of the e-mails, we think he's an American ex-pat. The last e-mail says Black will be the guy wearing a leather jacket and carrying a copy of Atlas Shrugged, which tells me he doesn't know what he looks like," he assured Neal with a stern eye. This was no up for debate. "Let's make this happen. Go." The team split up.
"You're welcome," he overheard Neal telling Sara as she passed him.
"For what?"
"I recover the bonds, and your cut is two million."
"See, I thought the Bureau needed me, given their recovery rate is less than one in twenty."
"Is that true?" the kid asked Peter. Of course, he was baffled.
"That's the Bureau's recovery rate," Peter grinned. "Not mine." He did not need Sara. But she had the intel, so why not? He gestured to Neal to come along to his office. Sara seemed a bit humbled. Well, that did not hurt her.
The kid closed the door behind him.
"You didn't give me a heads up because you thought I would use the opportunity if I had known in advanced?"
Peter was not sure if it was a question or not. Neal's voice rang of accusation, though.
"Neal, you are a convicted felon."
"Thank you for reminding me." The kid looked out through the window. Peter sat down on his chair.
"I am your handler, Neal. And you have used the opportunity before. Besides, there is hardly any risk of danger here." He watched Neal's back. "If you're afraid you will tell her something—"
"I'm not," the kid snapped back, turning to Peter. "I'm just not so keen on the idea of helping her to get two million dollars, that's all. Especially not when I'm the one taking all the risks."
"I see." Peter did. The kid got a minimum payment for his work, and Sara would earn a fortune. "Neal, I need to know, will you do your job?"
"You know I will."
"Thank you. Good to hear."
"I don't think Halbridge would use a currier for the bonds, though."
"Well, we'll find out, won't we?"