Chapter 1: A Meadowlark Sings
Thomas Paine Square, New York City. April 14, 2005. Thursday morning.
The meadowlark sings on the window ledge.
Neal Caffrey ducked out of the Federal Building and crossed the street. His destination was Thomas Paine Park, a small island of trees and grass a block away.
Why couldn't Mozzie have simply called? Normally he didn't pull Neal away from work. Mozzie was a shadow-dweller, a man who sought dim retreats in secluded locations. What made him brave the glare of the morning sun in the heart of the civic center?
Not that Neal complained when he got Mozzie's text message. Nothing compelling was going on at work, and the daily briefing wasn't due to start for a half-hour. An excuse to be outside in springtime was not to be missed. The ginkgo trees were starting to bud out. It was warm enough that women had emerged from the protective cocoons of their coats. Their colorful dresses blazed brightly against the backdrop of gray concrete sidewalks.
A street guitarist was strumming ballads at the entrance to the park. Many of the steel benches were occupied by New Yorkers taking their morning coffee outside. By midday, all the benches would be filled. Neal found Mozzie absorbed in reading a thick, well-worn paperback.
Neal sat down next to him and glanced at the book cover. "Dante's Divine Comedy?"
"I find it surprisingly relevant to life in New York City." Neal waited for him to explain why he thought the seven circles of Hell had something in common with New York, but enlightenment was not to come. Instead Mozzie's mind wandered off in an unexpected direction. "It must have been cosmic fate which dictated the suit dub me Dante. He has his moments of perspicacity."
"Yes, he does." Neal smiled at the memory. Over a year ago, Mozzie had called Neal's hotel room in St. Louis, not realizing that FBI agent Peter Burke was also in the room. Neal was zoned out with cold medicine so Peter answered his cell phone. He'd never met Mozzie but after talking with him on the phone, Peter feared he was a bad influence and nicknamed him Dante. Peter once called him the devil on Neal's shoulder. Mozzie sometimes referred to himself as Neal's guardian angel. Which one was on the bench this morning?
"In honor of my namesake, I've decided to expand my manuscript collection. Do you know where I could acquire The Divine Comedy?"
"I hope you're not looking for an original manuscript. None has survived," Neal pointed out.
"I know that—although I suspect somewhere deep within the recesses of an old monastery in Italy, pages in the master's handwriting may be found. Or perhaps in the Vatican Secret Archives. You know, we really need to plan a trip to Italy once your application for the PhD program is approved. In the meantime, I'm willing to settle for one of the manuscript copies from the fourteenth century."
Neal shrugged. "You're a little late. I'd stolen a manuscript but it's been returned to the owner."
Mozzie's groan of disappointment was loud enough to make the pigeons feeding on the sidewalk fly off in a panic. "How could you?"
"I didn't know you were interested in it," Neal said helplessly. "It was one of the crimes I confessed to as part of my agreement to join the FBI. I picked items that could be easily restored and where I didn't like the current owners. I stole the Barberino manuscript in Milan for Klaus Mansfeld."
"Ah yes, the Leopard. What a genius he was. A man of exquisite refinement I'm told. I regret never having met him. He was the ideal choice to act as your mentor in Europe. Dante had Virgil serving as his guide. You had the Leopard."
This was becoming uncomfortable. Mozzie wasn't aware that Neal had worked undercover in an operation to capture Klaus, and he knew nothing about how Klaus died. It was one of the few secrets Neal kept from Mozzie. To change the subject, Neal launched into a description of the manuscript. "The theft had been a commission job. The buyer was an ex-KGB officer living in London. I had no regrets in telling the FBI about him. The manuscript was recovered and restored to the Milan Library."
Mozzie shook his head despondently. "I'll keep searching. What other treasures did you tell the FBI about?"
"Much as I enjoy being outside, was there a purpose other than asking me about Dante to bring me here? The morning briefing will start soon."
"Oh yes, about that . . ."
#
"The Dutchman's back in town."
After Neal tossed that salvo into the meeting, he sat back to enjoy the fireworks. The effect was instantaneous. In unison, Diana, Jones, and Travis snapped to attention, and Peter was right with them.
The meeting had already started by the time he returned. Peter raised an eyebrow at his late appearance but didn't comment. Normally Neal arrived early. He must have wondered at the cause of the delay.
Neal waited patiently while the others made their reports. All routine matters. Nothing to compare with what he had in store. When Peter asked for any additional updates, Neal lobbed his bombshell.
Curtis Hagen, the man Peter called the Dutchman, had dropped out of sight almost two months ago. The last address anyone had for him was for a house in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was suspected of art and bond forgeries for over fifteen years, but there had never been enough evidence to arrest him.
During the investigation of a Corot forgery a couple of months ago, Hagen had been linked to Ydrus, an international criminal group. Ydrus was a new player in the space and had quickly advanced to become a major instigator of art crimes and weapons smuggling. When the White Collar team raided the house in Hoboken, shredded paper hinting at a connection between Hagen and Raphael's St. George and the Dragon had been discovered. That painting had been stolen the previous summer from the National Gallery in Washington. Neal theorized that Hagen had taken it with the idea of selling multiple forgeries on the black market.
For a moment everyone sat in stunned silence, but that quickly turned into the predicted hailstorm of questions. Peter held out a hand to lower the din and spoke for them all when he demanded details.
"Mozzie texted me to meet him shortly before the briefing was due to start. That's why I was late. Yesterday, an acquaintance of his had talked with Hagen in Times Square. The Dutchman was inquiring about smuggling operations but didn't mention the specifics. Mozzie's contact got the impression that Hagen only recently returned to New York."
"After our sting collapsed," Jones said, "I've continued to track chatter about a stolen Raphael being offered for sale. Rumors are still in circulation, but nothing actionable has risen to the surface."
That op's failure had been a blow. Jones had worked up an ideal cover as a South American drug lord in the market for the painting, but the sting blew up at the last minute. The seller could have gotten cold feet, but a much more troubling possibility was that a mole for Ydrus was working within the Bureau. The insurance giant Sterling-Bosch had unearthed an Ydrus informant in their midst a couple of months ago.
"We'll treat this information as highly confidential," Peter said. "Hagen may have eluded capture for so long because he's being helped by someone in the Bureau."
"It makes sense," Travis commented. "I'd like to think our resources are sufficient to have brought someone like him to justice long before now." Travis should know. He was White Collar's tech expert and electronics guru.
As the others discussed strategies for tracking Hagen, Neal pulled out a notepad and began to doodle. Peter had named the Dutchman after the Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship disappearing into the fog. Sailing ships on the ocean, buffeted by the waves . . . landing in ports. As he covered his paper with ships, one question emerged from the fog. Neal broke into Jones's riveting discussion of plastering wanted posters in taxi cab dispatch centers with a challenge: "Why here?"
Diana cocked her head, looking exasperated. "For those of us who aren't tuned to your internal wavelength, care to give a little more detail?"
"Why did Hagen come back to New York? We know he fled the house in Hoboken in a hurry, most likely because he'd been tipped off we were on to him. Hagen could work anywhere in the world. Why choose a place where he knows we're watching for him?"
"You're our expert on the criminal mind," Jones countered. "Why would you have returned?"
"It has to be a job," he said, "but it wouldn't be forging St. George and the Dragon. I could do that anywhere. I'd pick a place where I wasn't known and smuggling paintings was easy—low airport security or easy access to ship transport. After the attacks on September 11, New York's security was beefed up tenfold. So, if we discard the Raphael as a possibility, we're left with a different job. It's probably a contract and sufficiently lucrative to make it worth the risk."
"He's targeted a museum?" Diana suggested.
Neal nodded. "That or a wealthy collector."
"Any contract would most likely have come through Ydrus," Peter noted. "We suspect Ydrus is making use of Azathoth's malware for museum heists. Several paintings were stolen from the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo last month. The museum's security software had been infected with his code. Last week one of the paintings was recovered from a fence who claimed he'd bought it from Ydrus. It's the clearest indication we've had yet that Ydrus is working hand in glove with Azathoth."
The unknown cybercriminal, who'd been dubbed Azathoth because of his fascination with the world created by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, had been on their hit list since they'd first encountered his museum security malware last fall. For the past several months his program had been used in heists in Europe and Asia, but none in the States. Had he decided to make an encore performance at the Met? Would the Dutchman's return lead to a breakthrough on Azathoth and Ydrus as well?
"Where do we stand on the anti-malware program Neal's friend Aidan is writing?" Diana asked.
"Our team's been running tests on the beta version for the past few weeks," Travis said. "It's ready for its trial by fire."
Peter nodded with satisfaction. "If Hagen's here to rob a museum and we can find the malware, we'd have a heads up on where his target is."
#
What had started out as a routine briefing quickly turned into a strategy session. Midday, no one wanted to stop so they called down to Jacob's Coffee Shop on the ground floor for sandwiches and continued their work over lunch.
Diana ripped open a bag of pita chips and passed it around. "Are there any exhibits currently running that you think would be particularly attractive to Hagen?"
Neal glanced at a spreadsheet on his laptop. "There are several promising candidates. The Guggenheim has an exhibit on Paul Klee. For the past month, the Museum of Modern Art has been featuring the works of Gustav Klimt. Last week the Met opened an exhibit on Goya called Contradictions. Any of those would be prime targets."
"If this had happened at the beginning of the year, trying to convince museum officials to use an unknown anti-malware program would have been an excruciating exercise in foot-dragging," Jones noted. "Now we can take advantage of Peter and Neal's status on the Interpol art crimes task force."
Jones was right. When they'd been selected for the new task force, they'd acquired a cachet that should slice through the normal red tape they would have encountered. The task force had the backing of the International Council of Museums and along with it, the pledge of full cooperation by member museums.
"Is Win-Win's facial recognition software ready to be used?" Diana asked.
Travis nodded. "This will be its first major test. If we're to have any chance of tracking down Hagen without engaging in a large-scale manhunt, we'll have to make use of the latest technology in our toolkit. Assuming we'll be able to receive permission from the museums to provide us with their surveillance camera footage, we can use the software to make quick work of processing the feeds. By running it on several computers simultaneously, we'll be able to minimize the amount of time required."
Neal smiled to himself. Who would have thought when he joined the FBI that the team would be grateful for his family connections?
When Peter recruited him in Saint Louis, Neal never talked about his parents. His mother was in WITSEC, his father a convicted murderer. They were part of a past he kept quarantined from his new life. Now he'd been reunited with the white sheep of the family—his mother's Caffrey relatives. Henry was on the marketing team for the facial recognition software at his investigation company, Winston-Winslow. Initially, Win-Win had targeted airports for their product, but Travis convinced Henry to allow White Collar to beta test it in their operations. Henry was currently in Paris overseeing the evaluation of the software at De Gaulle International Airport.
"Neal, you and I will put that task force membership to work this afternoon when we speak with the museums," Peter said. "I'm counting on that silver tongue of yours to smooth over any rough waters."
"Besides the museums, what other locations should we target?" Travis asked.
"If Hagen's working on a forgery, more than likely he'll need art supplies," Neal speculated. "No matter how well equipped you are, it's inevitable you run short of something. Many of the largest supply houses are in Lower Manhattan: Chelsea, the Village, SoHo. I'd start with those especially since he was seen in Chelsea. Hagen may also have his studio there."
"But even if we find him, will we be able to obtain a warrant?" Diana asked.
"In this case, we will," Jones said. "We should be able to search the premises by using Section 213 of the Patriot Act—the delayed search warrant notification. That's what we used with Rinaldi at the Lynx Mountain Ski Resort in February. The data on Rinaldi's computer established his links to both Ydrus and Hagen. Since Ydrus is involved in supplying arms to international terrorist groups, they fall within the umbrella of Section 213."
Diana wasn't satisfied. "But even if we search his studio, unless we catch Hagen in the act of selling a forgery, we won't have a case. So what if he possesses a Picasso or a Raphael for that matter? It doesn't prove he stole it. He could claim he'd bought it or even that it was a gift, and he didn't realize it was stolen."
"True," Peter said, "but if we discover records proving he sold forgeries as originals, then we have him. And now we have the means of catching him in the act if he tries to pull a heist at one of the New York museums. Our probability of success is not high," he added, glancing at Travis, the team's biggest sci-fan fan. "This is one of those moments when Mr. Spock would quote to Captain Kirk the odds of success being approximately 7,824.7 to 1, but Kirk managed to triumph over the odds. If Kirk could do it, so can we."
#
After lunch, Neal and Peter divided up the names of the major art museums in the city. With the art crimes task force having paved the way, they were able to accomplish in an afternoon what in the past would have taken a week of negotiations. Once they'd secured approval, Travis and his support team worked on the implementation. By the time Neal left work, the White Collar lab resembled Mission Control at NASA with technicians hunched over every computer monitor in the room as they processed the first footage from the museums.
Late in the day, Mozzie texted Neal. Another cryptic message—this time requesting a meeting in his bunker after work. Two messages in one day? Mozzie was on a roll.
The bunker was in the basement of the Aloha Emporium, a Hawaiian-themed store just south of the Columbia University campus. Mozzie had gone into partnership with the store's owner, Billy Feng, at the beginning of the year to launch a line of Hawaiian organic honey products. The venture had turned into such a success that for the first time in his life, Mozzie could live comfortably off a legitimate source of income. He'd grown increasingly picky about his less-legal pursuits.
When he arrived, Neal grabbed a rice bowl in the café for his supper and jogged down the narrow flight of stairs to the basement. The door to Mozzie's bunker was concealed in one of the cabinets and secured by a cutting-edge security alarm.
The bunker served as a combination office and refuge in case of impending nuclear disaster or a host of other catastrophes. Mozzie had equipped it with a futon for sleeping, a tiny kitchenette, and a bathroom. It had water reserves, a backup power generator, and an air filtration system designed by NASA. One of its best features was that it opened in the rear to a long-forgotten side branch of the university tunnel system. Mozzie could use it to traverse the campus underground. It was the most secure of any of his safe houses to date.
Mozzie was seated at his worktable, poring over a sheet of equations. He'd already opened a bottle of honey wine.
Neal helped himself to a glass. "You caused quite a furor at White Collar with your news. Have you heard anything more about Hagen?"
"The ether's gone quiet, but Hale's promised to let me know if Hagen contacts him again. You didn't mention Hale's name, did you?"
"Of course not." Hale was an old friend and associate, someone Mozzie had been working with long before he met Neal.
"Was the lady suit at the briefing?"
"Diana? Yes, she was there."
"How busy is she on the Dutchman case?"
"We're all working full time on it, Mozz."
"Well, she'll need to stop what she's doing. I have new instructions for her." That Mozzie had joined forces with Diana was probably more astonishing than Neal being a student at Columbia. And it was all because of Azathoth.
As part of a multi-pronged strategy to apprehend the cybercriminal, she'd volunteered to write Lovecraft fanfiction. She posted her first story last month—"Arkham Files: Visions from Beyond." That same month she received a mysterious comment written in code to one of her chapters. Mozzie had been working with her to decipher the code.
At first glance, it was hard to imagine how Mozzie and Diana could possibly declare a truce, but two factors were in their favor. One was Mozzie's desire to mold his character in her stories to his liking, and the other was his unparalleled expertise with abstruse codes. Diana could rail, and she did, at Mozzie's contempt for the law and government regulations, but even she grudgingly admitted that they needed him.
Mozzie took off his glasses to polish the lenses with a handkerchief. "You remember I suspected Azathoth was using a variant of the Grand Chiffre?"
Neal nodded. "You had Diana reply with a Ginsberg quote in a code you'd devised."
"It came to me this afternoon as I was cataloging my tunnel slime samples. Did I tell you I'd discovered yet another variety of tunnel slime? This brings the number to nine discrete types, providing further corroboration to my hypothesis that extraterrestrials have disguised their appearance to resemble bees and are living among us. When I report my findings to SETI—"
"Mozzie, the code?" Neal broke in. If he let Mozzie veer into his theory of extraterrestrial evidence in tunnel slime, Neal would never find out what he'd learned. As it was, Mozzie was already gazing longingly back at his computer.
He snapped his fingers in front of Mozzie's face. "The code?" he repeated.
"A fascinating string of words. Here it is: 'doyouliketreasurehuntsfindyourselfintheskyoverbritain.' "
Neal set down his wine glass as he mulled over the riddle. "The first part—Do you like treasure hunts—that sounds like Azathoth."
"That house where he held you and Peter last fall could be viewed as a type of treasure hunt—one with fatal consequences if you failed."
"Find yourself in the sky over Britain . . . Maybe a constellation? Azathoth is addressing Diana. She's made it clear in her notes that she's a woman. He could be equating her with Cassiopeia or Andromeda."
"A worthwhile possibility to consider. Diana's user name for her stories, Lomaria, sounds a little like a constellation. Or Azathoth could be telling her to look for her name somewhere in England. He could have written it on a skyscraper, for instance, or a cathedral. But why is he sending her to England?"
Mozzie spun around in his chair to face his desk—he rarely walked in his bunker but insisted on having everything accessible by rolling his chair, a custom-made replica of a command chair on the Starship Enterprise. He claimed it was good practice in case his legs were stricken by an extraterrestrial plague. Opening a drawer, he pulled out a cell phone. The drawer contained at least a dozen phones, all in different colors. Diana's phone was easy to pick out. Mozzie had chosen a Wonder Woman skin for it. When he called her, Neal could hear her shout of triumph.
While Mozzie reported on his discovery, Neal walked over to scan through the books in the bookcase. He regretted the lack of windows. Why Mozzie didn't get claustrophobic from the long hours he spent underground was as much a mystery as Azathoth's riddle.
The bookcase was a microcosm of Mozzie's brain with books on history, codes, art, electronics, chemistry, poetry . . . One of the books caught Neal's eye—a book on Cubism. Mozzie must have been researching the Braque painting. Neal pulled the book out, took it over to the futon, and scanned it for references to Violin and Candlestick.
That painting was a puzzle. Five years ago he'd helped Klaus steal it. Neal had assumed Klaus later sold it. But a couple of months ago, Klaus's ex-wife Chantal had contacted Neal, alerting him that an unknown buyer was offering a king's ransom for the painting. She believed Klaus never sold it, and it was still in Paris where they'd hidden it. Why anyone would want to pay so much for the Braque was a mystery. Neal skimmed through the text, but it contained no reference to the painting and he returned it to the bookshelf.
"Have you set your date for Paris yet?" Mozzie asked when he finished his call. Neal's book choice must not have gone unnoticed.
"It will be sometime in late May after classes are over. Fiona's checking her work schedule. She hopes to take a few days off while I'm there."
"Ah yes, the fair Fiona. Your girlfriend would no doubt appreciate the baubles you could buy her if you'd do the sensible thing and let me fence the painting for you. No one would ever know of your involvement. I assume you still haven't mentioned it to Peter?"
"I can't tell him. You know that." What to do with the painting once he retrieved it was a sensitive issue. Since he hadn't mentioned it in his confession to gain immunity, if he returned the painting, he'd be arrested for having stolen it. But he had no desire to see it languish in hiding. The best solution he'd come up with was to leave it at the doorstep of a museum as an anonymous donation.
"You're not the least bit tempted to sell it?" Mozzie asked plaintively. "Think what you could do with all that money. A villa in Europe, your private plane."
Neal snorted. "And how would I explain that to Peter?"
"I could invest the proceeds for you. Don't you owe it to the world to sell the painting to that buyer?"
"Not happening, Mozz. I've left those ways behind."
He sighed. "Such a waste. Still, simply rescuing the painting has a certain allure. You've said I wouldn't be able to access the lady's hiding place, so we'll save her together. I've never worked with you in Europe. That will soon be rectified."
#
By the time Neal arrived at work the following day, Diana had already placed copies of the riddle on everyone's desks and posted an offer for a gourmet lunch to whoever solved it. Did that mean she was prepared to go on a date with Mozzie? Neal was willing to wager the codebreaker would also be the winner, although Peter's odds were a close second. Neal's best guess was that it had something to do with the night sky because of Azathoth's interest in Galileo, but he was stumped on how to tie stargazing to Britain.
The museums were sending in their surveillance footage at a rapid clip. Several art supply stores had also agreed to have their feeds monitored. Neal was scheduled to help weed out the false positives. He enjoyed working in the lab with the techs. Travis sat beside him. During breaks, they speculated on the meaning of the riddle.
Neal was reviewing the previous day's data from the Guggenheim Museum when Peter walked into the lab. "Just heard from the FBI office in Boston," he said, pulling over a chair. "There's been a major art theft. A Raphael drawing was stolen from the mansion of a private collector."
"Which one?" Neal asked, giving a low whistle. Travis stopped working to listen in.
"It's called Head of a Young Apostle. It was stolen two days ago while the owner was at work. It was a targeted hit. Nothing else was taken. Are you familiar with the work?"
Neal nodded. "That drawing had been auctioned off at Weatherby's London gallery four months ago. It sold for over forty-five million dollars. As I recall, the buyer was anonymous. There was quite a furor at the time because the Brits didn't want it to leave the country. They tried to raise the funds to purchase it but were unable to come up with enough money."
"The buyer was a CEO of a privately-held holding company," Peter said. He pointed to Neal's drawing of Raphael's Head of a Muse which was mounted on his bulletin board. "You're an expert on Raphael. Enlighten me on his drawings."
"He's regarded as one of the finest draftsmen of all time. That particular drawing was executed in black chalk and is considered to be one of his last great masterpieces. Raphael had prepared it as a sketch for Transfiguration, a painting which is in the Vatican. The drawing is quite small which makes it easily hidden and transportable."
"Who's going to handle the investigation?" Travis asked.
"D.C. Art Crimes," Peter said. "Kramer's already en route to Boston. The Boston bureau chief called me to inform the Interpol task force about it. The drawing could already be out of the country." He turned to Neal. "What do you think? A coincidence that two such high-profile Raphaels were stolen in one year?"
Neal shrugged. "Raphael's works are so valuable that they're high priority targets, but to have both seized in such a short length of time invites speculation."
"It makes me wonder if the same thief was involved," Peter added. "We suspect Hagen stole the Raphael painting. Boston's only a few hours away from New York."
Travis steepled his fingers in front of his lips as he considered. "Mozzie found out about Hagen from a smuggler. Was Hagen exploring ways to sneak the drawing out of the country?"
"Hagen's involvement raises the likelihood that Ydrus has a contract with a Raphael collector." Peter turned to face Neal. "Does the Met have any Raphaels?"
"A few—primarily altarpieces. There's a small wood panel called The Agony in the Garden which is easily transportable. Another target is a lovely drawing of Lucretia."
Travis's eyes widened. "I'm glad the anti-malware program is already in place at the Met. My team installed it this morning."
Neal considered for a moment and the more he thought it over, the more he admired the brazenness of the act. "With the theft of such a high-value masterpiece like the drawing, Hagen would safely assume all the FBI resources would be thrown at its investigation. He must know that the Bureau has only one art crimes unit with limited resources. He steals the drawing, comes to New York, and sets up shop where he can strike the Met while everyone's attention is on Boston. It's brilliant."
"A double play." Peter jotted down a note. "I'll call the Met Director. He needs to be alerted to the possibility of a strike against their Raphaels."
"I wonder how the thief learned who'd bought the drawing," Neal said. "The sale had been extensively covered in the media outlets at the time, but I'd only seen rumors about the buyer. If we can answer that, we could be much closer to identifying them."
#
It didn't take long for Neal to obtain his answer. In the afternoon, Peter called him upstairs to his office.
"I just got off the phone with R.W. Bosch." When Peter mentioned the name of the Sterling-Bosch CEO, Neal knew what Peter was going to say, but he waited for the explanation. "Sterling-Bosch was the insurer of that drawing. Bosch now believes that Ydrus may have a second informant within its organization. The owner had been tight-lipped about his purchase with very few of his acquaintances knowing about it. Everyone who did will be investigated of course, but another informant is a real possibility."
"A second mole? After the first mole was exposed, Sterling-Bosch supposedly put in additional security measures. Looks like they were pretty ineffective."
"It's too early to make that kind of assessment," Peter cautioned. "R.W. claims the company has a better tracking system in place now. If someone leaked information to Ydrus about the drawing, they'll be easier to trace."
"Do you know if Sara is under suspicion once more?"
Peter shook his head. "She's in the clear. R.W. said she was unaware that Sterling-Bosch was the insurer of the drawing since her responsibilities don't include Boston." That was welcome news. Neal had no desire to repeat the awkwardness from last month. "I have more news on the Sara front. She's asked for a transfer away from London and has been re-assigned to New York. R.W. is making her the lead investigator on this case."
"Do you know if it's a permanent transfer?"
"No idea, but you're in contact with her. You should ask."
"I thought she was happy in London. Fiona talks with her more than I do. She may know why Sara wanted to relocate. Perhaps Bryan's being reassigned to New York and she wants to be with him."
Bryan McKenzie's townhouse. London. Saturday morning.
Sara walked through Bryan's flat one final time. Her heels clicked loudly on the stone floor as she checked the living room for any personal items.
Bryan was due back from Vienna this afternoon. He'd asked her out to dinner and she'd use the occasion to tell him her decision. It shouldn't come as a surprise—she'd been sending him enough signals for the past two months. But Bryan stubbornly refused to acknowledge them. Sara blamed herself for not having cut off their relationship earlier. If he hadn't been traveling so much, she would have.
She glanced around his luxurious flat. She used to admire the sophisticated urbanity of the furnishings. Now she found them cold and distant. The flat hadn't changed. Bryan hadn't changed. She had.
She couldn't wait to kick off the dust of a failed romance and make a fresh start. Her work at Sterling-Bosch was going better than ever. The New York assignment was a godsend. Having to work in the same office with Bryan would have been an excruciating ordeal. Now she understood why workplace romances were frowned upon.
Sara ticked off the rooms she'd searched: bedroom—check, bathroom—check, kitchen—check. She smiled at the thought of checking the kitchen. As if she ever cooked. The study? They'd spent hours there working on cases. She'd lent him a guide on antique porcelain marks and he'd never returned it. Better to pick it up now and avoid the awkwardness of having to ask for it later.
She walked into his study. The guide was a slim volume and not easy to find in Bryan's bookcase. He had an extensive collection of books on antique furniture, paintings, classic cars, clocks, Japanese swords, old prints . . . Sara paused when she noticed a book on medicinal plants.
Bryan had probably bought it when they worked on a theft in Cambridge, her first case in the U.K. That funny chemistry professor. He'd seemed like someone out of The Avengers—the stereotype of the British eccentric. Thieves had made off with a Constable painting he owned, but he was much more concerned about a few books they'd stolen, including an old German text on botany. The professor was frantic to recover the notes he'd left in the book on how to make poison from belladonna. His concern was unnecessary. If anyone wanted to make poison, they'd simply use the internet, not a nineteenth-century herbal guide.
She and Bryan had unearthed evidence to recover both the painting and his books. She remembered the feeling of exhilaration. At the time, she'd thought it was because of Bryan. Looking back, she realized it was the rush from solving a case, not because of Bryan, but that was when she was convincing herself she was falling in love with him.
And now? Tonight she'd turn down his proposal.
Sara resumed her search in the bookcase and found the porcelain guide. She hoped Bryan wouldn't bear any ill will toward her after tonight. He'd no doubt be happy to hear she was leaving town. A clean break would be best for both of them.
Notes: Peter demonstrates his Star Trek chops when he references the odds for success over lunch. He's quoting statistics used by Spock in the Star Trek Season 1 episode "Errand of Mercy." Raphael's Head of a Young Apostle, formerly part of the Chatsworth Collection in the UK, sold at auction in 2012 for over 45 million dollars to an anonymous buyer.
In 2022, I revisited this story and expanded the content. As a result, some of the reviews no longer match the chapter references.
Visuals and Music: The Raphael's Dragon board on the Caffrey Conversation Pinterest website
Blog: Penna Nomen & Silbrith Conversation
Background on the Caffrey Conversation AU for new readers: The series was created by Penna Nomen and begins with her story Caffrey Conversation. Our blog has a list and short summaries for all the stories. The primary difference from canon is that Neal was never sent to prison and the characters are several years younger. The personalities of canon characters (Elizabeth, Mozzie, Diana, Jones, Hughes, June, and Sara) are the same. Peter recruited Neal in 2003 when he was 24. In the fall of 2004, he entered Columbia University's graduate program in art as a part-time student. Working with the White Collar team are two non-canon characters: Travis Miller, a technical expert, and Tricia Wiese, a profiler.