Neal's eyes settled on the file and he thought about what might be inside, enticed more than he'd like to admit. He didn't think he was being encouraged to look, nor did he think he was being dissuaded, but Caffrey resisted the urge to reach out anyway. They often referred to him like an addict, the con being his drug of choice, but that had only been a portion of what made his life thrilling. Even before the con was the reveal, which was almost equally sweet, but only if it wasn't a tease.
With the idea in mind that Peter might still deny their request, he avoids focusing on the items in question and tries to get a better read on Claudia. She certainly seemed to have gotten a good read on him.
"I've got a friend or two like that," he noted with a grin that seemed to silently include the word allegedly. She'd probably know them if she saw them, although Neal had no hats to wear in that area, gray or otherwise, so he didn't suggest as much.
"How did you get wrapped up in all of this?" He leaned very pointedly to look for a monitor around her ankle, making light of his own impediment. It wasn't hard to imagine she might have been recruited early before charges were apt to stick.
Claudia glances back at the office, knowing that it doesn't matter how long the argument takes, Neal will be on this case, and shrugs. Mrs. F isn't the kind of person you say no to.
"I guess it would have to start with my brother and Rheticus' Compass. He found it, was trying to uncover a lot of the secrets he'd hidden. The people of the past sometimes aren't as crazy as we want to believe when it comes down to it. But proving it...well, you try to publish some of that stuff, you get on lists. And when he vanished, I decided to un-vanish him."
And it had worked, even if Joshua was still liable to get himself into trouble. She didn't really see what Caffrey was pushing for, but she did let him get a good look at her ankles as she recrossed her legs.
"I don't really see it as being wrapped up in anything. More like coming home. There's this line in the recruitment speech about endless wonder."
It was starting to make a little more sense why the idea of trusting Claudia had gotten them this far. Neal didn't exactly buy into the fraternity built around these types of organizations, but he'd had his own in the past, no doubt, and he appreciated seeing solidarity in others, even if it meant things might be a little more difficult for him. No matter; he liked a challenge.
"Rheticus, really?" He didn't care to push on the rest, but he found interest in the name. Art was his forte, but to be as skilled as he was, Caffrey required a rather broad knowledge of the history of the world. Thankfully he had a fairly decent memory (although he didn't compare to Mozzie and his steel trap of a mind). "Astronomy, mathematics... Was he known for puzzles?" Color him curious, but it sounded as if someone who had arguably failed his way out of Copernicus's inner circle was being characterized as more than a primer for Kepler.
Just as he was about to ask something else, Peter arrived with all the appropriate paperwork in hand. "Neal, I take it you've been getting to know your new handler?" He seemed to be relishing in this opportunity. Neal gaped and sat forward, but Peter raised a hand to stop any argument. "Provisional, only. Today and tomorrow you'll be with Claudia here, on anklet," he added before Caffrey could ask. "And I know you'll be on your best behavior because this could potentially lead to more opportunities like it."
Neal thought to bulk, but Peter clearly wasn't having it (and Caffrey had already been willing to cooperate, anyway.) "Yeah, of course, Peter. We've got this," he said, chin tipping up confidently.
Peter handed over his card to Claudia. "Call me if he gives you any trouble," he joked, ignoring the CI as he feigned a hurt look. "He's all yours."
Claudia nodded at his bare-bones summary, but was interrupted by the arrival of Agent Burke, taking the paperwork to add her own initials and signatures in the right places. It looked to be in order, and she didn't doubt it was, but she was taking responsibility for a valued asset, even if she personally found the term a little demeaning when applied to a human being. Still, it was enough to start the ball rolling.
"I'm sure we'll get along. I'd promise to feed him and make sure he's home in time for curfew, but I always hated those kinds of rules. Still, I'll keep you in the loop," she promised, even as she took the card, pretending to ignore the byplay between the two men. It was clearly a well-rehearsed sequence by now.
She was looking forward to picking his mind, and hopefully getting some better approaches to how to snag the artifacts that had surfaced. It'd be impossible to protect both of them from the reality of the cases that crossed her nonexistent desk, but this part was mostly legwork.
"So, Neal, how about we find a place that understands that government coffee is a heinous crime against both humanity and the magic bean that changed the world? We've got some files to go over." Besides, the whole surrounded-by-suits thing was really not her usual place. She could pass, but she'd rather be seen as the IT person, doing information analysis or whatever else needed doing.
"Two days should be enough to at least grease the wheels, maybe get one of the target acquisitions, but it's a long-term project. Hopefully things won't be too...boring."
Caffrey certainly had a reputation for livening up the cases he was involved in.
Neal perked at the mention of coffee and couldn't help but spare Peter a smug look. If Burke had thought that Caffrey wasn't going to make the most of this, then he wrong. Of course, Peter would never expect anything less and Neal would never deliver anything less, so feeling they had an implicit understanding between them, the CI allowed Claudia to lead them to the elevators with only the donning of his hat used for a goodbye to his handler and the rest of the office.
"Didn't you just get done telling me I should hope things weren't too exciting?" he asked eventually, not concerned but certainly interested. It felt as if she was suggesting there would be mystery and intrigue unexpected around every corner and he'd be lucky to avoid it. To dangle potential boredom like that only solidified his suspicions in his own mind, which certainly added another layer of intrigue. This seemed to be shaping up nicely for him.
He pressed the button for the lobby and waited for her, his hand casually pushed into his pocket. First impressions said he enjoyed her refreshing perspective. In a way she reminded him a little of at least a few people already in his inner circle.
"I'm honestly surprised about how aboveboard all of this seems," he told her, cryptically and purposefully using one of Peter's favorite words subversively to help describe the sense he held that things lingering just below the surface would soon be revealed.
"There's exciting, and then there's the kind of thing that results in insanity and/or death," Claudia said. "My first official case as a junior agent involved the spontaneous human combustion of a collegiate wrestling team."
She timed that statement to land just after the doors closed, leaving them alone in a metal box. Sure, there were cameras and probably lip-readers available for them to spy on them everywhere in this building, but it's not foolproof. Some words look a lot like others, as that one amazing YouTube Channel would show.
"That's Mrs. F's job. To keep the right wheels greased so everything runs smoothly. The rest of it tends to be that most of the people recruited are from the Secret Service, in part because of the Treasury angle, but also because folks forget what that agency's mandate actually entails. It's considered a dead-end posting for misfits on the rare occasions where anyone even notices that it exists, and those in the know are pretty glad that someone else gets to handle this shit."
Claudia shrugs, knowing he'll learn a fair bit about the odd and unusual if this keeps going. "You've probably run into pieces of art that have strange reputations. I mean, curses and legends are par for the course in the antiquities market, and let's not forget the number of artists who suddenly go off the rails for no obvious reason."
Neal had heard stories, certainly — knew so many of them intimately because that's what he needed to do to create the right kind of forgeries — but curses were more Mozzie's wheelhouse, and Caffrey tended to point himself towards legends, instead. Mostly generating his own, but that had little to do with forgery and more to do with Neal's somewhat narcissistic tendencies. It had gotten him in plenty of trouble before.
"There are plenty of rumors, sure: Smelling the flowers in Renoir's Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, feeling terror at seeing Munch's The Scream for the first time..."
He thought on that for a moment, watching the floor numbers changing above him. After a few, he glanced over and raised an eyebrow at Claudia. "That kind of stuff?" he asked. He was genuinely curious. Neal had a very practical side — it's why he and Peter could get along at all — but living in close proximity of someone like Moz (chosen or otherwise) meant he was privy to all types of wine-fueled discussions, and this felt much more like that than the CI was expecting.
Moments later, the doors to the elevator opened to the ground floor.
"And those are the minor ones," Claudia said, sighing just a little. "If the effects are transitory, it works better to leave the artifacts where they are, but some cause permanent damage, or are dangerous, it's in everyone's interest to make the piece disappear. But with famous pieces, that's a little tricky."
Which would be why engaging a master forger could be quite valuable. As well as someone with knowledge of the world of private art sales.
"Sometimes it means removing the original and replacing it. Finding pieces that have been stolen is harder. It's a bit of a waiting game with those. Getting the window of opportunity."
She isn't really worried about being overheard as they cross the lobby. "I can't promise you won't see the kinds of things you won't be able to un-see. It's that kind of work."
"Hold on," he said, coming to a stop just outside the main doors. The city loomed over them and Neal felt as if the world had suddenly doubled in size and intrigue and mystery. He was the one lowering his voice because he did care who might overhear him asking the question. "You aren't actually telling me those rumors and legends aren't really rumors or legends, are you?"
Honestly, Neal felt a little stupid for asking, but he had a decent gut on him and the way she'd delivered all of that information either made her a good actress and a hell of a prankster, or she was being serious and one hundred percent believed in said rumors and legends. Or at least the power of them over people. In the end, it hardly mattered which.
Neal didn't even let her get an answer in. Something shifted on her face and then something on his face in his observation of her. "You are." An accusation, sure, but he felt on the money.
The complicated slew of emotions that followed was a baffling experience for Caffrey. He immediately wanted to accept this and then deny it again on grounds of insanity. But Mozzie had touted the power of objects at times, and Neal had taken it as Mozzie's romanticism in all of his romanticism over the interest generated from what sounded like fairy tales.
He'd once told Neal that Louis Armstrong's last horn — "the real deal, not some forgery," he'd said — had caused a room to go dark, and he hadn't been speaking of illumination. The soulful turn of the night had generated a group of very blue folks. It had sounded to Neal like the stories about raining fish and sailing stones, where there's a reality beneath the wonder generated from the absurdity of it. Neal had never thought for a second it could be true. He still wasn't certain he did, or if this was some kind of strange and vivid dream.
He'd seen The Scream. His mind was racing. Was he talking himself into and out of this concept? Neal remembered being fascinated and excited, not terrified. But it had been a time in his life when, whether he'd acknowledged it or not, the entire undercurrent of his existence was terrifying. Maybe he hasn't noticed. As he'd made notes for a con, he'd visited the piece for inspiration. In 1994 it had disappeared and Caffrey had intended to use some part of that rumored heist in his own work a few weeks later, maybe as an homage, maybe to prove something, maybe both. But if it disappeared, maybe what was finally recovered wasn't the same piece. Maybe he hadn't noticed because there was nothing to notice.
Forget his mind racing, now his head was spinning, too. "You're going to have to show me," he finally decided, in so few seconds steamrolling through his own thoughts and any opportunity for her to right him along his path. This was Neal, though, effervescent in almost all things, both good and bad.
The amusement in her eyes was definitely back with a vengeance. His file had said he was sharp and savvy, the kind of person who read most people like open books. She knew her own reactions would give her away even if she tried not to, but her read was that Caffrey would react better if they didn't play the usual tap-dance around the truth. Hiding things would just say there was something to hide.
The almost-demand at the end had her smirking just a little. "I had to go through a thorough bag search and a metal detector on the way in. It's not like I have anything on me," she pointed out.
They checked her bag on the way out, too. It wasn't quite as bad as going into, say, the bowels of the Pentagon, when they inventory everything and check it when you leave, but she wouldn't have tried to pull anything, either.
"You really think I'd carry, say, Mata Hari's secret seduction shade of lipstick in there, do you?" Not that it was the lipstick. The stockings had done that trick. "Even my sidearm is back in the hotel safe."
Did she have some lesser artifacts she could gather? Of course, but the ones she did have were mostly technological, like the mini-Tesla she carried as a weapon by preference, or her Farnsworth. She considered, though.
"I do have a photo of the view from the office. It's a toss-up whether the pyramid or the Eiffel Tower catch most folks' attention. I'm a fan of the Space Needle, myself," she says, winking as she pulls out her cell phone and thumbs over to the relevant picture before handing the phone over. Any attempt on Neal's part to do more than pan or zoom the proffered photo will fail to do anything, because heaven forbid Claudia Donovan not improve her own form to respond to specific biofeedback loops.
As Neal took over the phone, he did try his hand at zooming to no affect, but still found himself thoroughly fascinated by so few pixels. Dubiously so, of course — digital work could be forged so much more simply than any other type, and certainly needed to hold up to a different kind of scrutiny — but considering all the hoops she'd just had to jump through, it was unlikely that Donovan was playing at a ruse (and if she was, he was notably impressed).
"I'll take the Eiffel Tower, personally," he told her, although he looked for a moment as if maybe he was questioning now whether he'd actually seen the monument, or if maybe that had been some kind of forgery, too. The sheer absurdity of it wasn't lost on him, honestly, and it felt as if maybe he'd had too much to drink or not enough air or both for all these realizations were doing for him.
He decided to reserve judgement, handing back the phone as it maybe he'd like to forget what he'd seen. It would be easier, especially if what all she was saying was true.
"I'm going to need a decaf," Neal announced, and when he laughed, he wasn't sure he was selling it as humor. Honestly, like a good suit, he felt he needed the idea to settle, otherwise it wasn't going to hold together. "And you're going to have to tell me if the stuff about Mata Hari's lipstick is true," he added, leading her to the door of the coffee shop just a few doors down.
"Good thing I'm buying, right?" she joked, although, honestly, she'd probably just expense it. In the back of her mind, there was a momentary thought that Neal might not be the only one being auditioned. That future Caretaker bit did come up, and the Caretaker did most of the recruiting.
"What you really want to know is where or not that famous spy had some kind of supernatural advantage when she was seducing away secrets," Claudia said, winking at him as she passed through the door he held, moving to the line. "It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, actually. We know certain objects develop properties that are associated with their owners, others have something to do with a significant event. Neither predictable nor easily studied."
"I can tell you Houdini's Wallet is prone to escape attempts."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
With the idea in mind that Peter might still deny their request, he avoids focusing on the items in question and tries to get a better read on Claudia. She certainly seemed to have gotten a good read on him.
"I've got a friend or two like that," he noted with a grin that seemed to silently include the word allegedly. She'd probably know them if she saw them, although Neal had no hats to wear in that area, gray or otherwise, so he didn't suggest as much.
"How did you get wrapped up in all of this?" He leaned very pointedly to look for a monitor around her ankle, making light of his own impediment. It wasn't hard to imagine she might have been recruited early before charges were apt to stick.
no subject
"I guess it would have to start with my brother and Rheticus' Compass. He found it, was trying to uncover a lot of the secrets he'd hidden. The people of the past sometimes aren't as crazy as we want to believe when it comes down to it. But proving it...well, you try to publish some of that stuff, you get on lists. And when he vanished, I decided to un-vanish him."
And it had worked, even if Joshua was still liable to get himself into trouble. She didn't really see what Caffrey was pushing for, but she did let him get a good look at her ankles as she recrossed her legs.
"I don't really see it as being wrapped up in anything. More like coming home. There's this line in the recruitment speech about endless wonder."
no subject
"Rheticus, really?" He didn't care to push on the rest, but he found interest in the name. Art was his forte, but to be as skilled as he was, Caffrey required a rather broad knowledge of the history of the world. Thankfully he had a fairly decent memory (although he didn't compare to Mozzie and his steel trap of a mind). "Astronomy, mathematics... Was he known for puzzles?" Color him curious, but it sounded as if someone who had arguably failed his way out of Copernicus's inner circle was being characterized as more than a primer for Kepler.
Just as he was about to ask something else, Peter arrived with all the appropriate paperwork in hand. "Neal, I take it you've been getting to know your new handler?" He seemed to be relishing in this opportunity. Neal gaped and sat forward, but Peter raised a hand to stop any argument. "Provisional, only. Today and tomorrow you'll be with Claudia here, on anklet," he added before Caffrey could ask. "And I know you'll be on your best behavior because this could potentially lead to more opportunities like it."
Neal thought to bulk, but Peter clearly wasn't having it (and Caffrey had already been willing to cooperate, anyway.) "Yeah, of course, Peter. We've got this," he said, chin tipping up confidently.
Peter handed over his card to Claudia. "Call me if he gives you any trouble," he joked, ignoring the CI as he feigned a hurt look. "He's all yours."
no subject
"I'm sure we'll get along. I'd promise to feed him and make sure he's home in time for curfew, but I always hated those kinds of rules. Still, I'll keep you in the loop," she promised, even as she took the card, pretending to ignore the byplay between the two men. It was clearly a well-rehearsed sequence by now.
She was looking forward to picking his mind, and hopefully getting some better approaches to how to snag the artifacts that had surfaced. It'd be impossible to protect both of them from the reality of the cases that crossed her nonexistent desk, but this part was mostly legwork.
"So, Neal, how about we find a place that understands that government coffee is a heinous crime against both humanity and the magic bean that changed the world? We've got some files to go over." Besides, the whole surrounded-by-suits thing was really not her usual place. She could pass, but she'd rather be seen as the IT person, doing information analysis or whatever else needed doing.
"Two days should be enough to at least grease the wheels, maybe get one of the target acquisitions, but it's a long-term project. Hopefully things won't be too...boring."
Caffrey certainly had a reputation for livening up the cases he was involved in.
no subject
"Didn't you just get done telling me I should hope things weren't too exciting?" he asked eventually, not concerned but certainly interested. It felt as if she was suggesting there would be mystery and intrigue unexpected around every corner and he'd be lucky to avoid it. To dangle potential boredom like that only solidified his suspicions in his own mind, which certainly added another layer of intrigue. This seemed to be shaping up nicely for him.
He pressed the button for the lobby and waited for her, his hand casually pushed into his pocket. First impressions said he enjoyed her refreshing perspective. In a way she reminded him a little of at least a few people already in his inner circle.
"I'm honestly surprised about how aboveboard all of this seems," he told her, cryptically and purposefully using one of Peter's favorite words subversively to help describe the sense he held that things lingering just below the surface would soon be revealed.
no subject
She timed that statement to land just after the doors closed, leaving them alone in a metal box. Sure, there were cameras and probably lip-readers available for them to spy on them everywhere in this building, but it's not foolproof. Some words look a lot like others, as that one amazing YouTube Channel would show.
"That's Mrs. F's job. To keep the right wheels greased so everything runs smoothly. The rest of it tends to be that most of the people recruited are from the Secret Service, in part because of the Treasury angle, but also because folks forget what that agency's mandate actually entails. It's considered a dead-end posting for misfits on the rare occasions where anyone even notices that it exists, and those in the know are pretty glad that someone else gets to handle this shit."
Claudia shrugs, knowing he'll learn a fair bit about the odd and unusual if this keeps going. "You've probably run into pieces of art that have strange reputations. I mean, curses and legends are par for the course in the antiquities market, and let's not forget the number of artists who suddenly go off the rails for no obvious reason."
no subject
"There are plenty of rumors, sure: Smelling the flowers in Renoir's Claude Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil, feeling terror at seeing Munch's The Scream for the first time..."
He thought on that for a moment, watching the floor numbers changing above him. After a few, he glanced over and raised an eyebrow at Claudia. "That kind of stuff?" he asked. He was genuinely curious. Neal had a very practical side — it's why he and Peter could get along at all — but living in close proximity of someone like Moz (chosen or otherwise) meant he was privy to all types of wine-fueled discussions, and this felt much more like that than the CI was expecting.
Moments later, the doors to the elevator opened to the ground floor.
no subject
Which would be why engaging a master forger could be quite valuable. As well as someone with knowledge of the world of private art sales.
"Sometimes it means removing the original and replacing it. Finding pieces that have been stolen is harder. It's a bit of a waiting game with those. Getting the window of opportunity."
She isn't really worried about being overheard as they cross the lobby. "I can't promise you won't see the kinds of things you won't be able to un-see. It's that kind of work."
/gently makes some stuff up..... yikes
Honestly, Neal felt a little stupid for asking, but he had a decent gut on him and the way she'd delivered all of that information either made her a good actress and a hell of a prankster, or she was being serious and one hundred percent believed in said rumors and legends. Or at least the power of them over people. In the end, it hardly mattered which.
Neal didn't even let her get an answer in. Something shifted on her face and then something on his face in his observation of her. "You are." An accusation, sure, but he felt on the money.
The complicated slew of emotions that followed was a baffling experience for Caffrey. He immediately wanted to accept this and then deny it again on grounds of insanity. But Mozzie had touted the power of objects at times, and Neal had taken it as Mozzie's romanticism in all of his romanticism over the interest generated from what sounded like fairy tales.
He'd once told Neal that Louis Armstrong's last horn — "the real deal, not some forgery," he'd said — had caused a room to go dark, and he hadn't been speaking of illumination. The soulful turn of the night had generated a group of very blue folks. It had sounded to Neal like the stories about raining fish and sailing stones, where there's a reality beneath the wonder generated from the absurdity of it. Neal had never thought for a second it could be true. He still wasn't certain he did, or if this was some kind of strange and vivid dream.
He'd seen The Scream. His mind was racing. Was he talking himself into and out of this concept? Neal remembered being fascinated and excited, not terrified. But it had been a time in his life when, whether he'd acknowledged it or not, the entire undercurrent of his existence was terrifying. Maybe he hasn't noticed. As he'd made notes for a con, he'd visited the piece for inspiration. In 1994 it had disappeared and Caffrey had intended to use some part of that rumored heist in his own work a few weeks later, maybe as an homage, maybe to prove something, maybe both. But if it disappeared, maybe what was finally recovered wasn't the same piece. Maybe he hadn't noticed because there was nothing to notice.
Forget his mind racing, now his head was spinning, too. "You're going to have to show me," he finally decided, in so few seconds steamrolling through his own thoughts and any opportunity for her to right him along his path. This was Neal, though, effervescent in almost all things, both good and bad.
it's all good. We all have to do it....
The almost-demand at the end had her smirking just a little. "I had to go through a thorough bag search and a metal detector on the way in. It's not like I have anything on me," she pointed out.
They checked her bag on the way out, too. It wasn't quite as bad as going into, say, the bowels of the Pentagon, when they inventory everything and check it when you leave, but she wouldn't have tried to pull anything, either.
"You really think I'd carry, say, Mata Hari's secret seduction shade of lipstick in there, do you?" Not that it was the lipstick. The stockings had done that trick. "Even my sidearm is back in the hotel safe."
Did she have some lesser artifacts she could gather? Of course, but the ones she did have were mostly technological, like the mini-Tesla she carried as a weapon by preference, or her Farnsworth. She considered, though.
"I do have a photo of the view from the office. It's a toss-up whether the pyramid or the Eiffel Tower catch most folks' attention. I'm a fan of the Space Needle, myself," she says, winking as she pulls out her cell phone and thumbs over to the relevant picture before handing the phone over. Any attempt on Neal's part to do more than pan or zoom the proffered photo will fail to do anything, because heaven forbid Claudia Donovan not improve her own form to respond to specific biofeedback loops.
no subject
"I'll take the Eiffel Tower, personally," he told her, although he looked for a moment as if maybe he was questioning now whether he'd actually seen the monument, or if maybe that had been some kind of forgery, too. The sheer absurdity of it wasn't lost on him, honestly, and it felt as if maybe he'd had too much to drink or not enough air or both for all these realizations were doing for him.
He decided to reserve judgement, handing back the phone as it maybe he'd like to forget what he'd seen. It would be easier, especially if what all she was saying was true.
"I'm going to need a decaf," Neal announced, and when he laughed, he wasn't sure he was selling it as humor. Honestly, like a good suit, he felt he needed the idea to settle, otherwise it wasn't going to hold together. "And you're going to have to tell me if the stuff about Mata Hari's lipstick is true," he added, leading her to the door of the coffee shop just a few doors down.
no subject
"What you really want to know is where or not that famous spy had some kind of supernatural advantage when she was seducing away secrets," Claudia said, winking at him as she passed through the door he held, moving to the line. "It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, actually. We know certain objects develop properties that are associated with their owners, others have something to do with a significant event. Neither predictable nor easily studied."
"I can tell you Houdini's Wallet is prone to escape attempts."