Work Text:
April 21st, 2011 - 10:35am
Neal drifted around the gallery, casually appraising the art, the visitors, and the security manager's poor life choices. The Pseudo Exhibition -- a whimsical collection of inferior works that had, at various points and for various reasons, been mistakenly attributed to much superior artists -- was proving even more popular than the Met's exhibits of genuine artworks. Far more people appreciated a good story than appreciated good art.
He paused to flirt with a young woman admiring the pseudo-Monet, but having established she knew nothing from art he rapidly changed the subject to her major. Law. If only you could be debarred for the appallingly pretty paintings she was bound to inflict on her future office walls.
Focus, Neal, Peter's voice told his right ear.
He was focused. He just didn't think the redhead currently admiring the pseudo-van Gogh could possibly be their target. She looked like she was actually moved by it, not like she was secretly gloating about having the original in a hidden wall-safe at home. But he dutifully extricated himself from the law student and crossed the room. Maybe the redhead would make more interesting conversation.
And he could annoy Peter. "Want to know a secret?" he asked from a little behind her shoulder.
She turned and raked her eyes once up and down his body. "Always," she said, relaxing her whole body into a suggestive quirk of eyebrows and smile. British, said her accent: a tourist. The ring on her left hand suggested a honeymoon -- presumably her husband didn't share her taste in art.
He grinned back and mirrored her posture, hands in pockets. "That doesn't really belong here," he said.
Neal... Peter said, halfway between warning and exasperation.
"In the exhibition?" she clarified.
Long assumed to be van Gogh's work merely by virtue of having been mixed in with the other canvases comprising his estate, the catalogue said, the disturbing subject matter of this sketch is entirely alien to his repertoire. It is undoubtedly by an unknown contemporary, although whether intended to depict a tropical parrot or a mythical basilisk is impossible to determine from the inexpert representation. This is the first time it has been displayed in public.
"Right. This actually was his work."
She tipped her head to one side. "How do you know that?"
He resisted the urge to tip his own head, surprised at her lack of surprise. Peter had gone quiet in his ear. "The way he laid down the background," he said. "That kind of thing's like a signature -- the more natural it is, the harder to fake. He was in a hurry to get it out: the oil wasn't quite dry when he started sketching. It might have been a friend visiting him, but..." He shook his head in disgust at the catalogue. "Not exactly Gauguin's style, and hardly inexpert. And that--" He traced the swoop of it at a respectful distance; the feathering. "Of course it's still just a sketch, but you can see: it's confident, purposeful, economical. It does exactly what he wants it to do. Shows what he saw."
She'd followed his pointing finger, watching gesture and canvas with a sudden quiet expression. Lost in thought; and then she blinked and looked back at him. "What do you think he saw?"
He laughed and shrugged a shoulder. The strokes were beautiful -- the subject clearly wasn't. "A nightmare, perhaps?"
She laughed back, but it hid a tinge of sadness. "Arles wasn't exactly famous for its parrots."
"No," he agreed, carefully not blinking at that casual revelation that she knew when it had been sketched. "You must know him well."
She looked back at the canvas. "He's been my favourite ever since I was a kid," she said. He waited -- he knew the look of someone who wanted to say more and just needed the space to do it -- and she confided in a lower tone, "I think to begin with it was because people thought he was crazy. He wasn't. He just saw things other people didn't see."
"The depth of his colours," Neal suggested. "And nightmares."
"Yes," she said. Her eyes flickered as if she was reading his face, and as if she approved of what she saw she repeated, "Yes. Like, one minute he's laughing over a bottle of wine, the next he's curled up on his bed screaming at the world to leave him alone."
"Some people say it's that duality that made his art truly great," he said, less because he believed it than to prompt her to continue.
"Vincent made his art great," she retorted. "The way he translated the world around him -- the light and the layers and the things no-one else saw -- into paint. That was all him. The depression just paralysed him. And killed--" She shook her head roughly. "He should have lived longer. I know he had good times, wonderful times. But he should have had more."
He watched entranced as she spoke: hands dancing in mimicry of the artist's brush, eyes cast down in anguish and up in starry memory. She ended, trembling in passion, with a glare so accusatory he almost promised he'd fix it.
Somehow. A hundred and twenty years ago.
She blinked as he did, and laughed. "I'm sorry. Blame the jetlag, I don't normally talk like this. I'm Amy."
"Neal," he said, accepting the hand she stuck out at him and wondering which of a hundred questions to ask. Like, Who thought you were crazy, and what do you see that other people don't see, and why do you call him Vincent, and just how obsessed are you with him anyway? And, How did you know van Gogh painted it at Arles but not know how I knew it was his? And, Marry me and talk like this forever? Instead he ended up asking, "On your honeymoon?"
She twinkled her ring at him with all the delight of the newlywed. "Actually we spent our honeymoon on a cruise ship. This is a trip to visit an old friend. --Rory's not so much into art," she explained. "He's gone to see if there's any Roman denari-thingies in the coin exhibit. We, um, take that whole 'living separate lives' thing to extremes."
"Well, you're still in the same museum," he pointed out, though that didn't seem to be what she meant. She'd turned back to the van Gogh with folded arms and seemed lost in thought again. Strange and half-sensical as her conversation was, she just didn't act like someone who'd forged and switched an obscure pseudo pseudo-van Gogh.
He was about to excuse himself when she turned her head sparrowlike back over her shoulder. "Want to know a secret?"
He met her quirked eyebrows and returned the flirt. "Always."
Leaning towards him she confided, "There's another painting beneath that one."
He stared at her a moment, not sure if he was more stunned at how casually she was incriminating herself or how wrong he'd been. "A lot of his paintings were on reused canvases," he said, and added -- apparently too rattled for historical accuracy -- "Like the Philadelphia Sunflowers."
There's our signal, Peter said. Go, go, go! --Jones, you take the coin exhibit, I want to talk to this husband.
"Not the Sunflowers," Amy corrected without a hint of suspicion, "but a lot of his other ones. This one -- God, I hope they didn't actually trim the canvas -- used to be a vase of chrysanthemums on a scarlet background."
"How do you know that?" he asked, as if she might, realising her faux pas, have time to escape.
But she only said, "He didn't paint over the whole canvas. You know they can use x-rays these days to see behind the top layers of paint? It's nice, knowing not everything was lost."
"Yes," he said, wishing she would hurry up and read his mind -- Run! -- because he liked her and this made no sense except there was no other explanation and anyway here came Peter in one door and Diana through the other. "I don't suppose you've got a lawyer this side of the pond?"
"What?"
Then Peter's badge was in her face. "FBI. You're under arrest."
"What?"
"Arms away from your sides," Diana said from behind her. "I'm going to frisk you."
"She's not carrying," Neal pointed out: "she's British." A half-scowl on her face made him check his memory for her accent. "Sorry, Scottish."
"Tell me," she gritted at him -- arms away from her sides and glaring down the stares of everyone else in the gallery -- "what is going on?"
Neal grimaced apologetically.
Diana's brisk search turned up a wallet, bag check token, a small British Airways folder, and passport: "Amelia Jessica Pond," she said, passing the lot to Peter.
"Amy," she corrected.
"Mrs Pond," Peter started.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Ms."
"Ms Pond," he agreed smoothly, "you're under arrest for conspiracy to forge and steal the pseudo-van Gogh."
"Pseudo pseudo-van Gogh," Neal murmured.
"That," Peter said, with a nod to the canvas.
Neal pursed his lips. "Technically, that would be a pseudo pseudo pseudo-van Gogh."
Peter, a pained expression on his face, drew breath to speak, but Amy Pond got in first. "That's a forgery? But it can't be. It's exactly what he painted."
She couldn't possibly not realise how incriminating that was. "Peter's about to tell you you've got the right to remain silent," he said. "You should probably--"
"Neal," Peter growled. Then read her the rights while Diana cuffed her and her face went through several stages of disbelief. "Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you?"
"Yeah, I've seen the TV shows," she said impatiently.
"Hear that?" Peter asked Neal. "She's seen the TV shows. Having these rights in mind," he finished, "do you wish to talk to us now?"
"No -- wait, I mean, look, obviously there's been a big misunderstanding here, and if we all just calm down and take a deep breath--" she suited action to words, hard as Neal knew that was with arms wrenched behind one's back, and looked around as if expecting them all to do the same -- "I'm sure we can sort it all out. Right?" she appealed to Neal.
"You can also contact your consulate," he said.
"Stop aiding and abetting the suspect," Peter said.
"Contacting her consulate isn't--" Peter shook his head. "I'm just--" He gave up at that glare, contenting himself with flashing pleading eyes at Amy.
Who was shaking her head at the doorway. He carefully didn't follow her gaze, but Peter had noticed the signal too. Seeing him turn with a hand to his gun, Amy abandoned subtlety and shouted, "Run! Get the Doctor!"
The gangly man in the doorway hesitated a beat, then raised his hands carefully. "Um. You've got the plane tickets," he pointed out.
"Credit card!" she said in exasperation.
"With the bags. Uh, what's this about?" he asked Peter.
"You're under arrest," Peter explained helpfully, pulling out his own handcuffs.
The rights were read again (Jones arriving a little sheepishly halfway through) and Rory (Williams, according to his passport) answered with wiser brevity, "Yes" and "No."
"But look," Amy insisted, "we were just passing through. We only got into La Guardia at ten o'clock last night, and--"
Neal winced. It'd be a little tight for a one a.m. heist, especially if they'd checked into their hotel to establish at least a thin alibi, but it really wasn't impossible. Especially if someone else was running the game.
"Check with the hotel!" she said, and nodded to the folder of documents Peter was leafing through. "The receipt's in there, that proves when we checked in. Oh -- oh! The security cameras. Watch the security cameras, you'll see we didn't leave until we checked out this morning and then we came straight here. Come on," she pleaded, "you've got to believe me, we've got a flight to be on in less than four hours."
"I don't think it's helping," Rory said.
"Okay, then-- Wait, can you still do that thing with your hand?"
"Not plastic anymore, and also they're people, and anyway handcuffs. Maybe we should just--"
"Right," she interrupted. "I mean, he knows we're here, sort of. Close enough. So we just need to wait and we'll be fine."
It didn't look exactly like what Rory had meant, but he nodded as if it were close enough. "Right, just wait."
With the spring of incriminating information thus temporarily stopped, Peter said, "Okay, Jones and Diana take them in -- separately -- while Neal and I check out the bags and hotel."
"I could just..." Neal said, making a gesture to encompass hanging around the gallery a little longer to look for someone who might actually have hoped to get away with stealing a painting.
"With me, Caffery," Peter called over his shoulder.
He followed reluctantly, pausing in the doorway to look back. Amy was making a decent attempt at lifting the key off Diana. He was impressed, and a little regretful that he'd given Diana so much practice over the last couple of years at protecting her pockets.
*
April 21st, 2011 - 10:54am
Their bags -- hiking packs -- held nothing more than clothes and generic camping gear. More interesting was the invitation Amy had been carrying: handcrafted and, though Neal couldn't detect any hidden messages, the date and coordinates themselves were cryptic enough to arouse suspicion. But Peter slapped his hand away when he reached for the GPS controls.
"What? I just want to see where these coordinates point to."
"And I want to find this hotel before lunch."
He leaned back in his seat and absentmindedly inspected the receipts, air tickets, and used boarding passes. They all looked legitimate, but Jones would probably be checking with the airlines anyway.
The hotel confirmed their checkin and checkout times. While Peter wrangled with them about copies of the security footage, Neal slipped up to the room they'd stayed in. It was decidedly budget, and took only three minutes to determine they hadn't stashed the painting anywhere. But then it took only another three minutes to slip out the service entrance -- not a security camera to be found -- and meet Peter back at the Taurus.
"There was time for them to do it?" Peter asked.
"Yeah," he said. "But they didn't."
"Come on, Neal. Everything she said points to it."
"Exactly," Neal said.
Peter looked at him in exasperation, took breath to argue, then shook his head and climbed back in the car.
"We should keep checking on the restorers and the exhibit staff," Neal said.
"We'll keep checking on them," Peter agreed, a concession somewhat spoiled when he added, "If Pond and Williams only arrived in the country last night they had to get their information from someone."
*
April 21st, 2011 - 11:12am
Back at his desk, Neal looked the coordinates up on Google Maps. They pointed to the middle of a road in the Utah desert, a short drive from Lake Silencio (the lake) and Lake Silencio (the pitstop-sized town). He'd have preferred even Salt Lake City for a meet, and just about anywhere for a retirement plan.
While Jones caught up with the airline and Diana with paperwork, he wandered down to the interrogation cells. Peter was with Amy, showing her photos of the lab techs and museum staff.
"Nope," she said to each one. "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope."
"Do any of these names sound familiar?" Peter asked, and read the list through to the same lack of response. Halfway through, groaning in boredom, she put her head down on her arms on the desk between them. Peter kept reading and she kept answering, "Nope," from beneath the fall of her hair.
Peter looked up at the ceiling as if rediscovering religion, then sat down. "Look at me," he said.
"Do I have to?"
"Look at me." She sat up with a sigh and he said, "You and your husband are both in a lot of trouble at the moment, you realise that? It's obvious that you couldn't have been working alone. You're a small part of a much bigger game. Problem is, right now you're the only part we know about, so you're the part that gets in trouble. But if you give us some names, you and your husband become less important to us, we can cut you some slack."
She'd sobered as he spoke, listening intently. Now she considered, leaned forward, and said, "Would we get conjugal visits?"
"Ms Pond--"
"Because we only got married three months ago, and it's still got that sizzle, you know?"
"Ms Pond, you need to take this seriously."
She lifted her hands as high as they'd go with one cuffed to the table. "I seriously don't understand what we're doing here, okay?"
"Okay," he said, "I'll tell you what we're doing here. You said you'd seen the van Gogh before. Nine people saw the van Gogh before the exhibit opened. That's a short list and you're not on it."
She was silent.
"You said it was painted over a vase of chrysanthemums on a scarlet background. Twelve people knew there was another painting. Five people knew what it was. You're not on either of those lists."
"Can I get a glass of water?"
"Okay," Peter said, changing tacks, "who's the Doctor?"
"My imaginary friend."
"Were you meeting him in Utah?"
She sighed and kicked her heels.
"Because at this rate it looks like you're not going to make your appointment."
"Yeah, well, payback's a bitch."
"What's the meet for? Have you still got the van Gogh stashed somewhere?"
"We don't have the van Gogh, we never had the van Gogh, we didn't steal the van Gogh, we didn't forge the van Gogh, we didn't know the van Gogh existed until I saw the exhibit brochure this morning at the hotel. Why," she sighed, "won't you believe me?"
"Vase of chrysanthemums on a scarlet background," Peter reminded her, and she groaned and folded her head back down on her arms.
Neal knocked and poked his head in. "Hi, mind if I ask a couple of questions?" Peter waved a hand in weary permission, so he finished stepping in. "Sorry about the Sunflowers thing," he added to Amy.
She had her chin on her fists and was eyeing him warily. "Okay. Are you going to get us out now?"
"Working on it. You've lived in Leadworth since you were five, right? Nowhere else?"
"A friend took me on a joyride the night before my wedding," she said. "And then there was our honeymoon."
"But other than that."
"Never been further away than Gloucester," she agreed.
"Okay, so convince me that's not true. Convince me you grew up somewhere else."
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. He showed his palms with a silent plea to trust him. She pursed her lips, then abruptly sat up and tossed her hair. "Well, of course I did. That's how I met Vincent."
"Vincent van Gogh?" Peter scoffed.
Neal gave him a look, but Amy just said impatiently, "Yes, Vincent van Gogh. Arles, 1890. Well, obviously we were both there longer than that," she told Neal, "but it was 1890 when I actually met him. My friend and I were at this café and Vincent was getting thrown out -- no money, you know -- so I shouted him a bottle of wine. We get talking and he invites us back to look at his paintings. Which is where I saw the parrot-thing," she added smugly. "He was telling us about this nightmare of his and suddenly he picks up the chrysanthemums and--" She mimed the rapid laying-down of a background. "Paints right over it. My friend and I were properly devastated."
"What other paintings did he have there?"
"Let's see," she said, looking up to her memory: "There was one of his bedroom -- that one was still wet. Um, that Doctor Gachet sleeping on his fist, looking all grumpy, you know?" She mimed it. "And the Almond Blossoms and Woman Rocking a Cradle, and the prisoners exercising in a circle, and Wheat Field with Cypresses, and Yellow House."
He could see the paintings as fast as she spoke their names, his mind's eye filling in his own favourites from among van Gogh's many variations, and -- still wet -- adding the thick smell of oil, the shine of it. The textures, still susceptible to a smudge or a touch-up...
"And he put the coffeepot down on a still-life with oranges in a basket. He didn't seem to think much of that one, kept talking about how he should do a tidy out, and we tried to tell him-- Oh, and he tried to give us one of his self-portraits. And he had sketches pinned up on all the walls. Um... did I mention the Starry Night? You know, we lay out in the field under the cypreses -- this was after he painted the Church at Auvers and he was showing us the sky and talking about how it wasn't black, it was full of colour, with dark blue and lighter blue swirling in the wind and the stars bursting through it all."
"I think I'm getting Florence Syndrome by proxy," Neal murmured.
She laughed. "Yeah, it was kind of like that. And... sad too. I'd just lost someone, but I didn't know I'd lost him, but... I was sad, and Vincent understood that better than I did. I think he felt like that all the time."
"Okay," Peter said impatiently, folding his arms, "but Neal said to convince us this happened. This is a hundred and twenty years ago and you don't look a day older than a hundred."
"Why, thank you," she said, batting her eyes. "Then we time-travelled, of course. Actually, we took Vincent with us, back to the Musée d'Orsay."
"Nice museum," Neal said, and to tease Peter, "Plenty of stairs."
"We showed him his exhibit, arranged for him to overhear how wonderful the curator thought he was..."
"Doctor Black?" Neal jumped in without thinking.
"Thick black glasses, and that really silly bowtie? He was very--" She drew herself up and looked down her nose to demonstrate. "But in a sweet way. Anyway, we sent Vincent home and I thought at first it'd made no difference, because he still died when he died. But then I saw the Sunflowers."
Neal grinned. "For Amy."
"For Amy," she agreed smugly.
"Was there a point to this?" Peter asked in exasperation.
"Yeah," Neal said, remembering his point, and said to Amy -- "Would you excuse us?"
"Sure. Oh hey," she added as they left, "if you're talking to Rory, you should ask him to convince you he's really a Roman centurion."
"Sure, why not," Peter sighed. Out in the corridor he folded his arms at Neal. "Well?"
"Listen to her," Neal said. "She's smart, she's witty--"
"She's kind of obsessed with van Gogh."
He tipped his head, admitting the point. "Over-invested arts student type. But you ask her to make up a story and she makes up a really good story. She's got an answer to every question--"
"So you think we should believe her because she's a good liar."
"I think we should believe her because she didn't make up an answer about the chrysanthemums." Peter looked skeptical. "Look, if she wanted to lie she could have told us she met someone at a bar, or an internet bulletin board, or whatever, and they happened to let something slip. We've got no actual evidence against them, Peter. If they could explain that away we'd have to let them go."
"Yet they haven't explained it away."
He spread his hands. "A friend of theirs let something slip, they don't want to get their friend in trouble."
Peter sighed, thought about it, and sighed again. "I'm going to talk to Williams," he said firmly.
"Okay," Neal agreed. "I'll ask him about being a Roman centurion."
Peter opened his mouth in disbelief, then shut it again and went into Rory's interrogation room shaking his head. Neal smirked and followed.
Rory was, if possible, even less helpful than Amy had been. He sat and listened to Peter's questions and didn't answer them. Where Amy had been constant frustrated motion, Rory simply... waited. Finally Peter shut his eyes, muttered something to himself, and told Neal reluctantly, "Don't use her words."
"How can I not use--" Peter looked at him and he shut his mouth and turned to Rory. "I'm playing a counterfactual game to make a point to Peter. We know you've lived your whole life in Leadworth, but just... pretend you grew up somewhere else."
Rory waited.
"Maybe in Italy?" Neal suggested.
Rory studied him. "Like Venice?"
"Okay."
Rory waited.
Neal turned back to Peter. "Can I just--"
"No."
"Peter, it's not a code."
Peter shook his head.
"Okay," he said, "you know what, really I already made my point. This was just because Amy said it'd be fun, so..."
"Oh," Rory said. "Well, I wasn't born in Italy."
"I know that."
"My grandfather came to Britain with Aulus Plautius in the reign of the Emperor Claudius. I was born in Vindolanda, I joined the Second Augustan Legion, and I came to Sorviodunum as a centurion. Uh... is that what you wanted to know?"
"And then you came to our time in a time machine?" Peter asked sarcastically, while Neal filed away the fact that apparently 'Amy' was the magic word.
"Well, no," Rory said. "I just... didn't die."
"You wh-- You're two thousand years old?"
"About nineteen hundred, I think. It's complicated. We didn't use annos domini back then and after a while I lost track."
"That doesn't sound very fun," Neal said.
"Medicine was pretty rubbish for most of it," Rory said fervently. "But it was okay. I mean, I had to be careful no-one noticed I wasn't getting any older, but people don't notice me much anyway, and I travelled a lot. Rome, Paris, Jerusalem, Rome again, Constantinople, Athens, London.... And finally I met Amy. I was a security guard at the National Museum then."
"A bit old for her, don't you think?" Peter pointed out.
With a pained expression, Rory said, "I try not to think about it too much."
"I'm still not seeing the fun," Neal complained. "I mean, I got around most of those cities in a couple of months."
"You were on the run," Peter pointed out.
"Okay, but nineteen hundred years?"
"It's just one day at a time," Rory said. "I mean, it's a cliché, but it really was. But I suppose the fun part -- well, Amy found a centurion outfit at a costume shop in Gloucester. I mean, it's a really cheap, inaccurate version of the uniform, but, uh. That can be fun."
"Okay," Peter said abruptly, "we've got some actual work to do."
Neal smirked and told Rory, "You're right, this was fun."
"Neal!" Peter called from the door.
Rory asked quickly as they left, "Is there any chance of us getting out in time to catch our flight?"
"Working on it," Neal said in the moment before Peter shut the door.
"No," said Peter.
"Come on--"
"They're twenty-one years old, Neal," he said, pointing at the doors for emphasis. "They're practically kids. They're in a foreign country, they've just been arrested on serious criminal charges and separated from each other. They should be terrified, they should be calling for their consulate, their lawyer, their mothers. They're not. They're sitting there being bored."
"Okay," Neal admitted, "that's a fair point. But--"
"No. I want to know who the Doctor is, and I want to know what's in Utah, and I want to know if they have any connections to any of the people on our lists." End of discussion, said his hands, and as soon as he made sure Neal had got the message he turned for the lifts.
Oh well, thought Neal, he'd tried.
*
April 21st, 2011 - 11:35am
Back on the 21st floor, he kicked his heels up on his desk and phoned Mozzie. "Hey, I need some information on a name."
"Is this about the van Gogh thing?"
"Yeah. The name's 'the Doctor'. No first name, no last name, no loconym. Possible British connection."
"Seriously?" Mozzie said, voice rising to a squeak. "Neal-- Okay-- Look-- Right, we're going with Hide-and-Seek, so--"
"Wait-wait-wait," Neal said, sitting up with a thump. Was Hide-and-Seek cut and run? No, that was Sardines: Hide and Seek was cut and run and ditch all means of communication except a complicated code in the buy-and-sell papers. "Please wait. Just -- what?"
"I assume your FBI friends are searching for this guy in their FBI systems?"
Peter had just left Jones' desk, so, "I assume-- Breathe, Moz. Talk to me here."
"Neal, do you know what happens when people search for 'the Doctor'?"
"Okay, just wait a moment," he said -- rested the phone on a pile of paperwork he was procrastinating on and called, "Jones, are you looking up this 'Doctor' guy?"
Jones paused, a finger above the enter key. "I was about to..."
"Can you... just hold that thought?" He gestured at the phone, met Peter's questioning expression from the stairs with a helpless shrug, and told Mozzie, "Okay, no-one's searching for anything, now will you tell me who this guy is?"
There was a long suspicious silence. For a moment Neal thought he'd hung up and fled already, but finally he said, "No-one knows who he is. That's the point. He flits in and out of history, wreaking chaos wherever he walks. His enemies are numberless, but he always stays one step ahead."
"Mozzie..."
"They say he brought down Harriet Jones' government with six words. Six!"
"Impressive, but what does this have to do with--"
"Well, obviously the U.S. government's looking for him too."
"Oh." Conspiracy theory, right.
"Oh, indeed. You search for 'the Doctor', the government figures you've seen him, they swoop in and take you and everyone in your vicinity away for questioning. And you're never seen again."
"Okay," Neal said, "then we won't do that."
"Good. I'm going to toss this phone anyway, just to be safe."
"Wait, before you go -- does the name Amy Pond ring any bells?"
"Hmm." Mozzie considered. "There's the Sunflowers for Amy. What?" he asked, evidently hearing Neal's bemused expression. "You're investigating a van Gogh."
"Yeah, okay. What about Rory Williams?"
"Um... 'Roranicus' was one of the names attributed to the Last Centurion?"
"The... what?"
"You know, the Eternal Hunter, the Wandering Jew, the Last Centurion. Hey, you ask, I free-associate. Anything else?"
"Uh." He was almost afraid to say it, but it was on the list. "Lake Silencio, Utah?"
"Silence will fall when the question is asked," Mozzie said promptly.
What? "Is that a passphrase? What does that even mean?"
"Neal, my friend, you're beginning to sound like the Suit." He hung up, and left Neal looking up into said Suit's impatient face.
"Just translating back into reality," he said, and massaged his sinuses. Okay, so that was creepy, but it was just synchronicity. Also, he was clearly getting cause and effect muddled up. Amy knew Sunflowers for Amy so she put it in her story. Rory knew the tale of the Last Centurion so that was the story he made up. Lake Silencio was a spooky riddle. And the Doctor...
"Mozzie says the government's after someone called 'the Doctor'."
"Any particularly part of the government?" Peter asked wearily.
"Who knows -- could be CIA, could be Homeland Security, could be UNIT--"
"The United Nations doesn't have--" Neal spread his hands helplessly and Peter subsided into, "I know, that's what they want me to think."
"Right. So, the CIA or whoever has this monicker on a watchlist of some kind. We run a search in the databases, it pings their radar, they come and claim jurisdiction, we never get our van Gogh back."
"Just to be clear, this is the translation into reality?"
"Trust me, Peter, you don't want to hear the original."
"If these guys are linked to someone like that--"
"Come on, you know how many senators are on the No Fly list just because their names look like someone else's?"
"You're starting to sound like Mozzie," Peter said. "Fine. Fine, no searching for the Doctor. For now. But I want everything else."
*
April 21st, 2011 - 12:16pm
"Everything else" included trawling through page after page of public Facebook postings and the not-so-public contents of Amy's Gmail account. (Rory's, at least, would have to wait for the official paperwork to go through, since he'd had the sense to choose a password slightly more secure than theD0ct0r.) It wasn't that Amy made a lot of Facebook posts, as Facebook profiles went, but he had to keep researching the Britspeak to make sure it was Britspeak and not code. And a lot of the photos were... distracting.
Her friend Mels might be worth looking up. Not that indecent exposure and taking a Lamborgini for a joyride had much to do with art theft and forgery, but it was the best they had to go on.
Until he found the correspondence with the hotel at Bristol.
He stood up casually, said, "Hey, I'm going to get a sandwich -- anyone want something?" and texted the order down to the coffeeshop while the lift took him to the interrogation rooms.
Amy stopped mid-pace, shooting a guilty look at the handcuffs dangling from the table. One of her hairpins was looking a little bent.
"Those things are really badly made," Neal said. "I can't count the number of times they've just slipped off my wrists."
She folded her arms and shifted into a stance that made it clear that a) she still didn't trust him and b) she had fantastic legs. "What about the doors?"
"Sturdier," he said regretfully. Also better guarded, and anyway they'd confiscated all her papers. Not that that had ever stopped Neal, but he could make his own papers. "You said you went on a cruise for your honeymoon."
She hesitated, as if seeing where this was headed, but flicked her hair over her shoulder and gamely said, "Yep."
"All your Facebook posts are talking about your fantastic time in Bristol."
"Yep."
"But you emailed the hotel to cancel your booking."
"...Yeah."
"So..."
"...I should pick a better password?"
"That too." He shifted his own stance. "Did Mels have anything to do with it?"
"Like what," she demanded, "hijack a cruiseship for our honeymoon?"
He shrugged expressively. "Maybe a small yacht?"
"That's--" She spluttered; her face suggested exactly the kind of thing Mels would do.
"She's been in a bit of trouble before, hasn't she?"
She sighed. "She's got a really creepy mum, okay? I mean, she never actually hurt her. I think. One time she said her mum tried to shoot her, before they came to Leadworth from America, but then another time she said it wasn't her mum, so I don't know. The point is, really creepy and controlling, so yeah, Mels ran away a bit. With other people's cars. Wouldn't you?"
"I've run away with other people's cars for less," he admitted.
"The thing is, ever since I was a little kid I've been able to remember these other... realities. Like, one where I didn't have any parents, and one where there weren't any stars."
That sounded creepy. "No Starry Night?"
She shook her head. "There was always a Starry Night. Vincent remembered, even when everyone else thought he was crazy. It was the first painting of his I ever saw, and that's why I loved it so much, because I knew I wasn't the only one."
"Um..."
"Oh, for crying out loud," she said in exasperation, "I know the difference between the real reality and the other kind, okay?" Right. Cause and effect: she saw Starry Night and then she created a reality where they were the only stars in the world. "The point is, all those extra memories does things to your head, and Rory and Mels were the only people who always always accepted me for who I am. So I know her inside out and she is bored to death by art. If she was going to steal a painting, she'd steal something people had heard of, like The Scream. --She didn't steal The Scream."
"I know."
"Actually The Scream gives her nightmares. She'd probably burn it. --Wait, how do you know?"
"Um." He was proud of those forgeries -- the moisture damage on the one the Norwegian police had found while he'd been in prison had been a particularly nice touch -- but he really wished Keller hadn't brought in that group of gunmen (gunmen!) to take the fall for them. "Don't ask. Are you sure you can't tell me anything I can use to get you out of here?"
"Look," she said pleadingly, "I get that you're trying to help, and I appreciate it, I really do, but my life is just really complicated."
"I know the feeling," he said, and went downstairs to pick up his sandwich order.
*
April 21st, 2011 - 12:35pm
"What'd you get?" Peter asked when he came back to the 21st floor.
"For you," he said, fishing it out of the bag, "one devilled ham."
"Come on, Neal," Peter said while he passed out the rest of the sandwiches, "I know you talked to Pond again."
Peter was really getting too suspicious of him: it was going to get him in trouble one day. "Okay, I thought maybe she was covering for her friend, but--"
"What friend?"
"Melody Kovarian, but she hasn't been in the States since she was a kid. Peter..."
Peter was already leaning over Jones' desk while Jones looked the name up in their databases. "She's got a record in the UK."
"She doesn't steal art," Neal pointed out hopelessly.
"Not finding anything domestic. Oh, wait: here's a missing person's report from... 1969. This is her friend?"
"Let me see that," Neal said. The record definitely said 1969. It also said the missing girl was white with blonde hair and blue eyes. "No, that's the wrong Melody Kovarian."
"Oh, sure," Peter said, "because Melody Kovarian's such a common name."
"Well, the Melody Kovarian all over Amy's Facebook albums is black and only twenty-one, so I guess there's at least two of them."
Jones checked the UK records again: they confirmed. "Says here she was born in the UK. Doesn't even have a passport."
Neal frowned. Maybe it was just a kid's story? She'd probably had to make up something, with a creepy mother and a best friend telling tales of a world without stars.
"Okay," Peter said, "this is obviously a dead-end. Neal, try talking to Williams again."
Neal looked a protest, but Peter just gave him the Remember who put who in prison twice? look, so with a sigh he left his half-eaten sandwich on his desk and went back downstairs.
*
April 21st, 2011 - 12:42pm
'Amy' was the magic word, he remembered. He could work with that, maybe. After all, Rory might be weirdly calm about the whole thing, but he was still only twenty-one: how savvy could he be?
"Hi again," he said, stepping into the interview room. "Oh -- seriously, have they still got you handcuffed to that thing? Here, let me..." He dug his lockpick set from his pocket and continued while Rory imperturbably gave him access to the cuffs, "You know, I get that you don't want to rat out your friend any more than Amy did, but it's not like she's in our jurisdiction at the moment anyway, so if you can just confirm--"
Just as the lock clicked open, something poked Neal in the back. Rory said evenly, "Take me to my wife or I'll shoot."
Neal hesitated. It wasn't that he minded being used as a hostage in this case, but... He reached a hand to cover the microphone in the middle of the table and whispered, "I've had guns in my back before, and that feels more like a finger."
"...So?"
"So, if it also looks like a finger, you might want to put a sweater over it or something before we go out there."
"I'm confused about your motives," Rory complained, but he shrugged out of his left sleeve and wrapped the bulk of his sweater over his hand without once removing it from Neal's back.
"Okay, now follow my lead," Neal said, and went -- with Rory tight at his back -- to poke his head out the door. "Hey, Paul, these guys get toilet breaks, right?"
"Sure." Paul got out his keys as he came over. He stepped in, noticed the empty chair, and got out, "Hey--" before he was at an angle to see the sweater-draped finger at Neal's back.
"Please don't," Neal said as Paul reached for his gun.
"Give him the keys," Rory demanded.
Neal added a hopeful I value my spine and think that would be a really good idea expression.
Paul grudgingly gave him the keys. Neal and Rory sidled out, locking him in, then hurried to Amy's cell.
Her face lit up when she saw Rory, and she jumped off the table she'd been kicking her heels against. "Are they finally letting us go?"
"Sort of," Rory said.
"Oh, right," she said, and as they ran, asked, "What happened to waiting?"
"It was more boring than I remembered."
At the lifts, the couple split up to jam on the buttons. "Are you crazy?" Neal said. "This way!" He slammed into the stairwell and started up, glad they had the sense to follow first, ask questions second. He explained to save them the trouble, "You don't just escape from FBI headquarters on the spur of the moment. You need to lay the groundwork months in advance."
"What are we going to do," Rory snarked, "jump off the roof?"
"No, no, my parachute isn't rated for three people. But don't worry, I have a plan."
He'd got his tone and facial expression just right to carry that lie, so he was a bit miffed when immediately, in unison, they groaned.
*
April 21st, 2011 - 12:54pm
Despite the couple's entirely unjustified distrust of his abilities, they eventually piled, out of breath, into a cab. "Where to?" the driver asked.
"Utah," Rory gasped out.
"He means the Met," Neal reassured the driver, backing this up with a twenty -- "and quickly." The driver hit the gas at once and Rory glared at him over Amy's shoulder. "Look, you're not getting to Utah without cash or papers, so your best chance right now is to clear your names."
Rory either grudgingly agreed or was too busy trying to fill his lungs to continue arguing.
Amy gulped in a couple of deep breaths, then flipped her hair back out of her face to turn a suspicious eye on Neal. "Why are you helping us anyway?"
"Your husband threatened my life," he pointed out virtuously. "And I know what it's like to be accused of something I didn't do." He was glad Peter wasn't there to scoff at him. So maybe most of the things he'd been accused of were true, but that didn't mean all of them were.
Amy was still looking at him suspiciously, so he admitted, "And it's a lot more fun than trawling through paperwork."
She nodded in satisfaction while on her other side Rory muttered, "Why am I surrounded by adrenaline junkies?"
"There, there," Amy said, making Sympathetic Face and patting his hand. Apparently their marriage really did still have that sizzle, because Neal had to spend the rest of the trip staring out the window at the traffic.
*
April 21st, 2011 - 1:13pm
Unfortunately their entrance to the Met was thwarted by an over-zealous security guard. "Mr Caffrey, you know you're not allowed in here unaccompanied."
He flashed his best smile and jagged a thumb at Amy and Rory. "But I am accompanied."
The guard turned to them without taking his eyes off Neal. "And you are?"
Amy drew herself straight and tipped up her chin. "Pond and Williams," she said in a wonderfully peremptory tone. "Undercover from Scotland Yard. We're assisting the FBI with their enquiries regarding the pseudo-van Gogh."
"Wait -- aren't you the two they arrested?"
"There was a mix-up," she said defensively. "Like I said, undercover. It's all sorted out now. So if we can just--"
"I'll need to see your papers, ma'am."
"Of course," she agreed. "Williams, our papers."
"Um," Rory said, such a picture of confusion that Neal couldn't tell if he was playing along or not, "I don't have our papers."
Amy paused, then held up a finger to the guard. "One moment, please."
Neal and the guard watched her hustle Rory a few paces away and whisper furiously, "I gave you our papers."
"No, you put them on the desk and told me to remind you not to forget them."
"So why didn't you remind me?"
"I did."
"No, you didn't!"
"You said, 'Anything else?' and I said 'Papers,' and you said, 'Right, thanks.'"
"Because you were getting them!"
"No, I wasn't, I was getting the parachute."
"I told you we didn't need the-- Oh, never mind!" She turned back to the security guard with an exasperated smile. "I guess we'll just stick to the public areas, then."
"Sorry, ma'am, but--"
"Uh, excuse me," Rory put in, "do you have a pen and paper? Sorry about the trouble. If you'll just phone--" He recited a British number that sounded vaguely familiar: "That's our contact at the National Museum, and he'll sort everything out. Um, we can wait over there while you clear the call with your manager."
The guard really was excessively suspicious: before leaving he called another guard over and told him, "Stay with these guys until I'm back."
Neal waited until he was out of sight then said brightly, "You know, why don't I just show you guys the way myself, and the director can catch us up there? Can you just let them know we've gone on in?" he added to the new guard, and slipped past while he hesitated.
"Thanks so much," Amy added with a dazzing smile and, as they merged into the crowd, hissed at Rory, "Parachute?"
"I panicked," he said defensively.
"More importantly," Neal said over his shoulder as they rounded a corner, "why have you memorised the phone number of the director of the National Museum?"
"I told you," Rory said, "I worked there until I met Amy." Neal gave him a sour look and he shrugged. "You said to pretend I grew up somewhere else," he pointed out. "Anyway, how is that important?"
"I'm trying to clear you and you keep knowing things a couple of kids who've never been outside Leadworth shouldn't know!"
"So he knows a phone number," Amy said dismissively, and pushed ahead of them both.
"And you know all about Doctor Black despite the fact that he's lived in Paris all your life."
"More importantly," she retorted, turning in the entrance to the Pseudo Exhibition with crossed arms, "why are you banned from the Met?"
Neal stopped short and gestured vaguely. "I... allegedly stole some art once."
She narrowed her eyes. "You mean The Scream?"
"And a Raphael and a few other things. None of which anyone has any evidence for," he insisted.
"So how come you're not a suspect?"
"Trust me, they thought about it. But I've got an alibi." He lifted his pants leg to reveal the tracking anklet. "They can track me wherever I go."
"Oh, God, seriously? You didn't bother telling us that they're following us right now?"
"If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure Peter's giving us a headstart." Judging by the scowl on her face, it wasn't any consolation at all. "Come on, do you really want to spend the next chapter in your life running across the entire United States with the FBI in pursuit?"
"Okay, maybe not," she admitted.
"Great, so let's figure out who did this. Come on, Mr Security Guard, tell me if you see anything weird."
He was scanning the room for suspicious characters when Rory said, "There's a blind spot in the security cameras."
"Yeah," he said absently, "just enough of a gap for someone to squeeze through and then go around knocking all the other cameras out of alignment for him to do the switch. But all the security people checked out clean."
"Why do people always blame security?" Rory complained. "Nineteen hundred years and nothing changes. What happens is the curator says, 'I want that camera pointed at that painting,' and the security people say, 'But that'll leave a blind spot at the entry,' and the curator says, 'But my very important painting will be safe and did I mention I can get you fired?' And then the very important painting gets stolen and everyone blames security."
"Huh," Neal said, filing that away as useful information. "But to be fair, they checked out the curator even before they thought of me. Although..."
The curator conveniently appeared at that moment, flanked by the two security guards from before.
"Oh, hi!" Neal said brightly before he could start. "We were just talking about you. Listen, did you discuss the security arrangements with anyone before the exhibit opened?"
"Of course not," he snapped, "and I'm going to have to ask you all to leave."
"Absolutely, I completely understand, but are you sure no-one else made any suggestions?"
"Even a teensy-tiny one?" Amy put in.
"Well, Doctor Flynn asked me to make sure the pseudo-van Gogh was under full surveillance, but that's hardly a crime considering the, uh, canvas it was painted on. Now please leave before--"
"I'll take it from here," Peter said, sweeping in with Diana behind him. "Neal--"
"Peter," he interrupted, "I know what you're going to say, but remember you asked me to talk to Rory, and he wasn't going to talk in that interview room, so I brought them here and we worked out it was Flynn."
"I heard," Peter said dryly. "Jones is already on his way to her place. Turns out she's behind on her mortgage repayments."
Neal grinned. "Stealing a van Gogh means never having to worry about your mortgage."
Predictably, Peter concluded, "Especially once I catch you and put you in prison."
Amy pushed her way forward: "Does that mean we can go and catch our plane now?"
"Yep," Peter said, "just as soon as we've found the painting and made sure your fingerprints aren't on it."
"But we've got to meet our friend and this is the only plane that'll get us there on time."
"I'm sure it won't be the end of the world if you're a little bit late."
"Oh, you're going to be so sorry if it is," she retorted.
"Peter, be reasonable," Neal tried.
"I am being reasonable. I'm not charging anyone with escaping custody or with aiding and abetting, and if you all come quietly I won't even handcuff you again and confiscate all your hairpins."
Amy gave him an offended look, and Neal was a little regretful that he'd given Peter so much practice over the last couple of years at blithely ignoring offended looks.
*
April 21st, 2011 - 1:39pm
Once they were back at the Bureau and it became clear Amy and Rory weren't going to be leaving it in time to catch their plane, Neal phoned Mozzie.
"Neal, I told you I was going to toss this phone."
Neal checked the number, then pointed out, "That was the other phone."
"Oh. Right. How can I help?"
"Okay, so we've caught the art thief and any minute now Peter's going to admit that our first suspects had nothing to do with it, but they're going to miss their plane, so can you come up with some alternative way for them to get to Lake Silencio by sixteen thirty Mountain Time tomorrow?"
"Neal," Mozzie said in that warning tone that presaged a lecture on his too-tender-heartedness.
"Come on, Moz, it's my fault we arrested them in the first place." The judging silence suggested that wasn't helping. "Their best friend is an orphan?" At least, having your mother shoot you had to count for something.
"Neal, really, do I look like the Pirates of Penzance?"
There were some images Neal did not need in his head. "Okay, okay, I know, it's just that they're supposed to meet this Doctor friend of theirs--"
"Wait -- they're friends of the Doctor? You arrested the Doctor's friends? Neal, have you got no sense of self-preservation?"
"Hey, I cleared their names!"
"That might help," he allowed uncertainly. "Okay, let me think about this-- You know, our reserves are getting pretty low. We're going to have to pull off something big soon to replenish them."
"Yeah, I can't talk about that right now." And honestly he was hoping he could avoid talking about it for a while yet: it was a bit disconcerting how much he liked being on the respectable side of the law. "Just tell me you can get them there in time."
"Tell them to go to the airport and look for a sign saying 'Asclepius'."
"Greek god of medicine and healing," Neal noted.
"You think it's too obvious?" he asked in sudden self-doubt.
"I'm sure it'll be fine," Neal reassured him.
"Yeah, the government isn't noted for its familiarity with history. Anyway, they'll get their new itinerary there."
"Thanks, Moz."
"Next time," he said sternly, "try not to get us into this kind of situation to start with."
*
April 22nd, 2011 - 5:25pm
Peter had just dropped him home the next day when his phone rang with a number he didn't recognise. "Hello?"
"Neal?" came a voice amidst the crackles that spoke of a poorly-maintained payphone.
"Amy? Have you got stuck somewhere?"
"No, we're fine, we're almost there. We're just about to get on a schoolbus for the last leg so we wanted to call and say thanks."
Rory put in, amidst even more crackles, "I'm not convinced the white water rafting was strictly necessary."
"Mozzie's schemes can get a little Byzantine," Neal admitted.
"It's fine," Amy protested: "it was fun."
"You know," he said, "you never did explain how you knew what was behind that painting."
"Oh, right," she said. "About that. Um..." More distantly: "Do you have any more quarters? I think this--"
The line went dead. Neal looked thoughtfully at his cellphone display of zero minutes and forty-three seconds, then grinned, deleted the call from memory, and went up to find out what wine Mozzie had picked out for the evening.
* END *