Fic: The Sanctuary Job - Part 1
Title: The Sanctuary Job
Rating: Pg-13
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fluff, Crossover, AU
Crossover! Sanctuary and Leverage
Summary: The Leverage Team takes on a most unusual job.
Notes: Written for kaitlia777 for Sanctuary_santa. She requested "Henry/Ashley! Shippy is best, friendship is good too. Will/Kate. Outsider POV's and Crossovers"
So you get Sanctuary crossed over with Leverage! :D I hope you like it! This first part ended up being heavy on the Leverage side, but I was really hitting on the crossover/Outside perspective thing XD Anyway this is part 1. The rest is being worked on and finalized. Oh my god I am having so much FUN with this. I hope you enjoy!
Boston
Sophie sipped her coffee, quietly evaluating the man sitting in front of them. Mr. Kuznetsov
was perhaps in his late thirties or early forties. His beard was touched with grey and it would have been rather dashing if it had been trimmed perhaps a bit more neatly. Sophie couldn’t blame him though from what she’d heard already. His eyes were a bit red.
“Mr. Kuznetsov-”
“Please,” the man said, cutting Sophie off. He held yo a hand. “Call me Sasha. My friends call me Sasha.”
“Sasha,” Sophie said warmly. She reached across the table and touched the man’s hand, associating herself with the smile and friendly feelings. “We’ve heard you’re in a bit of a bind. Would you be willing to tell your story to my colleagues? I know it’s rough, but-”
“Of course, of course.” Kuznetsov Looked at them all then focused on Nate. “My wife, Marie, passed last year. Pancreatic cancer.”
There we murmurs of sympathy from the group seated around the table in the bar.
“It is okay, she is at peace now. But my wife’s family had three relics from before the revolution. They’d been passed to her by her mother, but her uncle took them. At the time we thought it was what had been specific in her grandmother’s will. It is now proven that this is not the case and those relics should have come to my wife and after her, our children.”
Mr. Kuznetsov placed an old document, written in Russian, on the table. Elliot turned it around so he could read it. Sophie arched an eyebrow. Caught, Elliot sat back in his seat.
“Her uncle sold them for money. We tracked them down but the buyer had lost them to a thief. Many years we spent tracking them down. We finally found where they were located and she gets sick.”
“How awful,” Sophie sympathized.
“My wife asked me to recover them, so they might be in the family again. They are worth a great deal of money, but to us, they are absolutely priceless.” He put another document on the table. it was a flier from the field museum. “I had thought all was lost and then I saw this on the internets.” The flyier showed a picture of some fancy, gem encrusted sculptures in the shape of eggs. “This is one,” he said tapping one of the eggs. “There are two others.”
Nate nodded, taking the man’s story in. “Mr. Kuzentsov,”
“Sasha. Please.”
“Sasha,” Nate repeated, I’ll need to discuss this with my team, but I think we can get your relics back.”
The man’s sorrowful face split into a broad grin. “Thank you!”
Chicago.
It was too bad the dinosaur was dead, Parker decided. It would have been more of a challenge if there had been a real dinosaur stalking the halls of the Field Museum. Parker smiled up at Sue’s skeleton and waited. The security system was a Davison and Lecht 750-I. While one of the more difficult security systems to get around, it wasn’t as bad as a Sterekno by any stretch of the imagination. At least not here in the big entrance hall where most of the systems were stepped down because of the gala. The difficult part would come when Parker got to the target.
The dinosaur would have made things more interesting, too, she thought as she looked around the party. She’d considered lifting some wallets just to give herself something to do, but Nate had already told her not to do that. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t have put them back. Tonight she wasn’t playing the part of the waiter, but of Sophie’s personal assistant. Sophie had told her PAs were all but invisible at these functions. Sophie hadn’t told her it would be boring. She would have preferred to pull a regular heist, but the fundraiser for the museum meant they didn’t have that as an option.
“Okay, I have control of their cameras,” Hardison said.
Over her earpiece, Parker could hear the clickity clack as he typed. It was a good sound, like a tumbler falling into place. It meant things were working smoothly.
“You’re up Sophie,” Nate prompted. Nate was always calm. Parker liked that about Nate.
Sophie smoothly turned from the person she’d been chatting with and began to harangue Parker. Parker let her eyes widen and cowered away as she’d been told to do. Parker stammered something that sounded appropriate. Sophie’s eyes did that sparkle thing that always happened when Parker acted well. Parker got out of there before she could mess up her part. Plus it was really, really boring in there and now she finally got to have fun.
Avoiding security was abysmally easy. The row Sophie had incited in a couple of the Gala guests had drawn the interest of the rent-a-cops and the exhibit was wide open to Parker. Using the items Hardison had given her, she disabled the motion sensors. The can of compressed air froze in her hands and was unpleasant, but she waited until Hardison told her she was okay to continue.
“Sensors are down, you’re good to go, girl.”
Smiling, Parker slipped out of the heels Sophie had insisted she wear and sprayed the air in the room. Red laser lights appeared in a spiderweb. Parker took a look and then tightened the satchel against her body. She vaulted, twisted, stepped and spun over the lines. Easy as pie and a heck of a lot more fun than standing around listening to Sophie work the crowd.
“You’ve got thirty seconds on the case,” Hardison advised.
Parker carefully inserted the key she’d pocked from the curator Sophie had chatted up earlier and opened the case. The egg inside the case was jewel encrusted, the diamonds sparkling in the spotlight. Parker carefully removed the duplicate egg from the case at her hip and swapped the real one for the fake. It was kind of like that Indiana Jones movie. It would have been really fun if a big rock would have come down for her to outrun, but she guessed it might have smashed too many things here in a museum. She closed the case and locked it.
“Done.”
She could hear Hardison’s sigh of relief as she put the real egg into her satchel and crossed the lasers again. She slipped on her shoes and left, rejoining the party.
“There you are!” Sophie said, rounding on her assistant.
Parker held up her blackberry. “Main office.”
“Oh,” Sophie said, snatching the phone away from Parker. “Brown.”
“We’re all set,” Nate said over the comms.
“Finally!” Sophie exclaimed.
“Time to hit the exit.”
Sophie rolled her eyes dramatically. “Honestly, can’t you do anything right over there?” She asked. She shooed Parker off. “Go get the car.”
Parker nodded and trotted off, the cowed assistant to the high-priced executive off to get the car from the valet. She gave the stub to the valet and he left to get their car.
“Hey,” the other valet said, winking.
“Hi,” Parker said, not making eye contact. Guys pestered her more if she made eye contact. The night was chilly and she rubbed her arms.
“Gotta be hard working for that dragon lady,” the valet observed.
Parker shrugged. “It’s a job.”
“Is that car here yet?” Sophie demanded, saving Parker from further forced conversation.
“Just here!” Parker said, practically pulling the valet out of the seat and pressing a ten into his hand. She hadn’t wanted to do that, but Nate and Sophie both said it was what was done. She hopped into the driver’s seat. It was kinda fun being the getaway driver again, even if they didn’t know she’d boosted anything else.
Sophie sat in the back and Parker pulled away from the curb. “Well, “Sophie mused as she undid her hair from the severe updo she’d been wearing, “That’s done. Where’s the egg?”
Parker nodded at the satchel. “It’s in the bag.”
Sophie reached forward and took the back, removing the egg from within. “Its a bit gaudy,” she said, turning it over in her hands. “Looks like there’s some kind of catch. I wonder if it opens.”
“Wonder later. We’ve got a flight to catch,” Nate reminded them.
“Right,” Sophie agreed, pulling out the lined case they would use to transport the egg. “See you at the gate in twenty.”
Old City
Ashley pulled the freshly laundered hoodie out of the hamper. It was still warm and smelled like home. Ashley sniffed the fabric and gave Biggie a smile over it. “Thanks.”
She’d missed home so much when she’d been gone. When Mom had finally let her out of the infirmary, returning to a freshly cleaned and laundered room had almost, well, okay, she had broken down into tears. So had Mom. And while once she would have denied herself that release, It had been okay to just hold hug her mother and cry. She’d finally come home and maybe everything would be okay again.
Biggie grunted and placed a full basket of half-folded laundry at her feet. “This is yours.”
Ashley smiled and pulled the hoodie on. She took the basket to her room and began to fold the laundry. So much of it was new. Mom had donated much of her old wardrobe, saving a few items she’d treasured or that she’d known were Ashley’s favorites. Ashley had been okay with it. Yes, it had been a little painful, there was an initial feeling of having been tossed away. The knee-jerk reaction had passed though; she truly wouldn’t have wanted her mother to cling if she had been dead. Looking at the items that had been carefully saved, she’d felt loved. Maybe it was strange, but then most of her life in the past couple years hadn’t exactly been anything passably normal.
It was a work in progress, but it was getting better.
Mom had finally cleared her to go on missions and she’d been doing well. The new girl was pretty cool. She got the impression her mother had been worried about how she’d react to the new muscle. They had a lot in common, so maybe Mom had expected her to instantly hate Kate or something. Ashley kinda liked having someone to hang with and the girl knew her stuff, so Ash had no problems working with her. Hell, it make a lot of obnoxious things cakewalk. Well, the new skills she’d acquired helped as much as the new talent did. Still, it was nice to have a female friend vaguely around her age with some of the same interests. Kate had helped her pick out a lot of the new stuff. They didn’t exactly agree on accessories, but it had been nice to do something as utterly normal as shopping.
Ashley began to put away her clothes. The relaxed outfit of lounging pants, tank top and warm hoodie felt fantastic after a weekend on a mission abroad; her first! Hopefully one of many more. Alaska had been cold and often miserable, but Kate and she had gotten the job done faster than expected, in part thanks to the new skills.
The new skills were...they were a work in progress too. Tesla had already declared her the “Worst Vampire Ever,” since she apparently hadn’t gotten much desire to take over the world. Or maybe he was just jealous since he wasn’t a vampire anymore. The new skills...She did and didn’t like using them. She liked being a badass, she liked they helped her get her job done, but there were many awful things about them she didn’t especially want to remember. Ashley tried not thinking about that too often.
Life was getting better in really unexpected ways too. Ashley smiled to herself as she slipped out of her room. Henry’s lab had grown and expanded when she’d been away.
“Hey,” she called.
Henry looked up giving her a huge grin. “Hey! How’d the new toys work out for you guys?”
“Great!” Ashley beamed. “Love the new range on the stunners. Kate and I caught tal, dark and hairy between us and zap, zap, zap!” She mimed firing a gun. “He went down for the count.”
“Zap, zap, zap? Henry questioned.
Ashley shrugged. “You seen it yet? Kinda big. With the old stunners we would have needed a heck of a lot more fire power.”
Henry frowned and went to his computer, opening up the stunner schematics. “I was hoping you’d only have to fire once.”
“Henry,” Ashley touched his shoulder. “They worked really well though!”
Henry looked up at her. “I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
Ashley turned his chair and touched his face. She rubbed her thumb along his jaw then leaned in to kiss him once. “I’m okay.”
Henry stood, drawing her into a tight hug. After a moment he said, “I guess I shouldn’t worry, huh? You and Kate can pretty much take on anything?”
Ashley looped her arms around his shoulders. “It’s nice you care. And we can take on anything because we have all these wonderful toys.”
“Wonderful toys, huh?”
“Yeah. This really great guy makes ‘em for us.”
“Does he now?”
“Mmhmm.” She raised up on her toes just slightly to give him a peck on the lips. “I think you got smarter while I was gone.”
Henry rolled his eyes.
“Or maybe you just stopped spending brain power worrying about being a werewolf.” She rubbed her thumb over his jaw. “It looks good on you.”
Henry grinned and she smiled in answer. She grabbed his hands and began tugging him away from the computer. “Come on! you owe me a movie.”
“I do?”
“Yep! We’re going to watch Sherlock Holmes.” She didn’t really care if she got caught up on all the movies she’d missed, but movies meant lounging on the couch with Henry, and if the movie ended up being boring and there was making out? Well, she wasn’t gonna say no.
Henry grinned. “Hey, yeah!”
They’d just settled onto the couch when their cell phones went off.
[My office. ASAP - M]
“Guess we’ll have to watch this another time,” Ashley said, sliding off the couch. She offered a hand back, which Henry took, and she hauled him up. Before it would have been a slight effort but now it wasn’t.
Henry caught her eye and smiled, reassuringly. He squeezed her hand. “Come on.”
Boston
Alec leaned against the wall in the hallway, silently monitoring the progress of the auction from his phone. Three days and soon they’d have two of the set; not bad. People milled in and out of the room, many talking on headsets, so Alec was hardly alone in talking to the air.
“Online bidding’s dropped off. How’s it look in there?”
“Looks like the gentleman in the bad suit is going to get it,” Sophie whispered. She was seated in the fourth row, pretending to be a museium curator. She’d been on the inside moments ago to help Parker get into place.
“That means our egg is up next,” Nate said. “How we doing Parker?” Nate was seated on the other side of the room near the back. He’d placed a few bets on one of the earlier items, dropping out before the bidding got serious.
“Ready.”
Alec slipped back into the room to monitor the auction. The seats were all taken so he grabbed a spot on the wall in the back of the room like a few others had done.
“Next up is an egg from the famed House of Fabergé. Believed to have been constructed in Russia in 1901, this egg is unusual as it has no discernible surprise. It belonged to a set of three, one of which is presently being exhibited in the Field Museum in Chicago, on loan from a private collector. The third egg is currently unaccounted for.” The auctioneer paused as the handlers set the egg on the pedestal to let the crowd get a good look at it.
Alec smirked to himself. The fake he’d produced had been a master work and no one had figured out the switch yet. Parker had the second of the set ready to replace the little beauty on the pedestal at the front of the room. He tuned out the auctioneer as he rattled off the size and number of the gemstones set into the solid gold egg. Alec was already intimately familiar with the specifications of the egg.
“The bidding will start at ten thousand dollars. Do I hear ten? Ten. Do I hear fifteen?” The auctioneer proceeded to run the auction with bids coming in over the phone from Russia and Dubai, as well as two people present who really wanted that damn egg. Alec almost felt sorry for them, except they were dealing with stolen goods and this particular auction house was due for some comeuppance.
Alec watched as the bidding started slowing just shy of a quarter million. Some dude from Russia versus some dark-haired woman.
“The bid is at twenty thousand. Do I hear twenty five?” The auctioneer looked expectantly at the woman. Her head shook slightly in the negative.
“Twenty Thousand to the gentleman with placard four!” the auctioneer announced, rapping his gavel. “This concludes the bidding of this morning's auctions. We will reconvene at one pm sharp.”
“Parker, that’s your cue,” Nate advised. “Hardison and Elliot?”
“On it,” Alec said, rolling out the door, phone in hand. His job was to slow the exchange of cash into the auction house, just enough that Parker had an opportunity to replace the real egg with a fake. Judging by the angry Russian curses, his program was working just fine. “You’ve got about thirty second Parker.”
“Just about...Done!” Parker chirped.
“Elliot?”
“On the west end of the building. Hurry up. I’m getting looks.”
Alec tucked his phone away and pushed away from the door, nearly bumping in to someone; a guy with curly hair and a nice jacket. Maybe some kind of academic. Beside him was dark woman who gave Alec a quick evaluating look.
“Sorry, man!”
The man smiled. “My fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“It’s all good,” Alec smiled and headed down the halls. He checked his pockets a few feet away, just in case, but he found everything there.
“What’s the hold up?” Elliot growled as Alec climbed into the van. Today he was playing get away driver. Earlier he’d delivered the crate Parker had been hiding inside. Parker was tucked into the back, case with the egg stowed at her feet. Sophie sat beside her and Nate had claimed shotgun.
“Crowd in the hall,” Alec explained as he hauled the door closed behind them. “Let’s roll.”
The drive back to HQ was easy enough, even if they got stuck in rush hour. Alec put his earbuds in and sat back in his seat. About half an hour in, Parker blatantly stole his left earbud and put it in her ear. Alec winked at her and handed over the iPod. She shrugged a shoulder then handed back his phone, wallet, wrist watch and a pen he hadn’t known he’d been carrying. Shaking his head, Alec let her pick the music for the rest of the ride.
“Let’s see what we got,” Nate said as he dropped his coat onto a hanger back at his apartment. Parker put the case on the table and pulled out the egg. She turned it from side to side, watching it catch he afternoon light.
“What’s so special about this anyway?” Elliot picked it up, handling it much like a football.
“Well aside from being a priceless work of art and historical significance, the gems and gold are worth a fortune,” Sophie explained, carefully taking the egg from him. “That’s odd.”
“What?” Nate asked, looking up from the drink he was pouring.
“I got a good look at this piece before it went up and one of the diamonds was missing.”
“Are more missing?”
“No,” Sophie said, turning the egg over in her hands. “Quite the opposite. The missing diamond is here.”
“So maybe the auction house replaced it?” Hardison suggested.
“No, I saw it perhaps twenty minutes before it went up,” Sophie explained, “Restoration work is typically done weeks before it goes up. The staff curator was complaining it had come off again that morning and they didn’t have time to get it put in.”
“So what? This isn’t the real egg?” Elliot asked.
“Let me see,” Parker said, plucking it out of Sophie’s hands. She peered at the diamonds critically then sniffed the egg.
“Parker wait-”
Parker licked the egg. She frowned, tasting the material. “This is supposed to be twenty-four carat, right?”
“Yeah,” Alec spoke up.
“It’s only twelve carat gold. The diamonds might be lab created too.” She set the egg on the table, glaring at it. “We stole a fake.”
Alec, Elliot, Sophie and Nate exchanged looks.
“So where’s the real one?” Nate asked.
“There must have been another thief there,” Sophie answered. ‘They must have made the switch right before it was put up for auction.”
“I’m going to check the one we grabbed from Chicago.” Parker stated, expression thunderous. She didn’t quite stomp off in the direction of the safe.
Nate pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hardison-”
“I’m on it. If there was another thief there I’ll find em.”
It took awhile but finally Hardison sent everyone a text saying he’d found their thieves, and had assembled a briefing on them. Nate came downstairs having changed his clothing from the moderately rich dilettante he’d been playing. Sophie was already seated and Elliot slouched in the chair beside her. Parker had decided to take a seat on top of the counter. Nate poured two fingers of scotch and joined them, taking one of the free chairs. They were all focused, the sting of losing their target still fresh; now it wasn’t just about helping Mr. Kuznetsov, it was personal. While Nate was slightly wary, he trusted his people not to get too over zealous. They’d been up against a top notch crew before. They’d taken their lumps and had learned.
“Lay it out for us, Hardison,” Nate said gesturing for the tech to start up the briefing. “Who are we were up against?”
“After some digging by some absolutely brilliant search algorithms, you’re welcome, I finally found our guys. This isn’t like when we went against Stark. I gotta say, this is one of the weirder groups I’ve had to profile. Weird like call Agent Mulder weird.” He looked at the group expectantly. “No one? Agent-? Really?”
“Just get on with it,” Elliot growled.
Rolling his eyes Hardison hit a button on his remote. “First up, we have their thief. She’s was the key to the rest.” A few images of a woman of Indian descent in her late twenties to early thirties appeared on screen. Most pictures were surveillance shots but the image in the lower right was a mugshot from a few years previous. “Kate Freelander. And yes, I checked, that’s the girl’s real name.”
Parker’s hand shot up into the air. She was frowning slightly as she eyed her opposite number.
“Yes Parker?” Nate said, calling on her. Beside him Sophie chuckled softly.
Parker withdrew her hand. “I think I’ve seen her before.”
“We were just at the same auction, Parker,” Sophie reminded her gently.
“No, I mean I think I’ve seen her before that. I didn’t see her yesterday.”
“She’s one of the people I bumped into in the hall, which is what made me think to look her up. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve seen her though,” Hardison drawled, bringing up the thief’s rap sheet. “Girl’s worked in Mumbai, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, Dubai, a brief stint in Sydney and a few other places. She’s not a specialist and until a few years ago, she was one of those one-stop shop operations, pulling grifts, thefts and cons solo. Since then she’s almost completely dropped off the radar.”
“I haven’t run across her,” Sophie mused. “What’s she deal in?”
“Well she’s got some of the regular stuff, but the bulk of her work is where it begins to get weird,” Hardison said, pulling up another screen. There were a couple shiny things the likes of which Sophie or Parker might have wished to steal, but some of the other items were, well, not. There was a shriveled and dessicated bird’s claw, the skeleton of something with exceedingly large tusks, a pelt that looked like the fur was made of spun gold and some statuary among the other esoteric odds and ends.
“Ah,” Sophie mused, “Antiquities and natural relics. Paleontological finds, cultural items of significance, reportedly mystical artifacts, exotic creatures, those sorts of things.”
“Right, the Indiana Jones stuff. Lucrative if you know the right people but it’s a small, competitive market from what I’ve been hearing,” Hardison commented.
“Fairly brutal too,” Sophie added. “Never was worth the risk to get into that area. I preferred paintings and statuary.” She winked at Nate. “Those rarely bit back.”
“Who’d want an eagle claw?” Parker questioned, face twisting into an expression of dislike.
“Who’s next,” Nate prompted before Parker could get rolling.
“This is their tech guy. Henry Foss.” Images of a scruffy looking guy in his early to mid thirties showed up on screen. No mug images this time, but a bunch of surveillance photos and a couple silly pictures from some sort of event where everyone was in costume. Comicon, Nate thought it was called. “Undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer science from Carnegie Mellon, Graduate degrees from Cal Tech. Couple patents. He’s the real deal.”
“Now here’s the thing,” Hardison said, scratching his chin. “I’m pretty sure I’ve run into this guy at Defcon. He’s a known white hat.”
“He’s not wearing a hat,” Parker pointed out, hand raised in the air.
“It’s a metaphor,” Elliot told her.
“Right. White hats are hackers who work for the man. They’re paid to hack into security systems so holes can be closed.”
“So you’re saying he’s clean,” Nate summarized.
“If he’s not, he doesn’t do much and he’s good enough to cover his tracks when he does.”
“So he’s better than you?” Eliot drawled.
“Hey man, ain’t nobody better than me.”
“Boys,” Sophie interjected before the two could go at it again, “Let’s stay on task.”
“Next guy, near as I can figure, probably does a lot of what Sophie does. Will Zimmerman. Ex-FBI profiler. He got a little too into the X-Files for them and got the boot.” Hardison again looked expectant then rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. Don’t any of you know what the X-Files is? Seriously, no one gets that?”
“Do they come before the Y files?” Parker asked, legs swinging from her perch.
Hardison pinched the bridge of his nose. “I so know what I am putting in all ya’ll’s netflix queues.”
“Hardison,” Nate interjected. “Briefing?” He dimly recalled seeing the man at the auction. He’d not been doing anything at the time that had caught Nate’s attention, though.
"Right. Zimmerman. He got hired on with this group about four years back. After the FBI he tried to work with a couple police departments but it didn’t work out so well. Like I said, the guy was into the weird and freaky; strange disappearances, bigfoot sightings, alien abductions, that kind of stuff. He was good at his job, which is probably why the Feds picked him up in the first place, and why his bosses let him chase the boogey man for so long.”
He clicked the remote and Zimmerman’s FBI files scrolled up the screens, his ID photo appearing in the upper right. FBI Zimmerman was younger, cleaner-cut and had a boyish smile. In the more recent photos he looked scruffier and harder, but Nate didn’t think looked jaded; at least not yet. “Eventually they couldn’t take it and he got shown the door but he’s not a rent-a-cop. This is top-grade BAU talent we’re up against.”
“Who is he working for now?” Sophie asked.
“Hang on, I’m getting to it,” Hardison said, holding up forestalling hands. “Ya’ll haven’t seen the really weird ones yet.”
“Who’s their muscle?” Elliot asked, almost eager.
“So glad you asked.” Hardison clicked the remote over his shoulder without looking at the screen. “Meet Ashley Magnus.”
The woman on screen was in her early to mid twenties, blonde, blue eyed, and looked like she shared more in common with Parker than Elliot. Looking at the pictures, she seemed to have two modes; Cheerfully bubbly and deadly serious. The surveillance photo from the auction had her propping up one of the walls, looking a little bored.
Elliot made a noise. “A kid?”
“According to my sources, Ms. Magnus is proficient in multiple types of firearms, and has several years of Shaolin Kung fu, Aikido and something called Krav Maga, whatever that is.”
“Israeli fighting style,” Elliot interrupted, eyes narrowing at the screen. “Beats up all the other fighting schools and takes their techniques. Dirty. Deadly. Effective.”
“Oh like that Moussad chick you-”
Hardison was cut off by Elliot’s glare.
“Riiight. Anyway, she’s got a reputation in the black market circles for being a spitfire and really good at what she does. But the weird thing is that according to about half my sources, she’s dead.”
Elliot snorted and sat back in his seat. “I’ve been marked MIA before.” He shrugged at Sophie and Parker’s questioning glances. “Confused battlefields and bureaucracy.”
“This isn’t missing, this was dead, dead. K.I.A.” Hardison clicked a button and a bunch of government files popped up on the screen as well as an obituary. “Her mother had her declared, then almost a year ago, she got her status changed back to living.”
Parker raised her hand. “Maybe she’s a zombie.”
“I doubt that Parker. What’s more likely is that she was assumed KIA and was then recovered,” Sophie told her.
Hardison was shaking his head. “That only happens in movies, man. Making up a fake identity for someone like me? Easy. Declaring someone officially dead? Also fairly easy. But declaring someone who was dead is now alive? Actually not so easy. That’s the kind of stuff they really watch out for.”
“Insurance reasons,” Nate said, sipping his drink. “There was a real problem with it in the 60s and 70s.” And in the 40’s and the 50s, but the modern system was particularly watchful for that.
“Exactly,” Hardison said, pointing the remote at Nate, “Yet somehow, she’s back in all the main governmental systems as if she’d never left. That doesn’t happen.”
“You said she was only dead in half your systems,” Nate pointed out, swirling the scotch in his glass.
“She’s still missing on a bunch of the smaller government lists, in all the commercial stuff and most of the non-standard, non-official databases. Watch-lists, Black Market networks, fringe elements, that kind of thing.” He held up a long finger, “With a few exceptions, all in the freaky black market exotics.”
“So she doesn’t get junk mail,” Sophie smiled. “Sign me up,” she drawled, though Nate was fairly certain Sophie didn’t get much junk mail, if any, on any of her various personas.
“Oh, I can do that if you want,” Hardison offered. “Just let me know who its being sent to and I can get you out of that system.”
“Hardison.”
“Right. So yeah, this is really weird. You either need to have some high level hacking-”
“Which you said they had,” Elliot pointed out.
Hardison nodded and continued, “Or you need to have some serious clout with some key people.” He clicked his remote again and the screens showed a woman in perhaps her early forties, well dressed, with dark hair and blue eyes. Nate remembered her as the next highest bidder at the auction. “This is Doctor Helen Magnus.”
“The girl’s mom?” Elliot asked.
Hardison pointed at him. “Bingo. She’s got a whole bunch of letters after her name I had to google, and she’s got some pull with certain governments, but that isn’t the weird part.”
Sophie looked up. “Did you say ‘Governments?’ As in plural?”
“Oh yeah, fingers in a lot of pies..But seriously I started tracking her down figuring she’s their version of Nate? The rabbit hole goes deep my friends.”
“Oh!” Parker raised her hand ”I know that one! The movie with Cowboy Curtis and the guy from Speed!”
Hardison blinked at her, surprised, then his face split into a slow grin. “She can be taught.”
Parker beamed at him then at the group and swung her legs.
Nate shook his head. “Just tell us, Hardison.”
Hardison held up both hands, “According to everything I can find on this woman, she’s over a hundred and sixty years old.”
“Oh come on,” Elliot scoffed.
“I told you this was getting into some weird shit, man. I found a record of a Helen Magnus attending Oxford in the eighteen-eighties.” He pointed the remote and a scanned copy of a registrar’s book popped up on screen next to the transcribed page.
“So she has the same name as someone who lived in the eighteen hundreds,” Sophie said, “it happens.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but Oxford’s on this self-history kick and they’re digitizing and transcribing all their old stuff. Look at the signature. Now I found her again on the deed to some abandoned monastery in the Pacifc Northewest in the late forties.” He pulled up a scanned copy of the document and set them side by side. The signatures did look remarkably similar to Nate.
“She’s on some coroner’s documentation as the M.E. of record here in sixty five, then again in eighty nine and here in ninety one and a bunch more but you get the picture.” He pulled up those documents as well and the signature looked the same in each location.
“Hardison, that doesn’t prove anything but that this woman’s a successful identity thief,” Nate said. He took a sip of his scotch.
“And that was what I thought, until I started to get hits in the image databases. This one’s from Princeton.” He put up a picture of a group standing in front of a chalkboard. At the center was Albert Einstein. Standing two people over was a woman who bore a remarkable resemblance to this Helen Magnus. “Einstein. She partied with Einstein. And what’s even cooler,” he trailed off and pulled up another picture supposedly of Helen Magnus. This also featured a man with dark hair and a thick, dark moustache. “She knew Tesla. Nikola Tesla. And don’t you dare say you don’t know who he was.”
“Yeah, yeah, the guy who invented radio,” Nate said, frowning at the images. “She probably has the same name as her mother or grandmother or something.”
“I thought of that too and you know what? The face recognition software I borrowed from the Boston PD say it’s the same woman.” He clicked another button and the three faces were pulled out of their photos and a variety of lines were drawn on them in red with dots appearing on notable facial features. The lines and dots of the software fell in exactly the same spots in all three of the pictures.
“That has to be a fake,” Sophie said, leaning forward in her seat a little.
“No photoshop, I swear. I checked the files. No seams. No composites. These are one hundred percent legit.”
“Oh come on,” Elliot spoke up, gesturing at the screen. “You’re telling us this woman hasn’t aged since the eighteen eighties?”
Hardison held up his hands. “Dude, I told you this was some Grade-A, weird-ass information.”
Nate rubbed at this forehead, “Alright, let’s focus on the job here. It doesn’t matter if she’s forty or a hundred and forty. We still have a job. You got anything else for us, Hardison?”
“If you didn’t like Doc Magnus, you’re not gonna like the rest.”
Nate made a rolling gesture with his hand, “Yeah, yeah, just give it to us.”
“Alright. So, this Dr. Magnus runs something called the Sanctuary. It’s a global network of some kind. Now I’m not real clear on all of it, but its some kind of part nature reserve, part half-way house, part museum.” He clicked a button and a large gothic estate filled the screen. “When I found her name on the deed I went looking and this is the home base. There are bunches of these places all over the world, but this is the primary facility.”
“What does she want with an egg?” Parker asked.
“No idea,” Hardison said, “All I know is that the train to weirdsville left a couple hours ago.”
“Where’s the egg now, Hardison?” Nate asked. He poured himself another couple fingers.
Hardison pointed at the gothic monastary. “I think they’re back here.”
“You think?” Elliot questioned.
“Look man, I think they must have some kind of private jet. One minute they’re here in Boston, the next there are some credit card purchases in Old City. If you want me to confirm that I’d need to physically go there and find out.” He shook his head.
“Well,” Nate said, looking at the screens. “It looks like we’re taking a trip. Pack your bags, people. We’re headed west.”
To be continued... Part II
Rating: Pg-13
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fluff, Crossover, AU
Crossover! Sanctuary and Leverage
Summary: The Leverage Team takes on a most unusual job.
Notes: Written for kaitlia777 for Sanctuary_santa. She requested "Henry/Ashley! Shippy is best, friendship is good too. Will/Kate. Outsider POV's and Crossovers"
So you get Sanctuary crossed over with Leverage! :D I hope you like it! This first part ended up being heavy on the Leverage side, but I was really hitting on the crossover/Outside perspective thing XD Anyway this is part 1. The rest is being worked on and finalized. Oh my god I am having so much FUN with this. I hope you enjoy!
Boston
Sophie sipped her coffee, quietly evaluating the man sitting in front of them. Mr. Kuznetsov
was perhaps in his late thirties or early forties. His beard was touched with grey and it would have been rather dashing if it had been trimmed perhaps a bit more neatly. Sophie couldn’t blame him though from what she’d heard already. His eyes were a bit red.
“Mr. Kuznetsov-”
“Please,” the man said, cutting Sophie off. He held yo a hand. “Call me Sasha. My friends call me Sasha.”
“Sasha,” Sophie said warmly. She reached across the table and touched the man’s hand, associating herself with the smile and friendly feelings. “We’ve heard you’re in a bit of a bind. Would you be willing to tell your story to my colleagues? I know it’s rough, but-”
“Of course, of course.” Kuznetsov Looked at them all then focused on Nate. “My wife, Marie, passed last year. Pancreatic cancer.”
There we murmurs of sympathy from the group seated around the table in the bar.
“It is okay, she is at peace now. But my wife’s family had three relics from before the revolution. They’d been passed to her by her mother, but her uncle took them. At the time we thought it was what had been specific in her grandmother’s will. It is now proven that this is not the case and those relics should have come to my wife and after her, our children.”
Mr. Kuznetsov placed an old document, written in Russian, on the table. Elliot turned it around so he could read it. Sophie arched an eyebrow. Caught, Elliot sat back in his seat.
“Her uncle sold them for money. We tracked them down but the buyer had lost them to a thief. Many years we spent tracking them down. We finally found where they were located and she gets sick.”
“How awful,” Sophie sympathized.
“My wife asked me to recover them, so they might be in the family again. They are worth a great deal of money, but to us, they are absolutely priceless.” He put another document on the table. it was a flier from the field museum. “I had thought all was lost and then I saw this on the internets.” The flyier showed a picture of some fancy, gem encrusted sculptures in the shape of eggs. “This is one,” he said tapping one of the eggs. “There are two others.”
Nate nodded, taking the man’s story in. “Mr. Kuzentsov,”
“Sasha. Please.”
“Sasha,” Nate repeated, I’ll need to discuss this with my team, but I think we can get your relics back.”
The man’s sorrowful face split into a broad grin. “Thank you!”
Chicago.
It was too bad the dinosaur was dead, Parker decided. It would have been more of a challenge if there had been a real dinosaur stalking the halls of the Field Museum. Parker smiled up at Sue’s skeleton and waited. The security system was a Davison and Lecht 750-I. While one of the more difficult security systems to get around, it wasn’t as bad as a Sterekno by any stretch of the imagination. At least not here in the big entrance hall where most of the systems were stepped down because of the gala. The difficult part would come when Parker got to the target.
The dinosaur would have made things more interesting, too, she thought as she looked around the party. She’d considered lifting some wallets just to give herself something to do, but Nate had already told her not to do that. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t have put them back. Tonight she wasn’t playing the part of the waiter, but of Sophie’s personal assistant. Sophie had told her PAs were all but invisible at these functions. Sophie hadn’t told her it would be boring. She would have preferred to pull a regular heist, but the fundraiser for the museum meant they didn’t have that as an option.
“Okay, I have control of their cameras,” Hardison said.
Over her earpiece, Parker could hear the clickity clack as he typed. It was a good sound, like a tumbler falling into place. It meant things were working smoothly.
“You’re up Sophie,” Nate prompted. Nate was always calm. Parker liked that about Nate.
Sophie smoothly turned from the person she’d been chatting with and began to harangue Parker. Parker let her eyes widen and cowered away as she’d been told to do. Parker stammered something that sounded appropriate. Sophie’s eyes did that sparkle thing that always happened when Parker acted well. Parker got out of there before she could mess up her part. Plus it was really, really boring in there and now she finally got to have fun.
Avoiding security was abysmally easy. The row Sophie had incited in a couple of the Gala guests had drawn the interest of the rent-a-cops and the exhibit was wide open to Parker. Using the items Hardison had given her, she disabled the motion sensors. The can of compressed air froze in her hands and was unpleasant, but she waited until Hardison told her she was okay to continue.
“Sensors are down, you’re good to go, girl.”
Smiling, Parker slipped out of the heels Sophie had insisted she wear and sprayed the air in the room. Red laser lights appeared in a spiderweb. Parker took a look and then tightened the satchel against her body. She vaulted, twisted, stepped and spun over the lines. Easy as pie and a heck of a lot more fun than standing around listening to Sophie work the crowd.
“You’ve got thirty seconds on the case,” Hardison advised.
Parker carefully inserted the key she’d pocked from the curator Sophie had chatted up earlier and opened the case. The egg inside the case was jewel encrusted, the diamonds sparkling in the spotlight. Parker carefully removed the duplicate egg from the case at her hip and swapped the real one for the fake. It was kind of like that Indiana Jones movie. It would have been really fun if a big rock would have come down for her to outrun, but she guessed it might have smashed too many things here in a museum. She closed the case and locked it.
“Done.”
She could hear Hardison’s sigh of relief as she put the real egg into her satchel and crossed the lasers again. She slipped on her shoes and left, rejoining the party.
“There you are!” Sophie said, rounding on her assistant.
Parker held up her blackberry. “Main office.”
“Oh,” Sophie said, snatching the phone away from Parker. “Brown.”
“We’re all set,” Nate said over the comms.
“Finally!” Sophie exclaimed.
“Time to hit the exit.”
Sophie rolled her eyes dramatically. “Honestly, can’t you do anything right over there?” She asked. She shooed Parker off. “Go get the car.”
Parker nodded and trotted off, the cowed assistant to the high-priced executive off to get the car from the valet. She gave the stub to the valet and he left to get their car.
“Hey,” the other valet said, winking.
“Hi,” Parker said, not making eye contact. Guys pestered her more if she made eye contact. The night was chilly and she rubbed her arms.
“Gotta be hard working for that dragon lady,” the valet observed.
Parker shrugged. “It’s a job.”
“Is that car here yet?” Sophie demanded, saving Parker from further forced conversation.
“Just here!” Parker said, practically pulling the valet out of the seat and pressing a ten into his hand. She hadn’t wanted to do that, but Nate and Sophie both said it was what was done. She hopped into the driver’s seat. It was kinda fun being the getaway driver again, even if they didn’t know she’d boosted anything else.
Sophie sat in the back and Parker pulled away from the curb. “Well, “Sophie mused as she undid her hair from the severe updo she’d been wearing, “That’s done. Where’s the egg?”
Parker nodded at the satchel. “It’s in the bag.”
Sophie reached forward and took the back, removing the egg from within. “Its a bit gaudy,” she said, turning it over in her hands. “Looks like there’s some kind of catch. I wonder if it opens.”
“Wonder later. We’ve got a flight to catch,” Nate reminded them.
“Right,” Sophie agreed, pulling out the lined case they would use to transport the egg. “See you at the gate in twenty.”
Old City
Ashley pulled the freshly laundered hoodie out of the hamper. It was still warm and smelled like home. Ashley sniffed the fabric and gave Biggie a smile over it. “Thanks.”
She’d missed home so much when she’d been gone. When Mom had finally let her out of the infirmary, returning to a freshly cleaned and laundered room had almost, well, okay, she had broken down into tears. So had Mom. And while once she would have denied herself that release, It had been okay to just hold hug her mother and cry. She’d finally come home and maybe everything would be okay again.
Biggie grunted and placed a full basket of half-folded laundry at her feet. “This is yours.”
Ashley smiled and pulled the hoodie on. She took the basket to her room and began to fold the laundry. So much of it was new. Mom had donated much of her old wardrobe, saving a few items she’d treasured or that she’d known were Ashley’s favorites. Ashley had been okay with it. Yes, it had been a little painful, there was an initial feeling of having been tossed away. The knee-jerk reaction had passed though; she truly wouldn’t have wanted her mother to cling if she had been dead. Looking at the items that had been carefully saved, she’d felt loved. Maybe it was strange, but then most of her life in the past couple years hadn’t exactly been anything passably normal.
It was a work in progress, but it was getting better.
Mom had finally cleared her to go on missions and she’d been doing well. The new girl was pretty cool. She got the impression her mother had been worried about how she’d react to the new muscle. They had a lot in common, so maybe Mom had expected her to instantly hate Kate or something. Ashley kinda liked having someone to hang with and the girl knew her stuff, so Ash had no problems working with her. Hell, it make a lot of obnoxious things cakewalk. Well, the new skills she’d acquired helped as much as the new talent did. Still, it was nice to have a female friend vaguely around her age with some of the same interests. Kate had helped her pick out a lot of the new stuff. They didn’t exactly agree on accessories, but it had been nice to do something as utterly normal as shopping.
Ashley began to put away her clothes. The relaxed outfit of lounging pants, tank top and warm hoodie felt fantastic after a weekend on a mission abroad; her first! Hopefully one of many more. Alaska had been cold and often miserable, but Kate and she had gotten the job done faster than expected, in part thanks to the new skills.
The new skills were...they were a work in progress too. Tesla had already declared her the “Worst Vampire Ever,” since she apparently hadn’t gotten much desire to take over the world. Or maybe he was just jealous since he wasn’t a vampire anymore. The new skills...She did and didn’t like using them. She liked being a badass, she liked they helped her get her job done, but there were many awful things about them she didn’t especially want to remember. Ashley tried not thinking about that too often.
Life was getting better in really unexpected ways too. Ashley smiled to herself as she slipped out of her room. Henry’s lab had grown and expanded when she’d been away.
“Hey,” she called.
Henry looked up giving her a huge grin. “Hey! How’d the new toys work out for you guys?”
“Great!” Ashley beamed. “Love the new range on the stunners. Kate and I caught tal, dark and hairy between us and zap, zap, zap!” She mimed firing a gun. “He went down for the count.”
“Zap, zap, zap? Henry questioned.
Ashley shrugged. “You seen it yet? Kinda big. With the old stunners we would have needed a heck of a lot more fire power.”
Henry frowned and went to his computer, opening up the stunner schematics. “I was hoping you’d only have to fire once.”
“Henry,” Ashley touched his shoulder. “They worked really well though!”
Henry looked up at her. “I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
Ashley turned his chair and touched his face. She rubbed her thumb along his jaw then leaned in to kiss him once. “I’m okay.”
Henry stood, drawing her into a tight hug. After a moment he said, “I guess I shouldn’t worry, huh? You and Kate can pretty much take on anything?”
Ashley looped her arms around his shoulders. “It’s nice you care. And we can take on anything because we have all these wonderful toys.”
“Wonderful toys, huh?”
“Yeah. This really great guy makes ‘em for us.”
“Does he now?”
“Mmhmm.” She raised up on her toes just slightly to give him a peck on the lips. “I think you got smarter while I was gone.”
Henry rolled his eyes.
“Or maybe you just stopped spending brain power worrying about being a werewolf.” She rubbed her thumb over his jaw. “It looks good on you.”
Henry grinned and she smiled in answer. She grabbed his hands and began tugging him away from the computer. “Come on! you owe me a movie.”
“I do?”
“Yep! We’re going to watch Sherlock Holmes.” She didn’t really care if she got caught up on all the movies she’d missed, but movies meant lounging on the couch with Henry, and if the movie ended up being boring and there was making out? Well, she wasn’t gonna say no.
Henry grinned. “Hey, yeah!”
They’d just settled onto the couch when their cell phones went off.
[My office. ASAP - M]
“Guess we’ll have to watch this another time,” Ashley said, sliding off the couch. She offered a hand back, which Henry took, and she hauled him up. Before it would have been a slight effort but now it wasn’t.
Henry caught her eye and smiled, reassuringly. He squeezed her hand. “Come on.”
Boston
Alec leaned against the wall in the hallway, silently monitoring the progress of the auction from his phone. Three days and soon they’d have two of the set; not bad. People milled in and out of the room, many talking on headsets, so Alec was hardly alone in talking to the air.
“Online bidding’s dropped off. How’s it look in there?”
“Looks like the gentleman in the bad suit is going to get it,” Sophie whispered. She was seated in the fourth row, pretending to be a museium curator. She’d been on the inside moments ago to help Parker get into place.
“That means our egg is up next,” Nate said. “How we doing Parker?” Nate was seated on the other side of the room near the back. He’d placed a few bets on one of the earlier items, dropping out before the bidding got serious.
“Ready.”
Alec slipped back into the room to monitor the auction. The seats were all taken so he grabbed a spot on the wall in the back of the room like a few others had done.
“Next up is an egg from the famed House of Fabergé. Believed to have been constructed in Russia in 1901, this egg is unusual as it has no discernible surprise. It belonged to a set of three, one of which is presently being exhibited in the Field Museum in Chicago, on loan from a private collector. The third egg is currently unaccounted for.” The auctioneer paused as the handlers set the egg on the pedestal to let the crowd get a good look at it.
Alec smirked to himself. The fake he’d produced had been a master work and no one had figured out the switch yet. Parker had the second of the set ready to replace the little beauty on the pedestal at the front of the room. He tuned out the auctioneer as he rattled off the size and number of the gemstones set into the solid gold egg. Alec was already intimately familiar with the specifications of the egg.
“The bidding will start at ten thousand dollars. Do I hear ten? Ten. Do I hear fifteen?” The auctioneer proceeded to run the auction with bids coming in over the phone from Russia and Dubai, as well as two people present who really wanted that damn egg. Alec almost felt sorry for them, except they were dealing with stolen goods and this particular auction house was due for some comeuppance.
Alec watched as the bidding started slowing just shy of a quarter million. Some dude from Russia versus some dark-haired woman.
“The bid is at twenty thousand. Do I hear twenty five?” The auctioneer looked expectantly at the woman. Her head shook slightly in the negative.
“Twenty Thousand to the gentleman with placard four!” the auctioneer announced, rapping his gavel. “This concludes the bidding of this morning's auctions. We will reconvene at one pm sharp.”
“Parker, that’s your cue,” Nate advised. “Hardison and Elliot?”
“On it,” Alec said, rolling out the door, phone in hand. His job was to slow the exchange of cash into the auction house, just enough that Parker had an opportunity to replace the real egg with a fake. Judging by the angry Russian curses, his program was working just fine. “You’ve got about thirty second Parker.”
“Just about...Done!” Parker chirped.
“Elliot?”
“On the west end of the building. Hurry up. I’m getting looks.”
Alec tucked his phone away and pushed away from the door, nearly bumping in to someone; a guy with curly hair and a nice jacket. Maybe some kind of academic. Beside him was dark woman who gave Alec a quick evaluating look.
“Sorry, man!”
The man smiled. “My fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“It’s all good,” Alec smiled and headed down the halls. He checked his pockets a few feet away, just in case, but he found everything there.
“What’s the hold up?” Elliot growled as Alec climbed into the van. Today he was playing get away driver. Earlier he’d delivered the crate Parker had been hiding inside. Parker was tucked into the back, case with the egg stowed at her feet. Sophie sat beside her and Nate had claimed shotgun.
“Crowd in the hall,” Alec explained as he hauled the door closed behind them. “Let’s roll.”
The drive back to HQ was easy enough, even if they got stuck in rush hour. Alec put his earbuds in and sat back in his seat. About half an hour in, Parker blatantly stole his left earbud and put it in her ear. Alec winked at her and handed over the iPod. She shrugged a shoulder then handed back his phone, wallet, wrist watch and a pen he hadn’t known he’d been carrying. Shaking his head, Alec let her pick the music for the rest of the ride.
“Let’s see what we got,” Nate said as he dropped his coat onto a hanger back at his apartment. Parker put the case on the table and pulled out the egg. She turned it from side to side, watching it catch he afternoon light.
“What’s so special about this anyway?” Elliot picked it up, handling it much like a football.
“Well aside from being a priceless work of art and historical significance, the gems and gold are worth a fortune,” Sophie explained, carefully taking the egg from him. “That’s odd.”
“What?” Nate asked, looking up from the drink he was pouring.
“I got a good look at this piece before it went up and one of the diamonds was missing.”
“Are more missing?”
“No,” Sophie said, turning the egg over in her hands. “Quite the opposite. The missing diamond is here.”
“So maybe the auction house replaced it?” Hardison suggested.
“No, I saw it perhaps twenty minutes before it went up,” Sophie explained, “Restoration work is typically done weeks before it goes up. The staff curator was complaining it had come off again that morning and they didn’t have time to get it put in.”
“So what? This isn’t the real egg?” Elliot asked.
“Let me see,” Parker said, plucking it out of Sophie’s hands. She peered at the diamonds critically then sniffed the egg.
“Parker wait-”
Parker licked the egg. She frowned, tasting the material. “This is supposed to be twenty-four carat, right?”
“Yeah,” Alec spoke up.
“It’s only twelve carat gold. The diamonds might be lab created too.” She set the egg on the table, glaring at it. “We stole a fake.”
Alec, Elliot, Sophie and Nate exchanged looks.
“So where’s the real one?” Nate asked.
“There must have been another thief there,” Sophie answered. ‘They must have made the switch right before it was put up for auction.”
“I’m going to check the one we grabbed from Chicago.” Parker stated, expression thunderous. She didn’t quite stomp off in the direction of the safe.
Nate pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hardison-”
“I’m on it. If there was another thief there I’ll find em.”
It took awhile but finally Hardison sent everyone a text saying he’d found their thieves, and had assembled a briefing on them. Nate came downstairs having changed his clothing from the moderately rich dilettante he’d been playing. Sophie was already seated and Elliot slouched in the chair beside her. Parker had decided to take a seat on top of the counter. Nate poured two fingers of scotch and joined them, taking one of the free chairs. They were all focused, the sting of losing their target still fresh; now it wasn’t just about helping Mr. Kuznetsov, it was personal. While Nate was slightly wary, he trusted his people not to get too over zealous. They’d been up against a top notch crew before. They’d taken their lumps and had learned.
“Lay it out for us, Hardison,” Nate said gesturing for the tech to start up the briefing. “Who are we were up against?”
“After some digging by some absolutely brilliant search algorithms, you’re welcome, I finally found our guys. This isn’t like when we went against Stark. I gotta say, this is one of the weirder groups I’ve had to profile. Weird like call Agent Mulder weird.” He looked at the group expectantly. “No one? Agent-? Really?”
“Just get on with it,” Elliot growled.
Rolling his eyes Hardison hit a button on his remote. “First up, we have their thief. She’s was the key to the rest.” A few images of a woman of Indian descent in her late twenties to early thirties appeared on screen. Most pictures were surveillance shots but the image in the lower right was a mugshot from a few years previous. “Kate Freelander. And yes, I checked, that’s the girl’s real name.”
Parker’s hand shot up into the air. She was frowning slightly as she eyed her opposite number.
“Yes Parker?” Nate said, calling on her. Beside him Sophie chuckled softly.
Parker withdrew her hand. “I think I’ve seen her before.”
“We were just at the same auction, Parker,” Sophie reminded her gently.
“No, I mean I think I’ve seen her before that. I didn’t see her yesterday.”
“She’s one of the people I bumped into in the hall, which is what made me think to look her up. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve seen her though,” Hardison drawled, bringing up the thief’s rap sheet. “Girl’s worked in Mumbai, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, Dubai, a brief stint in Sydney and a few other places. She’s not a specialist and until a few years ago, she was one of those one-stop shop operations, pulling grifts, thefts and cons solo. Since then she’s almost completely dropped off the radar.”
“I haven’t run across her,” Sophie mused. “What’s she deal in?”
“Well she’s got some of the regular stuff, but the bulk of her work is where it begins to get weird,” Hardison said, pulling up another screen. There were a couple shiny things the likes of which Sophie or Parker might have wished to steal, but some of the other items were, well, not. There was a shriveled and dessicated bird’s claw, the skeleton of something with exceedingly large tusks, a pelt that looked like the fur was made of spun gold and some statuary among the other esoteric odds and ends.
“Ah,” Sophie mused, “Antiquities and natural relics. Paleontological finds, cultural items of significance, reportedly mystical artifacts, exotic creatures, those sorts of things.”
“Right, the Indiana Jones stuff. Lucrative if you know the right people but it’s a small, competitive market from what I’ve been hearing,” Hardison commented.
“Fairly brutal too,” Sophie added. “Never was worth the risk to get into that area. I preferred paintings and statuary.” She winked at Nate. “Those rarely bit back.”
“Who’d want an eagle claw?” Parker questioned, face twisting into an expression of dislike.
“Who’s next,” Nate prompted before Parker could get rolling.
“This is their tech guy. Henry Foss.” Images of a scruffy looking guy in his early to mid thirties showed up on screen. No mug images this time, but a bunch of surveillance photos and a couple silly pictures from some sort of event where everyone was in costume. Comicon, Nate thought it was called. “Undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Computer science from Carnegie Mellon, Graduate degrees from Cal Tech. Couple patents. He’s the real deal.”
“Now here’s the thing,” Hardison said, scratching his chin. “I’m pretty sure I’ve run into this guy at Defcon. He’s a known white hat.”
“He’s not wearing a hat,” Parker pointed out, hand raised in the air.
“It’s a metaphor,” Elliot told her.
“Right. White hats are hackers who work for the man. They’re paid to hack into security systems so holes can be closed.”
“So you’re saying he’s clean,” Nate summarized.
“If he’s not, he doesn’t do much and he’s good enough to cover his tracks when he does.”
“So he’s better than you?” Eliot drawled.
“Hey man, ain’t nobody better than me.”
“Boys,” Sophie interjected before the two could go at it again, “Let’s stay on task.”
“Next guy, near as I can figure, probably does a lot of what Sophie does. Will Zimmerman. Ex-FBI profiler. He got a little too into the X-Files for them and got the boot.” Hardison again looked expectant then rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. Don’t any of you know what the X-Files is? Seriously, no one gets that?”
“Do they come before the Y files?” Parker asked, legs swinging from her perch.
Hardison pinched the bridge of his nose. “I so know what I am putting in all ya’ll’s netflix queues.”
“Hardison,” Nate interjected. “Briefing?” He dimly recalled seeing the man at the auction. He’d not been doing anything at the time that had caught Nate’s attention, though.
"Right. Zimmerman. He got hired on with this group about four years back. After the FBI he tried to work with a couple police departments but it didn’t work out so well. Like I said, the guy was into the weird and freaky; strange disappearances, bigfoot sightings, alien abductions, that kind of stuff. He was good at his job, which is probably why the Feds picked him up in the first place, and why his bosses let him chase the boogey man for so long.”
He clicked the remote and Zimmerman’s FBI files scrolled up the screens, his ID photo appearing in the upper right. FBI Zimmerman was younger, cleaner-cut and had a boyish smile. In the more recent photos he looked scruffier and harder, but Nate didn’t think looked jaded; at least not yet. “Eventually they couldn’t take it and he got shown the door but he’s not a rent-a-cop. This is top-grade BAU talent we’re up against.”
“Who is he working for now?” Sophie asked.
“Hang on, I’m getting to it,” Hardison said, holding up forestalling hands. “Ya’ll haven’t seen the really weird ones yet.”
“Who’s their muscle?” Elliot asked, almost eager.
“So glad you asked.” Hardison clicked the remote over his shoulder without looking at the screen. “Meet Ashley Magnus.”
The woman on screen was in her early to mid twenties, blonde, blue eyed, and looked like she shared more in common with Parker than Elliot. Looking at the pictures, she seemed to have two modes; Cheerfully bubbly and deadly serious. The surveillance photo from the auction had her propping up one of the walls, looking a little bored.
Elliot made a noise. “A kid?”
“According to my sources, Ms. Magnus is proficient in multiple types of firearms, and has several years of Shaolin Kung fu, Aikido and something called Krav Maga, whatever that is.”
“Israeli fighting style,” Elliot interrupted, eyes narrowing at the screen. “Beats up all the other fighting schools and takes their techniques. Dirty. Deadly. Effective.”
“Oh like that Moussad chick you-”
Hardison was cut off by Elliot’s glare.
“Riiight. Anyway, she’s got a reputation in the black market circles for being a spitfire and really good at what she does. But the weird thing is that according to about half my sources, she’s dead.”
Elliot snorted and sat back in his seat. “I’ve been marked MIA before.” He shrugged at Sophie and Parker’s questioning glances. “Confused battlefields and bureaucracy.”
“This isn’t missing, this was dead, dead. K.I.A.” Hardison clicked a button and a bunch of government files popped up on the screen as well as an obituary. “Her mother had her declared, then almost a year ago, she got her status changed back to living.”
Parker raised her hand. “Maybe she’s a zombie.”
“I doubt that Parker. What’s more likely is that she was assumed KIA and was then recovered,” Sophie told her.
Hardison was shaking his head. “That only happens in movies, man. Making up a fake identity for someone like me? Easy. Declaring someone officially dead? Also fairly easy. But declaring someone who was dead is now alive? Actually not so easy. That’s the kind of stuff they really watch out for.”
“Insurance reasons,” Nate said, sipping his drink. “There was a real problem with it in the 60s and 70s.” And in the 40’s and the 50s, but the modern system was particularly watchful for that.
“Exactly,” Hardison said, pointing the remote at Nate, “Yet somehow, she’s back in all the main governmental systems as if she’d never left. That doesn’t happen.”
“You said she was only dead in half your systems,” Nate pointed out, swirling the scotch in his glass.
“She’s still missing on a bunch of the smaller government lists, in all the commercial stuff and most of the non-standard, non-official databases. Watch-lists, Black Market networks, fringe elements, that kind of thing.” He held up a long finger, “With a few exceptions, all in the freaky black market exotics.”
“So she doesn’t get junk mail,” Sophie smiled. “Sign me up,” she drawled, though Nate was fairly certain Sophie didn’t get much junk mail, if any, on any of her various personas.
“Oh, I can do that if you want,” Hardison offered. “Just let me know who its being sent to and I can get you out of that system.”
“Hardison.”
“Right. So yeah, this is really weird. You either need to have some high level hacking-”
“Which you said they had,” Elliot pointed out.
Hardison nodded and continued, “Or you need to have some serious clout with some key people.” He clicked his remote again and the screens showed a woman in perhaps her early forties, well dressed, with dark hair and blue eyes. Nate remembered her as the next highest bidder at the auction. “This is Doctor Helen Magnus.”
“The girl’s mom?” Elliot asked.
Hardison pointed at him. “Bingo. She’s got a whole bunch of letters after her name I had to google, and she’s got some pull with certain governments, but that isn’t the weird part.”
Sophie looked up. “Did you say ‘Governments?’ As in plural?”
“Oh yeah, fingers in a lot of pies..But seriously I started tracking her down figuring she’s their version of Nate? The rabbit hole goes deep my friends.”
“Oh!” Parker raised her hand ”I know that one! The movie with Cowboy Curtis and the guy from Speed!”
Hardison blinked at her, surprised, then his face split into a slow grin. “She can be taught.”
Parker beamed at him then at the group and swung her legs.
Nate shook his head. “Just tell us, Hardison.”
Hardison held up both hands, “According to everything I can find on this woman, she’s over a hundred and sixty years old.”
“Oh come on,” Elliot scoffed.
“I told you this was getting into some weird shit, man. I found a record of a Helen Magnus attending Oxford in the eighteen-eighties.” He pointed the remote and a scanned copy of a registrar’s book popped up on screen next to the transcribed page.
“So she has the same name as someone who lived in the eighteen hundreds,” Sophie said, “it happens.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but Oxford’s on this self-history kick and they’re digitizing and transcribing all their old stuff. Look at the signature. Now I found her again on the deed to some abandoned monastery in the Pacifc Northewest in the late forties.” He pulled up a scanned copy of the document and set them side by side. The signatures did look remarkably similar to Nate.
“She’s on some coroner’s documentation as the M.E. of record here in sixty five, then again in eighty nine and here in ninety one and a bunch more but you get the picture.” He pulled up those documents as well and the signature looked the same in each location.
“Hardison, that doesn’t prove anything but that this woman’s a successful identity thief,” Nate said. He took a sip of his scotch.
“And that was what I thought, until I started to get hits in the image databases. This one’s from Princeton.” He put up a picture of a group standing in front of a chalkboard. At the center was Albert Einstein. Standing two people over was a woman who bore a remarkable resemblance to this Helen Magnus. “Einstein. She partied with Einstein. And what’s even cooler,” he trailed off and pulled up another picture supposedly of Helen Magnus. This also featured a man with dark hair and a thick, dark moustache. “She knew Tesla. Nikola Tesla. And don’t you dare say you don’t know who he was.”
“Yeah, yeah, the guy who invented radio,” Nate said, frowning at the images. “She probably has the same name as her mother or grandmother or something.”
“I thought of that too and you know what? The face recognition software I borrowed from the Boston PD say it’s the same woman.” He clicked another button and the three faces were pulled out of their photos and a variety of lines were drawn on them in red with dots appearing on notable facial features. The lines and dots of the software fell in exactly the same spots in all three of the pictures.
“That has to be a fake,” Sophie said, leaning forward in her seat a little.
“No photoshop, I swear. I checked the files. No seams. No composites. These are one hundred percent legit.”
“Oh come on,” Elliot spoke up, gesturing at the screen. “You’re telling us this woman hasn’t aged since the eighteen eighties?”
Hardison held up his hands. “Dude, I told you this was some Grade-A, weird-ass information.”
Nate rubbed at this forehead, “Alright, let’s focus on the job here. It doesn’t matter if she’s forty or a hundred and forty. We still have a job. You got anything else for us, Hardison?”
“If you didn’t like Doc Magnus, you’re not gonna like the rest.”
Nate made a rolling gesture with his hand, “Yeah, yeah, just give it to us.”
“Alright. So, this Dr. Magnus runs something called the Sanctuary. It’s a global network of some kind. Now I’m not real clear on all of it, but its some kind of part nature reserve, part half-way house, part museum.” He clicked a button and a large gothic estate filled the screen. “When I found her name on the deed I went looking and this is the home base. There are bunches of these places all over the world, but this is the primary facility.”
“What does she want with an egg?” Parker asked.
“No idea,” Hardison said, “All I know is that the train to weirdsville left a couple hours ago.”
“Where’s the egg now, Hardison?” Nate asked. He poured himself another couple fingers.
Hardison pointed at the gothic monastary. “I think they’re back here.”
“You think?” Elliot questioned.
“Look man, I think they must have some kind of private jet. One minute they’re here in Boston, the next there are some credit card purchases in Old City. If you want me to confirm that I’d need to physically go there and find out.” He shook his head.
“Well,” Nate said, looking at the screens. “It looks like we’re taking a trip. Pack your bags, people. We’re headed west.”
To be continued... Part II