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The video, sent from an unknown, blocked number, had come into his phone at 11:15 AM on a Monday morning. Peter Burke was almost tempted to ignore it. Monday mornings were rife with tasks that had come in over the weekend, and this start of the work week was no different. Curiosity got the better of him, however, and he opened the attachment. What he saw had him frozen in his tracks.
A man stood facing the camera, his features distorted by a stocking mask. Beside him was another man, obviously secured to a folding chair, who stared into the camera with bleary, unfocused blue eyes. The masked man started to speak, “Agent Burke, I know what you have wanted for such a long time, and now, as you can clearly see, I am in possession of that entity. You want Neal Caffrey, and I have him. I am more than willing to give him to you, but there is something that you must do before that can happen. You must go the federal prosecutor and inform him that you planted evidence in the Morrison case. When Luke Morrison walks out of federal detention, I will make sure that I deliver my end of the bargain as well.” The video ended abruptly on that note.
Peter had been the lead agent to take down drug kingpin Luke Morrison a few weeks before. The man’s enterprises had gained him untold wealth which he continually used to expand his drug empire. A psychopath of epic proportions, he was lethal as a snake and liked to perform executions himself rather than hire a hitman to do his dirty work. Peter had managed to unearth a murder weapon used to kill a DEA agent with Morrison’s finger prints all over it. A grand jury had quickly indicted the criminal and the federal prosecutor was asking for the death penalty because of the mandate that crimes against federal officials merited such punishment. It was obvious that the masked man in the video was one of Morrison’s minions.
Peter rushed into Director Reese Hughes’ office, phone in hand. It was time to do what the FBI did best. The techies began working on the video to enhance and enlarge it, and toiled diligently for hours trying to pinpoint a location of origin. They were stymied as connections bounced from Lichtenstein to Hungary to Hong Kong and on and on. Peter found himself watching the video for the umpteenth time in Hughes’ office.
“What makes you so sure that Caffrey isn’t in on this little scheme?” asked Hughes.
“Neal would never be part of this, Reese,” Peter said vehemently. “He has no connection to drugs and hates guns and violence. He’d never align himself with slime like Morrison. He’s being used as a means to an end. Just look at his eyes. Neal’s been drugged to the gills!”
“Maybe,” mused Hughes, “but I’m not convinced. I am aware that you have a personal history with this young criminal, but the Bureau doesn’t. We are going to do nothing at this point, and neither are you, although the thought that you would ever perjure yourself never crossed my mind.”
Peter was definitely not happy with his boss, and Hughes accepted that as part of the onus of being his supervisor. No doubt everyone considered him an old fossil hanging out in the mundane White Collar department until he could take his retirement. They probably wondered if he had a soul, or was just some machine that went through the motions. But he had not always been in this division. Hughes had paid his dues ascending through the ranks of the more dangerous and violent parts of the FBI. He had seen everything that the criminal element was capable of and then some. He had been burned once or twice himself by being too trusting until he learned that criminals had that description for a reason.
Hughes was also not a man without empathy. Right now he empathized with his lead agent whom he had mentored over the years. Peter thought that his young man was different, but Hughes only harbored doubts. He remembered other agents who had thought that they had domesticated criminals only to see them turn on their handlers and return to their natural feral state. He just wanted to spare Peter that heartache, but being realistic, he didn’t think that was possible.
Hughes was right. All through the rest of the day, Peter fumed and felt powerless. Nausea welled up in his gut. This feeling was intensified when Tuesday morning brought another video to Peter’s phone. The same masked man re-appeared looking just as he had the day before. Neal, however, did not. He was still tied to the same chair, but this time his upper lip was split and there was swelling and deep purple bruising around one eye.
“Times a-wasting, Agent Burke. Tick-tock.” Then the screen went dark.
Peter found himself again in Hughes’ office watching the video on a laptop.
“We have to do something!” Peter demanded. Hughes was just as frustrated as Peter, but he couldn’t let that overshadow a professional reticence to get the FBI more involved than it already was.
“Just what would you have the Bureau do, Peter?” Hughes asked just as angrily. “We’re already utilizing our resources trying to track where this video was made, but we have no idea when or where Caffrey might have been abducted, or if, in fact, he really was abducted.”
“What are you implying, Reese?” Peter asked.
“Depending on how much money was offered, Caffrey might just be willing to take a roughing up to sell the con,” was the infuriating answer.
“And if it’s not a con?” asked Peter quietly.
“When all is said and done, Peter, Morrison will still be charged with first degree murder with special circumstances that warrants the death penalty. We have him and there is no way out for him. End of story, a win for the good guys.” Hughes stared at his agent and dared him to dispute anything that he had just said. Neal Caffrey’s fate remained the elephant in the room that neither man wanted to approach. Peter met his boss’s eyes, saw the challenge there, and turned on his heel before he said things that he couldn’t un-say.
Wednesday morning’s video brought more of the same. Neal now had numerous lacerations on his face and blood dripped from his nose onto his shirt.
“Not much time left, Agent Burke,” the masked man sneered.
This time Peter begged his boss for the opportunity to approach the federal prosecutor. If the looming death penalty charge was removed and Morrison was offered life in prison, it could possibly be a bargaining chip to negotiate Neal’s release. Maybe even appealing directly to Morrison might turn the tide. He was rebuked on both counts by Hughes for even entertaining those thoughts. The FBI didn’t capitulate and make deals with criminals.
Thursday’s video was the most graphically disturbing. Neal was no longer restrained in the chair. He lay on his back, seemingly unconscious, on a gray tiled floor. The masked man who stood over him said tauntingly, “I’m not sure how much longer he’s going to last, Agent Burke. You’ll have no one to blame except yourself if he can’t hold out while you’re dragging your heels.”
With that being said, the captor kicked the already battered man viciously in the ribs. Neal yelped and immediately turned on his side curling into a fetal position. His pitiful moans were clearly audible. Peter defiantly turned up the volume when the video was playing on Hughes’ laptop.
“Still think he’s part of his own torture, Reese? He’s a white collar criminal who has never hurt anyone, never used violence or a weapon ever. He doesn’t deserve this. No one does. Are we just going to stand back and let natural selection take its toll? Are we going to let the most vicious of the species annihilate the weaker while we sadly shake our heads?” Peter voice had risen in volume during his tirade.
Hughes now matched him in tone and loudness. “We do not negotiate with kidnappers, Peter! You know that. It seems that you have lost any professional detachment on this one, and you need to step back. You need to go home! That’s not a suggestion. That’s an order!!” In reality, what Hughes saw on the video sickened him, but like Peter, he was powerless to do anything and that feeling of helplessness made him lash out.
Peter glared at the older man, bit his tongue, and stomped down the stairs. Once in his car, he let his head fall into hands that were shaking. Somehow he made it home to Elizabeth, who had been privy to this drama from its inception and just as worried about the young man that her husband had grown to like. She greeted him with a sad little smile and enfolded him in a hug. There were no platitudes of false hope offered, just the comfort of her arms. Peter wasn’t much of a drinker, but today he dragged out the Scotch before noon and nursed it dejectedly.
Somewhere in the house the delicate chimes of Elizabeth’s cell phone sounded. When she answered it, she looked perplexed and held it out to Peter. “It’s for you,” she told him.
With trepidation, Peter said hello and was surprised to hear an unknown male voice speak to him in a rush.
“You have no idea who I am Agent Burke, but I know you. I took the precaution of using your wife’s phone since yours may very well be bugged by Big Brother. If you try to trace the origin of this call later, you will find that the number will no longer be in working order. Although it pains me to ask for assistance from The Man, I am between the proverbial rock and a hard place. I am a friend of Neal’s and I know where he is being held. Alas, I am not capable of performing an extraction myself, so unfortunately I must compromise my scruples and petition your help.”
Peter felt as if he had been transported by a tornado to the land of Oz. When he regained his bearings to speak coherently, he asked, “By chance, am I speaking with a Mr. Ramensky?” John Ramensky was one of the aliases that Neal’s strange little friend had used in the past.
“My name is not an important or pressing issue right now, Suit! What is urgent is the expediency with which you act to get Neal to safety.”
“How is it that you are privy to Neal’s location?” Peter asked suspiciously.
“Since time is of the essence, I will do what is essential to adequately impress you so that you will move on this ASAP. Years ago I implanted a small satellite tracking device into Neal’s hip. Thus, I have his exact coordinates. He’s being held at an estate out on Long Island Sound that has been closed up for the season. I have scouted the place and it is a fortress. If I could beam him up out of there to a transporter room, I would, but my new wrist iPhone is low on crystals. You will need to assemble a SWAT team to go in under the cover of darkness. Make it so, Suit!”
“If Neal is really there and we take down the kidnappers, your friend will also be arrested. He is a wanted criminal,” Peter warned the caller.
“Right now Neal would be much safer in a federal holding cell where no one is trying to beat his brains in,” his advocate solemnly replied.
Peter meticulously wrote down the address and sped back to the office. Without ceremony, he barged into Hughes’ office and told him where he suspected Neal was being held.
“Exactly how did you come by this information, Peter,” Hughes asked with one eyebrow cocked doubtfully.
“It was an anonymous source,” Peter replied. “But my gut tells me the information is accurate!”
“You want the Bureau to risk the lives of men on a SWAT team who may be walking into a trap, not to mention the expense involved in an operation of this sort, on an anonymous tip?” Hughes asked Peter.
Peter stared at Hughes for a long moment. Slowly he removed the FBI badge from the clip on his belt. He very gently and reverently laid it on his boss’ desk. With quiet dignity he said, “If this is all a hoax and blows up in our faces, I will take all the heat, Reese. You can say I superseded my authority and acted without official sanction. I will surrender my badge and you can spin the story anyway that you like.”
Both men went quiet with only the background hum of the bullpen breaking the silence. Eventually Hughes seemed to have an epiphany of sorts as he stared down at Peter’s badge. “Maybe I am jaded,” Hughes thought to himself, “but maybe I have enough humanity left in my soul to take a leap of faith and cross this line with Peter.”
With a resigned sigh he said aloud, “I know that you have developed some crazy kind of bond with Caffrey. I don’t know how that happened and I really don’t want to know the particulars. But it must be some powerful kind of relationship. Get the local FBI office in Long Island on the phone.”
One hour later, Hughes and Peter were notified that a SWAT team was assembled and ready to breach the Long Island residence. A tense thirty minutes passed before the team leader of the assault squad called to say that the action was complete. Three hostiles were taken down without any weapons fired, and an unidentified man who matched Caffrey’s description was being transported by helicopter to a Level II Trauma Center on the North Shore. The SWAT leader had no real information regarding his condition.
An hour and forty-five minutes later, Peter swung through the doors of the Huntington Hospital Trauma Center. Flashing the badge that Hughes had pressed back into his hand, he managed to corral one of the doctors who had treated Neal when he was admitted. He was informed that Neal was stable at the moment. He had sustained a severe concussion, fractured facial bones, fractured ribs and a break in his left wrist. Bleeding from his spleen had been remedied by catheter embolization. He would most likely make a full recovery, but right now he was only minimally alert in the Intensive Care Unit. Before the doctor left, he remembered something and turned to Peter while removing a thin glass vial from the pocket of his lab coat. He held it aloft for Peter to see.
“When doing a CAT scan to determine what injuries the patient had sustained, we saw this and removed it from his hip. I looked at it under a microscope and it seems to be some kind of microchip with Cyrillic letters on it. Is your boy in there some kind of Russian spy, Agent Burke?”
Peter smiled and said, “No, Doctor, he’s just your run of the mill, or maybe not so run of the mill, forger.” He then took the vial and put it into his own pocket.
When Peter arrived at his bedside, Neal looked much worse than he had on the video. The extreme facial bruising was lurid and his wrist was now encased in a fiberglass cast. Peter tried to talk to him, but the young man just mumbled incoherently about white picket fences, fireplace mantles, and rosebushes. The only things missing were white copper kettles and warm woolen mittens and they would have had a Julie Andrews song going on. Peter gave up and was determined to wait him out.
The next morning Peter found Neal to be lucid, although still looking uncomfortable. His un-casted right wrist was handcuffed to the bedrail.
“Hey, Neal, how are you doing,” asked Peter.
The conman grimaced slightly and claimed he was fine. Peter just rolled his eyes.
“I know that you have been read your rights and placed under arrest by the local feds in this neck of the woods. Why haven’t you asked for a lawyer, Neal?”
“Well then I wouldn’t be able to talk to you, Peter,” Neal answered as if that fact was obvious.
Peter smiled slightly and shook his head. “You know that I can’t work miracles and get you out of this mess, Neal. Eventually you’ll be going to trial for forgery unless you can make a deal with the prosecutor.”
“Think that an insanity plea might work, Peter?” Neal queried.
“Do you really want a panel of psychiatrists poking around in that brain of yours, Neal? Though I guess if anyone could pull it off, it would be you. If you were found to be of diminished mental capacity, the court would remand you to a federal criminal psychiatric facility until such time that you were deemed psychologically fit to stand trial for your crimes.”
After brief consideration of these facts, Neal spoke up, “I think I’ll pass. That whole scenario conjures up images of Nurse Ratchett, cuckoos’ nests and lobotomies. But that’s okay, Peter. You got me out of the more pressing situation yesterday with those goons who used me as a punching bag for hours on end,” Neal responded sincerely. “And I want to thank you for that.”
“It should have happened sooner, Neal, and I’m sorry about that, sorry for what you went through. I’ve talked with your doctor and he told me that you will make a full recovery in time. In fact, he said that you’re sufficiently stable to be transferred to a room later today. Most likely tomorrow you’ll be transported back to a secure federal medical facility in Manhattan. My advice to you is to retain a good lawyer, let him get you as good a deal as possible, and then use the experience to become rehabilitated so that you can start over.”
“Uh-huh,” was the only answer he got from the young criminal. When no more conversation was forthcoming, Peter bade Neal goodbye and drove back to Brooklyn. He looked forward to the first good night’s sleep in almost a week.
True to his word, the doctor signed Neal’s transfer to a private room later that day. A young local state trooper was assigned to stand guard outside of the criminal’s door. It was going to be a long night, the uniformed officer mused, as he kept re-positioning himself on the uncomfortable folding chair. He understood that the most boring duties would undoubtedly be his assignment because he was the newest member on the force. This seemed to fall into that category……boring rather than challenging. He had glimpsed the prisoner as he was transferred from the ICU, and the man didn’t look strong enough to lift his head off the pillow.
By 2 AM, the officer was mentally kicking himself for not having brought a Sports Illustrated magazine to help pass the tedium. However, the department would definitely frown on that. He wasn’t used to night shifts, and keeping his eyes open was getting harder and harder. Around 2:30 AM, his boredom was interrupted by the very loud sound of a floor buffer working its way down the hall. The man guiding it along was attired in the gray coveralls of the hospital’s housekeeping staff. He wore white gauze booties over his shoes, latex gloves and had a hospital ID with his name and photo swinging from a lanyard around his neck. As he came closer, the trooper saw that he wasn’t very tall, wore thick bottle-bottom glasses, and was sporting what had to be the world’s worst hairpiece, all blond ringlets on top that ended in a sort of mullet in the back. Ear buds from an iPod were blaring country music that even the police officer could hear from across the hall.
“Hey, buddy!” the trooper called to no avail. Finally he waved his arms at the housekeeper to get his attention. Pulling out the ear buds, the man returned his look quizzically.
“How come you’re doing such a noisy job in the middle of the night?” the cop asked.
“Well, nights is the only time there ain’t a lot of visitors that get in my way, ya know. And my boss wants this done, so here I am. Gotta keep the man happy, ya know. Can’t lose this gig cause I gotta keep the ‘old ball and chain’ from harping. Ya dig? She keeps buying that stuff they sell on that home shoppin’ channel and we’re about to bust out of our doublewide. Plus there’s the bingo on Monday nights, and those fake nails at the salon.” The policeman held up his hands to stem the rapid flow of words.
“I get your point,” the young man quickly said.
“Yeah, well nights is hard,” the cleaner continued. “Tough to stay awake if you’re not moving ‘round. I’m taking me a break now. Gonna get some coffee. You want that I should get ya some, too? Just gimme a buck fifty and tell me what ya take in it.”
The trooper agreed to the offer and forked over two dollars to the older man. A few minutes later his coffee arrived with creamer and sugar as he had requested. Somehow the hospital worker had neglected to give him his change, but it was only fifty cents so it didn’t matter.
The next morning Peter Burke got a phone call in his New York office from Long Island. He was soberly informed that Neal Caffrey had disappeared. It seemed that local authorities arrived at the hospital to find the guard who was stationed at his door soundly asleep. Contents of his coffee cup contained remnants of a powerful sedative. Thoroughly embarrassed, all that the young officer could remember was the name of the hospital worker who had given him the coffee. His hospital ID proclaimed that he was Louis Dega. The authorities had an APB out with his name and description, as well as Caffrey’s.
Peter Googled the name “Louis Dega” and began to laugh. He just couldn’t stem the hilarious chuckling even when tears had formed in his eyes and he couldn’t catch his breath. Agents down in the bullpen were eyeing him with bemused, bewildered expressions on their faces. What they couldn’t guess was that the joke was on him.
The Internet search had mockingly informed him that Louis Dega was a forger and embezzler who had been imprisoned on Devil Island in the 1930s. He became close friends with fellow inmate Henry Charriere, better know as Papillon. A film classic by that name was made in 1973 starring Steve McQueen as Papillon and Dustin Hoffman as Dega. The movie depicted their unusual friendship that embodied unwavering trust and loyalty through long solitary incarcerations and escape attempts for the whole of the two men’s lives.
When Peter was able to get the hilarity under control, he diligently added “Louis Dega” to a list of aliases that started with John Ramensky.