Work Text:
Jones brought Peter the morning edition of the paper and a Look that went with it.
“What?” Peter demanded. He was old enough to remember daily papers and his father reading them cover-to-cover, and easily slipped back into the way of it, whereas some of his younger agents – sheriffs! - chafed at the lack of the internet, smart phones, tablets and all the bally-hoo that were the tech-wars before the aliens showed them what real war was like, and had wiped out their electronics completely. Peter found he actually preferred this return to old ways of doing things. He hoped the geeks would take their time getting up to speed. At present, they seemed locked in a battle of byting words about which direction to take to create better, more streamlined systems…long may it last!
“Diana thinks you should look at the article on page five,” Clinton said. “May be just a funny coincidence.”
“Page five?” He started leafing through.
“Probably nothing. Might want to run it past Neal.”
Neal, to Peter’s surprise and Lord Steel’s disappointment, had stayed only a few days at the Keep before returning and labouring on as though his status had not changed, though he had promised Steel he would return more regularly. Every time he planned to do so, however, another urgent project showed up!
“Neal isn’t doing anything but forging…okay, he’s now allowed to call it copying! …the Lost Art of New York. Really, Clinton, he’s not – oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
“Surely we don’t need to worry about this?”
“But what if Neal’s involved in this and more than this? He’s here, under our noses, Peter. Just talk to him?”
About an hour later, the earliest Peter could manage to get away, he walked in on Neal without knocking. He’d stopped doing that since Neal was all legal and above-board but this article seemed to be taking him back to a former era.
Neal, unaware of that, was sitting at the table, old photos and small prints…postcard-size…of three pop art pieces spread before him.
“Hey, Peter.”
“What are you…?”
“I’m not sure I can…or want to…manage these. It’s not my thing, generally, and I never studied them particularly and to try and duplicate them from these bits and pieces…but Hammersmith is pushing like mad.”
“They always seemed …I don’t know…”
“Yeah, to you simple, childish, bright colours and simple shapes. And some pop art is, but not these. I don’t particularly like them, wouldn’t have most of them hanging on my walls, but I don’t want to disrespect the artists, either.”
“Did Moz ever study them?”
“No. He’s almost as bad as you are about them. Unless they’re very valuable, and that’s usually the only good thing he can say about them!” Neal grinned.
Peter couldn’t believe he knew anything. Surely!
“So say you can’t do them, and get on with the next thing. Surely they can look for someone who can copy these but not van Goghs, Manets and Picassos?”
“I thought I’d try, but it probably is more of a waste of time than anything. What’ya doin here? Isn’t it a work day?” Neal asked, vaguely, hardly looking up.
“Just thought this was a funny coincidence.” Peter threw down the morning paper.
Neal glanced across at it. “What, someone’s trying to get a whole baseball team together in New York? I would have thought it was almost inevitable.”
“No, no – this!” Peter pointed to a small photograph, about four inches by two, of a person in dark glasses and an open waist-coat over a beige shirt. His light brown hair was messy under a maroon beret.
“Is he the guy getting the team together? Peter, really, I’m – ”
“The picture goes with this article about an extensive cave system with some, if not the oldest cave paintings ever found anywhere.”
“Oh,” Neal said, sitting back and rubbing his eyes. “I need a better magnifying glass, or larger pictures. Damn!
“Are they good? Why don’t they have photos of the paintings, instead of some dweebie scientist. Are those the ones at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc? Because if they are, I’m not interested. They may be old – ”
“No, it mentions those,” Peter said, “in the article. It says these are much better and quite a bit earlier.”
“Hm,” Neal shrugged. “I’m no expert, Peter, I’m sure they’ve got archaeologists and palaeontologists and all sorts of -ologists crawling around them. Why is it of interest to the Bureau?”
“It isn’t. And we’re not exactly the Bureau any more, remember? But…”
Neal looked at him, a faint line between his brows. “This is a dream, right? Where nothing makes sense. Or that fish I had was tainted with fugu.” He looked a little alarmed. “Or – ”
“Neal, that doesn’t look like anybody to you?”
“What, the photo?” Neal looked again. “Actually, it does sort of look like anybody to me. I think it’s a man…”
Peter huffed. The biggest problem with newsprint. If you got closer to the photo you couldn’t see anything but dots and if you got further away from this little photo you could hardly see it!
“Where’s Mozzie?” Peter tried again.
“Last time I heard he was in Poland…or was the last one Austria? He’s sending postcards. Bought ones. Touristy. ‘Don’t you just wish you were here?’ He knows I don’t like that. He’s mad at me. I’m a traitor to the Life and the Cause.”
“I can see he might think that,” Peter nodded, out-of-his depth. “We’re proud of you, though, Neal.”
“Elizabeth is just pleased I am painting, Peter. I’m not sure she likes the new, boring Neal much. I’m not sure I do, either, but, well…the experts haven’t found anyone else. They thought they had…DC Art Crimes, all the members of which are older and were on some sort of wilderness retreat when the aliens came, apparently reached out and offered immunity to a bloke in Montana, been living with the hill folk – but he wasn’t. He’d gone to Los Angeles and been killed in one of the alien raids.
“Or he doesn’t trust them or want to go straight and has gone underground, so to speak. Dead is quite a good alias.”
“Those Montana trouble-maker-types of old,” Peter groaned, “have been a great help…they know all sorts about the original laws and things! Got it all printed out onto paper! It’s a crazy world, Neal!”
“I like it. Or I would if I could get out and see it! I think I travelled more and had more fun when I was in prison…I’m not complaining, don’t tell Elizabeth, please, please don’t tell Elizabeth, but well…there’s so much!”
“You’re doing excellent work, Neal. And why don’t you just…?” He made a little ‘poofing’ motion with his fingers.
“I could just as easily walk out the front door and stroll through the park with June…but every time I’m away from my easel, the art that has been lost sort of haunts me. I finally know what you went through, trying to catch me…the elusive, beautiful, unique piece just out of your reach!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…keep telling yourself that! Until I did. Catch you, I mean.”
“And now you know where to find me any time of any day, pretty much!” Neal huffed. “I’m either at the gym, jogging to or from the gym, sleeping or shackled to my art! Or, sadly, everyone else’s art! It’s great training! I’ll be set up in the forgery world …if I ever get through with this!”
“Which leads me back to this guy,” Peter said, determinedly. “It is a guy, his name is given as Ducas Roger Quartermain.”
“What did he do?” Neal asked, shuffling all the papers together. “I’m leaving this till I’ve finished some more important pieces…don’t tell anyone ever that I just said that! Not ever! Not even Elizabeth! Say older pieces!”
“Nothing that we know about. But the Italian government just paid him two-and-a-half million dollars – that’s the equivalent of what used to be at least 25 mill plus, it’s a vast amount! - more or less, for a villa-castle-thing…it’s a bit run-down, it’s on fifteen acres.”
“Peter, if you want to lure me back to White Collar, you’ll have to do better than mortgage fraud, even if it’s international mortgage fraud. And I don’t have time to go visit the place, which would be a draw if I could.”
“No, no, nothing like that…the estate isn’t worth that much. He paid about twelve thousand.”
“So the real estate is rebounding fast in Europe? Look, Peter, perhaps I’m just tired…”
“It’s worth that much to the Italian government because it’s over the caves.”
“Good for the owner, he’s done well.”
“It looks like Mozzie!” Peter snapped, exasperated.
“Who – oh, the scientist person?”
“No, no – the picture is of the guy who found the caves.”
“Oh, you said Ducas. Could be Dorcas?” Neal peered again.
“He was excavating under the house to try and extend the wine cellar, he says, and voilà! No, that’s French. Eureka!”
“Greek,” Neal murmured, looking back at the photo, knowing Italian wasn’t Peter’s language. “Perhaps Guardate cosa ho trovato! Io sono ricco,molto ricco!” Then, louder, “I grant you, the wine cellar extension does sound like Mozzie, but there are many Italians and French and …lots of other people out there who like wine almost as much, Peter.”
“He extends the cellar, finds the caves, complete with charcoal drawings of great beauty and detail, older, they say, than those you spoke of… Chavvy-Duck-Pond-something…and the Italians scurry to buy the whole establishment for a fortune before he can destroy the caves!”
“To make a wine cellar.” Neal picked up the paper, held it close, held it further away and said, “It could possibly be Mozzie. It could be a million other people. I would have thought he would have let me know if he’d bought a castle. Perhaps he wouldn’t.” Neal looked sad, shook himself and went on, “But Peter, you came here because you thought this looked like Mozzie, he had a wine cellar and he found some old caves?”
Peter fidgeted. “I suppose we went off half-cocked, but it does look like Mozzie, and turning twelve thousand into two-and-a-half million almost over-night seems suspicious.”
“Peter, even when you were real FBI, wouldn’t this be outside of your jurisdiction? Why are you even concerned?”
Peter was about to ask Neal to swear that his friend Mozzie wasn’t impersonating someone, or something…but he wasn’t Neal’s handler any more, and he was beginning to feel a little silly about the whole thing.
“We were actually concerned about you, I guess. I’ll let you get on with your work,” he told Neal, and left.
That weekend, El and Peter took dinner to Neal’s apartment. El had sat working in his room for a few hours, just wanting to spend some time with her friend but ended up watching him and deciding that he was again in need of a break and perhaps some good food and company. She had never realised how focussed he could be. They hadn’t exchanged more than a few words. He seemed unaware of her presence while he worked. He didn’t even move except the minimum gestures to lay down paint or blend colours.
Neal had set candles around the room, it was getting too cold for the balcony. There was a new, much nicer, much bigger couch (Neal regretted not having it when Mozzie was here and considered that possibly he had bought it so that his friend would be comfortable if he ever did return) and two chairs to match.
He had some of Mozzie’s best wine and coffee and a dessert ready to go. He was happier, working on a Turner for a very stately and handsome Englishwoman from Boston with a lovely twinkle in her eye. There were three more in her collection that had been badly damaged also, and she had many nice photographs of each. She had told him unashamedly that if she’d been thirty years younger – even twenty years – his virtue would have been at risk. He flirted with her and loved her spunk.
When Peter and El arrived, the three of them enjoyed a delicious meal, all sorts of Greek foods provided by a family Peter’s team had saved from some protection racket. Nothing new under the sun! The young, brash and foolish gangsters were now awaiting trial.
“Seems lots of bartering going on in the food business, all to our benefit!” Neal said, finishing the salad. “I’m sorry I have no Greek wine, but this is very fine!” He refilled their glasses.
“Yes. You say you haven’t seen Mozzie for a while.”
“He provided me with quite a good stock, me and June, and all the coffee we could drink, I would think! But I hope I see him again soon. I feel bad about him. I miss him. And while he was here I was irritated, trying to get on with my work. And he’s my best friend…of old. I have the rest of you, but he was there, pulling me out of trouble…”
“Having got you into it!” Peter grinned.
“Sometimes!” Neal grinned back. He sighed to himself, not wanting to be impolite. He really wished Mozzie was here. He never felt he could relax with Peter, they were always sparring, the mutual suspicion from his last months on the anklet seemed to have become etched into their psyches.
“I’m sorry I asked all those questions about Mozzie the other day. I think I went a bit mad.”
“You went into your Special Agent Burke, FBI, catch-the-bad-guy mode, yes.”
“Mmm.”
“I think he thinks these domestic baddies aren’t much of a challenge!” El smiled. “He misses the Neal Caffreys and Mozzies of the world.”
“Getting a bit old, that, Peter. And you never chased Mozzie.”
“No. He kept under the radar.”
“I’m not sure that man…Ducas?…would have found those caves under the old systems.”
“What do you mean?”
“We-ell, you do realise that article you brought me spoke of a cave find, and subsequent sale of land, that took place three weeks before? Not the breaking-news-coverage, video-at-eleven of the old days!”
“And…I did, er, get some photographs sent over, the drawings or whatever you would call them are much more detailed and much nicer than the others you mentioned, in France, and have been carbon-dated as about four and a half thousand years earlier.”
Neal’s face was hidden as he poured the coffee. Elizabeth watched them, back and forth, and said, “But even if it was Mozzie, he found some old cave paintings. It’s not as though he could paint them and age them in an oven, is it?”
“Not easily, no!”
“Why mention the age of the article?” Peter demanded, sniffing a rat.
“I’m just saying that whoever he or she was…and truly, that photo could have been of anyone! - they aren’t there any more, have had plenty of time to establish another identity, even if it was a con.”
“The cave was sealed. That the experts said was an absolute fact. They had to reseal the cave for the vast majority of the time so that the elements don’t damage the inside. The owner, that man, had an architect with him, along with several workers, when they found the cave entrance…well, what became the entrance. And the drawings have been dated as very old. You were right, Neal, I was being unreasonably suspicious.”
“You always said that it was impossible to be too suspicious of Neal and Mozzie!” El reminded him.
“Well, how would he have done it?”
“I can’t see a way, the experts are all on board, it’s a beautiful site from the photographs. We should have brought them, Hon.”
“Next time,” Neal murmured.
Peter’s gut was complaining, and it wasn’t about the wonderful food.
El noticed and smiled. She turned to Neal. “Could you and Mozzie have pulled it off?”
Neal sat back and thought a few minutes. “Quite a feat, Elizabeth.”
“That’s a given…but could it be done?”
“They say nothing is impossible.”
“Okay, a hypothetical…you’re going to do it: how?”
“We-ell, first you have to find or make some caves. From what you said, these are extensive, so finding them would be a lot easier.”
“Go on,” Peter said, sitting forward.
Neal smiled at him. “ That’s not easy, you know, to find caves that are correct in all respects, right rock, and undiscovered.”
“We will assume for this hypothetical that you and Mozzie are incredibly intelligent, persistent, patient, sneaky, crafty and industrious,” Peter said, drily.
“If you don’t want to play this game, I’ll go and get dessert. I should make an early night of it, anyway. Want to make an early start tomorrow.”
“Now look what you did!” El said. “You’ve insulted our resident expert and got him all huffy and miffed!”
Peter threw his hands up. “I apologise. I was being snarky. I admit that you are both very intelligent and skilled in multiple doctrines and I am all admiration. Go on – tell us!”
“No, it’s kind of lost the fun factor, now. And what I said is true, about starting early tomorrow.”
Elizabeth pouted. “Neal, please. We’ve been through a lot together, be nice, be kind.”
“Nah. Peter’s mean.”
“To punish him, I’ll throw him out and he can come and sleep here.”
Neal glowered. “Only if you don’t want me to be able to work. And my new friend Lil will get irritated, and that’s the last thing I want! We’re thinking of eloping as soon as this work is done.”
“I’m sorry, Sweetie,” El said.
“I need to go back to Steel, anyway. Once I’ve finished these Turners. I need to get away and be with people who appreciate me.”
El bit her lip so she wouldn’t grin.
Neal went on, “Thista’s little girl Cara is talking already! That’s so early! She’s a darling! And Steel just bought a new slave, his name is Trace, I’d like to help with getting him settled.”
“And Steel loves you,” Peter grumbled.
Neal smiled as though he couldn’t help himself. “Yes, he does. I’ve never felt quite like that about someone. I wish I’d grown up with him as my father. So after these are done, Elizabeth, fair warning…now I’ll go and get the dessert.”
When he returned, Peter got up and took the tray from him, put it down and gave him a hug, which Neal broke out of.
“What’s that for?”
“El said I should do that at least once a week for all the times I didn’t when I should have.”
“Yeah, don’t wait till the springtime to pick apples, Peter,” Neal said, straightening his clothing and sitting down. “To adapt a Sheel saying.”
El sat up and frowned. “Now you’re being mean, Neal! Peter’s trying!”
Neal huffed and said, “Sorry, I was being mean.” He sat back, Peter sat down and there was a strained silence.
“If you just tried and didn’t succeed, I caught you or you got shot…you’re not very good at rewarding attempts, are you?” Peter asked, shrewdly. “Because you were only rewarded for total success.”
Neal shrugged.
Peter leaned over and took his hand, a very uncharacteristic gesture. “Come on, Neal, you know we love you, just as much as Steel does. I’m just very bad at showing that sort of thing.”
Neal managed a shaky grin. “I’m just tired and grumpy, Peter.”
“Yeah, you should take some time off. Weeks, not hours!”
“So,” El said, dishing out dessert and pouring coffee, “please continue…tell us how you and Mozzie would do this, because I think Peter and Jones and Diana were so wrong. I don’t think anyone could do it.”
“Now that I know what it is, and how many experts have verified these things, neither do I,” Peter said, taking his coffee. “It was just at the time, and with limited information and – and that photo looking like a Moz in an awful disguise.”
“I shall find it and cut it out and tell him and let him get you!” Neal smiled. He thought a moment and went on, “Once you have the caves, and they have to be perfect, then you buy the land, you have to get in without disturbing anything, leave no traces, do the paintings and get out and re-seal the caves before ‘finding them’.”
“Mmmm…not that easy, though,” Peter said. “I didn’t know this before but there were some stalagmites and crystals growing over the paintings in parts. And there’s the carbon dating…I can’t see any way around all of that.”
“I wouldn’t bother about the old carbon,” Neal mused. “I think I’d bribe the lab.. Lab techs and such folks are badly paid and not given much recognition…or one could just fake the results by hacking the computers. Lots of weak links.”
“No computers, remember? And the crystals?”
“True…I keep forgetting. But still bribable people. Could fake the crystals, too.”
“There are ancient bones, covered in calcite crystals,” Peter shook his head. “Those take ages to grow, in the perfect environment. That’s why they almost immediately saw it was genuine.”
“Mmm,” Neal nodded.
“Come on, Neal!” El said. “You’ve found some perfect caves. How do you…oh, you could just jump in, couldn’t you?”
“Elizabeth, translating into a sealed dark cave structure I don’t know and have never seen? No, I couldn’t. I’ve done some crazy things…”
“So tell us. How are they able to do the carbon dating, now, anyway?”
“They’ve gone back to early methods. They can’t date stuff to as far back using carbon dating now, but apparently this is valid for this time period,” Peter answered her, having asked the same question, and found out that it was possible.
“You’re probably right, it’s impossible,” Neal conceded.
“But if Mozzie asked you to help him, what would the two of you do…he’s got the land and the caves.” Peter smiled at Neal. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t, I don’t believe that!”
“O-kay,” Neal shrugged again. The really fun aspect of the partnership he and Peter had always shared was these guessing games, playing games with each other to solve a case, or just him confusing Peter! It was hard to resist re-visiting that! “First find the caves and cut a small hole near the top of them, what would be their ceiling. Using ropes, bought in a foreign country, lower me down into them and place in some safe spot my slave collar and three bottles of wine.
“Shh!” He held up a hand. “You interrupt me, I’m done. Questions will be taken later!
“Then we close up the hole, taking all the ropes and things with us. Mozzie works at making the hole in the roof look just like the rest, planting shrubs or whatever grows there on the outside and lime-plastering it on the inside. Therefore the land has to be owned for at least six months, a year, and you said this was an overnight deal.
“Anyway, if I was doing it, I go to work painting the walls using primitive tools, always completely covered in full CSI-gear. We place fake bones from animals that would have lived around the time – Mozzie’s made all sorts of fake fossils and things, he’s an expert, best there is. We scatter them, many half-buried, just here and there but all over the floor, to make it hard for people to get close to most of the paintings without destroying stalagmites and crystals and fossils.
“Paint those same animals, many in groups. Do some strange abstract scribbles so that the experts can make wild unsubstantiated assumptions and talk rubbish about burial rituals and the primitive and superstitious belief in higher beings or spirits. Make fake cave-bear claw scratch marks on the walls. Bury a Canadian Loonie in one inaccessible place…”
“Why?” Peter gasped, unable to hold back.
“Just for fun, and a misdirect if it’s ever discovered…and to get them back for the Olympic ice hockey rink in Salt Lake!” Neal grinned, now very much in his element.
“Then get all the equipment in – jump it in - and spray and drip solutions to create more stalagmites and stalactites…they usually grow over time, but the process can be much speeded up, you know, by controlling the environment, and that’s what you have in a sealed cave. Be absolutely careful not to drop oil or anything that wouldn’t be there. Like a perfect murder scene…no evidence. Get some crystals growing over part of the paintings, wash parts of them away.
“Once everything looks perfect, you check through four, five times, make adjustments. Take all your equipment and translate out, go back, check again, leave, taking out the wine and slave-collar – the love-objects to hone in on when translating.
“At the right time, get an architect (someone with a big mouth and a sister who is dating a journalist) and break through the point of the caves nearest the cellars and be amazed and annoyed when the authorities want access and then when they start jabbering about Eminent Domain and National Treasure get lawyers, more lawyers, then become weary of it all, accept a good offer and leave the country.”
Neal sat back, eating his small bowl of dessert.
“You’ve left out the most important thing, Neal, sorry!” Peter tried not to sound smug. “It’s a very good try, I’ll give you that.”
“Have I?” Neal asked, coyly.
“Yes – the carbon dating! Early man made those about 35, 000 years ago!”
“What the carbon dating tells us is that the charcoal came from plants that grew more than 35,000 years ago. A man could have done the painting yesterday, a few months ago, a year ago!”
“And you're always so tired…” Peter was suddenly suspicious again.
“It’s just a story, Peter.”
“These weren’t like the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc paintings, Neal,” El shook her head. “They weren’t just charcoal. They have beautiful colours.”
“Experts won’t want to disturb their beautiful, ancient art more than necessary. I’ll bet you anything that the charcoal is the final layer, and that the other pigments are void of any organic material, and therefore cannot be dated. I’ll bet they tested mostly the torch scratch-marks on the walls and perhaps a few of the most accessible paintings.”
“I’m going home to get those photographs and the documents!” Peter said, and left.
Neal laughed. “He’s very predictable, you know! Do you like that about him, Elizabeth? Let me make some more coffee.”
Since Peter was now living practically next door, Neal could pour his coffee as soon as he got back.
“No, don’t show me,” Neal said. “Let me show you something first.”
He went through and came back with a large manila envelope. He warned the other two and turned on the main light and showed them the stamp and postmark. It came from Italy and was posted less than a week before. He then tore that part off the envelope and held it so that it caught fire in the candle flame.
He made sure it was burnt, and dropped the remains into the sink and doused them with a strong stream of water. Then he showed them a set of original sketches: bears, buffalo, mane-less lions, rhinos, various deer, some gorgeous, frolicking horses, something that looked like a whale, another that could have been a crocodile: some just charcoal, some with lovely burnt-sienna and rust and ochre shadings, some sage-green, some white highlights.
Peter, his mouth open, opened his file and took out photographs, and though the light in the photographs was sometimes poor and the angles often awkward, it was easy to see that Neal’s sketches and the subjects of the photographs were the same.
Neal produced his own set of photographs from the envelope, much of it a copy of Peter’s.
“But – but you just got these, the post can’t have got to you before today or perhaps yesterday and I was here all afternoon yesterday and again this morning! You were painting your sunset!” El exclaimed, leafing through the many detailed sketches.
“No, no, I called a friend from a pay-phone and got the photographs weeks ago, and for fun I made sketches of them because I was getting bored with the pop art,” Neal smiled. “You’re remembering the postmark incorrectly.”
“Are you telling me that – you and he – ” Peter sat down, bonelessly.
“But thank you for telling me the colours were beautiful, Elizabeth. Now that’s not easy, if we were doing this. Not easy, at all. Need a lab and a compact, inventive, dedicated helper! Hard to find that kind of expert.”
“But – but I’ve got to tell the Italian authorities!” Peter said.
“To what end?” Neal asked. “No proof, just a theory and I guarantee you, if this is a con, Ducas is long gone, will never be found and the money trail is even harder to track. Probably.”
“I’ve got you.”
“You’re going to tell them I was working here every day, though I did sleep in, I translated without a valid passport across the world, translated into a sealed cave and painted those paintings, and left? Good luck, Peter.”
“Well, we, our team, we know it can be done.”
“Mm. I think I hear the crowds of New York requiring psychiatric tests and your badges and guns…and perhaps your heads.”
“But – but how did you get 35,000 year-old plants or charcoal?”
Neal couldn't help grinning wickedly. “Peter, Peter, you expect me to step into a trap so unsubtle! I didn't say I had. But there is another site….the Chavvy- Duck-Pond, as you call it, Peter! It’s sealed, locked, but …”
“There isn’t a lock you can’t pick! I get it! I get it! You stole charcoal from there.”
“Hypothetically…I wouldn’t mess with their sketches, but I could have collected enough. Anyway, Mozzie says he has ways of faking…never mind, a talk for another evening.”
“Those French cave paintings were dated at about 30,000 years, though,” El said. “Was that Mozzie altering the C14 fingerprint?”
“I have to do something! Tell someone!” Peter huffed to himself.
“Don’t bother, Peter. It was …probably…the same charcoal, unaltered. The Italian site is now cut off from tourists, they are building – get this! – a replica for tourists to visit! Apparently the French did that, also.
“I wanted to volunteer, but Moz talked me out of it. If we did create the first one, it would have been the ultimate con, though…a page out of the Dutchman’s book…make it look the same as the fake original, have everyone tell me how wonderful I am!
“But the age, Italy’s vehemence to get those caves…well, France has some. Italy wants! France’s are 30,000, Italy’s are 35,000. France’s are plain charcoal, Italy’s are multi-coloured.
“I doubt the labs deliberately faked the results, the carbon dating is possibly not as accurate now – or more accurate! - and it’s Italy’s national pride at stake!
“ …And if you think that getting a warrant is difficult, Peter, if you think that getting a hostile witness to change his testimony is hard, if you think that arty people are closed-minded when it comes to authenticating a newly discovered Monet or da Vinci – you just try scientists!
“The battles fought over evidence – look into …oh! - Raymond Dart in South Africa, for example, how the Mighty Western Scientific Establishment vilified him, with incorrect statistics! Because he was saying that early man evolved in Africa, and was a carnivore, not a peaceful Englishman in the UK! They had Piltdown Man as their best early human, and they were backing him all the way! They were wrong, of course, but Dart never was really recognised for his genius and hard work during his lifetime.
“There are millions of examples. Scientists have closed minds, pet theories, they are no more intellectually open and honest as any other group: strangely, rather less! …and if you tried now to get them to reopen the case you would have to have a better set of lock-picks than the theory of a flying man and some sketches made by a renown and very valuable art-copier resident in New York - and a memory of a post-mark.”
Peter gazed at him, speechless yet again.
“And Peter, dear Peter,” Neal said, sympathetic despite himself, “you are still jumping to conclusions. I just showed you an envelope large enough to take the photos and documents sent to me from Italy with a very recent post-mark.
“But I could have got someone to send the photo’s a while back, made the sketches and got them to send me another similar envelope containing a magazine or something, just to show you and confuse you.
“And everything I suggested could be done by anyone, they don’t need to know how to ‘jump’, but they would need to have the caves for longer, do the work and only then repair the roof perfectly and replant over it. Put some nice big rocks and bushes on top.”
“So you didn’t do it? You said you’d never lie to me, Neal! And what you said…look here in the article, the journalist who broke the story was dating the architect’s sister, the owner bought the land about 22 months ago…everything you said is true.”
“I was indulging Elizabeth in a story of how Moz and I could have, hypothetically, forged a bunch of cave paintings.”
They drank coffee for a few minutes and Neal queried, sincerely puzzled, “But Peter, why do you care? It isn’t your money. This Ducas person is richer, the Italians are ecstatic, the scientists have something else to argue over and pick over…”
“It’s a fake!”
“Allegedly,” El murmured.
“So now I’ll never know whether it is your work or not?”
“You’ve lied to me in the past, Peter,” Neal said. “Several times. Will you tell me the truth now?”
“What?”
“Any recording devices on you or in this suite?”
“What? No! Our cell phones, everything, gone, you know that!”
“There were recording devices before electronics, Peter, for heaven’s sake! Drying clay can catch the image of sound waves!”
“Yeah, I guess so. No, Neal, neither we nor anyone else as far as I know are recording this, no-one else is listening.”
“And if I share you’ll hug me every week, at least once?” Neal grinned again, totally wicked. Neal knew he wouldn’t. They didn’t see each other that often, any more.
Peter groaned. “I promise! I promise!”
Neal rifled through Peter’s photographs and picked one. “I might always like to sign my work, if it’s quite safe,” he grinned. “I certainly don’t always, don’t count on it, but….”
There, amidst lots of scrolling lines, was a curving single line that certainly looked a little, once he’d pointed it out, like a very stylised, twisty NCES monogram…Neal Caffrey Ellington-Steel.
“Or that could just be a coincidence,” El said, putting her arm around Neal. “I can see other letters in there, if I look! I think it’s just a bunch of enigmatic, abstruse squiggles proving that ancient man believed in a higher power!”
Neal looked at Peter. Peter grinned ruefully. “There is no proof. You are either a fantastically clever forger or a very clever story-teller. But I agree…probably the latter. I can’t see you’ve benefitted, and so you’re probably just teasing me. All the experts agree, these were done many thousands of years ago. I have to agree with the experts, Neal.”
“Oh, certainly,” Neal nodded. “And Peter, I could be both! Fun if I could take credit for them, but Occam’s razor, you know. By far the simplest and most probably explanation. More coffee?”
Fin
Oh, please, feed to greedy author!