[Fic] The Topkapi Job (PG-13) [2/2]

[mizzy2k]

Part One

Part B:
The Con

0.
(Edwin Armitidge-The Forger)

Edwin Armitidge was tired, but at least at the base of it all, he still enjoyed his work, and that was the main thing, right?

Once upon a time he had been a reputable artist, making fanciful relics from countries that didn't exist. But that fairytale life had been nothing but an illusion. As an artist he had sold reasonably well for someone in his field, maybe four pieces a year, bringing in maybe $80,000 profit by the end of the financial year once all the appropriate taxes had been paid and his studio rental had come out of it and his forge maintenance. It wasn't an amount to sniff at... apart from his forgery work brought him that much in a quarter of the time. Plus the amount he brought in from his front as a jeweller's.

He had a pretty sweet set-up. The FBI knew of his existence, but let him keep operating on his small-time job in return for his help on their big, big cases. And occasionally he got freelance jobs. Like this one for Eliot Spencer.

He owed a Spencer a favor or two for back in the day when a less-impressed Mark had sourced the forgery back to him, and Spencer stopped Edwin from being made into a human pancake, so making the Topkapi-replica-replica dagger was fun enough. Spencer had mentioned there might be someone coming along to take a look at it, and that it was maybe okay, but making a replica of the Topkapi-replica-replica was not something Spencer had anticipated. Still, $10000 wasn't any to turn his nose up at, and technically he wasn't dropping Spencer in anything because he hadn't even mentioned Spencer's name to the Sterling fellow.

Spencer came by to pick up his copy, and thanked him.

Ten minutes later, the Sterling guy came in.

He looked exactly like Armitidge had pictured him, surly expression, dark clothes like he thought he was some sort of business ninja. Sweating in the heat. Armitidge liked the soaring Texan temperatures. He'd grown up in Alaska. Armitidge's life was a bundle of extremes all knotted together.

Armitidge handed Sterling the dagger replica when his phone chimed, indicating the money had gone in. Sterling promised the last $2000 when he was sure Armitidge had said nothing to Ford, although Sterling got a little angry when he tried to open the Topkapi-replica-replica. Armitidge shrugged at him. Spencer had only asked for a replica that looked like it, not behaved like it. A proper functioning replica would have taken another week, and cost more.

When he told Sterling this, Sterling sagged a little, looking confused. He still took the replica dagger. Armitidge shrugged. He'd done his job. It was none of his business what the two people did with their fake daggers.

Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that somehow he'd been played, or forced to be a pawn in some giant weird game that he had no idea he was playing. But with his scorecard with Eliot cleared, and $8000 in the bank, and maybe $2000 more if this Sterling guy was stupid or honest, Armitidge shook that odd feeling away. He had better things to worry about.
1.
(Nathan Ford-The Man With Issues. And Sophie's used tissues.)

Nathan Ford was tired.

It was possibly due to the heat, or the answer to the ridiculous con he had come up with (not that he'd use the word ridiculous to describe it anywhere outside his own head; he was a fatigued alcoholic, not suicidal) or maybe it was just because one person's brain could only take so much of Sophie speaking before it just curled up and went catatonic.

She was complaining, and Nate wasn't exactly surprised. The movies had made everything look so easy, and everything so far had been a ton of work. She was in the middle of ranting about the fingernail she broke helping put up the fake second floor. This was the third time he'd heard this rant.

He decided to waylay her with something she understood: a complaint.

"Did you really have to actually blow your nose into these?" Nate questioned, breaking her off mid-flow. "Seriously?"

Sophie narrowed her eyes, and snatched the peach one he was waving. "I only properly used the ones that were the right shades."

"That makes it so much better," Nate commented, holding one of the soggier examples up against the paint tins. It looked close to the right color. Sophie sighed and redirected his hand forcibly to a tin one shelf down. He pulled it off the shelf and put it in the cart. She was better at this than he was.

Not that he'd say that out loud either.

"It's for verisimilitude, Nate," Sophie said, dragging her voice out into a whine.

"Are you ever going to stop complaining? We need to get back to practice as soon as possible." He pushed the cart along to the whites, frowning at the selection. How could there be so many tins of different shades of white? Nate frowned at them all. Sometimes he thought the best con artists didn't spend their time cavorting over the globe carrying out heists, but were in a well-lit office of some large company's marketing department.

"Not while we're in Texas. I know Eliot's reacting as if we're in magic happy Grifter land, but if we have to stay much longer, I'm going to burn to a crisp." Sophie leant against one of the shelves, wafting her face with a paint selection leaflet.

"And you say that as if it's not an improvement," Nate managed with a straight face. She-quite rightly-belted him in the stomach with a large tin of Nordic Spa. Also known as white, Nate grumped. Internally.

If Sophie knew he was whining internally as much as she was externally, well- she probably did. She knew him, much too well. He'd give in to the impulse to run, but he was kind of tired of that, too.

One more thing he would never say out loud.

2.
(James Sterling-The Man Who Got Hit By The Clue Bus And Survived)

James Sterling was tired. Tired of Nathan Ford's never-ending melodrama and extended unresolved sexual tension with Miss. Sophie Devereaux. He thought enduring eight years of it alongside Nate at IYS was bad, but he was even doing it now, urgh.

He shook away those thoughts, frustrated. Ford could be as much of a melodramatic bastard as he liked. Sterling was finally, finally starting to understand what was going on, and it was marvellous. Ford had kind of brought his game this time.

But his game wasn't high enough this time. This was it, the time that Sterling was finally going to be able to bring Ford and his team down.

It had taken a bit of digging, but Sterling finally understood the connection between the team and their client, Carver. Carver was renowned for employing criminals to test out his security systems. It had been a lot of hard work over the last couple of days, but eventually Sterling had found an old picture of Carver and Parker in an old IYS file. Parker had been one of the thieves Carver employed to test his security.

IYS were lazy and were using Carver's system, and it stood to reason that Parker would know the security system's faults. Oh, Carver had sold it as fully tested and flawless, but Parker was a very good thief-there was no way she would have told Carver ever flaw of his system. Carver was a nationally renowned security expert before IYS started systematically undercutting him. Parker would have left herself a backdoor, should she want to steal from a Carver-protected facility in the future.

That information found, he picked up the location of the rental car-outside a hardware store again, this time one of the big wholesale branches. Sterling took a risk based on the fact that the dagger was still in place and no assaults had been made on the museum's security to guess that the team still had the rental car.

He found Ford and Devereaux inside, matching up tissues to paint samples. Devereaux had been checking the colors of the walls and fixtures. Sterling matched it up in his head to the equipment Spencer had bought on that first day here.

They were building a replica of the museum. They had to be. But why?

Sterling mulled over the thought as he waited in the car park for Devereaux and Ford to pull away, and he pulled out his GPS tracker and watched where they were driving to. Back to the warehouses. Yes, of course, a large space in which to build a replica.

Ford was trying to steal the dagger. Ford wanted to humiliate him. It kept coming back to those two things. Ford was building a replica of the museum, down to the exact same shades. Sterling was willing to bet if he went to all the electronic stores, between them they would have sold enough cabling and cameras for a CCTV system just like in the museum.

A replica, what could Ford do with a replica. Practice the con, of course-that's what Ford had said to Devereaux, unaware of Sterling lurking in the aisle behind. But Ford wouldn't waste the exact specifications on a practice. They would need the exact shades.

A perfect replica. Maybe they were planning to drug them, have them trapped forcibly by their own security system in the fake museum while they robbed the real one. That seemed like Ford's style. It was mildly humiliating. But Ford had been cocksure about humiliating Sterling, like for his con to work the humiliation was automatic.

A replica of the room, where had Sterling seen that used before. No con they'd come across with IYS, but it was familiar, it was very familiar, it was-

Sterling almost laughed.

Did Ford think he was that stupid?

Perhaps he did. It was a bold move. It was ridiculously bold. Sterling could see Ford's thought processes as clear as anything-Sterling knew every potential con that they could have chosen, so what would be as humiliating as a con which everyone knew?

Like the Ocean's Eleven remake replica room con?

Sterling knew he had to move fast. Now he had the paint, Ford would move fast. Tonight would be an excellent time for the con. Sterling needed proof, and a little more information, so as he gunned his engine, he loaded up his netbook, and did a little of the hacking he'd learned en route, finishing the routine in a little car park at a distance from the warehouses. Ford's Netflix account was ridiculously easy to hack into. Sterling grinned to himself, and checked the queue-there was a ton of stupid stuff on there, Sex in the City, Psych, and a bunch of heist movies. And Ocean's Eleven had been watched three times more than everything else.

Sterling got out of his car, pulled on a cap to cover his face, and covered the rest of the space to Ford's warehouse on foot. There was every chance they would be watching the cameras, just in case, but it had been several days now-there was also the chance they had slacked on their surveillance. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry. It took him a little hunting to find the right warehouse. A bin full of empty water bottles of the same brand Ford had tossed him was his first clue, the empty Scotch bottle in amongst them a clear second, and the empty Orange Squeeze cans (Sterling knew Ford's hacker downed the stuff like oxygen) were the final clue.

This was where they were.

It took him longer to climb up the drain pipe, prise open a small window, roll in and slither along the cat walk up high to get enough of a view of the warehouse. As soon as he saw the white railings, just like the ones at the museum's curved balustrade, Sterling had to resist the urge to punch the air in triumph-1) he might be discovered, 2) he would fall off and definitely be discovered.

The set up was amazing. The hacker and Devereaux were painting the walls, while Ford was drilling Spencer and Parker through a weird rotation of lights. It must be the museum's sensor patterns. The patterns were crazy, rotational, a masterpiece of security, and even Parker was having trouble with it, her small tiny body contorting almost painfully.

"Again," Ford barked, when Parker bumped against one of the exhibits. "Again," when Spencer moved just half an inch too far to the right.

"Nate, come on," Spencer protested, "the museum won't even have this rotation. We've practiced the ten common ones. We can do this. We're ready."

"Again," Ford said.

"But-"

"No buts. Sterling cannot win this one, you hear me? Are you in or are you out, because if you're out, you're out permanently." Ford's voice was hard. Sterling couldn't see his face, only a tense line of his shoulders, and that was enough. Ford was losing it, big style, and when he went down, he was going to take his team down with him. It was awesome. "Again," Ford commanded.

Sterling waiting until they were fully immersed in practicing for the sensors before wriggling backwards and sliding out of the window. Quickly checking around, he dropped to the ground, and went around the back of the nearing warehouses so he wouldn't be caught.

So Ford's team thought they could handle the light sensors. That might be the case. And they probably thought they could switch the camera feeds onto their replica, so the guards wouldn't even know their museum was being robbed.

And Sterling was going to let Ford think his plan was going okay. Let Ford switch the camera feed. Let him try and beat the lights.

Because what Ford thought was going to be there, as opposed to what was actually going to be there from tonight, was a million miles away from the truth.

Which seemed, sadly, to be Ford's final destination in life and try as he might to distance himself, Sterling couldn't help but be sad at the thought.

3.
(Eliot Spencer-The Man Who Always Slightly Disapproves of Nate's Plans, and Most Of The Time For Good Reason, Too)

Eliot Spencer was tired.

A little from the house of practice Nate had put them through, but mostly tired of Nate himself. One of these days, his plans were going to fold up again and they were going to have nowhere to go but Eliot. Again. How many times was he going to have to sacrifice his soul for someone else?

One day he'd get over it, but today was not that day.

He was hungry, too. That meal with Grimes seemed so long ago, Nate had barely given them time for the basics, and Parker just kept offering him fortune cookies in lieu of real food. He was frustrated, and the sooner this con was done, the better. He thought being in Texas would be fun, but Eliot felt as trapped here as anywhere else. There wasn't anywhere in the world he could go to escape himself.

The backdoors Parker had left for herself in Carver's security system were still there, unchecked and unchanged. Hardison was able to smoothly switch the security display from the real museum room to their replica room without a problem, and the spray Nate had given him to reveal the light beams showed the sensors were in a pattern they had practiced. Eliot dealt with the guards patrolling the outside rooms easily. Well, they'd have a headache in the morning. Eliot didn't feel too bad for that-they should be better at their job.

The con was going to work. Which was just frustrating, because Eliot knew he could fight his way out of this one. He could beat any of the security guards, all of them, and the local police. He unclenched his stomach, unhappy with the truth-that he had been hoping this would be the con Nate would fail in. Because if he failed now, there would be pieces to pick up. If he failed at a con with more at stake... No one kept going down at the speed and angle of descent Nate was careening at without falling, and falling hard. Eliot only hoped he could stop everyone else from toppling over with him.

Eliot took a deep breath. They'd got past all the other sensors to get here, and any one of them could have set off the alarms and ruined the con, and he could do this too. He stepped forward, and froze.

The small click under his feet was very distinctive.

"Uh, Parker?" Eliot had to whisper. Anything above a whisper would set off the sound sensors.

"Stop being a baby and come on," Parker whispered back, and then saw him frozen. "It's not that hard," she said.

"That's what she said," Eliot quipped automatically. Parker looked at him blankly. Eliot shook his annoyance away. "I'm stood on a pressure sensor."

"Huh?" Parker squirted her bottle of spray, and danced through the lights neatly, somersaulting out of the light zone to stand next to him. She crouched down, pressing her fingers around the edge of the floor tile he was on. "Huh, you're right."

"Don't sound so surprised."

Parker straightened. "There's more of them. Eight. I can see the slight depressions. We'll be okay if we-" She squirted the spray one more time, the droplets spreading out far. The lights revolved and span across the floor. Eliot mentally traced the path they would both have to take to get to the dagger, and he swallowed. "If only one of us goes."

"But we need both of us to deal with the sensors on the monolith," Eliot whispered uselessly.

"Unless-" Parker swooped away from him, and did a couple of complicated cartwheels, and then pulled something from her pack. A rope and hook. She flung it up and pulled herself up. The rope trailed down behind her, and she pulled it up and away from one of the moving sensors barely in time. She grinned at Eliot, upside down, and shimmied up the rope. "Ah-hah, found it." She kept her voice at a bare whisper, the ear piece thankfully carrying it to his ear.

"What?"

"What'll go off if we hit any of those pressure sensors," Parker whispered.

"If I step off this spot, you mean," Eliot returned.

"Stop whining like a baby," Parker said, shimmying down the rope.

"Well? What is it?" Eliot said.

"Birds. You step off there, a cage of birds is going to escape." Parker pulled a face. "I think Sterling watched the same movie as us."

"Except in our case, just one stray bird could set up any number of the sensors, triggering the alarm and locking us down in here," Eliot whispered. "Awesome." Except awesome didn't seem to cover everything. Eliot was missing something else. Something else bad.

"What?" Parker said, after navigating the light sensors back to him. "You look like Hardison's being trying to explain the plot of Deathnote to you again."

"Who would even kill with a notebook anyway," Eliot started, angrily. He calmed himself. "Parker, it's worse than we thought."

"Worse than you being trapped in a museum that will basically lock us inside itself if you move even one inch?" Parker said.

"Yeah," Eliot said. "Because we're using ear pieces. Nate got us in here just fine, but since we've been in this room, and gotten ourselves in trouble, why hasn't he said anything to us?"

Parker thought about it for a second.

"Uh-oh," she eventually managed.

Eliot's expression was tight. "I think 'uh-oh' sort of covers it quite well."

4.
(James I always win Sterling-The man who, oh, just see his name)

There were a lot of moments in his life that James Sterling had enjoyed voraciously. And several of them had happened in the last few minutes.

Sneaking into their van while their attention was on the monitors was delightful. The balmy Texan night was such that they didn't notice any change in temperature when he slid the van door open. And Ford's expression when he tossed him the water bottle was amazing. It would fuel Sterling's daydreams for a long, long time. It was a pity the hacker had shut down the monitors so quickly, as he would have liked to see Parker and Spencer fail, but Sterling had learned that you took your wins when you got them and didn't push for more, in case you lost the wins you had.

Behind Sterling were four burly security guards. IYS recruited them especially. Sterling wasn't taking any chances with this win.

He got them out of the van and crushed their ear pieces. As much as he melodramatically wanted to cackle in Parker and Spencer's ears, he knew the instant Ford got hold of one he would magically say some code word or other which would help them escape. Ford was sneaky like that. No, it was best that Spencer took them and held them until the museum shut itself down. Which was what would happen as soon as the birds escaped.

Sterling carefully explained what he had done. He especially liked the way Ford's expression got tighter and tighter, and the way the hacker kept staring at the museum, worry plain on his young face.

It wouldn't be much longer.

It couldn't.

The minutes stretched on, feeling stupidly long. Sterling knew it was only in his mind. When you were waiting for something which took even a tiny bit longer than it should, seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours. Even so, these minutes felt way too long, and the guards holding his quarries were shuffling, as if to say I was only hired so long, y'know, and Sterling-even though he didn't want to-looked down at his watch, and then back up at the building. Where the dawn's sun was slowly creeping over the top of the dark building, a brilliant spray of light.

"No," Sterling said. "No."

It wasn't possible.

Ford smiled, wide and genuine. "Yes," he said. "Oh, yes."

"I don't believe you." Sterling yanked out his phone. "Grimes. It's me, Jim Sterling, the IYS security consultant. I think we may have had an incident and I need you to bring the police to check it out."

- - - -

Sterling was furious. As soon as Grimes turned up to key in the code and unlock the museum, Sterling was there with him, leaving Ford, Devereaux and the hacker in the capable hands of the local police while he sorted this out. Spencer and Parker had to still be in there, trapped. It was the only solution.

They weren't. The shutters that were supposed to come down if the sensors were broken hadn't even deployed. Sterling had checked the security system himself on that front-the shutters weren't avoidable. He proved it now in front of Grimes and the police-breaking one of the sensors before Grimes shut it down.

The shutters slammed down, locking them in the room. Grimes opened it almost immediately with a retinal scan and his fingerprint and a 14 digit code that Sterling was almost positive couldn't be broken.

How had they managed it? He had no idea, and that was what made him angrier still.

Of course, there was another option-they hadn't managed it. The dagger was still there.

"Permission to check the dagger," Sterling ground out. Grimes nodded, and did the complicated steps to open the case. Sterling lifted the glass gingerly, noting it would be possible for a thief like Parker to maybe get this far, but not to move the dagger. The dagger was on such a sensitive sensor that the instant it was lifted, the very instant it was lifted even a tiny, tiny amount, the whole place should have locked down.

Sterling picked up the dagger, and before he could panic any more than he had to, he pulled at the handle.

The dagger did not come out of the hilt.

It was the forgery.

Sterling howled, throwing the forgery to one side in complete frustration, and glancing around wildly. How had they done this? Grimes was looking sad and stunned, and the police were muttering between themselves, unsure. The idiot security guards, both the museum and IYS alike, had come out of the room and were looking at the scene stunned. Sterling hoisted himself up onto the dagger's pedestal and jumped up, climbing up to where he had deployed the birds himself, ready to fly around the room.

Ready so he could say the Topkapi words to Nathan Ford and rub Ford's failure in his face: "A little bird told me."

The birds were sat there in their cage, milling around, chirping happily.

Sterling shouted incoherently at them, and jumped down, stalking around the pedestal in frustration. How the hell had Ford and his team managed this?

He thought about the past few days, and thought, and thought.

The Netflix queue, what was he missing? What else had been on it? Sex and the city? Serenity? Inside Man?

Inside Man, yes. That film where Clive Owen built a fake wall. How did that help him? Sterling remembered getting mad before, snarling at a couple of handymen and a really stupidly large canvas, yes. That had been moved into the entrance, but that could have been Ford's team. He pushed past Grimes and the police, and ran to the entrance, yanking down the large messy painting on the stupidly big canvas and yelling in annoyance when there was nothing behind it.

"That was a Pollock that cost me $500,000," Grimes said behind him, still looking stunned. Sterling looked from him to the canvas he had torn from the wall.

"I think you'd better come with us," one of the police said.

"Don't you even know who I am?" Sterling demanded, scrambling for his Interpol badge.

"Seize him."

Sterling felt them grab him, and he sagged. Ford. This was all Ford's doing. But how? Well, at least he'd be in a jail cell with him for a while. Arlington didn't have a very big local jail, so Sterling would be in with at least one of them, and he was fairly confident he could make them tell him how they'd managed this stupid feat.

Except, of course, when he was dragged outside the building, Ford, Devereaux, the hacker and the four security guards IYS sent him were all gone.

Sterling let himself be taken away. He didn't have the energy to fight any more.

5.
(James Maybe I Lost This Time Sterling versus Nathan Ford-The Man Who Might Not Be Honest Any More But The Man Who At Least Knows The Truth)

It didn't take Sterling very long to use his Interpol pulls to get him out of jail, especially with the fact that Hardison had only temporarily played the footage of the replica museum to the security guard's televisions; the CCTV system had all the original footage of what actually happened.

Well, a few key scenes were miraculously missing, like Devereaux's stakeout of the place, but Sterling got to watch the full 48 hours of tape up to the end of the con, with Sterling going a little crazy at the end of it.

He still couldn't figure out how they'd done it.

He had to leave his apartment for food eventually (Interpol had given him a week off after the debacle and strongly suggested he not consult again for a little while) and when he came back, he wasn't too surprised to find Ford and his whole team sat in his apartment, and the Topkapi-replica dagger at his place at the table.

Sterling sat down and held his hand out. Ford pushed the bottle of water across the table and Sterling took it, shaking his head.

"You got me," Sterling admitted. "No point lying about it."

"You can still win," Ford said, smiling that strange smile of his. "If you take the dagger back to Grimes, tell him you've retrieved it on behalf of Malcolm Carver."

"Grimes is on the board of Six Flags. Who also use IYS. If he goes back to Carver, they'll follow suit, and so will the other businesses run by the other board members." Sterling shook his head slowly. "And because I'm still such a self-serving utter bastard-"

"-you'll do it," Ford finished. "And you'll keep your reputation, and you've saved the day."

"Which is a win," Sterling said. "And I've been humiliated." He smiled slowly to himself. "All right, I'll do it. One condition."

"You wanna know how it was done," the hacker said, and spun his laptop around. "Watch and learn, my friend."

"I'm not your friend," Sterling muttered, leaning forwards to see the screen better and picked up the dagger, sliding it out of the hilt and back. It was the real thing. Ford wouldn't try and cheat with the dagger at this point-he was getting what he wanted, Carver in his job, and Ford might not be an honest man, but Ford was honest with what he said. It was a small distinction but it made a world of difference.

"Like you have so many of those," Ford said, as if quoting someone. Spencer reacted as if they might have been his words, once upon a time.

"I used to have more," Sterling said, directly to Ford, knowing it would hurt Ford. It did, but it hurt Sterling too. "Come on. Wow me with your brilliance."
"Maybe when we hear from Malcolm about his new job," Ford said, slowly.

Sterling groaned, but reached for his phone.

- - - -

It took a couple of hours, and Ford and his team stayed there the whole time, watching him with amused expressions. Sterling supposed they had every right to celebrate their win. He allowed them it-it would be their only time. And he hadn't lost entirely. He clung onto that fiercely, desperately ignoring the fact it was only because Ford was allowing him the win.

"Okay," Sterling said. "I've fulfilled my end. How did you do it?"

"The first thing you need to know is that we did not need the practice at defeating the light sensors in the museum. Parker's excellent, and Eliot knows how to move his body," Ford said.

"So you... practiced until I found you?" Sterling frowned. "That seems like a ridiculous waste of time."

"Nope," the hacker said. "We were making these." He pushed the enter key. Ford and his whole team were there in masks so they couldn't be seen. They must have taken those off the time Sterling approached. Sterling watched as they all went through the different permutations of light sensors, showing how to beat them. Even Ford managed it-Sterling recognised him, his body shape, and the same trousers he was wearing the day he baited Sterling outside the museum with the water bottle. At least now he understood the jacket-he was covering up his t-shirt.

Which said Carver Security Solutions.

"Carver's showing these to Grimes as we speak. I couldn't count on you calling Grimes later and sweet-talking it all back. Grimes is going to want the man on his side who can beat all these videos." Ford leaned back, appraising Sterling's expression. Sterling tried his best not to look impressed.

"Okay. So how did you defeat my birds?" Sterling said.

"That was terribly melodramatic of you. Oh, by the way, Grimes isn't too impressed at IYS security using birds. He's an animal activist, back when, you know." Ford stretched slightly.

Also, Grimes had been arrested once; it was on his record-for animal rights, though. Sterling had known that. He resisted the urge to sigh.

"So yet another thing to ensure Carver keeps his job," Sterling realized.

"You got it. Anyway, I knew you wouldn't be able to resist using A little bird told me," Ford said. "So I sent Parker in with a back-up plan just in case."

Spencer bristled, which was interesting. So Ford wasn't trusting Spencer with everything. Sterling filed it away for later consideration.

"The back-up plan?" Sterling questioned.

“That's because you only like fiction if it's Roald Dahl,“ Eliot said, ignoring him.

“His were the only books Archie ever let me steal,“ Parker explained.

"We were stealing great movie heists. One movie heist we knew without looking for it came from a book. There's a brilliant moment in Roald Dahl's Danny, Champion of the World where the father and son execute a heist and drug birds," Ford said.

"Grimes has allergies," Eliot said.

Grimes frowned at him, then looked at Eliot's gaze-directed at his own glass. “Oh, the orange juice, no, uh, additives? For my allergies. I'm on these anti-histamines.“

“Oh, the ones that make you drowsy.“

"And he has an office in his museum," Parker said. "People on medication always keep a spare in their office just in case."

“Make sure she's off my property by the time I get out of my office,“ Grimes said. Sterling nodded, and followed the guards with a struggling Devereaux outside.

"In Danny, Champion of the World they put the drug in the bird's food. I didn't leave any food for them on site," Sterling said.

He was hungry, too. That meal with Grimes seemed so long ago, Nate had barely given them time for the basics, and Parker just kept offering him fortune cookies in lieu of real food.

"We had some food on us," Spencer said. "Then it didn't matter how many times we depressed the sensors on the floor. You only tied them to the bird cage, not the main alarms."

"Okay, so how did you get the dagger out? I specifically programmed that pedestal myself. Even the tiniest amount of the dagger being lifted away would have sent the system crashing down," Sterling said.

"That's the best part," Ford said. "You did."

"Huh?" Sterling stared. "I did not."

"You really did," Spencer said, barely stifling a laugh.

Sterling stared at him.

"You know in the film Topkapi where the guy realizes who's to blame because, well, you knew the catchphrase-a little bird told me," Devereaux started. "You do know another name for the footage from security cameras, right?"

"A birds-eye view," Sterling said, slowly. "Oh, oh, oh-" His eyes widened.

"Yeah," Ford said. "That's what happened."

“After she got the lid stuck to the base with super glue,“ Hardison said, sounding wounded.

“What are you getting mad about,“ Parker returned immediately, “I unstuck it. Hand it over.“

“Yeah, you unstuck it by pouring white spirits on my machine.“

"The replica dagger was deliberately made with the hilt stuck to the handle," Sterling said. "And you knew I would know that."

Sterling got a little angry when he tried to open the Topkapi-replica-replica. Armitidge shrugged at him. Spencer had only asked for a replica that looked like it, not behaved like it. A proper functioning replica would have taken another week, and cost more.

“I swapped it quickly for our replica,” Parker said, playing a clip on screen when a heavily disguised Parker stepped in dressed as a cop and made the switch. “You threw it a long way. Thanks for that.”

Sterling howled, throwing the forgery to one side in complete frustration, and glancing around wildly.

"You're a clever bastard, Nathan Ford." Sterling leaned back, balancing the dagger between his hands.

Ford got to his feet, his team following the motion.

"One day it's going to all come tumbling down. You're good." Sterling got to his feet too, leaning against his table, not bothering to chase them. He wouldn't get very far, because Ford's team are clever, and fast, and loyal. But Sterling saw the crack forming between Spencer and Ford, even if Ford didn't, and maybe that loyalty had an expiration date. "But you're not as good as you think you are."

"I've heard that before," Ford said, letting his team out, locking gazes with Sterling one more time before sailing out, letting the door slam shut behind them.

"Yeah," Sterling said, to the empty room. "You heard it. But you weren't listening." He sank back down on his seat, playing with the dagger, knowing he had to go do his part in Ford's weird game soon. If he was lucky, he wouldn't run into Ford again for a long time.

Not because he was scared of losing - because Ford was steps closer to self-implosion than he even had been when he lost Sam. And when Ford finally exploded, he was going to take people out with him. Sterling planned to be as far away from that explosion as possible. He had no intention of being Nathan Ford's collateral damage, like Maggie had been the first time, standing square in the path of Hurricane Nate and getting burned.

No intention at all.

Master Post