Chapter 27: THE CONSULATE WATCH
[Midtown Manhattan, Rented Office — One Week Later, 8:15 PM]
The office occupied the seventh floor of a commercial building on East 69th, directly across from the Italian Consulate's staff entrance. Alex had leased it through a shell company — one month, furnished, no questions. The space had the sterile emptiness of a real estate staging effort: beige walls, a desk nobody had ever used, two chairs, and a window positioned like a rifle scope aimed at diplomatic territory.
Alex set up the binoculars on a tripod. I positioned a directional microphone — borrowed from DeShawn's inventory of surveillance equipment — aimed at the consulate's service corridor where deliveries entered and diplomatic pouches exited.
The music box was inside that building. Somewhere behind the limestone façade and the security checkpoints and the diplomatic immunity that made federal agencies tread carefully, the amber antique that had driven two seasons of White Collar was waiting for someone brave enough or stupid enough to extract it.
Neal Caffrey was going to be that someone.
The scanner on the desk confirmed it — two days of monitoring federal frequencies had tracked the operation's footprint. Peter Burke's team was running support. Neal was the insertion point. The FBI had negotiated a narrow access window through diplomatic back channels, giving Neal approximately forty-five minutes inside the consulate under cover of a cultural exchange event.
I knew the playbook. Season 1, Episode 13 — or was it 14? The details blurred at the edges, the specific episode numbers less reliable than the broad strokes. Neal would attend the event as a guest. He'd separate from the crowd, locate the music box in the consul general's private collection, and extract it using a combination of social engineering and the specific sleight-of-hand skills that made him the best in the world.
The part the show hadn't detailed was the preparation. And from the seventh floor of East 69th, I was watching it unfold in real time.
"He's been inside three times this week." Alex adjusted the binoculars. Her focus was absolute — the same concentrated intensity she brought to every operation, the discipline of a woman who'd been watching from shadows since her teens. "Twice for the cultural exchange planning meetings, once for a 'security consultation' that was obviously a recon walk."
"Standard procedure. He's mapping the interior — guard positions, camera blind spots, the consul general's schedule."
"And the FBI team?"
"Two vehicles on the perimeter. Burke is running command from a van on 68th. Diana Berrigan and Clinton Jones are on foot patrol, covering the exits." The names arrived from my criminal memory, cross-referenced against the Peter Burke profile I'd been building for weeks — Diana, the loyal agent who'd eventually become a mother; Jones, the steady professional who kept the team's operations running. Both mentioned in passing across six seasons, now standing on a Manhattan sidewalk in the autumn dark.
Alex lowered the binoculars. "We could do it. Intercept the box during the event, before Neal reaches it. I know the consulate's ventilation layout — there's a route through the mechanical systems on the fourth floor that bypasses the main corridors."
"And if Peter Burke's team catches us inside a diplomatic building during an active FBI operation?"
"We're faster than they are."
"Speed doesn't matter when you're inside a building with one exit and twenty federal agents covering it." I kept my voice level. The argument had been building since Alex's call — her urgency pulling against my patience, the competing mathematics of risk and reward. "Let Neal take the heat. Let the FBI process the box through their chain of custody. We intercept later, when the security has relaxed and the box is in a less fortified position."
"Later might not exist. If the box enters federal evidence storage—"
"It won't. The music box is a diplomatic asset — it'll be returned to the Italian government or held in negotiated custody. Either way, it moves through channels that are slower and more vulnerable than the FBI's evidence vault."
Alex's jaw tightened. The disagreement was professional, not personal, but it carried the weight of everything between us — the grandfather slip, the test at her apartment, the acknowledged distrust that functioned as the foundation of our partnership. She didn't believe my strategic patience was purely strategic. She suspected it was connected to the same unknown knowledge source that let me catch fabricated security details without verification.
She was right. I was letting the music box proceed through canon channels because I knew — from six seasons of television — that the box would surface again, multiple times, each time creating a new opportunity. The FBI would hold it. Neal would lose it. Fowler would try to acquire it. The box would pass through enough hands that intercepting it became a question of timing rather than capability.
But I couldn't tell Alex that. Couldn't explain that my patience was informed by the detailed plot of a television show that described every major beat of the next three years. So instead, I argued logistics.
"The parasitic approach is lower risk, lower exposure, and takes advantage of the FBI's resources. Let them find it. Let them secure it. Let them fight over custody. And when the box is between protections — between the FBI and the State Department, or between the State Department and the Italian government — we take it."
Alex stared out the window. The consulate glowed with the warm light of the cultural exchange event — diplomatic guests arriving in black cars, security personnel checking credentials at the gate. Somewhere inside, Neal Caffrey was working the room with the effortless charm that had made him the subject of six seasons of television and the obsession of the most capable FBI agent in New York.
"Fine." Alex's voice was flat. Concession, not agreement. "We watch. We track. We don't move."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Thank me when we actually have the box."
We settled into the watch. Alex on the binoculars, me on the directional microphone, the scanner murmuring federal frequencies between us. The evening unfolded in fragments — snippets of radio traffic, glimpses of movement through the consulate's windows, the slow machinery of a federal operation that looked nothing like television and everything like the bureaucratic patience I'd been learning to emulate.
At 9:47 PM, the scanner crackled with Peter Burke's voice — clear, controlled, the specific timbre of a man managing an operation that balanced diplomacy with larceny.
"Caffrey is inside. Copy on visual confirmation — northeast corridor, approaching private collection."
Alex's hands tightened on the binoculars. I could feel her restraint — physical, tangible, the discipline of a woman forcing herself to watch someone else acquire the prize her grandfather had spent a lifetime chasing.
"Caffrey has the asset. Repeat — asset in hand. Moving to extraction point."
Eleven minutes. From entry to acquisition. Neal Caffrey, operating at the peak of his abilities, with the FBI covering every exit and Peter Burke running the board. Eleven minutes for an operation that should have taken an hour, executed with the fluid confidence of someone who didn't need meta-knowledge because he had something better — natural, practiced, bone-deep expertise.
I watched Alex watch the consulate. The binoculars hid her expression, but her posture told the story — the tension in her shoulders, the stillness of her breathing, the controlled grief of a woman watching her inheritance pass through someone else's hands.
"Caffrey exiting northeast. Burke moving to intercept for handoff. Operation clean."
The black car appeared at the staff entrance. Neal's silhouette — tall, graceful, carrying something under his coat with the careful nonchalance of a man who could make federal evidence look like a dinner party favor. He climbed into the car. Peter's van pulled into traffic behind him. The escort formation closed around the asset.
The music box was in FBI custody.
Alex lowered the binoculars. Set them on the desk with a click that sounded like a door closing.
"It's done," she said.
"It's begun." I stood, stretched the stiffness from three hours in a chair, and started packing the surveillance equipment. "The box moves from here. Federal holding, diplomatic review, interagency negotiation. Each step creates a window."
"And if the windows don't open?"
"They will. They always do. This box has been moving between protections since 1945. It's not going to stop now."
She didn't argue. The concession from earlier held — not trust, not agreement, but the practical acceptance of a partner whose strategy hadn't been wrong yet. The yet was loud in the silence between us.
We packed the office. Alex locked the door. On the street, the consulate's lights were dimming as the cultural exchange wound down, the diplomatic guests filing out, the security teams standing down. A normal evening in New York's diplomatic district, the machinery of international relations continuing its slow grind unaware that a stolen music box had just changed hands inside its walls.
Alex offered a thermos. Coffee — black, still warm from whenever she'd filled it. I took it. Drank. The bitterness cut through the fatigue of three hours' focused observation, settling my stomach against the low-grade anxiety that had accompanied the entire operation.
Two thieves, sharing coffee on East 69th, watching the aftermath of a heist they'd chosen not to commit.
"Kate and Neal will have the box," I said. "Temporarily. Fowler will push for it. The FBI will push back. And somewhere in the push, the box will be vulnerable."
Alex pocketed the thermos. "When?"
"Soon. I'll know when the window opens."
She walked south toward the subway. I walked north toward home. The night air carried the bite of late October — the season turning, the trees along Fifth Avenue shedding their camouflage, the city stripping down to its winter architecture.
Behind me, the Italian Consulate went dark. The music box was gone from it, moving through federal channels toward a destination I could predict but couldn't yet reach. In the show, Kate and Neal would hold it briefly — the box serving as both prize and trap, its value ensuring that everyone who touched it became a target.
In four months, Kate would be dead. The music box would be one of the instruments of her death — Adler's obsession with it driving the escalation that put Fowler in position to plant the bomb. Every hand the box passed through added weight to the countdown.
I could have taken it tonight. Could have intercepted Neal, grabbed the box, broken the chain that led to Kate's death. Instead, I'd sat in a rented office and watched the timeline proceed.
The parasitic strategy was sound. The patience was calculated. The decision was correct.
The weight of it sat on my chest like a stone the entire walk home.
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