Chapter Text
“How would you like to make upwards of fifty million euros?” is how this conversation would start if Pearl had planned things better. It’s a great opener for a friendly discussion and it makes things very clear up front. Again, the ideal start to a business deal.
Instead, Pearl walks into the coffee shop and says, “You owe me one grand.” This, as you may expect, is not the greatest start to a conversation.
“Who carries one thousand pounds on them into a crowded city?” Grian responds incredulously, not bothering to get up from where he’s comfortably wedged into the corner of a booth. There’s a plate of sticky toffee pudding, half-eaten, beside him. In his hands, he holds a wallet. Pearl’s wallet, to be precise. He rifles through it, counting out the thick stack of 50 pound banknotes with Alan Turing’s face on them.
Pearl levels a Look at him. She comes to a halt in front of his table and holds out one hand towards him. Grian rolls his eyes and lets out a long-suffering sigh, but drops her wallet into her waiting hand. She doesn’t move.
“Really?” Grian protests. “You do know that the sheer amount of money you have on you is ridiculous, right?” Still, he pulls out three more banknotes and slaps them into her hand.
“Thank you,” Pearl says sweetly in return. She slips all the bills back into the folds of her wallet and tucks the whole thing somewhere in the depths of her long coat. She’s dressed warmly for London’s cold spring weather, a thick coat resting over her shoulders and a woven sweater underneath. The umbrella she brought in with her rests at the front of the shop inside of the designated bucket.
Grian takes a bite of his pudding, staring at Pearl. She looks back, sliding into the seat opposite of him in the booth. He swallows, not breaking eye contact.
“So,” he begins, putting his fork down, “I reckon this isn’t a social call?”
“Sorry, I know it’s been a while, but things have been busy. I saw you’ve been keeping busy too, though?”
Grian laughs at that. “Oh, I don’t know what you mean by that. It’s been really quiet up here, actually.”
“So the Crédit Agricole in Paris wasn’t you?” Pearl raises a finger. “Or that situation at South Bank London? Honestly, I’m kind of surprised you pulled that one off on your own!”
“Hey!” Grian complains. “I’m not that inept!” He pauses. “I sense that you’re leading up to something.”
Pearl grins at him, wide and sharp. “One grand, that’s a lot, right? Quick cash in a pinch.” She leans forward, and now she says, “How would you like to make upwards of fifty million euros?”
Grian stares at her. “Like… in one go? All together?” He narrows his eyes at her. “Are you joking around right now?”
“Fifty million. After the split.” Grian starts to say something, but she cuts him off. “Assuming we keep the crew small, five people. And the way the operation is looking, we need a small crew.”
“Right. Okay. So, um--” Grian sets his plate aside, toffee pudding forgotten “--just to be clear? We haven’t spoken in almost two years, then you suddenly show up in my city and offer me fifty million euros. You understand how sketchy this sounds?”
Pearl raises an eyebrow at him. “So you’re not in?”
“Oh, I’m definitely in! I just want you to know that you need to work on your persuasion skills.”
“That’s it? You’re in?” she asks in disbelief. “You don’t want to know more?” She knew it would be easy, but she didn't think it’d be this easy.
Grian shrugs. “Of course I want to know more. You can tell me on the way!” He fumbles with his satchel for a moment, digging around for something. “You can have this back, by the way.” He tosses a gold watch at her, and Pearl looks down at her bare wrist.
Damn. There’s the reason she wants him on her crew.
Wait.
“On the way?”
The engine of Pearl’s car idles in the car park of an old hardware store. Grian had left to go inside ten minutes ago, promising her that he’d be quick. His perception of “quick” is evidently not the same as Pearl’s.
Grian had assumed, and correctly, that Pearl had gone to him first. To be frank, she didn’t have anyone else she trusted on this job, but she figured that she’d find everyone else on the way. Grian had always had connections in their line of work, whereas Pearl preferred to work alone. This store was supposedly one of his numerous connections.
He’d always been the more social of the two, despite their long history with each other. In some ways, Pearl considered Grian to be her brother, if only a bond forged by many, many, situations involving running from the police.
After another fifteen minutes, Grian emerges. He waves a hand at Pearl in the car, beckoning for her to come inside. She sighs, pulling her feet off of the dashboard and turns off the car before getting out.
“Right, so I know this guy,” Grian says as she walks into the store. The inside is only slightly warmer than the chill outside. “We’re friends, anyhow, and he just needs a bit of convincing. Fifty million is a lot, but maybe not enough to make him want in just yet.”
“Who’s ‘this guy’?”
Grian doesn’t respond, instead opening a creaky door labelled “employees only” and gesturing her inside. It’s much warmer in this room, and she hears the gentle clicking of a locking mechanism from somewhere behind the stacks of hardware.
“Hi! Yeah, um, I’m the guy!” comes the voice of someone right next to Pearl. She jumps a little, searching for the source of the noise. “Sorry! Sorry, there’s not a lot of room, let me just move that--”
Crash!
A box of wires and cords come crashing to the concrete flooring with a heavy thud, yellows and reds spilling over the ground. Pearl lifts her eyes to see a tall man with an impressive handlebar moustache waving at her awkwardly, a Masterlock combination lock in one hand. She glances back down at the mess on the floor.
“I promise I’m usually much better with my hands.” He winces. “Not like that! Oh, bollocks, I’m really screwing this up.”
Grian clears his throat. “This is my friend!” he announces, waving a hand at the man. “He’s joining the crew--”
“I am?”
“--as our lockpicker. Trust me, he’s the best one this side of the pond.” He pauses. “His name is Mumbo, by the way.”
“Yep! That’s me!” Mumbo chimes in. He shoots a glare over at Grian. “And I did not say that I was joining your heist crew!”
Grian steps over the mess of cords delicately, then bounds over to his friend once he’s clear. “Oh, come on! You’ve been wanting to put your skills to the test for forever! Why not make a couple million while you're at it?”
“Because!” Mumbo protests, “I’m not really criminal material!”
Crossing his arms, Grian peers up at him. “And I am?”
“I mean…” Mumbo trails off. “You’d be wanted by Interpol if they knew how much you’ve stolen from just Europe alone.”
“He is,” Pearl cuts in. “Wanted by Interpol, I mean. It’s a long story! I can tell you all his secrets if you come with us to meet Grian’s next friend. You don’t have to join our crew, but you do know that I can’t tell you everything about the job unless you’re in, yeah?”
Mumbo shifts between his feet, eyes darting between Grian and Pearl. “Okay, fine,” he acquiesces. “But this does not mean I’m in,” he says pointedly at Grian, who’s already grinning as he leads Mumbo by hand to the door.
“Onwards!”
“I’m in.”
“You don’t know anything,” Pearl stresses as she looks at Grian’s newest recruit.
Yeah,” he agrees readily, nodding his head. “It sounds fun, though! More fun than the last job Grian called me in for.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Grian starts, “I did not mean for that to happen to you!”
“But it still did! It’s okay, though,” he tells Grian, “I’ve forgiven you! I did do the favour of taking a couple hundred from your accounts as your apology to me, I hope you didn’t mind. The Swedish guy I spoke to on the phone was so nice, by the way, didn’t even question me!”
Pearl stares at the man, closer this time. “Grian, who is this?” she asks. He doesn’t exactly look like someone regularly assisting grand larceny, more like a used car salesman -- er, previously owned car salesman.
“He’s my, uh… business asso--”
“We’re partners!”
Pearl raises her eyebrows at them. “Right. Moving on! You already know Grian, clearly, but I’m Pearl. Me and Grian go way back, which is why I trust his judgement on his crew member picks.”
“Well, you can call me Scar!” he says jovially. “Who else is in? I love making new friends.”
Pointing out towards where Mumbo is playing mobile games in Pearl’s car, she says, “So far? Just you, me, Grian, and possibly that guy over there. He’s still undecided.”
Behind the desk, Scar nods contemplatively. “So what’s the job? Are we stealing gold? I’ve always wanted to steal gold.”
Pearl tilts her head sideways. “Actually? We are stealing gold, sort of! I’ll explain when we get the crew assembled.”
This would be the perfect crew already, a master thief, an undetectable pickpocket, a (supposedly) world class locksmith, and a chameleon to round off the group, but there’s one more they still need.
The thing about this job in particular is that Grian doesn’t have connections, which is surprising. The last ‘crew’ (calling them a crew is a massive understatement) Grian really tangled with was a global organisation who “took care” of the flow of commerce in their own special little way (yet another understatement). When Grian left them, he kept those connections, which is why he somehow knows all the right people to bring into their crew.
It’s in the Watchers’ best interest to keep Grian out of this job, though, which means his connections are useless here. They’ll need to hunt for their final member old-school.
“Is this it?” Scar asks amiably as he wheels around the desk. They’ve met him at his art studio, a nice warehouse with sunlight streaming in through the ceiling skylights to illuminate his dozens of half-finished oil paintings. There’s no starving artist here, as Scar has made it plenty clear where he gets his funds from. It’s nice to see (stolen) money being funnelled into creatives for a change.
He weaves his way through his projects with practised ease, both hands on his wheels as he chatters to Grian. “It’s nice to meet your friend, Grian! You’ve talked about her before, but for some reason I didn’t think she’d be Australian!”
“You talked about me?” Pearl teases, “All good things I hope.”
Grian scoffs as he walks behind Scar. “No, I told him about all the times you almost got us caught.”
Pearl gasps in mock-shock. “I have never! I distinctly remember you pressing the silent alarm in a bank because you claimed not to know what the button did.”
“We promised never to talk about that one again!” Grian yelps. “This is betrayal.”
They reach the door, and Pearl holds it open for Scar in lieu of pressing the automatic button. She thinks about closing it on Grian, but opts to instead stick out her tongue at him as he passes by.
“You’re such a child!” he throws over his shoulder as he points Scar to the car with Mumbo. Pearl rolls her eyes and follows after them.
Once they’re all situated, Pearl behind the wheel, she looks over at the back where Scar is sitting with Mumbo. “I promise we’ll get a new car once everything is planned. I have to ditch this one soon, anyways,” she tells him. His wheelchair fit just barely in the back, but it wasn’t a comfortable squeeze. She decides that she’ll drive extra carefully to their next destination.
“What are we waiting for?” Grian complains. “Let’s go!”
<Unknown Number > would you like to make 50 million dollars in one job?
This time, everyone sits in the car together, huddling over Grian’s phone as he types away. The car is parked in the lot of a diner. Inside, the restaurant is about to close, and they watch as chairs are stacked on top of tables.
“Does this strike anyone else as, I dunno, stalker-ish?” Mumbo asks after ten minutes of silently watching the employees close shop. “I mean, we’re just sitting and staring at them. I almost feel like we need binoculars or something.”
Grian shushes his friend and sends the message again, from a different number. His phone is old, issued from when he was still with the Watchers. It can do all sorts of things that Pearl honestly can’t find it within herself to question, so she just watches as Grian spams job offers from multitudes of untraceable phone numbers.
This goes on for five more minutes before the lights in the diner shut off and Grian finally gets a response. His phone lights up with a chirp, and they all lean in again.
<###-###-#### > who are you?
< Unknown Number > someone offering you 50 million dollars in one job
< ###-###-#### > I got that much, but what do you want from me
< Unknown Number > are you interested in the 50 million dollar job
< Unknown Number > because we’re sort of on a time constraint
< Unknown Number > we heard you have connections
< ###-###-#### > okay wait hold on
< ###-###-#### > what sort of connections do you need
< ###-###-#### > I’m listening
< ###-###-####> you get 15 minutes to explain.
Then, without warning, Grian’s phone starts violently buzzing. He picks up the phone and answers the call, turning on speaker mode.
“You have fifteen minutes, starting now,” says the voice of an American man. He sounds friendly enough, if a bit wary. “I have a feeling it’s you in that car over there, so don’t make me have to come over there.”
Mumbo peers out the window into the darkened car park. All the employees have left already, though evidently not their man.
“Right!” Grian exclaims, putting the phone down on the centre console. “We need someone with connections to HASA. You help us, and you get fifty million euros -- that’s about fifty-three million US dollars, by the way.”
The man is silent for a moment. “What do you need HASA for?” He sounds confused, if a little interested.
“Nothing too big,” Pearl cuts in. “You won’t be risking much. We just need to get into an event under HASA’s name.”
“And what are you doing at that event under HASA’s name?” he asks pointedly.
Scar leans forwards. “Where do you think the fifty million dollars are coming from!”
There’s another pause as the man thinks.
“Look,” Grian begins, “Mister, uh, Esvee, you could use that fifty million, couldn’t you?” He nods his head, even though the guy can’t even see him. “You’ve got a partner that needs funds for his research, right? HASA doesn’t even pay that well. Fifty million is more than enough to retire and get all three of you somewhere comfortable for the rest of your lives.”
Pearl would assume that Grian is bluffing harder than he ever has before, but she knows for a fact that the source he got his information from is as clear as snowmelt from mountain peaks. Everything he says is true, if a bit ill gotten.
“Who are you?” the man asks again, this time with more steel in his voice. “How do you know all of this?”
Grian leans back. “I have connections, just like you, Impulse.” He pauses, just for effect, like the mischievous bastard he is. “Are you in?”
A much longer pause than before. “...I’m in.”
The line drops dead with a beep, and the whole car is silent for a beat.
“Oh my god,” says Mumbo in awe. “That was actually really impressive!”
Scar nods in agreement. “Almost as good as me, Grian!”
Pearl high-fives him with a wide grin. He returns it, a smug smile on his face as he pockets his phone.
They’re still celebrating when a sharp knock comes at the window of the car. Grian jumps in his seat and turns around to see a man standing outside the car, a thick jacket over a black shirt with a yellow print on it. Pearl rolls the window down for him.
“Yes, sir?” Grian asks with feigned politeness. “We’re just leaving now, don’t worry.”
“Where are we going?” the man asks. “Fifty million isn’t just going to fall from the sky, right?” He looks up, as if it might actually rain cash.
Grian’s eyes go wide. “Esvee! Impulse! Yeah, yeah, I was just joking with you!”
“You didn’t know what he looks like?!” Pearl whispers into Grian’s ear with a small laugh. He shushes her with a quick side-glare. Pearl elbows him and turns to Impulse. “Just follow the car,” she explains, “we can do introductions when we get there.”
Impulse gives her a thumbs up and walks back to his car. It’s across the car park, shadowed under a tree and a couple of metres behind a lamppost. She wouldn’t have noticed it if Impulse hadn’t been walking directly towards it. That explains why no one had seen it, at least.
Pearl turns the car back on and leans back to smile at her crew. This is it. One last heist, going out with a bang. Grian lets out a laugh, high and loud -- he’d always been the easiest to get excited for jobs. Mumbo has a smile on his face too, wider and more genuine than all his other ones before; he looks just about ready to commit to the crew. Scar, for his part, looks contemplative and just as excited as everyone else.
Well. Who wouldn’t be excited? They’re pirating from pirates who had pirated from pirates! In a way, it all comes full circle.