Chapter Text
Though it had been weird at first, Diana had come to accept Agent Dick Grayson’s recurring presence as the official Justice League consultant.
Dick Grayson—he was adamant that this was his real name— was not entirely unlike the conman he’d once played. He was charming and competent, but unlike Neal he had an underlying aura of professionalism. It was a subtle reminder that despite his good-natured exterior, he was trusted to be an agent of the world’s foremost coalition of superheroes. Diana didn’t know exactly how Grayson had ended up working for the Justice League, but there was clearly more to him than his family name.
Which was another adjustment she’d had to make in getting to know the man behind Neal Caffrey—where Neal’s childhood was a locked vault, Grayson was almost shockingly open about his family. Not only was Grayson’s life story available through a quick Google (the man had his own Wikipedia page for Christ’s sake), but Grayson himself was quick to share an anecdote about bizarre upbringing.
If Grayson hadn’t pulled her aside to personally explain that Neal Caffrey was an undercover case he’d worked on behalf of the Justice League, Diana might have been inclined to ignore any visual similarities between Grayson and Caffrey. There was no doubt that Grayson was his own person. For all that Grayson insisted that Caffrey hadn’t been a complete fabrication, Diana held no assumptions that she knew the full scope of Agent Dick Grayson.
But Diana was to learn.
***
It started, like many things involving the man formerly known as Neal Caffrey, with stolen art.
As much as she hated to admit it, Diana enjoyed when art was stolen. Yes, it was a crime, yes she was an FBI agent who specialized in white collar crimes, but also mortgage fraud paperwork was objectively boring. She would take standing in a commandeered meeting room discussing a missing artwork any day over sitting at her desk for hours on end.
And if the art piece in question was from another planet, well that was just another bonus.
“What fun have you got for me this time?” Grayson announced as he strode into the room.
“A Tamaranean sculpture on a short-term loan to the MET disappeared last night,” Peter said as he gestured to their evidence board. “You know how much off-world pieces go for on the black market.”
Grayson nodded and studied the board. They’d already spent days working the case, so their evidence board was unfortunately veering away from the realm of visual aid and into the territory of red-string conspiracy.
“So far our theory is that it was stolen on behalf of the Berlin Broker,” Jones explained. The Berlin Broker was an infamous entity in the black market of renowned art. It wouldn’t be the first time that one of their cases led to a collaboration with Interpol in the hopes of tracking him down.
Grayson raised his eyebrows. “This doesn’t seem like his usual method.”
“That’s what we thought too,” Diana said, “But the pieces are all adding up.”
“In what way?”
“We started by tracking any activity related to the piece, you know the drill,” Jones began excitedly. “And we found a rabbit hole of German conversations on this website, which led to another, then to a paper trail and so on, until we found what’s practically a confession.
“The Berlin Broker doesn’t leave a paper trail,” Grayson said, frowning. Back in the day, Caffrey had denied any associations with the Broker, but they had all assumed he was lying.
Peter shrugged. “He must have gotten sloppy.”
“No, there’s something else going on here,” Grayson pondered, pulling out his phone. He tapped it a couple of times, then raised it to his ear. The line rang once before a muffled voice that was definitely not speaking English spread through the room.
Grayson responded in like, in what Diana would bet money was rapid-fire German.
They had all gotten mostly used to Agent Grayson, but it was easy to forget that the man had been undercover flawlessly for years. He was indubitably skilled beyond what he’d been able to let show in his time as Neal.
“The Broker didn’t do it,” Grayson declared as he hung up the phone. “He knows better than to risk causing an inter-planetary war.”
Peter and Jones both looked stunned, and Diana was pretty sure her own mouth was hanging open.
“Was that him on the phone,” she asked faintly, while at the same time Jones exclaimed, “You have his number?”
Dick just shrugged. “We’ve had…dealings in the past. He’s learnt his lesson.”
“So we have nothing?” Peter sighed.
“Not at all,” Grayson smirked and pointed at the board. “That last message is the key.”
They all shot him questioning looks.
“You assumed it was basic German,” he continued, "probably because your translator corrected all of the mistakes in the translation—which is normally fine, y’know, but in this case the original errors are vital. When you isolate the mistakes, and shift them 13 places—that’s a lucky number on Tamaran—you get a phonetic spelling of a sentence in Tamaranean.
Grayson grabbed a white board pen and started writing frantically on the glass board.
“Which translates to…” He wrote across the whole board: TAMARANEAN LIBERATION: FREE OUR ART. “The Broker had nothing to do with it; it was Tamaranean dissidents. The TLF is an isolationist group that opposes Tamaranean cultural exchange, and they specifically hate Earth for ‘claiming’ their princess’ attention. Usually, they make a show of their work, but clearly this time they went for subtlety. And they had help from someone here who knows Earth’s languages and black art market well. It’s a good thing you called me in on this one, because the JL’s going to want to follow this thread.”
As he finished his monologue, Grayson looked up and met their eyes properly. At their stunned expressions, he blinked and narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“How the hell did you do that?” Jones asked.
“You speak German?” Peter added.
“You know Tamaranean?” Diana stressed.
Grayson huffed a laugh. “Uh, practice, it was one of my first languages, and a friend taught me.”
A silence filled the room as they tried to absorb all that information.
“Speaking of which,” Grayson said cheerfully, “I think it's safe to say I’ll be taking this case off your hands. I’ll give Kori a call, see if we can get this sorted out.”
“Kori?” Peter asked wearily, as though he couldn’t help but press for more information.
“Oh, sorry,” Grayson said. “Starfire. She’s their princess and knows how best to handle these kinds of fringe movements.”
“You know Starfire?” Jones asked, stunned.
“We go way back,” Grayson replied, looking somewhat confused. Which was fair, Diana figured, considering it probably was completely normal to Grayson that he knew an alien princess and her language. It just wasn’t something any of the team had really considered about him. Sure, they knew he was an agent of the Justice League, but he’d never talked about the superheroes he worked for. And he’d certainly never shown off the level of skill and familiarity he’d just displayed.
Not to mention he’d blown open their case in a matter of minutes.
“It was great seeing you all, but I should probably go handle this.” And then Grayson was gone, and Diana shared a long-suffering look with Peter.