| “ | Plans are like identities. Always have a backup. | ” |
— Sophie Devereaux | ||
The crew finds out that a shady plastics exporter whose dumping threatens local waters is smuggling black market antiquities on his barges, and plots to relieve him of his ill-gotten gains.
Client[]
DeDe and Marcus Wilkins
Mark[]
Clyde Hammond
Summary[]
The waters where a mother and her son run their shrimping business have been polluted with garbage. One day their ship gets blown up. The mother, DeDe, contacts Harry for help, and Harry asks the Leverage team for assistance. She tells the Leverage team how she went on the news to expose how Clyde Hammond was dumping the garbage from barges on his ship into the waters. Unfortunately, they had no physical evidence so they couldn’t stop him. But DeDe’s sure he blew up her boat in retribution for the T.V. interview.
The team finds out that Clyde has been stealing antiques and hiding them in the trash that he ships to open waters.
The team aims to go after Clyde through his stolen art. With Eliot as backup, Sophie meets Clyde, posing as an art authenticator. Clyde, however, has his art authenticated, revealing that he has an art forger working for him. When Clyde introduces his “art authenticator,” Sophie recognizes him as Arthur Wilde. Arthur gets Sophie away from Clyde to talk to her, and Sophie takes her com out. It’s revealed that they knew each other in the past and aren’t exactly on friendly terms. Arthur tells Sophie he’s been selling a few of Clyde’s antiques for his own gain.
Back at the base, Sophie assures the team that her history with Arthur won’t conflict with their job. The team plan to sell Clyde fake ivory Mah-jongg tiles with trackers implanted in them at an auction. At the auction, Arthur catches on to the team’s plan. Sophie loops Wilde into their con, promising him some of the antiques in Hammond’s shipping container. Harry pretends to be a Chechen who wants the tiles, and Hammond offers to ship them to him through his business, while planning to take them for himself. The team plans on tracking the tiles to find the shipping container with the antiques on Hammond’s boat, but the trackers stop working once the tiles are on the ship.
Sophie reveals to Eliot and Harry her history with Arthur. Sophie explains that Arthur was the first person she worked with when they were both street rats in London. Together they joined a crew doing art forgery. The boss got Sophie into high society, and she caught the eye of the Duke of Hannover. He was older than her, but she fell for him. Eventually, someone caught onto the art forgery scam they were running, and Sophie let Arthur take the fall, causing him to go to prison. She now feels like she owes him.
The team makes Hammond worried about angering the Chechen (Harry). Hammond noticed Eliot stalking them, and Arthur tells him Eliot’s a crooked fed. Hammond and Eliot talk. Eliot pretends to blackmail him, saying he wants a part of Hammond’s business or he’ll turn him into the feds. Hammond, feeling the heat of everything happening, orders the shipping crate to be unloaded.
Everything ultimately leads to Hammond shooting Arthur and getting away on a motorboat. Harry had earlier switched out Hammond’s bullets with blanks, so Arthur is unharmed. Parker and Breanna meanwhile found the shipping container with the antiques and unloaded it. The team buys DeDe a new boat and puts forward an effort to clean the bay.
Guest Cast[]
- Joshua Bitton as Clyde Hammond
- Damian O'Hare as Arthur Wilde
- J. Omar Castro as Anton
- Jackie Goldston as DeDe Wilkins
- Toby Nichols as Marcus Wilkins
Aliases[]
- Sophie: Athena Baros- art authenticator
- Eliot: Roy- mechanic, Crooker FBI agent
- Harry: Mr. Akhmedova the Chechen
Episode Notes[]
- Parker mentions in the episode that she’s practicing her lip reading
- Eliot name-drops Agent McSweeten, a favorite recurring character
- Harry repeats what Parker suggested they do to him in “The Too Many Rembrandts Job”, to “bonk him on the head, wipe his ID and credit rating, and dump him in Venezuela .”