- To rob an African kleptocrat's Boston vault, the LEVERAGE team has to time their heist to a symphony concert nearby, where amateur violinist Hardison must play a solo for a sell-out crowd.
- Wadata, a West African country, has an honest President, Simeon Moto, about to be term-limited out of office. His brother, Alexander Moto, owns conflict diamond mines, smuggles the diamonds, and I s a CIA snitch. Naturally, he aspires to public office. Nate, Parker and Eliot rain havoc on Alexander's campaign, Sophie uses some accent to perform "perception management" and introduces Hardison as Temi, musical prodigy from Wadata. Alexander paid $4.5 million for a 1705 Antonio Stradivari violin (i.e. "the Strad"). Sophie arranges a concert, starring Temi and the Strad, to cover a noisy heist. The Italian appears with her bad accent... hurray for closed captioning. Aldis Hodge's real life violin playing is beautifully poignant, worthy of the Philharmonic.—LA-Lawyer
- Mr. Moto tells some investors that he'll be a better leader of his rich African country than his brother, the current president.
On the street, a reporter with an African newspaper leaves Moto a message and walks to her car. Then she's nearly run down by a car.
Hardison and Eliot meet with Jane and Nate at the bar. She's followed by two men. Eliot takes care of them.
Jane tells them about the child slave labor in Moto's diamond minds. She says President Moto is a good man, but his brother Alexander isn't. The president is visiting in four days. She says the justice department is doing nothing.
Nate meets with his hot Italian contact, who tells him Alexander tips off the CIA about suspected terrorists and they leave him alone.
At HQ, Nate plans to go after Moto's diamonds, without which he won't be able to launch a campaign. Going through the buildings he owns around town, they find his vault in the basement of a concert hall. They also find a record he just purchased a $4.5 million Stradivarius violin.
Back at HQ they find that Moto has been in the US most of his life and will need to appeal to people back home to win the upcoming election.
Hardison mocks up a photo of Moto boozing it up and films a fake news report saying Moto called the soccer team "little school girls."
Moto seethes at the false reports and thinks Jane's behind it. Sophie drops by offering PR services. She suggests he make a child's dreams come true for good PR -- and shows him a photo of Hardison. Nate tells Hardison he needs to get Moto to take him into the vault and show him the violin. Hardison reiterates that he'd like to run his own crew someday, but Nate ignores him.
Hardison meets with Moto and Sophie and pretends to be skeptical about what good playing violin will do him. And so Moto takes him down to the vault to see the violin and Hardison's mini cams records it. Hardison is transfixed by the violin, which he played til he was 14.
Looking at the video of the vault, Parker says it's unhackable because it works on motion sensors. The only time they're turned off is for loud concerts which might trigger it. Nate has a new plan.
Sophie suggest Moto host a concert for his brother in two days, and Hardison will play.
Back at HQ, Hardison isn't keen on the idea. He'll be playing "Scheherezade", by Korsakov, which has a really hard solo at the end -- on the Stradivarius. Hardison goes to rehearse with the orchestra. He begs off when he gets a cell phone call.
Sophie arrives at the concert hall with lots of equipment, ready to do a sound check. A guard insists on checking it. Eliot watches a guard punch in the six digit key code but doesn't get the order of four digits.
Hardison comes back, panicked about playing in front of people. Planning the break in, Parker says they need to blast through the vault -- so Nate plans to time the break in to the music to cover it up. Which means Hardison has to play and play well.
At concert time, Sophie meets President Moto and takes a seat. The lights go up and everyone applauds for Hardison.
Nate gets a call from the Italian lady. She wants something from Moto's safe.
They begin playing.
Parker and Eliot go in as a cleaning crew. Security follows them. Parker starts punching in variations of the numbers they know are in the code. They have 5 minutes until the big noise.
The security guy is a challenge for Eliot but Parker finally gets the right code and they lay the explosives. But the security guy is back and whomping on Eliot again.
They time the blast to the music perfectly and it takes out the security guard. Hardison waits for his solo, oddly calm.
He stands and plays perfectly, of course. The team stops in the vault and listens. He gets a standing ovation. The team loses track of time and gets caught by the motion sensor in the vault, then the security guard finds them, followed by the Motos.
Nate tells the president his brother lured him there to assassinate him. Nate tells the president they're there for the list of suspected terrorists that he's holding (really the Italian chick's envelope) and implies they're CIA. Nate tells Moto to just open the envelope if he doesn't believe him, but they don't.
One of the president's men says they just found a rifle in the balcony with a clean print on the scope. Flash to one of Moto's security guys pawing through Sophie's "sound check" equipment. Then her assembling a rifle later and leaving it on the balcony. Guards take Alexander Moto away.
Nate admits to the team that he has no idea what's in the envelope. He gives it, unopened, to Italian Chick later. He guesses that the envelope was a link to her and tells her never to play him again.
Eliot and Nate meet with Jane. They know the assassination charges against Moto won't stick, but the charges led to a warrant which turned up smuggled diamonds in the vault. He'll never be president.
Nate gives her a check. Turns out they ended up with a Stradivarius on their hands. He suggests she open a music school back home.
Later at the bar, Hardison can't believe he played like that. Nate says he hypnotized him and took him back to playing as a kid. He even found out the last piece he played was Scheherezade.
Flash to Nate hypnotizing him with a metronome, then asking Hardison if he'd been napping, then sitting downstairs and Sophie noticing the metronome.
Hardison is upset Nate hypnotized a member of his own crew. Nate says pushing your crew is the key trait Hardison doesn't have to run a team.
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