Dear God, He's Gone and Done It: Chapter 10
12, Oct. 2015-2 ½ days after the discovery of the dead cabbie
Meet me at Diogenes in 45mins. I have something I want to discuss with you. MH 12, Oct. 2015
"Well there goes my night." Sherlock tossed his phone onto the desk in the sitting room.
"Mycroft again?" John glanced up at him from the page he was reading in the newspaper.
"At least the weather is suitably dull and tedious."
"Too right. It couldn't be any rainier and colder if it tried. It's a miserable night out. Do you want me to go with you?"
"Hmmmm. No. Everything should be alright. If it was important enough to him, he would have just snatched us off of the streets."
Going back to his reading, John could only nod his head in agreement.
Forty-three minutes later, a black car pulled up in front of Diogenes; the driver got out and went around letting out the passenger. Sherlock, getting out of the car, made his way through the club to his brother's office.
"What is so important Mycroft? And do be quick….."
"Oh please Sherlock, it's not like you have a pressing case on hand."
"The dead cabbie…."
"And you know where that is going."
"Under the rug with some of the others then?"
Mycroft simply smiled smugly. "Now, with the small talk out of the way…I want you to stay away from Barbary. You should not be involved with this woman."
"What does it matter to you?"
"She is one of my agents and I have her placed in such a way to keep you out of danger."
"What danger…oh. You've upset someone's applecart and now you are worried about retaliation."
"No. WE."
"What?"
"WE both have upset someone's applecart and they are planning retaliation. But I don't want you consorting with her. I fear you may fall for her many significant charms."
"Oh please, do you even realize who you are talking to?"
"This is how she works Sherlock. On an assignment she finds ways to get close to her mark. Sometimes it's as simple as the way she tosses her hair or bats her eyes…sometimes she acts like a bumbling tart….other times she can come across as tremendously intelligent. She gets close to her mark, usually for the purposes of killing them. In your case it is just the opposite. If she gets close enough to you she thinks that it will make it easier to keep track of where you're going and who might be following you around. I only want her doing her job, not my brother. There is also the social aspect of it. You are of a higher station in life, she is beneath you. "
"So, in review….You don't want me to fall into some sordid affair with…what…what would you call her…."
"Agent…"Mycroft added carefully.
"Hmmm, perhaps. But, I do know that the other night when we were together she was rather responsive to my advances, and now she will barely look me in the eye. What have you said to her?"
"Why do you think…"
"You have done or said something to her. Now, what was it?"
"Stay away from her Sherlock, at least on the personal level. Otherwise, when this is over and she goes back to her normal self, you will be left in the dust. Do you think she is going to care a thing about you when she is assigned to a case in say, Cambodia or Kazakhstan? She will be on to her next mark and you will be just an after-thought."
"Why would you even assign her to do something like this? Why not just use your usual men to trail me around London?"
"Under ordinary circumstances, they would be just fine. This situation requires more….just more. Barbary has no threshold on how far she will go to get the job done. If things fall apart she is not above fighting to the last man standing to achieve a favorable outcome. And as you can see, she usually is the last man standing."
"You've done exceedingly well avoiding the real answer."
"Some of your investigations into lesser cases have, apparently, piqued the interest of some slave traders. They are worried that you are going to lead authorities straight to their operations."
"Are you protecting the traders?"
"Hardly. These traffickers deal in sex slaves. I have actually been trying to shut this particular ring down for years. They are rather like a hydra. You cut off one head and two more grow back in its place. I would never protect anyone affiliated with them. But, if they think that you are sniffing around their operation they would not hesitate to take you out. And, if I was to be entirely honest with you, if they didn't try to kill you they would likely torture you to find out what you might now about our government investigation into their operation. We'd have to start from scratch. Do you know how long it has taken to get this close to them?"
"Do tell."
"Sherlock. Please, I am only thinking of your well-being. You know how you get when things don't go your way. And if you were to carry on with this woman and she was to leave you behind when she moved on, how do you think you would handle that?"
"I think you're more concerned with taking care of your investigation into this slave trading ring and cover your own backside." Sherlock glared at his brother. He knew then what he had to do. If Mycroft wanted him to back away from any association with Barbary he would get exactly what he wanted; but Sherlock was doing things his way.
"Will you do as I say? Or, will I have to apply more pressure?"
Sherlock never answered Mycroft, only turned his back and swept from the room dramatically as always, his now famous Belstaff swinging into place.
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Morning of 13, Oct. 2015
Barbary woke up in a cold sweat; her eyes were spinning around the room at top speed trying to figure out where she was. Her breathing was heavy, as if she had just run a marathon. She couldn't catch her breath.
"Calm down old girl, you're in your own flat…in your own bed." Barbary tried telling herself this over and over again, just like every other night she had the same damned dream; it never worked much, but she had to try. Her hands were cold and clammy, even she could tell that. It had been three days since they found that burned out taxi on the docks with the driver's body in the trunk. So far the only news she had received about it was that some of the homeless people and dockworkers that she and Tarek had spoken with fingered the same person for the blaze…the mysterious mercenary….the bastard, Kostya. She should have killed him ten years ago. If the building they were in hadn't been rigged to explode, causing the room shake, the floor giving way underneath her as Edward and Phillip were dragging her away, she would have finished the job. This time around she would not be stopped. Kostya would die.
"Get out of bed already!" Lying in the bed all day wasn't going to make anything better. If she went back to sleep, the dream…nightmare really…would just come back; you could almost set your watch by that damned dream. Barbary hopped down out of bed and changed out of her pajamas and into some gym shorts and a tank top. After brushing her teeth and combing out her bed head she headed out of her flat to the lift in the hall. After stopping by the desk on the main floor to check in with Edward and Phillip, she took the lift the rest of the way down to the basement, entering the gymnasium.
Barbary loved this gym. Of course it had all the equipment that you would find in a gym, but it also had a couple sets of uneven bars, four balance beams, three vaulting benches, five professional sized trampolines, an Olympic quality swimming pool, two sets of rings, and three sets of parallel bars.
As it was, Barbary walked over to the mat and sat down, lying back staring at the ceiling; one would almost think she was meditating….wrong room for that. As she was there, trying to reign in her thoughts, she lifted her arms up, placing her hands palm-down on the mat beside her head, arching her back as she went. She arched her back as much as she could, the vertebrae popping as she went…she loved that sound….her spine lining up. Then, without missing a beat she raised her legs over her head in an arch and slowly brought them around so she was in a standing position again. Clapping her hands loudly, loud music started to play. She had eclectic tastes in music, just as she did with everything else in her life apparently. Some of the music selections were of a classical nature, some had been from the 50's and 60's, and still other selections were of a more modern hard rock/heavy metal variety; it wouldn't have been completely out of the question to hear the odd rap tune if the mood struck her.
After her initial movement, Barbary began giving her gym mat a fit; she was tumbling as hard and fast as she could go in any given direction. Cartwheels, handsprings, you name it. There were no flourishes; she wasn't in it for showmanship. Barbary was trying to rattle the damned nightmare loose.
She had been concentrating so hard on what she was doing and figuring out which moves to use next that she did not notice the people watching her. Almost suddenly, at least to any outsider, she changed her mind abruptly and ran over, hitting a spring board, tackling the uneven bars. The people who had come to the door stood watching her were quite fascinated.
Mary, John, and Sherlock watched from just inside the door for quite some time. Since Sherlock now knew without a shadow of doubt that Barbary worked for his brother, it seemed wrong to keep him in the dark about much about her career and training….he still had no clue how Mycroft had come to know someone like Barbary or anything more about her private life than he had already learned, but this was a start. It would at least shut him up for maybe five minutes. So far he was too wrapped up watching her move to make an argument on anything.
Mary, noticing Sherlock's attention of Barbary, couldn't resist. "She's quite flexible, yeah?"
"It would seem so,' he never missed a beat; neither did he take his eyes off of Barbary to reply. John only grinned quietly to his wife.
"We will eventually have to call time for her. She has been known to go at this until she gives out completely. She broke two ribs falling off once when she was completely exhausted. We don't know what makes her do that. We will definitely have to stop her before she gets to the rings."
They watched a little while longer. Apparently, the bars weren't working for her today; she gave them up in favor of more tumbling. At one point she even began to do it with her eyes closed. Barbary had been working at everything so hard that she was positively dripping with sweat. Then there was a moment when she landed one move and she made a groan of agony, immediately rolling to the mat and grabbing her right ankle.
"Damn it!"
John, ever the doctor, rushed forward without even thinking about it, Mary at his side. As he reached out for Barbary's foot, the girl flinched. Sherlock clapped, causing the music to stop.
"John, hello. What is everyone doing here? Apparently, I'm…."
"A danger to yourself?" Sherlock supplied.
"Some days." Barbary agreed.
She lay back on the mat to letting John check her ankle; the sweat was rolling into the dip of her neck and pooling, her tank top was sticking to her every curve. Sherlock couldn't take his eyes off of her in the least. He would know every curve of that body if it killed him.
"Does anything else hurt?" John asked looking her over.
"Just my wrist, but I have a brace for that in my flat."
"Are you trying to kill yourself?"
"No, Mary, there are enough people out there waiting to do that for me."
"On the contrary,' another voice sounded.
"Mycroft."
"Brother." The snide look on Mycroft's face had Sherlock already fighting to reign in his urge to punch him right in the nose. "Have that nightmare again did you?"
Barbary glared at him before ordering him to shut up; and Mycroft surprised everyone by doing as she asked. "Besides, what are you doing here anyway? I didn't think my humble abode was worthy of your presence."
"You know very well I have been here plenty of times."
"The ankle is sprained, that's for sure." John spoke aloud as he felt around her ankle.
Sherlock hadn't said much since Mycroft showed up; he hadn't been able to take his eyes off of Barbary. She was glistening; and even though it was merely perspiration, Sherlock couldn't help but notice how seeing her in such a state made him feel. This woman was going to be the death of him he was sure of it.
Once John had made his assessment, Barbary sat up and began trying to figure out how she was going to stand. Sherlock came over and made designs on picking her up to carry her, but she shrugged him off.
"I'll…I'll be fine, we have a lift you know." Barbary's eyes flitted between Sherlock and Mycroft.
Sherlock knew then that Mycroft had definitely said something to her to make her pull away from him. He made a mental note to loosen no less than four of Mycroft's teeth.
Mary leaned down and offered Barbary a hand, which was accepted, helping the smaller woman up. Once upright, Barbary balanced mainly on her left foot, hopping out of the gym gracefully enough making her way towards the lift.
"So, to what do I owe this pleasure so early in the bleeding morning?"
"We have news on who was behind your attack…." Mycroft started.
"Yes, yes….Kostya from that assignment in Macedonia. That's what you came all the way out here to tell me? That can't be all of the news."
"We seem to think his arrival is funded by Khaled this time around."
Barbary stopped in front of the lift before raising the door on it….all the color drained from her face and she started to tremble slightly. Her four visitors could actually hear her swallow. Getting into the lift and waiting for the others, she lowered the door.
"No worries, yeah. You can all sit and have a bite of breakfast or some tea while I grab a shower. Then we can try talking about this a little more."
Once they were in Barbary's flat she made her way to her room to gather some clothes before grabbing her shower. Mary asked her if she needed help getting back and forth. Barbary shrugged her off and began to hobble around on her bum ankle as best she could. Her shower was quick. She needed to get off of this ankle, get it wrapped, and put some ice on it; right now it was throbbing like a son of a bitch.
As soon as Barbary had the bathroom door shut and everybody could hear the shower running, Mary lit into Mycroft.
"You have got to pull her off of this assignment!" Mary had walked over to the kitchen area and started sorting some tea and a light breakfast for everybody; knowing her way around Barbary's kitchen made things go a lot faster. While she was at it she began to put together an ice pack for Barbary, letting it sit in the freezer while she finished her other duties. Mycroft followed her; he thought it better not to have this argument too loudly on the off chance that Barbary heard them.
"I will do nothing of the sort." Mycroft looked at Mary as though she had grown two extra heads. "These people are targeting Sherlock as well as Barbary and possibly even myself. She is the best asset we have for the assignment."
"Take her off Mycroft! You have to. How many times do you think you can send her into the lion's den before she doesn't come back?"
"She's always made it out in one piece before."
"I wasn't talking about getting her back physically. She's been doing this for nearly twenty-five years Mycroft. How many agents have you lost in that length of time? How many of them were lost at their own hands? She's seen too much. Do you even know, or care….? Of course you don't, forgive me for asking. And, Khaled? You know very well what he's capable of. Do you have any idea what he did to her the last time their paths crossed?"
"Please, enlighten me." Mycroft looked rather haughty, and Mary didn't miss the sarcastic tone of his voice.
"Did you know that she has a daughter that would be 15 now? Even before the Macedonia job ten years ago, you had her in Cambodia….Khaled showed up there…."
"Why was I not informed?"
"We had no warning of his involvement. After we learned of Khaled being there we wanted to pull out; dealing with Khaled on the best of days is unstable. But, Barbary wouldn't close up the assignment. She kept saying that you wanted a resolution to the whole mess regardless. Then, he found out she was there. She separated herself from the rest of us; I think to save us….he got his hands on her and that was when she went missing for that year. I couldn't get to her. We didn't hear a word from her; there was no communication, no chatter….we thought she was gone for good that time. By the time she did come back to us, you know what she was like! You know what shape she was in! How can you feed her to the wolves again knowing what will happen?" Mary had seemed distressed at the thought of not being able to save her friend.
"Why was I not informed immediately?" Mycroft was getting angry. He did not like being left out of the loop when it concerned an important assignment. And, in all honesty, he did care for Barbary quite a lot actually. When he found her in the streets of Morocco that day, dying, begging him to at least save the life of her baby…he made her his priority. He found out she had next to no education. She could not read or write; basic mathematics escaped her…physically she was in terrible condition. She was starving, entirely too thin for someone that was going to have a baby. Some of her bones had been broken and healed; although they actually looked like she had received a fair degree of medical care. He had her placed in a private facility of his choosing. He made sure that she got world class medical care that would save her life and the life of her unborn baby. Amid complications, the baby was delivered two and a half months early. It was a boy; she named him Tarek….that was before she flat lined for the second time since she had been in Mycroft's custody. Those early days were touch and go. She had been shot in the chest from mere feet away by Khaled himself. It was unusual for him to do his own dirty work, so this young woman must have done something terribly naughty to warrant the almighty Khaled to come down off of his high horse and take matters into his own hands. Mycroft knew, based on that fact alone, that this girl was special. Somehow, over the years, their working relationship had twisted into something neither one of them recognized. But he still cared for this girl.
John and Sherlock had stayed silent watching the exchange between Mary and Mycroft; it was as if they had forgotten there were two other people in the room momentarily.
"What about her daughter? Mary, what happened to her daughter?" John enquired, breaking the spell.
"Khaled is nothing if not vicious. And, he really has it out for Barbary anyway. At some point during the year he had her, she became pregnant by him….again. Once she had the baby, a girl, Khaled took it from her; he barely gave the doctor time to cut the umbilical cord before he took the baby. I don't know if she has ever seen the child or not. I don't even know if the child is still alive or not. Those of us who have tried to find out have met with dead ends."
"She has never mentioned anything about this to me." Mycroft seemed put out at the idea that information had been kept from him, especially about an asset that meant as much to him and the agency as Barbary.
"She begged me to keep my mouth shut and not tell you all the things she told me. She begged me Mycroft. She already knows of the low opinion you seem to have of her, though none of us can figure out why. But she was terrified that, if you knew what had happened, your opinion of her would drop even lower than it already was. And you had already broken her heart."
They continued to argue back and forth. Barbary was apparently one of Mary's best friends from back during her days as an agent; although John and Sherlock could only speculate about this seeing as Mary had only rarely ever made fleeting references to her life back then, and certainly never made any lengthy discussions on the subject. Mary loved Barbary like a sister, and she was tired of watching her get walked all over by the likes of Mycroft Holmes.
After quickly washing her hair and carefully washing her body (seeing as she had to be able to balance), she shut the water off and grabbed her towel. After she dried off she wrapped her towel around her body and began to try to figure out how to get out of the tub; no matter how you sliced it, she would have to put some weight on her sprained ankle if she did it alone.
"Mary, can you help me please?" Mary heard Barbary call from the bathroom. Before she could set anything down and go check on her, Sherlock had already made his way to the bathroom door.
"Oh this won't be good." Mary mumbled so that only Mycroft could hear her.
Barbary had stood in the tub and waited on Mary, but when she heard the door open and she saw Sherlock, she started shaking her head 'no'.
"Come on, you need help getting out of the shower. It's much easier for me to lift you out than it is for Mary; you're both similar in size."
"I want Mary to help." Barbary had done her best to back against the wall of the bathtub. Sherlock didn't miss the body language. She wasn't really comfortable with him being so close to her now; why?
"She's handling tea and breakfast; you will have to accept my help."
Barbary stood there in the tub for a couple of moments, looking off to the side and down at the floor all at the same time, almost weighing her options.
"You can't put very much weight on that sprained ankle, which you will have to do no matter how you try to go about this on your own. You will only succeed in falling on the floor, possibly injuring yourself further."
Barbary squinted at Sherlock, weighing her options; knowing he was right, she finally nodded allowing him to step closer to help her. He stepped forward and scooped her out of the tub; one arm behind her back, the other behind her knees, and carried her into the living room. All she could do was wrap an arm around his neck to hold on; she hadn't expected quite this scenario. Her free hand kept a tight hold on her towel.
Sherlock was having issues himself, though he tried to at least school his face into a normal appearance. She was light, weighed practically nothing. How exactly did Mycroft expect her to protect anybody? A hard wind would knock her over. And the curves he remembered from his last night here. Damn it! Why did Mycroft have to be such a….pompous ass? Sherlock walked with her over to the door to her sleeping area; but he just stood there for a second, as if he was remembering the last time he had been there.
"You can put me down now, if you don't mind." Barbary looked up at him carefully, as if she might have said the wrong thing. Reluctantly, Sherlock carefully set her down, backing away. "Thank you,' it was so quietly said that a normal human being would have missed it. Sherlock didn't; nor did he miss the sad look in her eye. Something wasn't quite right, of that much he was sure. What it was, he couldn't say; but he was always missing something.
Mycroft didn't miss the way Barbary looked at Sherlock either. He began to wonder if he hadn't spoken a bit prematurely about how she would treat his brother once the circumstances changed. There was little that could be done now except to watch the drama unfold. He had planted the seed of doubt within Sherlock; once Sherlock got an idea, you couldn't derail his train of thought if you tried. But that look in Barbary's eyes….she knew what was coming….she knew….and she was just going to take it; no matter what she would play her part. Mycroft noticed that once she had uttered the near silent 'Thank you' and Sherlock walked away, Barbary turned to make her way into her little room, eyes on the floor, head slowly shaking from side to side. Unless his ears were failing him, he would swear he heard her give a sigh of resignation; she knew this was what her life was going to be until the day she died, it was never going to change no matter what she did. A sigh that said that she gave up even trying to understand it or change it; from now on she just didn't care what happened to her. Mycroft stopped everything he was doing or thinking for just that moment in time…He knew what he just saw. He watched her come to the sad realization that her life wasn't worth the effort; that no matter what she did or how hard she tried she was always going to be somebody's property and would never be allowed to be more than that. He saw her give up on herself. She gave up on herself, not on the assignment. She was too much of a professional to give up on the assignment; but as far as her own life….Barbary no longer cared what happened to her. Mycroft couldn't tell her how wrong she was of course; it would ruin his stone cold façade that he was an uncaring machine, much like most people thought of Sherlock. Difference was Mycroft had to form that shell to be able to do his job to the utmost. But he resolved right then and there to try to set things right the only way he knew how.
"I cannot stay for breakfast I'm afraid. Duty calls. I apologize, Mary, for putting you to any inconvenience. But I must be off. Sherlock, John, I will be seeing you soon. Mary, I hope Lucy is doing well." With a glare from Mary, who had seen the exact same interaction, and thought the exact same as Mycroft, he was out of the door as dramatically as only a Holmes can be.
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Once in his car that had been waiting downstairs, Mycroft placed a call; a woman with a burnished voice answered.
"Anthea, I need you to pull any missing persons cases from the United States from the year 1983 where the possible victim would have been blonde women in their early-mid 20s and would have been between 172-180cm and approximately 60kg. And I am guessing the woman would have been of British birth and only move to the US after a marriage. Also, I will need you to also begin looking up missing persons reports from around, let's say 1986/87. The parameters for the victims in this case would be a young girl, dark hair, 76-92cm, and approximately 11-13kg."
"Are you finally going to try to solve the riddle then?"
"I will discuss this with you later my dear. For now, just get the information that you can find together please."
"Of course sir, as always."
With that brief call, Mycroft ended his call to Anthea. He began thinking that, perhaps Mary was right, he had taken serious advantage of Barbary. Perhaps he had been somewhat of a tyrant where she was concerned. Maybe he couldn't stop whatever plans were boiling in Sherlock's brain, but Mycroft Holmes could at least put every available resource at his disposal into the effort of finding out who Barbary was.
He had picked that name for her. Barbary. It meant 'Stranger', the surname he gave her was insignificant at this point. He could have picked something mundane, like Barbara….the meaning of the name was the same. But, he did not find her under mundane circumstances. She was 15, pregnant, dying in the streets of Marrakech, Morocco, bleeding from a gun-shot wound to the general chest area. She had escaped from one of the most dangerous slave/sex traffickers in the world only after having fought her way free, killing his identical twin brother in the process, by slitting the man's throat no less. This young woman was anything but ordinary.
He rested his head against the car seat, wracking his brain, blinded suddenly by a memory he had thought long deleted. He sat upright barking instructions at the driver to deliver him to the address of his family's old city house. Several photographs that, at the time, seemed completely without context in his life suddenly became utterly important to the task at hand….figuring out who this girl was after all this time. Perhaps the answer had been under his nose and he had never been bothered to pay attention.
Post AN: Just a minor cliffy then. R/R. I miss reviews actually.