Chapter 14
In which there are spies and there are spies.
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Suddenly realising if he was the target of observation, that standing on the top of five steps, neatly framed by the school's doorway was perhaps not the most sensible of locations, Mycroft ushered Sherlock down and into the car. Had he been alone, he would have attempted to pinpoint the source of surveillance, possibly even try and apprehend the person or persons responsible. One of the less-used aspects of his vampiric state was, when necessary, the ability to initiate a respectable turn of speed and he could likely have made it across the street before his watcher had noticed him move. The speed didn't last long but it had been sufficient in the past to facilitate a few handy exits. Leaving Sherlock to return home alone, however, would be good for neither of them ... and besides, he had other tracking methods he might use.
"I'm returning to my office for a while," he told the boy after seeing him safely through the front door of the Pall Mall house. "Go and ask Kit if she wants you to do anything before bedtime, and continue with your booklist," he smiled. "If I'm not back before you go to bed, I'll most likely see you tomorrow at dinner. We can talk about the school and see if you've had any further thoughts on the matter," he paused, looking down at the boy. "Goodnight, Sherlock." Without waiting for a reply, Mycroft turned and walked back down the steps to the car which pulled silently away and out into the night.
Frowning in slight puzzlement, Sherlock did as he was bid, heading into the kitchen where Kit's old radio was playing one of the Capitol stations. There was an appetising smell in the air.
"Mycroft decided to go back to his office," he said, sniffing appreciatively. "He told me to ask if there was anything you wanted me to do," he added, swivelling until he'd located the source of the delectable aroma. "Is there?"
"You hungry?" Kitta wanted to make sure an early dinner would be enough to last the boy until breakfast time. "I've been experimenting with this new mixer-thing and some of them ingredients those nice young people from Selfridges left in the pantry," she indicated the Bright red KitchenAid stand mixer. "It came with a whole book of recipes for what Americans call 'cookies'," she added, indicating several trays of cooling, biscuit-looking things that smelled most appealing. Sherlock could make out the scent of almond and chocolate and apple. As it happened, he wasn't actually hungry at all ... but the scent was beguiling.
Kit laughed at the expression on his face. "I'll make us both some cocoa," she said, "and you can try some of these biscuits and tell me all about the new school," she smiled. Getting the child used to eating more regularly would not be a bad thing and a treat every now and again did nobody no harm. Curious though, that Mycroft hadn't returned with the lad; she had imagined he'd have been as full of the experience as was Sherlock.
Mycroft had wasted little time when he entered the dimmed-out premises of his own particular department in Whitehall, and made his way unerringly towards the brand-new CCTV viewing and recording room. Since the Harrods's bombings in 1983, it had been permanently staffed around the clock, and Mycroft had made it his home away from home, despite it being more of a technical environment, he had discovered these new CCTV cameras to be highly effective little spies. If he had his way and, he promised himself, he would ... then the whole of central London would be decked out in the things in the next ten years. Sadiq Marri, the on-duty technical analyst was in the process of reviewing and storing the last 12-hours' worth of tape. All recorded materials would be conserved for six-months, after which it would be deleted to allow for fresher recordings. Mycroft couldn't wait until someone like IBM came up with a more substantial form of video-storage; JDR were already experimenting with computer memory of over 4,000 kilobytes, though the price for such extensive memory was still very high. Rumour had it that Unitex were already assembling a ten megabyte RAM memory, but rumour was all he had heard. And to keep all these endless hours of recorded television signals, the government needed to invest in the right kind of technology. If the commercial world was already making inroads into the problem of long-term data storage, then there had to be some military project somewhere doing the same thing, and probably on a much larger scale. He made a note to speak to the Americans on this issue in the morning. To keep Britain safe in these troubled times, technology was, in fact, the most cost-effective way to go. But for tonight, his interest was engaged with something other than national security.
"Pull up the last two hours from any camera in or around Eccleston Square," he said. "Particularly anything capturing activity along the north edge of the gardens," he added.
"It won't be easy to spot much, sir," Sadiq looked thoughtful. "Right on the cusp of darkness, the street lights would only just have begun switch on, but there probably wouldn't have been enough true daylight left to make out a lot of details; I'll do my best, but I'm not sure I can promise you much."
"Do what you can to get me whatever's available. Let me know when you've cued up the feed and send it through to my office, if you would."
"Certainly, Mr Holmes," the man bent to his task as Mycroft headed deeper into the windowless fortress that housed his team of special analysts, agents and, of course, himself.
Back in his office, he sank into his classic, black-leather Eames director's chair, holding a discreet pride-of-place not so much because it was incredibly comfortable, which it was, but mainly because it was a beautiful piece of design. A significant number of years before, as soon, in fact, as money had ceased being a problem for him, Mycroft had maintained his decision to purchase and use only those things that were of the highest quality, applying that maxim to every part of his existence, including his working environment. His current headquarters here in Whitehall met all the usual office-type requirements, but even more than that, he was privately amused by the way the rest of his people seemed to appreciate the things he'd done to keep the place comfortable for himself, to make it, in fact, into a perfect vampire-den. It was internal and relatively subterranean, which meant it was both bomb-proof and avoided any form of natural light. Most people thought Mycroft arranged things this way to ensure the safety and security of everyone who worked in his department, thus being a member of the Holmes team carried a certain intangible cachet, even in a place like Whitehall.
The reason that such a location would never see the full light of day seemed evident to everyone who worked there, especially since lighting was deliberately kept at a slightly lower level than the rest of the building. That the dimness was in order to super-illuminate the massive television wall-screens and glowing, back-lit map-panels, seemed an obvious reason. It was also a much better light, of course, by which to see the fine details on the several extensive and live video screens of London and other major British cities, each image able to be switched, instantly, from live feed to extraordinarily detailed street maps of any city in the world, including Pyongyang, Tehran and Mogadishu. The dark charcoal floor of the entire department was a carpet of large, heavy-duty but extremely good-quality pure wool tiles. Again, most people believed this was to eliminate any chance of static-electrical build up, ruinous to the new software and technologies, never imagining for one moment that its primary purpose was to deaden sound to a bearable level for someone with incredibly sensitive hearing.
Every item of office furniture was of solid and, purely coincidentally, of beautifully engineered and crafted timber. Wood was the most neutral of all materials other than stone, and one which would maintain a static-free environment for all that oh-so-delicate technology; after all, one was morally obliged to take great care of such expensive government equipment. Thus Mycroft's immediate team of some twenty or so highly-skilled individuals worked in a tasteful and almost luxuriously appointed office space, carefully humidified, cooled, warmed and coddled. When he deemed it time for one or more of them to move on, it was sometimes difficult to get them to leave, but he trained his people so well that it wasn't overly problematic to find each one an exceptionally good new home somewhere within the vast administrative or executive arms of the British government, almost always at a higher pay grade than the one they had occupied in his employ. None of his current team had worked with him for more than five or six years. The rumour behind this constant movement of people and, in government, there were always rumours, was that the work the department handled was so classified that nobody could stay more than a few years in case they remembered too much secret information. Mycroft, of course, made no attempt to disabuse anyone of this fallacious belief.
The subdued overhead lighting of his own private office made obscure checkered patterns across the floor as Mycroft sat in thought, weighing up the alternatives and likelihood of his mysterious watcher. Or watchers. That he might have imagined the entire experience did not for one moment cross his mind; Mycroft had survived for far too long on his wits and instincts alone to doubt for a second that what he had sensed in Eccleston Road had been anything other than real. He knew somebody, or, more probably, a group of somebodies, was watching him, a task that, over the years, must have involved quite a number of individuals. And they had been watching him for a long time. As he sat at his desk waiting for the camera footage, he pursed his mouth and thought dark thoughts.
Who were these people? Why were they keeping him under surveillance? And why had their presence become more noticeably obvious in the last few days? Was it political? Had his name and photograph finally made its way to the inner cabinet of the Kremlin in Moscow or the Zhongnanhai in Beijing? Or was it, perhaps, a more domestic shadowing? God only knew how many personal and professional enemies he'd racked up over the years, though in previous posts, he'd always taken extraordinary care to ensure he never stayed overlong in the same job or position; his lack of aging sure to raise suspicions of something if not the actual reality of his situation, for who believed in vampires these days? But in this particular role, one in which he had to admit, he felt he had discovered his niche, he'd taken an entirely different tack. Rather than trying to move or change himself in order to keep everyone around him unaware of his non-changing reality, he simply made sure that everyone else around him changed instead.
His political masters, such as they were, changed on a relatively frequent basis; he hardly dealt with any of them these days for more than ten years or so. Each new General Election brought in a fresh wave of faces to power; a new PM, new Ministers and Heads of Committees. With the advent of the new computer-systems, it was utter child's play to reset the details on his private file every decade or so. For those individuals in his own department with whom he worked on a daily basis, he simply moved them onwards and upwards after a few years. A change of Department Head here, a promotion there. It had proved to be an absurdly easy method and Mycroft couldn't understand why the idea hadn't occurred to him ages before. For those rare few at the very top of Whitehall's enormous administrative hierarchy whom he could neither promote or persuade to leave, he simply kept himself to his own business until he'd outlived them all. He had everyone assume him to be 'a minor official' for a very good reason; keeping a relatively low profile wasn't simply a matter of avoiding unwanted publicity, but also one of calculated misdirection. And thus he'd happily managed to remain unchanging in this increasingly central role for almost forty years, since not long after the end of the last war, to be accurate. Which was when he'd been finangled into the job in the first place, and it had all been Winston's fault.
Just prior to Germany's opening salvos in 1939, Churchill had once again become First Lord of the Admiralty when Mycroft had, almost literally, bumped into the man at an elegant black-tie soiree in Belgravia. The hostess of this particular grand evening was the strikingly beautiful wife of a Viscount in one of England's finest and oldest aristocratic families. She'd met Mycroft at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden during the interval of Lohengrin, and had apparently taken a great fancy to the darkly handsome and enigmatic Englishman. That she had taken an even greater fancy in divesting him of his darkly handsome clothing and getting him into her fine old English bed was neither here nor there. Mycroft had adroitly managed to avoid the woman's artful lures, maintaining the loosest of relationships because he found her husband, the Viscount, to be a tolerably good chess player.
The mood of London society at the end of summer in 1939 was gay and unnaturally, artificially buoyant, with a number of large and blissfully untroubled revelries taking place at the smartest of addresses. Mycroft had agreed to attend this evening's event only in order to avoid attending another one at which he'd heard Oswald Mosely was due to appear. He could not abide the man, so this affair had seemed the perfect alternative. There was the usual string-quartet in the corner of the main receiving room, with glittering elegance and rare jewellery on display, as if this were after a war had been won rather than immediately before one was about to begin. The great number of exquisitely-dressed and fashionably-chic women laughing and gossiping had him wondering if he'd made an even great error in coming to this one.
Standing alone in an alcove near a massively ornate fireplace and about to light up one of his ever-present Cuban cigars, Winston Churchill had reached for a crystal lighter sitting on a low side table at the same time as Mycroft.
"Apologies," Churchill growled, standing back to allow the much taller stranger right of passage. "Keep meaning to bring a spare with me and always forget," he shrugged, smiling uncertainly as Mycroft turned, lifting the heavy lighter up for both their uses.
"Allow me," he flicked the device into life, offering the flame for Churchill's convenience.
Leaning forward and puffing a fierce Romeo y Julieta into life, the soon-to-be Prime Minister narrowed his eyes and assessed the tall, impeccably well-dressed stranger in the process of lighting up his own, much less impressive smoke.
"Winston Churchill," he said, holding out his right hand. "I'm a politician."
Taking the shorter man's firm grip, Mycroft shook it firmly. "Mycroft Holmes," he said. "I'm a spy."
"Are you really?" Churchill smiled widely, amused by such effrontary. "For which side?"
"Britain, naturally," Mycroft smiled back. "I spy on all manner of boring paperwork for the War Office, wasting my time when I might be able to offer some real assistance to those preparing for the oncoming war."
"You're so certain there'll be war?" Winston stared into the taller man's face.
Mycroft inspected his mild Uppman Corona, a moue forming on his mouth. "Of course there's going to be war," he murmured. "Short of an act of god exploding the entire inner circle of Herr Hitler's little coterie, I cannot imagine any other outcome given the current conditions."
"Some people would welcome a return to the battlefield, to win glory and honour for King and Country, Mr Holmes," Winston puffed softly on his cigar.
"Some people are fools," Mycroft frowned. "War begets war and I've no patience with those who laud its existence."
"A Pacifist, then?" Churchill looked down at the tips of his shiny black shoes.
Contemplating the glowing tip of his fragrant-burning cigar, Mycroft shook his head. "Not in the least," he said. "Though I confess that a return to the Garden of Eden is far more preferable in my eyes than a descent into the battlefield."
"You've served, of course?" Churchill thought of his own military days on the Western Front in 1915. It had been a bloody affair.
Mycroft smiled inwardly. He'd been in more wars than he could easily remember and had fought for many causes, many kings. The only ones who ever gained from such conflict were the worms. "Of course," his smile was distant and a little sad.
"Then you'll likely be involved in the coming scrap," Churchill intercepted a passing waiter and liberated a crystal tumbler of scotch. The waiter offered the tray to Mycroft, who did the same.
"To a swift peace," he said, tipping the glass towards the older-looking man.
"Amen, Mr Holmes," the Admiralty Lord clinked glasses. "Now tell me more about this nonsense of pushing paper around in the War Office; wouldn't you much rather have an active role in the great global stage upon which Europe and, no doubt, her many minions will engage?" he asked. "A young man such as yourself, in your prime of life, must surely be keen to see this thing over and done with as quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible?"
"I may be older than you think," Mycroft's smile was genuine. "But to answer your question, then yes; of course I'd far rather be doing something that would work towards the end of the fighting than for its continuance, of course."
"You'll be well-educated, naturally," Churchill eyed his smoking companion up and down. "You speak several languages, I presume?"
Wondering what point the conversation was about to reach, Mycroft restrained any fulsome response, waiting, instead for further information. "A few," he answered cagily.
"German?" Winston tapped an inch of grey ash from the tip of his Cuban.
"And Russian, Japanese, Italian and French," Mycroft nodded. No need to tell the War Lord all his secrets just yet; he wanted to know what was on the man's mind and where this conversation was leading.
"Japanese, eh?" Churchill looked immediately thoughtful and nodded slowly. "You think Japanese might be a productive language to have in the not-too-distant future?"
"I believe it might be a very useful tongue within ... oh ..." Mycroft puffed on his cigar and looked up at the ceiling. "Certainly within the next twelve to fourteen months," he said, examining the exquisitely painted details of an elaborate architrave. "I think confidential translations might be quite the thing within the year, actually," he held the sweet-scented smoke in his mouth. "Almost certainly before the end of next year, Minister," he added.
"You think a year at most, do you?" Churchill was suddenly reflective. "That might make things a little tricky."
"Depends on what other languages one might hear," Mycroft tilted his head to one side. "The Americans can be on the loud side, but their expressions are very similar to ours, despite their inability to master the finer rules of cricket."
The First Lord of the Admiralty laughed. "I believe the Americans play by slightly different rules," he said. "My own mother was American, you know," he added shrewdly, watching the expression on Mycroft's face.
"I'm told the lady was a true beauty," Mycroft lifted his glass in salute. "To the beautiful Americans."
Churchill laughed again, clouds of aromatic smoke drifting around him. "And to insightful Englishmen," he said, clinking glasses before becoming suddenly serious. "I'd like to talk a little more on this matter of language," he added, looking around. "But perhaps a less crowded room might be indicated ..."
Observing their hostess wending a convoluted pathway towards their private nook by the fireplace, Mycroft felt the time had come to make a strategic retreat to a spot less open to ambush. "I know just the place," he smiled mildly, walking with a deceptive swiftness over to the nearest exit and through the adjacent room with Churchill on his heels. Turning down one passage after another, the two men emerged in a quaint little conservatory, unlit except by faint starlight. There were several generous armchairs.
"Damn," Churchill muttered. "Should've brought the scotch."
"Permit me," Mycroft placed a half-full decanter on the low table between them, then producing, much like white rabbits from hats, a glass from each jacket pocket. "I imagined it might be appreciated."
"Man after my own heart," the War Lord chuckled as Mycroft poured the golden spirit for them both. "Now," he said. "About those languages you think it might be useful to speak ..."
Mycroft had become Churchill's man that night, working throughout the war both in front of and behind the scenes as needed, his only stipulations being that his work had to be undertaken beyond the daylight hours and that nobody should ever learn his name. Though considered somewhat strange, there were so many other bizarre and outlandish goings-on at the time that Mycroft's relatively minor requests were easily accommodated. It was only after the war was finally over that a small department was created, deep within the gloomy passages of Whitehall; its first Director a tall, dark-haired man with piercingly blue eyes.
And now, sitting in the carefully bespoke office that had been his, one way or another, for the last thirty-odd years, Mycroft pondered the question of who might possibly know enough about him to consider him worth watching. The sudden re-emergence of persistent observation after all this time was both disquieting and irritating. Mycroft realised if he could find out the who, then he'd be able to deduce the why. Thus he waited in his office for the camera-feed of Eccleston Road, checking his Hunter with some impatience and waiting a little more.
Kit sat and sipped her hot cocoa, waiting for Sherlock to finish describing the main Chemistry lab in the school. He'd spent less that fifteen seconds on the entirety of the rest of his description, but had waxed lyrical about the laboratory. It wasn't hard to see where the lad's interest lay. He said something that niggled at her attention.
"What?" she said. "Say that again."
Sherlock sighed the sigh of the intellectually superior. "I said," he said patronisingly, "that I'll need to get my own lab set up somewhere in the house if I'm going to be able to do any real work after school," he pursed his lips in thought.
"You plan on setting up a proper laboratory here," Kit felt the first twinges of potential concern. "In this house?"
"Well, where else could I set one up?" Sherlock spoke patiently, as if Kit was being particularly dim this evening. "I'll need somewhere that won't matter if I splash acid around, and where I have good access to hard surfaces and running water," he nodded as the design of his new plan became clearer in his mind. "I could make good use of the laundry area," he added, think out loud. "Though there wouldn't be much room left for those big machines."
Replacing her empty mug on the table, Kitta sat back with folded arms and an expression Sherlock would recognise if he looked in the mirror. "Not in this lifetime are you going to be doing anything with splashy acid on any of the hard surfaces in my laundry," she said. "I shall have to put my foot down about that little idea, I think."
"But apart from the bathrooms, it's the only place in the house with enough space and running water," Sherlock slumped down in his seat and looked vaguely mutinous. "I suppose I could set one up in my room, but it wouldn't be very big ..."
"No chemicals or laboratory in your bedroom, neither," Kit shook her head, wanting to put a stop to this line of thinking once and for all. "Nor in the attic or any of the bathrooms, nowhere, in fact," she said, leaning forward to meet the boy's eyes, "that's in any of the rooms in this house," she added. "Unless Mr Mycroft decides he wants to do over one of the spare rooms for you."
Brightening immediately, Sherlock looked hopeful. "Do you think he would?" he asked.
Looking less than delighted at the idea, Kit made a face. "I suppose he might," she said. "If he thought it was a good idea and would keep you out of trouble."
"Then I shall have to ask him as soon as he gets home tonight," the child's cheerful expectation hard to dampen, as he returned to describing the exceptional science facilities at the Eaton Square School in Eccleston Road.
"Sending the footage through now, sir," the analyst called Mycroft on an internal line. "There's not much to see, I'm afraid, even though I was able to skim feed from three different locations. Please tell me if you require further input from any of the three."
Turning immediately to a wall-mounted television-screen, Mycroft switched the feed through; there were three distinct channels playing simultaneously, each one showing a different angle of the same area of Eccleston Gardens. His eyes flickered from one channel to the next, to the next and back again. Tall hedges, high black iron railings, everything in shadows and darkness; nothing but shrubs and rails and leaves and pavement. His analyst had been correct; the natural light hadn't been good enough to provide a clear view of ... wait ... there did appear to be ... something.
There. Beneath the thinly-leaved branches of a tall sycamore tree; something ... someone ... moved. Completely shaded under the tree, in the more than half-dark ... someone standing deliberately close to the bole of the sycamore, wearing dark clothing and allowing no ambient lighting to highlight any part of their body. Whoever it was knew a great deal about remaining invisible in plain sight; this ... yes ... this man, judging by the figure's relative height to the lowest tree branches, was a surveillance expert, no doubt about it. Mycroft sat back into his chair, fingers resting against him mouth. Who was this person? Was he activing on his own behalf, or had someone sent him? If so, then who? He picked up the internal desk phone.
"There's a man sheltering within the penumbra of the large sycamore on the third camera feed," he said. "Have that section isolated and enhanced as far as possible and as quickly as possible," he paused, thinking. "Keep watching that particular feed to see when the man leaves and in which direction he moves; track him for me, Mr Marri," he added slowly. "I want to see where he goes to ground."
"I'll do my best, sir," the young man had keen eyes and Mycroft knew that his request was in the most competent of hands. Now all he had to do was wait. In the meantime, he began reviewing all intercepted coded material and recent chatter between the major embassies; had any one of them been involved in this new surveillance? He examined every small scrap of conversation for some mention of his name or even a general description that he might apply to himself. But there was nothing new; his people were too good to allow something like that to slip through unobserved and unmentioned. His phone buzzed.
"Sorry, Mr Holmes," Sadiq sounded genuinely contrite. "The park simply became too dark to identify the individual any further and by the time the street lights were bright enough to see anything, he'd gone. I'm very sorry, sir; I'll keep looking."
"Never mind," Mycroft was disappointed but hardly surprised. Anyone that good at watching others would surely know the perfect time to leave a site before he too was among the observed. "Have the footage sent to our forensic people to see if they can extract any further details from what we have," he said. "But in the meantime, I shall return home; contact me if you find anything of use." At that time of the evening, traffic in and around Whitehall had diminished to a trickle and the Jaguar had him back at the Pall Mall address in minutes only.
Sherlock was still in full spate as Mycroft walked into the kitchen, a bright smile lighting the boy's face as he stopped, arms wide, right in the middle of describing a series of glass glove-boxes where each student could put their hands and work on experiments inside the box.
Despite his dissatisfaction at being unable to yet identify the man surveilling him, Mycroft found it difficult to retain his bad mood in the face of Sherlock's unbounded enthusiasm. He found himself smiling despite everything.
"I take it you find the school to be satisfactory?" he asked, taking a seat at the table as Kit brought his usual silver tray over. Tonight, apparently, was shrimp and celery. Mycroft wondered vaguely if Kit was attempting to tempt him with a normal diet.
"I wasn't overly taken with the English reading list for my year," he frowned. "I read all those books when I was three," he sounded unimpressed. "Though I suppose they'll let me read other books as well."
"I'm fairly certain none of the teachers would want you to feel your learning had been in any way constrained, Sherlock," Mycroft sipped his vodka, relishing the burn of the fiery liquid inside his chest. "You only need advise them you've already absorbed the prescribed texts and they will suggest alternatives."
"And the language labs looked interesting, although Mr Townsend said they only taught modern languages," the boy looked undecided. "I will need ancient Greek and Latin for my science studies."
"We've already agreed I can teach you Latin here," Mycroft crossed his legs. "There's no reason why I can't teach you ancient Greek at the same time."
Pausing, Sherlock let everything sink in. "In that case," he murmured slowly, "I think I might like to try the Eaton Square School," he said. "At least until I get bored."
Quietly thanking all the pedagogical deities for a favourable outcome, Mycroft nodded. "In that case," he said. "There's one thing that absolutely must be done before we continue any further," he leaned forward, fixing the boy with an unwavering stare. "Tonight, in fact."
Kitta looked wondering. Mycroft had said nothing to her about anything special that needed to be done this evening.
"What?" Sherlock raised his eyebrows, curious.
Looking back over his shoulder as he made his way to the main phone in the hallway, Mycroft smiled again as he picked up the receiver, holding it to his ear. "Haircut."