It is June, and Sherlock is being ushered into the garden of the Diogenes.
His brother is sitting at a small table under an umbrella. He appears incongruous with his deep grey suit and briefcase, a jug of water on the table, mint leaves tumbling among the lumps of ice, his only concession to high summer. That and the lower wool weight of his suit fabric, Sherlock noted.
The brothers are alone in the garden: stone flags under their shoes, a lawn before them, and trees inside the high walls which shield this spot from the street. All the same, they converse in low voices.
"You look ... populist," Mycroft observes. His signature sneer.
Sherlock is wearing pale chinos, a white shirt striped finely with sky blue, and has sunglasses hooked inside his open collar. In his hand is his panama. "Eight hours ago I was on a Sunseeker at St Tropez," he says.
"And no time to change." Mycroft gives a mouth only smile. "How it must chafe you."
"This helps prevent recognition." Sherlock places the hat on the table and pours himself cool water.
"Yes... You have been attracting a great deal of press attention." Mycroft picks a stack of newspapers from his briefcase. "Almost as much as your paramour herself." He lifts the corner of one page as if it might contaminate him. "A balcony, Sherlock. Where is your discretion, one might say, your dignity?"
"It fit the moment," says Sherlock carelessly. "And we were on the balcony." He gestures dismissively. "I have no news for you. Is the mission to continue?"
"Yes." Mycroft lets drop the tabloid page. "Your updates are reassuring even when they contain little. It shows the group is not yet on the move."
"They are trying to choose their opportunity." Sherlock has come to this conclusion after many seeming near-misses with his surveillance efforts. He has concluded that it is not his presence which is delaying the group, but their inability to decide upon a worthy target.
He toys with his cigarette lighter. "I can give them a suitable opportunity if you want."
"No! You are to observe and report, not to influence. Clear?"
"Dull."
"Tell me you understand." Mycroft reaches for the lighter but Sherlock snaps it away beyond his reach.
"I understand." Sherlock puts down the lighter, and picks up his drink. There is a tiny chink of sound as his ring strikes the glass.
"She is directly involved," Mycroft asks after a pause.
"She is their financier, but also their artistic designer." Mycroft's eyebrows lift. "Their shock and awe administrator, if you will," says Sherlock. "She will choose the target. And it will be based on her assessment of the political impact and the visual impact - she is very aware of how news plays out. I think she actually wants to be there on the spot, filming it all. I am on the lookout for key locations in her filming schedule - iconic buildings and the like. "
"Proof," says Mycroft.
"Only my recordings of her conversations with Rudi. You have those already." It has been difficult to make them, even harder to send them. The impossible phone has been in play again, taped to the underside of a rainy cafe awning where Liesl and Rudi had a briefing in Paris. Sherlock almost got arrested retrieving it afterwards.
Mycroft passes the newspapers across the table. Sherlock looks at them but does not touch them. He drinks the water, watching Mycroft. Compared to living with Liesl, his Boyfriend face always in view, this is relaxing.
Mycroft taps the papers and takes a deep breath. A classic tell: new topic, probably to do with sex.
Mycroft says, "I applaud your thoroughness in paying the girls to reveal your historical prowess but don't you think it is a little risky? Their lies may be discovered."
Sherlock looks at the spread of tabloid pages. The latest kiss and tell is so young that she would have been in school at the time; she has his age and the timeframe of their supposed liaison completely wrong. "I didn't pay anybody," he says.
Gratifyingly, Mycroft is surprised. "They are volunteering?"
"They are fantasizing." Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Did it really seem likely that I would hire people to expose my apparent past liaisons?"
"I see. I did think your choices of supposed former partner a little incongruous. Page three model. Not really your type."
"No." Female, stupid, attention-seeking. Certainly not his type.
"You have not denied the stories," Mycroft states.
"No. Why bother? And it confirms my status as a red blooded male." He sneers.
"What does Liesl say?"
They refer to her familiarly. It is odd but Sherlock supposes it is because she is supposed to be family, of a sort. Soon the relationship will progress to meeting significant relatives, although Mycroft is all Sherlock has and Liesl has none. Until then, this first name reference. And Messernacht is such a mouthful of a name.
Sherlock says, "She was angry, threw the paper at me, and I denied everything. Then she was even angrier and accused me of lying. Then I pointed out the trashiness of these women and how I would never sleep with anyone stupid enough to ever reveal the fact and then she was charmingly apologetic and then, at her insistence, we had make up sex."
"You had - what?" Mycroft's face is pink, from the sun, perhaps.
"Make up sex. It's where you have sex in order to, or because you have managed to, make up with someone after a disagreement." Sherlock wants to guffaw at Mycroft's discomfort but maintains a brusque matter of factness. Intercourse, he thinks. Yes thank you, I can, as you once put it, manage that. And how you hate that I can.
"I see." Mycroft looks repulsed.
"It is Liesl's primary mode, actually," Sherlock says. "Her relationships centre around her unreasonable demands, followed by her reliance on her ability to persuade anyone of anything using sex."
"So," Mycroft says, "pretty much the same as your own plan for managing her?"
"Yes. We are astonishingly well matched." He looks calmly at Mycroft.
Mycroft narrows his eyes in suspicion, but says nothing. He seems wrong-footed by Sherlock's casual acknowledgement of events which would have mortified him six months previously.
God, thinks Sherlock, noticing this,I should have done this years ago.