Spring 2018
There was another woman staring down the barrel of my gun. Until a few years ago, I could have said I'd never killed a woman.
I'd had standards, once.
Unlike Rose, unlike that poor Margaret Thatcher fan who came home early on the only day where it mattered, this one didn't look horrified, so much as offended.
"How dare you, sir!" Lady Smallwood snapped, "What is the meaning of this?"
"Not ammo," I said quietly. There wasn't as much satisfaction at the moment as I had been hoping, "The English woman, called Amo. Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant. You learned that, in your bloody first-class degree in literae humaniores at Oxford, didn't you… Love?"
"Mr. Agarwal," Lady Smallwood seethed, "I don't know what you think-"
"Why did you do it?" I interrupted, "AGRA took your money and did what you asked and as best I can tell never did a damn thing to you or to MI6 that deserved your burning us. So why?"
There was a small click behind me. A round being chambered.
"The answer, of course," drawled Mycroft Holmes, "Is that she didn't. Please drop your gun, Ajay, or I will feel obliged to shoot you."
He edged around into my line of sight, leveling a small pistol at my head. I obviously didn't drop the gun. I hadn't come into HQ planning to shoot a peeress with any expectation of leaving alive.
"I'd wondered why the great Mycroft Holmes hadn't made me," I laughed, "Six months fetching your tea and reading your paperwork and I really did think I'd got away with it."
He shrugged.
"I believed you had come for me. Did you kill the real Vihaan Agarwal?"
"Oh, really, Mycroft," Lady Smallwood said, rolling her eyes.
"I was never an assassin, Holmes," I spat, never taking my gaze off her, "And I wish people would stop accusing me of being one. Vihaan Agarwal went native, married a nice Sikh girl in Himachal Pradesh. I paid him fair and square for his identity. Lucky all us wogs look alike."
This wasn't entirely fair, Agarwal and I had at least a passing resemblance. But it had been far too easy for me to replace him, and I thought they ought to know that before it was over.
"Lady Smallwood is innocent in this matter," Holmes declared, "Love is her code name, yes. But that name is known among a small circle of people, including her former secretary, Vivian Norbury, who used it to impersonate her. She was the English woman."
My eyes slid over to him, at that.
"When the story of Mary Watson's past history came to light, we reopened the AGRA case file. We'd discontinued all work with independent consultants like yourself after Tblisi, but the fact that at least one of you had survived suggested we may have missed something."
He shrugged one elegantly-waistcoated shoulder.
"It wasn't actually that difficult to find. She wasn't an intelligence agent herself, after all. She'd been selling secrets for years… not particularly effectually, as far as we can determine, she didn't make nearly as much money as she ought. The Georgian ambassador had discovered this, and was threatening to reveal it, and so she had to go. AGRA was merely… collateral damage."
"So where is she?" I said, resuming my steel-eyed gaze down the barrel of my gun.
"That would be a question beyond my purview," Holmes said, "She was tried, in secret of course, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment. Where she died, almost a year ago now. Pancreatic cancer."
I laughed aloud.
"Well isn't that fucking convenient?"
"It isn't particularly convenient at the moment!" he snapped, "If you shoot her, Ajay, you'll be murdering a woman who has never harmed you. Look, I…"
He stammered a bit.
"I can prove it, given twenty minutes and access to the higher level archives, which I have and you know that I have."
Slowly, Mycroft lowered his gun to the floor, raised his hands in supplication.
"Justice is not available to you, and that goes on my lengthy list of personal regrets. But you can have freedom, and peace. And you can give my regards to Mary Watson."
