Chapter Six.
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Propped on one elbow, Irene watched Mycroft dress. He had turned away from her – rather primly, she felt – but she could see him reflected in the mirror: pale, freckled belly and sparse, copper-tinted hair. He fastened the buttons of his shirt from the top downward, spending precisely the same amount of time over each: fastidious, but not fussy. It was a new shirt, sky-blue. With practised movements, he added a pair of understated silver cufflinks and an Oxford-blue tie.
"Interesting…" Irene purred.
"Hmm?"
"Your need to reassert your own personality following sex."
Mycroft shot her a disdainful look. Irene smirked
"I've always thought there was something rather Freudian about sibling rivalry; don't you agree?"
"And the only thing that distinguishes me from my brother is a tie? How very distressing."
"A tie and a pair of cufflinks. Sherlock doesn't like cufflinks."
"I am aware."
Irene rolled over onto her front, flicking her legs up behind her and looking coyly back at Mycroft over her shoulder. Mycroft's mouth twitched.
"As it happens," he told her, "And much as you may find it hard to believe, my desire to 'reassert my own personality' is not motivated solely by sexual jealousy of my baby brother. You and I are going out."
"Oh?"
"Yes. It's about time I started laying a false trail. Given that I have no doubt spectacularly offended my American counterpart by failing to arrive in Washington, I imagine that questions are beginning to be asked about my whereabouts. It will soon emerge, if it hasn't already, that I am also demonstrably absent from North Korea." He paused, straightening the lapels of his jacket. "A few discreet appearances in the company of the notorious Miss Adler should give them something to chew over once they finally manage to trawl through the surveillance tapes."
"You're a devious man, Mr Holmes."
"One does one's best."
The atmosphere around the varnished Whitehall conference table was tense. In normal circumstances that wouldn't have bothered Philippa Grey over-much. But then, in normal circumstances, Mycroft would have been beside her. Measuringly, she scanned the faces that surrounded her, trying to gauge where allegiances might lie. Harry Merton was one of theirs, she was certain. Harry had been their palace liaison – Lady's Man, in the Service's own peculiar argot – for close on twenty years now. Robert Braithwaite, head of the Lamplighters division, was theirs also – good, old fashioned public-school loyalty. Sir Peter Guillam, to Braithwaite's immediate left, would no more go against Mycroft than he would sell his soul. Despite his advanced age, Guillam still had one of the best strategic minds in the business, and a talent for field work unrivalled by many a younger man.
Apparently unconcerned by the dissension in the ranks, Sir Peter reached out and snaffled a chocolate digestive. He caught Pippa's eye across the table and winked – he had, she thought wryly, never liked the Americans.
Across the table from Guillam was the upright and aristocratic figure of Lady Smallwood, here to represent the Sisters (as MI5-branch was less-than-affectionately known). By all rights, Lady Smallwood should have been in Mycroft's camp as well – but then doing someone a favour, in Pippa's experience, was by no means a guarantor of their support.
It wasn't enough. Charles Burleigh and Frances Everard from Scalp-hunters; Dame Eleanor Fairfax from the Embassy; Lady Carlisle and Richard Tate from the Babysitters; Malcolm Ward from the Burrowers; and Sir Miles Etherington from Q-division. Too many people Mycroft had passed over or belittled; too many people Sherlock had exposed, eviscerated or outright insulted.
"I'm going to ask you again, Ms. Grey. Where is Mycroft Holmes?"
It was Lady Carlisle who spoke. A vicious bitch, by Pippa's private reckoning. Carlisle headed the Babysitters, the innocuously-named division that was responsible for 86% of all surveillance conducted in the United Kingdom, whether of suspected criminals, private citizens, or the Service's own personnel. She had hated Mycroft since the early nineties, at least.
"The last time I spoke to Mr. Holmes he was on his way to North Korea." Pippa repeated for the third time. "He hasn't contacted me since, but that isn't unusual. I assure you, there is no cause for alarm."
He'd asked her for four days. Four days to stall the Americans and bluff Whitehall while he met with his new contact – a contact, she privately suspected, who may not have been in North Korea at all. She'd managed to hold them off now for three days, sixteen hours, and counting. She prayed it would be enough.
Richard Tate tapped his pen impatiently against the arm of his chair. He leaned bullishly across the table, yellow eyes boring into Pippa's.
"He is not in North Korea."
Pippa allowed herself a tiny smirk. "How thoroughly have you looked?"
A flash of ire travelled across Lady Carlisle's perfectly-made face. Jessica Carlisle was a Lady only by virtue of having married an obscure member of the peerage some half-dozen years ago. Prior to that time she had, as everyone around the table knew, been one of the Service's American liaisons, working in counter-intelligence for the Cousins. Mycroft had not been alone in expressing his scepticism over her sudden defection.
"We're sure of our sources," Charles Burleigh huffed. "Are you seriously attempting to tell me that Holmes left no means of contacting him?"
"Have you tried his Twitter account?"
"You are very amusing today, Ms. Grey."
"I'm pleased you think so."
"Perhaps you'll allow me to put it another way," Lady Carlisle said. Her eyes narrowed malevolently. "You will find Mycroft Holmes. He will be at his post in Whitehall in twenty-four hours' time, unless he wishes to be brought in on charges of treachery and desertion."
"Steady on!" Harry Merton interjected. "There's no call for threats."
Old Guillam had removed his glasses and was, with gentle dedication, polishing them on the fat end of his tie. Without looking up, he gave a discrete cough, and even Charles Burleigh stopped blustering in order to listen. One didn't attain Guillam's age, in the Service, without the ability to be listened to.
"I think Holmes is entitled to a mystery or two, don't you?" his eyes twinkled a little as he glanced up at them. "What is the Service without secrets, after all?"
"And I think that you will find yourself overruled, Guillam," said Lady Carlisle, her nostrils flaring. "Twenty-four hours, Ms. Grey."
Mary Watson stood with Molly Hooper on the pavement outside an extremely high-end Greek jewellery store, cooing rapturously over the contents of its display window. A sea of tasteless gold bangles, ostentatious jewels and obscenely-priced blood-diamonds confronted them. Mary gazed intently at the window, observing the shimmering mass keenly. A grey Honda was reflected in the glass. If she tilted her head at a particular angle she could read the licence plate. The characters were hardly likely to prove useful, however. No doubt they would be changed before the day's end.
The Watson-Hooper-Lestrade family holiday had been the subject of low-level surveillance for the past three days. It was not anything that the others would have noticed; it was subtle, and very carefully done. It was nothing that Mary herself would have noticed, if she had been who she ought to be. But there were formulae to Mary's profession – standard practices, classic formations, little pieces of common tradecraft, if you knew where to look. And Mary was always looking.
The grey Honda had been stalled in the parking bay opposite for twelve minutes now. An unusual length of time for a vehicle to pause without the driver making a move either to exit or to reach for his phone. Before the Honda had pulled in there had been a girl ahead of them – denim jacket and miniskirt and too-young-for-her pigtails; her phone had come out of her pocket the moment they paused in front of the jewellery store.
Mary stepped away from the window and walked on, Molly bobbing good-naturedly at her elbow. She was enthusing rather painfully about an engagement ring she'd spotted, with diamonds arranged like the petals of a flower ("Not that I'm engaged. I mean, I'm not even dating anyone... And I mean, we obviously wouldn't get engaged straight away, even if we… I mean, even if I was…"). Mary winced internally. She needed to have a serious girl talk with Molly, one of these days.
In the glass-fronted office block ahead of them, Mary watched the reflection of the grey Honda flick on its indicator and pull casually out into the stream of traffic.
There were three options, she thought, musingly. The first, that her own handlers had become wise to the afterlife of Agent Agnew, she dismissed immediately. The surveillance was good, but not good enough for anyone who knew her. That should have ruled out Mycroft, but didn't entirely. The surveillance might have been ordered by him for their protection, with the tacit understanding that she would know it was there if necessary. Given how little he had professed to trust his own people, she didn't think it likely, but she'd be a fool to believe everything that came out of the mouth of Mycroft Holmes. The third option was whoever Sherlock had got himself entangled with; he'd been in Eastern Europe, she knew that much. There weren't so many big players there, these days, and a few she could eliminate immediately. That left Russia, Serbia, Ukraine or, at a stretch, Germany. More likely to be the Cubans though, since that's where Sherlock was apparently annoying people at present; run by way of China or North Korea, almost certainly. But intelligence was one of the oldest games in the world, and everybody sold to everybody else – it was just a matter of what and when. She considered it a moment, but it didn't fit. There had been nothing to link them to Sherlock for almost eighteen months, certainly no indication that they might be involved in whatever idiotic game he was playing. Mycroft's people, then. But not ordered by him – no. Ordered in his absence by someone who knew him well enough to suspect that he might use John as a backup if he ever dropped off the radar, but not well enough to have seen her own file.
It came to Mary in a rush, and she swallowed, forcing herself to breathe normally. Not Mycroft, and not his Second either. His rival. The coup had happened.
The coup had happened, and they were hunting him.
The woman had waltzed into Sally's borrowed office without so much as a by-your-leave. With a frown, Sally flipped closed the confidential file she'd been working on and minimised the document on her computer screen. The woman smirked, as though Sally had amused her.
"And you are?" Sally said, with a scowl. She resisted the urge to tilt back on the legs of her chair and put her feet on the desk (unprofessional, Donovan).
The woman smiled blandly. "I'm here to file a missing person's report."
Sally's eyes flickered over her uninvited guest in a rapid professional assessment: pretty face, expensive-looking hair, well-dressed, decidedly not sensible shoes. She didn't miss that the woman had failed to answer her question.
"Not my division," Sally said dismissively, echoing her favourite holidaying prat. "Try the second floor."
"Oh, it's your division alright," the woman said. "Or if it's not, it will be soon.
She smiled at Sally. It was a perfectly pleasant smile. It made Sally wonder, unaccountably, why she'd ever dropped karate.
The woman tossed a manila folder onto the desk between them. There was an 8x6 black and white photograph attached to the front cover with a paper clip. With unusual wariness, Sally picked it up. From the photograph, the bland visage and eerie grey eyes of Mycroft Holmes stared back at her.
.
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A/N: A bit of a ladies' chapter this time round. I keep trying (and failing) to make this fic pass the Bechdel Test. All these intelligent women around, and all they ever want to talk about is the damn Holmes brothers! I briefly contemplated having Molly and Mary engage in a discussion about jewellery, but somehow that didn't exactly seem like a fulfilling alternative...
Also, as I'm sure some of you have noticed, much of the imagined structure of the 'Service' is nicked blatantly from John Le Carre. I make no apologies.
Keep those reviews coming, y'all!