Chapter Fourteen.
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There was a strange ringing in Mary's ears. The silence in the room had a chill like deep water. She could hear the distant thrum of voices from the hotel courtyard and the quiet tick of a clock. She could hear somebody's breath, slow and deliberately controlled. It seemed to take a long time before she recognised it as her own.
Around her, the faces of John and the others were gape-mouthed, wrinkled-browed, comical. Mary felt an untimely desire to laugh. Only Mycroft looked grim.
Inadvertently, her eyes flicked down to Mycroft's long, delicate-looking hands. That left hand had once held her arm behind her back so hard that a muscle in her shoulder had torn. The right had once held her by the throat, so tightly that she'd felt her vision blur, darkness eating at the edges of her sight.
Unbidden, the memory of the night she'd shot Sherlock flashed into her mind: the mobile in Mycroft's hand; the grainy, real-time footage from the fisheye lens somewhere near the ceiling of the operating theatre. Somehow, Mycroft had got surveillance in there, had managed to piggyback the hospital's systems so that his brother's every laboured breath and every fluttering heartbeat was broadcast directly to his phone. Most of the screen had been taken up with the video feed, but the readout from the heartrate monitor had scrolled below it, running in rapid spikes – a strange counterpoint to the preternatural calm of the surgical team. Mycroft had held her by the neck against a brick wall, forcing her to look; forcing her to watch as silver implements sliced into Sherlock's porcelain-white skin and the monitor beat a panicked tempo.
What had surprised her most had been Mycroft's strength. She'd guessed by then that he must have been in better form than his carefully-cut suits and his carefully-cultivated belly suggested, or he'd never have been let out without a dozen bodyguards. She was aware enough, by then, to have connected Edward Mycroft George Holmes with Edward Ellis, Samuel Liminov, Mykhail Mykhaylenko and Antonin Ward, and even with a handful of code names in half a dozen ancient but painstakingly-gleaned transcripts (Ice Man, King-maker, Argus, Tolstoy, The Tailor). She'd thought she'd known what she was dealing with.
Mycroft had found her before she'd got even a mile from Magnussen's office. He'd had two of his people with him – the woman called Anthea and another, a tall black man. He hadn't needed either of them. He was behind her before Mary – before Amanda Grace Reid Agnew, on full alert – had even heard his approach. He'd batted away her weapon with a single movement, his eyes as hard as death. He'd forced her against the wall, pinning her with his weight, impervious to her kicking feet and thrashing arms. His knee had forced itself between her thighs, his hip bone had pressed cruelly into the small of her back, and she had felt a rush of that entirely specific, entirely sexual terror that few men ever experience.
And then he'd made her watch. Every slice of a scalpel, every needle, every tube, every stitch. She'd seen Sherlock's face, bloodless and slack, the shape of his mouth distorted by the oxygen tube. She'd heard the crack as they broke his two lowest ribs, seeking a way in. She'd heard the klaxon-like warning of the machines and the cursing of the anaesthetist as his blood-oxygen plummeted abruptly to zero.
'Fuck', the anaesthetist had said. 'What the bloody fuck?' Not as if she was distressed. Not like she was terrified for Sherlock's singular brain, or his singular life. Just 'fuck', as if she were annoyed.
And the heartbeat on the monitor had flat-lined.
Mary's own heart had seemed to stop along with it. She'd felt a throat-clenching terror overtake her, her stomach roiling until she'd thought she would vomit. Mycroft's grip upon her neck had tightened convulsively and she had choked, stars bursting in front of her eyes.
And Mycroft had picked her up and tossed her against the wall, the way a labourer might toss a sack of grain.
She'd smashed into the brick, head and shoulder first, and crumpled to the ground. She'd felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her abdomen and a thunder of drum-beat heels as the baby kicked frantically. It had been the first time she'd felt Billie move.
Mycroft had been pitiless. He had tugged at his cuffs, straightened the line of his jacket, and stared down, cold-eyed at where she lay sprawled.
"If you'll excuse me," he had said. "I should be with John."
And that had been all.
Mary glanced again at Mycroft's hands, resisting the urge to clutch Billie to her chest.
She could still smell the damp brick.
.
"– about? Mycroft? Say what you mean for once in your life for fuck's sake."
It was John who was speaking. His voice was rough and angry, and cracked on the word fuck.
Of course; John. Beautiful, phenomenal John.
And then Mycroft was speaking, his voice lacking even its customary unctuousness in the intensity of his venom:
"I mean, John, that your wife has lied to you time and time again; that she has never ceased lying to you. She may be retired in the eyes of the Agency at large, but she has been contracted to Special Branch for as long as you've known her. Your wife is a sleeper agent, John. She was placed in London by her masters so as to be in a position to fulfil a number of unsavoury tasks if and when they ever called upon her to do so. Not the least of those tasks was my eventual assassination."
"Eventual?" Greg managed, croakily.
Mycroft shrugged. "An inevitability, once the difficulties I made for them began to outweigh the perceived benefits of our supposed alliance. Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long. I must be losing my touch."
He turned to look at her at last, as fierce, as arrogant as his brother ever was. She heard a stifled squeak from Molly and an oath from Greg. John was silent, trembling, the knuckles showing white in his fists.
Mary found her voice at last. "I haven't told them we're here. I swear. I never told them we'd left London."
"I know. So you can naturally understand my curiosity regarding your loyalties."
John shifted, frowning, but didn't say anything. Mary closed her eyes, willing herself not to lose control.
"Did Sherlock know?"
"Not until after you shot him, no. For some reason, no doubt stemming from misguided consideration for Doctor Watson, he forebore to investigate you. Afterwards, I rather think that the idea of making friends with my assassin-elect amused him."
Irene Adler had drawn a weapon. A pistol, mid-range. She held it with appropriate intent, but she wasn't Anthea, by any means. Her hand was steady, but her grip was awkward, unfamiliar ('No particular skill with weaponry'; Mary remembered Mycroft's phrase). The will to do it, then, but not the skill set. Not enough to beat Amanda Agnew.
For a moment, for half a heartbeat, she considered it. Swing Billie aside onto the couch; draw and fire before Irene even had time to find her aim. The woman first, then Mycroft – an easy one-two, like duck shooting. Lestrade would be a threat: he had the size to take her down and he'd have the time to do it before she could turn, if he was quick off the mark. On balance, though, she didn't think he would. All his training, all his instinct would be civilians first. He'd reach for Molly, get her behind the cover of the bed, and make for Billie second.
And that left John.
And she knew, without even having to look at him, that she couldn't do it.
She looked at Mycroft, hopelessly. This was why they called him the king-maker. She'd thought, long ago, that she'd stolen a march on him; that he'd believed her ties to the C.I.A. to be severed for good. She'd been as blameless as a church mouse after the Magnusson fiasco: no contact with her handler or the local station agent; no efforts to thwart Mycroft's watchers; not even the barest of codes or signals; no Facebook post about a favourite recipe to signify 'mission aborted'; no new subscription to Home and Garden to indicate 'deep cover, do not contact'. She'd waited nine and a half months before she'd made a move – six months of John living back at Baker Street, refusing to talk to her; six and a half months of Billie's gestation; three and a half months after Sherlock's absurd, reckless Christmas shoot out; three months and two days of her daughter's little life. In doing so, she'd passed up a score of opportunities, had sacrificed valuable contacts and refrained from reporting crucial intelligence.
Even after she had finally made contact once more (walking past a particular delicatessen on Marylebone Road with a copy of the Guardian sticking from her handbag on a Wednesday afternoon), her movements had been achingly cautious. Her silence had earned her a proper bollocking, yet even that had been deferred in favour of keeping Mycroft sweet. Slowly, torturously slowly, she'd slipped back into the game, one ear always to the ground for even a whisper of Mycroft's suspicion.
She'd waited nine and a half months, and still, Mycroft the bastard had been watching her.
She knew what he was offering now: her family.
The price: her country.
He hadn't even needed to play her. He'd just slipped John Watson into her path and let her play herself. And, like a sentimental fool, Amanda Grace Reid Agnew had spun the noose with which she was now, for her sins, to be hanged.
In the end, it was barely even a choice.
She looked up at him, hopelessly, searching his unremarkable face.
"What do you want?" she asked him.
Mycroft looked down at her, and there was a fleeting hint of compassion in the lines that framed his mouth.
"You. Your skills, your loyalty, your contacts, your access. I want everything you have ever known about Guantanamo, and every favour you have left to call in. I want everything that you can give me."
.
Sherlock Holmes wasn't an addict; he was a user ('And so sayeth every man who ever ended his days puking his guts up behind some old biddy's dustbins' – the voice in his mind sounded like John). In Sherlock's case, however, the distinction was substantively correct. His mind was not like other minds. Cocaine triggered many of the usual responses, of course – the euphoria, the increased heart rate, occasional hallucinations – but those things were secondary. It was only the clarity that mattered; the ability to rise clear of extraneous detail to focus on the case at hand.
Sherlock's mind was mapped out, in its entirety, in his own consciousness. A mind within a mind. If he attuned his focus to it, he could know and recognise every synapse, every neurotransmitter, every chemical pathway. Introduce a solution of benzoylmethylecgonine, precisely calculated, and watch the buggers dance.
Sherlock closed his eyes, seeing the strands of his plan to break into the prison complex laid out before him in his mind's eye. His hands twitched delicately, tugging a strand here, flicking away an extraneous detail there. Barbed wire. Landmines. Camouflage; orange jumpsuits; detainees; watchtowers. Camp X-ray, Camp Delta, Camp Echo, Camp Iguana, Camp 7, Camp No, Penny Lane. 'What have you taken, Sherlock?' (John – Irrelevant. Delete).
Barbed wire. Landmines. Guardrooms; patrols; assault rifles. 'I mean it Sherlock. What have you taken?' (Get out of my head. I'm busy.). 'Have you made a list, Sherlock?' (Piss off, Mycroft!).
His brother would have sent someone after him by now. Sherlock had tried to time the postcard so that Mycroft couldn't catch him – not if he wanted to avoid the usual channels and prevent an international fall-out. But whomever his brother had sent would be in Cuba by now. He'd have to watch his step. He wanted them as a safety net in case he'd miscalculated, but not close enough on his heels to get in his way. The memory of Serbia flicked into his mind, and he scowled. Perhaps a little closer behind him wouldn't be a bad thing.
At that moment, there came the sound of small, hasty feet pounding up the stairs. It was followed almost immediately by a heavy thumping at the door of the squalid room he was currently inhabiting.
"Piss off! I'm busy."
It didn't deter his visitor. With some effort, the door was shoved open, squealing as it ground over the warped floorboards. A dark head was shoved through the opening. Scrawny, male, perhaps elevenish.
"You are right!" the boy told him. He gave a gap-toothed grin. "A man is searching for you."
Sherlock scowled, disliking the disruption to his thought process but recognising its necessity. "Who?"
"I do not know. A guero." The boy shrugged, and thought some more. "Maybe an old man. Fat, but not fat fat."
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Which could mean anybody from Mycroft to Stephen Fry."
"Que?"
"Actually scratch that. Mycroft's definitely fat fat."
"Que?"
"Never mind." He waved a hand toward a shelf by the door, where a handful of banknotes sat cushioned between a pistol and a mug with a broken handle. "Now take the money and get out."
The child left without the need for platitudes. Children were good like that.
Sherlock drew a deep breath, hands stilling for a moment at his temples, and began again.
Barbed wire. Landmines. Checkpoints…
He knew there was a risk. He wasn't foolish enough to believe otherwise, and – contrary to some of John's less-complementary mutterings – he'd never had a God complex.
There was a risk, yes, but sometimes risks were necessary.
.
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A/N: Children can be cruel observers. Poor John. ;-) Thanks as always to those lovely people who take the time to review. Almost up to 30! Yay!
Next up: In which John and Mycroft go a-hunting...