Chapter Fifteen

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Sidestepping his way through the crowded marketplace, John followed obediently in Mycroft's wake. He was glad to be outside. The close quarters and confinement of the hotel, since Mycroft and Irene's arrival, had become almost unbearable. Of course, that had nothing to do with his lying bitch of a wife.

The row that had followed Mycroft's little exposé of the night before had been one of the worst ever. It had rivaled even the revelation that Mary had been responsible for Sherlock's near-murder and, unlike that occasion, there hadn't been a consulting drama queen around to distract them. Mary hadn't come to bed. Instead, she'd spent the night plotting with Mycroft and Irene, presumably selling out yet more people who'd once relied upon her in the process. John, naturally, had been excluded. Instead, he'd spent the night lying tense as a bowstring in a cold bed, wondering whether it might not be better just to cut and run. Get the hell out of the hotel, away from Mycroft and his fat, smug face, away from Irene's smirk and Greg's pitying glances. Away from his wife. If he could just get out and find Sherlock, if they could go back home to Baker Street and tea and crimes and arguments over Top Gear and Mrs Hudson's shortbread…

But of course, he couldn't do any of those things. He hadn't a hope of finding Sherlock on his own, much less evading a pissed off Mary-and-Mycroft tag team. Besides, there was Billie. She'd been restless again last night, still miserable about the altered time zone and prepared to let him know it. He'd brought her to bed with him, her tiny body helping to fill the cold space left by Mary's absence. He'd recited as much of The Lorax as he could from memory, played a gentle game of peek-a-boo with her until she'd managed to tire herself out, and then lain in the dark, stroking her soft hair while she slept. He'd been amazed to realise how much she'd grown. With her head beneath his chin, her toes now reached to halfway down his thigh. The corn-silk hair that she'd had since birth was thicker now, long enough to skim the nape of her neck. Her hand, clutching his finger as she slept, now spanned past the second knuckle.

And if everything had gone the way her mother intended, she might never have existed at all.

John shook his head, trying to shake loose the anger that throbbed beneath his skin, and concentrated on his partner in crime. Mycroft was striding ahead of him as if he owned the street, long legs eating up the pavement. His hair tossed with every step and his long coat billowed behind him, utterly ridiculous in the Cuban heat. He looked absurd. His hair was the wrong colour, his face was the wrong shape, and shirts that tight, in John's professional opinion, should not be worn by anybody with Mycroft's degree of middle-aged spread.

"Come along John, keep up."

John rolled his eyes. The shirt and the hair and the face might be wrong, but the tone of snotty impatience was spot-on.

"Coming," he said, not altering his pace even slightly.

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Their destination was a grotty little café-bar on the western bank of the harbour, a place where, Mycroft assured him, they would find a source leading to Sherlock. John was more than a little dubious, not least because Mycroft's information had apparently been derived from some poor sap who'd made the near-fatal mistake of trying to bed Irene. Nor did the appearance of the café inspire confidence. The patrons sat at grimy tables nursing mugs of something dark and potent-smelling. There was no conversation. Their eyes followed John and Mycroft, hostile and un-blinking. John resisted the temptation to reach for the tyre iron he had shoved down the back of his jeans (Mycroft had refused to allow him a gun).

Ignoring both the wait-staff and the silent stares of the patrons, Mycroft strode unerringly between the tables towards a beaded curtain behind the bar. He ducked through it without glancing at John, and, grumbling internally, John followed.

He'd expected a kitchen, or perhaps the private quarters of the owners. What he got instead was a narrow wooden staircase that plunged downwards, unlit, into a shadowy basement, the steps covered in borer dust and fragments of broken glass. The top of Mycroft's head was already disappearing into the gloom. All his efforts at mimicking Sherlock's hairstyle couldn't entirely disguise the thin patch at his crown. John grinned.

He shuffled his way down the stairs in Mycroft's wake, not entirely sharing the other man's confidence in the sagging steps, or his apparent ability to see in the dark. When they finally emerged, it was into a subterranean concrete basement with all the charm of a soviet-era bunker. It probably was one. Here, too, there were patrons sitting at tables, and here too they eyed the interlopers with barely concealed hostility. They were all men, John noticed. Sculpted muscles were very much in evidence, as were sagging black vests and hairy armpits. Cards and bottles covered most available surfaces. There were also several blackjack tables, a couple of dusty pokie machines, and stacks of chips at every elbow.

Mycroft turned and shot him an infuriating smirk. "Care to indulge an old talent?"

John growled.

He'd done a lot of gambling once, in the army. It was a way to pass the time, and he was good at it. Sherlock might claim that he was an open book, but as Sherlock could read everyone it hardly signified. Amongst other people – normal people – John was considered, in fact, to have a pretty good poker face. He'd been good enough that he usually won or drew even – at least when playing with his mates and not betting against a stacked house. But he was also particularly bad at calling in debts, and he'd never found there was much fun to be had in stripping the last pennies from an eighteen year old kid on a Private's wage. Somewhere around about his fourth year in Afghanistan, he'd worked out that, while he might have been winning the cards, he was actually losing the damn money.

And so he'd tried to stop. And had discovered, to his eternal chagrin, that it was rather more difficult than he had anticipated.

Whether bringing it up now was Mycroft's idea of a joke or not, John didn't know, but he didn't exactly want to argue about it with a bunch of meat-heads eyeing them up for tonight's supper, so he satisfied himself with an insulting hand gesture. Then he headed for the nearest table and drew up a chair alongside a man who looked like he had a goat for a mother.

"Are you girls playing, or what?"

With a grunt, the dealer swept the cards towards him and began to shuffle. Around them, a low level of chatter gradually resumed. Mycroft, joining the game on the other side of the table, eyed his cards with distaste.

For perhaps half an hour, they simply played. John had no idea what Mycroft was thinking or what the end game was, but the other men at the table had gradually relaxed and stopped looking as though they wanted to bake his head, so he was reasonably content. Compared to some of the things Sherlock had made him do, gambling with gorillas was practically a day at the office.

So immersed was he in the game that it took him a moment to realise that everyone around him had fallen quiet. John looked up from his hand (a promising baby straight) and into the eyes of a man who had appeared at his shoulder almost silently. Two others stood behind Mycroft's chair.

Despite their being rather smaller and tidier than the bar's average inhabitant, John knew instantly that these three were the dangerous ones. The man at his shoulder was slim and young, not much above John's own height. His hair was in blond spikes and his hands rested, completely relaxed, in the pockets of his jeans. The two blokes behind Mycroft were darker, and alike enough that they were probably brothers.

The one behind Mycroft's left shoulder posed a question in Spanish. Mycroft's eyes flickered, but he did not rise. He folded his cards neatly and laid them on the table in front of him before replying. His tone was low and soft. John didn't understand what was being said, but he caught both 'Holmes' and 'Watson", and presumed Mycroft was introducing them.

The man conducting the interrogation gave what appeared to be an order, and John was hauled unceremoniously to his feet. He didn't struggle or try to fight. Struggling was for little boys who didn't understand the way these things worked, and over the last few years John had been hauled off and interrogated more times than he'd like to count. He did wince a little as his captor discovered the tyre iron he had stashed down the back of his jeans. Blondie tugged it from his waistband with a single sharp motion, but that didn't stop it from scraping his arse on the way out. Great. He was going to have bruises where bruises weren't meant to go.

Blondie dropped the tyre iron contemptuously, and it clattered on the concrete floor, smacking John on the back of the ankle.

"Bloody ow," he grumbled.

Mycroft smirked.

"It appears that the lady of the house is expecting us," he told John. He stepped away from the table, keeping his hands where the men could see them. "Shall we, gentlemen?"

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John and Mycroft were manhandled through a door at the rear of the cellar, along a dark passage, and up another flight of sticky, glass-strewn stairs, emerging in what appeared to be the next building over. The slim, blond man kept John's right arm pinned to his side with one hand and held his left twisted behind his back with little apparent effort. That the man had chosen to control John's dominant hand rather than the more obvious right did not escape him, and he felt a sense of disquiet that had nothing at all to do with the complaining muscles in his left shoulder.

Together, they were hauled through an external door into an enclosed courtyard, then up a further flight of debilitated, sun-bleached stairs that might once have been a serviceable fire escape. Propelled awkwardly by their captors, they ducked beneath a final beaded curtain and into a room so remarkable that John stood transfixed. The walls were yellow ochre, startlingly bright after the dingy cellar, and plastered with a veritable rainbow of posters and tapestries; images of Krishna in the garden jostled for space with Muhammad Ali and Fidel Castro; a blue-eyed, red-lipped Christ exposed his heart in glorious technicolour, hemmed in on either side by a snarling tiger and a high-kicking Bruce Lee. A dozen wall-sconces were filled to overflowing with icons, candles, and plastic figurines that might have come from McDonalds Happy Meals. The paint on the doors and window frames was bubbled and peeling, but what remained was a vivid and unapologetic turquoise. Scarlet geraniums bloomed in profusion on every windowsill, and enormous vases of silk flowers smothered every available surface.

If the room was remarkable though, it was nothing to the woman who sat enthroned in its midst. Her enormous bulk was spread across a vast sofa of red velvet, her immensity barely concealed by a robe-like garment of orange and purple. Though she was clearly in her sixties or seventies, she had retained a thick braid of wildly frizzing dark hair and brown, supple skin like a teenager's. Her dark eyes glinted with intelligence.

"Mr Holmes," she said, her voice low and hoarse and sultry. "I am delighted at last to meet you. And Doctor Watson too. A pleasure."

Mycroft actually bowed. "Madame Palazuelos, I presume."

The woman chuckled, and said something in Spanish to her guards. The man holding John released him, and John tugged at his shoulder, feeling the joint click as he massaged it. He winced.

"Mr Holmes and Doctor Watson," Madame Palazuelos reiterated, with a broad smile. "I have looked forward to meeting you now some time."

Mycroft's eyebrows quirked. "Likewise, I'm sure. Your reputation precedes you, madame."

The woman laughed richly, her several chins wobbling, though John noticed that the gleam in her eyes was sharp rather than amused.

"So what is it that you want from Madame, Mr Holmes?"

"I think you already know the answer to that."

The woman's head cocked to one side, assessing. "Maybe Madame knows. Si. Maybe. The famous Mr Holmes comes to me for information, and maybe Madame can provide."

"In exchange for a generous reimbursement, obviously," Mycroft said drily. Madame's face split into an unashamed grin.

"Twenty thousand dollars, US."

"Five."

"Fifteen."

"Seven."

"Twelve."

"Seven."

She grinned again. "Seven ok, detective man. Because I like you."

Mycroft's mouth twitched in amusement, but he removed a thin leather wallet from the breast pocket of his coat and withdrew seven crisp, foreign-looking notes. The wallet, John was amused to note, contained not a single penny more.

Madame Palazuelos tucked the money tenderly down the front of her capacious bosom and beckoned the two of them closer.

"Sit, sit. Now we can do business, si?"

John's erstwhile captor drew a pair of armchairs forward towards the sofa and motioned them to sit. John subsided into the offered chair with a pointed glare that told the man quite plainly that he hadn't forgotten the damage to his shoulder.

"So, Mr Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson," Madame Palazuelos crooned softly. "What do two Englishmen want to know? Something about a man, yes? Special man." She chuckled. "Secret agent man, maybe?"

"Your perspicacity is admirable, madame."

"Man called Kni-ight," she said, drawing out the name, curling her pink tongue between her lips.

"Yes," Mycroft confirmed. It was only the fact that he knew Sherlock so well that allowed John to recognise that the elder Holmes brother was on edge, even afraid.

"Agent Knight in Guantanamo. In the prison," she said softly. "Bad, bad hurt. Broken back, broken legs, lashes from the whip, many, many."

The smallest finger of Mycroft's right hand twitched, barely perceptibly.

"When?" he asked. "When was this?"

"Three year ago, maybe four. Agent Knight with the Americans a long time. Maybe better now. Maybe dead. Who knows?"

"How do you know of him?"

"Carlo, my boy, he work in the American prison. Eight year, nine year. Carlo sweeps the yard where prisoners walk, washes the cells, takes away shit of Americans in big tanks. Maria, his wife, she makes the coffee and food for soldiers. Then Americans decide they don't want Cubans inside big prison no more. Cubans all go home. But Carlo remembers Agent Knight, thinks that Englishmen might be very interested to know where Agent Knight is staying now."

Mycroft gave a tight nod. He looked as calm and collected as John had ever seen him, but his face was very pale.

"And your Carlo is in danger now, is that right?"

Madame Palazeulos turned her great, heavy head towards him. "My Carlo is a poor man, Mr Holmes. He sells what he can, where he can. A year ago now, he sell this information, but he is not careful enough. Now Americans know what he sells, and they are looking for him. Very dangerous for Carlo."

Mycroft met her eyes steadily. "And where is Carlo now?"

For a long, slow moment, the woman looked at him. John found himself holding his breath.

Slowly, the woman reached towards the little table that stood between them. She retrieved a notepad patterned with pictures of kittens, and scribbled an address with a turquoise pen. She folded the topmost sheet of paper carefully, first in half, then into quarters, and handed it, not to Mycroft, but to John. John looked at her, surprised, and the woman laughed.

"I trust Doctor Watson," she said, with a sly grin. "Not so much Sherlock Holmes."

John grinned. He took the address with a flourish and made a great show of folding it safely into his wallet.

Mycroft rose gracefully to his feet, and John followed, inclining his head to Madame Palazuelos. Apparently, their interview was at an end.

They had taken no more than three paces towards the door when there was an outbreak of voluble Spanish. One of the brothers who had apprehended Mycroft earlier had broken away from his post by the door, waving a mobile phone and shouting. John didn't understand, but he saw Mycroft's surprise, and realised with alarm that Mycroft was drawing in on himself, centering his weight and preparing to fight. Instinctively, John spun around, setting himself back to back with Mycroft and dropping into a protective crouch. All three of the guards were coming for them now, the blond man vaulting over furniture in his haste. A roundhouse punch came swinging towards him and John dodged right. Then a kick was speeding in his direction, chest height, and fast enough to send him sprawling. He darted left, just managing to block the flying foot with a shoulder charge, knocking his assailant off balance. To his horror, he realised that several other men had come charging up the stairs from the courtyard. Three, maybe four, but he didn't have time to count them.

He felt movement behind him and he spun, only to see a dreadlocked man go flying. Mycroft performed a manoeuvre that John would have sworn, mere minutes ago, that he wasn't capable of, sending another assailant sailing back down the stairs the way he'd come. John ducked another blow and delivered a punch that connected with something solid and fleshy, though he wasn't precisely sure what. The blond man leaped over him, making for the sofa where Madame Palazuelos still sat, mouth open in a scream that seemed part rage, part excitement. The blond man was shouting something, and it was only as John straightened, seeing Mycroft deliver a short, sharp blow to someone's abdomen, that he heard what is was they were fighting about:

"That man! That man is not Sherlock Holmes!"

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A/N. My sincere apologies for how late this chapter is. I really have no excuse other than the fact that my life is apparently busier than I've ever given it credit for. I very much hope that the next chapter won't take so long. Exposition is coming, I promise. Just hang in there.

Thanks, as always, to everyone who's reviewed since I last posted. I love you all. Up next: John finally finds out what the hell is going on, and Sherlock breaks in to a maximum security prison in his underwear...