Chapter 5.
7 pm, London
Secrets. Governments stealing them while publicly bemoaning the practice. Companies stealing them while suing for intellectual property theft. Hackers stealing them while claiming the high road. Secrets made the world go 'round.
My secrets.
Sherlock shook his head, the thought like a pesky fly which wouldn't leave him alone. There was one more secret that Moriarty's minions could release to his friends and it was a whopper. So far, the envelopes had gone to people of increasing significance to him, so John was the next logical target. And each envelope's delivery had followed on the heels of an escalation in the attack on satellite communications.
The last attack on the GPS satellites was now 12 hours old, so an envelope would certainly be coming soon. If he tried to stop John from opening it, there would be questions, lots of them. No time for that—Sherlock had a global crisis to help contain. He opted for a quick result.
YOU'LL GET AN ENVELOPE, PROBABLY WITHIN HOURS. BRING IT TO ME, DON'T OPEN IT.—SH
ODD REQUEST, MATE. YOU WANT ME TO BRING YOU MY MAIL?—JW
NO. A MANILA ENVELOPE. UNMARKED. IT'S IMPORTANT.—SH
FINE. WOULD THERE BE ANY POINT TO ME ASKING WHAT'S GOING ON?-JW
John didn't expect or get an answer.
Sherlock dropped his phone onto his couch and returned his attention to the wall behind it. The wallpaper was nearly obscured in paper and photographs. Somewhere in that information was a link between the attack on Sherlock's past and the assault on global communications.
Belt and suspenders was Moriarty's MO when it came to plans. He'd wanted Sherlock to end his own life when his professional reputation failed before Moriarty's suicide but, if he couldn't have that, reducing Sherlock's personal life to rubble would be an acceptable alternative. Engineering that collapse to coincide with massive losses to other people would be frosting on the cake.
The plan could work because, despite all such evidence to the contrary, Sherlock still didn't believe that his friends could truly accept any weakness on his part. His well-defended persona was the result of decades of sheer effort. Discipline in mind and body was his mantra.
In an impressive exercise in self-delusion, Sherlock was convinced that, if his armor slipped, the image of himself reflected others' eyes would be irrevocably damaged. To avoid that, his weapon of choice was the first strike—put others' frailties under a spotlight to hide or overshadow his own. Being alone was a price he felt he'd always somehow pay for being extraordinary.
Yet in his chemically induced dreams on the plane, Greg Lestrade uncomplainingly dug into an old grave at his side, simply because Sherlock had asked for his help. Mary Morstan had gracefully hacked into MI6—on a cell phone, no less—to give him information. John Watson had cared enough to shout him down when he offered excuses for his drug use. And Mycroft had insisted on a list of everything he'd taken, honoring a long-standing agreement between the brothers to ensure Sherlock's survival in case of a lapse in sobriety. They all seemed to care so much…
Sherlock slapped himself, making his eyes water. This self-indulgent wallowing wouldn't do. He needed to regain his concentration, focus on the case.
Instead, his train of thought was derailed by the sound of a door clicking open down the hall. Footsteps preceded the appearance of the last person he expected to see in his living room.
Naked as the day she was born except for a pair of shiny Louboutins with 4 inch heels, Irene Adler smiled at Sherlock.
"Surprise," she said, smirking. Sherlock just stared. "Cat got your tongue?"
It had been almost a year since he'd seen her last. And five years since she'd first met him while wearing nothing in her London flat.
Slowly—much more slowly than he'd like—his brain came out of the fog that had descended on him at the sight of Irene. It registered with him that her body hadn't changed at all since that first meeting. Which made no sense, given that he'd seen her body several times the year before and knew it to be thinner, possibly due to her having retreated from her previous life as a dominatrix when a plan to blackmail the British government (in the form of Mycroft) had failed.
"You're not real," he said.
"And you're not getting the point," she responded.
"Which is?" he asked.
"Oh, it's no fun if I have to tell you. Guess," she teased.
"You're a distraction," he ventured.
"Thank you," she purred. "Lots of those for you these days, though, I'm afraid." She advanced until her body nearly touched his. He fought the urge to take a step forward.
"I have to find out how the envelopes tie into the cyberattacks. I can't afford distractions."
"And yet, here I am," Irene pointed out.
"As am I." Another voice came from the kitchen. Molly Hooper appeared in the entrance. Sherlock swung his eyes wildly between the two women, more relieved than he'd admit that faux Irene was now fully clothed.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Sherlock!" protested his mother, who was standing on the landing to his flat. "Manners."
"What. Are. You. All. Doing. Here?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"Think," ordered Irene. "It really is obvious, as plain as the nose on your face. Or the ones on ours—what do we all share in common?"
He stared, a perfectly juvenile response which would be beneath him to utter nearly escaping his lips. He shook his head, then a better answer came to him.
"You're all women," he said.
"Oh, brilliant, Sherl," snarked Janine, who was now lounging against a doorframe.
"Does that tie into the case, dear?" asked Mrs. Hudson from the stairs.
"I don't know, I don't know…" he muttered as he turned his gaze from one to another of them. Sally Donovan spoke up from a corner.
"Come on, freak," she stammered slightly, then amended her statement with a glance toward Sherlock's mother. "I mean, Holmes. The word of the day is 'woman'. You're so damn smart, figure out why. We can't wait on you all day."
Mycroft's assistant Anthea then stepped forward from the fireplace to hand Sherlock his phone. A series of text messages were displayed on the screen:
FOOD SHORTAGES AT SITES THROUGOUT LONDON AND BEYOND. INVENTORY SYSTEMS DOWN. SHIPPING INTERRUPTED. PLANES STILL GROUNDED. YOUR INPUT NOW WOULD BE APPRECIATED, LITTLE BROTHER.—MH.
I AM NOT AMUSED BY YOUR SILENCE. THIS IS NOT A GAME. I WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO INTERVENE ON YOUR BEHALF IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND. PARDONS MAY BE REVOKED, SHERLOCK.—MH
DO YOU SIMPLY NOT GIVE A DAMN WHAT HAPPENS TO THIS COUNTRY OR YOURSELF?-MH
Under other circumstances, Mycroft's overflowing frustration might have pleased him. But Anthea's voice broke his concentration.
"Tick tock, Sherlock."
He gasped, coming to awareness as if cold water had been poured over him. His phone was ringing. He grabbed it, swiping across the screen to answer the call and close the messaging app. As he did so, he looked around the room. It was empty.
"Sherlock," said John. "I got the envelope. I'm just out the door, should I bring it over?"
When John arrived, the living room of 221B looked like the aftermath of an explosion. Papers were scattered across every surface and photographs were pinned haphazardly to the walls. Open laptops ringed the room, each with a different display. The kitchen table had been dragged into the room and pressed into service as a makeshift fort by way of a blanket hanging over it. By all appearances, the flat had been attacked by a herd of deranged toddlers.
Sherlock was seated under the table, legs criss-crossed.
"Sherlock?" came John's voice. "What in the world has happened here? Are we playing hide-and-seek?" John's head popped under the blanket.
"I needed the privacy," he said.
"From what, the skull? There's no one here," John answered.
"To go deeper," Sherlock said vaguely.
John frowned. "Last time you 'went deep', you nearly overdosed. Let's give that a wide berth this time, shall we?"
Sherlock hummed but said nothing.
"Do you know what's going on out there? There's a run on the shops, people buying up cases of water, food, even toilet paper. And there's no buses running because of the traffic lights. It's madness—one bloke tried to get on the tube with a wheelbarrow full of groceries. A wheelbarrow! All it will take is one good fight and there'll be panic in the streets." John shook his head as he pulled his gloves off.
"What do we have here, then?" he asked, gesturing to the wall. He peered more closely at several of the photographs. "Wait, is that the Chinese code? From Soo Lin's case?"
"Well-spotted," said Sherlock with a touch of acerbity.
"Why-", he began.
"Do you know that you've asked 10 questions since you came in the door?" Sherlock interrupted, rising from the floor.
John settled into his armchair. "All right, why don't you just tell me what this is all about and save us the Q & A. Go on, enlighten me."
"China, John. This all somehow ties into it. The Chinese government has been sponsoring wholesale cyberattacks on us, the United States, literally every major Western country and a few non-Western ones for ages. It's their version of a business plan." He plucked a handful of papers from the floor.
"Over the last 5 years, there has been a massive increase in those incursions .All alleged or proven to have been the work of Chinese operatives, many of whom work in Western tech companies like Amazon and Google." Sherlock shoved a newspaper article into John's hands.
"China professes concern about these incidents from time to time, of course. Gives them plausible deniability. But the pace of the hacking has increased sharply over the past few months. There's a pattern emerging here—building up to something big."
"The satellite attacks," John said wonderingly.
"Yes," Sherlock answered. "I think so."
"You think it has something to do with the Black Lotus?" John said, glancing at the photos. He had taken one of the most prominent shots, an image of a black brick wall covered in bright yellow spray paint. The paint formed Chinese numerals, which had been key to an earlier case John had called "The Blind Banker" on his blog.
The numerals were code for letters of messages sent by the Black Lotus, a Chinese criminal gang. Decoding the messages had led to solving the crime, but at the cost of several deaths, including that of a young woman they'd failed to protect. The memory of her loss was still painful.
"What makes you so certain?" John asked.
"These," Sherlock said, pulling two manila envelopes out from under a laptop on his desk. "They were sent to Molly Hooper and Greg Lestrade yesterday. Their postmark is London. But the brand of envelope is Zhuziang Paper, which is only sold in China."
"This looks the same," John exclaimed, pulling a folded manila envelope from his pocket. "It was at our doorstep when Mary and I got home tonight. Do you know what's in this?"
"Do you?" asked Sherlock softly, eyes fixed on the envelope.
"No, didn't open it yet. It has your name on it too." John turned it over. 'For Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson' had been scrawled across the front in black marker.
"None of the others were marked," Sherlock murmured.
"So, shall we open it, then?," John said, beginning to pull at the flap.
"No!" barked Sherlock, grabbing at the envelope. As he did so, one side of his dressing gown swung up, following his arm.
A clear bag of white powder popped out of the gown's pocket and fell to the floor. Both men stopped to stare at it. Neither said a word, simply looking at the bag as if waiting for it to do something. Had it gotten up and danced, John couldn't have looked more shocked. That gave Sherlock the time he needed to recover and scoop the packet up.
The men's eyes met. "Drop it," said John in an unambiguous order.
"No." Sherlock refused, returning the packet to his pocket.
"Even you can't be a big enough idiot to get high again, Sherlock. Not again. Give it to me." John demanded.
Sherlock said nothing, instead turning his back on John to pick up a laptop. He froze at the sound of paper tearing.
John's voice was quiet and firm. "There's something in here you don't want me to see. Hand over the drugs, or I look at it."
Sherlock spun around, eyes blazing. "Go ahead. I don't care." He was vaguely aware of sounding like a sulky child. "In fact, why don't you stop inflicting your moral high ground on me and take that on home."
He gestured to the envelope. "You and Mary can have a nice long read. Maybe send a copy around on the internet." Sherlock was breathing hard at this point. "Oh, wait. There isn't going to be an internet anymore. Not unless I solve this case, which I need these to do!"
He pulled the bag from his pocket and swept the blanket off of the kitchen table in the middle of the room. With a quick swipe, he snatched up the box and snapped it open. It contained injection tools—a needle, spoon and lighter.
"Jesus, Sherlock," John breathed. His face flushed with anger and time stood still for a moment. "Right," said John, and pulled a sheet from the envelope.
When he looked back up, Sherlock had the expression of a kicked puppy. In all the times that John had seen his friend pretend to be vulnerable, and the far fewer occasions when he actually had been, he'd never seen anything like this. Sherlock's face was snow white, his eyes wide, and his lips were slightly parted.
The silence between the two men stretched out. John broke it.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I won't-".
Sherlock interrupted. "It doesn't matter." He spun around, dropping into his armchair and closing his eyes. John moved toward him.
"Sherlock," he began, then stalled. Words would come, but the right ones seemed elusive.
Slowly, Sherlock's hand came up. John gently lifted the box and bag from it. He replaced them with the envelope.
"Go," said Sherlock flatly. "Take those with you."
"No, we'll figure this out. We'll-"
Sherlock cut him off again. "Go," he said, this time interjecting a note of steel into his voice.
John sighed. There was no arguing with Sherlock when he was in this state of mind.
"I'll dispose of this, shall I? Then I'll be back," John said. Sherlock didn't reply, and John slowly walked to the door.
A look back confirmed that the envelope was in Sherlock's lap. His eyes were now open, but unseeing, a thousand yard stare into nothing.