The Strange Case of Doctor Watson and Mister Ives
Part Six: Closing the Snare
Mycroft had been waiting for this.
Ives had brought him back to a penthouse apartment, probably rented under an alias, he had no doubt the man covered his tracks too well for Mycroft's people to find him in time, but somehow he had no fear of what the monster would do to him.
Sure his shoulder throbbed under the bandage, but the cut was clean and precise and the stitches Ives used to close the wound were tight and professional, John Watson was still leaking through which was astonishing, the underlying personality never was able to survive and imprint itself in the previous subjects. However, except when he was killing Moriarty's men, Ives had shown a modicum of restraint, the other Jekyll's would have left a string of bloody bodies in their wake, there would have been no way possible for them to hide like this, but Ives had remained hidden and set up this alternate life without Mycroft's knowledge and that was some feat!
He remembered the strange calmness that he had noted in Watson upon that first meeting...that complete and utter lack of intimidation, the strange almost clinical way he had stared Mycroft down when most would have been reduced to quivering pools of terror.
Maybe he was seeing what eventually turned in to Ives even then, this was a man who infiltrated Mycroft's organization and managed to be underestimated even with all the precautions, Mycroft had gone with him because he saw a plan at work and he wanted to play his part if just to see where this would lead.
He watched as Howard Ives clicked away at an expensive laptop, suddenly the man reached up and rubbed his eyes, sat the computer to the side and rested his head on his hands.
The change came nearly instantaneously.
John Watson rose up and studied the room, his tired eyes widened when he saw Mycroft seated there comfortably with a zip tie around his hands and a gag in his mouth looking patient. Mycroft gave him a small companionable wave.
"Dear God what has he done now?" John lamented.
Watson picked up the laptop and sure enough there was a message typed out for him.
He read for a minute and his shoulders slumped.
"He wants you to set up a meet with Moriarty, and he has a message for you to send, he says that if you refuse or make a move to attract attention or try to escape when he comes back he's going to peel you like a grape then have fun until you die of shock with a salt shaker and a lemon wedge."
Watson gave Mycroft tired eyes. "I think you know he means it."
Mycroft nodded with the upmost solemnity.
Watson reached for his gag.
He worked his jaw while Watson worked on releasing him from the zip tie with a pair of scissors. "You are going along with his plans? Why is that?" Mycroft inquired.
"What part of "he'll kill you slow in the most painful way possible for his own amusement" did you not comprehend?" Watson inquired with an eye roll.
Mycroft studied the man as he finished his ministrations and brought the computer over so Mycroft could send his email. He saw the truth written in John's eyes.
"You don't think you're coming back from this do you?" he inquired.
Watson sighed. "Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde isn't exactly a happy ending is it?" he replied, "but at least Sherlock will be safe, now, just type in the email and copy and paste the document."
Mycroft bent to the task but his mind was not on what his hands were doing, multi-tasking was a Holmesian strength after all. "We might be able to reverse the process; you've shown a remarkable control over Ives so far."
"He brutally killed two men," John reminded.
"One was a monster who had murdered dozens of innocent and not so innocent people in cold blood, I've seen his file, and the other, besides counterfeiting, had a sideline in child pornography wherein he was more than a mere distributor," Mycroft informed as he hit send on the email.
Watson sighed and ran a hand over his tired features; the change was remarkably fast in that by the time his face reappeared from behind the hand it was Ives who regarded Mycroft with eyes devoid of humanity.
The monster smiled. "You don't seem frightened."
Mycroft had to chuckle. 'You don't seem very frightening."
"That can change," Ives reminded him.
Mycroft remembering the wording of the email leaned back and sighed. "Yes, I am sure it can."
~o0o~
Moriarty leaned back in his expensive Swedish built chair and hit send on the final prospectus for that assassination job in Belgium, he had already planned a kidnapping in Argentina and drug smuggling ring channelling opium from China through a monastery in Tibet, he sighed wearily. Even with this Ives business he was dreadfully bored.
His cell buzzed and he glanced over to see a number that he thought defunct was sending him a text.
He clicked on it.
Ives has Mycroft, he took him from a heavily guarded facility with all guns pointed in his direction, with my brother's knowledge of your affairs, how long do you think it will be until Ives finds you and kills you in the most spectacularly gruesome way possible? I want my brother safe, John Watson cured, you need Ives gone and my brother back in his office, our desires in this matter at least coincide, I am proposing a meeting...it would be in your best interest to take it.
SH
Huzzah! The boredom was gone! Moriarty had to smile. If that Ives bastard wasn't gunning for him he would give the killer a kiss on the lips just for distracting him for a few hours. He should turn super powered monsters with a grudge against him loose in London more often!
Moriarty chuckled as he turned and clicked off the Kosovo massacre photos he had as a screen saver to see that he did indeed have an email in his inbox, the last time he felt a surge of enjoyment was when he blew up that blind lady for describing his voice.
"My, my, I am a popular fellow today," he said in a sing song voice as he clicked on Mycroft's email.
I am being held by Howard Ives, he is threatening to kill me if I don't set up a meeting with you today. Please respond as soon as possible since I am in mortal peril here, don't forget you and I have a generous arrangement that my successor might not make with you, so I would seriously entertain his request.
Mycroft
Moriarty giggled in a way he had not since he saw Carl Powers struggling in the deep end of the pool they recently blew up.
Enjoy hell darling, tell Snuffles Jimmy says hello.
Jimbo
He pressed send and picked up his cell and made a call to a luxurious apartment down town.
"Hello, Jim." the phone was answered by that familiar sexy smoky voice.
"Irene, my pet, I'm afraid I need to go underground for a few weeks, but I just cannot be without my Addie, so what about it love, you wanna come with?"
"Send a car," she replied with a sigh, and then she had the nerve to hang up on him.
He kissed the phone. "That's my girl!"
He settled back into the chair. He had been run out of his usual operations, lost two valuable hard to replace assets, and now the one person who had curtailed his operations and had any sway over him whatsoever, the one person he still feared, was somewhere in the city dying horribly.
Now Sherlock Holmes was stepping into his grasp allowing him to take both Holmes brothers out of the equation. It all seemed to be coming up roses all of a sudden.
Sherlock, darling, I think a meeting would be a splendid idea! I will send a car for you in an hour, be out in front of New Scotland Yard, since that is where you are at present, no tricks or trackers, I've been at this a few years, my dear, you won't like what happens if you disobey.
See you soon!
Jimbo
He sighed happily. With Sherlock's help Ives would be in his clutches in a couple of hours, and then he would have them both. He wondered if Irene would enjoy Trinidad and Tobago this time of year.
~o0o~
Sherlock read the text message on the pink phone then looked up at an expectant Lestrade and his team.
"He agreed to the meeting, he's sending a car for me."
Lestrade nodded as if he had suspected such.
"We can't let Mister Holmes just go with Moriarty's men," Dimmock stated with a fret.
Lestrade nodded. "We have no intention of doing so, do we, Sherlock?
"That's not in the plan," Sherlock replied, with a nod.
Donovan walked up. "Harry's here, got her in interview three, she's in a bad way, half down a bottle of Scotch by the time I knocked on the door, I wouldn't suggest Freak here be the one to question her."
"As usual, Sally, you are wrong, at least you are consistent in one thing," Sherlock replied as he swept by smirking at her affronted sniff.
He swirled into the room and sat across from the well dressed sallow woman with stringy ginger hair and reddened cheeks from alcoholic rosacea.
"What's this all about? I doubt a dandy like you works for the Yard." She grumbled.
Without a word Sherlock slipped his phone out of his pocket and queued up the footage from the room where Ives had been restrained.
As he suspected Harry's face went white. "That looks like my father, but that sods been dead for going on a decade!" Harry stated in an awed tone of voice just above a whisper.
"That's John, it's a long story but I need to know where he got these mannerisms from," Sherlock responded.
She trembled as she stared at the screen at the dark look in the man's eyes apparent even from the small image.
"Was your father violent?" Sherlock inquired trying to get information out of her before her defences came back up.
"Beat Mum and me and John like stepchildren when he had too much to drink, which was everyday, if Mum hadn't've escaped he would've put lil Johnny in the ground."
"Have you ever heard the name Howard Ives?" Sherlock pressed.
He was rewarded by a look of utter and complete revulsion.
"Mum was still a bit vulnerable after dad, and she met this man not even a year after, he was well dressed, called everyone, Lovely, not Love, it annoyed me to no end. He took a liking to John, and John to him at first, as it happened, too much of a liking, by the time I realized something was going on, and told mum, he'd been at John for over a year. Whatever dad left of Johnny's innocence was gone after that bastard. I would have found out sooner but John always kept himself to himself, you know, and by then I'd already found the liquor cabinet pretty regular. Mum threatened to go to the coppers if Ives didn't leave, we never saw him again, he probably found another family somewhere."
She studied her hands as if wishing there was a bottle there. "His name wasn't Howard though, it was Harold."
She looked up into Sherlock's face, her eyes dark and haunted, in some ways similar to Ives himself. "Is that all? Can I go now?"
Sherlock nodded. "Sally will find you a ride home."
"Tell John to call me, don't appreciate being drug out like this," she murmured as she passed by, all inquires lost in the need to find a bottle and crawl in.
She was too pitiful to hate, and Sherlock did not bother.
His mind made connections at a rapid pace, his neurons firing in complicated synaptic patterns as his basal ganglia fired up and the brain that was Sherlock Holmes began sifting through the information it just received and applied it to the information already acquired and a plan began to emerge.
Lestrade stepped in. He had obviously been listening to the interview. "I don't know where that Harold Ives is, but you have my word I'll find him by the end of the day!" he growled.
Holmes nodded. "Later...besides the statute has run out by now, at the moment we need make some plans for after I reach Moriarty."
"You think you can get to him before Ives?" Lestrade asked as he settled in to the chair recently vacated.
Sherlock shook his head. "I need to get there at the same time or everything is lost. According to the information that Mycroft's people gave me, when Ives kills Moriarty, then his purpose will be done and he will have no need for further self control, he'll have to be put down like a rabid animal or we will be following a trail of bodies. If my hunch is correct, John knows this and he won't allow that to happen."
Lestrade looked grim. "You think he'll eat a gun?"
Sherlock nodded his eyes haunted. "John still has some measure of control over Ives, as long as he has that, there is a chance I can talk him out of killing Moriarty, and there's still a chance that the two parts of himself can be reintegrated."
"So to save Watson, you have to save Moriarty?" Lestrade concluded his eyes incredulous.
Sherlock sighed in a distinctively bitter manner. "Unfortunately."
"What about Mycroft?" Lestrade inquired.
"My brother can take care of himself," Sherlock answered with a smirk.
~o0o~
Mycroft watched as Ives stayed glued to the laptop, the man made him some tea earlier and Mycroft was sipping as he watched.
"You are being very civilized about this," he commented, "I was under the impression that I was to be murdered by now."
Ives barely gave him a glance. "I have no reason to kill you at the moment, except for my own amusement. Moriarty knows that if you are taken out of the picture that your organization will lay the blame at his door and as such he needs to go to ground until a successor is appointed, as such he will be taking the closest thing he has to a girlfriend with him. Her name is Irene Adler and she has a tracer implanted in her body, I put it there just last night, she will lead me straight to Moriarty."
"What am I to do now, since I am "dead" Mycroft inquired crossing his legs.
"As long as your whereabouts are a mystery then your organization cannot interfere, so you'll have to stay here for the time being, alive or dead, you are on the sidelines for the remainder of this drama."
Mycroft nodded. "I prefer to be alive if I am being consulted."
"You weren't being consulted, however killing you won't be as amusing if I have to do it quickly, and at the moment, dearest Addie is on the move so I don't have the time to torture you as you most certainly deserve."
"I certainly can sympathise with having too much to do and too little time," Mycroft confirmed with a sigh of bother. "There are two things you should know, by the way, Moriarty is a survivor of the Jekyll project, and he claims to have an antidote. He plans on using it on you to weaken you for the kill."
"I assume I will find out soon enough...and unless I miss my guess, you sir, are stalling," Ives stated in a flat tone flicking open a nasty looking knife.
Mycroft nodded. "Very well."
Suddenly the windows burst in with the kicks of several well armoured and armed men with weapons at the ready, and the front door was kicked open, in the cacophony of noise and debris Mycroft covered his eyes, he looked up and saw that his men were now covering an empty chair.
"Find him!" Mycroft ordered.
They spread out and began to kick open doors elsewhere in the penthouse while one guarded the door, Mycroft walked over to the computer and looked for the tracker program, to his annoyance he saw from the logs it was downloaded to a cell phone.
He glanced up and saw that the man that was covering the splintered door was missing. He rushed over to see where the man got off to, suddenly he saw a small trail of blood droplets leading to a closet by the door, he checked inside to see one of the soldiers missing his gear unconscious in the floor.
"Check every soldier," he said lifting the transmitter he kept secreted in his shoe, "Ives stole a uni."
"He got away, sir." Was the reply a few minutes later.
Mycroft rubbed his temples. "He's on his way to Moriarty and certain death, what am I going to say to Sherlock?"
He watched as the soldier at his feet began to come around and said to himself.
At the very least Howard Ives would have made an amazing operative!
Part 07 Tomorrow-