WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2015

'Thank you for stopping me,' said John.

It was Sherlock's turn behind the wheel, and they were returning south at last. The car was newly detailed, both inside and out, a process that had taken almost all of yesterday's daylight hours, leaving them with nothing to do but wait things out in a cheap hotel room, watching telly but not really watching at all. Even now, Bill was out there, figuring out his return to Sebastian Moran, and anything could go wrong. In Edgware, a credible threat was leading to the discreet relocation and protection of Frances Murray and her children. And meanwhile, Sherlock was consumed with devising a plan, and alternative plans, and backups to the alternatives, whereas John had merely been preoccupied with the fresh understanding that his life was one big cosmic joke.

'Oh,' said Sherlock. He had been suffering a mild bout of highway hypnosis, his attention scattered to the four four corners of England. Now he returned to the present, checked his speed, and discerned to what John was referring. The only thing he had stopped John from doing in recent memory was shooting Bill Murray in the head. Must one be thanked for that? 'You're welcome.'

'I think I would have done it,' said John. 'One trigger-pull away, that's all. And then . . . we would never have known . . . you know, about his involvement in . . . Jesus, all of it.'

Were they going to talk about it now? John had been very quiet yesterday, processing, seeing his past and in a new and upsetting light. How was he coping?

'Do you regret letting him go?' Sherlock asked delicately.

'No.'

The answer came quickly, earning John a raised eyebrow from Sherlock.

'He's our best shot at getting closer to Moran,' said John, going for the logical reason first. But his emotional drive could not be denied. 'And he needs to do this. He doesn't get to play the coward anymore.'

'Are you okay?'

John sighed, ending in a half laugh. 'Compared to what?'

'It was a lot to take in, John.'

'I'm angry. I think I'll be angry for a while. At the same time, though, there's nothing I hate worse than being lied to. So . . . at least I got the truth. That's something.'

'That's something.'

For a short while, they drove along in silence. Then Sherlock, hoping to level the playing field, said, 'All right, it's my turn, is it?'

'What is?'

'Ask me one of Ella's questions.'

John looked taken aback. 'Really?'

'How bad could it be?'

John reached around to the back to unzip his duffle, murmuring, 'You're still new to this whole therapy thing, aren't you?'

Settling back into his seat with the manila envelope, John lifted the flap and dug inside for the small stack of cards with questions. 'I'll choose one at random, shall I?'

'If you like.'

'Feel free to veto.'

'I won't.'

John slowly sifted through the cards, reading the questions, and under his breath said, 'You might.' Then he took a moment to familiarise himself with Ella's rules for asking Sherlock's questions, which he hummed at upon finishing, a noise Sherlock didn't quite know how to interpret.

His own list of rules for John had been short: One, have John name his experiences plainly and avoid euphemisms. Two, ask questions in a private space where you cannot be overheard. Three, never ask John directly to speak of his rape experience; engage in that conversation only if John initiates, with great sensitivity and understanding, and without proffering advice on the matter. And four, with John's permission, engage in a form of mild touch therapy. Nothing intimate, just a hand on the shoulder or arm, hand or back, gestures of closeness and comfort. He wasn't sure how to approach that one.

'All right, here's one,' said John, and Sherlock took in a preparatory breath. 'What does your life look like in twenty years?'

Sherlock practically snorted. 'Did she grab that one from Facebook? What does she think I am, a soothsayer?'

'Answer the question.'

'How? Making predictions isn't therapy, it's making wishes, as useful as blowing out the candles on a birthday— Oh.'

'What oh?'

He sniffed. 'It's perfectly obvious, John, her tactics with this one. In our first (and ironically last) session, she challenged me on what she called my "fatalistic superstitions," my fallacious reasoning that all my actions lead to devastations and will ultimately terminate in my demise. She promised to help me regain control over my mind and consequently empower my decision-making, so now she's forcing me to look beyond the falling dominos and imagine a future in which I do survive the shafts and arrows Moriarty flings at me on a daily basis.'

'Moran.'

'Whoever.'

'No, I'm not supposed to let you talk about Moriarty as if he's still alive.' John tapped the instructions on his knee. 'Past tense only.'

'Is that so?'

'That's so.'

'Moran, then. Under Moriarty's orders.'

'Oh, go on. Play her game. Twenty years, where are you?'

'Where else would I be? London. With flying cars and microchips in our brains.'

John turned his head slightly, looking out the window, disappointed but silent.

Guilt pricked him. Okay, play the game. Play it right. Twenty years, the year would be 2035, and he would be fifty-nine years old, at the end of another decade of life. Mrs Hudson would be gone (a reprehensible thought), and 221 Baker Street would have fallen to him and John. Him and John.

Strangely, the future suddenly looked a little clearer.

'We'll be living on Baker Street,' he answered. 'Just the two of us. Mrs Hudson's flat will be a guest house, not a rented property, because . . . because it should only ever be just the two of us.'

Slowly, John's head came around, leaving the scenery to fly by in streaks of colour.

'I'll be retired, mostly. I'll take the occasional case, when the Yard's own brainpower falls short, or when a particularly interesting client comes knocking, and you'll do some consulting work at Bart's or St E's or wherever you like, but only on the days you're bored. Otherwise . . . we do whatever pleases us. Weekends, summers, we go to the country. We have a cottage by the sea. North Devon, maybe, or the South Downs. I tend hives, do beekeeping. You . . . whittle.'

John suddenly laughed. 'Whittle!'

'Or write your memoirs. Our memoirs. Publishers are interested. It's the story of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, London's premier detectives, who toppled a criminal empire with nothing more than their wits and a few friends at their side. You'll get rich off the royalties.'

For a few moments, silence abided. Then John said softly, 'Bees, eh?'

'Beekeeping. It will be the fruit of my leisured ease, the magnum opus of my latter years.'

'But why bees?'

'Oh, John. A bee is a magnificent chemist. Fascinating creature.' Then he laughed at himself. 'I don't know, it's all fanciful talk. But how does that strike you? Ourselves in twenty years?'

'I like it,' said John, sombrely but with a crooked kind of grin. He settled more comfortably into his seat and with a sigh, returned to the window. 'I like it a lot.'

Less than twenty miles outside of London, Sherlock's mobile rang. John answered it.

'You're not in London,' said Lestrade, sounding half worried, half exasperated.

'Say again,' said John. The quality of the call was poor.

'I'm here on Baker Street, Mrs Hudson says she hasn't seen you in days, and you weren't at our mutual friend's, either. Where are you?'

'Almost home.' John switched the call to speaker phone and held it between them so that Sherlock could hear. 'What's wrong?'

'I'm calling a meeting.'

'At the Yard?'

'Hell no. At yours, I had hoped, if you were there. And what in Jesus' name are you doing, leaving London without letting me know? Without letting anyone know? Mother of God.'

Sherlock and John exchanged looks. Lestrade normally had a steady tongue, but for when he was riled. Then he let loose the expletives. Something was amiss.

'Like we said,' Sherlock chimed in, 'we're nearly back on our own doorstep. Keep your shirt on.'

'How long?'

'An hour.' They still had to return the rental car.

'Fine. An hour. Don't make me put out an APW on you.'

And he hung up.

Lestrade was waiting for them on the street, where he had been pacing impatiently. They had just come from the Baker Street Station and given each other the once-over to make sure nothing about their appearance suggested all that had happened. But this was Lestrade, after all, Sherlock said, so they could very nearly approach him with blood on their cuffs and Bill Murray's keys and phone in their pockets and not arouse suspicion.

'Do give him some credit,' John had censured, though with little acrimony.

When they did finally reach him, they received, by way of greeting, 'About time. Come on, we're waiting.'

'We?' Sherlock said.

'You think I'd call a meeting just for you two? Let's go.'

Lestrade led them into their own building, but rather than head for the stairs to 221B, he headed right, and they thought they were angling for Mrs Hudson's. They were surprised again, however, when he took a hard left under the stairs to the short flight downward leading to 221C.

Just a handful of weeks earlier, following a nearly catastrophic break-in, Mycroft had made several security updates to the flats on Baker Street, the basement flat not excepted. During the tour, he had named it 'the War Room,' and not without reason. The kitchen had been converted to a veritable weapons bunker—John had taken careful inventory and declared their stock to qualify as 'overkill'—with maps of London, England, Europe, and the whole Earth plastering the walls alongside corkboards empty of everything besides push-pins. The sitting room no longer existed; in its place, a shiny black conference table with six leather chairs on swivel, as well as a series of laptop computers and an oversized flat screen television on the wall. All windows had been sealed, and the only illumination came from skylights in the ceiling. It had a distinctly Mycroftian feel to it and, in Sherlock's opinion, didn't fit the aesthetic of the rest of 221, which he took sorely.

Since their first introduction, neither he nor John had spent very much time at all in this space. They had had neither the time nor the need.

Now, they entered the War Room and saw, sitting expectantly around long, black table, Lestrade's invitees: on the left, Anthea, Sally Donovan, and Thomas Dryers; on the right, Molly Hooper, and two empty chairs. Lestrade placed himself at the head, where a metal box was set, and indicated that they sit.

Pulling back his chair and lowering himself into it, John said, 'I suppose you're wondering why we've gathered you all together here today.'

Sherlock snorted appreciatively, plopping down into his seat.

'Boys, please,' said Lestrade, not at all amused.

'No really, Greg,' said John, 'am I the only one who doesn't know what's going on?'

Lestrade huffed and straightened his suit coat, looking around the table. He looked strangely authoritative, though contrarily anxious, and he touched the metal box with three fingers twice before he said anything, as if to verify it was really there.

'Thank you all for coming on such short notice. We are here because we're all deeply involved in this whole . . . Moriarty affair.' He threw desultory hand, as if it were a scandal at the local country club and not the acts of torture, murder, and terrorism it really was.

'Deeply involved,' Sherlock repeated. 'Then why is that one here?'

All heads turned to regard Dryers, who shrank a little in his chair.

'I brought him,' said Donovan, like she was squaring up for a fight. 'And after you hear what he has to say, you'll be glad I did.'

'This seems a rather private meeting among friends,' Sherlock returned. 'I don't think he qualifies.'

'I trust him.'

'I don't.'

'He stays,' Anthea spoke up, and with a tone that ended the conversation. Sherlock looked unhappily at John but received the equivalent of a shrug in the returned expression. John was right. If Anthea said he could stay, the man must have already undergone her thorough and uncompromising scrutiny and was found to sound no alarm bells.

'As I was saying,' said Lestrade, reclaiming the attention of the room, 'we are at war, and no one is fighting harder than the people in this room. We have all suffered, we have all survived, and we all want to see Moran and his people brought to justice.'

'Or a grave,' John said under his breath.

'The problem, though, as I see it, is that we are all fighting on different battlegrounds. Yes, we're on the same side, of course, but we're not fighting together. Not like we need to. We are each, how shall I put this, hoarding intelligence. We have our reasons, I know. Believe me, I know it. Some of us have been warned to keep quiet, others hold secrets to protect one another, but people, we can't afford to be isolated in what we know anymore. We have to put our minds together here.'

'Knowledge is power,' Sherlock said glibly, 'unless that power falls into the wrong hands. Or upon the wrong ears.'

'Which is why it's just us.' Lestrade gave Sherlock a hard look. 'You'll notice I didn't call this meeting at the Yard. You believe there's still a spy among the Met. I don't know if you're right, but I trust that it's foolish to gamble on the off chance you're wrong.'

'I'm not.'

'Fine. So. Here we are.'

'What's in the box, Lestrade?'

'I'll get there. But first. I want to be systematic.' He turned to Donovan. 'Sally.' He gestured for her to be the first to crack the seal on the secret-keeping. 'What have you learnt of Bill Murray?'

'Erm.' Donovan's eyes quickly met Sherlock's, but the guilt was fleeting, and her attention returned swiftly to Lestrade. 'Nothing.'

Lestrade blinked. 'But . . . You phoned and said you had something really important to report. You're not on any other assignments.'

'Not exactly true.'

'What the hell does that mean? I gave you a special assignment, and I told you to put all your resources into it. And you've learnt nothing?'

Donovan came to her own defence. 'Something . . . came up. But look, I didn't neglect my duty. I put my best people on it.'

'Who!' Lestrade looked at Dryers with incredulity, but it was Sherlock who raised his hand and gave it a wave.

'You? When!'

'Two days before the cottage burnt down,' Sherlock said blithely.

'You know about the cottage?' Lestrade said, thunderstruck.

'What cottage?' asked Donovan.

'We were hiding in a cupboard when Moran ordered it set alight. Barely got out of there with our lives, isn't that right, John?'

He said it for the reaction, and he got it.

'Are you fucking kidding me?' Lestrade bellowed. Sherlock made a shushy noise, but Lestrade wasn't done. 'You had a run-in with Sebastian Moran, who nobody has seen or heard from since October, and you didn't tell me?'

'Moran and I had a phone chat in April,' John volunteered.

Lestrade slapped his hand down on the table. 'This! This is exactly what I'm talking about, you idiots. How the fuck am I supposed to do anything useful when you're busy keeping secrets? You cannot manage this on your own, Sherlock, you or John, and doing so is going to get you killed. Do you realise this?'

'I concede we have things to report,' said Sherlock, the calm to Lestrade's storm, 'and I am curious to learn what cards everyone else around this table has been holding so close to the chest. But I do not regret neither John's secrets nor my own, to this point.'

'Yeah, well, you may feel differently about that after today.'

'Yeah, well, you sound like Mycroft,' Sherlock snapped back. 'Stop revving the engine, Lestrade, and say what you have to say!'

'I will start,' said Anthea, and she arose from her seat with an air of authority that was more Mycroft-like than anything coming from Lestrade's lips. 'This is, after all, a meeting I should have called weeks ago.' She looked at Lestrade. 'We should have. It was protocol.'

'What protocol?' asked Sherlock, looking between them, though already he was beginning to see more clearly, and it annoyed him. 'You've both been playing foot soldier to my brother, I know that already. Anthea, I understand, she's on payroll, but you, Greg. When were you recruited?'

'November,' Lestrade answered plainly. 'And to save your arse, I might add.'

'Forever in your debt.'

Anthea ignored them both. 'In the summer of 2010, James Moriarty was seized by MI6 for suspected terrorist activities in seven countries, mostly in the Middle East, and was held captive in an undisclosed location. Almost ten years before, Mycroft Holmes had been tasked with, shall we say, keeping an eye on him, but Moriarty was elusive, the kind of man who keeps to the shadows and only steps out when he wants to be seen. During his most active period, 2001 to 2010, he created his syndicate, a vast network of criminals from all around the globe.'

'His masterpiece,' said Sherlock.

'Yes. But once operational, and running like a well-oiled machine, he got bored. He turned his attention to a different challenge.'

'To Sherlock, you mean,' said Molly.

Anthea nodded. 'When he was being interrogated, he willingly gave up information about the network in exchange for information about Sherlock.'

'And Mycroft gave it to him.' John shook his head, with an unamused huff. 'He told me so. Just before Sherlock fell.'

'He believed he was exchanging tin for gold. You don't need me to tell you how he came to regret that decision. But Mycroft did learn much from Moriarty and how he had built his network. After Sherlock's return from tracking down its operatives, he learned even more. Say what you will about James Moriarty, his system was—is—effective. Brilliant, even. And Mycroft, well . . . he admired it.'

'Admired,' Donovan cut in with a sneer. 'The man was a psychopath.'

Sherlock shared her disgust of the man, but he sympathised with his brother on this one. Once upon a time, he, too, had admired Moriarty's mind. It had both thrilled and challenged him, back when it had all seemed to him to be a giant game of chess.

'Yes,' said Anthea with disinterest; she was rather skilful in not mirroring others' emotions, 'to the extent that, in countering it, Mycroft knew he would need his own network, of a sort. Operatives, if you will. Players on a chess board whom he could direct with strategy and intent to eliminate the opposition.'

'That's us,' said Lestrade. 'We are his operatives. At least, a few of them. There are others. We don't know them all. At least, I don't.' He looked over at Anthea, who, Sherlock noted, remained as unreactive and inscrutable as ever. 'Mycroft's design was not unlike Moriarty's, which is to say that the operatives can't always see each other, and don't often know how they are being used or for what purpose. But he did have protocols in place, in the even that something happened to him. And, well, something has. So we—'

'Weeks ago,' Sherlock interrupted. 'Something happened to him weeks ago.'

'It's complicated, Sherlock. And more difficult to act when you can't see the whole picture. So that's what we are here for. Mycroft has given an order, and before I can carry it out, I need to see as much of the picture as possible, and I need you each to empty your pockets and lay it all out on the table. So can we please get on with this?'

Once more, he turned to Donovan. 'If you were not tracking Murray, what were you doing?'

But Donovan gestured a head at Dryers. 'Tom?'

Dryers cleared his throat, and Sherlock read signs of nervousness in his shiny brow and constant lip-licking. Not nervousness. Intimidation. The man had little idea of what he was doing in this room, surrounded by giants.

'On April 20,' he said, 'I arrived home to find an old man waiting for me in my flat. He threatened me with a gun, made me memorise a message to deliver to Sgt Donovan, and forced me to swallow flunitrazepam to knock me out.'

He proceeded, through Lestrade's look of contained surprise, to relate in detail as much as he could remember of what the man had said and done, at the end of which Sherlock, feeling an uptick of excitement, said, 'Describe him again.'

'Five-eight, maybe, late seventies or early eighties, I would guess, white hair. Suit and tie, posh as all hell.'

Sherlock turned to John. 'It's the same man I saw in the hospital, the one who left the transmitter at Mycroft's bedside.'

'You're sure?' asked John.

'More sure than not.' He steepled his fingers together at his lips, pondering. 'This man. He visits Mycroft in hospital. He mentions Sebastian Moran. He knows something of Bill Murray, and he instructs Donovan to investigate an old case belonging to Tony Pitts. Interesting.'

'Not to mention he knows enough to target Donovan through Dryers,' said John.

'This man has eyes,' Sherlock whispered to himself.

'So who is he?' asked Lestrade.

'I'll know before long,' said Sherlock. 'Go on, Sally. I assume you took the case?'

'I did,' she said, and proceeded, at Sherlock's urging, to recount her every move, from examining the 1996 case files to visiting Pitts' former sergeant in Liverpool to interviewing Henry Thurgood and removing him to a safe house. Sherlock's attention was rapt. Half of his brain soaked in jealousy—what a case!—while the other half waited eagerly for the unfolding of the story. He was collecting the details like puzzle master.

'So let me get this straight,' said Lestrade, leaning into the table. He had been taking notes (one of Sherlock's pet peeves about the man; he never quite understood why Lestrade just didn't remember it all himself), and now pointing the biro at Donovan. 'Your theory is that Moriarty—James Moriarty, back in 1996—convinced one man to murder Jankowski and then turned around and convinced this Thurgood to take the fall.' A beat. 'Why?'

'I don't see what Tony Pitts has to do with that,' said Molly shyly. Sherlock glanced her way. She'd not been saying much this whole conversation, but it was clear she was paying attention and trying to make sense of it all. He wondered what secrets she had brought to the table.

'I'm only halfway there,' said Donovan. 'We dug deeper. Henry said that he was not the only inmate at Belmarsh who claimed to have been conned into confessing to crimes they had never committed. He remembered a few of their names.' Her eyes were bright as she brought out a notepad of her own. 'I wrote them down. And Dryers and me, we kept searching. We looked at records of men who had died at Belmarsh during the time Thurgood was there. We looked into their cases, their alleged victims, and a pattern began to emerge.' She looked at Sherlock now, and he saw something in her face that he rarely saw: excitement. 'They like puzzles, yeah? They play games with people's names.'

'Yes,' said Sherlock and John together.

'I think you'll see it, too.'

She slid the notepad over to them, and Sherlock turned it around so that he and John could read. Not to be left out, Lestrade moved to stand behind them.

Her notes were neatly ordered and written in a tight script:

Perp Vic

Henry Thurgood Tomaz Jankowski
Ricky Warren Thomas Byers
Harry Pfiefer Ricardo Alvarez
Tom Chancey Henry Overton
Dickie McKinley Harry Ayers
Richard Saunders Tom Yates
Thomas Eddington Henry Manning

'All of them?' Lestrade breathed. 'Henrys, Thomases, and Richards?'

But it was Joh who really saw the pattern. 'Tom, Dick, and Harry,' he said.

'So Moriarty murdered these people and convinced others to take the fall.'

'No,' said Sherlock. 'He was not the sort to get his hands dirty. Look again, Lestrade. Three victims, not two.'

Donovan nodded. 'If Moriarty could persuade someone to confess to a murder he didn't commit, what's to say he couldn't talk someone into committing the murder in the first place? There's a third player in each of these pairings. If Henry Thurgood was the scapegoat and Tomasz Jankowski the victim, my bet is that the real killer was someone named Richard, or a variant of it. In each of these pairing, I'm convinced there's a third, unknown player. How any of these men were persuaded to do it is anyone's guess. Threats or promises, mind games and manipulations. But one thing I'm certain of: Moriarty was the puppet master.'

John looked troubled, sceptical. 'So . . . this was all a game to him. A brag! His way of, I don't know, boasting that he could manipulate anyone, any Tom, Dick, or Harry into murdering and being murdered and making false confessions.'

'Not a boast, John,' said Sherlock.

'But—'

'Who was the audience? No one figured this out until Donovan's attention was turned toward it. This was practice. Honing his craft. This case happened in 1996. When were the others?'

'All within two-and-a-half years,' answered Donovan.

'It could not have been too long after that he began to spin his webs.'

'But why was Donovan's attention to toward it?' John's head swivelled back to her. 'Why would Pitts try to cover it up, and for that matter, what do we care about Pitts anymore? Why did this strange old man even give a damn? And why you? Dryers, you said the man couldn't approach Donovan directly, but why the hell not?'

'All good questions,' said Sherlock mildly, though his heart raced with exhilaration. This was important, somehow, he just couldn't see where it all might lead. 'Think of all this man knows. He knows Pitts was a crook, had been for a while, and knows of Moriarty's activities before even Mycroft . . . presumably. And he wants Donovan to reach some conclusion, but of everyone we know, only Dryers and I have seen the man.'

'And Scott Anderson,' said Dryers.

'Anderson?' said John and Lestrade together, while Sherlock swallowed a sudden bitterness in his throat.

'Just two days ago,' said Donovan, and reached into a pocket of her jacket. 'He gave this to Anderson, to give to me, along with a message.' She produced a small plastic baggie, inside of which rested a small brass key. 'To work faster. Apparently, I'm not impressing him with my results.'

Lestrade leant into the table to get a better look. 'A housekey?'

'As ordinary as they come. I've run it for prints and residues, taken it to experts, run the numbers through every database I know. There's nothing remarkable about it at all. What good is a key if you don't know what it unlocks? I'm stumped.' She looked at Sherlock. 'So I'm betting you'll look at it for two seconds and crack the whole thing wide open.'

'You flatter me, Sally,' said Sherlock, reaching for the bag and tipped the key into his palm. The room hushed—an air of expectation he normally enjoyed—but he doubted he would find anything to contradict Donovan's conclusion, that this was an ordinary key, one without distinction, and to quip that she ought to make a thousand copies and send her lads on an unlocking spree throughout the city . . .

He stared, stunned.

'What is it?' John prompted softly, as though afraid to break a spell.

Sherlock lifted his eyes to find Donovan staring with begrudging eagerness. 'You have to understand,' he began, feeling this merited explanation, 'I have an eidetic memory. It's not a boast, just the plain truth. Like, photographs in my head. Some photos fade with time, with some people claiming the gift, but not with me. I see something once, I don't forget it. It's filed. It's retrievable. So with a brain like mine, it's just a matter of retrieving the right file, the right photo.' He turned his attention. 'You remember, Lestrade. In the Slash Man's lair. The jar of ordinary but identical keys. I knew them instantly.'

Lestrade started. 'That's a key to my old house?'

'No, I'm just demonstrating my capacity. This'—he lifted the key to eye level to double check the outline of the ridges, like the skyline of a city he knew so well—'was mine.'

'221B?' asked John in amazement.

'No. The flat I occupied just before Baker Street. End of 2009. I was there just two months.'

'You can't possibly know that,' said Donovan, half incredulous, half awestruck, like she had just witnessed a magic trick but didn't want to be taken in by it. 'That was six years ago!'

'114 Grosvenor Road, Flat 1C, Chiswick,' Sherlock rattled off and held the key out to her.

'I . . . don't . . . understand,' Donovan said numbly, accepting it back.

'You're not alone there,' said Lestrade.

'What does your old flat have to do with Henry Thurgood or Tony Pitts or bleeding James Moriarty?'

'I suggest you go find out,' said Sherlock.

'You're coming with me.'

'I exposed the landlady's affair. I may not be terribly welcome.'

'You're not the least bit curious?' Donovan balked.

'Oh, terribly. But, sadly, preoccupied with other matters at hand.'

'Like hiding in burning cottages, for instance?' griped Lestrade.

'Found it before you did,' Sherlock returned smugly.

'Go on then,' said Lestrade with a sigh. 'Tell the story. What led you to the cottage?'

'Dull,' Sherlock retorted. 'All it took was talking to three women: Fran Murray, Kitty Riley, and Anita Heslehurst.'

'Kitty!' cried Molly.

'Anita?' said Donovan.

'But we talked to Fran,' Lestrade protested, clearly chagrined that his own interview had not yielded so much fruit.

'And a splendid job you did of it, too.'

'Just tell it properly, Sherlock,' said John.

So he did. In rapid-fire succession, he detailed how each new clue led to the next, allowing for the interlude in which everyone in the party proposed guesses as to the true meaning of A.G.R.A., and—side-stepping John's panic attack that had begun in the cellar and persisted for hours after—terminated with his and John's fortuitous escape from the burning cottage.

'Christ,' said Molly, breathless and with a hand over her heart. 'You might have been killed.'

Sherlock did not reply, only surreptitiously stole a glance at John, to make sure he was not too vividly reliving that night.

'We connected the cottage to Moran,' said Lestrade, 'because of the red dish left in the basement. We believe it is where he kept Karim Niazi.'

Sherlock did not acknowledge that they had also found the bowl, nor that he and John had already deduced the full story—that not only had they kept Karimi in a subterranean prison, but that it had been the destination intended for John in March.

'But we checked the records,' Lestrade continued. 'Murray had signed away the deed, but not to Moran.'

'Then to whom?' asked Sherlock.

'A Mr Bailey. Clement Bailey. We can't find any record of a Clement Bailey, and I don't suppose you've ever heard . . .'

Sherlock was shaking his head. 'Clement. Not a terribly common Christian name, is it?'

'Though it is strikingly Christian,' John put in. 'St Clement was a pope, wasn't he?'

Sherlock shrugged. 'My religious education in wanting.' To Lestrade, 'A pity we didn't know this. We might have asked Bill.'

Lestrade closed his eyes and appeared to be biting his tongue and swallowing an audible groan. Before he could launch into another tirade, Donovan beat him to the punch. 'You found him then.'

'Oh yes.'

'And talked to him?'

'Extensively.'

She sighed, but in the way of a defeated parent. 'I said, survey and report. I said, don't talk to him.'

Sherlock smirked at her, but with warmth. 'You didn't honestly believe we'd leave it at bird watching.'

Lestrade finally burst. 'Then where the hell is he! I want that man in for questioning!'

'Let me start by saying, Mrs Murray and the children are safe. That's what's most important here.'

'So . . . Murray was being threatened. He was another of Moran's victims, yeah?' He looked, strangely, hopeful at this theory, but looking between Sherlock and John, he saw, from their sombre faces, that he was wrong. 'Tell me.'

Sherlock turned to John, inviting him to speak.

John cleared his throat, a gesture Sherlock recognised as a way to control the emotion that portended to quell his speech. 'The long and short of it,' he said as preamble, but had to clear his throat again. 'They found Bill through my blog. Stubbins made of him a sort of lackey. He was duped into providing intelligence that led to my abduction last autumn. But he got in too deep. He treated Moran for his injuries, after the convent, in his own cottage, where they had designed to take me.' John swallowed and pressed on. 'He was there, with Daz, when Jefferies' was murdered and helped hoist him into the tree. He helped set up the Slash Man's lair. He was the trigger man when Tony Pitts was shot.' John finally made eye contact with Lestrade. 'But he was pointing the rifle at you, Greg.'

'Oh my God,' breathed Molly.

'Holy shit,' said Donovan. 'Holy shit.'

Lestrade looked pale, shaken. 'He told you all of this? How the hell did you—?'

'He's scared, Greg,' said John. 'Scared and exhausted. He's been running from Moran since that day in March, and he never wanted to get mixed up in this thing to start with. Telling us what he had done—I think it was a relief.'

'It sounds like you're making excuses for him.'

'I'm not, I—'

'You just told me he's a conspirator and a murderer. That you had him in your clutches, and he confessed to you that he'd done all this. Then what? You just let him go? You let him go?'

'That was my call,' said Sherlock. 'Bill is no use to us behind bars.'

'Use to us!' cried Donovan. 'Behind bars, he couldn't harm another soul! Locked up, he wouldn't be any further use to Moran!' But she was getting quicker these days, and in the blink of an eye she followed Sherlock's train of logic. 'Wait a minute. Did you . . . ? Oh my God. You're using him as a spy.'

Sherlock simply nodded.

'Whoa,' breathed Dryers.

'You sent him back to Moran,' said Lestrade in awe. 'How do you know you can trust him?'

'Balance of probability. He is more likely to help us than not, and if not, well.' He looked grimly at John. 'He rather tied his own noose, I'm afraid. I'll thank you not to question either John or me beyond this. Transparency is all well and good, and I appreciate what you are doing here, but Murray's success quite depends on a strong measure of secrecy.'

'My good God in heaven,' said Lestrade, scrubbing a hand across his eyes. 'When I called this meeting, I figured that there would be things to say, but this thing with Bill Murray, with Tony Pitts. I hardly know what to make of it all.'

'And to think,' said Sherlock, 'that you thought you were the one carrying all the weight of secrecy.' He looked pointedly at the metal box.

They had come to it at last, and Lestrade seemed resolved on that point. He took in a breath large enough to expand his belly, and let it out in a rush. 'Okay. A brief backstory. Last Christmas, Mycroft came to see me. I'd already been running little errands for him for about a month, but this was unusual. Largely, I was tasked with monitoring known and suspected assassins and retracing Sherlock's hunt around the globe on my own and reporting. We were trying to get a better sense of the network. Anthea was working on it, too.'

Anthea gave little sign that she was even listening. She look straight ahead as if staring at nothing.

'So anyway, end of December, Mycroft shows up at my house, of all places, and he sits me down, and he says to me, "The danger to my brother is more extensive than you can imagine," and that he felt he alone was holding back the oncoming floods, and he didn't know if he could manage it much longer on his own. He said . . . He said he expected that, in time, he would be removed from the chessboard. Now, he didn't say how or by whom, and I honestly believed he was speaking from exhaustion or paranoia, and I sympathised with that. I still do. I tried telling him that he wasn't alone, but he wasn't interested in reassurances. He had come only to tell me that he'd developed a plan. A protocol, he said.'

'Protocol Blackbird,' said Anthea.

'Right,' said Lestrade. 'In short, if Mycroft were to be taken out of action in any way—death, disappearance—we were to initiate Protocol Blackbird. But Mycroft hoped it would never come to it. He was making plans, and using me and others to execute those plans.'

'My part was recruitment,' said Anthea. 'Gathering people to our cause. Shadow allies, he called them, because such people had to be persuaded to a purpose without fully understanding it. Their roles are small, but meaningful. It would be tedious to name them all the shadow allies, but you have probably guessed at one or two of them. Henry Knight, for one, Michaela Warner for another.'

'The reporter?' said Donovan.

'Henry Knight,' Sherlock said, not sure how he felt about that. 'So that bit he wrote on John's blog a couple months ago. Not his idea after all, was it. It was Mycroft's.'

'It was Henry's,' said Anthea. 'All he needed was a venue to express what he had been thinking all along, and it was a good thing, too. It turned the tide of opinion.'

'And Ms Warner?'

'She was already interested in exposing Kitty Riley for the sub-rate reporter she really was. I just turned the right wheels to make the interview with Claudette Bruhl happen, and it made her career. Everything else she has done has been on her merit, and that's the thing, Mr Holmes. Bad people may be inclined toward evil work, and Moriarty relied on that to build his networ. But good people are primed to do good things, too. Sometimes, they just need an opportunity. I give that to them, and let the good fall where it will. As it happens, much of it lands in your favour. There are many working on your behalf. So what if it's part of your brother's larger design?'

'Anthea has played her part well,' said Lestrade. 'But I'm afraid I cannot say the same of myself. In February, Mycroft called me and instructed me to retrieve a box'—he placed his hand on the metal box on the table, then withdrew it again like it would burn him if he kept it there too long—'from a highly secured storage room in the Home Office, without being seen, and destroy the box. It was locked, and I didn't know what was in it, and I was not supposed to know. But it's not like I could just toss it into a bin. I hadn't figured out, exactly, how to destroy the thing yet. I hid it in my own house, meaning to deal with it the next day. But next day, I found out Molly had been threatened with a dead bird, and then Sherlock went mental on Anderson and got locked up, then attacked, and it was just one thing after another, it all just kept coming, relentless—'

'We remember,' said Sherlock.

'—and the box just wasn't a priority. Mycroft must have just assumed I'd done away with it, and frankly, I forgot about it altogether, until . . . Well, you know I sold the house. The new owners . . . they found it, and—long story short—it fell into my ex-wife's hands. I was trying to figure out how to get it back from her, and meanwhile, she broke into it and called me . . . This was just this past Monday. Another long story short, I got the box back from her, and Angela now owns me for the rest of my natural life. More importantly, though, I now see why Mycroft wanted it destroyed.'

He lifted his eyes from the box and looked at Sherlock.

'I'm sorry, Sherlock.' He lifted the lid. 'I know Mycroft never meant for you to see any of this. But I don't see any way around it.' He pulled out a manila folder and passed it over.

The folder was nondescript, but for the tab labelled 10.82-12.94. Sherlock lay if flat on the table. He could feel the room holding its breath as he opened the folder, turned the blank yellow cover page, and found himself staring at a pencil-and-crayon child's drawing of a family of four skeletons, two tall, two short, alongside their headstones labelled Dad, Mum, Mycroft, and Sherlock. He looked up sharply.

'What's this? Where did you get this?'

John leant closer to see, and spoke in a low voice. 'You made that?'

'Of course I made it,' snapped Sherlock. 'More than thirty years ago.' He turned the old drawing aside and saw another, this time with a skeleton in a coffin, holding a violin like the old dead kings would hold a sword. 'Lestrade. Where did you get this?'

'It was in the box, Sherlock. Keep going.'

He felt suddenly exposed, embarrassed in ways he didn't usually tolerate but now couldn't help. Perhaps he was among friends, but really, none of them had any business being here anymore, seeing this, seeing him. He forced himself to play the detective and turn the page, one of which was scrawled a poem by a seven-year-old child titled 'Poisonous Plants' that was rather graphic in its descriptions of bodily harm and an eight-year-old's report on nineteenth century use of the gallows in Britain. A clipping from a newspaper, a letter to the editor written by a thirteen-year-old boy who suspected a drowning had been criminal. And then, reports. Page after page of school reports and therapist reports and the occasional police report, all compiled for a child until the age of twelve. When he was finished, he slapped the folder closed and gave Lestrade a cold look.

'So?' he said.

'There's more folders,' Lestrade said. '1995 to 1998, 1999 to 2004, 2004 to 2009, and 2010 to 2015. Newspapers, some of them, otherwise, field surveillance reports. Pages of them.'

'Why?' He was getting upset. He didn't know what it all meant, and his overwrought brain wasn't putting the pieces together, which infuriated him more. He wanted to run, but when his muscles tensed to rise, he discovered John's hand on his knee under the table, holding him in place. He had no idea how long it had been there.

'You've been part of a watch programme since 1986,' said Anthea, 'when you were only ten years old. And they've been watching ever since.'

'Who is they?' John asked angrily.

Anthea addressed Sherlock. 'Do you remember two men in suits coming to your house in Buckinghamshire to interview you?'

Sherlock couldn't pry his teeth apart. All he could do was nod.

'Your brother was listening. He deduced who they were, and worked all his life to become one of them, to get your name off the watchlist.'

'What watchlist!' John demanded.

'They marked you as dangerous even as a child, a potential threat for your genius, antisocial behaviours, and inappropriate interest in the macabre.'

John was practically spitting, and his hand tightened around Sherlock's knee. 'That's absurd. Who are these people?'

'They have no name. They are accountable to no one. But they have power, and they know how to manipulate people and control situations, to set up a series of dominos, knock one over, and watch the rest fall in line to achieve their desired ends.'

Remembering his first session with Dr Thompson, Sherlock couldn't help but flinch visibly. John's hand tightened on his knee.

Can you predict the future? she had asked in his assertion that he was waiting for the last domino to fall.

Of course not. It was irrational, ridiculous, fatalistic.

Can anybody?

No, he had answered, and with certainty. It was impossible to know the minds and hearts of men well enough to predict every action and reaction. Impossible to trace a path to an inevitable conclusion.

'They've done it before,' said Anthea, 'and they will do it again: remove the threats. Mr Holmes'—she said to Sherlock—'they mean to remove you.'

Lestrade lifted another item from the metal box: a DVD. 'With those folders, they compiled all the evidence to conclude that you were . . . dangerous.' He waggled the DVD between two fingers. 'And they came up with a plan they called Emergency Protocol 68.'

He turned around and inserted the DVD into a player. Seconds later, on the wall screens, a video began to play.

For a few seconds, there was only black, and then a passcode screen appeared. Using his phone, Lestrade synced to the DVD player and opened an app. 'Government access,' he said. 'Top secret. You can thank Mycroft for that. Took some doing, last night, to figure out the passcode, but I managed.'

He typedMZ1065RQ.

As the passcode was accepted and the video began to play, Sherlock softly placed his hand atop John's and held his breath.

Later, he would process the details. He would replay the video over and over again in his mind, dissecting every image, every word, and make sense of it all. But for now, all he could do was watch and listen. The thinking would come later.

A speaker with a distorted voice laid out the history of two men: Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty. As surveillance videos and photographs from across the years appeared and disappeared during the narrative, the speaker detailed their histories, emphasising their 'striking similarities' and 'disturbing parallels'. Both were born to well-to-do married parents; both had had prominent fathers who had committed adultery and abandoned the family; both had had socialite mothers who had committed suicide; both were labelled as abused and isolated children who developed interests in the ghoulish and gruesome, in violence and mutilation, and in death. Both were certifiably brilliant, as well, and though both had multiple encounters with the law before the age of eighteen, neither had been arrested, perhaps due to an uncanny ability to circumvent authority. Obviously, said the speaker, the two boys walked the same path toward a life of criminality, and it was only a matter of time before they became dangerous, perhaps even to the security of the nation.

'In 2010,' said the speaker, 'our two subjects, codenamed KITE and VULTURE, intersected for the first time in London. The meeting proved highly volatile, resulting in multiple explosions, kidnappings of citizens, credible threats of bodily harm, and even one death of an innocent blind woman. It was after this event that both subjects entered emergency reassessment, and their status was officially assigned as Level 7: Lethal, which, as you know, is an automatic qualifier for the activation of Protocol 68. However, KITE went into hiding, and in his absence, VULTURE was placed on probationary status. It was agreed, at the time, that extenuating circumstances, including a symbiotic relationship with law enforcement and other tempering influences, should qualify VULTURE as dangerous but not of imminent threat.

'Then, in 2011, KITE reappeared and collided with VULTURE. Full details of that series of events, beginning with KITE's arrest and terminating with the murder-suicide of both subjects, can be found in Appendix C. Upon analysis, it was determined that their joint termination—one at the hand of the other—was fortuitous, and it inspired Project Raptor, an experiment developed to make viable the elimination of one undesirable subject at the hand of another, all within the scope of Emergency Protocol 68.

'This file was considered closed in 2011, Status: Termination Achieved. However, that status was revoked in October 2014 when VULTURE revealed himself in London, having deceived not only the public but government officials into believing he had died. Full details and analysis of VULTURE's disappearance, absence, and return are to be found in Appendix F. For now, suffice it to say that his surveillance status was set instantly to Level 6: Imminent Threat.

'Emergency Protocol 68 has been established for the subject as is ready to execute if the surveillance level escalates to 7.'

On the screen, in red type over black-and-white surveillance photos of Sherlock taken in front of 221 Baker Street, walking out of New Scotland Yard, climbing into a taxi in Soho, and entering the Magistrate's Court on Victoria Street. The text read:

Sherlock Scott Holmes (b. 1976)
Profession: Consulting Detective (self-employed)
Porn preference: Unknown
Finances: Unknown
Family: William Scott Holmes (father, deceased 1997); Judy Fay Holmes, née Lockwood (mother, deceased 1998); Mycroft William Holmes (brother, b. 1969)
Officially deceased: June 2011 – October 2014

Pressure Points:
John Watson (b. 1973)
Cocaine, heroin, opium
Irene Adler (b. 1979)
James Moriarty (b. 1976)

Plan of Action:
Bill Murray Activate pressure point John Watson John Watson termination Sherlock Holmes termination

Sherlock's eyes scanned quickly, taking in every word as is scrolled up the screen, even as the voice continued, "For the protocol to be successfully carried out, it is exigent that VULTURE no longer be shielded."

Plan of Action:
Activate Project Raptor Leak intelligence to subject Adler Mycroft Holmes termination

'Enough,' said Sherlock. He moved John's hand off his knee and rose to his feet. 'Turn it off, Lestrade.'

'It's nearly over, Sherlock.'

'Turn it off, turn it off, turn the goddamn thing off!"

John was standing now. There was a hand on his arm, another around his back. 'Hey, hey,' said John, trying to calm him.

'I've heard enough. Enough. What, you think I missed the point? That I didn't get the message? Those mystery men'—he threw a hand at the paused screen—'have been watching me my whole life because they believe I'm sick, and crazy, and dangerous, and Mycroft knew about it, he knew about it for years, he even became one of them, the son of a bitch, and he never told me, he never told me!'

'He believed he was protecting you—' Anthea said, for the first time sounding defensive.

'And how's that working out for me?' he snapped. 'Protecting me has made him a target. They used my enemies to take him out. Project Raptor, or whatever the hell it is. They almost killed him!'

'And they believe he's dead!' She pushed herself to standing. 'I've made sure of it, Mr Holmes, they still believe your brother is dead, because if they knew he had survived, they would have found another way to assassinate him. You fooled them, and he has, too, but the point—the point—is to not let his sacrifice be in vain.'

'We're initiating Protocol Blackbird,' said Lestrade sternly, clearly anticipating objection. 'Mycroft being taken out of action was the signal to do it, and we didn't act. Fortunately, it isn't too late.'

'And what,' Sherlock seethed, 'is Protocol fucking Blackbird?'

Lestrade stood straighter. 'You saw the video. Deduce it.'

With a huff, Sherlock looked at John, hoping to see camaraderie in annoyance and frustration. Instead, he saw a John who was troubled, almost sorrowful.

Lestrade continued. 'They mean to take you down by exploiting your pressure points. They're going to go after John. So you need to do what Mycroft asked you to do back in March. You need to leave.'

'Leave.'

'Leave London. Leave England. Get yourself some place safe, and stay there.'

'No.'

'Dammit, Sherlock, this isn't negotiable.'

'That video said they'd use Bill Murray. Ah, I see it now. Don't you, John? Kitty Riley's anonymous source? It was them. These people. They wanted Bill's story to come to light, to torment with the knowledge that he was part of a conspiracy to kill you. Ask him about a man named James Sholto, remember? It was part of their plan to break you, maybe cause you to lash out and hurt him, maybe even kill him, or kill yourself, and they thought your "termination" would lead to mine, and they were probably right. But that's not what happened, its it?'

Because no, John had not killed Bill. He had wanted to, but Sherlock had stopped him. They had won. They had foiled the plot, together. They had done it once; what was to stop them from doing it again?

'Don't make the mistake that they won't have backup plans,' said Anthea. 'A hundred of them. Your enemies are not limited to Moran and Adler. There were international snipers poised to take you out as far back as four years ago, and three of them are still at large, and they may not be the only ones. One way or another, they'll let your enemies have you, and do nothing to intervene.'

'Irene Adler has already made an overt gesture on that front,' Lestrade said.

Sherlock scoffed. 'What, the letter with yet another riddle? The orange seeds? I'm ignoring it. Entirely.'

'And lemon seeds, turns out,' said Lestrade. 'Two of one, three of the other. But the point it—'

'Like the song?' Molly piped up, though quietly.

The room went quiet, a little startled by the unexpected voice. They turned to look at her.

'What song?' asked Sherlock.

'Oh, you know,' she said, a little meekly, 'the old nursery rhyme.' And she sang the first line softly: 'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's.'

'Clement,' repeated John.

'No,' said Sherlock angrily. 'I'm not dealing with more riddles. John and I agreed. We don't play their games. We have a plan, and Bill Murray—who is working for us now—is at the heart of it. We track them down, and we take them out. That's it. No more games.'

'And that would be great, Sherlock,' said Lestrade, 'if that's where it would end. But it won't end there. There's a price on your head, and if it's not Irene who collects, and if it's not Moriarty or any of those people, they'll find another way. They'll get to you somehow, and probably through John. Don't you see? There's no debate in this. You have to leave.'

He looked around the table, desperate for someone to disagree. 'I can't leave John . . .'

'He's going with you. Of course he is.'

He turned to John, whose face was steely and unreadable. He hated it when he couldn't read a man at a glance, but especially this man. Without taking his eyes away from John's, he asked, 'For how long?'

Lestrade shrugged helplessly. 'I don't know. I'm sorry, I wish I had all the answers, but I don't.'

'Where would I . . . ?'

'It's best no one know,' said Anthea, 'but you. It's safest that way.'

'This is madness.' He threw up his hands. 'This is madness. I'm supposed to turn tail and run, and leave you and all of London to the likes of Moriarty? You think they'll stop, once I've disappeared? You think this will all just go away?'

'Of course we don't. We're not stupid, despite what you think of us, and we'll keep fighting the good fight, here on British soil. It's just . . . if you stay, you'll be dead. It's that simple.'

Sherlock slammed his hands on the table and leant into it. 'It's not simple. It's not inevitable. We're getting so close, Lestrade. The work John and I have done these past couple of days, it's getting us closer to Moran. Soon we'll be on his doorstep, and we're just supposed to leave? Now?'

'Sherlock,' said John softly, gently.

It was as though he knew what John was going to say, even before he said it. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, shaking it regretfully from side to side in a slow rhythm. At last, he stood upright and turned to face his friend.

'We should go.' His voice was almost a whisper, and everyone looked away, as though to give the two of them privacy.

'How can you say that?' Sherlock asked.

'It's what we should have done from the start,' said John. 'The very start. There's an evil out there, bigger than England can contain, and you once set out to defeat it. You had a mission, but you never finished it. You needed me at your side, and you left me behind. Not this time. This time, we go together. Just the two of us against the rest of the world.'

Sherlock closed his eyes and fought to keep from trembling. When he opened them again, they were wet, but the fight had gone out of him. Feeling defeated, he asked Lestrade, 'How long will you give me?'

But it was Anthea who answered.

'Only hours. You leave tonight.'

Molly: She confesses that she has aided in swapping Sherlock and John's identities with dead men, which coincides with the new identities that Mycroft has created for them.

Anthea: She explains the origins of the four snipers from before the Fall and gives insight into the dangers at large.