CHAPTER 24: AFTER THE TURN

JUNE 27, 2015

Budapest

In a seedy hotel in Budapest, perched on the edge of a double mattress, Sherlock and John watched in shock as the story unfolded.

'. . . unprecedented attack . . .'

'. . . a city stunned . . .'

'. . . rising death toll . . .'

It had happened some thirty-six hours before, but it was only by chance that John spotted, through the open door of a pub, a hanging television displaying a helicopter's eye view of the side of the tall glass building at the intersection of Broadway and Victoria with a crater like a geode, black smoke rising. When he realised what he was seeing, he stopped short and grabbed Sherlock's sleeve to detain him. Then they rushed back to the hotel, turned the channel to BBC World News, and watched the story unfold with abject horror.

'. . . initial explosion was said to be caused by a rocket launcher which impacted here, on the seventh story, setting off a series of smaller explosions, presumably on the same floor. Fires spread to a total of four floors while the building was evacuated . . .'

'We have to call Molly,' said John, shaking. 'We have to know . . .'

Sherlock said nothing. His eyes were glued to the telly.

'Or we call Mycroft, Anthea, someone. God, that's his floor, Sherlock. Lestrade's office was right there!'

'. . . Twenty-five were killed in the blast or later from burn injuries sustained in the fires. Fifty-two more are reported injured, thirty-one critically, and are being cared for in hospitals around the city. As of this report, seven officers and staff remain unaccounted for . . .'

The news continued to show images of the wreckage, of the London Fire Brigade, of ambulances and police officers and men and women on stretchers. Sherlock's eyes were probing, desperate, searching the background for a well-known profile.

'. . . suspected domestic terrorism . . .'

'. . . where investigators believe the rocket launcher originated . . .'

'. . . combing CCTV footage to identify the attacker . . .'

'Is this retaliation?' John wondered aloud, breathless with fear. 'Because of what we did in Albania?'

'No,' said Sherlock softly, speaking for the first time since snapping on the telly. 'This is something else.'

'But Sherlock—'

'Even if they knew what we had done—and I'm not convinced of it—even if they knew, they would never be able to organise this kind of attack so quickly. This is a tragedy, John, a devastation, but we don't have all the data yet to reach a conclusion. At this stage, we are only presuming that this has Moran's hand in it, only supposing that this has anything to do with us and our actions at all.'

'Then why—!' John shouted. Then he caught himself, lowered his voice, and pointed angrily at the TV screen. 'That is a targeted attack, and the target is Greg's office! Moran knows we've fled England by now, he must! He's trying to draw us out, bring us back, just like he did with you by going after me! This is his game!'

' . . . suspected connection with the crime organisation known only as A.G.R.A. . . .'

John's head snapped to the telly and Sherlock shot to his feet.

'Did she say—?'

'I heard it, too.' Sherlock spun around and grabbed the mobile from the bedside table, yanking it out of its charger.

'Who are you calling?' John asked, stepping to his side to see the screen, adrenaline coursing through his every vein. 'Mycroft?'

'Too risky.'

'But the number is untraceable. Isn't it?'

'I don't know what to trust, John. I really don't.'

'Then . . . ?' But he watched as Sherlock punched in a memorised number, and he recognised the final digits for Sally Donovan. Held his breath.

He listened to it ring. And ring.

'Shit,' Sherlock said under his breath when it went to voicemail, and he ended the call. Instantly, he started inputting a different number, but this one John didn't know. Heart in his throat, he fixated on the stiffness of Sherlock's fingers, the bloodlessness of his cheeks. He was afraid, and John with him.

Again, the distant, mechanical ring of the phone.

But this time, someone answered.

'Are you alone?' Sherlock asked into the phone, and after a brief pause, he heard a man answer a muffled yes. 'Are they alive?' he asked next.

John's heart was beating so loudly in his ears, he couldn't make much sense of the muffled tones on the other end of the line. All he could do was watch Sherlock's stony expression in conflict with wet-shined eyes, and think silent prayers.

When the call was ended, Sherlock released the reins of control, and he let out a gasp, covering his face with a large, spidery hand. Then he turned to John, grabbed his neck, and pulled him in close.

What Thomas Dryers told them was this:

The attack occurred shortly after lunch on Thursday, at 13.18 hours. A rocket, launched from the roof of a high rise across the street, blasted into the Yard and precisely into the office of DI Greg Lestrade. The subsequent explosions—for there had been, by earliest estimates, at least five—had been devastating, the loss of life catastrophic. As fires raged and floors collapsed and emergency responders raced to save the dying, Dryers, a newly reinstated constable, received an urgent call on his radio. All officers were required to report in and, until instructed, to stay in their respective locations and maintain the peace against an upswell of frantic citizen reaction.

But Constable Dryers did not stay put. He jumped his car, turned on the lights, and got as close to Victoria and Broadway as he could before entering the logjam of fire engines, ambulances, and patrol cars. The wail of sirens filled the air, and the flashing lights almost blinded. Black smoke rose into the clouds. He kept trying Sally's phone, but there was no answer. He would wait—for hours and hours—for confirmation, one way or the other, of what had happened to her, and to the others: his colleagues and friends of the Metropolitan Police.

It would be almost twenty-four hours before they were found.

With the fires quelled and the rubble secured, responders sent in sniffer dogs from Italy, specially trained to detect human scent in wreckage following an earthquake. It was the dogs that found them, buried but alive, in what had once been the northeast stairwell. And it was that stairwell that had saved them. Though cracked and unstable, the concrete walls had shielded them from the force of the blast, and from the heat of the raging fires. But it had also left them trapped in pitch blackness, like in a cave far below the surface of the earth, and no matter how they cried out for help, there were none to hear them. Greg and Sally bolstered one another in a time of grief and uncertainty, knowing that not far distant, their fellow officers lay dead, and those they loved likely thought they had met the same fate. If they were not discovered—and soon—those loved ones would be right. The hours passed in lonesomeness and fear.

At long last they were rescued. Though they had suffered no critical blows—no broken bones or severe loss of blood—they were severely dehydrated, disoriented, and worse for wear, and had to be carried out on stretchers and taken to hospital, at which point Dryers received the call. By then, the missing had all been accounted for, the dead confirmed, the injured tended to, and families and officers across the city joined together in mourning. Chief Superintendent Gregson, who had been on the ground floor at the time and survived the explosions, was calling in reinforcements from around the country to hunt down those responsible. A new task force was formed, who needed debriefing about the extent of the Moriarty Mayhem, which he believed wholeheartedly was at the centre of it all.

It was about this time, as Gregson was preparing the debriefing, that he began to notice the curious and conspicuous absence of a certain self-described consulting detective and his companion.

'Don't mention this call,' Sherlock said. Dryers promised he would not.

June 28, 2015

London

Her hospital room was dark, darker than she thought it should be, leaving her disoriented and anxious. Having spent twenty-four hours in pitch darkness, not knowing whether she would ever again see the light of day, the repetition awoke within her a special kind of terror she had not expected. Her chest felt constricted, her lungs in want of air, and she wished for another human to grab and reassure her that she was still alive. Like Lestrade. Like Dryers.

She had sent Dryers home to sleep, though the moment she said it and saw the pained but conceding look on his face, she wished she could recall the words and keep him at her side. God, if he had been in that building with them when it blew . . . He would be dead, she knew it, sure as anything. But Gregson had put him on the streets, a beat cop, a probationary period, he said, before he could rejoin the detective team. The demotion—however temporary—had grated her at the time. Now, she was grateful. The demotion had saved his life. That meant, if one followed the dominos, that in some strangely twisted way, the old man forcing Dryers to take a roofie all those weeks ago had saved him, too.

Like her, like all of them, Dryers was in shock at what had happened, and he mourned for those he had lost. It wasn't fair to him that she sent him off alone.

Her father had wanted to stay, too. Twice in the space of only four months, Lucius Donovan had got word that his daughter had been in a serious accident and made the four-hour drive from Bradford to London to be with her. The first time, it had been a phone call from the chief superintendent. The second time, he had been watching the news and saw that New Scotland Yard had been bombed. He had made the long, lonely journey without any reassurance that he would ever again see his daughter alive. Upon arrival, however, he had been merely one of hundreds anxiously awaiting word just beyond the hastily erected police barriers that kept the public away from the site of destruction.

When he came to see her in hospital, he cried. Donovan hated seeing her father cry. It was one of the hardest things she had ever witnessed, and she had seen some terrible things during her time as a police officer, much of it within the last year. But her father sobbing on her chest, begging her to quit her job and come home and be safe almost undid her. She didn't say yes, but she couldn't say no and hurt him even more. Not at that moment.

And it was while weeping silently for her father, longing for Thomas Dryers' company, and yearning for the light that someone in that too-dark room, invisible until the moment he spoke, made himself known.

'Don't move, don't speak, or I'll have no choice but to kill you.'

A cold wave of fear passed through her body. Her head lifted sharply off the pillow as she cast her widened eyes frantically around the room until she could make out—only just—the black silhouette of a man in the corner, rising slowly from a chair. He seemed not particularly tall, but as her eyes probed the darkness, she thought she could make out the whiteness of his hair, and his voice was that of an old man's.

'You should know, Ms Donovan,' that voice continued, 'that I have no wish to kill you. You have been of great use to me.' He drew nearer, soft shoes making soft noises as he crossed the floor toward the side of her bed. 'Speak softly.'

'I know who you are,' she said, voice low as she tried to control for any tremors. Her heart was racing, and she wished someone would come into the room. But Lestrade was laid up in his own bed far down the hallway, Dryers was back at Moriarty's flat, and she would have bet a month's salary that this man had already arranged his visit to ensure that no nurses would be happening by any time soon.

'I doubt that.'

'You make lists and turn wheels and hurt innocent people to reach your ends. And you've been using me to do it. Not anymore.'

'Is that so? Whom have you hurt?'

She closed her mouth, having no answer.

The old man continued. 'You are playing your part well enough, but you do not see to what end.'

'Then tell me. Turn on the light, and let me see you.'

But the old man quashed any illusion that she was in any way in control of what happened next. He was not about to answer her questions but to get on with his purpose. 'The attack on New Scotland Yard was . . . unforeseen. Your survival—and Gregory Lestrade's—was even more of a surprise, though not an unwelcome one. For my part, that is. I have a task for you.'

'No.'

'You'll find that it is in the best interest of those you care about.'

'You'll find that I am no longer inclined to work in the dark.'

There was quiet. Then the old man said, 'A little illumination, then. Ask me a question.'

'To earn your trust?' Donovan huffed a laugh.

'To reward you for your work. Ask. One question, Ms Donovan. You'll find that this opportunity will not come again.'

'Tell me about Tony Pitts,' she blurted out, before she had the chance to think and land on a more urgent question.

The old man sighed. 'I thought you cleverer than that, sergeant. Mr Pitts was an operative, one of ours. Nothing more. We did what we told him to do, for our own purposes.'

'Like hide the identity of a murderer?'

'Precisely.'

'Why—?'

'Come now. You have all you need by now to unlock the mystery box. I've given it to you, my dear, in the form of a key.'

'The flat with the shoes—?'

'My turn.' She felt a hand rest upon her knee, as though to keep her in place. She recognised the feel of an old man's hand, tremulous and frail, but it gripped with intent. 'The attack on New Scotland Yard has unveiled a little secret you and your people have been trying to keep.'

'I don't know what you—'

'Sherlock Holmes is vanished. As is John Watson. They are not in London. They are not in England.'

She tried to play her hand at denial, but she didn't get out two words. The old man was not there, he said, to force her to give them up. Quite the contrary.

'It is imperative,' he said, 'that their absence remain . . . undetected. Sherlock Holmes cannot achieve his ends if London knows he is no longer in it. Therefore, it is incumbent upon you, Sgt Donovan, to create for him a virtual doppelganger, of sorts.'

'What the hell does that mean?'

'Start with the papers. I believe you have ties with a certain junior reporter from The Guardian. She will run a story. Maybe an interview with Sherlock Holmes. Or just a quote will do. It will reinforce in the minds of the public—and those who matter—that the man is alive and well and tied to the city he loves.'

'You want Michaela Warner to run a fake story?' said Donovan, stunned. 'She'll never do it. She has a moral compass stuck on due north.'

'As do you,' the man replied. 'And look what you've done for me.'

His hand left her leg, and she felt the air turn with him as he headed to the door.

'Your team is dead, Ms Donovan. The case against Mr Moran, the most dangerous man in England, will fall apart. You won't find him. Your only hope lies in Sherlock Holmes. So you may want to do your part in keeping him alive.'

She heard the door click open.

'Wait.'

He waited.

'Give me one reason to trust you. Just one.'

She was met with a wall of silence, and she thought she had her answer. Then:

'Mycroft Holmes is alive,' he said softly. 'And I alone, of all my people, know it. Ask yourself: why have I not told them?'

Stunned by this answer, she had nothing to reply.

He opened the door, and by the light of the hallway, for all of two seconds before he passed into it, she saw the whiteness of his hair and his retreating back. Then he was gone.

July 6, 2015

Minsk

They decided that it would no longer do to ignore the news out of London, which was how they came across an article by Michaela Warner, just a little blurb of a story buried several pages deep in the Guardian, citing an interview Sherlock never gave:

NO NEW LEADS ON BROOK DISAPPEARANCE

Southwater – Since confirming that Richard Brook did not die on the roof of St. Bartholomew's in London in June of 2011, neither the Metropolitan Police nor the Sussex Police have made any headway in discovering what really happened to Brook, who has been missing since March of 2011.

Brook's parents, Roger and JoAnna, have still not given up hope.

'Our boy is out there somewhere,' says Mr Brook. 'We won't rest until we bring him home and lay him to rest.'

Their faith, however, lies not in the police but in the private detective originally accused of their son's murder, Sherlock Holmes, who has promised to do all he can to bring Richard justice. Nevertheless, the answer may not come quickly.

'It'll take some time,' says Mr Holmes, adding that Richard's story may not have a happy ending.

In the meantime, the Brooks are holding a memorial service for Richard, and are starting a charity in his name . . .

'You never said that,' said John, reading over his shoulder one morning before leaving the hotel.

'Not to Ms Warner, no,' said Sherlock, musing on why the scrupulous Michaela Warner would print something that, strictly speaking, was not false but nevertheless was not quite true.

Their ears were likewise pricked for international news, though sometimes they had to go digging. From Albanian local papers, translated by Sherlock's admittedly fledgling language skills, they learnt of a shooting in an abandoned warehouse that had left six men dead but no suspects, though police suspected a drug deal gone wrong, nothing more. What Sherlock did have, though, was ample experience tracing a spider's silken thread to watch a web unravel. He had done it before. And it was thanks to his keen observational skills and unmatched deductive reasoning that he was able to lay out for John, night after night, how removing that one linchpin was having a domino effect throughout Eastern Europe, spreading outward like a ripple effect. The arms dealer's operation was falling apart, exposing leaks in the boat, and local authorities were making arrests left, right, and centre without realising how connected, how interdependent, the crimes were. It was a tear in Moriarty's web that could not be easily prepared, and in fact would not be repaired, as long as Sherlock and John moved quickly to keep ahead of the master spinner. One down, three to go.

When the ripple reached Istanbul, the next spider was revealed.

July 18, 2015

Istanbul, Turkey

Arthur Doyle and Joseph Conan arrived in Turkey equipped with intelligence and two smuggled pistols. In a city of over fifteen million, they were virtually swallowed up into anonymity. Nevertheless, they maintained an inconspicuous disguise: Arthur wore polo shirts and jeans like any average bloke, and Joseph's beard—now full and thick though neatly trimmed—had been dyed to match his now-brunette hair. When wearing sunglasses, his face was satisfactorily obscured, and even Arthur had to do a double take to make sure he was walking beside the right man.

They found a shoddy, run-down hotel in a neighbourhood called Tarlabaşi because the manager accepted cash, asked no questions, and provided little by way of room service. The room was consequently miserable, with peeling decades' old wallpaper, unswept tile floors, a cracked toilet, and a bed that smelt of industrial-strength detergent used to cover up more stomach-churning aromas.

Smelling it, Sherlock turned to John and said, 'We don't have to stay.'

'It's fine,' said John, stoic. He'd been somewhat detached since boarding the plane. To be more truthful, he'd been that way since Albania. 'We do the job, we leave.'

The job. It was an unsettling euphemism. Sherlock would have preferred mission or operation, something more, well, military. They had agreed that this was a war and that they were soldiers in it. Calling it a job made them sound like thugs.

Moriarty's first linchpin had been an arms dealer, the most prevalent and nefarious in Europe. The second, though, operated one of the largest human trafficking rings in the hemisphere. They were but two men, and they could not reasonably expect to dismantle the whole operation, not by a long shot. What they could do, though, was remove the head off the snake and flay it open, exposing it to the world. They had a plan. And it was an unsavoury one, to say the least.

The trick was, they had to get close.

Sources suggested that there was a hotel, a posh hotel, right on the banks of the Bosporus Strait dividing the European side of the city from the Anatolian side. The website listed room prices as high as two thousand euros a night and no less than three hundred. The owner of the hotel, it was rumoured on their dark channels, was in league with their linchpin, and he met with some of the most powerful and corrupt men in the city every Saturday night for games of cards, drinks, and girls. Meanwhile, throughout the hotel, dozens of girls lay in wait, each in her own room, until a charge was paid, a key granted, and a blind eye turned from acts of heinous violation, night after night.

For several nights, Sherlock and John staked out the hotel. The first thing they noticed was the suspicious lack of visible cameras, the surprising number of security officers, and the frequently utilised egresses, from which guests only ever exited, never entered. On one night, John chatted up a chambermaid he had followed to a pub and over the course of three hours learnt quite a lot about the layout of the building and the habits of certain bellhops who apparently had rights and privileges exceeding those of other bellhops, for instance, access to certain floors and corridors. He felt guilty, plying her with alcohol and false promises before ultimately disappearing to the loo never to return.

Sherlock, however, undertook a more objectionable duty: seeking out how to become a client of the most revolting business imaginable, one buried deeply and yet hidden in plain sight within a massive hotel aglow with lights on the banks of the strait.

July 30, 2015

Istanbul, Turkey

They planned for days upon days, every step, every contingency. That night, they would execute. But first, that morning, alone together in the hotel room, they went through it all again, one last time.

On the table between them, the key to the whole operation: a small, dark-amber bottle, with a small dropper lid.

They had prepared it themselves, collecting wildly growing monkshood from a field, steeping the roots and seeds (not boiling), and distilling the solution to a concentrate. Ultimately, they collected 25 millilitres in a bottle. Pure aconite, the queen of poisons.

'Never take off the gloves,' said Sherlock, although he had said it already, many times.

'I know.'

'Not only because of fingerprints.'

'I know.'

'It's not too late, you know. If you want, I can be the one . . . you know. The one who . . . administers . . . the drops.'

John looked at him with an incredulous expression, then sat back in his chair, folding his arms.

'If you can't say it, you can't do it,' he said coolly.

Taken aback, Sherlock dropped his head, pretending not to understand. 'Say what?'

'Let's call it what it is. What I did in Albania, what I'll do again tonight. I'm taking lives. I'm killing people.'

'Bad people.'

'The worst. And that's why I have no qualms about it. But I don't do this lightly. It's not easy.'

'I know it's not.'

'Do you?'

Sherlock's head lifted. His initial protest died on his lips when he saw the hard expression on John's face, the challenge there. Wait, no. Not challenge. Not defensiveness. It was something else. Protectiveness.

'Look, Sherlock,' said John, a little softer now. 'You've never had to do it before, have you?'

Feeling a little discomfited, he shifted in his chair. 'Not as such,' he said.

'Not by your own hand, you mean.'

'I've wanted to.' He didn't name the occasions, but he didn't have to. He had already told John what it had been like, encountering Moran in that convent basement.

'Willingness, even desire—it's not the same. You've never been the one to pull the trigger that ended a man's life, even in the defence of another. You've never taken a blade to another man's body, even in defence of your own, and watched as he bled out. It changes you. You can't ever go back to . . . whatever it was you were before.' John reached for the bottle and pulled it toward himself. 'So if it comes down to a choice between you or me? If one of us has to do this, it'll always be me. Okay? I've already crossed that threshold. There's no return route.'

Night fell.

They left the hotel separately, something John pretended did not make him anxious as he forced away any portentous thoughts that suggested it would be the last time he would ever again see Sherlock. If he let such thoughts take hold for more than half a second, they would render him debilitated. So instead, he looked ahead, for only a moment, to the hour ahead when it would all be over. They would not return to the horrid hotel room, but to a new rendezvous, and flee the country before the dawning light. And with that thought settling his over-anxious heart, he set that aside too, and turned his attention to the mission.

The hard work had already been done; now all that was left was risk. He entered the hotel through the front doors with a backpack over one shoulder, passed through the spacious lobby without even looking at the front desk, and went straight to the lifts. As he waited patiently for the lift to arrive, he was joined by another hotel patron, then another, then a third, and then four of them entered the lift together. One of them, he knew, was Sherlock. But they did not acknowledge one another.

He got off on the ninth floor and left alone, then he checked the pocket of his jacket and found a key card, which had not been there before. Room 934.

In the room, he first did a security check. When satisfied, he took his bag to the sink and took out his shave kit.

'The servers are all clean shaven,' Sherlock said as they studied the photos on the bed. 'This'—he touched John's beard with the backs of his fingers, casually, a single stroke, then cleared his throat and, dropping his hand and head, returned his attention to the photos—'will have to go.'

Staring at himself in the mirror, John stroked his beard, thinking how it made him seem an older man than he was. There were more flecks of grey and white in it than he had expected before he had dyed it. But he had grown comfortable wearing it. It made him feel like a different man, and so a well-hidden one. No matter. He was but to exchange one disguise for another. So he reached for the scissors first, to trim it before lathering and razoring, and minded where the pieces fell. As per instruction, he would be careful and flush every last hair down the toilet.

When it was done, he turned to the wardrobe standing in the corner and found inside dark grey trousers, white collared shirt with no visible buttons, grey waistcoat with teal lining, teal bowtie, black shoes, and white gloves. It was the uniform of all servers in the hotel. He took a deep breath and began to change.

Minutes later, his heart rate was surprisingly steady as he sat on the end of the bed, staring at the mirror on the wall, rolling the amber vial between his finger and thumb, and waiting for the phone to ring. He sat in semi-darkness, and his reflection was more shadow than man. Slowly, he touched his own cheek, stroking gently, mind blank but heart throbbing.

The phone rang. He stood to lift the receiver and spoke the words he had practised: 'Selam.'

He waited. A moment later:

'Lütfen şarabı gönderin.'

The line went dead.

John pocketed the vial. It was time to go.

'Lütfen şarabı gönderin.'

Sherlock set the phone back in the cradle and turned to his fellow players. With a shrug and a smile, he said, in a barely passable American accent, 'Drinks are on me.'

They were six men around the table, of all nationalities: Chinese, Indian, South African, German, Russian, and Turkish. Arthur Doyle, the American, made seven. He had finessed his way to the table over the course of two weeks talking with exactly the right people on the lie that he was a business tycoon with money to burn and a healthy appetite for the 'local flavour'. He was charming, convincing, qualities Sherlock had once attributed to his self-diagnosed sociopathy and which he now found distasteful. In this case, however, it was necessary. They had invited him to a game of cards and afterwards, they said, he could have his pick of the best girls in all of Istanbul. They were dancing for him on a stage on the far side of the room.

'Let's deal 'em,' he said resuming his seat.

The game was Texas Hold'em. As far as games went, Sherlock liked card games. He was good at them, although, historically speaking, he was new to poker. He thought wistfully of the night, just last March, when John had taught it to him, and how they had played together in John's hospital room in the wake of the Slash Man's attack.

'Remember,' said John, sitting in a wheelchair across the tiny table from him, 'if you're confident in your hand after the turn, make it expensive for your opponents to see the river.'

He had a good hand, likely the best hand in the circle. He followed John's sound advice and tripled his bet. The others folded, and he won the pot.

'USA here is a lucky man tonight,' said the South African, smiling with his teeth but not his eyes.

'He'll be lucky later, too,' said the Russian, and the men chortled around him. Sherlock gave him a wry smile; it was thanks to the Russian he was there. They had tracked Ludmilla Dyachenko right to him. She was his bodyguard, and was sitting one floor down, unawares that her boss now bandied wits with a viper she'd let into his den.

The dealer changed, and a new hand was dealt.

'Your first time in Turkey, USA?' said the Turk in a voice at least half an octave below Sherlock's own. He was an unemotive man, with a well-manicured and close-trimmed beard, a receding hairline, and bright, untrusting eyes. Ironic, Sherlock mused, for a man so untrustworthy himself, his being the orchestrator of a veritable modern-day slavery and all.

'First time in Istanbul,' said Sherlock vaguely, neither confirming nor denying whether he had ever set foot in the country before.

'So you want to try Turkish woman, ha?' He waved his arm to the stage where the women, barely clothed, moved in sensuous rhythms.

'I've heard that Turkey is well known for its spices,' said Sherlock with a wink, playing the part.

The Turk smiled. Or was that a sneer? 'Whatever you win tonight, at this table, I'll take back with interest. My girls are finest girls. Like fawns. Soft, young. Not cheap.'

Sherlock spread his hands in mock offence. 'Do I look like a man without means? Without skill? When I'm done at this table, maybe I'll just take the whole hotel off your hands.' With that, he called, only to reveal a straight, beating out the others' hands still in play.

While the Turk scowled and the others guffawed, the door opened, and a hotel server entered, pushing a trolley of glasses and wine bottles. No one took much notice of him; Sherlock didn't even turn his head or flick an eye. They just continued to play as the server rolled the trolley closer and pulled six wine glasses from underneath. He uncorked a bottle of Anatolian red wine and began to pour.

'Whisky for me, thanks,' said Sherlock with a haughty wave of his hand, paying the server not even the dignity of a glance. 'Now that one'—he made eye contact with the Turk, then nodded to the stage—'already has my blood running hot.'

'Ah yes?' said the Turk. 'She is Nazik. Smooth and delicate, as her name.'

'Nazik,' said Sherlock approvingly. The server was setting the wine before each of the men. Then he returned to the trolley to pour Sherlock his whisky. 'Yes, she'll do. I have no need to see any more girls. You can send the others away.'

The Russian pouted in jest. 'So soon? I was quite enjoying the show!'

'You may want to get your head back in the game,' said Sherlock, 'and win back some of your money from me before I give it all to the Turk to pay for my prize.'

But the Turk had already signalled to the girls to leave. He reached for his glass of wine, and drank.

The server placed a crystal tumbler of whisky in front of Sherlock.

'To Turkish women,' he said, raising his glass. The men all drank. The server slowly replaced the decanter stopper. He rolled the trolley away from the table and half turned his back as he worked to reorganize and clean the trolley. The posture, the act of working, made him an inconsequential figure to the other men. To him, he was nothing. Just a server, too many rungs down the social ladder to be bothered acknowledging. Nevertheless, Sherlock knew, unless they had something else to distract their attentions, they would begin to notice that the server lingered. Why was he lingering? They had an agreement: serve the wine, and leave. Sherlock would take care of the rest.

But the server was not leaving. Sherlock needed to cause a distraction.

'Would you be so upset if I took one of them back home with me?' he asked. His tone joshed, and he winked at the Turk to let him know he teased. 'As a souvenir?'

The Turk smacked his lips and set down the wine glass with a harrumph, evidently not so keen on the joke. 'Would you pick a man's pocket and call it a keepsake?'

Sherlock shrugged, swirling his whisky. He let his eyes jump to the other men's wine glasses. It had the subconscious effect he desired: they drank again. 'What's one woman worth to you?'

If the Turk had been even a little amused, any semblance of it vanished in an instant. 'Keep talking like that, and you'll not have a girl waiting for you in your room, but two men.'

'Oh, well,' said Sherlock, 'now you're just making assumptions about my objections.' He winked again.

'With pistols.'

'Now now,' said the German. 'Our American friend is brash, but that is the way they banter, ja? Crude jokes. You've seen American cinema? He means nothing serious.'

The South African was licking his lips repeatedly. To assuage an apparent burning sensation, he drank again from his glass.

'I'm just curious how it works,' said Sherlock.

The server moved the trolley toward the door but still made no sign of leaving the room.

'How what works?' said the Turk. He was sucking on his tongue and beginning to perspire.

So it was happening quickly. That meant the number of drops administered had been unsparing. A lesser dosage, and the effects of the aconite might take upwards of an hour to manifest. But within minutes, the poison had moved from the stomach and infected the blood. The heart had begun to race and the temperature to rise. A burning sensation was upon the lips and tongue, and it would not be long before the gastrointestinal system began to rebel. Sherlock felt a mixture of fascination and horror: horror, for he was witnessing the very same effects of a poison that had nearly robbed him of his brother; fascination, because he was human, and one could not help but be entranced to see one shucking this mortal coil.

'If I did steal her from you,' said Sherlock, 'who would punish you for losing her?'

The Turk frowned deeply and pointed a finger at him. 'I do not like your talk.'

'What I mean is, do you work for the king or the queen?'

The men exchanged worried glances. The Chinese man looked flush and uncomfortable and placed a hand over his stomach.

'What do you mean by this?' said the Indian. He seemed to be having trouble swallowing. 'Turkey has no monoarchy.'

Sherlock looked around the circle in feigned surprise at their ignorance, and the pretence of his being an American began to slide away. 'You're all spiders on a spider web, am I wrong?' His natural accent became more dominant, but as none of the men were native English speakers, he wondered how long before they cottoned on. His words, however, were enough to cause a reaction around the table.

'Enough of this,' said the Turk, his forehead an uninterrupted sheen of sweat, like a millpond.

'Problem?' asked Sherlock innocently, then his lifted eyebrows lowered with concern. 'Are you feeling quite well?' He set his tumbler down.

'I want to know, what does he mean by king? Eh?' The Turk pounded a fist on the table. 'What does he mean? In this place, I am king.'

'Oh,' Sherlock said in a low voice, 'surely not. Not king of kings. I thought that honour belonged to Sebastian Moran.'

The eyes of the men around the table widened, and a couple gasped. The Turk shot to his feet. 'You,' he said. 'Who are you?'

Unruffled, Sherlock looked up at him and answered, 'I'm the man who will overthrow the kingdom.'

Suddenly, the German gave a loud groan and bent over in pain, clutching his stomach. He pushed away from the table, and seconds later vomited between his knees. The Chinese man was pulling at the front of his shirt, gasping for breath.

'Oh dear,' said Sherlock. 'It appears our time together is short.'

By the door stood a table, and in that table was a drawer into which all the men had deposited their mobile phones upon entering the room. It was against the rules to have one's phone on him whilst playing cards, after all, and Sherlock had complied along with rest. Two of the men—the Indian and the South African—started to their feet, intending to the rush to the table to call for help—for security, for a doctor—when they found their way blocked.

The server pivoted smoothly and stepped forward, and from the back of his trousers he whipped out a pistol and pointed it at the men.

'Have a seat,' he said evenly.

It was then, as Sherlock rose to stand beside him, that a light of recognition entered the Turk's eyes, and the eyes of the other five men, and their confusion turned to horror and dread. Alone, and in minimal disguise, they had not recognised their new guest. But the two men standing shoulder to shoulder like angels of vengeance were unmistakable, and the spiders trembled on their silken, flimsy threads.

'Holmes,' the Turk whispered. Then he squeezed his eyes shut in pain and fell back into his chair. The Chinese man was now on the floor, and the others' panic was rising. 'What have you done?'

'The Queen of Poisons sends her regards,' Sherlock said dryly.

'Security! Security!' called the Russian.

'No one is coming,' said John. 'Not in time to save you. You have each ingested at least five milligrams of aconite. Already, you are experiencing ventricular arrhythmias, and soon your hearts will begin to slow.'

'Çeneni tut!' cried the Turk.

'Zhopu porvu margala vikoliu,' spat the Russian, collapsing to his knees with his arms around his middle.

John was not finished. 'Toxins are racing throughout your system even now, and passing the blood-barrier to your brain, blocking neuromuscular transmission. You'll experience paralysis. Central nervous system suppression will cause seizures. There is no antidote. You cannot expel the poison through regurgitation, and no one is coming to stop your inevitable cardiac arrests. Make no mistake: you will die. And soon.'

On the floor, the Chinese man began to convulse.

'How dare— how dare—!'

But the Turk could speak no more. None of them could. Sherlock stood stock still, like a bollard, listening to the pathetic, disquieting sounds of men dying at his feet. He was no stranger to death; he had witnessed many. But though not at his hand, this was the first that had been at his design, and its visceral anguish—the retching, the writhing, and struggle to cling to those last seconds of mortality—seemed all the more searing and rooted him to the spot while John circled the bodies, his arms extended toward the floor, but instead of a healer's hand reaching down, he bore a pistol, and his finger teased the trigger.

One by one, the men stilled. Quieted. John lowered himself to a knee beside one—the Turk—and felt for a pulse.

'We stay ten more minutes,' he said coldly. 'To make sure they cannot be revived.'

Sherlock said nothing. His heart was racing, but his body was still.

They waited in grisly silence. There was no more work to perform. They would touch nothing, clean nothing, leave the chips and cards and the glasses and the wallets. At the last, John checked each body one last time. No breath. No pulse. He lifted his eyes once more to Sherlock's, and nodded.

Like ghosts, they slipped away, leaving corpses in their wake.

The whole web was shivering.

It was morning before the bodies were found. By then, local, national, and even international journalists had been tipped off about the luxury hotel on the Bosporus Strait that was actually a den of human trafficking. Before noon, the General Directorate of Security had shut down the hotel and detained everyone already inside, and their arrests, rescues, interrogations, and interviews commenced. Word spread quickly, and law enforcement was rallying throughout the country, and not through Turkey only, but neighbouring nations throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. Secretive operations and smugglers were on high alert and tried to go even deeper underground, but intelligence was too accurate, and a vast network—once hidden—was becoming visible.

But before that, before the night was even out, Arthur Doyle and Joseph Conan landed in Athens, nerves worn, and limbs and psyches heavy with exhaustion.

Sherlock could see it in John's face. There was nothing quantifiable in his expression or pallor, nothing he could even articulate. Maybe it was instinct, cultivated over too many nights like this one, but Sherlock knew that if John didn't sleep soon, he would have intrusive images; and if he did sleep, nightmares were inevitable. He had been too long the soldier, since Albania. So for too long he had walked among the dying and the dead without mental reprieve. So now, no matter how he might brace against it, the ghosts of his past were sure to rise from their slumber.

The room had two singles beds. John was out of his shoes, trousers, and shirt before Sherlock had even removed his jacket and crawled into bed, turning instantly onto his side, and within a minute, his breathing had deepened. He was asleep.

They had not talked about what they had done in that hotel, nor what they had witnessed. They had wanted to get out of the hotel first, then out of Istanbul, then out of the country altogether. On the aeroplane, they had neither boarded nor sat together, and though they shared a taxi in Athens, they did so as strangers and did not converse, then were dropped off at separate locations, only to meet up again in the middle. Sherlock still remembered the look in John's eyes when he had spotted him again, after only twenty minutes of being apart—raw relief, an ebbing panic. Yes, it would be a bad night.

Sherlock left a lamp on. He lay upon his own bed, and waited.

It was within the half hour when it started, the tell-tale signs of an impending horror behind John's sealed eyelids. First, it was the breathing—shallow, more rapid than before—and the twitching fingers and feet. Tired though he was, Sherlock found himself instantly on his feet and at John's bedside.

He called his name, softly, trying to enter the darkness to give it a different shape, or to bring John back into the light. There was no reaction, not at first. Just a whimper. A flinch. Then John rolled over onto his back, his body went rigid, and his face began to purple.

'Breathe, John.'

John gasped, then sucked in a great gulp of air. One arm flailed; the other grasped his throat and held on.

Drowning. He thought he was drowning.

That son-of-a-bitch Moran, he seethed.

He lowered himself to the edge of the mattress. 'Breathe,' he said again, and placed a hand on John's chest as if he could place the breath of life in his lungs.

John's flailing hand found his arm and squeezed. With another gasp, his eyes flew open. He panted. A line of perspiration ran across his hairline. But though his eyes were wide, they didn't see Sherlock. His teeth were gritted and lips quivered as he stared vacantly as the ceiling, like he was fighting to surface, to come back, but couldn't quite rise.

'John,' Sherlock said again.

John let out a shaky sob and let his eyes fall shut again. But this time, his breath was more of a sigh. He began to roll to his side, but his grip on Sherlock's arm did not slacken. Instead, he pulled Sherlock along behind him.

And what could Sherlock do, but follow? He left his arm in John's care, draped along his ribs and curled into his chest where John held Sherlock's palm steadily to his heart. The rest of him lay behind. The bed was narrow, too narrow to fit two grown men comfortably. And yet. Sherlock's head found the pillow behind John's.

The fit, though lessened, was not entirely passed. From time to time, John's muscled tautened or his breath raced, and when that happened, Sherlock hugged him tighter until the moment passed. Soon, the horrors dispersed, and John slipped seamlessly into an empty dream. Sherlock joined him there. And so they remained, side by side, until morning.

August 1, 2015

In a quiet cottage in South Wales, situated on the edge of a treeline and invisible from an unnamed road, Bill Murray finally stopped. He dropped his hands from the man's chest where he had been administering chest compressions for the last ten minutes and took one last look at his battered, bloodied face.

'Dead, is he,' came the voice behind him, dark and cold.

Murray could not, in that moment, find his voice. He lifted a blood-soaked rag and draped it over the dead man's face, though he doubted his own gesture. The traitor's dignity was hardly spared.

'Bill.' A warning, this time.

'Dead,' he answered.

In the silent reply was an air of satisfaction and arrogance.

Numbly, Murray began to clean up the scene—scattered blood-stained gauze pads and flecks of gore—then manage the body itself. He was just unfolding a long plastic bag for the body when a knock came at the door, and he froze.

'See who it is,' said Moran. He lay sprawled on the sofa facing the fireplace, which burned brightly. There was no electricity in the disused cottage. Murray worked by lamplight.

'Yes, sir,' he murmured. On his way to the door, he grabbed a pistol. He held it at his side as he approached the door. 'Who is it?' he called.

'Bellfield, motherfucker,' came the growl on the other side.

'Let him in,' droned Moran.

Murray cracked open the door and stepped back, and Liam Bellfield strode inside, casting a disparaging glance in Murray's direction. He knew the other men distrusted him, but none dared question Moran. Not when questioning, these days, or any sign of disloyalty, led you to kind of fate suffered by the man still lying on Murray's makeshift surgical table.

'Colonel,' said Bellfield, coming to the edge of the sofa.

Moran swung his legs to floor and pushed to standing. He unwound the rag from his bloodied knuckles and tossed it aside to place hands on hips. 'This had better be a full report, Bellend, or so help me God . . .'

Bellfield got straight to the point. 'We've been watching Baker Street for seven straight days now. No sign of either Holmes or Watson. Just the old woman, the copper, and the mortuary attendant going in or out. Your suspicions were right. They're not in London.'

'How long?'

'No one knows, sir. We can't find any hard evidence for weeks now. Since the death of Mycroft Holmes, they've been very hard to track.'

Murray had returned to cleaning and pretended not to be listening too intently. Moran was getting restless. Since the paper had printed the letters A.G.R.A., he had been nervous. He was convinced one of his own had blabbed, or that Holmes was sniffing up the right trees and DI Lestrade was simply his mouthpiece, one that needed to be permanently removed, and as many of the Metropolitan Police as could be managed along with him. He was done playing games. Irene, she still wanted to craft riddles and dangle carrots. Moran wanted blood.

'Just what are you saying?' Moran stepped closer to Bellfield with a menacing gait, his fists balling at his sides, and Murray feared he would be bagging two men tonight, not just one. 'I told you—I fucking told you—do not come back here unless you know where that son of a bitch Holmes is!'

'Yes, sir, but we do, sir!' Bellfield was a stalwart man, a former soldier, not easily cowed. But there was fear in his voice as he fought not to fall back a step at Moran's terrible advance. 'We believe we do.'

'Say it!'

'He's not in London. He's not in England. Third week in June, your contingent in Albania was taken out.'

'Yes,' said Moran, breathing hard. His eyes narrowed dangerously. 'What are you saying?'

'Two nights ago, six of your men were killed in Istanbul.'

'What?''

'The Turkish Ring, sir—it's gone.'

'How!'

'Reports say the whole Ring was found dead in the hotel. Poisoned. The guardsmen have been arrested, including Dyachenko.'

'Son of a bitch!' Moran swung and around and kicked the edge of the sofa, which shot several feet back.

'The whole hotel operation is falling apart. We think—we're almost certain—that Holmes is behind this. He's out there, destroying the network, sir. It's strategic bombing, like what he did before. But this time, it's not just one here and another there; it's a blitz.'

Moran's chest rose and fell dramatically, and his wild eyes gleamed in the firelight. 'The cornerstones. He's going after the fucking cornerstones. Albania, Turkey . . .' He thought. 'Who is next? Serbia or Spain?'

'We don't know, sir. We're trying to trace them, but no one has actually seen—'

'Shut up, I'm trying to think.'

Murray's heart was pounding as he wiped up blood from the floor. Sherlock and John were no longer in the country? Was that true? He didn't think it could be. In the few, infrequent texts they had sent him, they had made no indication whatsoever that they weren't on British soil. Strangely, he felt suddenly less safe at the thought.

'Bill.'

His head twisted around.

'Sir?'

The Colonel stalked forward. 'Are you ready to prove yourself to me?'

'Of course,' he said, stamping down the tremor that began to rise in him.

'You and I, we're ending this. You and I are going to the Continent, and we are going to find these sons of bitches, and twist their fucking heads off their fucking bodies. Then we're going to stake them on pikes for Irene fucking Adler and all the world to see. A.G.R.A. is mine. You and I'—he closed a hand around the front of Murray's shirt and dragged him up to his feet until they were nose to nose—'are taking back the kingdom.'