The God of the Hive (16 page)

No, Peter James West only killed when necessary. For the most part, he merely ordered a killing. But it was good to know that when the personal touch was required, his hand did not hesitate.

He put down his drink and laid the half-burnt cigar into its cut-glass bowl, to take up the leather scabbard that Brothers had worn against his skin. The oily texture of the leather was repugnant, but the knife itself was a thing of beauty. The blade, whether or not of meteor iron, was the work of a true artist, shaped to perfection and beaten until the surface shimmered with depth. The hilt might have been carved to fit his own hand, the warm ivory coaxing his fingers to wrap around it and hold the blade to the light.

It was the kind of knife that whispered,
Use me
.

A year ago, he would not have considered using a knife on Mycroft Holmes. Now, however, the old man had dropped a tremendous amount of weight: A six-inch-long blade would easily pierce his vitals.

Would it, West wondered, feel like regicide?

He regretted talking so much, in St Albans before Gunderson left. That was the problem with an audience of nonentities: One tended to overlook their capacity for action. Yes, the criminal classes could be bought and be kept in line by fear, but the moment they imagined they had the stronger weapon, they could turn vicious. Which would be inconvenient.

Not that he had given away any secrets—if he’d been stupid enough
to do so, he’d have been forced to leave Gunderson lying on the floor next to Brothers. Which might have been a bit tricky. However, once this was over, Gunderson would have to be removed.

Let it be a lesson to you, Peter James: Never talk before the staff.

But he was grateful for the knife, a unique object in so many ways. An unexpected gift. But then, wasn’t this entire affair an unexpected gift? He’d never have thought it possible, three years ago, when the Secret Intelligence Service budget was being pared to the bone, Smith-Cumming was so ill it was a surprise to see him each morning, every man was snarling to defend his small corner, and the distasteful “arrangement” was being imposed on them, weakening every aspect of the Service. The one person without a look of panic on his face had been Mycroft Holmes, who wandered the halls as fat and as enigmatic as ever. And only he, West, had thought to question why.

Mycroft Holmes, the ethical, the incorruptible. Who had laid a façade of virtue over a foundation of corruption, constructing a massive edifice almost entirely hidden by the grit and grief of lesser enterprises. Who answered to no higher authority than the face in the mirror.

It had been a hard two years, knowing the flaw but being unable to use it. Two years, before he’d heard of a letter from Shanghai.

Holmes called himself an accountant. Well, every accountant should know that there comes a day of reckoning.

West felt he’d played with the man long enough: drugs in his drink, disguised footsteps every morning, carrying a cloth dabbed with bay rum cologne. A private game, childish, perhaps, and at the end of its run. Time for Mycroft Holmes’ final service to his country.

West finished his drink, crushed out the cigar, and took himself to bed.

As he slept, the curved knife lay on the bedside table.

The next morning, he put it into his pocket before he left the flat.

And carried it with him as he made his way to the attic prison of Mycroft Holmes.

Chapter 27

a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c) − (f) = g

g
, Mycroft decided on Wednesday, was The Opponent.
g
was the one who kept him here, who had granted him a neck-tie for a belt, who (this last was hypothesis, but he felt it a strong one) came down the prison’s corridor on City heels and smelt occasionally of bay rum.

Mycroft’s December illness had damaged his heart, but cleared his vision. He’d grown so accustomed to power, it took a spell of weakness to make him see just how immense his authority was. His job did not exist; his position was largely outside the government and therefore essentially without oversight. His was a power based entirely on ineffable agreement and hidden secrets: Mycroft Holmes is unshakably ethical; he is the nation’s moral authority; all sides that matter accept him as the ultimate authority and mediator; he may have whatever he requests, to get his job done.

Three decades ago, he had made a decision that was not his to make. A decision that made everything possible. A decision that only he and one living man knew had been made. Before December, he’d managed to all but forget it, himself.

It was a beautiful thing, and a fragile thing, to place an empire’s moral welfare in the hands of one man. Six months ago, he had come face to face with the knowledge that it was also a terrifying thing, and foolish beyond belief.

a ÷ (b+c+d) + e − (½ c) − (f) = g

A
koan
, a conundrum, now beginning to disappear with the setting sun. If
g
was the man who had put
e
here, then it followed that
g
wanted to replace
e
. That
g
had looked at the rôle of the accountant and lusted after its authority—rather, its perceived authority, since the power behind
e
remained well hidden. And as soon as the
g
had been scratched onto the wall, Mycroft could only wonder that he was not yet dead.

Not that
e
objected to the delay of his death. Mycroft was actually growing accustomed to the hunger, and the cold, and even the stupefying boredom.

However, one possible explanation of his continued immobility was that in the outside world,
g
was busy assembling his weapons. That he was pulling together—call them
m
and
s
and
n
and
i
: Mary and Sherlock and Nephew and Infant. Adding to g’s side of the equation. Making
e
into a tool of his own.

Which raised the further question: Was this person
e
—this most ethical and moral of men—required to act on his suspicion? Was he obligated, as a servant of His Majesty, to remove a potential tool from enemy hands by using this bent nail to open a vein in his own wrist?

His grim thoughts broke off: a sound, where customarily there was none. It was too early for his evening visitation, too heavy for one of the pigeons, too near for street noise. He grabbed the solitary brick that his chip of porcelain and farthing coin had between them freed from the wall, then scrambled to his feet. Tightening his silken belt, he faced the approaching sound.

He wished that he might have been permitted to shave, before they came for him.

Chapter 28

O
n Wednesday, Goodman tried to teach Estelle jackstones. However, mature as her mind might be, her small hands lacked sufficient coordination to toss, snatch, and grab. She grew increasingly frustrated, and was not far from tears when he bundled the game back into its cloth bag and brought out his knife and a chunk of pine instead, asking her what kind of animal she wished him to carve next.

We were all relieved when she permitted herself to be distracted, to decide on a hedgehog.

So he carved Estelle a family of hedgehogs.

When I looked for him after lunch, he had disappeared again. Estelle and I gathered fallen apples from his orchard and managed to cook them without burning the place down. We helped Javitz hobble out to the garden, and had a fierce contest on who could spit a plum-pit the greatest percentage of their height (Javitz won). Fortunately, our host reappeared before I was driven to assemble an evening meal, bringing with him a
Times
, half a dozen fresh-baked scones, a bag of fresh-ground coffee, a jar of bilberry preserves, a piece of beef (which he would cook for us but not eat, as he had not eaten the sausages), a tiny silver hair-brush, and a diminutive pink pinafore.

My BEEKEEPING message was in the agony column, but no other.

*   *   *

On Thursday afternoon, our host walked to the lakeside village and returned with a box of soft chocolates, three varieties of cheese, two packets of biscuits, and that day’s paper.

My message was there—and, halfway down the far right side, another:

BEES may thrive in foreign lands yet, lacking protection, meet peril close to home on Saturday
.

I nearly danced in relief: They were safe, Holmes and Damian both, somewhere far from London or Sussex, and he would post our meeting-place in Saturday’s column.

Things were moving, at last! Tomorrow I would make my way to a train, and be in London when the Saturday papers hit the streets. The only question was whether I should remove Javitz and Estelle from this rustic establishment, or return for them once Holmes and I had joined up. And that decision, I knew, would have to wait until I could speak to Goodman without being overheard.

At the moment, he was instructing the child on the art of the plum crumble, she standing atop a stool at the sink measuring sugar into a bowl, her tiny form enveloped in one of his shirts as a stand-in apron, he beside her, buttering an oven bowl. I helped myself to a second cup of the stewed tea he’d made when he came in, and took it into the afternoon sunlight for a leisurely perusal of the rest of the day’s news, which had rather begun to resemble distant drum-beats heard from a jungle fastness.

I read about the status of the German economy and the doings of the Royal Family, followed by an article concerning a film actor and a scientific report on a new radio device. I casually turned over a page, read a follow-up on the earthquake in Japan, and turned the next. With one swallow of bitter tea yet in the cup and the light fading from the sky, the page with the obituaries came into sight.

A name leapt off the page at me, electrifying my brain and driving the breath straight out of my chest:

Mycroft Holmes, OBE

Chapter 29

T
uesday night, the wind that had shoved against the European coast-line for the past week finally died away. Before Wednesday’s sun cleared the eastern horizon, Gordon cast off from the private dock and slipped into the North Sea, a generous bank draught tucked into his pocket.

To Holmes’ surprise, Dr Henning had declined to accompany Gordon. She claimed that she’d scarcely got the smell of fish out of her hair, and said that she would wait for a nice large steamer for the return trip. She seemed in no hurry to be home, or to abandon her patient.

Following a luncheon brought over from the house, Holmes resumed the French clothing that he had bought the day before and arranged to have the VanderLowe driver take him to a different, more southerly train station. There he bought a packet of Gitanes and a day-old Paris newspaper, was greeted by the ticket-seller in French, and inhabited the stance and accents of his French persona as he rode the train to Amsterdam, arriving shortly before three in the afternoon. Holmes made his way to the same news stand; this time, the day’s
Times
had arrived. He sought a café in the opposite direction from the one he had patronised the day before, spread out the pages with a snap of impatience, and felt a great burden lift:

BEEKEEPING is enjoyed by thousands, a reliable and safe hobby, practiced on week-ends alone from Oxford Street to Regent’s Park
.

“Safe”: Russell and the child were well, and she proposed a rendezvous on the week-end in the bolt-hole that lay between Oxford Street and Regent’s Park—more precisely, in the back of a building that opened onto Baker Street. She would no doubt see his own message in the agony column, possibly tomorrow, or for certain on Friday; when no contradictory message followed, she would read that as an agreement.

He folded the paper, saw by his pocket-watch that he had half an hour before the return train set off, and used that time to buy the good doctor another change of clothing. This time he had a closer idea of her taste, and the frock he paid for was considerably less dowdy than the brown skirt and white shirt he’d taken her the day before.

The following day, Thursday, Holmes made his third trip to Amsterdam, and found them waiting for him.

Had he gone earlier in the day when the two men were fresh, they might have had him. Had he relented from his obsessive and life-long habits of vigilance, had he been less rested or more preoccupied with the telephone call he wished to place, he might have walked straight into their arms.

Had he not looked at flotsam and seen a shark, he might even have approached them openly.

As it was, his train was one of dozens the two men had watched pull in that day, and he was both alert and unremarkable, one of a thousand men in dark suits and city hats.

He spotted the first watcher while the train was slowing to a halt, a big man tucked into a niche near the exit, giving close scrutiny to every passing male, and to those females of a greater than average height. Holmes went still, his grey eyes boring into the nondescript figure on the far side of the crowded platform, instantaneously considering and discarding a hundred minute details of dress, stance, hair, attitude. There came a brief gap in the stream of passengers, and two things happened: The man shifted, as if his feet were sore, then he glanced across the station. The watcher had a partner.

Police? Not that the nearer man had trained as a constable, or even as
a soldier—no man who’d pounded the pavements would fail to wear comfortable shoes for day-long surveillance. Plain-clothes detectives? But they were not local: No Continental tailor had cut those suits, and Holmes could place the source of both men’s hats to a specific London district.

Mycroft’s men? He was conscious of a sudden taste of optimism in the air; nonetheless, he kept his seat in the emptying car. Certainly the two had the look of the men his brother employed, quiet, capable, and potentially deadly. And the cut of the first man’s coat suggested a gun, which Mycroft’s agents had been known to carry.