Coda
part fourJohn's initial thought was not to panic. His first impulse, however, was to reach for the gun he didn't carry and curse at himself for being such an idiot. It was unfortunately not the first time he'd crawled into the back seat of a posh, black car and found someone other than Mycroft. The Government had instilled a rather dangerous habit in him with his pointlessly sinister summons. The first time he'd made the mistake, it had been the presumed dead Irene Adler he'd arrived to find. The man sitting opposite him smelling of expensive cologne and new-car type musk was a complete and total stranger.
His skin was tan which didn't help John as much as he'd thought it might as he failed to find tell-all tan lines. Recently returned from holiday, maybe, or perhaps he frequented tanning booths. He almost seemed the type. John's gut said military though he was hard pressed to support it by the length of the man's blonde hair or the relative ease of his posture. The gut feeling was enough for him, honestly--one recognizes their own kind. He decided perhaps the thin, crooked nose was from repetitive injury, the surroundings making the stranger seem more the type who had worked his way up than who had been born privileged and entitled. It didn't endear John to him any. It made him more wary if anything, not quite sure what sort of man the tanned stranger was who would fight his way to the upper echelon and pick up blogger doctors off the street.
The man smiled, fingers entwined in his lap as he reclined. "I'm generally officed in Thessaloniki if that helps any," he said, smirking even more at the way John's eyes narrowed sharply. "I know the look," he explained, shifting in his seat. "We all pick up a few tricks from him here and there. Though I admit, as much intel as I have on you, you are still not at all what I pictured. Five-eight is a lot shorter in person than on paper."
John bristled, sitting up taller. "You know, in the service, short jokes stop around the time you swing a grown man over your shoulders and carry him off the battle field. You want to make me feel small, height comments aren't really the way to go about it."
"Tongue and cheek. I didn't get that so much from the e-mails. I can see why you two get along."
A sizzle ran down John's spine, sparking like a fuse at his neck. "E-mails?"
The stranger smiled. He reminded John of Moriarty in some strange way. A little smarmy, possessing a charismatic, practiced charm. They were both the sorts of people you would probably not mind to have in your sitting room until you realized who they were. The mental association made the mystery of the man all the more unnerving. John was rather done playing with spiders and parasites. Whatever this man was, he was unwelcomed.
"I have a matter of business I'd like to discuss with Sherlock," he said. "I can't contact him directly but I believe you will make an excellent conduit for communication in that absence." He laced fingers over a crossed knee, leaning forward. "Don't worry; I won't ask you to do anything that would pointless endanger you both. I guess you could say I'm an old friend of his."
"I've met old friends of his. They're all dicks. Just know that I set the pricing and 'old friend' automatically ups the bill by thirty percent."
The man laughed, his smile less practiced and more genuine. "I like you. I didn't think I would but I do."
"Well, that's good. I still don't have the slightest idea who you are." John's eyes narrowed, trying to imagine on what paths Sherlock and this man had crossed. He seemed the right age to have been a university 'friend' like good ole' Sebastian Wilkes. It wasn't the kind of guessing game he enjoyed, though. "How do you know Sherlock?" he asked, trying to keep from licking his lips expectantly and failing.
The stranger's pleased expression remained. "I don't, really. I suppose you'd say I was more a friend of James Sigerson." He leaned forward, hand extended to John in greeting. "Steven Church."
Hesitantly John shook his hand, the name not one he remembered but Sherlock's pseudonym ringing clear as a bell. "You knew Sherlock when he was undercover?" he asked.
"I'm his boss. Was his boss. It gets a bit technical, really." Church sat back with a sigh, settling in again with a squeak against the leather seating. "And as I said, I have a case for him."
John nodded, hearing him just fine but seeing him for the first time. Not the Government but the Firm. Now that made him feel small. John cleared his throat, fingers pulling slightly at the collar of his button down and tie. "Right... Right. Well, I can... listen to your proposal I guess. Still probably easier if you spoke to him yourself." He pursed his lips, eyes narrowed slightly in observation. "Or is there a reason why he wouldn't want to speak to you? He's never mentioned you, you know."
Church shrugged, eyes looking off towards the tinted windows and their view of a darker London. "Not surprising. Confidentiality is hardly his strong suit--nor yours; yes, I've read your blog--but neither were those the best of times. Brilliant man. Stunningly brilliant. And a fucking moron when you get down to it."
"Yeah, that's Sherlock." John resisted the urge to stipulate 'my Sherlock' though the past hour had instilled a slight possessive streak with assistants and friends that weren't him suddenly dropping into his life. He imagined he wouldn't mind Billie after a few weeks but this man... John was both intensely intrigued at the idea of meeting someone from that time in Sherlock's life and extremely wary.
"You know, I told him to give up on this. On ever coming home. Suicide mission. Should have known he'd manage. First Moriarty, then Moran. He's making my men look bad." Church smiled still. "England needs him much more than London does. You know that, John."
"Well, we've done cases vital to Queen and Country before. They're not a problem. What is it? Kidnapping? Blackmail?"
"Simple murder, I'm afraid, but still very much both yours and my own concern." Church hesitated a moment, eyes still flickering towards the landscape outside. "It's better if we discuss things in my office," he said at last.
John shared his glance, looking out at the Thames and Vauxhall bridge where their destination--large, new and slightly ominous--loomed over most of their visible skyline. John licked his lips nervously, finding his chosen attire hardly fitting for the occasion. Button down and tie were fine but the red wool sweater vest really didn't have that James Bond flair. He was beginning to understand perhaps a little more why Sherlock always insisted on wearing a suit.
He half expected a blindfold to be slid over his eyes once they exited the car. As with the handful of times he'd dropped in on Mycroft, though, having clearance enough to get inside the building seemed enough to afford one a quick look around. They didn't dally and John didn't fall behind. Every lift and door they passed through required Church's authorization to which John respectfully waited, eyes averted from most of the more interesting items to admire the simple, mostly abstract artwork on the walls. He tried to ignore the nervous twitch of his fingers as they walked past people who had the luxury to stare. It was like Baskerville all over again, only this time by invitation. John nodded but worried his lips over a smile, front teeth showing like a beaver the few times he deemed so much as a smirk to a desk attendant.
"Two coffees," Church ordered as he walked past the last administrative desk on their walk. "John; cream and sugar?"
"Black," he managed, nodding to the smartly dressed woman waiting on them as they breezed past into a large, windowed office. From there London looked bluer, the waters of the Thames half green under the tinted light. They were far from any penthouse view. As high up as John had thought the man before him was, there were still many more above him. It helped settle his nerves a bit to know he wasn't speaking to the head of national intelligence.
Church took a seat behind his desk and motioned for John to sit as well. The leather creaked, the furniture far from worn-in while the deep wood of the table shone with new polish. Their coffee was brought in without much delay, 'thank you's exchanged for proper porcelain cups. John let the dark liquid calm him completely, becoming much more at home in the very alien surroundings than he thought he could. He had very little to fear from his own government--or so he liked to entertain. When things pertained to Sherlock Holmes, it wasn't exactly an iron clad assumption. Mycroft's American friends had been kind enough to point that out. But he trusted Church thus far, nothing he'd said or done undermining that small and hard to obtain confidence. Truthfully, it might have been as much curiosity as anything. He wanted to know more with a rarely felt interest. Nothing quite got his attention like some previously unknown piece to Sherlock's life in all the times without him.
John sipped as Church pulled out files, knowing the drill well by now and waiting for the first of them to be passed his way. It turned out to be a red one, paperclips holding small clippings inside while the top tabs secured tight groups of pages. The label read "Moriarty, James" and felt colder than pressboard should in his hands.
"My first large assignment in the Firm was in trying to undermine and infiltrate Moriarty's syndicate. Spent years on it. A bit of an obsession, really. So when I heard the man had died, it was a bit of a professional blow."
John nodded, flipping through pages of investigative profiling, known aliases, connections, maps with locations and photos of sightings. Clippings from his trial were clinging to papers that seemed to outline the multiple break-ins. There was an autopsy report in the very back. John felt the air leave him in a gentle sigh, relief running through him with the very real proof of his death sitting in his hands. Mycroft had always said he was dead but never what happened to the body. There was closure in reading the weight of his internal organs. Some deaths couldn't be faked. He paused at the notes jotted in by the coroner. "Brain tumor?"
Church nodded. "Frontal lobe. They said it likely affected his understanding of reality."
That was a gross understatement of the man's psychosis. John could not spare the slightest bit of pity for the villain. "So Moriarty was a sick man in more than one way. Thanks and all but you said you had a case for Sherlock."
Church passed over another file, this one navy blue with much less pinned and tabbed inside. The label read "Moriarty, James". Even without opening it, he knew he wasn't going to like whatever was inside.
"Two brothers of the same name. One went on to be a Colonel; one chose to venture into crime. Sociopathy can run in families but by all accounts only the older brother exhibited the dangerous behavior that lead to his lifestyle. James Moriarty the younger was, by all accounts, a very accomplished solider who was recognized for his bravery and was honorably discharged back in 2007."
John listened as he opened the file. The photo was from his military ID, the face shown there resembling that of the madman John knew but by no more than one would expect from family. There was far less on the man that intrigued him in the file, the reason for leave described as "medical" on the discharge papers. "Wounded, was he?" John asked, searching for any death certificate among the pages.
"Diagnosed with a brain tumor," Church said quietly. "Frontal lobe."
John's heart stopped for a moment, sweat collecting against his palms. He stared up at Church whose schooled expression belayed nothing. "That sort of deductive leap doesn't require the help of Sherlock Holmes," John criticized, feeling anxiety prickling under his skin.
"No, I agree. The man who died on the roof of Saint Barts was assuredly James Moriarty the younger. This isn't new information. Sherlock knows this as well."
"He what?!"
Church put a hand up to stall John's surprise and anger. "Sherlock knows he dealt with the younger on the roof but there is no way to know whether or not it was ever anyone else you had dealings with or if it was the younger brother from the start." He leaned back in his chair, hands crossed in his lap. "Colonel Sebastian Moran was an army friend of the younger brother. His presence in the organization leaves us some clues. We can tell from the evidence that at some point the younger brother undertook cosmetic surgery to adopt his brother's face and identity. It could be the older brother was killed at some point and rather than let the syndicate crumble, the younger brother took up the call to crime. It's all speculation outside the fact that the older brother never resurfaced after the younger took his own life and left Moran in charge. By all accounts both Moriarty brothers are dead."
John took a deep breath, swallowing down the surge of emotions the news had resurrected from inside him. "So... you're saying it's likely that between his discharge and the time he met us, we were dealing with Colonel James Moriarty the whole time, that there weren't two Moriarty's running around, pulling a double act to get one over on us all."
"Yeah, something like that." Church leaned forward, fingers tapping against the top of a third pressboard folder--a green one. "A certain case has... lead us to consider other options, though. And it's a case I need you and Sherlock in on due to your... unique understanding of the situation.
John stared at the file, Church's palm obscuring the label as he kept his hand against it. "Is it him?" he found himself asking.
Church paused before exhaling evenly. "We don't know," he said. The green file slid across the desk with poignant hesitation, his fingertips not leaving till John's pulled it too far away.
McCarthy, James it read in a slightly comforting way. John opened it against his lap, feeling any comfort not so much as wash away as burn by the heat of his blood. The man could have been James Moriarty's twin. That face was forever engrained in his memory as the face of the devil and every dark thing that hid in the shadows and under children's beds.
"Uncanny, isn't it?" Church remarked.
"Impossible," John conceded. He flipped through the case file, nearly ripping a few of the pages. "So, what, there's three of them? The older brother's not really dead? What exactly are you trying to imply?"
Church sat back, quiet and calm, though the pinch of his brow said he was not unaffected by this final file's contents. "We don't know what it means or who he is. Could be an unfortunate likeness. Could be the older brother. Could mean he's partially guilty for everything that happened to you and Sherlock and the rest of London while they played their game and could be he retired from all that early on and is just your average ex-con. There's too much for it to possibly mean to say any one idea is more plausible than any other."
"Jesus." John closed the file, all three sitting in his lap like lead weights. His head hurt like a hangover with a cold, acidic taste on his tongue. "So you need Sherlock to...to check this guy out? Find out who and what he is?"
"In a sense." Church picked up his mostly forgotten coffee, sipping through a clenched jaw. "There's been a murder in Ross. James McCartney is a suspect in the murder of his father to which he claims he's innocent. There's nothing outwardly difficult about the investigation, nothing local authorities can't piece together eventually, but several factors I believe make this something that should be brought to Sherlock's attention."
John nodded, setting the files back on his desk. "Forget the murder. As soon as Sherlock hears Moriarty might be alive, he'll have us on the first train."
"No."
John stopped short, caught off guard by the stern tone in the other man's voice. "No? What do you mean no?"
Church took a shallow breath, his gaze intense but far from unforgiving. "I need this to be a blind study. We have no evidence against him except for Sherlock's expert opinion. I need Sherlock to come to the conclusion on his own. If he's biased, it could throw any possible case we could have against him out the window."
"He's going to take one look at--!"
"He'll never meet James McCarthy. He'll have his statement and that's all. The man will remain in custody and special attention will be made to remove any photos or likenesses."
"This is ridiculous! Have you any idea the potential danger he could be in if this Moriarty is our Moriarty?!"
Church nodded. He knew. It didn't matter.
John felt his blood pressure spike as he fisted his fingers against his thighs. "An open and shut murder is not going to get Sherlock Holmes on a train to Ross."
"Then I suppose you have your work cut out for you, Dr. Watson." Church said as collected his colored files, shifting them even against the desk. "You might be able to sleep at night knowing Sebastian Moran is behind bars waiting for trial, but even if the right Moriarty is dead and buried, what sort of horrors do you think may await you if James McCartney was his brother?"