The Hundred Year Wait (7 page)

“Thank you,
Daniels, you can go.” Mycroft gave his usual brief smile and took
the top box in his hands. A reasonably new smart phone was pictured
on the box and the one underneath matched apart from the colour.
One had a silver case, the other black. Without hesitating he put
the silver one back and pulled the other box towards himself.
Silver wasn't a colour he liked and he imagined it would suit
Amelia better than him anyway.

It took him
another half an hour to prepare both phones and get them registered
with the pre-paid cards. Before he put Amelia's back in the box he
added the number of his own under
tutor
and then put her
number into his under
student
. He hoped no one would find
her phone, but if they did it wouldn't be enough to link him to
her. If it was found, it would be her fault if they thought she was
in a relationship with a wealthy elder man. He knew, given the
nature of their communication and the messages he intended to send
her that it would be the most likely assumption others would leap
to, but any reputation loss would be her own making. She asked him
to teach her.

With nothing else
to do but wait for his assistant and team to report in, he loaded
the files he had on Amelia. The basic details had come in the
evening he'd requested them, like her age, her parents and all her
exam results, as well as her finances, spending habits and
political leanings.

Since then several
more files had arrived, including a description of each of her
novels. They'd been checked for code words already, which is how
he'd known about her upcoming release and its similarity to real
world events, but he now had a full synopsis for each. On top of
that he had every photo of her ever taken and put on a computer or
developed, every comment she'd ever posted in a forum or social
network, and every email, text or instant message she'd ever
sent.

Someone had
already been through the raw data files and copied relevant
conversation chunks and messages into sub categories, which ranged
from her political opinions to her relationships and sexual
interests and even her fears and dreams in life.

By the end of the
evening Mycroft had scanned through it all. He had raised his
eyebrows when he came across the photos of her modelling underwear,
taken on an old phone, when she was still a teenager. The phone had
been registered to her boyfriend at the time and the originals no
longer existed. As soon as he saw them he instructed the informant
to delete all copies and records of the photos from everywhere but
Mycroft's own files.

He knew this was
doing Amelia a service in helping her hide a skeleton in her closet
but he also knew it gave him more power over her. He now had the
only copies.

Since her first
few weeks at university she'd been significantly more careful,
probably due to the sexual assault she'd suffered on her fifth day.
She hadn't ever reported the incident but she'd mentioned it to an
internet friend on facebook. Given her reclusive personality, and
how she'd gone from almost constantly dating to being single until
she met her husband several years later, he was inclined to believe
the account.

For a twenty-nine
year old she'd lived through a varied amount of good and bad. She'd
grown up poor to begin with before her father's fortunes had
improved, so she wasn't spoilt. She had a younger brother but
didn't talk to him much and she'd travelled to a few countries but
nothing out of the ordinary. She'd always known she wanted to be a
writer, and pursued her career relentlessly, despite doing well in
the more academic subjects in school, especially maths.

Mycroft found her
lack of friends interesting. She'd already mentioned she didn't
enjoy the social side of her profession but she handled people well
and had been an extroverted individual until her husband had died.
Ever since then she'd withdrawn and kept to herself in the
apartment they'd bought together, although signs of her socialising
less had started to show in her years at Uni. He knew both would
come down to her own feelings of hurt. It would make her guarded
with her heart towards him and gave him more confidence to proceed
teaching her. It also made her request to learn more genuine and
increased it as the main motivation behind her pleasantness and
willingness to cooperate.

Now he had the
entire picture of her life, he was impressed with her. She'd
reacted well to bad situations and shown she could handle
emotionally stressful events without falling apart. And, despite
being an artistic person with a fairly typical creative
personality, she knew how to keep her emotions under control.
Something he thought very important.

All the
information he'd learnt would help him teach her as well as keep
their game on his terms. He probably knew her better now than she
did herself and he could be confident she wouldn't make a fuss when
he was done playing with her.

With a smile of
smug satisfaction Mycroft sat back and stared at the photos of her
playing in a looped slide-show in front of him. He stayed that way
for several minutes until he realised his team had still not
reported in concerning the terrorist attack. He glanced at the
clock on the wall. There was less than an hour of Friday left.
Something had gone wrong.

Saturday morning
flew past in a haze as Mycroft attended meeting after meeting with
official cabinet members and other government officials. All of
them wanted to know why the information was wrong and what was
going to be done about it. Ironically he'd have been more likely to
give them answers if they'd stopped their pointless discussions and
let him get back to work. Instead he had to text his brother and
get Sherlock to re-examine the intercepted message for him.

During what he
hoped would be his final meeting of the day, he received a message
from his informant on Amelia.

Brother sent text to
Miss Jones. She's just bought a train ticket to London and booked a
hotel room. I've emailed you all the details.

He frowned and put
his phone back in his pocket. The last thing he wanted was Amelia
Jones getting involved. It already looked as if she'd taken them
down the wrong direction and kept him from keeping the country
safe. He should never have trusted her suggestions.

As soon as the
meeting ended he opened the email from his informant and studied
it. To make matters worse she was staying in the same hotel. At
least he hadn't posted her letter and could get it to her while she
was in London, although he wasn't going to sneak it into her hotel
room again. If his brother had summoned Amelia then he could show
up while she was there and slip it into her bag. He could also pass
on the phone he wanted her to use to reply to him, assuming he
still wished to. At the moment, he considered cutting all ties with
her. He'd trusted her judgement and it remained to be proved wise
or foolish.

“Home, sir?”
Daniels asked.

“No. Baker
Street.” Mycroft sat back and tried to think of how he was going to
sort out the mess Amelia had created. At least he would be able to
point out she'd got it wrong. If he hadn't already written out the
next letter he'd have told her it was over. He'd never been so
furious, not even when Sherlock had been duped by that woman and
lost a file of government secrets. All the hours wasted listening
to people drone on had only made him angrier.

Mycroft wasn't
surprised when he noticed the now familiar perfume lingering in the
hallway. Both his brother and Amelia stared at him as he walked
into the flat's living area. The pair stood in almost the exact
same positions as they had the first time he'd discovered them
working together.

She gave him a
brief smile, but it vanished when he gave her his often used
sneer.

“I thought we'd be
seeing you soon, brother of mine,” Sherlock said, taking Mycroft's
focus away from Amelia and the corseted waistcoat she wore with
trousers and boots.

“People want
answers.” Mycroft moved his gaze back to Amelia and tried not to
think about the compromising pictures he'd got of her. “Nothing
happened on Friday and they want to know why my information was
wrong.”

We've looked at
the message several times,” she replied, motioning to the
whiteboard behind her. “We can't see any other sort of
pattern.”

“Which is why I am
here. We shall have to look again.” Mycroft walked past her and
stood in front of the letter. In truth he hadn't been able to think
of an alternative code yet but he wanted her to squirm for a while.
He knew his agents would have provided solid information so
something had gone wrong with this message and Amelia had put them
on this track.

“Run me through
each sentence.” Mycroft directed his comment at his brother but she
stepped up beside him and used the pen to point as she explained
each meme, one by one.

His mind reeled at
the amount of time she must have spent online to know what the
possibilities were, and he didn't even feel slightly bothered that
he recognised none of them. There was little point remembering such
random nonsense, especially so out of context.

Once she'd
finished he felt satisfied that the key to translating the message
must be entirely different. If it was the wrong day then it must be
something other than internet memes.

“What do you think
it might be instead?” She asked when he voiced this.

“I don't know yet,
but I'm sure between us we can find it.” He gave her another one of
his fake smiles and backed away motioning for Sherlock to follow
him.

“I don't
appreciate you involving her in this, brother of mine,” Mycroft
whispered.

“Nonsense, she's
proved useful and I'm sure you'll like her when you get to know
her.”

Mycroft raised his
eyebrows as his brother went back to staring at the letter.

After an hour of
trying to find another possible key, Amelia put down her pen and
shook her head.

“Is there anything
else you can tell us, Myron? Something more about the kind of
message we should be expecting. Sebastian mentioned you knew the
target was the Millennium Eye. Where did you get that information
from?”

Mycroft frowned
and kept silent but even Sherlock looked like he agreed with
her.

“Two of my agents
gave me several facts.” She handed him the pen, brushing her
fingers against the back of his hand. If she hadn't done a similar
gesture to Sherlock the first time he'd seen them together he'd
have thought she was trying to show interest in him.

He wrote down the
names of all the different planned projects and the location.

“Are you sure
you've got the right location?”

“Yes.” Mycroft
used the same tone of voice that he warned his brother not to argue
with.

“Could each
codename have a different location? So
clip
or
pin
would be the name for the attack on the Millennium Eye, but
lace
is somewhere different.” Amelia said, ignoring him.

Mycroft shook his
head, too angry to gather his thoughts into words. She'd misled
them, not his own agents.

“Amelia has a
point,” Sherlock said just as he opened his mouth to begin his
tirade at her. “Could it be worth looking at other locations?”

He saw her eyes
flick between the two of them. She'd picked up on the anger and
he'd noticed her own heart rate increase in response. Now she bit
her lip and waited for him to speak. At first he didn't respond,
choosing to study her instead. Until now she'd given no indication
that she was affected by his presence in the room. If for no other
reason than to keep his communications with her from being picked
up by Sherlock, he knew he needed to move the conversation
along.

“I have no more
information. If there are other locations I don't know where they
would be.”

“That can be
sorted out. If we assume the message is right and something
happened yesterday we can find out what and where. Whatever
happened it wasn't a big explosion.” Sherlock smiled and grabbed
his maps of London from a nearby shelf. Amelia moved to his side to
pore over them with him, leaving Mycroft to stand awkwardly off to
one side.

After watching the
two of them point out likely targets for a minute he grabbed his
phone and scrolled to the email with all his agent's statements and
read through everything again.

This time in the
reading he noticed that the female agent who'd gained information
on
clip
being a codeword had heard them mention the
Millennium Eye at the same time. Amelia's theory could well be
sound. He could have kicked himself for making such a bad
assumption and not sending both agents back into the field to find
out more. Instead of telling his brother and new student this, he
wrote an email to his assistant.

Potential evidence that
each codeword related to a different location. Have the agents
bought in and questioned and tap the usual informants for any
suspicious activity yesterday at other major locations. Have any
extra information forwarded to me immediately.

M

With that done he
joined his brother, still looking over a map with the underground
tunnels marked on it.

“We need to know
if anything suspicious happened yesterday somewhere else,” Mycroft
said in his brothers ear.

“It will cost
you.”

Mycroft rolled his
eyes. His brothers homeless network did well for money some days
and it was usually Mycroft's finances that took the hit. Regardless
of his own annoyance he handed a stack of notes to his brother
while Amelia only raised an eyebrow. Her lack of understanding made
him feel a little better. She can't have been to his brother's many
times if she'd not witnessed his crew of young homeless teenagers
who gathered him info.