‘Tea would be excellent,’ Mycroft said, placing himself on a chair that looked entirely unsuited to take his weight. ‘Breakfast would be ideal.’
‘I thought you’d already had breakfast with your solicitor,’ Sherlock pointed out.
Mycroft gazed solemnly at him. ‘If a law has been passed forbidding the consumption of more than one breakfast during the course of a morning then I am entirely unaware of it,’ he said. ‘In point of fact, my previous breakfast hardly qualifies for the term. The toast was damp, the bacon limp and the black pudding too crisp. The marmalade I will not even mention. I absent myself from the Diogenes for one day and the place starts falling apart. All that meal did was make me hungry for a real breakfast, which I trust is available here.’
Crowe signalled to the waiter to bring another plate of breakfast and a pot of tea. Mycroft followed his gaze and stared at the waiter for a moment. ‘Norway?’ he asked Crowe.
‘Finland,’ Crowe answered.
‘Yes, of course.’ Mycroft shook his head. ‘My short time in custody has thrown my logical skills somewhat out of balance.’
Crowe caught Sherlock’s eye. ‘Ah know ah said ah didn’t know anything about him,’ he said, ‘but that was also a lie. His family are from Finland – you can tell by the haircut.’
‘Why lie again?’ Sherlock protested.
‘It’s a strange fact in life,’ Crowe said, ‘that if an Englishman catches another man out in a lie, or even two or three lies, he assumes that the man will then tell him the truth. Something to do with a misplaced sense of British fair play, ah suspect. In reality, if a man has lied once then he is likely to lie repeatedly and often.’
Mycroft turned his gaze towards Sherlock. ‘I understand there was some… unpleasantness,’ he said. ‘Something to do with a bird of prey. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. What about you?’
Mycroft shrugged. ‘At least I can now say that I have seen how the other half lives, although I do not feel edified by the experience. My solicitor expects to have the charges withdrawn by this afternoon.’
‘Any idea why you were targeted in the first place?’ Crowe asked.
‘There are relatively few possibilities,’ Mycroft replied. ‘It is possible that someone was taking their revenge upon me for something, but I cannot think who or what. A more likely possibility is that someone wanted me distracted from events that were about to occur, or from something that was going to cross my desk and upon which I might have initiated action.’ He glanced across at Sherlock. ‘You will be aware that I work for the Foreign Office. The Government has many specialists in various fields, but I consider myself a generalist. Facts and speculations of all kinds cross my desk, and I look for patterns – for connections between apparently separate things. On such connections foreign policy is frequently made.’
‘Anything in particular strike you?’ Crowe asked.
‘I really should not discuss Government business outside the Whitehall enclave,’ Mycroft murmured. ‘Ah, here is my breakfast.’
The waiter placed the plate in front of him and whipped the metal cover off. Mycroft’s face broke into a smile as he regarded the array of food. ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘A perfect arrangement, perfectly prepared. My compliments to the chef.’ As the waiter moved away, he continued: ‘Yes, as I was saying, I really should not be discussing Government business outside Whitehall, especially with a man whose allegiances are to another nation entirely, but I believe, based on my long acquaintance with you, that you can be trusted to keep a secret, Mr Crowe.’ He speared a mushroom with his fork and bit into it. ‘Ah, perfect.’ He closed his eyes and chewed. ‘Yes,’ he said, opening them again, ‘where was I? There are several international incidents which may pertain to this issue at the moment, but the one I believe has the highest likelihood concerns the recent sale of a large piece of land to your own country, Mr Crowe.’
Crowe raised an eyebrow. ‘Not caught up with that particular news item, Mr Holmes.’
‘I am not surprised: it did not make for many headlines. Let me summarize: sometime last year, a vast expanse of land was sold to the American government for the sum of seven million, two hundred thousand dollars, to be paid in gold. Strange how “expanse” and “expense” are only one letter apart. The tract was so large, I have worked out, that the price comes to about two cents an acre, which seems like something of a bargain to me. The land itself lies in the northwest of the North American continent, bordered by Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south.’
‘Who owned the land previously?’ Sherlock asked.
‘A very pertinent question. Russia, whose Empire is located just across the Bering Strait – which is what that part of the Pacific Ocean is called – was the previous owner, although there were and are a number of indigenous tribes.’
‘What is this place called?’
‘The Russians called it Alyeska,’ Mycroft replied, ‘but the American government have apparently settled on the Department of Alaska as a name.’
‘So we’ve got a land sale,’ Crowe said. ‘Happens in America all the time. Ah own quite a parcel of land myself in Albuquerque, which some acquaintances are managing for me while ah’m away. What’s the big deal?’
Mycroft sighed. ‘The “big deal”, as you call it, is that the sale may not have been entirely legitimate.’
There was silence around the table for a few moments as the other two took in the importance of what Mycroft had just said.
‘How can that be?’ Sherlock asked eventually. ‘Surely the Russian and American governments have legal advisors who check over the details in the contracts?’
‘It’s not so much the validity of the contract, more that no payment has yet been made, which renders the actual sale legally dubious.’
‘The question,’ Crowe said thoughtfully, ‘would be – does anybody else want Alaska? If not, the point is moot, and the Russians will just have to whistle for their money.’
Mycroft transferred a piece of black pudding on a fragment of fried bread into his mouth. For a minute or so he ate contentedly in silence, with a blissful smile on his face.
‘This is where it all becomes rather sensitive, and rather personal,’ he said eventually. ‘I have, for some time, had a “man” in Moscow. I say that he is my man because although his salary and expenses are paid for by the Foreign Office, he reports directly to me and to nobody else.’
‘I presume that you mean he’s there pretending to be one thing while actually doing something else?’ Crowe asked.
‘He is there as a journalist, and rather a good one, but in addition he provides me with intelligence on what the Tsar and his court are up to.’ Mycroft sighed, and pushed his plate away. ‘Going through my recent communications this morning – the ones that came in while I have been indisposed at Bow Street Police Station – I found two pertaining to this man. The first was from him, telling me that he had solid information that the Spanish Ambassador to the Court of Tsar Alexander II had made a counter-offer in excess of ten million US dollars for Alaska, to be paid immediately – in gold – on signature of a treaty. The second communication was from one of the British diplomatic staff in Moscow. They informed me that my man, my agent, had disappeared.’ He lifted his teacup to his lips, then lowered it again. ‘The Tsar has a secret police force as well as his normal police force. They are known as the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery – not a very catchy title, as titles go, but very Russian. The man in charge is Count Pyotr Andreyevich Shuvalov. I met him in France, a few years back. We got on well. No matter – Department One of the Third Section deals with political crimes, Department Three with foreigners. I very much suspect that my man has fallen foul of one of those Departments and has been taken in the night.’
‘Tsar,’ Sherlock said to break the ensuing silence. ‘Is that like a king or emperor?’
‘In a sense,’ Mycroft responded, heaving himself out of his own dark thoughts. ‘Although it is, in another sense, untranslatable. It derives, oddly, from the Latin “Caesar”.’ He shook his head. ‘The Russians are strangely formal when it comes to titles and so forth, even more so than we are in England. The most recent diplomatic correspondence I have seen from the Tsar’s court started off, as I recall -’ he closed his eyes ‘- “We, Alexander the Second, by the grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Chersonesos, Tsar of Georgia, Lord of Pskov, and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, and Finland, Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalia, Samogitia, Belostok, Karelia, Tver, Yugra, Perm, Vyatka, Bulgaria and other territories; Lord and Grand Duke of Nizhni Novgorod, Sovereign of Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Beloozero, Udoria,
