The God of the Hive

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 facade 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 ? (? 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 ? (? 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 role 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

On 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,