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“There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.”
-- G. K. Chesterton
*
“It’s not entirely hopeless,” he’s saying, as if at any moment the skull is going to reply. “He’ll put it together sooner or later, it’s just a question of patience. One can’t expect miracles, after all.”
When John first heard him do it, not long after he was assigned this detail, he’d dropped into a cold sweat, cycling through a flurry of panicked explanations—the target had snuck an informant into the flat unnoticed, the target was going mad, the target knew his flat was bugged and was addressing John directly.
Now, after two weeks spent listening in on the target, John understands that talking out loud helps the target think. Sometimes he talks to the obliging landlady, sometimes to the harried police inspector who occasionally drops by for help on a case, and sometimes, yes, to the skull. It doesn’t seem to matter who’s listening, as long as the target has an audience.
John wonders what the target would do if he knew he always has an audience now—if he knew John sits in this secret little cupboard of a room day and night, his headphones an ever-present weight on the sides of his head, listening, always listening. He’s learned the smooth cadences of the target’s voice, the particular rhythm of the floorboards creaking as he paces—one, two, three, turn, one, two, three. John can even distinguish between the rustle his dressing gowns (the second-best is stiffer, heavier, must be rougher on the target’s skin).
It’s possible John is in need of a break, that nonstop surveillance has warped his sense of perspective a little. He should really call someone to come spell him for a little while, but he knows he won’t.
It’s not simply professionalism or dedication to his duty that prevent John from abandoning his post. He’s grateful for his job—there’s not much in the way of rewarding work for a soldier who can’t fight, and he’s glad he hasn’t had to return to civilian life, as he feared he would when he first came home from the front. He’s listened to all sorts of targets since he was recruited to Directorate—double-agents and dissidents, actors and artists, ordinary people suspected of smuggling contraband or forging ration coupons. But this man, his present target, is unlike any of them.
John doesn’t know why the target is under observation—it’s not John’s place to ask question—but it’s clear that he’s exceptional. From what John has heard over the past two weeks, he seems to be some kind of consulting private investigator, seeing clients in the sitting room of his little flat and often solving cases without ever getting out of his chair. He is highly intelligent—brilliant, really—and callous towards those unfortunate enough to be less clever than him. John listens, breathless, to his deductions—such seamless chains of logic, such elegant manipulation of the facts—and sometimes when the target reaches his conclusion, John has to stop himself from exclaiming aloud.
Beyond the target’s terrifying intellect, what John knows about him is fairly quotidian. He is an insomniac. He takes his tea with milk, no sugar, and chain-smokes ruthlessly. Sometimes he plays the violin—often just practice scales or ruthless sawing noise, but sometimes the most exquisite melodies. The target has few friends, save for his landlady, the police inspector, and a young woman from the pathology lab who occasionally brings him samples, nor does he have a lover, as far as John has seen, though on one occasion he did overhear what sounded like—well, John took off his headphones before he heard too much, though even with the headphones resting on the table, the noises coming across the transmitter made him blush.
The point is, the target is, quite simply, extraordinary, and John doesn’t want to miss a moment, not one single thing. He would gladly go without sleep if it means hearing the target’s stunned exhalation of breath when he has a breakthrough in a case.
John tries to maintain his objectivity—he’s an impartial observer, recording what happens without any bias and reporting back—but it’s difficult. He’s aware that his admiration for the target sometimes creeps into the reports he sends to Directorate, and he does his best to pare down the superlatives that wind up peppering his prose. The last thing he wants is for Directorate to think he’s beginning to fall in love with his target.
With this resolution in mind, e pulls out his notes for the day, sets his encoding device and prepares to transmit his report.
09:03 Landlady (Hudson, Martha, ident. #3986-02) brings up tea, target does not acknowledge
09:05 Landlady tidies target’s kitchen
09:23 Landlady returns downstairs
13:45 Target drinks tea, complains loudly about temperature of tea
16:37 Two (2) men arrive, identify themselves as Bellinger and Hope (request ident. # inquiry, auth. #5NF); discuss hiring target to investigate theft of documents from Hope’s home; target accepts case
17:55 Bellinger and Hope depart
18:05 Target makes tea
21:37 Target makes tea
John leaves out the detail of the target talking to his skull, though he is still doing so, even as John compiles his report.
“There must be a way to make him come to me,” the target mutters to himself, presumably considering some aspect of the case he took this afternoon. “Force his hand, yes, preferable to waiting.” John can hear the catch of a lighter, the slow drag of an inhale, so intimate on the recording John can almost smell the smoke. “Nothing for it, I’ll have to call in a favor. Distasteful, but it has to be done. I’ve waited long enough.”
John’s not quite sure why he leaves it out, as it’s still a matter of record on the tape. But, even so, it feels personal, somehow. If the target were anyone else, that monologue would be going on inside his head, where nobody would be able to hear it, and perhaps John, despite the fact that he’s recording the target’s every breath, feels some urge to respect the privacy of his inner thoughts.
After double-checking his report, John encodes it and sends it off before slipping his headphones off one at a time—left, then right—to massage his ears.
With a new case to consider, the target mostly likely won’t sleep tonight, which means that John probably won’t sleep, either. He stretches in anticipation of another long night, feeling his vertebra pop. The cord on his headphones is long enough that he can stand and stretch his legs, which he does now, careful to deaden the sound of his cane on the floor as he mimics the target’s stride—one, two, three, turn, one, two, three.
*
Instead of the junior agent bearing coffee he was expecting, John is faced with a handsome young woman in a smart black dress. She quirks an eyebrow at the rumpled state of his clothes and hands him an envelope. When he just stares at it, she gestures impatiently, and he opens it.
Report to Directorate, Flash Priority, it reads.
John stares at the message, then at the agent standing in the doorway.
“There’s a car waiting for you downstairs,” she informs him. “I’m to take over here in the meantime.”
John’s first reaction is reluctance, to leave his post—to leave the target. But an order is an order, and so he steps forward, only to be yanked back by the headphones still clapped over his ears. He staggers, manages not to fall, and turns around to detach himself from his recording equipment. The look she gives him as he slides past on the way out is one of bored antipathy.
In the car, he doesn’t bother asking any questions, as he knows none will be forthcoming anyway. He looks out the window and tries to imagine what he could possibly have done to warrant being called into Directorate. A light mist hangs in the early-morning streets, which are almost empty at this hour.
Directorate is three floors underground, beneath two levels of solid concrete. The story goes that these offices were bomb shelters once. John doesn’t trust much of what people say about the old days, but Directorate does have the look of a bunker—dim and utilitarian.
John is ushered down a long hallway into a room he’s never been in before, where a bored junior officer tells him to wait before departing. John sits the chair positioned in front of the desk and waits, closing and unclosing his hands atop his thighs.
He’s not sure how long he waits, as the cool, subterranean space precludes any natural means of measuring the passage of time. There is not, he notices, a clock anywhere in the room.
When at last the door opens again, John is simply relieved to know that the outside world still exists. A hawkish senior officer in a three-piece suit comes in, glances at John, and says, “You may sit.”
John, who’d snapped to his feet at his superior’s arrival, sits back down.
The man consults a file on his desk and says, “Tell me, how are you faring on your present assignment?”
John clears his throat, wishing now he’d gotten more than a few hours of sleep in the last few days. He’s never been called in to see someone so senior for something as routine as an assignment update. He thinks back to his report, to the previous day’s recordings, trying to glean some hint as to what this might be about. “Fine, sir.” John tries to relax. All he has to do is give his report. “There’s been . . . very little motion on the target’s part. He’s spent most of the past few days in the house, watching television or practicing his music.” He can feel himself falling into the familiar pattern of reporting someone else’s movements. “He took a case yesterday afternoon—some documents that went missing from a safe in a private residence in Whitehall Terrace. It sounds like a simple enough job for someone of the target’s—” He bites down on the subjective assessment, his jaw clenching.
“You seem to have quite a high opinion of the target,” his superior says.
John is silent for a moment, his hands tightening in his lap. “From what I’ve heard, sir, he seems . . . exceptional.”
His superior nods thoughtfully and makes a note on the file in front of him. “Do you consider yourself a loyal person?” he asks.
Saying even as little has he has suddenly seems like a mistake. He’s gotten too involved, they’re going to pull him off the detail— “Yes, of course,” he forces himself to say.
“Reliable?”
“Yes,” he grinds out.
His superior glances down his nose at the file in front on his desk. “And brave, certainly, for your service record.”
“I’m sorry,” John snaps, “but what does this have to do with anything?” John regrets saying it instantly. He’s known people blacklisted for less—their papers flagged, ration coupons stalled. He takes a deep breath.
The man across the desk from him smiles slowly—not a very reassuring expression. “I’m merely attempting to assess your suitability, John.”
“My suitability for—”
“I think I’ve heard enough,” says his superior curtly. “That will be all. You will be escorted back to your post.”
John grits his teeth as he lets himself out of the office. Another faceless junior officer is waiting to escort him down the same long corridor and back to the elevator. The sight of the weak morning sunlight when he steps outside is something of a relief.
As promised, another black car is waiting for him, and he gets in, too thrown by his strange encounter to do anything else. The city is properly awake now, and John notices people’s eyes following the car as they pass. It may be unmarked, but you learn to recognize Directorate vehicles when you see them.
This assignment, John thinks to himself, leaning back in his seat, just gets stranger and stranger. It’s one thing to be assigned to an eccentric target, but now to be pulled into Directorate for no apparent reason. And the officer’s line of questioning, completely nonsensical—
“Er, excuse me?” John says.
This isn’t the way to the target’s residence. In fact, they seem to be headed in the exact opposite direction.
“I think you’ve made a wrong turn,” John informs the driver on the other side of the tinted glass. In response, the locks on the doors click shut and John feels a spike of panic.
I’m merely attempting to assess your suitability, the man had said. What if—What if it’s been decided he can’t be trusted to maintain objectivity? He knows what happens to agents whose loyalties are compromised.
The car comes to a stop at a light, and John realizes with a cold twist in the pit of his stomach that this is no misunderstanding. They’re two blocks away from Directorate’s detention facility. No one who goes through those gates ever makes it back out.
There’s no time now to wonder what he did to deserve this sentence. He’s got—maybe—two minutes before they arrive, and he’s as good as dead.
He surreptitiously tries the door handle, but of course it’s no good, and there are no controls for the windows in the back. There’s nothing in the back of the car that will be any use to him—of course, they’ll have made sure there was no chance of escape.
John can feel his heart rate escalating, adrenaline flooding his system. Strangely enough, his left hand, normally unsteady even on the best of days, is perfectly still. He takes a deep breath. He can do this.
Sliding down in his seat, he braces himself against the backrest and unscrews the rubber pad at the end of his cane. With one sharp thrust, he shoves the metal foot of his cane against the glass partition.
The blow isn’t enough to shatter the glass, but it is enough to startle the driver, who swerves into the other lane and collides head-on with an oncoming car. John is thrown forward, striking his head on the back of the driver’s sear. He can hear the crunch of metal and the shriek of tires as other drivers on the road become entangled in the crash.
He grabs his cane and smashes the unprotected end against the glass a second time, and a third. On the fourth blow, it cracks, and another strike breaks the partition open, showering the back seat with glass. He can hear people shouting, horns blaring. In few minutes, there will be sirens, and then he’ll be out of time.
Once he’s knocked most of the broken glass out of the way, he hauls himself through the opening between the seats. The driver is slumped over the wheel, unconscious and bleeding from his head, but John just reaches past him and flicks the button for the door locks. They click open and John slithers back through the partition, feeling shards of glass tear at his shirt.
Throwing open the door, he tumbles out of the car and hits the pavement hard. The pedestrians who’ve gathered to rubberneck at the accident are staring at him with their jaws agape, but he just turns and pushes his way through the crowd, running for the nearest Tube station.
It’s not a good option, but he’d rather try to lose himself in the crush of rush hour commuters than take his chances topside, where the police will be responding to the accident any moment now.
He scrambles down the escalator and jumps the turnstile, sliding onto the platform just as a train arrives. Once the train pulls away from the station, he allows himself to slow down, ducking into an empty seat and doing his best to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. He turns up the collar of his jacket—drab green, standard issue, there must be half a dozen men wearing one just like it on this car alone. If it weren’t for the shards of glass glittering on his clothes, he might almost be mistaken for any other commuter trying to catch a few more minutes’ sleep on the way to work.
But John has no time to rest. He can’t ride the Tube forever. He needs a plan—he needs to get somewhere safe and figure out what he’s going to do. A broad, white-noise buzzing fills his ears and he struggles to stay focused.
At the next stop, the crowd on the train thins considerably. John is grateful to have a little more room to breathe, but sorry to lose the cover. He slouches further down in his seat and picks up a fallen newspaper to hide his face behind.
He stares blankly at the black-and-white pages without reading the words, trying to think where he might be able to go to ground for a few days. His flat is obviously out of the question, and it’s not like he can go to Harry for help—
Blinking, he focuses on the page in front of him. It’s the police beat, neat paragraph-long summaries of crimes, sanitized for public consumption.
Break-In at Secretary of State’s, reads the headline on the second blurb.
A break-in took place last night at Secretary of State Hope’s private residence in Whitehall Terrace. Police confirm that they are investigating the break-in, but would not comment on whether anything had been stolen. “We currently have our best man on the job,” said a government spokesperson.
It can’t be a coincidence. The man John is assigned to surveil takes a case involving the theft of sensitive documents from the home of a man who just so happens to be a highly-placed government official. But what is Directorate’s interest, and why was John called in for questioning simply for overhearing them discuss the case?
If nothing else, one thing is clear: the target is the only person who might be able to help John out of this mess. Unfortunately, John will have to get past Directorate to speak to him—if they don’t have him already.
The train stops again, and John realizes the car is nearly empty. Rush hour must be ending. He’s going to need to switch trains soon, find someplace to hide out for a while and get cleaned up.
Someone sits down next to him—as if there weren’t dozens of open seats—and he slouches down even further in his seat, wishing he had a hat or a scarf or something to hide his face. He really needs to get off this train.
“Get off at the next stop and head toward the south exit. You’ll see a storage cupboard. The door will be unlocked. He’ll be waiting for you there.”
It takes John a moment to realize that the woman sitting next to him is speaking to him. “What—?”
But the woman is already getting to her feet and moving toward the other end of the car. He resists the urge to stare after her, but only barely.
John experiences—not for the first time this morning—an intense feeling of unreality. He’s not sure if it’s shock from the collision or the swift destruction of his entire position in life, but he’s reeling, unmoored. He can feel himself tumbling toward some unknowable destination, but he can’t seem to stop his forward momentum. Some part of him—he thinks of the yearning strains of the target’s violin, of the ceaseless fluctuation of his sultry voice—is might actually be anticipating what he’ll find at the other end.
When the train reaches the next stop, he doesn’t think twice before following the directions the young woman gave him. At worst, she’s a Directorate pawn and he’ll wind up right back where he started. At best—well, he isn’t sure, but he wants to find out.
Near the south exit, there is indeed a door marked ‘Storage’, and it swings open when he pushes on it, revealing not the broom cupboard John is expecting but rather a steep set of stairs. He descends into a dim room that gives onto a network of narrow tunnels. Standing in the pool of light emanating from the single, bare bulb is the man John has only ever thought of as “the target”, though, considering that he’s pretty definitively broken ties with Directorate today, it’s probably about time he stops thinking of the man as his assignment.
“Mr. Holmes,” he says.
“Sherlock, please,” says that familiar voice.
John nods, trying the name on. “Sherlock.” It’s a nice name, John rather likes it. But there’ll be time for that later—or, at least, John hopes there will. “Listen, I think you’re in danger. Directorate knows about your case—”
“Case?” Sherlock repeats, taken aback.
“The—documents,” John clarifies, wondering if perhaps he hit his head harder than he realized in the collision. “Bellinger and Hope?”
“Oh, I solved that already,” Sherlock says with a wave of his hand.
“You—what?”
“Hours ago,” Sherlock confirms. “It was Hope’s wife, she was being blackmailed. The documents are already back in Hope’s safe.”
John feels something cold spreading in his chest. “You mean—”
Sherlock frowns. “I should have thought that was obvious.”
“It wasn’t obvious to me,” John snaps, feeling, somehow, like a fool.
“John,” Sherlock says, impatiently, “this is about so much more than some stolen government documents.”
“Directorate tried to have me detained today just for having heard about that case.”
“Actually,” Sherlock says, with what John thinks hysterically is an expression of chagrin, “that’s not exactly true.”
“I had to crash a car to escape,” John points out.
That handsome face contorts uncomfortably. “As a matter of fact, you didn’t.”
“. . . What.”
“It’s just possible that you came to a bit of a wrong conclusion about the outcome of your meeting today. Although I have to say, you acquitted yourself admirably in the chase. Quick thinking, breaking the partition. I even had a moment’s trouble finding you.”
“You mean . . .” John shakes his head. “No, sorry, what do you mean?”
Sherlock blows out an impatient breath. “I’ve been waiting for you to work it out for ages, John, but I suppose I might as well explain.”
“Wait, weeks— You mean you—knew—?”
“About the surveillance detail? Of course I knew. You were hardly subtle about it, John. I thought you’d realize I knew once I started talking to the skull—I was practically courting you, I don’t know how much more obvious I could have been—“
John feels as though something has been short-wired in his skull. He tries to interject, to ask what the hell Sherlock is talking about, but he can’t seem to make his tongue work.
“So, I finally gave up and decided to call in a favor with my brother Mycroft. He’s a nuisance and a despise him, but he agreed to use his Directorate resources to vet you for my next assignment.”
“Your brother. That was—your brother?”
“Obviously.”
Actually, now that John thinks back, he can see the family resemblance—same hawkish profile, same supercilious manner. He has the intense urge to start laughing. “So this was all . . .”
“Well, not intentionally, no,” Sherlock says. “Though, as I said, you were . . . not bad.”
John does laugh, just a tight little sound wrung out of his throat. “Not bad, right.”
“Quite impressive, actually,” Sherlock admits.
“So what is this about, then?”
Sherlock’s mercury-blue eyes narrow, the excitement unmistakable on his face. “Do you really want to know?”
John grins. As if Sherlock really has to ask.