Chapter Text
Chapter 9
“I just need to know one thing,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could. Mrs. Hudson was downstairs with Amelia, but I still didn’t want to risk waking her by raising my voice.
“Just one thing, Mary.”
Mary stood at the window, looking outside at the darkened Baker Street below. I hadn’t said a word until Sherlock answered the door 5 minutes previously. I didn’t waste any time getting to Sherlock—who clearly knew not only that Mary was hiding something, but also what that something was. At that particular moment, I wasn’t feeling particularly trusting toward my wife. I’d rather have Sherlock there to read Mary; make sure she was telling the truth. He sat in his usual chair and observed Mary just as intently as she was observing the street.
“Well go on then.” Mary said sharply. I could tell she was scared, but I also knew that she didn’t want me to know that. It was then that I realised we were in the same position we had been almost two years ago... nearly to the day. I had been ready to walk out the door and never look back. Christ, I’m glad I stayed. I felt a pang of guilt for my anger in the current situation. I still had my question, though, burning in my throat and mouth, ready to burst out and inflict pain. I took a breath, and chose to word my question differently:
“Mary, did you... did you know those men who shot at us?” I was glad to hear that my own voice did not come out with venom; it was still firm, but pleading instead of raging.
She didn’t look at me. In fact, she hardly moved at all. Her only reaction was to shut her eyes tightly. This was not the response I had been hoping for.
“Mary?” I pressed.
“It’s okay, Mary. You can tell us.” Sherlock’s surprisingly gentle voice interjected.
“Do you know those men?!” I repeated, practically begging for her to look at me and answer—to tell me ‘no she didn’t know them.’ But she said no such thing. Instead, she slowly turned to face us, eyes still closed. Then, after a moment that seemed to last hours, she opened her eyes, looking only at me. Tears fell freely down her cheeks and her voice shook as she finally answered:
“Yes,” She said simply, “They’re my brothers.”
I was too shocked to be angry. My mind reeled with this new information and with that one question answered, about a hundred more flooded my mind. It was my turn to close my eyes. I shut them tightly and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“I think it’s time we took a closer look at this.” I heard Sherlock say. Then I heard the clatter of something small and plastic landing upon the side table next to Sherlock’s chair.
When I opened my eyes and looked down, I saw the image that had haunted me for months until I finally tossed it in the fire that Christmas at Sherlock’s parents’ house. It was that silver flash drive with the letters A.G.R.A. scrawled across it in permanent ink.
“Where did you find that?” Mary asked him, her hands wrapped around her as though she was cold, though her face was flushed.
“One of the so-called-attorneys left this behind in his rush to leave the museum with his companion.”
“Okay...” I said, growing more confused by the second.
“I think things will become clearer if we take a look at the drive. Mary?”
I turned back to her and realised she was once again avoiding my gaze. Her cheeks were wet with fresh tears as she nodded slowly. Suddenly, any residual anger I had been feeling vanished. I crossed the room and grabbed her hand.
“Mary, we don’t have to do this. I meant every word I said before. Whatever you did, whoever you worked with before, none of it matters to me. It has nothing to do with who you are now.” I lifted her chin gently so she would meet my eyes.
“I thought so too,” she said hopelessly, “but apparently they do. They have everything to do with what I am now...because they’ll make sure I lose it all.”
“What?” I breathed.
“Allow me to explain a little,” Sherlock said, reminding me of his presence.
He had plugged the flash drive into his computer and was scrolling through a series of image files. He enlarged two of them. In the first, I recognised the alleged lawyers, the men I knew as Henry Winters and James Darkwood. I was shocked. Then I turned my attention to the second photograph and shock could not begin to explain how I felt. There was my wife, standing side by side with these terrifying-looking men, and she was dressed from head to toe all in black with weapons I hadn’t even heard of strapped to her. The men—her brothers, apparently—were dawning the same walking artillery.
“So they worked with you? Before?”
“Yes.” Mary had composed herself a little and was staring at the images on the screen with unmasked loathing. “My brothers, Archibald and Richmond were the ones who picked me up from the orphanage. I was ten at the time, they were only a little older than that. Still, they picked me up with two superior officers under the guise of adopting me into their little family. Apparently they were recruiting. They needed fresh blood.”
I swallowed hard, as though trying to consume this news orally because my mind couldn’t take it. When neither Sherlock or myself said anything, Mary continued.
“My whole life from then on was training and killing...and stealing. Richmond and Archie looked out for me as much as they could, but eventually, they separated us. Intelligence agents usually don’t usually work in groups, you see. We were sent off on our own missions and steadily, we lost touch. Years later, we ended up working for different countries and stumbled upon each other while on a mission. We were to obtain a disc and bring it back to our superiors.” She let out a little laugh, sad and reminiscent.
“We nearly killed each other before we recognised one another! It was so good to see them again. Being reunited sort of sparked a little bit of morality in us, because we decided we needed to know what was on that disk before we decided what to do next.” Here, Mary paused. She closed her eyes tightly again and drew a long, staggering breath before continuing.
“It was awful. Truly. There were weapons trade agreements, maps, plans of attack on innocent villages... Everything from nuclear bombs weaponised gases. Obviously, at that point we realised that we were about to start a Third World War with this little disc. We couldn’t go through with it, so we decided to destroy it, return to our head offices and claim we never found anything. That would have been the end of it.” Now Mary’s eyes grew dark, “But there was a fourth spy. Gretchen. She was in our group when we were younger and in training. The four of us spent most of our lives growing up together. She was like an older sister to all of us. When she showed up and caught us about to destroy the disc, she went absolutely mental. When we explained how dangerous the contents were, she seemed to understand, but she convinced us not to destroy it, but to hide it somewhere only the four of us would know about. I hate myself every single day that I think of how I should have just broken it to pieces right then and there!”
She was suddenly overcome with emotion. Instinctively, I grabbed her hand and put my other arm around her shoulders.
“But we agreed,” she sniffed, “we agreed that we would hide it. We decided a small village just outside of Greece would do. There were plenty of ruins and old pieces of architecture that had been abandoned and unused for centuries. We hid it there in the rubble. But... erm.” She paused and looked at me balefully, "It turns out some of those bits of rubble were actually worth something.”
“Oh yes...” Sherlock muttered, his eyes alight with realization, “It was on the news, John.” he explained to me. “Our very own National Gallery of London acquired a few artistic pieces a few months ago. They were meant to go on display this week.”
Mary simply nodded, not meeting either of our gazes. “I knew Gretchen was always power hungry. I knew that as soon as the disc was in close proximity, she’d try to take it. I-I... I didn't figure on her convincing Richmond and Archie to help her. They all think I’m dead.”
I stared at her. I knew she’d faked her death, and that she’d had a life before meeting me, but somehow learning that she had a family who must have mourned her passing made me queasy... reminding me of my own grief when I believed Sherlock to be dead. I had to snap myself out of my bitter reminiscing so I could keep up with Mary’s story.
“...so naturally, none of them came trying to recruit me” she was saying. “But I knew they’d go to the museum and try to retrieve that disc... So I broke in first, and I stole the bust. There was no way I’d be able to get the disc without smashing it, so I took it back to the house and smashed it open. To buy some time, I made a replica of the bust, and placed within it a blank disc—almost completely identical.”
My wife bit her bottom lip, which was quivering. It was unnerving to see her like this; Mary is not a particularly emotional person... but she was most certainly struggling to keep up her composure now.
Suddenly, she turned to me as angry tears spilled down her cheeks.
“John I am so sorry. GOD. I am so sorry.”
She turned fully into my embrace and cried in earnest.
“The question now, Mary,” Sherlock started, rising and replacing Mary’s post looking out the window, “is whether they know now that you’re alive...and that you have the disc.”
“I don’t think so.” Mary recovered herself and turned to face the detective.
“Well then, we’ll just have to tell them, won’t we?”
I gapped are him, “Excuse me...WHAT?”