A week passed and I went back to work. I could tell Lestrade was still curious about what was going on with Sherlock and what had happened at Irene Adler's house. One morning I was off work and I got a call from Mrs. Hudson asking me to help her grocery shopping since she was shopping for Sherlock and John too. I met her at the store and when I got back to Baker Street I walked up the stairs to the flat, bags in hand.
"Morning." I said, putting the bags in the kitchen.
I turned my head to the living room. I saw Sherlock sitting where clients usually sit, John was at his desk, and Irene Adler was sitting in Sherlock's black chair.
"Ah just who I was hoping would show up, hello Sergeant Gregson." Irene said.
"Miss Adler." I nodded, while placing all the bags on the counter.
"Where's my camera-phone?" Irene asked.
"It's not here. We're not stupid." John said.
"Then what have you done with it? If they've guessed you've got it, they'll be watching you." Irene said.
"If they've been watching me, they'll know that I took a safety deposit box at a bank on the Strand." Sherlock lied.
"I need it." Irene said as I took a seat in John's chair.
"Molly Hooper, she could collect it, and take it to Barts. Then one of your homeless network could bring it here, leave it in the cafe and one of the boys downstairs could bring it up the back." John offered.
"Very good, John, excellent plan, full of intelligent precautions." Sherlock said.
"Thank you, so why don't I phone..." John began but let out an annoyed sigh when Sherlock pulled the camera phone out of his pocket.
"So, what do you keep on here? In general, I mean?" Sherlock asked Irene.
"Pictures, information, anything I might find useful." Irene said.
"For blackmail?" I asked.
"For protection." She said and I rolled my eyes. "I make my way in the world, I misbehave. I like to know people will be on my side exactly when I need them to be."
"So how do you acquire this information?" Sherlock asked her.
"I told you, I misbehave." Irene said.
"But you've acquired something more danger than protection. Do you know what it is?" I asked Irene.
"Yes. But I don't understand it." Irene said.
"Show me." Sherlock said. She stuck out her hand for the phone.
"The passcode." Sherlock said, refusing to give it to her. She extended her hand further, Sherlock gave in and placed the phone in her hand. She smiled and typed the passcode in, beeping loudly when it was incorrect.
"It's not working." Irene said, confused.
"No, because it's a duplicate which I had made into which you've just entered the numbers 1058." Sherlock said, taking the phone out of her hand. "I assumed you'd chose something more specific than that but thanks anyway."
Sherlock walked towards me, sticking his hand out for me to take it. I did, confused, and he pulled me effortlessly to my feet. He then stuck his hand under the seat cushion of John's chair and retrieved the real camera phone. He placed a kiss on my cheek as he ushered me back into my chair.
He typed 1058 into the real camera phone but it still said it was incorrect.
"I told you that camera phone was my life. I know when it's in my hand." Irene said.
"Oh, you're rather good." Sherlock complemented her.
"You're not so bad." She returned.
"Hamish." John suddenly said, to fill the awkward silence in the room while Irene and Sherlock were having a stare down. "John Hamish Watson, just if you were looking for baby names."
I laughed as John sat back in his seat.
"There was a man, an MOD official and I knew what he liked. One of the things he liked was showing off. He told me this email was going to save the world. He didn't know it, but I photographed it. He was a bit tied up at the time." Irene said. I shared a look with John. Irene handed the phone to Sherlock so he could read the email.
"It's a bit small on that screen, can you read it?" Irene asked.
"Yes." sherlock answered.
"Code, obviously." Irene said again. "I had one of the best cryptographers in the country take a look at it, though he was mostly upside-down, as I recall. Couldn't figure it out."
I stood from my chair and moved so I was standing next to John at his desk. I placed my hand on it and stared at Sherlock who was now sitting across from me.
"What can you do, Mr. Holmes?" Irene asked.
"There's a margin for error, but I'm pretty sure there's a 747 leaving Heathrow tomorrow at 6:30 in the evening for Baltimore. Apparently it's going to save the world, I'm not sure how that could be true, but give me a moment, I've only been on the case for eight seconds." Sherlock said, everyone staring at him. Was he trying to show off?
"Oh come on, it's not code. These are seat allocations on a passenger jet. Look! There's no letter I because it can be mistaken for a one. No letters past K, the width of the plane is the limit. The numbers always appear randomly and not in sequence, but the letters have little runs of sequence all over the place. Families and couples sitting together. Only a jumbo is wide enough to need a letter K or rows past 55, which is why there's always an upstairs. There's a row 13 which eliminated the more superstitious airlines. Then there's the style of the flight number, 007, that eliminates a few more. And assuming the British point of origin, which would be logical, considering the original source of the information and assuming from the increased pressure on you lately that the crisis is imminent, the only flight that matches all the criteria and departs within the week is the 6:30 to Baltimore tomorrow evening from Heathrow airport." Sherlock said with record speed. He turned and handed the phone back to Irene.
"Please don't feel obliged to tell me that was remarkable or amazing. John's expressed that thought in every possible variant available to the English language." Sherlock said.
"I would have you right here, on this desk, until you begged for mercy twice." Irene said to Sherlock, causing John to nearly choke on his tea.
"John, please could you check those flight schedules to see if I'm right?" Sherlock said.
"Yeah, I'm on it, yeah." John said awkwardly.
"I've never begged in my life." Sherlock said.
"I beg to differ." I said with a smirk, John turned to me, eyes wide, before returning back to the computer. Irene bit her lip and turned to me, looking me up and down. I raised an eyebrow to her.
"Uh, you're right, flight double-O seven." John said.
"What did you say?" Sherlock asked again.
"You're right." John repeated.
"No, no, after that, what did you say after that?" Sherlock said.
"007. Flight 007." John repeated. Sherlock frantically began trying to remember where he had heard that before. The thought popped into my head. Bond Air is go. Mycroft was on the phone here weeks ago and said, Bond Air is go, check with the coventry lot. James Bond was MI6 agent 007.
Sherlock kept repeating 007 and mumbling as he walked into the hallway, I followed him, leaving John and Irene in the living room.
"Bond Air is go." I said to him, once I was in the hallway. Sherlock turned to me, eyes wide.
"That's it, quickly, tell me, where have I heard that." Sherlock said, unknowingly pushing you against the wall.
"Mycroft, right here, he was on the phone and he said' Bond Air is go, that's decided. Check with the coventry lot.'" I told him.
"Yes, that's it!" Sherlock said, kissing me. "God, I love you." He said casually, my eye's grew wide and my mouth fell open as Sherlock walked back into the living room. He had never said those words before. He'd said variations, which were all great, but he'd never said those three words.
Sherlock was now sitting in his chair, in his mind palace, stroking his violin. A few hours had passed. John and I left to grab some food, leaving Sherlock in his mind palace. When Sherlock goes into his mind palace, it's best to just leave. He doesn't speak, he doesn't move, he hardly breathes. So when he opened his eyes and said the word "Coventry", he was surprised to see Irene Adler sitting in front of him and not myself.
"I've never been." Irene answered, sitting opposite of him in John's chair. "Is it nice?"
"Where's John and Adelaide?" He asked confused.
"They went out, a couple of hours ago." She answered.
"I was just talking to them." He said.
"They said you do that." Irene said.
"What's Coventry got to do with anything?" She asked.
"It's a story. Probable not true. In the Second World War the Allies knew that Coventry was going to get bombed because they'd broken the German code but they didn't want the Germans to know that they'd broken the code so they let it happen anyway." Sherlock explained.
"Have you ever had anyone?" She asked.
"I'm sorry?" Sherlock asked, confused.
"And when I say had, I'm being indelicate." She said again.
"I don't understand." Sherlock said.
"I'll be delicate, then. Let's have dinner." She said as she moved to kneel in front of him, placing her hand over his.
"Why?" He asked.
"You might be hungry." She said.
"I'm not." He said.
"Good." Irene smiled.
"Why would I want to have dinner if I wasn't hungry?" Sherlock asked, shifting his hand so he was holding her wrist, little did she know, he was taking her pulse.
"If it was the end of the world, if this was the very last night, would you have dinner with me?" She asked.
"Sherlock?" Mrs. Hudson called from down the stairs.
"Too late." Irene said, moving back.
"That's not the end of the world, that's Mrs. Hudson." Sherlock said.
"Sherlock, this man was at the door. Is the bell still not working? He shot it." Mrs. Hudson told the same man that came to take him away to Buckingham Palace a few weeks ago.
"Have you come to take me away again?" Sherlock asked.
"Yes, Mr. Holmes." The secret service man told him.
"Well, I decline." Sherlock said.
"I don't think you do." He said, handing Sherlock as plane ticket for flight 007.
After a quick bite with John, I went back to my flat to change into a dress before going to find Mycroft, hoping he was at his office. I didn't trust this Irene Adler woman and I didn't like the thought of her knowing this top secret information. She was mildly intelligent, but not intelligent enough to be working on her own. I was afraid of a partnership with someone bad, possibly even James Moriarty.
I found Mycroft in his office, with his head in his hands.
"Adelaide?" He asked, when he noticed I entered the room.
"Irene Adler is back. She'd stolen an email from some MOD man who hired her. It was seat allocations for flight 007. 'Bond Air'?" I asked him.
Mycroft only sighed and slid his phone across the table to me. On the screen was a text from James Moriarty. It read- JUMBO JET. DEAR ME, MR. HOLMES, DEAR ME. I shook my head in disbelief. I was right, Irene Adler had given the information Sherlock so willingly gave her to James Moriarty.
"Will you come with me?" Mycroft asked. I nodded. Together we got in a car that took us to Heathrow airport. When we were in the car, he told me the same Coventry story that unbeknownst to me, Sherlock had also told Irene.
When we arrived at the airport the car was driven right to the back where Mycroft and I stepped onto Flight 007. Inside, the lights were off, but the flight was completely full. I bent down to look at one person, and stumbled back slightly when I discovered they were all dead. A few minutes passed and I heard one of the dividers slide open. I followed Mycroft out to the sound.
"The Coventry conundrum. What do you think of my solution? The flight of the dead." Mycroft asked Sherlock, making him jump a bit when he stepped out. I stepped out next to him in the wide aisle. Sherlock gave me a confused look, I only looked away.
"Plane blows up mid air, mission accomplished for the terrorists, hundreds of casualties but nobody dies." Sherlock said.
"Neat, don't you think?" Mycroft asked."You two have been stumbling around the fringes of this one for ages. Or were you too bored to notice the pattern. We ran a similar project with the Germans a while back, though I believe one of our passengers didn't make the flight."
I remembered that case. We found a body in the trunk of a car that was technically already checked on the plane, a plane which had already crashed a day before, thousands of miles away.
"But that's the deceased for you, late, in every sense of the word." Mycroft said.
"How's the plane going to fly. Oh, of course, unmanned aircraft, hardly new." Sherlock said.
"It doesn't fly. It will never fly." I said, disappointedly. Sherlock looked to me confused.
"This entire project is cancelled. The terrorist cells have been informed that we know about the bomb. We can't fool them now. We've lost everything." Mycroft explained.
"Were you in on this too?" Sherlock asked me.
"No, you idiot, she was trying to do the right thing. One fragment of one email and months and years of planning, finished." Mycroft said.
"Your MOD man." Sherlock said, nodding.
"That's all it takes. One lonely, naive man, desperate to show off, and a woman clever enough to make him feel special." Mycroft said, Sherlock assumed he was talking about the MOD man.
"You should screen your defence people more carefully." Sherlock said, casually.
"I'm not talking about the MOD man, Sherlock! I'm talking about you!" Mycroft yelled. "A damsel in distress. In the end, are you really so obvious? Because this was textbook. The promise of love, the pain of loss, the joy of redemption. Then give him a puzzle and watch him dance."
"Don't be absurd!" Sherlock shot back.
"Absurd? How quickly did you decipher that email for her? Was it the full minute? Or were you really eager to impress?" Mycroft asked.
"I'd say it was less than five seconds." Irene Adler said, now appearing behind Sherlock.
"I drove you into her path. I'm sorry. I didn't know." Mycroft said.
"Mr. Holmes, I think we need to talk." Irene said.
"So do I. There are a number of aspects I'm still not quite clear on." Sherlock said.
"Not you, junior, you're done now." Irene said, walking past Sherlock. I began walking towards Sherlock, passing Irene in the middle of the aisle, giving her my best death stare.
"There's more, loads more. On this phone I've got secrets and pictures and scandals that could topple your whole world. You have no idea how much havoc I can cause and exactly one way to stop me. Unless you want to tell your masters that your biggest security leak is your own little brother." Irene said, and I saw fear flash across Mycroft's eye.
"What are you doing here?" Sherlock asked me, now standing in front of him.
"I tried to do the right thing, but I was too late. She was using you. When she'd gotten what she wanted, she gave the information to James Moriarty." I said, looking down to the floor.