The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [108]
“I have, then, a limited number of options. Considering the gravity of this particular case, I feel I should be justified in removing you from the firing line as I did Watson, until I can clear it up. No, do not inter-rupt. Much to my displeasure, I find I cannot bring myself to attempt that. For one thing, the logistics of keeping you under control are too daunting.
“It has been on my mind since Wales that an apprentice kept from her journeyman’s papers will spoil. Faced with this, what for lack of a better term I shall call a case, I have two choices: I can maintain your ‘apprenticeship’ (as you yourself called it), or I can grant you your Mastery. Having never been one for half-measures, I see no point in delaying the inevitable.Therefore ...” He stopped, took his pipe from his mouth, looked into the bowl, put it back into his mouth, reached for the pouch in his pocket, and I very nearly screamed at him with the tension of being torn between “Thank God, here it comes, at last!” and “Oh, God, here it comes, he’s sending me away.”
He opened the tobacco pouch and dug from it a small, much-folded scrap of onionskin, dropped it in front of me, went to the ash-tray clipped to the table, and began to scrape the dottle from his pipe while I unfolded the paper. On it, in five lines of minute, cramped, an-tique, and graphologically cryptic script, were written:
Egypt—Alexandria—Sayeed Abu Bahadr Greece—Thessaloníki—Thomas Catalepo Italy—Ravenna—Fr. Domenico Palestine—Jaffa—Ali & Mahmoud Hazr Morocco—Rabat—Peter Thomas
Each of the personal names was followed by a series of numbers that looked like a radio frequency. I looked up, but Holmes was at the window again, his unrevealing back to me.
“I have said before this time that I regard it as stupidity rather than courage to overlook a danger that presses as close as this one has. Even my critics will not accuse me of stupidity, else I should not have reached my present age after a lifetime of the rough-and-tumble. I re-member vividly, as if it were last week rather than two and a half de-cades ago, sitting in Watson’s chair and admitting to him that London was too hot for my safety.The current state of affairs is ...remarkably similar.
“The admission then caused me some shame. But, that was half a lifetime ago, and since then I have learnt, slowly, and painfully, that time and distance can prove a powerful weapon. It is not one that comes naturally to my hand, I admit. I much prefer direct attack, com-plete immersion, and a quick finish. However, there is much to be said for the occasional, judicious, prodigious expenditure of time.”
“What sort of time are you thinking of here, Holmes?” I asked war-ily. His most famous hiatus had lasted three years; that would certainly drive a cart and horses through my University degree.
“Not terribly long. Enough to instill doubts in our opponent—Was she wrong after all? Did I just choose to vanish? Where on earth am I?—and to allow Mycroft and the elephantine Scotland Yard to sweep up the data and begin to sift it over. By the time we return” (we! I snatched at) “the momentum will have been taken from her. She will be furious, and careless, with the knowledge that we have removed ourselves from her rules, that we have opted out of the traditional and expected program of threat, challenge, response, and counterattack.
“For better or for worse, you are in this case.” My brief surge of tri-umph was quickly submerged in a backwash of conflicting questions and feelings: Was he fleeing because he was saddled with me? And what on earth did he have in mind? Tibet? “What is more, you are in it as, God help us, my partner, or as near to such a creature as I am ever likely to see. Given the circumstances, I have no choice: I have to trust you.”
I could think of no sensible response to this, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“What