Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

I tried my best not to show my surprise. Bruce-Partington! The construction plans for the submarine were top secret. Obviously Mycroft had got wind of the matter and told his brother all about it. But, in any case, it was out of the question to buy the submarines in Sweden.

“We’ll go about it differently,” I said. “We will buy Nordenfelt.”

“We?”

“Vickers in Sheffield. Talk to your brother Mycroft about it. Convince him. I have already spoken to Tom Vickers. He thinks it’s a great idea. And while you negotiate with the politicians, I will keep the competition at bay.”

It took me some time to eliminate Holmes’s qualms. In order to concentrate all our efforts on our joint aim, it was necessary for us to stop all our other pursuits. This would work best if we were both declared dead. So, we spread the rumour that Holmes and I had been killed in deadly tussle.

Watson was – as ever – easy to deceive. He really believed that we had both plunged to our deaths at the Reichenbach Falls, while in reality we had hidden in a rock crevice until the devastated doctor had disappeared. Thus, the British-German arms race began.

People who, like me, are financially dependent on a neverending effort to keep the country’s defences up, invariably also have to make contact with the other side. The opponent must always remain so strong that further investments in arms on our own side are absolutely necessary.

Sherlock Holmes, with whom I had worked seamlessly together until this point, did not approve of this method. He was satisfied that in 1904 John Fisher was made First Sea Lord, which entailed a comprehensive reform of the fleet. Finally, the construction of modern battleships and submarines was given full priority. Holmes believed we had reached our goal. He moved to Sussex to devote his life to beekeeping.

I, meanwhile, made contact with Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz. He was responsible for realising the emperor’s dream of a powerful German fleet. But in 1905, this was but a dream. I met the admiral in a harbour pub in Kiel, and he was pissed as a newt.

“This is the current situation,” he slurred. “This is the situation: Germany has twenty-two battleships. Together, Great Britain and France have eighty. Germany is hopelessly outnumbered by all its potential opponents. The kaiser may dream of a powerful fleet, but he will never get one. Our place in the sun is gone. We need to end the arms race.”

I had feared this much. My German opponent seemed totally defeated. He merely brightened up a little when I bought him another drink. I said: “Don’t lose hope, Herr Admiral! Admittedly, it doesn’t look too good at the moment. But what would you say, Herr Tirpitz, if we simply scrapped our current fleets and started all over?”

“From scratch?” I had aroused his interest. “How could that work?”

“Simple. Next year, we will launch the Dreadnought. A new type of battleship, which is sure to outperform all other vessels. All you can do is scrap the rest.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. It is great to have such a ship. But it is, of course, just a single ship. And no one can keep Germany from building two ships of this type …”

“For that we would, first of all, need the plans.”

“For the right sum of money, that could easily be arranged …”

Sherlock Holmes was furious. “You have betrayed our country!” he bellowed when I told him about it.

I shook my head. “Mr Holmes, you understand nothing of arms deals. We need a kind of balance of powers. The Germans need to believe that they can catch up. Our shipyards have a much greater capacity than the German ones. And to get a nice advantage right from the start, I have changed the construction plans slightly. The first new German ships will be significantly slower and not armed quite as well as the British Dreadnoughts.”

What I failed to mention to Holmes, but which was of great significance to me, was: with Germany arming its navy, Great Britain was obliged to follow suit. Investing in arms remained lucrative for me. Investing on both sides, that is.

In spring 1914, I travelled to Belgrade in my capacity as unofficial representative of the largest British arms manufacturer. Officially, I was there to supply the Serbian army with Maxim machine guns. In reality, it was about something else entirely. A group of Serbian nationalists had planned an assassination attempt on the Austrian heir to the throne, who was expected for a visit in Sarajevo at the end of June. Sarajevo was the capital of Bosnia. Bosnia belonged to Austro-Hungary. The plan was precarious. Apparently, there was a lack of guns.

Assassins without guns are, of course, ludicrous. In order not to endanger the project, I offered to provide the gentleman with suitable weapons. It was said that they would be three to four people. Just to be on the safe side, I promised to bring five pistols. Naturally, I knew that the connection between the assassins and the Serbian government was ideal to conjure up a larger conflict. If this came to light, a war was unavoidable, and – due to the existing treaty obligations – Russia, Germany, France and England would have to intervene.

On 26 June, I took the train to Sarajevo. The following day, after dusk had fallen, I made my way to our agreed-upon meeting point. I had visited the graveyard in advance, so I did not have to search for long to find the grave of Bogdan Žerajić. Žerajić had been a student who had tried to shoot the Austro-Hungarian Governor for Bosnia and Herzegovina four years previously. He had fired five shots and missed. With the last bullet, Žerajić had shot himself.

Now, the men who wanted to shoot the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria the following day had met at this dubious hero’s grave. They were seven men, most of them very young. Some of them probably still went to school. Princip, for example. They all had primitive bombs from Serbia, and they had three revolvers in total, which they had also brought along from Belgrade. They talked too much and too loudly, just like schoolboys, who still had to convince themselves that their terrible plan might actually work.

I gave them four of my Browning pistols. The new model 1910, 9 mm, six shots. The fifth pistol was spare, so I kept that one for myself. I wanted to suggest that everyone fire a couple of shots to get used to the weapons, but it never came to that. All of a sudden, there was a shrill whistling sound. “A spy!” the lookout shouted.

“Where?”

“Over there!”

Several shots rang out. I disappeared discreetly. I was not keen on a night-time shootout with the police. If indeed it was the police. I was not too sure. Fact was that only the prospective assassins were firing their guns. And fact was, too, that every shot missed. The shadow the lookout had seen remained unharmed.

As I vaulted over the low wall at the rear end of the graveyard, someone cleared his throat quite close by. I plunged my hand into my jacket to draw my pistol, when I heard a familiar voice: “Come, come, Professor Moriarty, we wouldn’t want to shoot one another now, would we?” It was Holmes.

An hour later, we sat together at the bar of our hotel. “To be honest, I did not expect to see you here in Sarajevo,” I said.

“You should always expect me,” replied Holmes.

“Did you tail me?” I had taken good care along the whole journey to ensure that nobody was following me. At least I had thought I had.

“I did not tail you,” said Holmes. “I saw you alight from a taxi at Victoria Station in London, and I was curious as to what your plans were. I observed you for a moment and then drew my conclusions. It was quite simple: you bought your ticket at the station. That means that you are here neither on behalf of the British government nor on behalf of Vickers. You bought a ticket for Lüttich. And you are not someone who is interested in Gothic cathedrals. Therefore I knew that Lüttich was not your final destination. You wanted to travel on. For example to Herstal. Herstal lies just five kilometres away from Lüttich. And Herstal is home to the Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre.”