Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“When you say he has steady funding, whom are you speaking of?” said Holmes. “The anarchists?”

Irene Adler laughed. It sounded almost authentic this time. Holmes remembered that she’d always had a beautiful laugh.

“The anarchists have no money to speak of, my darling,” said Irene Adler. “They’re anarchists , for God’s sake. Most of them can’t even find work in the factories where their fathers worked they’re so drunk or crazy or lazy.”

“Then who . . .” said Sherlock.

“I saw Lucan on Saturday,” said Irene Adler. “He bragged about following you and that writer you’ve been dragging around with you all through the Chicago World’s Fairgrounds. You were within fifty yards of an entire building at the Fair dedicated to one of the primary companies funding Colonel Moran and Lucan Adler—they provide the list of targets to be assassinated—and you didn’t even peek into the building!”

“Krupp,” Holmes said at last.

“Of course .”

Colonel Rice had gone on about how one of the great highlights of the World’s Fair—at least for men and boys—was to be “Krupp’s Baby”, a 250,000-pound cannon so large that it needed its own building, tucked in between the Agriculture Building and the lake. The cannon, built by Fritz Krupp’s Essen Works, was said to be capable of firing a one-ton shell twenty miles and still penetrate three feet of wrought-iron armor plating. Since the building hadn’t been in a sniper’s line of sight with the Administration Building, Holmes had had no interest in it.

“What do they want to come from these random assassinations?” asked Holmes and heard the one-syllable answer in his own mind a split second before Irene Adler spoke it aloud.

“War.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere will suit them,” she said. “As long as the major European powers are involved. From the list that Lucan has mentioned, I believe they place their fondest hopes for the fire starting in the Balkans.”

“Then why on earth kill an American president?” said Holmes.

“A little test,” said Adler. “And an easy one. American presidents are always so . . . accessible . . . aren’t they?”

“Do you know where Lucan will be shooting from, Irene? His choice of a sniper’s roost?”

“No.”

He seized her upper arms again and squeezed hard enough to make a large man cry for mercy, but all the time he was looking into her eyes in the last of that April twilight. She was telling the truth. He let her go and said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know that he expects you to figure out his shooting position,” she said softly. Holmes noticed that she did not rub what must now be her bruised arms.

“Why?”

“Because he’s already told me that he’ll be killing you at almost the same time he will kill President Cleveland.”

“Do you know when he’ll kill the president?”

“He hasn’t told me, but I know Lucan,” said Irene Adler. “He’ll shoot Cleveland during his short speech. When everyone is quiet and attentive. It will be the brightest spotlight on Lucan Adler’s genius. He even described it in those terms.”

“Do you know how he plans to escape?” asked Holmes.

“Not from wherever his sniper’s roost might be,” said Adler. “But I know the . . . vested interests who are paying him . . . have bought the swift-sailing ship the Zephyr and it will be waiting for Lucan in the lake just offshore. According to Lucan, the Zephyr with its sails, its German-trained racing crew, and new steam engine–driven propellers can outrun any police boat or yacht on the Great Lakes.”

“Thank you for that,” said Holmes. “Thank you for everything.”

Irene Adler touched her locket, opened it, and held it up in the failing light, and for a second Holmes thought she might have a daguerreotype of him or some lock of his hair in there, but it was only a miniature watch.

She said softly, “Our hour is up, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

“ ‘Ill met by moonlight’?” he asked.

She smiled without effort, the way he remembered her smiling freely when he was not quite nineteen years old. “That’s not the inconstant moon over the hedge tops, my lovelorn Romeo,” she said. “It’s one of the gaslights along the paved road in the cemetery.”

He stood when she did. He made no move and neither did she. Then she turned toward the lighter opening in the monument’s hedged-in space and he walked half a step behind her.

“I’ll see you to your carriage,” he said, taking her arm. They walked that way across the dew-wet grass where headstones were becoming vague and vaguely threatening inconstant outlines in the last of the twilight.

There were sidelights burning on her elegant enclosed coach. Holmes had an instant’s perfect image of Lucan Adler thrusting his arm out the door of the coach and shooting him in the chest with a Colt .45 pistol.

He shook his head once, waving the eager driver/doorman aside, and helped Irene Adler step up into her empty coach.

“When shall we meet again?” asked Holmes, still holding the door as she settled into the cushioned bench.

“Oh, at your funeral or my hanging is most likely,” said Irene Adler.

“NO!” said Sherlock Holmes in a voice so loud and so commanding that the horse twitched its tail in alarm and the driver turned around on his box.

She leaned forward and kissed him passionately on the lips. With her hands still on his cheeks she said softly,

Now to scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long:

Give me your hands, if we be friends . . .

Holmes immediately took both her hands in his and squeezed them.

And luck or Prov’dence shall restore amends .

She pulled the door shut and cried, “Drive on, driver.”

Holmes stood there for a while in the dark. Then he walked back to Clover Adams’s grave, stopped at the granite back of the monument, and pounded on it with his fist.

The stone door hinged open. Chief of the Treasury Department Andrew L. Drummond stepped out and pushed the granite shut behind him.

“Did you hear it all?” asked Holmes in a strained monotone.

“Yes, everything,” said Drummond. “It shall be very helpful.” He gripped Holmes’s forearm in a man’s more aggressive way than Irene had done just a few minutes earlier. “Holmes, the personal things . . . I swear to you upon my word of honor, upon my children’s lives . . . that no one shall ever hear a word of them from me.”

Holmes shrugged as if to say he’d known how naked and vulnerable he would be after this session.

“We’ll find and start following the Zephyr immediately,” said Drummond.

Holmes nodded tiredly. “But let it anchor there near the World’s Fair,” he said in the same monotone as before. “Nothing must let Lucan Adler know that we’re on to his plan.”

“We’ll have to put Miss Adler under arrest,” said Drummond.

“Not now, for Christ’s sake!” exploded Holmes. “We’d just as well send Lucan Adler a telegram saying that we were on to him. Follow her if you can do so subtly—and I mean so totally subtly that a snake like Lucan Adler wouldn’t spot the tail—but, better yet, leave her alone, unfollowed, and free until . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Until when?” asked Drummond.

“Until I tell you otherwise,” said Holmes and turned to walk away.

Behind him, Agent Drummond blew a police whistle, and more than a dozen men—shadows among shadows—came from behind distant trees, boulders, headstones, and monuments to join their chief. Wagons were arriving at the park entrance. By their lamps, Holmes could see that most of the men were armed with pistols, as Drummond had been, but several carried long guns. None of them could have stopped Lucan Adler from shooting Sherlock Holmes—the sniper would have been too concealed for that—but the plan had been to capture Lucan after the fatal shot had revealed his position.