Agent Omega: You Only Live Forever

by Schaffer, Bernard

  Emily looked over her shoulder and shouted, "Hurry up, Price!"

  A bullet flew past Price's right calf, searing the flesh and leaving a smoking hot trail across his skin. Price yowled and the gunman poked just enough of his head out to line up his next shot, but instead heard nothing but the click of the Webley's smooth, well-oiled trigger. The weapon barked in Price's hands and the assassin's head blew into fragments.

  There were three black sedans speeding down Baker street, tires screeching as they came around the corner toward the house. Emily leaned over to roof to watch them jump out of the cars, guns in hand. "There's more of them! We have to go!"

  Price looked over the edge at the steep drop to the street below and said, "Are you mad, woman?"

  "No," she said. "I'm a beekeeper." With that, Emily leapt over the side of the roof, crying, "Victoria Regina!"

  The cast iron ball fell out of the last pipe and dropped ten feet to the street below, exploding with such force it sent chunks of cobblestone and dirt as high as the roof. Emily clung to the drainpipe, hugging the wall as tight as she could and shouted, "Get down here if you're coming, otherwise, you're on your own."

  There were gunmen running into the apartment, making their way toward the back bedroom, and Price pointed the Webley down the ladder and fired once, just to keep them honest. He turned and ran across the roof toward the pipe and jumped.

  I can't bloody well cry out Victoria Regina, he thought.

  He shouted the first thing that came to mind that he believed in. Something sacred, worth dying for. The cobblestone street opened up beneath him as he grabbed for the pipe and he cried out, "Brigitte Bardot!"

  Emily grabbed him as he swung past, holding his coat as the pipe screamed and bent under both of their weight. "We have to hurry," she said. She led him down the pipes into the swirling vortex of smoke and flame from the bomb's explosion, seeing the hole in the street that gave way to the sewer.

  Whoever had designed this escape route had done their job, Price thought.

  Emily jumped from the pipe and into the hole, falling until she landed in a pool of black water. Rats squealed in protest at her sudden intrusion and Emily splashed out of the way to make room for Price to land.

  He kept his arms straight and his mouth shut as he descended, bending slightly at the knees, just as he had as a frogman during his days at Camp X. They'd jumped into dodgier stuff than the London underground sewers in those days.

  Price splashed into the water and got up to straighten his tie. "Well, I should say that your grandfather did a smashing job. You should be proud to call yourself Watson, my dear."

  Emily headed down the nearest tunnel and said, "It wasn't Watson who designed it."

  They arrived at a tunnel marked King's Road and Price told Emily they could exit there. "But, why?" she said. "Where can we go on King's Road?"

  "My home," he said. "I live there."

  They emerged on the dark street, soaking wet and smelling of the sewer. They took off their shoes at his front door and poured out black, stinking water onto the sidewalk. Inside the flat, Emily insisted he shower first, and he half expected her to be gone by the time he emerged from the bathroom, but there she was, waiting for her turn.

  Price stood in the hallway toweling off his wet hair, standing just inches from the door. Steam curled out from beneath it and he leaned close, saying, "Finding everything all right in there?"

  "I don't believe it's that difficult of a task, Mr. Price," Emily said.

  "Just letting you know that my assistance is available to you. If anything is too hard to reach, for instance, I am sure you'll find me an able assistant."

  "I'll manage, thanks," she said. "Are you always this forward, or is it just when there are naked women within ten feet of you?"

  Price smiled as he headed for the drink cart. He poured a whiskey over several ice cubes and swirled it in the glass before adding a dash of soda, using the ice to mix it. "I've found that getting shot at tends to bring out my passion for living. When people try and murder me, I respond by clinging to life, in all its trappings." Price quickly downed his drink, made another, and downed that as well. The third he took his time with and sipped slowly. "It's a survival mechanism, really. People who lack it don't last very long in my profession."

  "And what profession is that, exactly?" Emily called out.

  He looked down at his injured leg. It would heal. The damage had not been significant. He'd cleaned the wound out in the bathroom but was going to wait to dress it until the skin dried. He tightened his robe around his waist and listened as Emily shut the water off in the bathroom.

  She came out wearing nothing but a towel. Price took his time looking her over, enjoying himself. "I say, my eyes are up here," she said.

  "Don't be immature," Price scolded her. "I was simply looking you over to see if you were injured."

  "I wasn't," she said. "I already checked."

  "But you could be in shock. In fact, drop your towel immediately and let us have a proper look. Safety first, just like I always say."

  Emily smirked and walked toward his bedroom. Price had laid out cotton pajama pants and shirt for her on the bed. She looked back at him and said, "I appreciate the clean clothes. The wanton advances, I'm not sure about."

  Price took another sip of his drink and said, "As if I would ever dream of taking advantage of a terrified, easily-startled young woman. Perish the very thought."

  "Much better," Emily said. With that, she reached up and undid the knotted towel between her breasts, letting it fall to reveal the briefest glimpse of her perfect body just before she vanished inside his bedroom and shut the door.

  Price finished his drink and thought, This woman is more dangerous than she knows.

  They sat across from one another on his wide, deep sofa, enjoying the warmth of the fireplace. He was into his fifth drink, but taking his time now, sipping the watery remains of his glass and not getting up to fill another. Emily was still nursing her first, and he did not want to outpace her too greatly in the event of…well, just in case he needed to not be drunk later.

  The flats on King's Road were tiny, and the walls were not as thick as he'd preferred, but they were still relatively cheap and came with the benefit of a fireplace. He poked a log within, turning it over until it crackled and said, "This was quite a first date, you know. I mean, I'm used to getting shot at on them but not blowing up municipal property and dropping into sewers."

  "And you thought Baker Street was going to be boring," she said, smiling.

  "I'd say you owe me."

  "That is not the kind of thing one person should owe another, Mr. Price."

  He smiled and said, "Actually, I meant an explanation. Who were the men that tried to kill you?"

  Emily sighed and leaned back against the couch with her eyes closed. "My grandfather was, above all things, a man of science. A chemist, by training. He understood the order of things. He understood that when you added variable compounds together, it took a very strong oppositional chemical to neutralize the solution."

  Price scratched his nose and said, "I was told John Watson was a medical doctor, not a doctor of chemistry."

  "My other grandfather," Emily said. "Sherlock Holmes."

  Price looked at her with a raised eyebrow and said, "Sorry? Come again?"

  Emily held up her hands and said, "Do you want me to finish the story or not?"

  "Fine, fine, sorry," he said. "Please continue."

  "Sherlock Holmes took a look at the world in the late 1800's and realized that something was very, very wrong, with it. He saw the emergence of great evil, and foresaw the need for someone to stand against it."

  "This would be your Apiary Society, I presume?"

  "Exactly," she said. She held up her empty drink and said, "Do you have any more of this?"

  As he rose up to take her glass, she said, "No one really knows that Sherlock Holmes ever had a child. It was a scandal back in the Victorian Times and his bro
ther, Mycroft, did his best to keep it silent."

  Price shrugged and said, "Different times, I guess. So did this Holmes fellow live long enough to establish his society, or was it more his brother Mycroft's doing?"

  "That is a matter of what you believe," Emily said. "Or rather, whom."

  Price squinted as he poured one drink for Emily and one for himself. "I might have had one too many to properly understand what you mean right now."

  "Well, some say Holmes died at the hands of his nemesis, a cruel man called Professor Moriarty. Holmes referred to Moriarty as the Napoleon of Crime, for at the time, there was no single criminal enterprise in existence that he did not have his claws in. Moriarty was Holmes' intellectual equal in nearly every fashion. Prior to turning his attention to criminality, he authored authoritative scientific papers, including the famous Binomial Theorem and Dynamics of Asteroids."

  Emily looked knowingly at Price when she said this, as if she'd just said something of great significance. Price covered his confusion by saying, "Really? Oh, that one…I…hadn't realized you meant that Moriarty."

  "One and the same!" Emily said. "By rights, Moriarty should have gone on to cure a great disease, or discover a new solar system, but instead, he set events in motion that would create a network of criminals so vast that it would eventually change the face of the world."

  Price passed Emily her drink and had to keep himself from laughing. "I'm sorry, dear, but I think you might be getting a little carried away. I happen to have very specific and vast knowledge of all the major criminal organizations in the world, and I've never heard of this man Moriarty."

  Emily smirked and said, "In the late 1880's a group called the Irish National Invincibles assassinated the British Chief Secretary to Ireland and his secretary. Around that same time, the term Mafia first appeared in official law documentation when a Sicilian doctor was threatened for not abandoning his lemon grove. Then, members of a Russian organization called Narodnaya Volya assassinated Emperor Alexander II. I could go on, Mr. Price, but one startling fact remains: All around the world, at almost exactly the same time, multiple criminal organizations sprang up that grew very powerful, very quickly."

  "And you believe this Professor Moriarty was at the head of it all?" Price said.

  "Not necessarily," Watson said. "But his methods, his influence, was seen and felt throughout that time. Moriarty was the spider, spinning a massive web of chaos that reached across nations."

  Price's eyes felt heavy. "So who was it today, then? The IRA? Mafia? Soviets?"

  "None of them," Emily sighed. "All of them. I don't know. The Apiary Society is a beacon of light in a world that is growing increasingly dark, Mr. Price. We've made many enemies. What were you expecting? Some fancy, flashily named syndicate you could just blow up and be done with?"

  Price sighed, "No. That was my last assignment. Actually, if you put it on an exotic island with a casino nearby, it's practically every assignment. So what ever became of Professor Moriarty?"

  "Sherlock Holmes killed him in 1891 at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland."

  Price raised his glass, "Bully for him."

  "Of course, Holmes was killed along with him."

  "Ah," Price said. "Sorry to hear that."

  "That's the one story."

  "And what is the other story?"

  "The other is that my grandfather faked his death, traveled around clearing up the rest of Moriarty's gang, and died years later in Sussex Downs, tending to bees."

  "And which one do you believe?"

  "The one my father always told me, about how he met my mother at Sherlock Holmes' funeral, long before either of them joined the Apiary Society."

  Price looked at her carefully for a moment and said, "Let me guess. Your father was the son of Dr. Watson and your mother was this secret child of Sherlock Holmes."

  Emily raised her glass and said, "Elementary, my dear."

  It was the same dream again.

  The creature had him, and Ivor's shredded face billowed in the sea water like mermaid tailfins. "You should have been with me, Stuart. You should have been with me. Why weren't you with me?"

  Price woke clutching the blanket stretched across his body. The fire was out, leaving the flat dark and cold. Emily Watson was gone.

  His head was buzzing from the whiskey the night before and pressed his face against the cool glass of the taxi's window on the way to the office. He got off a block early and tried to walk off the hangover, taking deep breaths of the cool London air as he headed for the café. He needed one of Mrs. Bridge's strong coffees for his head and a nice buttery pastry for his insides. It was the only thing that would do. Instead, he found the front door locked and a note taped to the front that read, "Closed due to family emergency."

  Closed? He thought. No, not today. Come on. He yanked on the door over and over but it wouldn't budge. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and grumbled to himself as he headed for the office.

  Admiral Sir Lee Knight did not look amused. "You did debrief her, didn't you, Commander?"

  Price crossed his legs casually and said, "Unfortunately, not as extensively as I'd hoped to."

  "Damn. And she's gone without a trace? In the dead of the night?" Knight said.

  "Yes, exactly," Price said. "With her briefs, unfortunately, intact."

  "This is no laughing matter, Commander," Knight said. "You've let a major suspect in an international criminal syndicate into your personal dwelling, and then allowed her to waltz out freely whenever she chose. Tell me you didn't let her pump you, at least?"

  "Excuse me, sir?" Price said.

  "For information, Commander. Tell me you didn't let her pump you for information."

  Price looked at the old man for a moment and then said, "No, sir. She did not pump me."

  "Well, if she is in London, we'll find her. If she isn't, she might try to escape across the pond to where the largest faction of the Apiary Society now resides. I want you to do is alert Commander Damon of Station A. Advise him Emily Watson may be en route to the United States and to have CIA pick her up if they see her. If the cousins will detain her at the airport, we'll extradite her home immediately. Also, I'd like you to return to Baker Street and thoroughly investigate the premises for any sort of clue as to what they may be up to. Don't ignore even the slightest detail."

  "Ironic, isn't that, sir?"

  "What's that?"

  "Sending me to 221B Baker Street to search for clues? Historically, it would have been the opposite, I suppose."

  Ms. Maxwell cocked an eyebrow at Price as he came out of Admiral Knight's office and closed the door behind him. "Was it really so disappointing, Stuart? You must have wanted her to debrief you and pump you very badly."

  Price straightened his tie. "Don't be silly, my dear. I wasn't wearing briefs in the first place."

  The lock on the door to 221 Baker Street was old and worn, with the brass worn off around the keyholes after a century of use. Price slid a small tool into the keyhole and jiggled it until the door popped open. He stepped inside and looked around and listened carefully for any signs of movement. In the old houses, a mouse could run across a roof beam and the entire building would creak. The old construction could withstand a hurricane but they were noisy as the dickens, he thought.

  The place was ransacked, with shelves and clothing strewn about the foyer and staircase. There was an apartment on the first floor that he'd missed before. Probably blocked by Wiggins' massive form.

  Speaking of Wiggins, what the hell did they do with his body?

  He looked down at the floor near the steps and didn't even see a blood stain. Remarkable, he thought.

  Whoever these bastards are, they know the right people to call for corpse disposal. They do a better job than our lot on the Fifth Floor, that's for certain.

  Price walked up the flight of stairs and looked through the door. All the furniture was overturned within. Stuffing from every cushion of every chair littered the floor like sn
ow and all of the linings were slashed to pieces. Loose floorboards had been pulled up. Framed pictures were ripped from the walls and smashed on the ground. Price suddenly felt angry for the intrusion. He thought of Emily's descriptions of her grandfathers, and how she'd kept the old place in tact all these years rather than selling it off or renting it out, and found himself growing angrier with every step that these bastards would so wantonly ruin it.

  Price checked the bedrooms, which were in similar states of destruction. Feathers from the pillows littered the floor and dresser drawers were yanked out and thrown across the room. Under one of the windows in the bedroom with ladder lay an antique wooden case. The base was carved with elaborate designs, probably Moroccan, he thought. Someone had smashed it on the ground and snapped the lid off. There was a rusted syringe under the lid and several vials of strange white powders.

  Price bent down and picked up one of the vials, inspecting it closely.

  Cocaine.

  Perhaps Emily's grandfather was bit more complicated than she believed.

  He continued to look around but there was no paperwork or journals of any kind to be found. Everywhere he looked he saw glass from shattered microscopes and magnifying glasses and pages ripped out of old scientific text books, or the books themselves, flung across the floor when they should have been in a library somewhere.

  Price rested his arm on the mantle over the fireplace and sighed, crunching bits of glass under his shoes as he shifted. The only thing left on the mantle was a long, curved pipe with a deep bowl. Price picked it up and rapped his knuckle against the mahogany wood. It was easy to admire good craftsmanship, and whoever had owned the pipe before had used it often and well, and forgotten to clean it out.

  No use to leave the thing for the scavengers to pawn. If I ever see Emily again, I'll let her know I saved it for her.