The Reluctant Knight Page 2

  Eventually, she noticed she was going in circles and getting nowhere. She stopped thinking about all the same thoughts and tried to think of a different angle of attack. A book she'd once read came to mind. The book itself was long forgotten, but she knew the characters, once captured, had taken stock of what they had on them that might be of use. Several items had come in handy when it came to their escape plan. Somehow, she might be able to achieve the same thing.

  Not long after she thought this she remembered they'd left her handbag behind. She was wearing nothing but a flimsy dress and her coat.

  When she thought over the matching underwear underneath, she let out a muffled laugh that she had no doubt would have sounded crazed had it not been hindered. Her best-friend, Sophie, had once joked that the best way a woman could protect herself against rape or kidnapping was to not wear matching underwear. After all, women who did have this sort of thing happen to them, in books or on TV, always wore matching underwear. She chalked it up to mistake number one.

  Bringing her back to her situation, the van slowed and turned sharply to one side. The guy beside her then shuffled closer, and she realised something was about to happen. She might not be able to escape, but if she was going to try and leave something for Myron she needed to decide what now.

  A light went on in her head as she remembered she had two of the bugs Myron had given her in her right-hand pocket. She could try and hide one of them on herself and turn it on. She was assuming he'd given her working models. The other she could drop somewhere he might notice.

  While the driver got out of the van and shut the door behind him, Amelia reached around to her pocket. Trying to make as little noise as possible, she slid her hands inside and pulled out one of the tiny bugs in each hand. Less than a second later the back door of the van swung open, followed by the other.

  When her legs were grabbed, Amelia struggled again, dropping one of the bugs as she did. Making sure she then cradled the other safely in the palm of her hand, she allowed herself to be taken to the edge of the van. As they set her on her feet, she let a leg turn to jelly. Instantly she fell to the ground, slamming into the feet of the person next to her.

  She heard him swear in Russian; It seemed she'd hurt his foot and her shoulder equally. Allowing herself to yell in pain, she reached her hands up to massage her shoulder, inside her coat and near the edge of her dress.

  Before she could plant the bug on herself they yanked her back to her feet again. Her breath caught in her throat as the second device slid from her grip. Her fingers closed on it just in time and cradled it against the palm of the other hand.

  She felt a third pair of hands reach out, and between all three of her captors she was slung into a small space. It took less than a second for her to work out that it was a car boot. They pushed in the fabric of her coat around her and then slammed the lid down.

  Once more, Amelia felt her heart begin to pound in her chest and her breathing quicken until her lungs felt like they were straining against the restrictions to getting air. Fog crept into her mind and she started to wonder if she was about to pass out.

  Little frightened her more than being enclosed in a small space. Just before she passed out, Amelia thought of how Myron would react. Letting her fear get the better of her would disgust him so badly she'd never get him to like her again. This was enough of a motivator that, combined with the light-headedness, she managed to calm her heart back down a little and steady out her breathing.

  Amelia estimated she'd been in the van somewhere between three quarters of an hour and an hour, even after adjusting for the eternity it felt like while she lay on the metal flooring. This car was warm, which was an improvement, but she knew she'd be in this space far longer. She needed to conquer this fear and keep it conquered or she wouldn't survive this journey.

  As soon as she was once more in control of her body, Amelia tried to wiggle enough to tuck the bug in her hands underneath the top of her dress, where the strap was stitched in. Hopefully, her coat wouldn't muffle the sound too much. Once it was in place she depressed the very small button on the other side of it and wiggled around some more to bring her head down and close to it.

  Now all she had to do was somehow get her hands up and underneath the bag she was wearing to try and get the cloth out of her mouth. After taking a minute to re-calm herself, she wriggled some more to bring her hands up to her neck and felt round the base of the bag. It had a drawstring-style closing around the bottom, and no matter how badly she tried to squirm her fingers up under the edge it didn't loosen. She couldn't get it past the base of her fingers without restricting her own neck.

  It didn't take long for her head to fog up again and let her know she had once more come close to passing out. She changed tack and tried to feel around the bag for whatever was holding it so tightly closed. It had fitted over her head with ease so somewhere it must be tied in place.

  Her elbows jabbed into her sides several times before she concluded she couldn't reach the tie in her current position. The breath she'd been holding while she concentrated came out in one exasperated puff, but she knew she couldn't give up. She had to use every last ounce of thought, strength and stamina she had to get herself into a better situation.

  She allowed herself a slight whimper of frustration as she reached her fingers underneath the bag edge again, accidentally prodding herself in the tender flesh of her own neck several times. Centimetre by painstaking centimetre, she pulled the bag around.

  By the time she reached the knot, her throat hurt from the abuse her fingers kept accidentally inflicting upon it and she was growing dizzy for a third time. She paused once more, unable to continue until she'd cleared her head.

  Several more minutes passed while she rested and thought. There was still no way for her to tell for sure if this was a test from Myron or a real situation. However, it was evident that, if it was a test, she was meant to believe it was real. Either way, what she should do was the same. She could almost hear Myron's voice in her head telling her to assume it was real and act accordingly.

  She nodded her acknowledgement of the thought and felt around the side of her neck for the knot. It was complicated and the string used to form the not had frayed, leaving strands of the soft fibre to trip her fingers up while they worked blind.

  It took her several minutes of feeling along the knot for her to find anything that might be considered an end to start work with. When they'd pulled the bag over her head and bundled her along the hotel corridor she hadn't thought the knot was this complicated, but it was possible elements of it had already been in place and they'd only needed to yank it tight to seal her in darkness.

  Amelia pulled on the different parts of the knot, but after ten minutes her finger tips were rubbed raw, she'd torn a finger nail somewhere low enough it now gave off a dull ache, and she had made incredibly little progress.

  With a sigh, she gave up. The loose strands were tangled up in the rest of the knot, and trying to undo it without being able to see was only making more of a mess. No matter how hard she tried she didn't think she would manage to undo it.

  If she was going to use the bug to communicate with Myron she needed to do so without using her voice. Reaching her fingers around until she could feel the bug, she placed the digit of one finger over the top of it. She paused, making sure she remembered SOS in Morse code, and then tapped it out several times.

  After that she realised she knew little else. E was the most common letter so she knew it was represented by a single dot and she was fairly sure T was a single dash. That didn't give her the ability to say much. No matter how much she tried to think of other letters she just couldn't remember what they were. Not even numbers came back to her.

  Morse code was something she'd looked at once in a maths lesson when she was a young child and then forgotten about. Twenty years later, there was nothing she could do to recall it. Unlike that of the Holmes brothers, her memory wasn't perfect.

  Just in case s
omeone hadn't heard her first message, she tapped out SOS again every now and then to signal to whoever was listening that she was in trouble. With that plan in motion, she tried to feel around the inside of the boot but her arms were tucked against her body in such a way that she could only feel a limited area. She poked, pulled and otherwise tried to get to something like the outside of the car, but nothing gave way to her probing fingers.

  Until she reached somewhere else, she had no hope of escape. All she could do in the meantime was try to feed information to whoever might be listening in. She tried not to think about how little she had to communicate. With the bag on her head she had no idea where she was going.

  While she fought to keep herself calm, keep track of the time, and keep up her message-tapping, hours slipped by, and she found her hope slipping away with it.

  Chapter 3

  It took Mycroft several minutes to scan over the area around the white van, but he saw nothing, not even a cigarette butt that might give him a clue. After glancing at the quiet car park to see if he was being watched, Mycroft tried to open the back of the van. Surprisingly, it was unlocked.

  Not wanting to waste the few precious minutes he had to catch up, Mycroft got up inside and pulled a small torch from his pocket. After a few seconds he noticed the light glint off something small to the left. He reached forward and found one of the bugs he'd given Amelia to plant in the hotel room.

  It had been pressed as if it had been activated and he nodded his satisfaction. She'd only put two of them in the room, and he'd been in such a hurry to get away from her when she'd been trying to seduce him, and almost succeeded, that he'd left her with the rest.

  If she'd deliberately dropped one, or even had one taken off her, that meant there was a good chance the fourth and final one was now transmitting from either the Russians or her. He hoped it was the former, but even the later could be a useful result.

  After the lack of skill she'd shown in allowing herself to be taken, for her to have managed to plant one of the bugs would go some way in restoring his faith in her abilities. She might yet lead them to her in time.

  He pocketed the bug and scanned the rest of the interior of the van, but there was nothing else to provide him with a clue. Their shoes had been clean and there were no non-metal surfaces to give him any indents, scuff marks or other identifying features.

  A little over three hours after Amelia was there, Mycroft got back into the car and looked to Sherlock for directions.

  “Folkestone still makes the most sense,” he said, not looking up from the laptop screen. “The motorbike is still heading towards the channel tunnel.”

  “If they do, they'll have changed cars again,” Mycroft replied as Daniels pulled off, not waiting for him to confirm the order.

  “Certainly. They don't know how far behind we are.”

  Mycroft nodded, despite his brother not even looking up. They'd expect him to figure out the car they were using before each checkpoint they reached. If they used the crossing, there was a good chance they were out of the country and in France, but only if they'd timed things well. There was a slim chance they were on the train still, but he needed to know what car they'd used to cross if he was going to get the authorities to do a stop and search. It was a legality he couldn't skirt outside of the UK.

  Until then, he could at least try to see what Amelia had managed to do with the fourth bug. Leaving Sherlock to direct Daniels, he fetched his laptop again and pulled up the feeds for the bugs. Now more than ever, he felt grateful that he'd given her real equipment.

  As he expected, three of them gave him nothing but static. The fourth had a dull droning in the background. Sherlock finally glanced up from watching the motorbike, the curiosity evident in his eyes.

  “She's planted a bug,” he said. Sherlock only raised his eyebrow further, but didn't look up again. “It was part of a task.”

  Sherlock nodded almost imperceptibly, but it was evident he still felt some curiosity about the situation. Before Mycroft could even consider the merit of explaining further, the sound coming from the bug changed. Immediately, he recognised the three short taps of the beginning of an SOS message.

  “Amelia has it working somewhere, then,” Daniels said, also recognising the distress call.

  When it repeated for the third time, Mycroft found himself wondering if it was going to give him any other information, but it started again with three short taps. Just as he was feeling frustration well in him Amelia tapped it again only once. There was another pause and then she tapped it twelve times, then another pause and a single tap. When the next set of taps added up to nine Mycroft rolled his eyes. Amelia evidently didn't know anything other than SOS in Morse code. Now she was spelling out Calais with a tap for every letter further down the alphabet. It was a rudimentary code at best.

  Sherlock finally looked away from the camera feed on his screen. Neither Holmes brother said anything. Amelia wasn't in the UK anymore.

  “What's she saying?” Daniels asked, picking up on the atmosphere change.

  “They've taken her across the channel,” Sherlock explained when Mycroft didn't respond.

  “I've got my passport on me.” Daniels gave Mycroft a quick glance, and he didn't fail to see the fiery look in his chauffeur's eyes. One of them, at least, was prepared to do whatever it took to get her back, but Mycroft had to consider what would happen if he stepped onto European soil unannounced.

  Being such a big part of the UK government, he had always been careful about leaving the country. In his entire lifetime he'd only left twice before, and both times had been at the request of the British monarch at the time. Not even when his own brother had faked his death to elude Moriarty had Mycroft left British soil. Doing so now ran the risk of causing problems, and he was already in the bad graces of the current monarch because of Amelia. On top of that, he took little delight in leaving. It had been bad enough having to travel to Scotland.

  “We can still catch them, especially with her feeding us her location,” Sherlock said, all too aware of the thoughts going on in Mycroft's head.

  It took him less than three seconds to process all the ramifications of leaving the country. As long as he stayed in Western Europe he could follow Amelia and smooth over any awkward political situations after he had her safe. There would be several, but if he travelled under one of his aliases he would go undetected for a few days by most countries. The problems would arise when he reached Russia and her closest allies. There was too much history there for him to ignore.

  “Shall I head to the airfield at Dover?” Daniels asked, breaking into Mycroft's thoughts.

  “No. It won't be quicker to get a helicopter or plane than the channel tunnel.” Sherlock beat him to the response and shut down the man's attempt at help before it became annoying. He didn't have time for pointless questions. “The real question is are we going at all, brother of mine?”

  He gave Sherlock a quick nod and immediately his younger brother pulled out his phone and bought the required tickets to get them into France. While he was doing this, Mycroft messaged his secretary for the appropriate paperwork for the three of them, making sure she would book them under the correct names.

  Sherlock would be travelling as a Daniel Winters and himself as Mark Turner. Very few people in the UK government knew that was him, and nobody outside of his country would think he was anyone else. Only Daniels had no other name.

  If he'd been given more time he'd have changed cars and provided Daniels with something other than his chauffeur uniform to wear, but it would waste precious time to do so now. They were going to have to go as they were and hope the car wasn't quickly traced back to him. It wasn't ideal but he had few options when caught by surprise like this.

  Daniels drove towards the channel tunnel, breaking the speed limit in an attempt to make his way there in time for the train Sherlock had booked. All the while, Mycroft continued to listen to the tapping from Amelia, but it was always the same message, SOS i
n Morse code, followed by Calais. Given that she never spoke and the engine of the car she was in sounded muffled, Mycroft could safely assume she was being kept in the boot of a car, or some other small space out of sight.

  Half an hour after he emailed his secretary, he turned down the volume of Amelia's feed and passed the laptop to Sherlock to monitor. A minute later his phone rang. Before he answered it, he knew who it would be.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Holmes,” the familiar voice said. “Were you planning on getting permission to go abroad through the usual channels?”

  Mycroft knew the palace butler would waste no time, but he wasn't going to be deterred.

  “My assistance is needed in a very delicate matter and time is of the utmost importance. I assure you I know what I'm doing,” Mycroft replied, keeping his tone cool and letting the man know exactly how he felt.

  “Her majesty would like me to remind you that you represent her, and as such shouldn't be doing anything that would reflect badly on her. She also wishes you to know that we have no desire to fight a war with Russia right now.”

  “Of course. I'm well aware of the disaster that would cause. I did handle a significant amount of the details of that particular agreement. My restrictions have already been taken into account.”

  “As long as we understand each other, Mr Holmes. We can't aid you in your current endeavour, and the usual resources will not be made available to you.”

  “I assure you, I had no intention of breaching protocol. Give my best to her majesty.” Mycroft hung up before he could be told any more, and his brother chuckled.

  “The royal family still causing you problems, brother of mine? I'm surprised you haven't sought to replace them with someone more compliant. After all, hundreds of years of ruling as a family does give people delusions of authority.”

  Mycroft felt the corners of his mouth tilting up at the irony of the statement, and caught the twinkle of amusement in his brother's eyes as well.

  They were still a little way out from the Channel when Amelia's regular tapped message changed. Sherlock turned the volume back up again and the entire car listened while she let them know she thought they'd gone through into Belgium. When it took several minutes, Mycroft decided he'd be teaching her Morse code at the next opportunity.