The Emotional Children

XLII

"You're telling me what?!"

"John, please be reasonable."

"I am being reasonable, you're being ridiculous! This is bloody insane! Sherlock, you can't do this."

"I can and I have to, John. It's the only way."

"No, no, no, no. No, there's gotta be—there's gotta be another way. Don't tell me there isn't. You said you could diffuse all the explosives!"

"All of them—except the last one, John. The last one is the largest, and without the others it is less powerful, but not powerless. We can diffuse it, but only if we synchronize our actions with the detonator and the bomb's wiring. We cut the main red wire at the same time we cancel the detonation of the bomb. There's no other way."

"How long before detonation do we do this?"

"Five seconds," Mycroft replied. He'd had his boys go down and take a look at the bomb. They'd run diagnostics and given him the details of the situation.

"Christ," John cursed. "And the detonator is in—"

"Yes."

"Oh my god."

"I didn't think it would come to this, and I didn't want it to, but I see no other explanation. That's why she left all those months ago. She has the detonator."

"Did she take it? On purpose?"

"I don't know. She said it wasn't my fault."

"Was she forced?"

"No one forces that woman to do anything. It was her own choice," Sherlock said. "I don't know why she's done it, but she has. There has to have been a reason."

"I am convinced of her loyalty," Mycroft added. "She didn't do this willingly. But the fact that she did it tells me she had reasons. And whatever they were, they weren't malevolent reasons."

"How can you be so sure?" John asked. Sherlock could see his confidence in the woman slowly deteriorating.

The doctor nibbled a bit of dry skin peeling off his thumb, and Mycroft was standing by the fireplace, refusing to say anything. They had two months now until June 18, and their plan was looking more and more like a suicide mission.

Sherlock had disclosed the information he had chosen to keep private the week before.

Mycroft's team had not diffused all the bombs. It was impossible to do so. They had diffused all of them, except for the final one...the largest one: the one sitting at the opening to the crypt in St. Paul's.

Upon further inspection, it was discovered that this explosive could only be disarmed through the synchronization of the detonator and the cutting of a wire within the bomb's actual makeup itself. This had to be done five seconds before detonation.

Sherlock needed that detonator. The detonator wasn't even in England. It was in Kirov, Russia. It was in the hands of his wife.

"Can't you just bring the detonator back here?" Mycroft asked.

"It's most likely location locked. Most detonators of that nature are. It has to be within a certain radius of Kirov in order for it to remain active. You can't take it anywhere."

John put his head in his hands.

Mycroft spluttered, "But that's—"

"Clever," Sherlock replied. "Moriarty told me himself: 'You're not gonna be where you think you are on June 18, Sherlock.' He was right. I'm not going to be under London. I'm going to be in Russia."