Welcome to Baker Street

16. Race against time

The detective gives the driver the address he wrote down at the bottom of the page while unravelling the clue hidden in the puzzle, and John groans, "I can't believe you were playing crosswords while I was looking everywhere and searching the whole building."

"It was Giulia," Sherlock childishly protests.

She rolls up her eyes and tries to retrace his deductions.

"So, you translated the author's name from French and understood that only Cathy Baaral could have created that clever little game, right?"

"Correct. I thought she could hide inside the editorial office since that was her only connection to the Secret Service, but I was wrong: she is cleverer than that. She avoided the mole and didn't write an article, but she still tried to communicate with the MI6 through the newspaper. Everything became clear when you read that French alias. A crossword puzzle... I should have thought about that sooner," he says in a self-loathing tone, resting his back against the seat.

Giulia stares at him and leans her chin on the palm of her head, signalling her eagerness to hear the rest of the explanation. A corner of his mouth twitches in a smirk at her boundless curiosity and stubbornness, so he recounts, "I should have remembered a detail from the crime scene. In the twins' flat, there was a manifest of the D-Day; I noticed it the moment I walked in. There is a fascinating story about that event. Some days before the Normandy landings, The Daily Telegraph published a series of crosswords containing, among their answers, secret codewords for the operation—such as Neptune, Mulberry and Overlord. Someone thought it could be an act of espionage, but after interrogating the Telegraph crossword compiler, the entire story was simply disregarded as a fortuity."

"But you realised it wasn't just a random case this time," Giulia murmurs.

"It's fairly easy when you piece everything together: she is a secret agent who's fond of history and war actions (it was plainly obvious given the choice of posters in her flat). She needed to reveal her coordinates without letting her enemies know and came up with a crossword puzzle. The most logical assumption was that she must have hidden in it all the information."

"How did you find the concealed address in the puzzle?"

"I simply used the letters that you had put into the numbered boxes while completing the puzzle: they formed the name of the street. The most important things are always there for all to see, but hardly anyone observes them," he asserts philosophically.

"All very fascinating, but where we are going now exactly?" John intervenes, annoyed.

"To a construction site in the southern part of the city," Holmes answers plainly. He knows John is a man of action; he cares little about elaborate explanations, especially when his friend's deductions make him look like an idiot.

"Are you sure this time? Because I'd rather not disguise myself as a labourer," John jests.

The cab makes a sharp turn, and the newspaper glides on Sherlock's lap, landing on Giulia's knees. She gets a glimpse of the folded page of the crossword and frowns at it. Realising that in the rush of their escape, she accidentally kept the pencil from the editorial office. She fishes it from her pocket and starts circling the first letter of every definition, turning paler after each sign.

"Sherlock?" She calls with a trembling voice. "We're heading in the wrong direction."

The taxi driver turns his head to her and replies, "No, Miss. I can assure you, this is the shortest way to get to the address you gave me."

Sherlock takes a quick look out of the window and nods. "He's right. We'll get there in ten minutes."

"No, I mean that we're going to the wrong part of the city. The main show will be somewhere else."

She slowly shows them the definitions of the puzzle, pointing at the letters she has just circled and transcribed at the top of the page.

"The most important things are always there for all to see, but hardly anyone observes them, right?" she quotes Sherlock's previous words.

The letters form this writing: BOMB / TONIGHT / AT / PALESTINIAN / MISSION