BASKERVILLE.
Stapleton leads Sherlock, Vaness and John along a corridor and uses her card to swipe them into a large room which has Major Barrymore's office in the corner. As they go into the room, Sherlock points back to the door they just came through.
"John." He said.
"Yeah, I'm on it." John replied.
He turns back to keep an eye on the door while Stapleton goes over to sit down at a computer. Vaness was back to her old self.
"Project HOUND. Must have read about it and stored it away. An experiment in a CIA facility in Liberty, Indiana." Sherlock said.
He stands behind Stapleton while she types her User ID onto the computer, then adds her password. A request to "Enter Search String" comes up and she looks up at Sherlock who dictates the letters.
"H, O, U, N, D." Sherlock spelled out.
She types in the letters and hits Enter. A message comes up saying "NO ACCESS. CIA Classified" and requesting an authorisation code.
"That's as far as my access goes, I'm afraid." Stapleton said.
"Well, there must be an override and password." John replied.
"I imagine so, but that'd be Major Barrymore's." Stapleton said.
Sherlock spins around and walks into Barrymore's office. Vaness could just tell them, but Stapleton was there and that would be a problem. She followed Sherlock but stayed on the doorway.
"Password, password, password." Sherlock said repeatedly.
Switching on the lights in the room he sits down at the desk.
"He sat here when he thought it up." Sherlock said.
Folding his hands in front of his mouth, he slowly spins a full circle on the chair, looking around the office as he goes. Stapleton comes to the doorway, to Vaness' right.
"Describe him to me." Sherlock told Stapleton.
"You've seen him." Stapleton replied.
"But describe him." Sherlock said.
"Er, he's a bloody martinet, a throw-back, the sort of man they'd have sent into Suez." Stapleton told him.
"Good, excellent. Old-fashioned, traditionalist; not the sort that would use his children's names as a password." He gestures towards the children's drawings pinned on the board above the desk.
"He loves his job; proud of it and this is work-related, so what's at eye level?" Sherlock asked himself.
He rapidly scans around everything in the room without altering the angle of his eyes.
"Books." He said gesturing to the right
"Jane's Defence Weekly - bound copies." He said pointing to the left
He looks to the right again and at the subject matter of some of the books on the bookshelf.
"Hannibal; Wellington; Rommel; Churchill's 'History of the English-Speaking Peoples' - all four volumes."
He stands up and looks at a bronze bust on a shelf.
"Churchill - well, he's fond of Churchill. Copy of 'The Downing Street Years'; one, two, three, four, five separate biographies of Thatcher." Sherlock said.
He looks down to a framed photograph on the desk of a man in uniform standing with his teenage son.
"Mid 1980s at a guess. Father and son: Barrymore senior. Medals: Distinguished Service Order." He looks around to John who has come to the office door.
YOU ARE READING
Fandom Traveler (Sherlock Holmes)
Fan fikcia1st in the Fandom Traveler Series Vaness Miche has been travelling a lot. But not by cars or airplanes, she's been traveling through dimensions by portal. A portal she created to escape her life. It hasn't been easy, arriving in a dimension she know...
