It seems strange, but we I told about the essence of mythology, about its “harm and use” with one Russian count in Liechtenstein two weeks ago. That time the matter concerned another world war – the informational one. Later in Madrid I talked with Russians and Spanish about aggregorial and matrix wars fought on the Earth since Atlantis. In Egypt I got know about the completely unusual aspect of activity of Russian poet Pushkin, whom some people in Russia concerned to be an heir of pharaoh Ehnaton and his follower Moses. And now in India I learn, how “the waters are changing”. If you don’t object, Grisha, I’d like to take a copy of the paper and the text of the parable.
Yes, of course, Mr. Holmes. I’ve prepared it specially for you. It’s a dining time in the ashram. Let’s visit the canteen and it will be a time to leave.
They escaped the “WEST” block, where they had been placed. While going to the canteen they saw a large group of pilgrims standing under a tent.
What are they waiting for? – Holmes asked.
Fresh coconuts have been brought. You are welcome to taste one before the dinner – it slakes thirst well.
Holmes agreed mostly out of curiosity. They queued and saw how a swarthy and barefooted Indian took a nut from the heap, cut off the top with one precise strike of a big curved knife and gave it to a pilgrim. He took it with two hands, set a plastic tubule into the hole and slowly drank the liquid. To Holmes’s taste it was sour, cool and little bit tart.
After a vegetarian dinner in the ashram canteen Holmes and Prakash sincerely bade farewell to Grisha and went to the airport by taxi looking as a broken chariot. In the plane of 155 places there were not more than twenty passengers. The looked and told like well-to-do Americans. Surprisingly they behaved quite guardedly and made an impression to be members of some sect. Holmes sat near the window and was busy with his thoughts. He looked at the runway moving away and green hills divided into right squares.
Holmes almost didn’t get out his room after return to Bombay. Prakash called him two times and offered to walk around Bombay: to the seashore, to the Gandhi museum, to the local ashram of Sai Baba, But Holmes refused every time alleging tiredness and being busy. He was really busy – all day long sat at his notebook computer. He tried to remember all the details of the two previous days, because he knew that what seemed small and petty that time possibly would become extremely important for his investigation in a week, a month or a year. A floor-attendant brought coffee, tea, salads and sandwiches several times. Holmes ate everything not noticing the taste as if his gustatory sense had become dull. The evening Sun was lightening tops of palms in the inner-yard of the hotel when he finally stopped and read again his work file, which Watson in London had called “The Last Gambit”. Holmes was very surprised – whether it had passed little more than a day and night? He checked himself: on Wednesday at 14:00 he and Prakash had arrived to Puttaparthi and at 16:00 on Thursday he already had sat in the plane to Bombay. He asked a porter to wake him up at 23:00 and made himself to sleep.
Prakash drove him to the airport when the check-in was near to finish. Night Bombay was full of lights. Below Holmes lay the Indian Ocean, before him were Europe, Frankfurt am Main, and London. Holmes wrapped himself up in the woollen plaid and tried to sleep again. Then was a short stop in Frankfurt where Holmes had time to drink a cup of tea. And at 8:45 the plane landed in Heathrow quite on schedule. Holmes looked at his watch, which he had set to the Greenwich Time already in Frankfurt, and thought that Missis Hudson was finishing serving the table for breakfast. It was Saturday, October 13, 2001. Three weeks exactly passed since he had flown away from that airport to Zurich.
Part IV. Holmes and Watson Again
Saturday morning. October 13. London
In an hour or so Holmes was already in a living room, where Watson was finishing his breakfast, while Mrs. Hudson in her tightly starched white apron, trying to conceal her gladness under the customary grumbling, bustled about the tenant who returned from the long journey.
And whoever, Mr. Holmes, makes you wander about the wide world? Can’t you sit still at home? Instead you sit in the airplane’s armchair for the whole night. And what for?.. No, no, I don’t feel like that. I don’t like all these “Boeings”, especially now, when they’re constantly falling now on the ground, now in water.
And that’s exactly what I want to understand, Mrs. Hudson, why they fall down. And, you know, one can sleep in the airplane too, if he is not disturbed. I had two spare armchairs beside me, and I was having quite good rest till Frankfurt.
Holmes indeed looked fresh and animated.
Well, dear Watson, “picnics” really travel along the wide world.
Let you better tell us about your adventures, Holmes. I have a feeling, that you have visited half of the Earth globe in these three weeks.
Holmes looked in the window with the customary London rain behind it, and his face lit up with the contented smile.
You might have missed our rains and fogs, haven’t you, Mr. Holmes? –Mrs. Hudson asked.
I remembered at once, that when I went down the boarding ramp of “Boeing” at Heathrow, I thought: “What a good big conditioner for the whole good old England!”
Holmes coped with his breakfast quickly, and we settled in his study, where Mrs. Hudson brought coffee for us. Having got his pipe lighted, Holmes started to tell his story, with some inner guardedness unusual for him before.
The first adventure happened at Zurich airport. While passing visa control, I noticed one passenger from the flight from Frankfurt am Main. It’ better to say, not the passenger, but the newspaper he held in his hands.
Holmes put rather creased newspaper on the desk. It was “Izvestiya”, September 22, №175.
Yes, Holmes, I understand, why you noticed it.
You’re absolutely right, Watson, its number is the same as the number of the flight of “Boeing-767”, which attacked the southern tower of WTC, and – naturally – the date when this newspaper was published – September 22. You know, Watson, I noticed this numerical accordance almost automatically, and the incident might finish on it, if this unknown to me passenger hadn’t passed through passport control several minutes earlier than me. Having got my luggage, I was hurrying to the exit, where Switzerland representative of our firm, Louis Renier, was waiting for me, but suddenly my glance stopped at some armchair in the waiting room, and there that very newspaper, carelessly thrown, which I paid my attention several minutes ago, lied. How do you think, Watson, what did I think?
The most probable, that the same thing can’t catch one’s eye twice in the senseless fuss of airport.
Of course, Watson, you’re right. And still, some time I was hesitating, like Buridan’s ass, – should I take it? Or not? And may be, I didn’t take it finally, if it wasn’t for the photo in the upper corner of the first page.
Holmes pointed on the page of the newspaper, where the photo of smiling Anna Kurnikova, Russian tennis player, was placed.
Dear Watson, doesn’t it remind you something?