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Last week, the plot was about someone who could make all computer security obsolete. This week, it's an even more pulled-from-the-headlines case as Holmes and Watson are hired by a disguised spy to track down someone who's basically Edward Snowden. It doesn't take Holmes long to determine that the best way to find out where their target -- Ezra Kleinfelter -- is hiding is to go online and harass the members of "Everyone," which is a group that's basically "Anonymous." That's not a really safe plan, and soon the Brownstone is awash in crank calls and misdirected pizzas.
But Holmes has located Kleinfelter's hideout. Which would be really good news, except that Kleinfelter murdered the woman who was helping him hide from the government, possibly because she rejected his romantic advances. Holmes and Watson set out to find the disused emergency bunker where he's been hiding, but they're somewhat hindered when the Secret Service grab them on suspicion of being out to assassinate the President. It all goes back to Everyone's harassment. Everyone, it turns out, is a real jerk. By the time Holmes has freed himself and Watson from the Secret Service, Kleinfelter has left his bunker.
Holmes begs Everyone to leave him and Watson alone on the grounds that they're now after Kleinfelter for murder, not leaking government documents. It doesn't work, but he manages to get enough information that he's able to deduce that Kleinfelter's going to be on a private jet to Venezuela, and the police pounce. Unfortunately, Kleinfelter is prepared to release the names of fourteen deep-cover agents, and they have to let him go. While he's in the air, Holmes goes to the spy that hired him and convinces him to go behind his bosses' backs and warn the CIA that the deep-cover agents need to be protected. So when Kleinfelter lands, he's arrested for murder.
In the less-important plot, Watson goes for a date. And we don't even see it. The point is to let Holmes muse about whether romance is even possible, since the only woman he ever loved turned out to be Moriarty. And we learn that Moriarty's first name is "Jamie," which is neat.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!A moody voiceover reads out something being written on a tablet. The gist of it is that Ezra Kleinfelter will soon be revealing his country's secrets. He's doing it in the back of a taxi, and his card is declined. And then police cars pull up behind him and he decides that "they" have frozen his accounts. Even though the police walk into the building instead of arresting him, he sends an email and gets out and runs. That's definitely going to get the police's attention.
A playground. Watson volunteers to watch the place, and she tells her companion that she gets texts from Holmes. It's a picture of a dollhouse for Watson to make a flash analysis, because somebody saw that documentary. She decides it was a medical OD. Watson's companion tells her to find time for herself and keep her options open, and Watson is distracted by a picture of dolls killed by a gas leak. Watson has been signed up for True Romantix, a dating site. The picture is of a staged suicide, because no one sticks their head in an oven anymore.
Watson comes home to find an old man at a backgammon board. Holmes introduces Mr. Mueller, who has declined to state his business until she got home. Mueller says that Ezra Kleinfelter leaked a dossier of state secrets and might leak more. I'd try to do a joke about how Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Julian Assange and also plays Sherlock Holmes, but I tried that last week with the cryptography plot and also got nowhere. Mueller represents a consortium of Belgians concerned about Kleinfelter's safety, because they think some of the people hunting him might not be after a fair trial. They'd like Kleinfelter delivered to them so they can take him to an embassy. Holmes takes the case immediately and ushers Mueller out the door.
Once he's gone, Watson complains that they're not supposed to aid and abet fugitives. Sure, but who else needs aiding and abetting? Holmes snuck a picture of Mueller, so he could send it to someone who can search up his face. He's confident that Mueller is lying, because "no Belgian is that bad at backgammon." They follow him through the city streets as he talks on his phone. Holmes's contact reports that Mueller is Elliot Honeycutt, and he has a dossier that exactly fills a telephone screen. He entered Officers' Candidate School in 1975, then he joined Special Forces, then he was trained in marksmanship and enhanced interrogation theory, worked as a Systems Analyst at a CIA front, and now he's Vice President of "Corporate Counterintelligence" at Redding Enterprises, which recently employed Kleinfelter. Holmes's conclusion is that he intends to eliminate Kleinfelter.
Kleinfelter has a blog called "Kleinfeltarianism," which prompts Holmes to call Ayn Rand "Philosopher-in-chief to the intellectually bankrupt." Interesting; I would have thought Holmes would be more into Rand's philosophy. If you know what I mean. (I mean he's a selfish jerk). Watson wonders what they're planning to do when they find Kleinfelter, since some find him a hero for leaking that information. Holmes wants to at least protect him from Redding. He only worked with one journalist: Celia Carroll. Let's meet her!
She's at her newspaper, the Village Dispatch. She tells them what she's told everything else. She hasn't heard from him, and his plan was to leave the country before he had to release the information early. Holmes thinks he has a crush on her, because she matches his description of his dream girl: "You're bespectacled, you're lean, and yet possessed of an alluring curve of flank." Heh. She shakes that off and says she never got any whiff of that the few times she met him face to face. Holmes and Watson walk away and Watson observes that Celia resorted to a defensive posture when repeating herself, so she was lying. Holmes wants to analyze her movements to determine how she's communicating with Kleinfelter.
They're across the street, watching her do interviews. Watson looks at her True Romantix page and asks if he thinks they're cut off from the world. Holmes denies that, because they've created a world that serves their needs. She says she's making a dating profile, and he suggests she won't bring anyone around. He used to think romantic love is a delusion, but then he met Irene Adler, who turned out to be a criminal. And that makes him feel liberated: "I am, now and forever, post-love." Celia talks to the security guard at the door, and they do the ol' bag-switch routine. Holmes plans to pick the guard's pocket and look through his phone. "It's a fascinating art. It's all to do with establishing trust and eye contact." He also stole Watson's watch at some point.
Back at the brownstone, Holmes is microwaving the guard's phone, because it's too dangerous to be allowed to live. The guard's name is Hector goes to a website called "Jamaica Key" where people trade stolen identity. Hector is part of a hacker collective called "Everyone." They also call themselves "Cyber-activists," and it's nice to see people still use the prefix "Cyber" somewhere. Hector has gotten messages from someone called "Defenestrator," who Holmes believes to be harboring Ezra Kleinfelter. Holmes is going to spend the night trolling Defenestrator until he reveals himself. That sounds fun! Watson goes to bed with a bowl of salad.
You know what they say, "Go to bed with lettuce, wake up with turtles." Well, one turtle. It's Clyde. Holmes claims this was the polite way to wake her at dawn. Well sure. Clyde's cuddly! Holmes reports that Defenestrator was cannier than expected, but "she" revealed that she lived within three blocks of the building that used to house Reuben's delicatessen. Then he bothered a nearby computer store until he located Vanessa Hiskie, the only person who recently bought hacker gear. Well, a hacker-quality computer. I don't know if she wears mirrorshades and combat boots the way all cyber-activists are supposed to. The point is that Holmes feels he has located the person who's holding Ezra Kleinfelter.
Her door has peace stickers all over it. She doesn't answer the knocking, so Watson picks the lock while Holmes gloats about how great he is. They enter. There are all the signs of a hacker, by which I mean there's a computer with three screens covered in green stuff. And an electric fan with the anarchy symbol in the center. Holmes calls out for Kleinfelter, and Watson calls him over to wear there's a dead lady on the floor. Uh oh!
Gregson is there. Holmes notes there are skin fragments under Hiskie's fingernails, so there was an argument. Gregson thinks it would be crazy for Kleinfelter to attack the person who's hiding him, and Holmes suggests that Kleinfelter made some romantic overtures that he rejected. Kleinfelter has no priors, so they don't have anything to check the DNA of the skin fragments against. A policeman is dusting a copy of Atlas Shrugged for fingerprints and Watson asks if it was in a particular box. This box was sitting in the living room, and Ms. Hiskie's bookshelf was in her bedroom. The other things in the box are a map of New York, a travel guide to Venezuela, and a box of crackers. Watson suggests that he brought this box to Hiskie's house, and Gregson puts out the word that Kleinfelter is a "person of interest" in a homicide.
Brownstone. Holmes has been monitoring Jamaica Key, which means he's been arguing with people on the Internet about the government. Watson is look at True Romantix profiles, which isn't much more productive. She gets a call from someone claiming he wants to see a model train set, and apparently someone has put out an ad offering Naked Model Train Time. Watson sends a message to someone named Jeff Heinz, and then! Her computer goes all blue because of hackers. The doorbell rings and it's a big stack of pizzas. The driver has twenty more in the car. Holmes apologizes, says he's been duped, gives the guy a handful of cash, and asks that he find the pizzas a good home. That's a nice thing to do! Watson's computer is flashing "EVERYONE" and Holmes decides the phone was tracked here. Hector must have realized his phone was stolen and tracked it before it was destroyed, so now everyone believes them to be the enemies of Ezra Kleinfelter, and they're going to, as Holmes says, "Subject us to a life-ruin."
I'm going to interrupt the flow of this narrative for a moment to point out that our Sherlock Holmes is played by Jonny Lee Miller. In 1995, Mr. Miller appeared in a movie called Hackers, which I like very much and I don't care if hackers don't really look like Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie. I also don't care if hackers don't really wear rubber and go rollerblading everywhere. My point is this: Jonny Lee Miller was in a movie in which he subjected someone (Wendell Pierce, who played Bunk on The Wire) to a life-ruin. And now karma has come around and he is receiving the same treatment. That's all. I'll get back to the show now.
Holmes asks if Watson's passwords are based on the names of family members. Then they leave the brownstone, because all the phones are ringing. At the police station, they learn that their phones have been disconnected already. Holmes asks Bell for permission to examine the box, because it might have clues to where Kleinfelter had been hiding. And he might have gone back there.
Holmes studies the box of crackers. They're stale, which makes it weird that they're among Kleinfelter's most prized possessions. Holmes checks the box itself, which is labeled "OCD." The Office of Civil Defense, which maintains emergency bunkers. There are a lot of them. Holmes's phone has no signal, and he needs to make a visit.
Holmes and Watson go to a giant building, which is occupied by Milton Van Kirk, who has spent his entire life on a biography of Robert Moses, an important New York architect. He's an expert on New York geography, so he should know where all the emergency bunkers are. Inside (in a great room) he reports that there were 41 bunkers, but they were all decommissioned. Holmes takes a look at Van Kirk's notes, leaving Watson with him. Holmes has found one bunker in the Brooklyn Bridge that was never decommissioned. And Kleinfelter had access to government records, so he could have known that as well. Success! But before they leave, Van Kirk has Watson take his 5,000-page manuscript so she can read it for him. Holmes points out that this will help her avoid wasting time on the Internet. Holmes's phone is dead, so he asks a bike cop to take a message to Gregson: "Kleinfelter hiding. Brooklyn Bride. East Caisson. On the way." He's a little smug at Watson about how a discreet digital footprint reduces harassment. And then the Secret Service roars up, because a blog called "44mustdie.com" has been traced to Holmes's IP address, and it's chock-full of plans to assassinate the President. This is just the sort of thing he did to Wendell Pierce!
Holmes is being interrogated on suspicion of planning to kill the President. He assures the Secret Service he has no such intentions, and they don't seem to buy it. He reminds them he already told them to call Gregson, and Angry Cop shouts at him. This has no effect, as Holmes calmly tells them they're in pursuit of "Skrewdriver," the author of a series of hate pamphlets. He got that from the bulletin board outside. He offers to tell them Skrewdriver's identity if they call Gregson. They don't think he could know that, so he shows off a bit. Agent Polk is in the middle of a divorce and has started shaving his chest, and the other one has recently become vegan, but he needs to find alternate sources of protein. This is impressive enough for them, and Holmes and Watson are soon outside on the sidewalk. It's night.
Watson still has the 5,000-page manuscript with her, and she's cranky about spending three hours answering questions about presidential assassinations. Holmes says the police got to the bunker, but it was gone. There was just a card that said "Everyone" on it. Gregson thinks they were monitoring the police band. Holmes has a new phone, which he "liberated" from Agent Polk.
Brownstone. The doorbell rings, and Watson answers it. It's Jeff Heinz, from True Romantix. He explains that he got some really weird messages from her with her home address. Oh, those hackers. They filled her profile with weird stuff, and Jeff says he figured it wasn't her. So he came over to see if she was okay. In the background, Holmes shouts, "Right, hack this!" Watson asks if she could have a couple of days, but she looks forward to seeing him.
Their power has been turned off, but Holmes has a generator. Weirdo. And he's accessing their neighbor's wireless, which is just common sense. He's on Jamaica Key pleading for mercy from Everyone. He doesn't expect any, but maybe if they respond, he can get a dialogue going. Watson wants to talk about Irene, although Holmes corrects her that Irene's name is Moriarty. And he doesn't want to talk about her. The messages on the computer are mostly "Get lost" and "No mercy," although BAD_SEED says "Shoe on head." That's a weird message. I like that Holmes's messages are all complete sentences, even though he normally texts in short bursts of punctuation. Holmes explains that he is being asked to upload a picture of himself with his shoe on his head. He's willing to go along with it. Someone else demands "naked pics," and he's fine with that too. But they clarify: "Not you, the chick," and Watson is reluctant. Holmes says they're investigating a murder. BAD_SEED says Kleinfelter's gone far away and JORMUNGANDR says, "EVERYONE SHUT UP NOW. WE SHOULDN'T BE TALKING TO HIM." He or she is correct! And indeed, everyone stops responding right then. For a collective, Everyone is very willing to let one person dictate their actions.
The day at 9:00 AM, Holmes explains that he didn't need to wake Watson. They're free until 4:22 PM. Overnight, Holmes considered Kleinfelter's options, the best of which is to get to foreign soil via private air travel. Holmes has been cooking breakfast over the fire, which I believe he learned to do in one of those British Public Schools. Holmes says that Jormungandr is the third child of Loki and Angrboda. It's the giant serpent that swallowed its own tail. Holmes says it's Darragh O'Connor, who sold a piece of software called Ouroboros and made a billion dollars, which he then spent pursuing the cause of Freedom of Information. And his private jet will be landing this afternoon before heading out to Venezuela. Sounds good!
Gregson, Holmes, and Watson are watching the airfield. Holmes decides Kleinfelter is the driver, and the police swoop in. Gregson arrests Kleinfelter. And Kleinfelter says that if he doesn't get on the plane, fourteen innocent people will die. He directs Holmes to his bag, where there's an envelope. It's a dossier about Farouq Hassad. He's a spy in Morocco, and if Kleinfelter gets arrested, their names will go public. He says they won't all get to safety. Gregson checks the phone number, and it is, indeed, answered by the section chief or whatever the boss spy is called. Watson warns Kleinfelter that they'll prove he killed Vanessa Hiskie, and he gets on the plane.
The plane flies away, and Holmes fumes. Watson asks if they could tie Kleinfelter to the murder, would that stop Venezuela from granting him asylum? Because she stole his watch when she warned him. And it might have skin cells on it, which would let them prove he killed Vanessa Hiskie. Bell is willing to go along with it (although Holmes says they'll have to be "creative" about how they got the watch), but what about the fourteen spies? Well, Holmes plans to find all of them before they drop the hammer on Kleinfelter. He's got nine hours to work with. He decides he needs a backgammon board so he can go talk to their client. Oh yeah! Mueller! I remember him now!
Redding Enterprises. "Mueller" walks into his office and is greeted by Holmes, who calls him Elliot Honeycutt. Honeycutt is understandably a bit thrown by this, even though Holmes really did bring a backgammon board. Holmes briefs him on Kleinfelter's current whereabouts and the murder he's tied to and the fourteen clandestine operatives. Honeycutt didn't tell his bosses that Kleinfelter had those names. Holmes suggests that he release those names to the government, who can then protect them before arresting Kleinfelter. That'll be suicide for Redding, which means the board would never agree. But Holmes doesn't see that the board needs to get involved. He's confident that Honeycutt knows what it means to serve, and he won't leave those fourteen men and women to their fates. When he leaves, he's going to have Kleinfelter arrested. Honeycutt thinks he's bluffing, but he doesn't seem to be: "I've told you what needs to happen. Those souls won't be on my conscience. Your turn, Mr. Honeycutt."
Television news shows Ezra Kleinfelter being arrested for the murder of Vanessa Hiskie. He confessed on the condition he wouldn't face capital punishment for espionage. The power's back on! Holmes tells Watson that the spies were all in safe houses and Everyone kind of lost interest in Kleinfelter. Watson's phone is back, and she needs to deal with cleaning up her online life. And she's going on a real date tonight.
Holmes sits alone by the fire and reads a letter that was written to him from Newgate Prison. It begins, "For a long while now I've suspected that connection with another person, real connection, simply isn't possible. I'm curious if you disagree, although I suspect you feel as I do in this, as you do in so many other things." Watson returns from her date, and Holmes observes that she had a good-night kiss. She says she thinks it's sad that he's given up, adding, "I shouldn't be the only one who knows you" She goes up to her room, and Holmes's voice continues to read the letter to us: "So tell me: is it possible to truly know another person. Is it even a worthwhile pursuit? Yours is the only opinion I'll trust." A female voice merges with Sherlock's. "The only point of view that holds even the faintest interest. I find my diversions as I always do but the days are long in this gray place." Now it's just the woman. "I dearly home you'll write soon. Ever yours, Jamie Moriarty." Upstairs, Watson types "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes." Then she cuts it back to just "Sherlock Holmes."
Holmes folds up the letter. He does not throw it in the fire.
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.