Simon Green - Ghost of a Smile

Diego looked across at JC, and his gaze was only spared from being openly contemptuous by its basic lack of interest. JC made a point of smiling meaninglessly at Diego, as though he sort of recognised the face but couldn’t quite put a name to it.

Diego wandered casually over to confront JC, who made a point of adopting an especially casual and unimpressed pose. The two team leaders nodded and smiled politely to each other, because other people were looking, but neither of them offered to shake hands. There were limits. Diego stuck his hands in the pockets of his long duster coat and made a point of looking JC square in the sunglasses.

“Anything in there we need to look out for?” he said casually. “Anything that was a little bit too much for you or might need another slap round the head to keep it quiet?”

“No,” said JC, smiling easily. “Nothing worth the mentioning. My team always takes care of business. Though if you could bring yourselves to clean up some of the mess… since you’re there.. .”

“We’ll run all the usual checks anyway,” said Diego. “In case you missed something. Better safe than sorry, eh?”

“Of course,” said JC. “It’s always best to keep busy when there’s nothing important left to do.”

By then, both men were being so laid-back it was a wonder they hadn’t toppled over. Diego and JC exchanged quietly venomous smiles before Diego turned his back on JC and wandered unhurriedly back to his own team. Happy moved in close beside JC.

“You wouldn’t believe what their team telepath Monica just thought at me! Some people have far too much imagination and not nearly enough inhibitions. You haven’t got a notepad, have you, JC? I need to jot something down, while the details are still fresh…”

“Tempted?” said JC.

“With her?” said Happy. “I’d rather stick it in a blender. I’ve heard stories about her. Most of them end up with emotionally distressed young men being dropped off at hospital emergency rooms. Besides, Melody would tear me limb from limb. Or even worse, ask Monica to join us for a threesome. I don’t know which option scares me more.”

“Heads up,” said JC. “Here comes trouble… Melody! Stop caressing that computer and get over here! I think the Boss would like a word with us.”

Melody came hurrying back to join JC and Happy. She knew the value of a united front against danger and had always been very big on safety in numbers. If only so there was someone else to hide behind when the shit started flying. The nurse saw Catherine Latimer striding forward and retreated quickly into her ambulance, locking the door behind her. JC would have joined her if he’d thought it would do any good. Meetings with the Carnacki Institute’s Boss rarely went well when he and his team were involved. Somehow, JC knew she was already working on a way to blame the whole mess on him.

The Boss crashed to a halt before JC and his team, who all made a point of nodding casually to her in a totally unimpressed sort of way. Latimer considered each one of them in turn with a cold and very direct gaze. She wasn’t all that impressive, physically, but her sheer force of personality more than made up for that. Medium height and sturdy, she wore a superbly tailored grey suit and smoked black Turkish cigarettes in a long ivory holder. She had to be in her seventies and looked like she’d fought for every inch of it. She was the most impressive, efficient, and downright dangerous woman JC had ever met. He spent a lot of time avoiding her, which most of the time she seemed to appreciate.

“I am here,” said Catherine Latimer, the Boss, in an even more than usually harsh and clipped voice, “because the first I knew anything about this mission was when you phoned in to say it was all over. It would seem Patterson set the whole thing up himself and ran it personally from behind the scenes. I’m still having trouble accepting that Robert was a traitor. I’ve known him for years, man and boy. His father was one of my best field agents, back in the eighties. I trained Patterson personally, pushed him up the promotions ladder as fast as I could… I had such plans for him. He would have gone far, the fool.”

“It’s always the ambitious ones you have to look out for,” Happy said wisely, as the Boss paused for a moment, lost in thought. She glared at him.

“When I want your opinion, I’ll have my head examined!” She switched her glare to JC. “Was it really necessary to kill him?”

“Yes,” JC said steadily. “He betrayed every one of us, put all of Humanity at risk by dealing in things he didn’t understand and couldn’t control. And he boasted that he and his secret backers were planning to do even worse things in the future. He had to die.”

“Did you make him understand that we would have given him full immunity, and round-the-clock protection, in return for information?” said the Boss.

JC met her gaze steadily. “He was more afraid of his own people than he was of us.”

“It’s true,” said Happy. “He said he’d rather die than betray them. He did. I was there.”

The Boss looked at Melody. “Do you have anything useful to add?”

“He wasn’t the man you thought he was,” said Melody, as kindly as she could. “He wasn’t the man any of us thought he was.”

The Boss nodded slowly. “I want every bit of information you have about this secret organisation Patterson answered to. Every word he said about them. I want fully detailed reports from all three of you on my desk before the end of day.” She looked back at Chimera House. “These… New People. Were they really living gods, or the final destiny of human evolution? I would have liked to have seen them. It’s not often you get to see something completely new, in this business.” She looked back at JC and his team. “You got lucky. You do realise that, don’t you? This could all have gone horribly wrong, in so many appalling ways. But, still-you did good. Well done. Don’t even think of asking for a raise.”

She drew heavily on her ivory holder, and blew a thick cloud of aromatic smoke out onto the early-morning air. “How could something as important, as extreme as this, have got so far completely undetected by anyone in the Institute? Patterson wasn’t that high up, or that connected… He couldn’t have managed all this on his own. You’re sure he didn’t mention any other names… Of course not. You would have said.”

JC could have said something there but didn’t. Happy and Melody took their cues from him.

“Reports,” the Boss said savagely. “Extremely detailed reports. And God have mercy on your souls if they aren’t in on time.”

She turned her back and strode off, to organise things and shout at people a lot. JC, Happy, and Melody all breathed a little more easily, and moved away to find somewhere quiet, and private, so they could talk. Once they were safely away from the crowds, Kim manifested again, a vague impression on the air, an outline of a young woman in pastel colours, so the others could see and hear her. She hated to be left out of things just because she was dead.

“We’re going to have to be very careful about what we say in our reports,” said JC. “And careful that they all agree with each other, in the things that matter. Because there’s a lot we’re going to have to leave out, or at the very least fudge around. We don’t know how many other traitors there might be, hidden away inside the Carnacki Institute.”

“Are you saying we can’t even trust the Boss?” said Happy, his eyes widening at the thought of trying to keep things from the dreaded Catherine Latimer.

“She’s the Boss!” said Melody. “She’s in charge of everything! If she’s gone over to the dark side, we are all royally screwed!”