The most obvious line of defence was Catherine Latimer’s private secretary, Heather. Who sat happily at her desk, day in and day out, typing away and running interference for the Boss, so the rest of the world didn’t bother her unnecessarily.
Heather was already there on duty when the three field agents arrived and gave every indication of having been there for some time, despite the early hour of the morning. She was always just Heather; if she had a surname, no-one knew, for security reasons. Or possibly because she liked messing with people’s heads. JC sometimes wondered if she ever went home.
Heather was a calm, easy-going, professional type, pleasantly pretty in a blonde, curly-haired, round-faced way. She dressed neatly rather than fashionably and looked like she would have trouble bench-pressing a bench. But you could only get to the Boss if you could get past Heather; and that didn’t happen. Heather was rumoured to be the most heavily armed person in the entire building, which took some doing, and more than ready to use excessive force on anyone who gave her any lip. Or tried to get past her without an appointment. As far as JC could see, she only ever stopped typing to ceremonially move a piece of paper from the in-tray to the out-tray. JC had never seen either of the trays empty.
Melody looked up from her game abruptly to glare at JC. “Correct me if I’m wrong, which I’m not, but we are an A team these days, aren’t we? One of the most successful field teams in the entire Carnacki Institute? Then why are we being kept waiting out here like errant schoolchildren summoned to see the Headmistress?”
“We are here because the Boss wants us here,” said JC. “And we are sitting patiently and very definitely not complaining because the Boss is Catherine Latimer. Voted most scary person in the entire world seventeen years running by anyone who knows anything about anything.” He looked across at Heather. “You work with the Boss every day, Heather. Do you find her scary?”
“Hell yes,” said Heather, not looking up from her typing.
Melody sniffed loudly and gave JC her best meaningful stare. JC sighed, inwardly. He knew it wasn’t going to do any good, but sometimes you had to do things anyway, to keep your team quiet. He gave Heather his best ingratiating smile.
“You’re looking very yourself today, Heather. Is that a new hairstyle? And wonderfully efficient, as always.”
“Don’t waste your famous charm on me, JC,” said Heather, still not looking up from what she was doing. “It’s no use asking me about anything because I don’t know anything.”
“Not even a hint as to what’s going on?” said JC. “For old times’ sake?”
“What old times?” said Heather.
“How soon they forget,” said JC.
Happy looked up from his scribbling. “You must know something, Heather. You run the Boss’s appointments book. Can’t you at least tell us what kind of mood she’s in? Are we in trouble? Answer the second question first.”
“She’ll tell you herself,” said Heather. “When she’s ready.”
And then she stopped typing and turned around in her chair to look at them thoughtfully, catching them all by surprise.
“I did hear,” she said, “that Kim is back.”
“Yes,” said JC. “She is.”
Heather waited a moment, until it became clear JC wasn’t going to say anything else. “Then why isn’t she here with you?”
“Sorry,” said JC. “That’s strictly need-to-know.”
Heather gave him a long, hard look and turned her attention to Happy. “I did also hear that you are back on the mother’s little helpers again.”
“You leave him alone!” Melody said immediately.
“It’s all right, Melody,” said Happy. “I can look after myself.” He smiled easily at Heather. “You do realise, I could slip absolutely anything into your coffee mug. And you’d never know until it was far too late.”
Heather looked at him coldly and moved her coffee mug to the other side of her desk.
They all looked round as the outer door flew open, and a thoroughly annoyed middle-aged man in a very expensive three-piece suit burst in. He stomped over to Heather’s desk and scowled at her, conspicuously ignoring the three waiting field agents. He had the look of a man who had lunched not wisely but too well, on many occasions, and for some reason had stretched his remaining thinning hair across his bald pate in a tragically unconvincing comb-over. His face was flushed, his eyes were blazing, and he had a mean, pinched little mouth. He planted both hands on Heather’s desk, so he could lean forward and glare right into her face.
“I am the newly appointed Minister for Supernatural Affairs!” he said loudly. “As in appointed first thing this morning! I didn’t even know we had a Ministry for Supernatural Affairs! I was promised Education, or Health, one of the big sexy top jobs, come the next reshuffle of the Cabinet. And this is what I get! Well, if the Prime Minister thinks he can shut me up by pushing me out into the backwaters, he’s got another think coming! I know how to get noticed . . . If I have to run this half-baked Ministry, whatever it is, I will put my personal stamp on things! Oh yes . . . I’ll reorganise this place till people’s heads spin and get everyone doing things my way! Till they’re afraid to do anything without checking with me first! I demand to see Catherine Latimer, right now, so she can brief me. And so I can brief her on all the changes that will be taking place around here!”
Heather smiled at him, politely, not budging an inch. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I don’t need an appointment! I am the newly appointed Minister, and I am in charge of this . . . Department, or whatever it is.”
“No, Minister,” said Heather. “You answer to Catherine Latimer, not the other way round. It’s a common misconception, among the newly appointed. The Boss will call you in when she needs to speak to you. Go back to your office and wait.”
“Now you listen to me, young lady, this is precisely the sort of attitude I intend to put a stop to!” The Minister’s voice was rising sharply now. “All Departments in this Government answer to the Ministers of the elected Government, not to some jumped-up civil servant!”
“Not here,” said Heather. “The Carnacki Institute was founded on the orders of Her Most Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I, in 1587. So we are therefore a Royal Prerogative, and not a Government Department. Which is why we’re situated here, in Buck House. Strictly speaking, we answer to the sitting Monarch, not the Prime Minister. Because all successive Governments have preferred it that way. Don’t ask; don’t want to know. Your Prime Minister really doesn’t like you any longer, does he? Or he would have warned you . . .”
“This is worse than I thought,” said the Minister. “I know all about career civil servants and their own private fiefdoms . . . Well, if this is a fiefdom, it’s going to be my fiefdom! Following my orders! This kind of sloppy thinking and wilful independence has no place in modern Government! Now you do as you’re told, young lady, if you like having a job! I demand to speak to Catherine Latimer, immediately!”
“I’m afraid that these waiting field agents have the only appointment today,” said Heather.
The Minister looked at JC, Happy, and Melody properly for the first time, and gave no indication of being in any way impressed. He sniffed loudly and turned his scowl back to Heather.
“They can wait. They’re nothing more than little people.”
JC smiled at Happy. “There you are. It’s official. We are little people. Doesn’t that make you feel all safe and protected, knowing we’re too small to be any real danger to anyone?”
“I’ve always wanted to be little people,” said Happy. “Too small to be noticed by the powers that be.”
“Size isn’t everything,” said Melody. “Except for when it is.”
The Minister glared at them. “I have never found humour funny. You can be sure I’ll be looking into your files very thoroughly.”
“Good look finding them,” said JC.
“Right,” said Happy. “I’ve been trying to hack into them f
or years; and I know my name. Which you haven’t asked.”
“Tell me your names!” snapped the Minister.
“Jeremy Diego,” said JC.
“Monica Odini,” said Melody.
“Ivar ap Owen III,” said Happy.
The Minister looked at them suspiciously. He could sense they’d slipped something past him, but he couldn’t tell what. So he went back to frowning at Heather, regarding her as an easier target for bullying and intimidation. “You tell Latimer I’m coming in. And open up that damned door right now, or I’ll send for some security men to come in here and break it down!”
Heather sighed and pushed her chair back from her desk. JC felt an immediate need to hide behind or possibly under something. Heather came out from behind her desk, and the Minister smiled, thinking he’d won the argument—the fool. Heather strode right up to the Minister, grabbed his nose between the middle fingers of her closed left hand, and twisted the Minister’s nose savagely. He let out a howl of such pain and misery it must have been heard three corridors away. Heather twisted the Minister’s nose back and forth unmercifully while he cried like a baby; and then she let go and stepped back. The Minister raised both hands to his bleeding nose and looked at Heather with wide-eyed horror. And then he turned and ran from the Waiting Room. Heather closed the door behind him, went back to her desk, and resumed typing. Not appearing in the least disturbed or even out of breath.
JC looked at Happy and Melody. “You have to know how to talk to these people.”
There was a long pause. Melody went back to her game of Angry Chavs, Happy went back to scribbling exaggerations in his note-book, and JC went back to staring thoughtfully at the portraits on the walls, trying to catch one of them not looking at him. Time passed.
“Come on, Heather,” JC said finally. “Help us out. What sort of mood is the Boss in? Should we have brought flowers or updated our wills?”
“You’d know better than me,” said Heather. “She summoned the three of you here directly instead of going through me and this office.” She didn’t actually stop typing, but JC couldn’t help noticing that she did look a bit put-out. “And that’s not like her! The Boss is normally a stickler for following protocol. I think something’s worrying her. She’s hiding things from me. She’s hiding things from everyone.”
“Situation entirely normal, then,” said JC.
And that was when the door slammed open, again, and the newly appointed Minister for Supernatural Affairs stormed back in. There was dried blood all down the front of his nice suit, and two thick tufts of cotton wool protruded from his nostrils. He was accompanied this time by half a dozen large and heavily armed security types. The Minister struck an aggrieved pose before Heather’s desk and pointed a quivering finger at her.
“That’s her! That’s the bitch! I want her arrested, and dragged out of here, and thrown in a cell! In handcuffs!”
Heather was already up on her feet, behind her desk. Two really big guns had appeared in her hands, out of nowhere. The Minister’s jaw dropped, and he stood very still. The six security guards lowered their weapons immediately. The man in charge nodded respectfully to Heather, then looked witheringly at the Minister.
“You idiot. This is who you wanted us to arrest? Catherine Latimer’s personal secretary? Are you insane? Sorry, Heather. We didn’t know. Please don’t kill us all and dump our bodies in a mass grave.”
“It’s all right, Dave,” said Heather. “He didn’t know. He’s new.”
“Well, he’s not going to get old, acting like that,” said the security guard. “Come on, lads, let’s get going while the going’s still good.”
They left in a rush, pushing and shoving each other in their hurry to get through the open door. The Minister stood alone, staring in an almost hypnotised way at the really big guns Heather was now pointing exclusively at him.
“So,” he said finally. “If I’m not in charge . . . what, exactly, is my job here? What do I do?”
“You get to talk to the media and convince them that we don’t exist,” said Heather. “And that’s it.”
“Ah,” said the Minister. “Yes. I think I’ll go now if that’s all right.”
“I would,” said Heather.
The Minister left, closing the door quietly and very politely behind him. The really big guns disappeared from Heather’s hands, and she sat down again and resumed her typing.
“Potentially bright sort, I thought,” said JC. “He learned quickly.”
Catherine Latimer’s voice sounded suddenly in the office, from no obvious source. “Chance, get in here with your team. Heather; we are not to be interrupted. Unless it’s that thing we talked about.”
“What?” Happy said immediately. “What thing?”
“That thing the Boss and I talked about that the likes of you don’t need to know about,” said Heather.
“Unless it’s that thing we already know about,” said JC.
“The thing with the thing?” said Melody.
“No; the thing with the other thing,” said Happy.
“You all think you’re so funny,” said Heather, crushingly.
“Get in here, Chance!” said Catherine Latimer’s voice.
The extremely solid steel door at the back of the Waiting Room swung slowly open, as though daring the three field agents to enter. JC made a point of swaggering in, while Melody stuck her nose in the air, and Happy slouched along in the rear. The door closed very firmly behind them.
* * *
The Boss’s private office hadn’t changed much since the last time JC and his team had been called before her. Large and comfortable, but in no way cosy or inviting, with only the most luxurious and expensive fittings and furnishings. Catherine Latimer sat upright behind her Hepplewhite desk and gestured for the three of them to arrange themselves on the even more uncomfortable visitors’ chairs set out before her. She then looked them over with her usual cold gaze. JC made a point of not looking at her, pretending an interest in the contents of her office. Which was actually quite interesting in its own right. The Boss’s antique desk might be covered with all the most up-to-date electronic equipment, but there was no doubt Catherine Latimer had placed her own personal mark on her surroundings. Strange objects leapt to the eye everywhere, demanding the visitor’s attention.
There was a large goldfish bowl, half-full of murky ectoplasm, in which the ghost of a goldfish swam calmly backwards; flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb. A glass display case, remarkably similar to the ones JC had encountered down in the Secret Libraries, here containing the Haunted Glove of Haversham, known to have strangled seventeen young debutantes in 1953. The long white evening glove had been very firmly nailed to its wooden stand. It looked ordinary enough until you realised the fingertips were still twitching. Another display case contained an exceedingly large tooth labelled, simply but worryingly, Loch Ness 1933. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II took pride of place on the wall behind the Boss’s desk. It was said to have been painted directly after her Coronation, but that it had aged along with the Queen, in real time. It was also said that the Boss talked to the portrait concerning important matters of the day. It was not known whether she ever received a reply; but there was a great deal of discussion on the subject.
JC reluctantly returned his attention to Catherine Latimer to find she was still looking the field agents over, taking her time, saying nothing. So JC looked her over, taking his time.
The Boss had to be almost eighty now, but she still projected an air of unnatural strength and vitality. She was medium height, unapologetically stocky, her grey hair cropped in a bowl cut. Her face was all hard edges and cold grey eyes. She wore a smartly tailored grey suit and smoked black Turkish cigarettes in a long, ivory holder; supposedly an affectation that had survived from her old student days in Cambridge. There was a long-standing rumour that a long time ago, Catherine Latimer had made a deal with Someone, but no-one had ever been able to prove anything.
“
You’ve all come a long way,” she said abruptly. “From C-team agents with disreputable backgrounds and quite appalling business interests to full-time A-team agents. With an impressive record of cases solved and a series of impressive victories against the Institute’s enemies. I’d put you all down for a commendation if we did that sort of thing. I am pleased to see you’re all giving the Institute your full attention these days.” She looked at JC. “Mr. Chance, you used to run an antiquarian bookshop, in the Charing Cross Road, specialising in the kind of esoteric forbidden lore that would give any reputable scholar nightmares. The literary occult equivalent of the back-pack nuke.”
“Guilty as charged,” JC said easily. “It’s all in storage now. Just don’t have the time, any more. And A-team pay is so much better than C-team. As long as the money continues, I see no reason why I should have to go back to my bad old ways.”
Catherine Latimer turned to Happy, who sat up straight in his chair, trying hard not to look guilty. Or at least, no guiltier than usual.
“Mr. Palmer,” said the Boss. “You used to be an accountant. A very creative accountant, by all accounts.”
“I find numbers comforting,” said Happy, hardly meeting her gaze. “They are what they are. But like JC said, the money’s good enough now that I have no need for outside income. No need at all. Honest.”
“And you, Miss Chambers,” said the Boss, switching her cold gaze to Melody. “You used to publish . . . Well, let’s be polite and call it specialised erotica.”
“Filth,” said Melody. “For the discerning connoisseur. But like JC said, I don’t need the money now. Though I do still have a lock-up full of really quite interesting stuff. In case times get hard . . . Banks may come and banks may go, but filth goes on forever.”
“We all give the Carnacki Institute our full attention, these days,” said JC, quickly cutting in. “If only in self-defence. So why don’t we forget the pleasant conversation and get down to business?”