“Vivienne scares me,” said Erik. “I like that in a woman.”

Natasha gave him her best withering glance, but he didn’t care. He was already thinking about things she didn’t like to think about.

Vivienne MacAbre was the current Head of the Crowley Project. That wasn’t her real name, of course. In the kinds of circles Project people moved, to know the true name of a thing was to have power over it. Vivienne was a tall, willowy woman in her early forties, with olive skin and dark ethnic features, and a great mane of curly dark hair. Of Greek origin, supposedly, though of course no-one knew anything for sure. She became the current Head of the Project in the usual way, by assassinating her predecessor. If you couldn’t protect yourself from your own underlings, you weren’t fit to be Head of the Project . . . Which have always believed very firmly in survival of the fittest. Certainly no-one had tried to assassinate Vivienne since she became Head. Though Natasha did sometimes allow herself to dream a little, of what might be possible in the future . . . as long as she was careful to only dream such things a safe distance away from Project Headquarters, in its bland anonymous tower block in the middle of London.

People were always very cautious about what they said or thought around Vivienne MacAbre. Because those who weren’t had a disturbing tendency to disappear. Sometimes right in front of people.

At the briefing, Natasha and Erik had sat stiffly to attention on hard-backed chairs, while Vivienne gave them the terms of their mission in her usual calm and subtly chilling voice. Apparently something important was happening down in Oxford Circus Tube Station, and the Crowley Project wanted it. Whatever it was. So Natasha and Erik were tasked with the destruction of JC and his team and the retrieval of anything of interest the team might have uncovered. Both Natasha and Erik got the distinct impression there was rather more to the situation than that; but they knew better than to ask questions. The Crowley Project operated on a very strict Need To Know basis. And as Natasha said to Erik afterwards, safely outside Vivienne MacAbre’s office, whatever was going on at Oxford Circus, it couldn’t be that important, or the Carnacki Institute would have sent one of their A teams. JC and his people were good, but they barely qualified as a B team.

Natasha and Erik stood at the top of the unmoving escalator, considering the still-life scene before them. The intensity of the silence and the stillness intrigued them. They looked at each other. Natasha smiled suddenly at Erik.

“I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. What marvellous toys did you bring with you this time, you awful little man?”