Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

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.