“I felt the threats and menaces were quite unnecessary,” Natasha said primly. “I am an experienced field agent. I mean, Come back with their heads or don’t bother coming back? When have we ever needed threats to motivate us? When have we ever failed the Project?”

“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?”

Erik smiled smugly in return and fished in the bulging pockets of his jacket. He avoided Natasha’s eyes. Moments like this were the nearest they ever got to a real relationship, and they made him nervous. He produced with a flourish a 375 Magnum pistol so big it shouldn’t even have fitted into his pocket. He considered trying the famous monologue from Dirty Harry but knew he didn’t have the voice to bring it off successfully.

“How typical,” Natasha murmured sweetly. “A big gun for a small man. It’s all about compensation, you know.”

“How typical of a woman,” countered Erik, “to think it’s always about size.”

He put the Magnum away and produced from his other pocket a piece of yellowed bone, barely three inches long. Carved deep into the bone were strange, curving patterns that seemed to seethe and swirl if you looked at them long enough.

“Aboriginal pointing bone,” said Erik proudly. “And not just any bone—carved from the thigh-bone of the great naval explorer and map-maker, Captain Cook himself. Soaked for three years in the semen of a dozen hanged men, the first transported convicts to be hanged in Australia. I could point this at an elephant, and it would drop dead on the spot.”

“They don’t have elephants in the London Underground,” said Natasha, crushingly.

“They might have,” said Erik. “You don’t know. You never travel on the Tube.”

The next object out of his pockets was a flat metal box with two steel horns protruding. Natasha looked at it, then at Erik.

“Taser,” he said proudly. “Of my own design. Press the button, and this little box will produce actual lightning bolts. If my pointing bone doesn’t finish off the elephant, I can fry it with this.”

“What is this sudden obsession with elephants?” said Natasha. “It’s not more compensation, is it?”

Erik didn’t deign to answer. The last object out of his pockets was a simple monocle. He showed it to Natasha but made no attempt actually to screw it into his eye.

“This specially treated lens can see through all illusions and reveal hidden traps. It can also show what’s happening in deepest dark and brightest light. It can even, theoretically, reveal the true nature of any given object or person though I haven’t actually tested that function under field conditions, as yet.” He considered Natasha thoughtfully. “What would I see, I wonder, if I were to look at you through this marvellous monocle, Natasha dear?”

“Don’t even think about it,” said Natasha. “Now, my turn.”

She started off by pulling two heavy punch daggers from the tops of her tall pink leather boots. The wide leaf-shaped blades had long oval holes in their centres.

“So when you thrust the blades deep into someone’s body, bits of their organs or intestines will fall through the holes and be trapped there,” Natasha explained. “When you pull the blades out again, the trapped body parts are pulled out with them. Note also the serrated edges, so the blades can cut through bone. I’ve never understood this modern fascination with flick-knives. Decorative, yes, but I want a blade that can do real damage.”

“Of course you do,” murmured Erik. “It’s never about the kill with you; it’s the suffering. And given the size of those knives, I could make a remark or two about compensation myself.”

“Don’t start with the elephant again,” said Natasha. She thrust the knives back into the concealed sheaths in her boots with a casualness that made Erik wince, and produced from a concealed holster a small but perfectly formed 9mm pistol, silver-plated, with real pearl handles.

“Mummy gave it to me on my thirteenth birthday,” Natasha said happily. “She had a feeling it might come in handy someday.”

“That’s boarding-school for you,” said Erik.

“Well, quite,” said Natasha, making the pistol disappear about her person. She pulled a small leather pouch from an inside pocket. “I had this made from the stretched and tanned testicles of an old lover,” she said casually. Opening the drawstrings carefully, she spilled out onto her hand a dull red withered object that Erik couldn’t identify at first. Natasha smiled. “This is the mummified heart of dear dead Daddy, gone and not missed in the least. Frankly, Mummy and I were somewhat surprised to find he actually had a heart when we opened him up. It’s been treated in many special ways, by the Seven Sisters of Stepney Underneath, and now I can use it to call up the dead and make them answer to me. Not for long, admittedly, and it’s a hard job getting anything useful out of them; but then, the dead always have their own agenda.”

“Do I smell cardamom?” said Erik.

“Well, we had to preserve it with something,” said Natasha.

Next up were two chicken legs, tied together with brass wire and several strands of human hair with complicated knots tied in them.

“I didn’t know you were bringing lunch,” said Erik.