«Yes,» said R. There was a crisp finality in that single word that told Blade a great deal. It told him that he had indeed been interrogated, that they'd found out a great deal about him, and that he would never learn what they'd found out, no matter how many times he asked. In fact, asking would be not merely a waste of time, it would be dangerous.
Blade very badly wanted to know how much he'd said. Above all, he wanted to know if he'd revealed that he was-from another Dimension. He might not have said so in plain words, but this was a scientifically advanced Dimension. Its interrogators could interpret his words and draw conclusions from them in ways that men from a world of swords and castles never could. Revealing his origins to these people would amount to revealing the Dimension X secret, and to people who might be able to make use of the knowledge. Blade did not know how advanced Englor's computer technology was. He suspected it was uncomfortably close to that of Home Dimension.
It was maddeningly frustrating. How much did these people know? Blade knew that he was a difficult subject for interrogation, but he also knew that any man can be broken, given enough time and the right techniques.
Well, if he wasn't going to find out, he wasn't going to find out. In any case, the odds were somewhat against their having dug out anything dangerous. That would have certainly required more than the few days at most that he could have been under interrogation. Also, there was R's offer of a position as a field operative. It seemed hard to believe that a «mystery man» or a traveler from another Dimension would be casually offered such a position-at least by an intelligence professional like R.
Blade set his mind more or less at rest and nodded. «Very well. It's certainly an appealing offer. May I ask-is there any penalty for refusing?»
R smiled and shook his head. «None whatever. Well, perhaps a slight one. It will cause less talk if you do not return to your training unit. So you'll be passed as fully trained and assigned with the rank of corporal to the Royal Yorkshire Light Infantry. Their field battalions are all with the Eighth Army in Gallia. No one in the Yorkshires will know there's anything unusual about you, and there will be a cover story for the men in the training battalion. We aren't interested in coercing you, Mr. Blade. We want you as a free agent, or not at all.» A lift of the gray eyebrows told Blade that the pun was intentional.
«I see.» It was not hard to decide what his answer should be. He was being offered a chance to spend his time in this Dimension doing exactly the same type of work he'd done in Home Dimension for years. He'd done it well then, he'd do it well now. It was also the best opportunity he could hope for to dig out whatever useful secrets this Dimension might hold. Finally, it would be interesting, and Blade was a natural adventurer who hated boredom almost more than he did armed enemies.
«Do you want an answer now?» he said.
R nodded. «If you feel yourself in a position to give one, yes.»
«I accept.»
R smiled, rose to his feet-slowly, but quite gracefully. He came over to Blade with his hand outstretched. Blade rose and they shook hands.
«You'll have to pass through our regular training course, naturally. I don't imagine that someone with the qualities you've shown will fail, however. So, Mr. Blade, I think I can say with some confidence-welcome to the Special Operations Division.»
They shook hands again, and R opened the door. As he went out, the maid entered, pushing ahead of her a wheeled cart with an array of covered dishes, glasses, bottles, and pots.
Blade sniffed the various odors, and suddenly realized that he was a good deal hungrier than he'd thought.
Blade was again face to face with R only six weeks later. He spent the first three of those weeks in what was nominally the «training course.» After the first few days it became obvious that he was not being taught the skills he would need as a Special Operations agent. He was being tested to see if he already had those skills.
That suggested they knew or suspected something unusual about his background. Refusing to worry about that, Blade concentrated with grim determination on passing every one of the tests as impressively as possible. There were tests in marksmanship and parachuting, weapons and vehicle maintenance, unarmed combat, swimming and scuba diving. There were tests of his reaction times, analytical abilities, stress tolerances, memory, and every other quality that it was possible to measure. There was testing ten and sometimes twelve hours a day. It was a grueling routine, but the beds were soft, the food was good, and Blade's iron constitution and machinelike endurance did the rest. No one, least of all Blade, was surprised when at the end of the three weeks he was declared to have passed all the tests by a wide margin. In some of them he'd made the highest scores ever recorded in the school.
He spent another three weeks learning things a little less basic, such as ship and aircraft recognition, Red Flame military customs, the use of Russland weapons, and the like. The Russland language was as nearly identical to Home Dimension Russian as the language of Englor was to Home Dimension English, and Blade spoke competent if not fluent Russian. The language instructors said he would have trouble passing as a native Russlander, but no trouble at all passing as a citizen of one of the conquered satellites.
While Blade was in training, the Red Flames were busily setting about adding Nordsbergen to their empire. Or at least they were arranging things so that they could move in any time they wanted to, in force, with no danger of facing effective resistance.
Their surface ships and submarines swept across the shallow Baltan Sea that lay between Russland and Nordsbergen, and out through the Straits of Gratz into the Nord Sea. They completely ruled the coastal waters of Nordsbergen. Landings were reported on a number of the islands along the coast. Fortunately, all the troops and equipment of Englor had already been evacuated.
In the air, Russland planes were over Nordsbergen twenty-four hours a day, flying low, flying high, buzzing cities and military installations, watching everything that went on, doing little damage but making a thorough nuisance of themselves. They were reported to be concentrating heavily over the high range of mountains in central Nordsbergen.
Here in the training school Blade didn't have to keep his mouth shut on matters of strategy, tactics, and politics. «There seem to be good sites for radar stations all along the range,» he said. «With long-range sets up there, the Red Flames could extend their warning network halfway across the Nord Sea.»
«That could very well be it,» said one of the instructors. «We've had reports of Russ experiments with large prefabricated domes. They could be used for housing radar sets.»
The Imperial Navy and Air Force made no effort to interfere with Russland operations over and around Nordsbergen. At the same time, they left nothing undone to keep a close watch on those operations. The Imperial Army was wasting no time either. Battalions and brigades arrived from overseas areas of the Empire almost every day. Other battalions and brigades crossed the Channel to join the Eighth Army facing the Red Flames on the eastern border of Gallia.
There was good reason for these troop movements. The Russlanders were steadily reinforcing their own armies in their satellite countries. In a single week eight new divisions were identified by Imperial Military Intelligence, three of them armored divisions. A mighty mass of men and tanks and guns was gathering opposite the Eighth Army, outnumbering it at least three to one. Against that kind of odds, even the better training and better weapons of the Imperial Army might not be enough. There was a race on between Englor and the Red Flames, a race to see who would be the first to be ready to strike. It was by no means certain that Englor was going to win that race.