«Good evening, Richard,» said the voice on the line. It was a well-educated, quiet, and supremely calm voice. The man called J was getting very old, but nobody had ever guessed it from talking to him over the telephone.
«Good evening, sir,» said Blade. «I'm back from the hills.»
«Very good. How soon can you reach London?»
«Is His Lordship breathing down your neck again?»
«Not precisely. He hasn't got another Portal Case in mind. But he would be happier with you on call.»
Over anything except a secure line, Blade and J always used language that suggested they were discussing an ordinary business matter to refer to the Project. A «Portal Case» was their name for one of Lord Leighton's brainstorms, which came at unpredictable intervals and usually left in their wake confusion, extra expense, and gray hairs on both Blade and J.
«I can easily be on call two days after reaching London,» said Blade. «I trust His Lordship can wait that long?»
«Certainly,» said J. «I'm very glad to hear you're coming back.» His voice was no longer quite so calm.
«It will be good to be back, sir,» said Blade. «Good night.» His own voice wasn't quite calm either.
J listened to the line go dead, gently put down the receiver, and stood up. Then he stretched both arms as far as they would go, first to either side and then over his head. A great deal of tension flowed out of him with those movements. He was tall, so that his fingers brushed the ceiling overhead, and still limber in spite of his years. Not as limber as he'd been when he stalked Germans behind the Hindenberg Line in the winter of 1917-18, of course. But one couldn't expect that unless one found the Fountain of Youth, and so far even Richard Blade hadn't found that in Dimension X.
Richard hadn't found the Fountain of Youth in Dimension X, but he'd found something far more important in the Highlands. He'd found the ability to live with himself and his duties, an ability he'd been losing. J had been wondering if Blade would lose it for good, and he'd feared the worst.
In spite of this, he hadn't been angry with Blade. He loved the younger man like the son he'd never had, and also knew Blade's ordeal from bitter personal experience.
At some time in his life, every good secret agent realizes that he moves through life leaving behind him a steadily lengthening trail of bodies. It is something he has to face and learn to live with.
J had known agents who could not learn to live with this responsibility. He'd also known agents who never realized that they had any. In different ways both kinds became unreliable and even dangerous. Both kinds tended to end up dead or mad or both if they continued their careers as agents and didn't retire in time to something less demanding.
There were also those agents who faced their responsibilities in the same determined way they faced enemy guns. They were the good and even the great agents, who could be relied on for almost anything. J had always been sure that Richard Blade was one of those men, who would meet and master his personal crisis when it came. Now he had done so, and J could not help being immensely relieved.
He walked over to the sideboard and drew out the brandy decanter and a glass. Richard Blade's latest victory called for a celebration, not just a glass of brandy. But the brandy was all it would get.
That was nothing new. Blade and J had spent their lives in secret work, winning their victories and taking their defeats in the shadows, never able to either celebrate or mourn too loudly.
Chapter 2
Four dark-suited Special Branch men barred Richard Blade's path as he approached the secret entrance to the underground complex below the Tower of London. They checked his identification and looked him over closely. None of them knew exactly who or what he was, but all of them knew that he was someone authorized to enter the complex at will. That made him important, but there was no deference in their manner as they looked him over. A Special Branch man on critical security duty would not defer to the Queen of England without orders.
Blade entered the building that concealed the head of the elevator shaft. It was an old powder magazine, dating from the eighteenth century. The entrance was now fitted with a steel door three inches thick that could slide into place at the touch of a button. The whitewashed interior was brightly lit and continuously scanned by electronic monitoring devices. At the touch of another button the interior could be flooded with tear gas.
J was waiting for Blade by the elevator. They shook hands in silence. There was no need to refight the battle Blade had fought and won over the past few weeks. The calm smile on J's face and the firmness in his handshake said everything necessary. Then he turned and pressed the button set in the wall. A section of the wall slid aside, revealing the golden bronze of the elevator. The door slid open with a faint hiss and Blade and J stepped into the elevator car.
They stepped out again a few seconds later, two hundred feet below the Tower. The main corridor of the Project's complex stretched emptily away in front of them. Sometimes Lord Leighton himself was waiting to greet them here, but not today.
The corridor was empty, but it was neither silent or unguarded. The distant purr of machinery, the clatter of typewriters and computer terminals, faint footsteps and blurred voices all combined into sound that flowed along the corridor.
Every foot of the corridor was watched every minute of the twenty-four hours of the day by computerized systems of electronic monitors and sensing devices. Every few yards were archways concealing more sliding steel doors. Like a ship's hull, the complex was divided into compartments that could be sealed off in seconds against any attack. Trapped and immobilized, the attackers could be dealt with almost at leisure.
They would be dealt with harshly, Blade knew. The defenses of the complex included several of the latest, nastiest, and most expensive security devices. They also included some of Lord Leighton's own devices, products of his endlessly fertile mind and somewhat gruesome sense of humor. Blade didn't know anything about most of Lord Leighton's devices and wasn't quite sure he wanted to know. He did know they would work, and that was enough.
The two men walked swiftly along the corridor, passing through eight successive archways before they reached the computer rooms at the far end. There were five of those rooms. The first four held the steadily increasing mass of auxiliary equipment and storage facilities for the computers and the technicians to handle it all. Katerina Shumilova had infiltrated the complex as one of those technicians.
As they passed through the rooms, it seemed to Blade that every inch of floor had something on it and every desk had at least three people using it. It would soon be time to add another room to the complex.
Blade wondered if the money would be available. Project Dimension X could not draw on regular Parliamentary appropriations for research and development. It depended on the Prime Minister's Special Fund and the sale of whatever Blade brought back from Dimension X.
When he brought back gold or jewels, that was easy money. Often he brought back materials or devices that defied the scientists' best efforts to duplicate them. Sometimes he brought back only the knowledge of something centuries beyond Home Dimension science. These exciting discoveries were invariably useless without many millions of pounds of additional research and development.