"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 04 - Slave of Sarma" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

them. Blade wondered how J had wangled his invitation.
A taxi came down the street at the same moment the crowd spilled from the church. Blade stepped
down into the area again and peered through the spiked iron grille. This was the essence of J's plan. A
third Richard Blade! J was offering them a decoy and hoping they would bite.
The taxi halted just short of the church. The crowd, perhaps sixty-odd men and women, surged
down the steps, broke around the tall figure of J's Bobby and formed two roughly equal groups flanking
the lane down which would come the happy couple.
Blade watched the taxi.
The man who got out and paid the driver, refused his change, and stared in a sullen, hurt manner at
the church doors, was an excellent actor. J's makeup people had labored for hours. The result, the real
Blade admitted now, was astounding. For a short time, in bad light, the man could pass for Richard
Blade. Now he stood, swaying a little, scowling, hands in pockets, waiting for a last look at the girl he
had lost. The actor had been coached by J in person.
J came out of the church, moving a bit out from the crowd and remaining at the top of the steps. He
was carrying a bouquet and a large paper sack of rice. Blade grinned. J was a thorough man.
J did not expect the Russians to make an attempt at snatching Blade on the church site, or even near
it. What J did expect was that the RussiansтАФprovided they showed up at allтАФwould pick up the
actorтАФBlade and tail him away from the wedding after he had run through the histrionics of a
half-drunken sore loser. That was the script: the Russians would tail the actorтАФBlade and J's men would
tail the Russians. At the proper time J and his men would pounce. And, since the Russian Blade had not
put in an appearanceтАФneither Blade nor J had really thought he wouldтАФthe captured agents would be
taken to a certain old house in Hampstead Heath and, in J's parlance, 'questioned a bit.' When J's men
questioned you, you usually talked.
It did not work out that way. Not at all.
The florist truck came down the street and passed the church. Traveling slowly, it went on up the
street, reversed in a drive, and came back down the street. As it neared the church and the little crowd it
slowed to a bare crawl. Blade, concealed in the area-way, watched the truck with a little tic of unease.
StillтАФwhat more natural than a florist truck, late because of weather and traffic, delivering flowers to a
church? J's men guarding the end of the street had no orders to keep anyone out. This was supposed to
be a trapтАФyou had to let the quarryin.
A riffle of sound arose from the crowd, a m├йlange of shouts and laughter and old jokes and flung rice
and shoes. The happy couple were coming down the church steps arm in arm.
It was a tribute to Blade's professionalism that he took one look at Zoe's face, remembered her body
for a last time, and then kept his eyes on the actorтАФBlade. That talented gentleman, under orders to
make a discreet scene and call attention to himself, was trying to push through the throng and get to the
newlyweds. He was having rough going. The crowd was small, but tightly knit, and it took the actor a
couple of minutes to make it through the last clot of friends and well-wishers. Then, of course, the ham in
the actor came out. He faced Zoe and Reggie, the latter taking a fast backward step, and, swaying
drunkenly, made a wild gesture and said something. Blade was caught between laughter and pity for Zoe.
She really didn't deserve this. It was just bad luck that she and Reggie, and their wedding, had to be
caught up in J's machinations with the Kremlin.
Zoe thought it was the real Blade. A drunken, demented Richard Blade. She clung to Reggie as the
actor pointed an accusing finger and declaimed something. The babble of the crowd died as they sensed
something unusual. Reggie, by neat footwork, managed to remain behind his bride.
Richard Blade, fascinated as he was by the absurd little tableau, was still to blame. He should have
been more alert than he was. But Blade was man, not superman, and at the moment he was empathic
with poor Zoe. His gorge rose and yet he was near laughter as she in turn pointed a finger at the man she
thought was Blade and began to tell him off.
Blade wrote his own dialog for the scene: "Have you gone mad, Richard? This is not like you. Not at
all like you! And drunk in the bargain! Oh, Richard, Richard, how could you come here like this andтАФ"