"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 10 - Ice Dragon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

computer on a reasonably empty stomach, but it was nearly six hours before he had to be at the Tower.
The apartment was a new indulgence, five rooms in a newly renovated Victorian building, an
indulgence that absorbed a large part of the two thousand-pound tax-free bonus to his salary that was his
only financial reward for his work on the project. But the new apartment had space for his growing
collection of books and weapons, for fitting up one room as a dojo for his weapons training (walls and
ceiling as well as the floor padded to avoid disturbing the neighbors), for entertaining in the unlikely event
that he ever did so. It also served to support his new "cover" as a youngтАФwell,
middle-aged-manтАФabout-town living comfortably if not extravagantly off a fortune made by three
previous generations in the jute and copra trade.
Blade did not find this role entirely congenial. It involved being considered a deplorably eligible
bachelor and fending off approaches made by matrimonially inclined ladies and, even worse, by their
mothers. Also it was an image that his father had always loathed with a purple and loudly expressed
passion. His father, in spite of having all the appropriate money and credentials for a life of gilded ease,
had distinguished himself in forty years of public service, including honors gained in both world wars. And
he had passed on to his only son the firm conviction that those born to wealth and position should work
five times as hard as the ordinary man, in order to be considered deserving of their privileges. Since that
son had grown up with a keen if practically oriented mind, a superb physique, and a taste for adventure,
it had been easy for him to respond to his father's urgings. Blade had been recruited by MI6 while still
atOxford , and had never looked back since.
After lunch he stacked the dishes in the kitchen for the cleaning woman to cope with tomorrow
morning, put himself through a vigorous hour of limbering and testing exercises, then pulled a book from
his increasingly well-stocked shelves and sat down to read for the remaining hours until it was time to
leave for the Tower. He had acquired a habit of voracious reading the year before, when he had been
tormented by an impotence that was eventually cured only by his eighth trip through the computer.
At the time he had devoured books on psychology and physiology like a starving man sitting down at
a banquet, and accumulated a collection that many practicing professionals in both fields might have
envied. Since then, he had been more wide-ranging in his reading habits, covering military history,
geography, geology, anthropologyтАФa dozen different fields.
He wanted to train himself to be the best possible observer of the worlds in which he traveled. Also,
he wanted to understand each one as well as he could, so that if he took action in a situation, he would
stand a chance of doing the right thing. Both J and Lord L had enthusiastically taken up the notion of his
doing something to help the people of each dimension if possible, rather than simply observing,
adventuring, grabbing whatever might be useful to England, and coming home. But this also made his job
even more complex and demanding.
The afternoon wore on; he read with less and less attention, until the clock finally crept around to four
thirty. It was time to leave for the Tower.
He left the MG in the garage and took a taxi. By the time it had battled its way through the evening
rush hour to the Tower, it was nearly six. He left the taxi outside the gate like any ordinary visitor and
walked the rest of the way in, until the escort of grim-faced Special Branch men materialized out of the
damp shadows cast by the ancient walls and took him in tow.
Both J and Lord Leighton were waiting at the head of the elevator shaft. That meant that either the
computer's main sequence hadn't been initiated, or else that Lord Leighton had finally and miraculously
found somebody he trusted to initiate at least its first phase. Blade looked at them closely, suddenly even
more conscious than usual that this might be the last time he saw these two men who trusted himтАФand
whom he trustedтАФin a very special way, men who had given him an opportunity to satisfy his craving for
adventure in a way beyond even the imagination of most people.
There was JтАФtall, craggy-faced, slightly stooped now with his sixty-plus years, as always exuding an
air of imperturbability and urbanity. He might have been a successful stockbroker or aHarley Street
practitioner, at least to anybody who didn't know his record. He had been surviving Gestapo
interrogations when Blade was still in diapers. Even after age had finally brought him behind a desk he