"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 15 - The Towers of Melnon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

The Towers of Melnon
Blade Book 15


By Jeffrey Lord




Chapter ONE
^┬╗
Englandis a small and crowded country. Enough vacant land for the type of training center the secret
intelligence agency MI6 wanted to build is often hard to come by. MI6 wanted at least a square mile with
buildings, which doesn't grow on bushes along every cowpath and byway.
But it so happened that, just as MI6's search was beginning, a certain earl was being buried. This earl
had been atEton with the man called J, the head of MI6, in the days before World War I. This was so
long ago that neither of the men enjoyed being reminded of how long ago it had been. But the friendship
had lasted down the years. It had lasted as J rose to be one of the most distinguished spymasters in the
free world, and as the earl rose to be a general, complete with VC and DSO, and later became a
distinguished member of Parliament. But no amount of distinction can ensure that a man will not fall from
a horse and break his neck, and the earl did just that.
J attended the funeral at the earl's family seat. Afterwards the new earl ushered him into the great,
gloomy, oak-paneled library. There he made J a proposition concerning the disposal of the family
estateтАФor at least of part of it.
"You know what death duties are like, sir," said the younger man. "We should be able to hold on to
the main estate. But father was rather old-fashioned. He preferred to keep as much in land as possible.
We don't have much cash, so we're going to have to sell off the Herefordshire estate."
"Indeed?" said J, with deceptive placidity.
"Yes. It's not a great huge thing, less than fifteen hundred acres. And the house is a great wretched
Victorian pile that sheds tiles and chimney pots on alternate Thursdays. But the stables are in good shape,
and there's plenty of room. Also a good bit of privacy. The land's heavily wooded, and the walls and
fences have been kept up fairly well. My father was a bitтАФah, shirty, when it came to trespassers. Got in
trouble with the county over that a few times."
 "I know," said J. He had been a guest at this same estate a number of times before, during, and after
World War II.
"The thing of it is," said the young earl, "I think father would have liked you to have a chance at the
Herefordshire estate."
"Why me?" said J. His placidity was even more deceptive now.
"Well, he always said he thought you were in some sort ofтАФwell, secret intelligence work. MI5 or
something like that. You know, James Bond stuff?"
"Suppose I were?" said J. "What does that have to do with the estate?"
"If you were, it occurred to father that you might want a training center of some sort. A nice secluded
training center, someplace where a lot of tourists and passersby won't be butting in."
J nodded. He kept his professional poker face, so he did not light up like a Christmas tree with sheer
delight. At least not on the outside. But he did take a deep breath before saying, "I see."
"We'd have to sell it," the young earl went on. "I doubt if the law would just let us donate it. But I'll
see about keeping the price down as far as I can. I know the intelligence agencies aren't exactly rolling in
money these days."
"Except inAmerica ," said J with a wry grin. The wealth of people and equipment that his American
colleagues had was always a sore point with him, sometimes a major one. They could claim at least a