"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 17 - The Mountains of Brega" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

sagged limply down onto the floor.
Blade pivoted as he came down, then lunged at the dart gun. His fingers closed on it as new sounds
exploded outside. Five gunshots erupted in rapid succession, two shotgun blasts, a brief sputter of
automatic weapons. There was the unmistakable whoooom of a gasoline tank igniting, and a second later
a long and terrible scream. The scream ended in a squashy thump, and after that came silence.
Blade pickedElizabeth up, carried her unresisting body to the couch, and pulled the nightdress back
over her head. By the time he had retrieved a decent minimum of his own clothing, her eyes were
beginning to focus again and her breathing had almost returned to normal. His voice was clipped and cool
as he spoke to her.
"I think my friends have just taken care of the rest of your friends."
"My friends?" she said dully.
"Yes. I don't know who they are, but we'll find out shortly. Those two with the dart guns, at least, are
going to live to be questioned."
"WhatтАФwhat about me?" she said, with a faint whimper.
"That depends. If you cooperateтАФ"
"But my familyтАФoh, God, why didn't I just kill myself when they asked me? Why, why, why?" And
she burst into tears.
Blade could not help feeling sorry for her. Unless she was still acting, she had just confirmed his
suspicions that she was an amateur, dragged into posing as bait by blackmail or threats. Now he had to
find out who had done the blackmailing or threatening. And it was even more important to find out how
much they knew about Richard Blade, and why they were after him.
If they were after him because he had been one of the best and deadliest agents of MI6 for twenty
years, that was one thing. There were several like him. But if they were after him because they knew or
suspected his role in Project Dimension XтАФthat was something far different, far worse.
It was far worse because Richard Blade was the only living man who could travel into other
dimensions.


Chapter 2
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There were four people in the office. They were the only four people in the world who were supposed to
know all about Project Dimension X. There was Richard Blade, the project's front-line soldier. He had
made sixteen trips into Dimension X. No other living man had made even one and returned alive and
sane. There were hopes that someone might turn up sooner or later, but so far all the searching had not
disclosed that someone.
There was Lord Leighton, as brilliant as he was temperamental,Britain 's leading computer scientist.
The great computers under theTowerofLondon that sent Blade into Dimension X were his creation. His
small dark eyes behind their thick glasses flicked irritably around the room. Occasionally he would shift
position in his chair, trying to get more comfortable. That was hard, with a body distorted by polio, a
hunchback, and eighty-odd years.
J returned Leighton's glance imperturbably. Everything about J seemed ordered and disciplined, even
the lines in his face and the iron-gray hair receding from his high forehead. The imperturbability was not a
pose, either. J had been a spy and then a spymaster for all the years of a career that went back to World
War I. If he had been the type to lose his head, he would long since have been dead. He had picked
Richard Blade out of Oxford, watched his career as an MI6 agent for nearly twenty years, then seen him
move on to Project Dimension X. He was never happy about seeing the man he loved like a son hurled
off into the unknown. But neither he nor Blade would ever balk at doing forEngland what needed to be
done.
Nor would the fourth man in the room, the Prime Minister. He seldom sat in on these policy
conferences for the project. He did not understand most of what was discussed, and admitted as much.