"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 25 - Torian Pearls." - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

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