"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 30 - Dimension Of Horror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

Blade did not reply, but did appear to be aware that J was speaking to him. At least, his eyes
focused on J's face.
J tried again. "You must have seen what happened here just now. Tell me, Richard. Tell me."

Blade's blank eyes remained on J's face, but his features were expressionless.

"Tell me," J repeated.

J stared into Richard's eyes for a long time, waiting for an answer, or at least for some flicker of
recognition.

At last, with an angry shrug, J turned away and strode from the room.

In the lounge he found a wall phone, and after securing an outside line, phoned his secretary at
Copra House.

"Could you send the Rolls over to the Tower to pick me up?"

"Right away, sir." Her voice was cold, businesslike.

"Then call our man at Heathrow Airport and have him make ready the Lear jet. Tell him to file a
flight plan for Inverness."

As he hung up, J silently admitted that he should be sending an agent on this mission, rather than
going himself. But, he mused, half-smiling, everything's so nebulous. I need to get a feel for it
personally, first-hand, if I've any hope of understanding it.

He went to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited, listening to the rush as it came down.
Abruptly, though he had heard no one approach, he thought he saw, from the corner of his eye,
someone standing at his right.

He turned to speak, but there was nobody there.

The elevator door slid open. Glancing uneasily around, he stepped inside. As the elevator
ascended with a sickening acceleration, he thought bleakly, Are the loony germs rubbing off on
me? I could have sworn someone was there!

At fourteen hundred hours, in a light rain, the Lear jet touched down at Inverness Airport.
Opening his umbrella, J disembarked and hurried for the hangar, leaving the pilot to tie down and
make arrangements. The sanitarium had sent a car-a Rover-and a chauffeur, a big fellow with a
pot belly and no hair. J guessed he was an old MI6 man in semi-retirement; former SIS men often
had a wary look about the eyes and a body that had once been trained like an athlete's, but had
been let go to seed, and this sanitarium functioned largely as a place where used-up agents were
put out to pasture.

As they drove inland, cruising swiftly along the glistening wet macadam roadway, J leaned
forward and spoke to the back of the man's head.
"Have you been working for the sanitarium long?"