J nodded and smiled at his end of the line. No mistaking that voice, that cheerful, well-spoken, light baritone. This was the man who had worked for him, for MI6 before it had become MI6A, ever since J had, in person, recruited him at Oxford.
Wasn't it?
'Just being conversational,' J said with a laugh. 'And, of course, a bit of business. A certain boffin wants to see you right away, Richard.'
Unthinkable now to waste two precious days. It might already be too late. There was a tiny snapping sound. J stared down at his spare pipe, the stem broken in half in his palm. You, he told himself, had bloody well pull yourself together and bloody fast, too.
Blade said: 'Lord L, eh? I didn't think it was quite ready yet, sir. Not that I mind coming up at once, but the last time I saw you I got the impression that - '
J leaped at it. 'Oh, that - er, yes. When did I see you last, Richard? My memory is getting fuzzy these days.'
Silence. The wire hummed in desolation. J thought he heard gulls screaming in the background. He guessed at the puzzlement on Blade's face. The lad knew there was nothing wrong with his, J's, memory.
Blade did sound puzzled. Cautious. Remote now. J smiled. Blade was a professional like himself.
'Day before yesterday, sir. In your office.'
'Right,' said J. 'That will be all, Richard. Get up here at once, as soon as you hang up. Go to Lord L's place. You know it?'
But now Blade wasn't giving anything away. All he said was, 'I know it, sir. At once. Goodbye.'
'Goodbye, Richard.'
J hung up and sat staring down at the broken pipe. Were his nerves really all that strung up? He tossed the bits of pipe into a wastebasket and reached for another phone. No time to waste now.
As he worked he stared occasionally out the window. Here, in the city, just off Threadneedle Street, it was quiet. Raining again, adding to the murk. There was no shimmer of neon, no street noise. The brokers and the merchants had gone for the day.
J locked his door, a thing he had not done in years. Before he went back to his desk he went again to peer out the window. Out there somewhere, perhaps not in London, or even in England, but somewhere, was another Richard Blade. A double, twin, doppelganger, call him what you would. He was there. As perfect a replica of the real Blade as years of training could make him.
J went to his files and unlocked them. He found a manila folder and scanned it rapidly. The Russian version of Blade had been in the works for some ten years. They had never used him.
Why now?
Could the Russians, impossible and incredible as it seemed, somehow have found out about PDX? Dimension X?
Chapter Three
Richard Blade had never been cut out for the role of rejected suitor. Massive, handsome, steel thewed, endowed with a superior brain that matched his superb body, he was a man moulded for heroic things. Yet here he was, lurking in a dark areaway on a day of pouring rain, watching another man marry the girl he had loved and bedded. Any moment now she would come out of the little church across this quiet Mayfair street, borne on the triumphant arm of Reginald Smythe-Evans, CPA.
Blade made a bear-like sound in his throat. Reginald Smythe-Evans, indeed! Reggie! Blade spat and pulled the collar of his trenchcoat tighter against the rain. It was almost obscenely like something out of P.G. Wodehouse. Reggie was pale, thin, and had spots. And a great deal of money, because Reggie, Sr. owned the firm.
Yet none of that explained it - Blade knew what did. Zoe Cornwall wanted a man around the house. Operative word - around. A man who would be there when wanted, whether for love-making or fixing things. A man who would not be forced to lie to her, by silence or omission, because the Official Secrets Act had him trussed like a Christmas goose.
Blade sighed and forgot it. That was over and done with. Zoe was out of his life and he wished her well with Reggie. There was a job to be done now, duty to be fulfilled, and the wedding of Zoe and Reggie had - how she would have hated the idea - set the stage.
If matters went well today, if the trap worked, they would take the fake Richard Blade.
The three of them, J, Lord Leighton, and Blade, had devised the plan during an arduous eighteen hour session at the house in Prince's Gate.
Blade, peering through gray ropes of rain at the blank gothic arching of church doors, smiled as he recalled how J had made him recount certain details of his three previous adventures into Dimension X. J was not a man easily satisfied. For a long time Blade had answered questions about the land of Alb, about his adventures among the Caths and Mongs in the Jade Mountains, the perils he had faced in the weird twilight world of Tharn, the strangest of all the X Dimensions into which the computer had sent him.
It was Blade's private opinion that J overdid things at times. His Lordship must have been of the same opinion and, being His Lordship, did not have to remain quiet about it.
'Don't be such a ruddy ass,' he told J. 'Who in the bloody hell else could it be? Let us have less 'security,' J, and more creative thinking. How are we going to trap this fake Richard Blade?'
J, sulking a bit, retired with his newly repaired pipe to a chair before the fire. Blade and the old scientist talked and, half-heartedly, tried to come up with something. Neither tried very hard. Both knew that in the end it would be J who solved the problem.
And so it was. An hour or so later J had it all worked out. The wedding, the next day, was fortuitous. What more natural than that a rejected suitor, a little the worse for wear, needing a shave and with whiskey in him, should hover in the shadows and watch his lost love?
Lord L rubbed his hands in half-contemptuous glee. 'Pure Stella Dallas. But it might work.'
