by Джеффри Лорд
They were halfway across the garden before Blade saw even one guard. He was only a helmeted silhouette, standing immobile, his face turned toward the sky. For all the attention he was paying to the garden, Blade and Arllona might have ridden past on horseback without his noticing them.
The Gardens of Stam were visible through the trees when Arllona stopped and put a hand on Blade's arm. She pointed at a long creeping vine that sprawled across the grass in front of them. She was about to speak, when Blade put a finger to his lips. She nodded as she also heard the sound of approaching footsteps.
The other guard was walking along the outer wall. As he came in sight, it was clear he was a good deal more alert than his comrade. He kept his back toward the wall and his eyes toward the garden, one hand close to the butt of a long-barreled pistol. He stepped a few paces closer, investigating the shadows under a bush, and Blade saw that the man was wearing a breastplate, a chain-mail loinguard, and a high-crested helmet.
That wasn't good. The armor would make it impossible to strike the guard down from a distance. It would be hard enough even to stab him before he could grab his pistol. One shot would give the alert, whether it hit anything or not. How to-?
The vine! Blade dropped on hands and knees and crawled back to where the vine trailed across the grass. It was as tough as Arllona had said. He drew his sword and sliced downward. He wound up having to saw through it a strand at a time. In a few minutes he had a five-foot section cut off and pruned of all leaves. He tied a knot in each end, to give himself a better grip. Then he returned to Arllona.
«Stay here, and the next time the guard passes that bush-«he pointed «-make a noise, as if you were sick. That will make him stop. I'll do the rest.» He gripped the vine with both hands and formed a loop to show what he meant. She nodded, face set and body rigid with tension.
Blade slipped away to his chosen position and waited. He would have only one chance. So far they had been astoundingly lucky. No one could have found the dead guards in the chamber above, or the alarm would long since have been up. One shot, though-
The guard's footsteps sounded again, soft thuds on the grass. Blade saw the silhouette of the guard's helmeted head appear over the top of the bush.
The guard took two more steps. Then Arllona moaned, a long, faint, whimpering moan, like an animal in pain. The guard stopped, standing in the open as he looked around, searching for the source of the noise. He was alert and aware, but not alert enough to catch the sound of three soft, rapid steps behind him.
Blade's looped vine rose, then descended over the guard's head and around his unprotected throat. Before the man could take another breath Blade jerked the loop tight. The heavy muscles of his arms stood out as he heaved up and back. The guard rose completely off the ground, as the vine tightened around his throat. His breath died, his eyes bulged, a swollen tongue crept out as his jaw sagged open. With a soft crunch the guard's windpipe caved in. He went limp and the pistol thudded to the grass from a lifeless hand.
Blade did not loosen the vine until he had dragged the dead guard under the bushes. Then he thrust the pistol into his belt and crept back to Arllona. A minute later they were both kneeling over the vine, slicing through the tough fibers.
They kept cutting and tying together lengths of vine until they had a rope more than a hundred feet long. Then Blade tied a large loop on one end, dragged the other end over to a stout tree near the edge of the garden, and tied the vine firmly around the trunk. Pulling with all his strength, Blade could barely make the tree shiver.
Either the other guard had fallen asleep, or he had taken their small noises to be normal night sounds. Blade carried the loop to the wall and helped Arllona place her feet in it.
«All right, now,» he whispered. «Clasp your hands around the vine, as tightly as you can. Don't look down until you land. Then get out of sight at once. I'll be down as fast as I can.»
He knew he would have to leave the vine-rope dangling, an open sign of their escape if anyone was looking for it. Even if anyone was, the dark green vine would not be easy to see at night. By dawn they should be safe in the hands of the Jade Masters, or even out of Kano altogether. So far Arllona had kept every promise she'd made. Blade hoped the Jade Masters would keep theirs, and he started to lower Arllona away and down.
He had lowered her barely twenty feet when a thunderstorm seemed to explode over the outer wall of the city. Six times in a few seconds, jets of yellow flame stabbed the darkness. Then the thunder of six heavy guns going off reached Blade's ears. The distant gunners fired a second salvo-and from below came Arllona's wild screams.
«The Raufi! The Raufi! They are coming against the walls! That is the signal! Oh, it is the end for Kano! It is the end for Kano! Oh, oh, ohhhhhhhh!» More cannon went off. The lights of torches and signal fires started springing to life all across the three miles of darkness in the Gardens of Stam.
Maybe it was the end of Kano, and maybe it wasn't. Blade was painfully sure that it was the end of any chance for a quiet, secret escape. Every Kanoan soldier within a mile must have heard Arllona's hysterical screams. Even if by some miracle nobody had heard Arllona and was running to find out what the noise meant, there would still be trouble. If the Raufii were really marching on the outer wall, the Gardens of Stam would be swarming with alarmed and hurrying Kanoan soldiers. They might arrest Blade and Arllona on general principles. They would certainly drive the agents of the Jade Masters away from the rendezvous. Within an hour or two, Kano would be tightly sealed.
Blade let out the rest of the vine as fast as he dared. A yelp of pain and surprise from below told him that Arllona had landed harder than she'd expected. He saw that she was on her feet and hobbling rapidly toward the nearest cover.
Blade had his hands on the vine and was about to swing himself over the wall when he heard footsteps behind him. He whirled, drawing his sword as the surviving guard dashed up. The man halted, surprised at Blade's formidable appearance and readiness for combat. That halt gave Blade his chance to attack, aiming a thrust at his opponent's throat.
The guard was a better swordsman than Blade had expected. Steel met steel with a clang that echoed around the garden. The guard disengaged with impressive speed and launched a furious attack of his own. Blade parried it, but not easily. The guard was nearly as big as he was and hitting nearly as hard.
Another flurry of blows. Blade was sure he could defeat this man, but that would take the time he didn't have! He drove his mind furiously, hammering out a strategy in seconds.
The guard launched another attack. Blade reached out farther than usual to parry it. The swords met with another echoing clang. Blade relaxed his grip and let the guard's sword beat his own out of his hand, sending it flying over the wall. The guard let out a roar of triumphant laughter and raised his sword for a downcut to split Blade's head open. Before the laugh died or the sword started down, Blade moved.
He lunged forward, his two hundred and ten pounds driving his shoulder into the man's armored chest. The man's breath exploded out of him as if he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. He heeled backward, eyes wide and gasping for breath. Somehow he found the strength to raise his sword again. Blade grabbed the raised sword arm, bending it until the elbow shattered, then jerked. The guard screamed in agony, then screamed again as he found himself hurtling forward toward the wall. A third scream began as he found himself in mid-air. Then it cut off abruptly with a thud and a crunch as he hit the ground ninety feet below.
Blade gripped the vine again and swung himself over the wall. He didn't bother looking down. If there were Kanoans already waiting down there he was a dead man anyway, and if there weren't he didn't need to waste time looking for them.
He went down the vine hand over hand. He would have slid down, but the vine was so rough that sliding would have torn his hands to ribbons, leaving him unable to hold a sword.
Halfway down he swung his eyes upward. He was just in time to see three helmeted heads appear over the wall.
A pistol flashed, but the bullet sailed off into the darkness unheard. Then something metal flashed high over one of the heads and came down. The vine jerked, slamming Blade painfully against the hard cold jade of the wall. The axe came down again, and the vine parted.
Blade had time to let out one yell of sheer, blazing rage at Kano and everybody in it. He knew he was falling, and he knew that his fall would make him an easy prey for the men who wanted to reduce him to a charred grease spot in the Mouth of the Gods.
Then the ground came up and hit him, and Richard Blade stopped knowing anything for a while.
Chapter Nine
No light shone in the chambers of the computer complex. The electronic monitors that kept watch didn't need any light, and no people were here tonight. There might be one or two night owls still working in the laboratories along the main corridor, but Katerina Shumilova hadn't seen any. Hopefully they hadn't seen her either, but even if they had, why should they be concerned? She was a computer technician, with every right and privilege to come and go in the computer complex when she pleased.
She was also a crack agent for the KGB, the Soviet secret police. Her presence here as a full-fledged member of the complex's staff was a major breakthrough for Soviet intelligence. She had been here three months. Tonight she was to bring off the first full-fledged act of sabotage against the «Project.»
It would not destroy or disable anything that could not be repaired or replaced fairly quickly. Doing that would risk exposing herself to British counterintelligence, throwing away all the time and effort involved in placing her here. The KGB preferred not to waste important and well-placed agents to win small victories.
No, what she would do tonight would simply cause temporary but spectacular and annoying damage. She would see what the other people on the Project did to repair that damage. She would listen very carefully to what they said. Everything she saw and heard would tell her more about the nature of the computers involved in the Project, and therefore more about the Project itself.
For all the time she had spent in the complex, she still knew practically nothing about the ultimate purpose of the Project. She knew a good deal, but all of it was fairly obvious.
The Project was vital to British security. She knew that simply from the size of the complex and the expense involved in building and equipping it. With British capitalism in its final agonies, the British would never pour tens of millions of pounds into something that wasn't expected to produce enormous returns.
The Project itself involved some major scientific breakthrough, and that breakthrough involved advanced computers. She knew that from even a casual look around the complex, and also from the fact that Lord Leighton appeared to be heavily involved in the Project. Leighton's reputation as a brilliant, innovative scientist, an absolute wizard with computers, was worldwide.
British intelligence was taking a hand in the Project. She knew that, or at least suspected it. She had seen the man known as J in the complex too often for there to be any other explanation. That was neither surprising nor mysterious. If the Project was as important as it seemed, of course British intelligence would be concerned with it. They would be fools not to be, and Katerina did not think British intelligence was foolish. Those Soviet agents who thought otherwise very seldom lived long enough to learn from their mistakes.
There was one unanswered question she'd found worth thinking about. What was Richard Blade's connection with the Project? It was an important one, considering how often he was mentioned in even the few documents she'd been able to examine. She'd also seen him in the complex twice. None of this told her very much.
She was familiar with the KGB's dossiers on Blade and on other top ranked British intelligence operatives. What she knew of Blade only deepened the mystery. He was a field man, a superb and formidable one with an almost legendary reputation. He was about the last man in British intelligence who would be assigned to any sort of desk job in connection with a research project.
She realized that it was time she stopped running her mind over ground she'd already covered many times. Somebody might still come in, and then there would certainly be delay, perhaps awkward questions. Ten years of training and field work had hammered a number of rules into her. One of them was: don't waste opportunities.
She unbuttoned the top two buttons of her laboratory coat and reached into the concealed pocket sewn into it just under her left breast. She drew out the doctored tape, checked the serial number, and double-checked the setting on the anti-tamper charge. Then she reached down and opened the lid of the main tape storage bin. She'd seen Lord Leighton do it a number of times, and her memory was superb. She could match every one of his motions as precisely as a ballet dancer.
The tapes already on the racks inside the bin gleamed faintly in the dim glow from the small light set in the lid. There was a space near the end of the second row from the top. Katerina took a firm grip on her tape and reached down toward the empty space.
If the computer rooms hadn't been soundproofed, her scream would have been heard all over the complex. The soft thud as she fell unconscious to the floor wouldn't have been heard more than a few feet away.
The signal did not awaken Lord Leighton, since he wasn't asleep. He was seated at the desk in the small room where he lived while Blade was in Dimension X. Being awake at three o'clock in the morning was nothing unusual for him. He seldom slept more than four hours a night. When a man is past eighty, he knows that he has only so many days' work left. Every hour spent sleeping is one that can't be put to some better use.
Then the desk lamp started flashing. Three shorts and a long, three shorts and a long, three shorts and a long-the letter V, over and over again. The lamp was hooked into the anti-sabotage devices built into several of the key elements of the computer system. Each element had its own code letter. The letter V meant the main tape file.
Leighton grinned. There was real pleasure in seeing his own work justifying itself. He had installed and wired in every one of those anti-sabotage devices with his own hands, working late at night and saying nothing to anybody. That was one certain way of keeping a secret-make sure it would die with you.
It occurred to Leighton that few people might have suspected in any case. Few people realized how well he could still handle a spot welder or a circuit diagram. Of course, they didn't realize just how long he'd been at work, and what that meant.
Sixty years ago there had been fewer high-priced technicians around, and many more chances of electrocuting yourself in the average laboratory. He was one of the last survivors of that generation of scientists. He hadn't forgotten all the things he'd had to learn in order to do his early work.
He stood up, flicked off the light, and pulled on his coat. He had better go see what had happened. Then as an afterthought he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the huge Webley revolver J had given him for a birthday present last year. Frankly, he thought it was rather, primitive. He would have preferred a hand laser, and he hoped to live long enough to see them available. But he couldn't turn down a present from J, or neglect to keep it in working condition. Besides, the anti-sabotage devices might have really caught a saboteur, instead of having some sort of electronic fit. If that was the case, the gun might come in handy.
The device had been telling the truth. Lord Leighton realized that the moment he saw the white-coated figure sprawled facedown on the floor by the tape bin. He wasn't going to need the gun, though.
He knelt down, made sure the woman was still breathing normally, then opened the door to the main computer room, his own inner sanctum. Gritting his teeth at the pain in his back, he hauled the woman through the door. He kept on hauling until he reached the changing booth, then shoved the woman inside. She would not be very comfortable, but once he locked the door she could see and hear nothing. As for getting out, that would take a stick of dynamite.
Then Leighton pulled the observer seat down and collapsed on it for a moment. He hadn't exerted himself
like that in months. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning of what looked like a long, tiring night.
After a few minutes he heaved himself to his feet and went to the telephone. Assuming that J slept at all while Blade was in Dimension X, he slept at his London flat. The scientist punched in the code for J's security phone and waited.
The conversation was brief, at least on Leighton's part.
«Hello, J? Leighton here. You remember I mentioned something about leaving a few mousetraps around the complex? Well, I've got a mouse, and I'd like your help with it. One of the lab technicians, a woman. Yes, full interrogation. So come loaded for bear. Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you're forgetting your business. Half an hour? Good. Come straight on into the main rooms. I've got her in the changing booth.»
He hung up and sat back down. He would never have admitted it to J, now or at any other time, but he was glad to have the spymaster around and available. When things came to a head as they had now, J knew a great deal more than he did about what to do.
The clock showed just after five. On the surface far above them, London's early-morning life would be starting up. Here in the main computer room there was nothing but two tired men, one sleeping woman, a gigantic computer, and a knotty problem that involved all of them.
J finished resterilizing the hypodermic needle and put it away in the battered leather case that held his interrogation kit. He shook his head wearily. The last time he'd handled an interrogation personally, he'd been fifteen years younger. He looked down at the woman asleep on the blanket they'd spread on the tiled floor, and then at Lord Leighton.
«She'll sleep now for-how long?» asked the scientist.
«With this dosage, about four hours. I can give her up to six successive doses. We can keep her out until we've figured out what to do with her.»
Leighton nodded. «I was hoping you'd say that. You know, she's a bit of a sticky problem.»