After accepting the bribe, the burly orderly continued to hover around behind her with a worried frown on his face.

«I'll be all right,» Zoe assured him. «If anything happens I'll call for you.»

Reluctantly the orderly went out into the hall and left her alone with Richard.

She approached the foot of the bed, barefoot, clad in a hospital gown, with her purse clutched in her hands.

Richard was asleep, breathing gently, lying on his side. He was free to toss and turn if he wanted to; the orderly had told her Ferguson had ordered the restraining straps removed. They were useless against Blade's appalling strength. All the orderlies and nurses were now armed with tranquilizer pistols. Drugs, it seemed, were the only things that could stop Blade when one of the fits came on.

She halted, gazing uncertainly across the expanse of rumpled blankets at the half-hidden, square-cut face she knew so well. She had watched him sleep many times, long ago.

As she looked at him, year after year fell away into unreality. She had had a husband. Or had she? She had had children. Or had she? She had had-and still had-a home, a comfortable if tasteless cottage in a small English town. Even that had become vague in her mind, dreamlike. Does one remember what one does while sitting in a waiting room? Does one remember the things one does to kill time?

«Richard,» she said softly.

He did not stir.

She moved to his bedside and stood looking down at him. How many mornings had she stood like this in the quiet cottage in Dorset, listening to the distant booming of the sea? How many times had they played the poetry game, one of them quoting a line from a famous poem, then the other trying to quote another line from the same poem?

She thought of Matthew Arnold's «Dover Beach.»

«Dick?» she called gently.

He slept on.

She closed her eyes, trying to remember the poem exactly, word for word. Over the years it came back to her. She began, «The sea is calm tonight… «Damn! How did the next line go?

«The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits,» said Richard Blade.

With a startled cry she leaped back, opening her eyes, almost dropping her purse.

Richard was looking up at her, his dark eyes serious but sane. «Good morning, darling,» he said in that cheerful well-spoken light baritone of his.

«Are you… are you all right?» she asked fearfully.

«Of course I'm all right. I had a damnable nightmare, that's all. It was one of those bloody awful things that runs on and on, one disaster after another. It seems you married some silly accountant, and there was a machine in it that kept sending me into one hell after another.» He raised himself on his elbow and smiled. «No use talking about it. Nothing like that could really happen. Could it, Zoe?»

«No, no, nothing like that could happen.»

Blade looked around, frowning with puzzlement. «Where am I? Is this some sort of hospital?»

«Yes. You've… you've had an accident.» Impulsively she stepped toward him and patted his head.

«What kind of accident?» he demanded.

She tried to think of something plausible, but her mind had gone blank.

«Wait! I think I remember.» His powerful fingers closed on her wrist. «A blue cloud. Fire. Pain. Oh my God, the Ngaa! The Ngaa!» His voice rose to a scream. «Oh my God, it's getting into my head!»

«Let me go, Dick.» His grip tightened painfully. «Please. Please!»

He did not let go, but screamed wordlessly, thrashing from side to side, his face contorted into a mask of terror, pulling her off her balance. She fell on top of him, sprawling and struggling. «Help!» she screamed. «Help me someone!»

Abruptly he released her and fell back on his pillow, eyes open but blank, face expressionless. She staggered away, half-blinded by her own sudden tears.

«Dick?» she called.

He did not answer, or show in any way that he heard her.

The door burst open and the burly orderly rushed in, tranquilizer gun in hand.

«Is he havin' another of his fits?» the man asked, taking aim.

«Don't shoot him. He's quiet now.» She groped her way into the hall.

Dimly she saw J, Lord Leighton and Dr. Ferguson coming toward her on the run. She threw herself into J's arms.

«What's going on here?» asked J.

«He spoke to me,» she sobbed.

«Blade? He spoke to you?» J was astonished.

«He sounded perfectly normal, except that he thought he was back in the time when he and I… «She could not go on.

«What did he say?» Dr. Ferguson broke in.

«He recited a line of poetry, the same line I heard in my hotel room, the night of… the night of the fire.» She was thinking, was it Richard Blade who'd spoken to her just now, or was it someone else?

Chapter 8

Dr. Ferguson waved goodbye with an absurd enthusiasm, standing in front of the hangar in his black plastic raincoat. Lord Leighton, similarly clad, merely hunched his shoulders and glowered like a moody troll. The handshaking and well-wishing was over, and the little scientist was probably already back with his beloved KALI, in mind if not in body.

Then the plane swung around and Ferguson and Leighton were lost to view, though J continued to stare out the porthole-like window into the night. There was nothing to see but an occasional moving point of light as they taxied swiftly but smoothly out onto the field, but J, lost in thought, did not care.

J had been to the United States before, but not since the Fifties, when he and Richard Blade had tracked a defecting agent from New York to San Francisco in cooperation with the CIA, finally catching up with and killing the fellow in a gay bar in the North Beach district.

J smiled, thinking of the CIA euphemism that had appeared in their report on the action. «The operative was terminated with extreme prejudice.» The Yanks were never squeamish about killing, but they were downright Victorian when it came to talking about it.

Some of the CIA men J and Blade had worked with were probably still posted to San Francisco, but J made a mental note not to visit these «old friends.» He did not like the CIA, an organization more or less blueprinted by Kim Philby, a British agent who had turned out to be a Russian spy. In J's eyes the CIA still bore the triple mark of its birth: it was as ruthless and power hungry as the worst Russian communist, as stuffy and bureacratic as the worst Englishman, and, most annoying of all, as crass and businesslike as the worst Yank, with its network of secretly owned businesses, which included airlines, hotel chains, laboratories, munitions factories and even a few publishing companies in New York.

J had heard the rumors to the effect that the CIA had assassinated the Kennedy brothers to prevent an investigation of the agency's worldwide billion-dollar clandestine business operations. The general public had laughed at the idea. but J, who knew the CIA better, had not laughed at all. No, J concluded, the less I see of the CIA, the better.

The plane reached the end of the runway, wheeled about, tested its mighty jet engines, then, after a pause, hurtled down the gleaming wet pavement and was airborne.

J took out his tobacco pouch and began filling his pipe, though the sign above the cockpit door still glowed «No Smoking» as well as «Fasten your seat belts.» The plane banked steeply, and J could see, out of the corner of his eye, the pattern of landing lights spread out far below, rendered indistinct by a curtain of mist, then London came into view, glimmering like a heap of red coals spilled out over a vast black hearth.

J tamped down his tobacco.

The plane entered a cloud and London vanished. Drops of moving water appeared on the outer face of the window.

J took out his lighter.