Neither Lord Leighton nor J was at the surface entrance to the complex. There was only the quartet of sober-garbed and even more sober-faced Special Branch men, who emerged from the shadows and took position around Blade as carefully as if he had been the crown jewels of England. Then they asked for his identity card. They would have done that even if they had recognized his face, and they probably did not. The Special Branch men who provided the above-ground security for the project served only a single one-year tour, then returned to regular duties, forever bound by the Official Secrets Act as tightly as Blade himself.

Blade wondered at times what impressions the security men or the scientific and technical experts on the staff might have formed about the project, impressions that might be dragged out of them by a sufficiently comprehensive interrogation. It might be a good idea to have one or two of the men interrogated, just to check. Unless J had already had that done? Blade grinned. He would have been very surprised if J hadn't already thought of the same thing. And if he had thought of it, he would have had it done. The head of MI6 had a reputation for covering all his bets. That reputation went back to his work in the First World War, long before Blade was even born. Blade knew that the old spymaster would leave nothing undone to guard the project. And also to guard Blade, whom he loved like the son he had never had.

When the elevator had dropped two hundred feet to the level of the complex and the heavy bronzed doors had slid noiselessly open, J was waiting for him. They walked through the long corridors, with the subdued lights gleaming on polished stone and metal, to the entrance of the computer rooms. There were sounds of human activity-voices, the clatter of a typewriter, the whine of a recording device-from behind the closed doors of the corridor, but there was not a living soul in the corridor itself. No human guards were needed down here. Each step of Blade's and J's progress, each passage through a door, was monitored by electronic devices that represented the latest in Ministry of Defense design. The devices never slept, never got tired, and could never be bribed or blackmailed, even if they might be jammed.