The apartment was a new indulgence, five rooms in a newly renovated Victorian building, an indulgence that absorbed a large part of the two thousand-pound tax-free bonus to his salary that was his only financial reward for his work on the project. But the new apartment had space for his growing collection of books and weapons, for fitting up one room as a dojo for his weapons training (walls and ceiling as well as the floor padded to avoid disturbing the neighbors), for entertaining in the unlikely event that he ever did so. It also served to support his new «cover» as a young-well, middle-aged-man-about-town living comfortably if not extravagantly off a fortune made by three previous generations in the jute and copra trade.

Blade did not find this role entirely congenial. It involved being considered a deplorably eligible bachelor and fending off approaches made by matrimonially inclined ladies and, even worse, by their mothers. Also it was an image that his father had always loathed with a purple and loudly expressed passion. His father, in spite of having all the appropriate money and credentials for a life of gilded ease, had distinguished himself in forty years of public service, including honors gained in both world wars. And he had passed on to his only son the firm conviction that those born to wealth and position should work five times as hard as the ordinary man, in order to be considered deserving of their privileges. Since that son had grown up with a keen if practically oriented mind, a superb physique, and a taste for adventure, it had been easy for him to respond to his father's urgings. Blade had been recruited by MI6 while still at Oxford, and had never looked back since.

After lunch he stacked the dishes in the kitchen for the cleaning woman to cope with tomorrow morning, put himself through a vigorous hour of limbering and testing exercises, then pulled a book from his increasingly well-stocked shelves and sat down to read for the remaining hours until it was time to leave for the Tower. He had acquired a habit of voracious reading the year before, when he had been tormented by an impotence that was eventually cured only by his eighth trip through the computer.