CHAPTER 38

Of course, Tangorn’s life in Umbar was not limited to travails of love. It should be noted that the baron’s professional responsibilities left a certain imprint on his relationship with Alviss. Since she let him know that she was aware of the true nature of his business, at first the baron thought that his girlfriend was somehow connected to the Umbarian secret service.

He learned otherwise in a fairly aggravating manner, when twice he planted on her some information meant for his ‘colleagues,’ and twice it got nowhere; the second time the mix-up almost cost him a well-designed operation.

“Aly, why do you think that your secret service has so little interest in me that they haven’t even asked you to look after me?”

“Of course they asked me, right after you came back. And left empty-handed.”

“You must have had trouble…”

“Nothing serious, Tan, forget about it, please!”

“Maybe you should’ve agreed, at least for show.”

“No. I don’t want to do it, not even for show. You see, to inform on a loved one, one has to be a highly moral individual with an ingrained sense of civic duty. But I’m just a whore who knows nothing of those things… Let’s not talk about this anymore, all right?”

This discovery gave the baron the idea to use Alviss’ boundless connections for his own data gathering – not of the secret kind (God forbid!), but public information. He and Grager were most interested not in the new generation of warships being built at the Republic’s shipyards or the recipe of the ‘Umbarian fire’ (a mysterious flammable liquid used to great effect during sieges and sea battles), but rather in such mundane matters as caravan trade volumes and price fluctuations on the food markets of Umbar and Barad-Dur. Another keen interest of the baron’s were the technological advances that more and more defined the civilization of Mordor, which he had always sincerely admired. Amazingly, it was Faramir’s semi-amateurish team (whose members, it should be mentioned, were not in state service and received not a dime from the Gondorian treasury during all these years) that had intuitively arrived at the style that intelligence services have only widely adopted in our days. It is well known that these days it is not the swashbuckling secret agents toting micro-cameras and noise-suppressed pistols who obtain the most valuable intelligence information, but rather analysts diligently combing newspapers, stock market news, and other openly available sources.

While Tangorn, on Alviss’ advice, perused the activities of Umbarian financiers (the magic of the White Council was a child’s game in comparison), Grager became Algoran, merchant of the second guild, and founded a company in Khand to export olive oil to Mordor in exchange for products of high technology. The trading house Algoran & Co. prospered; with its hand always on the pulse of the local agricultural markets, the firm kept increasing its export share and even managed to corner the import of dates for a time. The head of the company avoided visiting his Barad-Dur branch (having no reasons to believe that Mordor’s counterintelligence service was staffed with incompetent fools), but his position did not require that: the commander’s place is not in the front ranks but on a nearby hill.

The result of all this activity was a twelve-page document that historians now call ‘Grager’s memorandum.’ Putting together the rising profit margins of the caravan trade (as it was followed by the stock and commodity exchanges in Umbar and Barad-Dur), the introduction of a number of protectionist bills in the Mordorian parliament by the agrarian lobby (a reaction to the sharp increase of local growing costs), and a good dozen of other factors, Grager and Tangorn proved conclusively that import-reliant Mordor was incapable of waging prolonged war. Being totally dependent on caravan trade with its neighbors (a position totally incompatible with war), it was interested in peace and stability in the region above all else, and therefore posed no danger to Gondor. On the other hand, the safety of trade routes was a matter of life and death to Mordor, making it likely to react harshly and perhaps not too judiciously to any threat to these. The spies concluded: “Should anyone wish to force Mordor into a war, it would be very easy to accomplish by terrorizing caravans on the Ithilien Highway.”

Faramir took these conclusions to a special session of the Royal Council in another of his attempts to prove, facts in hand, that the much-belabored ‘Mordorian threat’ was nothing but a myth. The Council, as usual, listened respectfully, understood nothing, and ruled on the matter by addressing the prince with its by now familiar litany of reprimands and instructions. These boiled down to two points: “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail” and “your spies have gotten lazy and do no real work.” Thereafter Grager’s memorandum was sent to the archives, where it gathered dust with the Faramir’s intelligence service’s other reports until catching the eye of Gandalf during a visit to Minas Tirith…

When the war began exactly following their script, Tangorn realized with horror that it was all his doing.

“…’The World is Text,’ eh, man – just the way you like it. What’s your problem?” Grager smirked woodenly, pouring yet another shot of either tequila or some other moonshine with an unsteady hand.

“But we wrote a different Text, you and I, totally different!”

“Whaddya mean – different? My dear aesthete, a text exists only in its interaction with a reader. Everyone writes their own story of Princess Allandale, and whatever Alrufin himself wanted to say is absolutely irrelevant. Looks like we managed to create a real work of art, since the readers,” the resident waved a finger near his ear, so it was impossible to say whether he meant the Royal Council or some really Higher Powers, “managed to read it in this rather unexpected way.”

“We betrayed them… We got played like little kids, but that’s no excuse – we betrayed them…” Tangorn repeated, staring fixedly into the murky opalescent depths of his glass.

“Yep – it’s no excuse… Another one?”

He could not figure out which day of their binge it was – not considering themselves in any service, they did not keep track. They started the day the head of the trading house Algoran & Co. heard of the war and raced to Umbar, running down several horses, and learned the details from him. Strangely, they more or less held up when apart, but now, looking each other in the eye, they recognized clearly and at once – this was the end of all they held dear, and they have destroyed it with their own hands. Two well-meaning idiots… Then there was the nightmarish nauseating hung-over dawn when he awoke because Grager poured a pitcher of ice-cold water over him. Grager looked his usual self, quick and sure-footed, so his bloodshot eyes and several days’ growth of beard seemed a part of some not too successful disguise.

“Up!” he informed drily. “We’re in business again. We’ve been summoned to Minas Tirith to brief the Royal Council on the possibilities of a separate peace with Mordor. Immediately and with utmost secrecy, of course… Hot damn, maybe we can still fix something! His Majesty Denethor is a practical ruler; looks like he, too, needs this war like a fish needs an umbrella.”

They have worked on their document for three days with almost no sleep or food, running on coffee alone, putting all their souls and all their expertise into it – they had no right to a second mistake. It was a true masterpiece: a meld of unassailable logic and inerrant intuition based on an intimate knowledge of the East, expressed in a brilliant literary language capable of touching every heart; it was the road to peace with an exhaustive description of the dangers and traps lining that road. On his way to the port Tangorn found a minute to drop in on Alviss: “I’m going to Gondor – only for a short while, so don’t feel lonely!”

She paled and said almost inaudibly: “You’re going to war, Tan. We’re separating for a long time, most likely forever… could you not say a proper good-bye, at least?”

“What’re you talking about, Aly?” he was sincerely puzzled. He hesitated for a couple of seconds then decided to breach security: “To be honest, I’m going there to stop this stupid war. In any case I hate it and I’m not about to play those games, by the halls of Valinor!”

“You’re going to war,” she repeated despondently, “I know that for sure. I’ll be praying for you… Please go now, don’t look at me when I’m like this.”

When their ship had passed the gloomy stormy shores of South Gondor and entered the Anduin, Grager muttered through clenched teeth: “Picture this: we show up in Minas Tirith and they stare at us: ‘Who are you guys? What Royal Council – are you crazy? It must be some joke, nobody called for you.”

But it was no joke. Indeed, they were impatiently expected right at the Pelargir pier: “Baron Grager? Baron Tangorn? You’re under arrest.”

Only their own could have taken the two best spies of the West so easily.