CHAPTER 40

All these days he had been putting off seeing her under various pretexts – “never revisit the places where you have been happy.” Since she had so unerringly prophesized that he was going to war, a lot of time passed and a lot of blood was spilled. Neither one of them was what they had been, so why walk the ruins and engage in necromancy? As he had found out, Alviss was now a respectable dame: her brilliant intuition had helped her make a sizable fortune on the stock market. She did not seem to be married, but was either engaged or betrothed to one of the pillars of the local business establishment – what the hell would she need with a restless and dangerous ghost from her past? Now all these wonderful deep defense fortifications lay in ruins.

“How much for your flowers, pretty one? I mean the whole basket?”

The girl – she looked about thirteen – stared at Tangorn in amazement. “You must not be from around here, noble sir! These are real meotis, they’re expensive.”

“Yes, I know.” He dug in his pocket and realized that he was out of silver. “Will a dungan be enough?”

Suddenly, her brilliant eyes lost all sparkle; bewilderment and fear flashed through them, replaced by tired disgust. “A gold coin for a basket of flowers is way too much, noble sir,” she said quietly. “I understand… you will take me to your place?”

The baron was never overly sentimental, but now his heart lurched with pity and anger.

“Stop it this second! Honestly, I only want the orchids. You haven’t earned money this way before, right?”

She nodded and sniffed childishly. “A dungan is a lot of money for us, noble sir. Mama and sister and I can live for half a year on that.”

“So take it and live on it,” he grumbled, putting a golden disk bearing Sauron’s profile in her hand. “And pray for my fortune, I’ll need it real soon…”

“So you’re a knight of Fortune, not a noble sir?” Now she was a wonderful blend of curiosity, childish excitement and fairly adult coquettishness. “I’d never guess!”

“Yeah, something like that,” the baron grinned, picked up the meotis basket, and headed towards Jasper Street, followed by her silvery voice: “You will be fortunate, sir knight, believe me! I will pray with all my might, and I have a lucky touch, you’ll see!”

Alviss’ old housemaid Tina opened the door and reeled back as if she had seen a ghost.

Aha, he thought, so my appearance is a real surprise and not everyone here will like it. With this thought he headed towards the living room and the sounds of music floating from there, leaving the old woman’s sad dirges behind – Tina must have realized that this visit from the past was not going to end well… The company in the living room was small and very refined; the music, superbly performed, was Akvino’s Third Sonata. At first, no one paid attention to the baron when he noiselessly appeared in the doorway, and he had a few moments to watch Alviss in her form-fitting dark blue dress from behind. Then she looked around, their eyes met, and Tangorn had two simultaneous thoughts, one stupider than the other: “Some women benefit from everything, even age” and “I wonder if she’ll drop her goblet?”

She moved towards him very, very slowly, as if against resistance, obviously external one; it seemed to him that music was the culprit – it had turned the room into a mountain stream rushing over boulders, and Alviss had to walk upstream, against the current. Then the rhythm changed, Alviss was trying to reach him, but the music resisted: it had turned from a foot-dragging mountain stream into an impenetrable blackberry thicket; Alviss had to tear through those prickly vines, it was difficult and painful, very painful, although she tried not to show it… Then it was all over: the music gave up, falling to Alviss’ feet in a spent heap, and she ran the tips of her fingers over his face, as if not yet believing:

“My God, Tan… my darling… you’re back…”

They must have stood in that embrace for an eternity, and then she took him by the hand and said quietly: “Come…”

Everything was like it always had been – and not. She was a totally different woman, and he was discovering her anew, like the first time. There were no volcanic passions, no exquisite caresses to suspend one on a thread at the edge of an abyss of sweet oblivion.

There was an enormous all-engulfing tenderness, and they both dissolved in it quietly, having no other rhythm than the flutter of Arda pushing blindly through the prickly starscape… “We’re sentenced to each other,” she had once said; if so, then today the sentence had been carried out.

“…Will you stay here long?”

“I don’t know, Aly. Honestly, I don’t know. I wish it were forever, but it might be for just a few days. Looks like this time it’s the Higher Powers that will decide, not I.”

“I understand. So you’re in business again. Will you need help?”

“Unlikely. Maybe a few small things.”

“Darling, you know I’ll do anything for you – even make love in the missionary position!”

“Well, I’m sure that such a sacrifice won’t be required,” Tangorn laughed in the same vein,

“Perhaps a trifle – risk your life a couple of times.”

“Yes, that’d be easier. So what do you need?”

“I was joking, Aly. You see, these games are really dangerous now, not like the good old times. Frankly, even my coming here was totally crazy, even though I checked real well…

I’ll just have some coffee and plod back to my hotel now.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she said in a strangely hoarse voice: “Tan, I’m afraid… I’m a broad, I can foresee… Don’t go, I pray you!”

She’s really out of sorts, never saw her like this… Oh, really – never? He remembered, from four years ago: “You’re going to war, Tan.” This just keeps getting worse, he thought with displeasure. Meanwhile she clung to him fiercely and just kept repeating desperately: “Stay with me, please! I’ve never asked anything of you, not once in all these years… Just this once, for me!”

He gave in just to calm her down (what does it really matter from where I come to the Seahorse Tavern tomorrow?), so Mongoose’s team had waited for him in vain at the Lucky Anchor that night.

Very well – he’ll come tomorrow if not tonight. Rather than chase him all over the city, better to wait for him near his lair, there’s no hurry. Besides, it’d be imprudent to divide the capture team: the baron is, after all, the third sword of Gondor, something to reckon with…

Mongoose knew how to wait better than anyone.

***

The Umbarian Secret Service, well-hidden in the dusty ink-smelling burrows of the Foreign Ministry under the deliberately ambiguous plaque DSD – Department of Special Documentation – is a stealthy organization. Even the location of its headquarters is a state secret: the Green House on Swamp Alley that ‘well-informed’ high officials and senators mention sometimes in appropriately hushed voices is actually only an archive holding documents declassified after the one hundred twenty years prescribed by law. Only three people know the name of the Department’s Director: the Chancellor, the Minister of Defense, and the Prosecutor General (the Office’s employees may kill only on the Prosecutor’s sanction, although sometimes they obtain it after the fact), and only he himself knows the names of his four Vice-Directors.

Unlike the secret services that are set up on the police model (these tend to never lose their penchant for pompous headquarters buildings on major streets and for scaring their own citizens with tall tales of their omnipotence and omnipresence), DSD had arisen more like a security service of a major trading corporation, and is above all concerned with always staying in the shadows. The Department’s organizational structure follows that of the zamorro (the Umbarian crime syndicates): a system of isolated cells connected only through their leaders, who in turn form the second- and third-level cells. The Office’s employees live under specially developed false identities both at home and abroad; they never carry weapons (unless required by their assumed identity) and never reveal their employment under any circumstances. The oath of silence and umberto (Grager had once described this principle to Tangorn as “one dungan to enter, a hundred to leave”) bond its members in a kind of a knightly order. Hard as it may be to believe, knowing Umbarian mores, during its three hundred years of existence there have been only a handful of betrayals in the Department (which changes its official name with the regularity of a snake shedding its skin).

The Department’s mandate is ‘to provide the top officials of the Republic with precise, timely, and objective information about the situation in the country and beyond.’ Obviously only an independent and uninterested source can be objective, and therefore by law the DSD only collects information but does not participate in related political or military decision-making and bears no responsibility for the results of those decisions; it is nothing but a measuring device that is categorically barred from interfering with the reality it measures.

This separation of duties is truly wise. Otherwise, intelligence services either placate the powerful by telling them what they want to hear or get out of control, which leads to such niceties as gathering compromising information on its own citizens, provocations, or irresponsible sabotage abroad; all of the above is justified by carefully selected information).

Therefore, from a legal standpoint, everything that went on that summer evening in a certain undistinguished mansion where the meeting between DSD Director Almandin, his Vice-Director in charge of domestic operations and agent networks Jacuzzi, and Admiral Carnero’s chief of staff Flag Captain Makarioni took place (which required all parties to overcome the eternal mutual dislike between the ‘spooks’ and the ‘grunts’ common to all worlds), had a very definite name: traitorous conspiracy. Not that any of them lusted for power, not at all – it was just that the spies clearly foresaw the consequences of their small prosperous country’s absorption by greedy despotic Gondor, and could not follow their cowardly ‘top officials.’

“How’s your chief’s health, Flag Captain?”

“Quite satisfactory. The stiletto only bruised the lung, and as for the rumors that the Admiral is at death’s door, that’s our work. His Excellency has no doubts that in two weeks he’ll be on his feet and nothing will keep him from personally leading Operation Sirocco.”

“As for us, we have bad news, Flag Captain. Our people report from Pelargir that Aragorn had radically speeded up the preparations of the invasion fleet. They estimate that it will be fully ready in about five weeks…”

“Thunder and devils! That’s the same time as ours!”

“Precisely. I don’t have to tell you that during the last few days before deployment an army or a fleet is totally helpless, like a shedding lobster. They’re getting ready in Pelargir, we –in Barangar, practically head-to-head; the advantage will be a day or two, and the one who gains those few days will be the one to catch the other unprepared in his home port. The difference is that they’re preparing for war openly, whereas we’re hiding our work from our own government and have to waste two-thirds of our resources on secrecy and disinformation... Flag Captain, can you speed up the preparations in Barangar in any way?”

“Only at the cost of some secrecy… but we’ll have to risk it now, there’s no other way. So the most important thing now is to throw 12 Shore Street off the scent, but that’s your job, as I see it.”

After the sailor made his goodbyes, the DSD chief looked questioningly at his comrade.

The spies made a funny pair – the portly, seemingly half-asleep Almandin and the lean Jacuzzi, swift as a barracuda. Over the years of working together they have learned to understand each other with not even a few words, but a few looks.

“Well?”

“I’ve gotten our materials on the Gondorian chief of station…”

“Captain of the Secret Guard Marandil; cover – second embassy secretary.”

“The same. An exceptional dirtbag, even compared to the rest of them… I wonder if they’ve shipped their worst dregs over here, to Umbar?”

“I don’t think so. These guys work the same way in Minas Tirith right now, except they dump the bodies into outhouses rather than the canals… Whatever. Stay focused.”

“All right. Marandil. A real bouquet of virtues, let me tell you…”

“Have you decided to recruit him based on a flower from that bouquet?”

“Not exactly. Can’t get him on anything from his past, since Aragorn had pardoned all their sins. On the other hand, the present… first, he’s appallingly unprofessional; second, he has no spine and can’t handle pressure at all. Should he make a really big screw-up on which we can pressure him, he’s ours. Our task is to help him screw up.”

“All right, develop this angle. In the meantime, toss them some bone to deflect attention from Barangar Bay. Give them, say… oh, everything we have on Mordorian agents here.”

“What the hell would they want with it now?”

“Nothing, really, but as you’ve correctly pointed out, they’re appallingly unprofessional.

Shark reflex: swallow first, then consider whether it was a good idea. Surely they will now eviscerate the Mordorian network, which nobody needs any more, and forget everything else. This will also count as a goodwill gesture from our side; it will give us some breathing room while you set a trap for Marandil.”

The thick DSD dossier on the Mordorian network in Umbar was delivered to 12 Shore Street that same evening, causing a condition approaching euphoria. Among other tips it contained the following: ‘Seahorse Tavern, 11 AM on odd Tuesdays; order a bottle of tequila with sliced lemon and sit at a table in the back left corner.’