CHAPTER 43

Umbar, Great Castamir Square

June 5, 3019

“How many have you counted, Jacuzzi?”

“Thirty-two.”

“I can only see twelve…”

“I’d rather not point them out.”

“Heavens, no! You, after all, are the operative, while I’m just an analyst, so you rule here.”

Almandin relaxed against the back of a wicker chair, enjoying his wine. They were sitting under a striped awning of one of the many small open cafes on Castamir Square, almost directly under a rostral column liberally studded with the prows of captured Gondorian ships, lazily observing the milling of the idle evening crowd. “If there’s indeed thirty-two of them, then Marandil has brought out his entire staff, save the embassy guards. Do you see our performer, by any chance?”

Jacuzzi looked over the bustling embankment of the grubby round lake one more time.

Gentlemen and naval officers, street vendors and gaudy street women, itinerant musicians and fortune-tellers, mendicants and knights of Fortune… He immediately recognized all the Gondorian spies among the throng (although most of them, to their credit, were pretty well disguised), but to his great disappointment he could not identify the baron. Unless, of course… no, that’s crazy.

“It looks like he had recognized these guys, too, gave up and tiptoed away.”

“That’s what a professional would do,” nodded Almandin, “but the baron will do something else entirely… want to bet?”

“Wait a moment!” the Vice-Director of Operations glanced at his chief in surprise. “Do you consider Tangorn to be a dilettante, then?”

“Not a dilettante, my dear Jacuzzi, but an amateur. Do you understand the difference?”

“To be honest – no, not quite.”

“A professional is not the person who’s mastered all the techniques of his craft – the baron has no problems in this regard – but the one who always delivers on his orders, regardless of the circumstances. It so happens that the baron had never worked for hire; he is bound by neither oath nor umberto and is used to the unbelievable luxury of doing only things he himself approves of. If an order contradicts his notions of honor or runs against his conscience, he will simply ignore it, and to hell with the consequences – both for himself and his goals. You can see that such a man belongs in a Vendotenian monastery, rather than in any intelligence service.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Jacuzzi nodded thoughtfully. “The baron lives in a world of moral scruples and stereotypes that are unthinkable to you and me… By the way, I was refreshing my memory of his dossier the other day and came across an interesting tidbit of friendly banter over a few drinks. Someone asked him whether he could hit a woman if he had to. He had spent some time seriously thinking about it, and then admitted that perhaps he’d be able to kill a woman, but never to hit one, under any circumstances. His dossier is anyway a rather curious read – it’s more of a literary review than a dossier; about half of it is poems and translations. I even thought that no one outside of our Department has a more complete collection of Tangorn’s takatos…”

“Too bad that they won’t be published until a hundred twenty years from now under the declassification law… Aha! A gondola! So, would you like to bet that he’s going to pull some crazy stunt and fool all of these guys?”

“I think that it would be more appropriate for us to pray for his Fortune, or rather Marandil’s blunder…”

A small three-seater gondola touched shore at one of the stairways descending to the water to take on a gentleman in a scarlet cape and a hat with black plumage, and started to cross the lake leisurely. Suddenly a sleepy expression appeared on Jacuzzi’s face; he unhurriedly took out a gold-plated sandalwood pencil, wrote a few words on a napkin, turned it over and handed the pencil to Almandin, saying: “All right, it’s a bet.” The other man also wrote something on another napkin, and both returned to silently watching the developments.

The gondola described a not-quite-complete triangle and came back to the stair next to the one where it started. That spot was perennially occupied by a band of lepers, wrapped in head-to-toe striped robes, who solicited alms there. The so-called cold leprosy is both fatal and incurable, but unlike the ‘hot leprosy’ it is not particularly contagious (the only way to catch it is by squashing one of the many small boils covering the leper’s face and hands, or by doing something like sharing his cup), so its sufferers were never expelled from human settlements. The Hakimians of Khand even considered them especially desired by God.

Every day those mournful figures in their striped robes silently appealed to the citizens’ mercy, as if inviting them to compare the lepers’ plight to whatever they considered troublesome in their own lives. They were motionless to the point of appearing to be some architectural element like the gondola tie-up posts, so when one of these cloth-draped statues suddenly got up and headed towards the stair, limping slightly, it was clear that something was afoot.

The leper stepped on the top stair and took a purple handkerchief out of his sleeve.

Immediately a bunch of idle men surrounding a street performer who was juggling three daggers about twenty yards away split up – two headed left and right, cutting off the robed man’s escape routes, while the other two and the juggler himself, snatching the flying blades out of the air, went straight for the prey. It became clear that the man had miscalculated – he started his descent while the gondola was too far away, about fifteen yards from the shore.

He might still have made it to the safety of the boat if not for the cowardice of the man in the scarlet cape: when he saw the three armed pursuers, he panicked, and the gondolier, obeying his frantic gestures, began pulling away, abandoning his partner. The man in the robe ran down to the last step and halted – there was no escape or help coming. A couple of seconds later the ‘idlers’ caught up with him; two pinned his arms behind his back while the ‘juggler’ hit him in the liver, followed up with a chop to the neck on the rebound. It was over, the prey bagged.

However, when they dragged the ‘leper’ up to the embankment, an enraged crowd gathered instantly: the locals were unused to sick people being treated that way. Two Hakimians in yellow pilgrims’ caps who happened to be nearby intervened for ‘the man of God,’ and the scandal began swiftly developing into a scuffle. Marandil’s men were fiercely pushing their way towards the scene through the thickening throng, and a police whistle was already trilling unnervingly somewhere close. Meanwhile, the man in the scarlet cape came ashore three stairways from the fray, let the gondola go and left unhurriedly; it was clear that the false leper’s fate was not of much concern to him.

“What do you think of the performance, dear Jacuzzi?”

“Excellent. Truly, the theater had lost a great director in Tangorn.”

The Vice-Director of Operations’ facial expression did not seem to change, but Almandin had known his subordinate for years and could tell that the terrible tension that had gripped him for the last ten minutes was gone, and a hint of a triumphant smile was beginning to form in the corners of his mouth. Well, this was his victory, too…

Jacuzzi called on a passing waiter: “A bottle of Núrnen, my friend!”

“Aren’t you afraid of spooking our luck?”

“Not at all. It’s all over, and Marandil is as good as ours.”

Waiting for the wine, they watched the proceedings with interest. The fight ended abruptly, although the noise increased, and an empty space cleared in the middle; the robed man was lying there, trying in vain to get up. Meanwhile, the ‘idlers’ and the ‘juggler’ had suddenly lost all interest in their victim: not only did they let him go, but they were trying to melt into the crowd; one of them was looking at his palms with abject horror on his face.

“See, chief, they’ve finally figured out that the leper is a real one. This is definitely not a case of ‘better late than never…’ While apprehending him they must’ve squashed a dozen boils on his hands and got smeared in pus, so all three are dead men now. Can’t blame their emotional reaction; to learn that you’ve got less than three months to live (if you can call it life) must be quite, quite disconcerting.”

“The leper must have profited by all this, I suppose?”

“That’s for sure! I think that each blow must’ve netted him at least a silver castamir: Tangorn is not one of those idiots who try to save on small details. What do they call it in the North: creaming crap, yes?”

When the golden Núrnen bubbled in their goblets like a mountain brook, Jacuzzi asked impudently (today he had the right): “Who’s paying?” Almandin nodded, turned over the napkins, compared their notes, and acknowledged honestly: “My treat.” His napkin bore a single word: gondolier, while the Vice-Director of Operations’ inscription was: T. is gondolier; diversion onshore.