CHAPTER 49

Umbar, 12 Shore Street

June 25, 3019

Mongoose walked unhurriedly down the embassy’s corridors.

Not crept along the wall like a fleet weightless shadow, but walked, with his every step echoing through the sleeping building, the wall lamps periodically illuminating his black parade uniform with silver officer’s cords on the left shoulder. Actually, Marandil realized almost immediately that this was a trick of the weak light: the lieutenant was wearing civilian clothes, the silver on his shoulder and chest being spots of some kind of whitish mold… No, what mold – it’s frost, real frost! Frost on clothing – how, from where? Just then a weak but clearly discernible breeze – like an icy breath from a crypt – touched the captain’s face, and the flames in the lamps dipped together, as if confirming to dash all hope: no, this is not an illusion! The walls of the embassy, long an unassailable fortress, two layers of slavishly devoted guards, DSD’s famed hunting skills – everything had failed…

He could physically feel the deathly cold emanating from the approaching figure; this cold froze Marandil’s boots to the floor and turned the panicked flurry of his thoughts into gel.

This is it. You knew all along that this was how it was going to end… After Aravan’s testimony you knew when, now you know how, that’s all… In the meantime, the lieutenant was turning into a real mongoose leisurely approaching a cobra – a flat triangular head with flattened ears, itself resembling a snake’s head, ruby eye beads and blinding white needle teeth under raised whiskers. He, Marandil, was the cobra – an old tired cobra with broken venomous fangs. Any moment now those teeth would sink into his throat, the blood would spurt from the torn arteries, the delicate neck vertebra would crunch… He backed away, futilely trying to shield himself from the approaching nightmare with his hands, and suddenly sprawled flat on his back: his heel caught the upturned edge of a carpet runner.

The pain from a badly bumped elbow rescued the captain, snapping him back into reality.

His terror somehow switched modes, turning from paralyzing to hysterical; Marandil jumped up and sped down the corridor so fast that the wall lamps turned into a blurred fiery line. Stairs… down… over the railing to the next landing… again… there’s supposed to be a guard here – where is he?.. corridor before the chief’s office… the guards, where the hell are all the guards?! Footfalls behind – regular, as if measuring the thick silence of the corridor. A-a-a-argh! it's a dead end! where now? The office – no other choice… the key…doesn’t fit in the keyhole, dammit… idiot, it’s the key to the safe… calm down… Aúle the Great, help me – this damn lock catches often… Footfalls getting closer, like an icy water drip on a shaved head of a prisoner (why isn’t he running? Shut up, idiot, don’t jinx it!)…calm, now… turn the key… yes!

Squeezing through the barely opened door like a lizard, he pushed it closed with his entire body and locked it at just the moment the werewolf’s footfalls reached the threshold. The captain did not strike up the light, having no strength; shaking and sopping wet with sweat, he sat down on the hardwood floor right in the middle of the office, in a large square of moonlight crisscrossed by the window frame. Strangely, Marandil understood that the nightmarish pursuer was still there, but still he somehow felt safe here, sitting on this silvery carpet, as if he was a child who had just touched “base.” He glanced distractedly at the pattern of moon shadows on the floor next to him and only then thought of checking out the window itself. Looking at the window, he almost howled in terror and desperation.

There, on the ledge, with his face almost against the windowpane, was a man with an uncanny resemblance to a hyena. Obviously it would be easy for this second werewolf to knock out the window and leap into the room, but he did not move, just stared at Marandil with round faintly phosphorescent eyes. A faint screech of metal came from behind –Mongoose was working on the door lock. At least the key is still in the hole, Marandil thought fleetingly a moment before a terrible blow hammered the door. A jagged hole six or so inches wide appeared beside the lock; faint light from the corridor seeped through it and was immediately cut down to a few rays when something obscured it. Then, suddenly, the lock clicked and the door opened wide. Only then did Marandil understand that the lieutenant had simply slammed his fist through the door panel and turned the key still in the lock. The captain dashed to the window (the hyena-man on the ledge scared him less than Mongoose), and then two more figures slipped out of the deep shadows in the corners of the room with silent grace; somehow he recognized wolves immediately.

They dragged him out by the feet from under the table where he tried to duck and stood over him, fangs bared, the sharp smell of dog and raw meat wafting over the captain; having realized the manner in which he was about to pay for his betrayal, he could only whine on the floor, trying to cover his throat and crotch… Suddenly the entire apparition blew away at the sound of Mongoose’s dispassionate voice: “Captain Marandil, you’re under arrest in the name of the King. Sergeant, take his weapons, badge, and keys to the safe. To the basement with him!”

No! No! No-o-o-o! It’s untrue, this can’t be happening – not to him, Captain of the Secret Guard Marandil, the chief of Gondorian station in Umbar! Yet already they are dragging him down the steep chipped stairs (out of the blue he remembered that there were twenty of them, with a large hole in the fourth step from the bottom); once in the basement, they shake him out of his clothes and hang him up by the tied thumbs off a large hook in the ceiling beam. Then Mongoose’s face appears in front of his again, eye to eye:

“I’m not interested in your games with the Umbarian Secret Service right now. What I want to know is who advised you to point the Elves to our team by siccing their underground on His Majesty’s Secret Guard? Who in Minas Tirith are you working for – Arwen’s people?

What do they know about Tangorn’s mission?”

“I know nothing about that, I swear by anything!” he croaks, twisting with pain in dislocated joints, understanding full well that this is just a warm-up. “I gave no orders to kidnap that Algali – Aravan is either crazy or working for himself…”

“Please begin, Sergeant. So who told you to reveal me to the Elves?”

They know their job well and doze the pain just so, not allowing him to slip away into unconsciousness… Then it is all over: the mercy of the Valar is truly boundless, and Vaira’s gentle palms pick him up and carry him to the safest refuge – the gloomy halls of Mandos.

…The sun was shining straight into Marandil’s eyes – it was almost noon. Groaning, he raised his head (heavy like he had not slept at all) off the rolled-up cloak he had used as a pillow, trying either to swallow or spit out the scream stuck in his dry throat. Habitually he felt for an unfinished bottle of rum by the couch, pulled the cork out with his teeth and took a few large swigs. Alcohol did not help much any more; he had to sniff kokkaine to really wake up. Over the last few days fear ate up the chief of station from the inside, leaving only a pitiful shell behind. The captain did not step outside the embassy now and slept only in the daytime, in his clothes: somehow he had convinced himself that Mongoose was going to come for him at midnight, just like in his nightmares.

The nightmares were varied and diverse. In them, Mongoose’s special ops team would now slip into his office like shadows, nin’yokve-style, then arrive ghost-like right out of the large Khandian wall mirror (when he woke up after that one, he smashed it first thing), or simply break down his door like a regular police squad, uniformed and armed with official papers.

His most vivid recollection was of a dream in which he was attacked by four cat-sized bats.

Fleet and impervious, they chased the captain all over the building, chirping angrily and slapping his head with their leathery wings, going for the eyes; the palms with which he had shielded his face and the back of his head were both already torn into bloody pulp by their tiny sharp teeth, and only then did the usual end come: “Captain Marandil, you’re under arrest in the name of the King. Sergeant, take his weapons, badge, and keys to the safe. To the basement with him!”

“Mister Secretary! Mister Secretary, wake up!” Finally he realized that he did not wake up by himself – there was a courier mincing in the door. “Sir Ambassador is summoning you right now.”

Right now – that was new. When he received the letter with Aravan’s testimony ten days prior in the morning mail, Sir Eldred, the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Reunited Kingdom, demanded an explanation from the chief of station. Hearing nothing but pitiful “not my doing, not our affair,” he began avoiding the captain like the plague, demonstratively severing all contact with him. The most horrible thing was that the legend that Tangorn had dictated to Aravan sounded so persuasive that Marandil doubted his own sanity: what if he had, indeed, given the order while out of his mind? He became so convinced that he did away with the wounded Morimir (what if he, too, confirms the order to kidnap Algali once he wakes up?); he did it in a hurry, clumsily, leaving plenty of clues and no way to go back. Marandil felt a suffocating emptiness around himself: his subordinates, to a man, avoided his glance, and all conversation stopped in any room he entered. He knew that it was high time to flee, but he was afraid of being alone in the city even more. The only hope was that DSD would get to Mongoose before he got to him; he no longer believed that his own guard (which was so instructed) would be able to stop him.

“What’s the big hurry?” he asked the courier gloomily, trying to smooth out his crumpled clothes.

“They’ve found some corpse and say it’s your department – plenty of small scars around the mouth.”

Marandil almost ran into the Ambassador’s office and was immediately grabbed by two bedraggled men in dirty jackets who had stationed themselves on either side of the door. Sir Eldred stood a bit aside, affronted aristocratic dignity and bureaucratic servility blending weirdly in his stance and expression – it was obvious that His Eminence had just been administered the proverbial acid enema, a couple of pails worth at least. His chair was occupied by none other than cross-legged Mongoose himself, as dirty as his subordinates.

“Captain Marandil, you’re under arrest in the name of the King. Sergeant, take his weapons, badge, and keys to the safe. To the basement with him!”  Standing up, he said over his shoulder: “Sir Ambassador, I strongly advise you to find the chief of security and kick his ass. There are at least four ways to get in here, but to fail to even put grates on the sewer openings – such sloppiness is utterly beyond belief! Don’t be surprised to find a gypsy camp in the courtyard and a couple of sleeping bums in the lobby one day…”

No! No! No-o-o-o! It’s untrue, this can’t be happening – not to him, Captain of the Secret Guard Marandil, the chief of Gondorian station in Umbar! Yet already they are dragging him down the steep chipped stairs (out of the blue he remembered that there were twenty of them, with a large hole in the fourth step from the bottom); once in the basement, they shake him out of his clothes and hang him up by the tied thumbs off a large hook in the ceiling beam. Then Mongoose’s face appears in front of his again, eye to eye:

“I’m not interested in your games with the Umbarian Secret Service right now. What I want to know is who advised you to point the Elves to our team by siccing their underground on His Majesty’s Secret Guard? Who in Minas Tirith are you working for – Arwen’s people?

What do they know about Tangorn’s mission?”

“I know nothing about that, I swear by anything!” he croaks, twisting with pain in dislocated joints, understanding full well that this is just a warm-up. “I gave no orders to kidnap that Algali – Aravan is either crazy or working for himself…”

“Please begin, Sergeant. So who told you to reveal me to the Elves?”

They know their job well and doze the pain just so, not allowing him to slip away into unconsciousness… Then it is all over: the mercy of the Valar is truly boundless, and Vaira’s gentle palms pick him up and carry him to the safest refuge – the gloomy halls of Mandos.

You wish!

“You bastard, don’t even hope to die before you tell everything you know! Which of Arwen’s people are you working for? How do you communicate?”

Nothing was over. It was only beginning…