The Last Ringbearer (31 page)

Tangorn got to Mordor on his own, as a private person – a murderer drawn to the scene of his crime. The Cormallen battle over, all he saw was the victors’ feast on the ruins of Barad-dúr. Watch, he ordered himself, watch the fruits of your work, and don’t dare turn away! Then he accidentally ended up at Teshgol right during the ‘mop-up,’ and snapped …

Ever since then he lived with a firm conviction that the Higher Powers have granted him a second life, but only so that he could expiate the evil he inadvertently did in his pre-Teshgol life, rather than for free. Intuition told him back then to join Haladdin, but how was he to know that he made the right choice? …

Suddenly he realized with an absolute, other-worldly clarity: this second life had been granted to him as a loan, not permanently, and will be taken back the moment he succeeds in his mission. Yes, precisely like that: if he guesses wrong (or pretends to), he will live to a ripe old age; if he guesses right, he will obtain redemption at the price of his life. He has a right only to this unhappy choice, but this right is the only difference between himself and Aragorn’s dead men.

This last thought – about Aragorn’s corpses – brought Tangorn from his memories back to the twilit Three Stars Embankment. All right, consider the dead men. Most likely no one will ever find out where they came from (the Elves are real good at keeping secrets), but the Umbarian ships that delivered that nightmarish cargo to the walls of Minas Tirith are another matter: they all have owners and crews, registrations and insurance policies. No doubt the Elvish agents have worked to bury this information, too (already a legend is circulating that this had been a corsair fleet about to sack Pelargir), but these events are recent and some tracks might not have been obliterated yet. These tracks will lead him to people who chartered the ships, and those will lead him to so far unknown Elandar. It makes no sense to start the Game he and Haladdin proposed to play with Lórien at any lower level.

The most amusing thing is that none other than Mordorian intelligence will assist him in his search – the same people he and Grager were accused of conspiring with four years ago. Awaiting execution in Pelargir prison, he never imagined that one day he will indeed be working with these guys. He could probably investigate this himself, but his network had been put to sleep and it would take at least two weeks to re-activate it. That’s time he doesn’t have, whereas the Mordorians ought to have a ton of material about this event, otherwise their station chief should be summarily dismissed. The question is whether they will want to share the information or contact him at all – he’s nothing but a Gondorian to them, an enemy … In any event, tomorrow it will all be clear. The contact method Sharya-Rana gave them was as follows: come to the Seahorse Tavern in the harbor on an odd Tuesday (that’s tomorrow) around eleven in the morning, order a bottle of tequila and a saucer of sliced lemon, pay with a gold coin, talk about anything at all with one of the sailors at the bar, spend ten minutes or so at the table in the back left corner – and then walk to the Great Castamir Square, where the meeting and the exchange of passwords will occur behind the rightmost rostral column … So: shall he stroll the embankments a little longer and then head unhurriedly back to the hotel?

Someone addressed him: “You’re waiting for a lady, noble sir – buy her a flower!” Tangorn turned around languidly, and his breath seized for a moment. It was not that the flower girl was beauty personified; rather, her little basket was full of purple-golden
meotis
orchids, exceedingly rare this time of year.
Meotis
was Alviss’ favorite flower.

CHAPTER 40

A 
ll these days he had been putting off seeing her under various pretexts – “never revisit the places where you have been happy.” Since the moment 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 highly respectable dame: her brilliant intuition had helped her make a sizable fortune in the stock market. Apparently unmarried, she seemed to be 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 wonderful 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 palm. “And pray for my fortune, I’ll need it real soon …”

“So you’re a knight of Fortune and 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’ll 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 has 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 laments 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; 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-impeding current into an impenetrable blackberry thicket; Alviss had to break 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 echoed her jest with a laugh. “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 beg 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 (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-tier 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. It may be hard to believe, given Umbarian mores, but during its three hundred years of existence there have been only a handful of betrayals in the DSD (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 gathers 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 filtered information.

Thus, 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 Yakudze, 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 lily-livered ‘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 …”