The Last Ringbearer (2011)

by Kirill Yeskov

  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.

  CHAPTER 44

  When the last vestiges of the scandal died down and the leper regained his customary place, Almandin asked with curiosity:

  “Listen, suppose you were planning this instead of that idiot Marandil. I’m not asking whether you’d capture the baron (that’d be an insult), but I’d like to know how many people you’d need as against his thirty-two?”

  Jacuzzi spent half a minute considering something while scanning the embankment, and then concluded:

  “Three. Not any kind of super-swordsmen or hand-to-hand experts, either; the only necessary skill is facility with silk throw nets. Note that all three canals join the lake under low bridges, less than ten feet clearance. I’d put a man on each bridge; that the target was the gondolier was pretty obvious, but in any event we’d have prearranged signals. When he’s passing under the bridge, the operative would drop the net, then jump down straight into the gondola and prick him with a mantzenilla-smeared needle… You’re absolutely right, chief – this whole adventure was a fool-trapping scheme. The leper diversion was very good, but that doesn’t change the fact that no professional would have risked his neck like that. He is, indeed, an amateur – a brilliant and lucky one, but he’ll be lucky once or twice and the third time he’ll break his neck…”

  “Look at that,” Almandin interrupted, pointing with his eyes across the square, “our incomparable Vaddari already has poor Marandil by all the private parts in his rough hand!

  This one will get his every time… By the way, are you going to recruit the captain yourself or send somebody?”

  …The café looked exactly the same as the one where the DSD bigwigs sat – the same wicker chairs, the same striped awning – but the mood at the table was much less celebratory. The Gondorian chief of station sat in stunned silence, staring at the badge on the table in front of him (Karanir, Sergeant of the Secret Guard of His Majesty Elessar Elfstone), nodding dumbly to the phrases Vaddari was doling out:

  “Today the baron was simply checking whether you mistook him for someone else back at the Seahorse Tavern, or were actually hunting him. Now it’s clear, so he’s sending you this badge and the following message, quote: ‘I never bothered you, but if you want war, you’ll get one. Since seven dead bodies isn’t enough for you, I’ll hunt your people throughout Umbar, and you’ll find out what a lone master can do to a bunch of fat bums.’ But these are your affairs, I don’t care about them. We have our own business.”

  “What business?” It looked like Marandil did not care any more. Even his musclemen, watching from a table in another corner, could see that the boss was in bad shape.

  “Very simple. If Tangorn failed to meet me, that’s one thing. Whereas if he did but you guys messed up and didn’t twig who the gondolier was – that’s quite another. Dunno about your head, but you’ll lose your officer’s cords for sure. I’m gonna have to write my report about the meeting now, since Tangorn’s letter arrived at our station by regular mail and was duly logged… Stop that crap! Signal your gorillas to sit down – I’m not alone here, either!

  You think offing me will save you? Good… yes, like that… sit down quietly. What’s with this northern habit of grabbing by force what you can buy? It doesn’t matter any for my report who the gondolier was... Well? Say something!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Man, this screw-up must’ve struck you dumb. It’s a simple deal – five dungans, and there was no gondolier. I mean, of course there was one, but he wasn’t Tangorn. Whaddya think

  – is your captain’s badge worth five dungans?”

  ...By the time Vaddari got back to his inhospitable bachelor pad, he had had enough time to consider Tangorn’s offer. Of course, it was not to dispatch three Gondorian operatives and officially declare war on Marandil that the baron risked everything today. His real objective, strange as it may seem, was simply to meet Vaddari to offer him a certain delicate assignment. The job was to be fairly simple (although on a tight schedule – only a week) but extremely dangerous – a single misstep would land the inspector straight in the basement of 12 Shore Street, a place that would forever stink with blood, burnt flesh, and vomit. The baron was willing to pay a hundred fifty dungans for success, an inspector’s salary for twelve years of impeccable service. Vaddari weighed the risk and decided that it was worth it; he was no coward and always finished the job he started.

  * * *

  “Dear Jacuzzi, your expression suggests that congratulations are in order.”

  “It was even easier than I expected – he broke immediately. ‘If we let Minas Tirith know about the escaped gondolier, it will demonstrate that you had Tangorn twice
and twice let him escape. No counter-intelligence professional will believe in such a coincidence. The way it will look to them is that you’re working together with the baron and even had seven subordinates killed in cold blood covering for him. They’ll send you to the basement, wring a confession of working for Emyn Arnen out of you, and liquidate you.’ This logic seemed flawless to him and he signed the agency agreement. Please tell Makarioni to speed up the work in Barangar – the Gondorian spy station is now deaf and blind… Do you know what he wanted as his fee? It turns out that there’s another team working in Umbar now, directed straight from Minas Tirith.”

  “Ah so.”

  “Fortunately, those guys aren’t interested in Barangar. Rather, they’re hunting Tangorn for some reason and have barred the locals from doing so. Their commander is one Lieutenant Mongoose, who carries a G-mandate and is a professional of the highest caliber, according to Marandil.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “Marandil had violated his direct order to forget about Tangorn and may be arrested once the lieutenant finds out. The captain wants us to get rid of this Mongoose and his men, just in case. I find this request to be reasonable: we have to protect this scoundrel like the apple of our eye now, at least until Operation Sirocco. In other words, chief, you’ll have to ask for the Prosecutor’s sanction. Our dearest Almaran is big on law and order and always makes a major stink over liquidations, but he’ll have to go along with us here.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that he’ll ask you the following question: how long will a man who authorized the killing of a Gondorian intelligence officer live, and what kind of death might befall him?”

  “Almaran is a fussy shyster, but not a coward. Do you remember the Arreno affair, when he disregarded both the threats and the pleas of two senators and sent three zamorro bosses to the gallows? In Mongoose’s case everything is clear: he’s here illegally on false papers and is setting up a kidnapping and a murder. We shouldn’t have any problem.”

  “No problem on that end, true. The real problem is finding these guys.”

  “Oh, we’ll find them!” the Vice-Director of Operations responded with some levity. “We’re still masters of this city. We’ll find Tangorn in a day or two and use him as bait to pick up those hunting him.”

  “We’ll see.”

  That last comment proved prophetic. DSD operatives scoured Umbar from stem to stern, but did not find either Tangorn or Mongoose; both lieutenants seemed to have vanished into thin air. By the fourth day of the search it became clear that neither wanted man was still in town; most likely the baron’s body was at the bottom of a canal while Mongoose must have already disembarked in Pelargir to report mission accomplished. Well, good riddance, then– Marandil is out of danger, so why poke into all those Gondor-Ithilien messes?

  Most interestingly, the Umbar Secret Service’s conclusion that Tangorn was no longer in the city was absolutely correct. By that time the baron was long aboard a felucca named Flying Fish which he had chartered to lay adrift about ten miles off Cape Jurinjoy south of Umbar, away from the main sea lanes. The three smugglers crewing the felucca (one Uncle Sarrakesh and two of his ‘nephews’) found this behavior strange but kept their opinions to themselves, rightly believing that a man who paid half-a-hundred dungans for a three-week charter was entitled not to be bothered with questions or advice. Even if they had managed to get themselves involved in some grandiose affair like the last year’s raid on the Republic Treasury’s gold cargo ship, their pay was worth that risk; in any event, the passenger did not look like a criminal, even though he came recommended by Lame Vittano himself (the man who was jokingly called ‘the Prince of Kharmian’ behind his back). The previous night of the twelfth the crew finally had a chance to demonstrate their skill to their employer – the Flying Fish slipped into the maze of small islands on the western side of the Kharmian Bay right under the noses of the swift coast guard galleys. After a customary exchange of signals in an inconspicuous cove they took on the baron’s mail and then retreated back beyond Jurinjoy.

  One letter was from Vaddari. The inspector reported success: he had found out the addresses of two Gondorian safe houses and assembled complete information on their owners and warning signals. The other inquiry came up empty (as Tangorn had expected): all persons having anything to do with Aragorn’s ships have either died from sudden illnesses or accidents, or have completely lost all memory of the affair, while all the relevant documents in the harbor office, going back years, turned out to have been doctored (without any visible signs of an alteration); it appeared that a whole bunch of Umbarian ships have never existed. There was more: the two senators Vaddari had felt out on the subject insisted that while they themselves could not remember the details of the Senate session which held the vote to support Gondor in the War of the Ring, such details could surely be found in the Senate minutes of February 29th; the honorable legislators treated all attempts to remind them that this year was not a leap one as a bad joke. The whole business reeked of some ominous witchery, so Tangorn wholeheartedly approved of Vaddari’s decision to avoid drawing any further attention to his interest in the ship affair, lest another fatal accident befall him.

  This made the second letter even more valuable. It contained information gathered by Alviss and relayed through Vaddari and further through Vittano’s men. She had talked to her numerous friends in the arts and business circles on a topic innocuous enough not to alarm any of the spooks likely to keep tabs on her these days, whether from DSD or 12 Shore Street. As usual, the most important information was lying openly in plain sight, and it painted a most interesting picture.

  About three years ago, as the war was heating up in the North, a fad for all things Elvish swept the Umbarian youth. The simpler ones made do with Elvish music and symbols, whereas the more sophisticated were offered a comprehensive ideology. In Alviss’ telling, at least, this ideology was a screwball concoction of the teachings of Khandian dervishes (“own nothing, fear nothing, want nothing”) and Mordorian anarchists (reorganization of society on the basis of absolute personal freedom and social equality), seasoned with bucolic claptrap about “all-encompassing unity with Nature.” One could only wonder why the young Umbarian intellectuals went for such primitive drivel, but they did, big time.

  Moreover, it soon transpired that not sharing those views was unseemly and even dangerous: all persons who had the ill grace of expressing anything other than admiration and support for them were ostracized and persecuted – “children are always cruel.”

  A year later it was all over as suddenly as it began. All that remained of the movement (and it was, beyond doubt, an organized movement) was the Elfinar school of painting – a rather interesting version of primitivism – and a dozen crazy gurus ecstatically preaching the impending conversion of the entire Middle Earth into Enchanted Forests; however, their main activities were denouncing each other and screwing their stoned underage followers.

  The serious young people have dropped all these games and returned to the bosom of their families, from which they have been totally estranged over the course of the previous year.

  Their explanations did not vary much – from “devils made me do it” to “whoever is not a revolutionary when young has no heart; whoever is not a conservative when old has no brain” – but what family cares for elaborate explanations when they have their dear child back at the dinner table? All of the above could have been written off as nonsense that deserved no special attention (youth fads are legion) if not for a peculiar circumstance – all of the ‘returnees,’ including the offspring of the most prominent families of the Republic, have suddenly acquired an unusual penchant for government service, which was something previously unheard of among the elite youth. A transformation of a semi-bohemian dreamer or society playboy into a model public official looks weird in general; when such cases number in the dozens and hundreds, they make a disturbing pattern. Add to that the fact that all these youngsters have made brilliant ca
reers in the past two years (while exhibiting an amazing degree of unity and mutual assistance – better than any zamorro), advancing quite far up the administrative ladder, and the picture turns really scary. There was no doubt that in seven or eight years precisely those boys will be in charge of all key government positions – from the Foreign Ministry to the Admiralty and from the Treasury to the Secret Service – and then they will have acquired all the levers of real power in the Republic without firing a shot. The most fantastic part was that no one in Umbar seemed to care about it, other than some old minor bureaucrats mumbling sentimentally: “We really shouldn’t castigate our young men! Look at them working for the good of the Motherland!”

  …Tangorn put down Alviss’ list of about three dozen ‘returnees’ and was now watching a seagull trailing the Flying Fish, deep in thought. The bird seemed to hang motionlessly in the windy blue expanse, resembling a checkmark in a margin – the checkmark that he should now make next to the name of his next contact. The problem was not the difficulty of this particular choice; the sad part was that he felt a genuine affinity to these boys, based on what little he knew about them. Money-shunning idealists whose honesty could compare only to their naiveté… Unfortunately, he had no chance to explain to them that the real Lórien (rather than the one created by their youthful imaginations) had not a trace of either freedom or classless equality, as far as he could tell, or that the ‘rotten selfish pseudo-democracy’ that had reared them had certain advantages over theocratic dictatorship.

  So: he is looking for the most likeable and maybe even kindred-spirited people in Umbar.

  He is looking for them in order to kill them.

  What was that Haladdin used to say? “Do the ends justify the means? Stated generally, the problem lacks a solution.”