“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 careers 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.