The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [107]
"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 laughed in the same vein, "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 pray 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 (what 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