The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [97]
Tangorn finished his wine, tossed his last Umbarian silver coin with Castamir's haughty profile on the table (Sharya-Rana gave them the locations of several secret money caches, but he avoided paying with golden dungans of Mordor) and headed for the exit, limping slightly. The sea urchin connoisseur at the nearby table has also finished his meal and unhurriedly wiped first his fingers and then his lips (thin and slightly puckered with a multitude of tiny scars around them) with a handkerchief – attention! Three sailors were concentrating on their clam chowder at the table right next to the door; one of them casually moved an open bottle of Barangar red to the edge of the table – ready! Tangorn would reach the tavern door in six or seven seconds, which was all the time that lieutenant Mongoose of the Secret Guard had to decide whether to improvise and capture the baron right now or stick to the original carefully worked out plan. Who would have thought that his agent Gagano would blow it so stupidly?
All he had to do was hint to Tangorn in the name of the Foreign Ministry that his official accreditation would be untimely (the lieutenant had absolutely no desire to abduct a diplomat of a foreign and nominally allied state); the assistant state secretary managed that quite well. Unfortunately, he was cowardly (even his recruitment was accomplished with blackmail over really trivial matters), so Mongoose's demand that he keep this assignment secret from his case officer at the station plunged the Umbarian into utter dread. He knew very well that at 12 Shore Street they would judge such 'forgetfulness' as double-dealing, with all proper consequences. Gagano shuddered with fear at the mere thought of either of his Gondorian masters, and so fell apart after Tangorn's shot in the dark.
No, Mongoose said to himself, don't jump at it. Nothing terrible has happened yet. Yes, the baron had surely figured out that his interlocutor is connected to Gondorian spies, but most likely he will interpret that as Minas Tirith's desire to curtail Emyn Arnen's diplomatic activity… All right, we'll let him go and stick to the original plan. The lieutenant put the handkerchief back in his pocket – rather than dropping it on the table – and Tangorn went by the sailors at the door without a hindrance. He mixed with the street crowds and unhurriedly headed to the waterfront; he checked for surveillance twice but saw none.
Indeed, there was none: Mongoose took the sane view that right then it was most important not to spook their quarry. In just a few hours they will be fully ready for the operation, when they receive two genuine Umbar police uniforms. This very evening a police detail will visit the Lucky Anchor hotel, present a properly executed warrant and ask him to come to the local station to testify… and they will not let the baron die before he tells them everything he knows about the Ithilienian intelligence service's accomplishments in the hunt for Mordorian technology.
Chapter 37
Probably no one will ever know when people started settling on this long mountainous peninsula and the flat swampy islands of the bay it encloses. In any event, while the inhabitants of the Reunited Kingdom do not utter the word 'Númenor' without a reverential sigh, a gaze at the sky, and an upraised index finger, the Umbarians sincerely scratch their heads: "Númenorians? Man, who can remember all those barbarians! Have you any idea how many of them we've seen here?" Two circumstances have determined Umbar's fate as a great sea power: an excellent enclosed harbor and the fact that the highest point on the peninsula is 5,356 feet above sea level; these are the only real mountains on the entire coast south of Anduin. In these arid latitudes 'mountains' spell 'forests,' 'forests' spell 'ships,' and 'ships' spell 'sea trade,' which organically blends with privateering and – let's