staying has handed him an envelope plastered all over with assorted state seals. Well, it has been three days since he had showed up in Umbar, where he had acquired – how shall we put it? – an ambiguous but indisputably colorful reputation; it was quite natural for the Assistant State Secretary Gagano (at the urging of Alkabir, chief of the Northern Countries section) to request a confidential meeting with the guest from Ithilien. As a result, Tangorn has been ‘considering’ this idiot’s rude diatribes for a good quarter of an hour… Stop! he told himself; is he really such an idiot as he pretends to be? Let’s feel him out… try something innocuous. “Well, ‘a tiny peninsula that’s way overestimating its importance’ – that’s pretty well said,” the baron acknowledged good-naturedly, “but I have to take issue with the last point of your indictment, regarding ‘brown sourwater.’ Believe it or not, not half a minute ago I was thinking about how nice it’d be to pair a couple of pints of our good old bitter with these shrimp! One that’s black and sour like pitch, with foam thick enough to hold up a small coin…” He smiled dreamily and gestured at the other man with tired condescension. “Mister Assistant State Secretary, you simply can’t imagine a real Gondorian bitter. The first, longest swallow leaves a vanishing aftertaste of smoke on your tongue, like what you can smell in a park when they burn last year’s leaves in the spring; not for naught is it called smoked beer…”
Mister Assistant State Secretary responded to the effect that he knew his beers no worse than the natives, having worked in the Northern Countries division for many years; he was likewise conversant with all kinds of seal blubber so prized by the
So why did they want to meet him? First guess: to get him out of his hotel room in order to check his luggage for messages, letters of introductions, and such. Well, such cheap tricks would be in style for the dumb boy scouts from the Gondorian station, but the Umbarian Secret Service, as far as he could remember, worked in much subtler ways. Second guess: Alkabir is letting him know on behalf of the Foreign Ministry that the Republic has abandoned its age-old practice of temporary alliances balancing opposing forces, and has decided to surrender to the strongest – that’d be Gondor – therefore it is pointedly refusing meaningful contact with the Ithilien emissary (undoubtedly that’s who they think he is). Third guess, the most likely one: Alkabir is letting him know that while the Republic had indeed abandoned the said age-old practice, there are powerful forces that disagree with this decision, and the ‘Ithilien emissary’ should deal with them, rather than with the Foreign Ministry and other official channels, which the pompous ass Gagano is supposed to personify. The main thing is that regardless of which of these guesses is correct, it’s not the right time to go to the Blue Palace waving his diplomatic papers (had he actually had any). Here Tangorn had to laugh: so I don’t believe that Alkabir sent Gagano without his choice being a hidden message, while Alkabir doesn’t believe that I’m really retired and not Faramir’s fully empowered representative, however unofficial. Both of these pictures, though resting as they do on fairly tenuous assumptions, are internally consistent, so it’s not entirely clear which facts might convince either one of us otherwise…
“What’s so funny, Baron?” the Assistant State Secretary inquired haughtily.
“Nothing much, just an amusing thought… Anyway, we’ve gone on talking for a bit too long, you’re probably expected back at the office. A simple traveler such as myself shouldn’t distract such an important person for so long. Thank you so much for the edifying conversation. And, if it’s not too much trouble, please convey the following to dearest Alkabir – literally, please, with nothing added – I have fully appreciated his decision to appoint specifically Assistant State Secretary Gagano to conduct talks with me, but I’m afraid that the guys at 12 Shore Street are too simple-minded to appreciate such subtleties…”
Tangorn cut himself off because at the mention of the Gondorian embassy his interlocutor glanced around furtively (as if expecting to find a couple of His Majesty’s Secret Guards in full parade black uniforms at the nearest table, their torture instruments arranged right there on the tablecloth) and dashed for the exit, mumbling excuses. A solitary merchant-looking gentleman thoughtfully consuming sea urchin eggs at a nearby table looked up at the baron, his face an appropriate mixture of confusion, uncertainty, and fear. Tangorn smiled back, pointed at the receding State Secretary and quite sincerely shrugged and sadly twirled a finger next to his temple. Then he pulled the cooling oyster plate close (why waste good food?), expertly pulled the mollusk from its apparently impregnable fortress, and lost himself in thought.
The grand building on Shore Street that now housed the Reunited Kingdom’s embassy (although it would have been more appropriate to label it the Umbar branch of the Secret Guard) deservedly had the most ominous reputation among the citizenry. Minas Tirith considered the imminent annexation of Umbar a done deal, calling it nothing but ‘a pirate haven on the ancestral lands of South Gondor.’ The ambassador was readying himself to become the governor without much ado, while the people of the spy station already behaved like they owned the place. They called themselves ‘spies’ although in reality they were nothing but a band of thugs; looking at them, Tangorn felt like a noble bandit of the classic school next to a gang of underage punks. People disappearing and torture-disfigured corpses surfacing in the canals were now commonplace; until recently the Umbarians could console themselves that the victims were mostly Mordorian immigrants, but a recent attempt on the famous Admiral Carnero dispelled those illusions.
In other words, Aragorn’s embassy was a formidable institution, no doubt about that, but that its mere mention would so scare a high-ranking official during performance of his duties… no, something’s off here. Unless… unless this dude works for the Gondorians! Aha! So he thought that I’ve figured him out and would turn him in. Man, that was a propitious joke, pure fool’s luck! But Aragorn’s men’s nerves are in bad shape for some reason. I wonder where I could actually turn in a traitor in this city, where the police is either solidly bought or else scared spitless, while the Gondorian embassy could issue direct orders to administration officials if it so wished? Of course, there’s also the local secret service and the military, but amazingly those, too, are behaving as if nothing going on has anything to do with them… Whatever, to hell with this Gagano, I have quite a few of my own problems now! That my modest person is now of interest to the Gondorian spies is bad enough.
What the devil! he thought, sipping suddenly tasteless wine. Why do they all think that I’m here with the mandate of an ambassador plenipotentiary of the Princedom of Ithilien sewn into my pants, and an offer of a defense treaty? All right, suppose that my
