“The dungans you got cover pain and suffering. If you’re angling for a bonus, forget it.”
“Really, man – whyn’t you just stab me, careful-like? Why lay it on for real? What if that mail shirt of yours broke?”
“Well, it didn’t,” the baron responded matter-of-factly. “By the way, hand it over.”
He had painted the mail with black enamel, so that it looked exactly like ancient Mordorian armor – he had no desire to demonstrate
He turned to the gymnast, who was carefully wiping blood splatters off the armchair. “Inspector! Don’t forget to put the censer back where it was.” “Listen, Baron,” the other responded irritably, “don’t teach me how to clean up a scene!” Then he recited a couple of well-known saws about an impudent son giving his father sex advice and about the main reason for not making love on the Three Stars Embankment being the passerby who would drive you nuts with their advice. Tangorn had to admit that the man had a point.
“Where did you get all this?” Tangorn fingered one of the ominous-looking pullers he fished randomly from the tin bowl.
“Just bought all his tools off a market dentist for three castamirs, plus added some handyman’s tools. Add a little dried blood and it all looks very presentable, if you don’t look too close.”
“Very well, guys, thank you for your service.” With those words he handed Vaddari and his henchman a bag of gold apiece. “Will ten minutes be enough for you to finish cleaning up?” The inspector thought about it, then nodded. “Excellent. Your ship,” the baron turned to the jester, “sails with the dawn. In those lands fifty dungans is quite enough to set up a tavern or an inn and forever forget Umbar and its policemen. My advice is not to publish any memoirs of this night, though.”
“What’s ‘publishing memoirs,’ eh, boss?”
“That’s when someone gets drunk and starts telling stories. Or gets too smart and sends a letter to police.”
“Whatcha saying, boss? I never rat on my pardners!” The man was upset.
“Keep it up, then. Mind that Lame Vittano owes me a few and considers himself my brother, so if anything goes wrong, he’ll find you even in the Far West, never mind Vendotenia.”
“You dissing me, boss?”
“I’m not ‘dissing,’ I’m warning. Sometimes, you know, people want to get paid twice for the same job. All right, guys, farewell and hope we never meet again.”
With those words the baron walked out, hesitating at the door for a few seconds: the job awaiting him on the second floor required more than just guts.
Chapter 47
The thing was that the house at 4 Lamp Street was indeed a Gondorian safe house, but its true owners – two Secret Guard sergeants – have taken no part in the above events, having spent all that time bound and gagged in the living room upstairs. The sergeants were captured in a lightning-fast operation devised by Vaddari and Tangorn and carried out with the help of a robber nicknamed Knuckles, who needed to change climate soon. The baron needed a third partner not only for the latter’s skills, but also to make the number of Algali’s abductors match the true number of the house’s residents. Since one of the kidnappers has been ‘killed’ by Tangorn as part of the hoax, one of the sergeants had to die by the sword now. Truly, the World is Text, and there’s no getting away from that, thought the baron as he opened the door to the living room.
“Do you recognize me, boys?” Tangorn took off his mask, so the prisoners had a good chance to compare his visage to the search descriptions while he was getting their gags out. One shrank back and the other went stone-faced; it was clear that they recognized him and expected nothing nice. “Shall we talk first or do I just dice you up?”
The one who had shrunk back erupted in a volley of disjointed curses, obviously trying desperately to push back fear. The other, though, seemed like a tough nut: he gazed at Tangorn levelly, and then spat: “Do what you need to do, rascal! But remember that we’ll catch up with you one day, and then we’ll hang you by the feet, as befits a traitor!”
“Yes, most likely that’s how it’s going to be, at some point,” the baron shrugged, unsheathing his sword (the choice of victim was clear now), “but you won’t be there to see it, I guarantee that.”
With those words he stabbed the prisoner in the chest and pulled the blade out immediately; the blood gush was spectacular. Over the last few years the third sword of Gondor had killed lots of people in battle, but never before did he have to dispatch an unarmed helpless man, albeit a mortal enemy, in cold blood; he understood clearly that he was taking another step beyond the pale, but there was no choice. The only break he allowed himself was to stab precisely in the upper right chest; such a wound is not always fatal, so if the guy was one of Fortune’s favorites, he could possibly make it. The baron did not need a corpse
When he turned to the other sergeant, bloody sword in hand, the man tried to push himself off with bound feet and, as Knuckles would say, spilled his guts like a hoisted pig. Swapping the variables does work sometimes… Tangorn had to interrupt his revelations, since he was not very interested in all the goings-on at 12 Shore Street.
“Fine. When did your station start investigating the Elvish underground?”
“I haven’t heard anything about that. Maybe others…”
“What do you mean, you haven’t heard? Why did you kidnap an Elf, then?”
“What Elf?” The man was perplexed.
“All right, not an Elf – the guy from the Elvish underground that I just let out of your basement.”
“I… I don’t understand! We never heard about any Elves!”
“Ah, so I must be hallucinating!” Tangorn smiled ominously. “Or maybe someone planted him in your basement, eh?” “Listen, I told you all I know; if Marandil gets his hands on me, I’m finished. Why would I lie?”
“Enough of this crap! I’ll have you know that I’ve located this house of yours by following that guy from the Elvish underground – Algali, Junior Secretary of the Foreign Ministry. And I saw with my own eyes how two costumed guys first gave him some potion and then dragged him into this mansion of yours. So I decided to pay you a visit… Unless there’s two more of your people somewhere around here?”
“No, I swear by anything, no! We haven’t kidnapped anybody!” The sergeant’s eyes looked crazy, with good reason.
“Well, well, looks like I’ve finally found something worthwhile in the pile of scraps you’re trying to feed me. Looks like this is your main operation and you’re ready to sacrifice anything to cover it up… except now I’m really interested, so don’t expect to die as quickly and easily as your buddy here! Know what I’m going to do to you first?”
The sergeant was one of those people who think much better when they are scared. To avoid the nightmare the baron had promised he instantaneously invented his own version of events: they had Marandil’s undocumented oral order to capture Algali, Junior Secretary of
