The Last Ringbearer (30 page)

While Tangorn, on Alviss’ advice, perused the activities of Umbarian financiers (the magic of the White Council was a child’s game in comparison), Grager became a second-guild merchant named Algoran and founded a company in Khand to export olive oil to Mordor in exchange for products of high technology. The trading house Algoran & Co. prospered: with its hand always on the pulse of the local agricultural markets, the firm kept increasing its share of exports to Mordor imports and even managed to corner the market for dates for a while. The head of the company avoided visiting his Barad-dúr branch (having no reason to believe that Mordor’s counterintelligence service was staffed with incompetent fools), but his position did not require that: the commander’s place is not in the front ranks but on a nearby hill.

The result of all this activity was a twelve-page document that historians now call ‘Grager’s memorandum.’ Putting together the rising profit margins of the caravan trade (as it was followed by the stock and commodity exchanges in Umbar and Barad-dúr), the introduction of a number of protectionist bills in the Mordorian parliament by the agrarian lobby (a reaction to the sharp increase in local growing costs), and a good dozen of other factors, Grager and Tangorn proved conclusively that import-reliant Mordor was incapable of waging prolonged war. Being totally dependent on caravan trade with its neighbors (an activity totally incompatible with war), it was concerned with peace and stability in the region more than anyone else, and therefore posed no danger to Gondor. On the other hand, the safety of trade routes was a matter of life and death to Mordor, making it likely to react harshly and perhaps not too judiciously to any threat to these. The spies concluded: “Should anyone wish to force Mordor into a war, it would be very easy to accomplish by terrorizing caravans on the Ithilien Highway.”

Faramir took these conclusions to a special session of the Royal Council in another of his attempts to prove, facts in hand, that the much-belabored ‘Mordorian threat’ was nothing but a myth. The Council, as usual, listened respectfully, understood not a blessed thing, and ruled on the matter by addressing the prince with its by now familiar litany of reprimands and instructions. These boiled down to two points: “gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail” and “your spies have gotten lazy and do no real work.” Thereafter Grager’s memorandum was sent to the archives, where it gathered dust with the Faramir intelligence service’s other reports until catching the eye of Gandalf during a visit to Minas Tirith …

When the war began exactly by their script, Tangorn realized with horror that it was all his doing.

“… ‘The World is Text,’ eh, man – just the way you like it. What’s your problem?” Grager smirked woodenly, pouring yet another shot of either tequila or some other moonshine with an unsteady hand.

“But we wrote a different Text, you and I, totally different!”

“Whaddya mean – different? My dear aesthete, a text exists only in its interaction with a reader. Everyone writes their own story of Princess Allandale, and whatever Alrufin himself wanted to say is absolutely irrelevant. Looks like we managed to create a real work of art, since the readers,” the resident spy waved a finger near his ear, so it was impossible to say whether he meant the Royal Council or some really Higher Powers, “managed to read it in this rather unexpected way.”

“We betrayed them … We got played like little kids, but that’s no excuse – we betrayed them …” Tangorn repeated, staring numbly into the murky opalescent depths of his glass.

“Yep – it’s no excuse … Another one?”

He could not figure out which day of their binge it was – not considering themselves in any service any more, they did not keep track. They started the day the head of the trading house Algoran & Co. heard of the war and raced to Umbar, running down several horses, and learned the details from him. Strangely, they more or less held up when apart, but now, looking each other in the eye, they recognized clearly and at once – this was the end of all they held dear, and they have destroyed it with their own hands. Two well-meaning idiots … Then there was the nightmarish nauseating hung-over dawn when he awoke because Grager unceremoniously poured a pitcher of ice-cold water over him. Grager looked his usual self, quick and sure-footed, so his bloodshot eyes and several days’ growth of beard seemed a part of some not too successful disguise.

“Up!” he informed drily. “We’re in business again. We’ve been summoned to Minas Tirith to brief the Royal Council on the possibilities of a separate peace with Mordor. Immediately and with utmost secrecy, of course … Hot damn, maybe we can still fix something! His Majesty Denethor is a practical enough ruler; looks like he, too, needs this war like a fish needs an umbrella.”

They worked on their document for three days straight with almost no sleep or food, running on coffee alone, investing all their souls and all their expertise into it – they had no right to a second mistake. It was a true masterpiece: a meld of incontrovertible logic and inerrant intuition based on intimate knowledge of the East and expressed in brilliant literary language capable of touching every heart; it was the road to peace with an exhaustive description of the dangers and traps lining that road. On his way to the port Tangorn found a minute to drop in on Alviss: “I’m going to Gondor, but only for a short while, so don’t feel lonely!”

She went white and said almost inaudibly: “You’re going to war, Tan. We’re separating for a long time, most likely forever … could you not make a proper farewell, at least?”

“What’re you talking about, Aly?” he was sincerely puzzled. He hesitated for a couple of seconds, then decided to breach security: “To be honest, I’m going there to stop this stupid war. In any case I hate it and I swear by the halls of Valinor – I’m not about to play those games!”

“You’re going to war,” she repeated despondently, “I know that for sure. I’ll be praying for you … Please go now, don’t look at me when I’m like this.”

When their ship had passed the gloomy stormy shores of South Gondor and entered the Anduin delta, Grager muttered through clenched teeth: “Picture this: we show up in Minas Tirith and they stare at us: ‘Who are you guys? What Royal Council – are you crazy? It must be some joke, nobody called for or is expecting you.”

But it was no joke. Indeed, they were impatiently expected right at the Pelargir pier: “Baron Grager? Baron Tangorn? You’re under arrest.”

Only their own could have taken the two best spies of the West so easily.

CHAPTER 39

Now tell us, Baron, exactly how you sold the Motherland over there, in Umbar.”

“Maybe I’d sell it, on sober reflection, but who the hell would buy such a motherland?”

“Let the record reflect: suspect Tangorn admits planning to switch to the enemy’s side and didn’t do it only because of circumstances beyond his control.”

“Yeah, that’s it: maybe he was planning something, but didn’t manage to do anything. Put it down like that.”

“Just the documents you brought are enough to have you drawn and quartered – all those ‘overtures of peace’!”

“They were written at the direct order of the Royal Council.”

“We’ve heard this fairy tale already. Can you show us this order?”

“Dammit, I must have calluses on my tongue already from telling you: it was
-marked, and such documents are to be destroyed after reading!”

“Gentlemen, I do believe it’s beneath us to plumb the customs of thieves and spies …”

This charade has been dragging on for two weeks already. Not that the spies’ guilt or their impending sentence were in any doubt on either side; it was just that Gondor had the rule of law. This meant that a person out of favor could not be simply sent to the gallows with only a flick of the royal wrist; proper formalities had to be observed. Most importantly, Tangorn never had a feeling that what was happening was unfair. That traitorous feeling had sometimes undone many brave and straight-thinking individuals, causing them to write useless and demeaning pleas to the authorities. The spies were about to be executed not in error or on a false report, but precisely for what they did do – for trying to stop a useless war their country did not need; everything was honest and above board and no one was to blame. So when Tangorn was roused from his cot one night (“Out, with your possessions!”), he did not know what to think.

In the prison office he and Grager saw the Chief Warden of the Pelargir prison and Prince Faramir, dressed in the field fatigues of a regiment unknown to them. The Warden was glum and perplexed; clearly, he was being forced to make some very unpleasant decision.

“Can you read?” the prince was inquiring coldly.

“But your order …”

“Not mine – the Royal order!”

“Yes, sir, the Royal order! Well, it says here that you’re forming a special volunteer regiment for especially dangerous operations behind enemy lines and are empowered to recruit criminals, like it says here, ‘even right off the gallows.’ But it doesn’t say here that this includes people charged with treason and collaboration with the enemy!”

“Nor does it say the opposite. What’s not forbidden is permitted.”

“Yes, sir, strictly speaking that’s true.” From the fact that a mere prison warden was addressing the heir to the throne of Gondor simply as ‘sir,’ rather than ‘Your Highness,’ Tangorn concluded that the prince’s fortunes were in real bad shape. “But that’s an obvious oversight! After all, I have a responsibility … in time of war … Motherland’s safety …” The official perked up a bit, having found something to fall back on at last. “In other words, I can’t permit this without a written approval.”

“Certainly we must not blindly follow the letter of our instructions in those trying times – we must confirm it with our patriotic sense … You’re a patriot, as I can see, right?”

“Yes, sir … I mean Your Highness! I’m glad you understand my motivation …”

“Now listen closely, you prison rat,” the prince continued in the same tone of voice. “Pay attention to my mandate, paragraph four. Not only can I accept serfs, criminals, and such as volunteers; I can draft, in the name of the King, the officials of all military-related institutions, of which yours is one. So: I will leave here either with those two, or with you, and – by the arrows of Oromë! – there, beyond Osgiliath, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to prove your patriotism! Which is it going to be?”

They embraced only when the prison walls were far behind. Tangorn remembered that moment forever: he stood in the middle of the dark street, leaning on the prince’s shoulder in sudden weakness; his eyes were closed and face turned up, and cold night fog, imbued with city smoke, was slowly settling on it … Life and freedom – what else does a man really need? Faramir led them to the harbor through muddy dark streets of Pelargir without delay.

“Dammit, guys, why did you violate my order to stay put in Umbar? And what’s the story with your recall here?”

“We haven’t received that order. As for the recall, we expected you’d explain it to us as a member of the Royal Council.”

“I’m not on it any more. The Royal Council doesn’t need defeatists.”

“So that’s how it is … And this regiment of yours – did you invent it just to get us out?”

“Well … let’s say – not just for that.”

“That’s really sticking your neck out.”

“Whatever. I’m in a wonderful position right now – they can neither exile me any further than the front lines nor give me less than a battalion – so I’m milking it for all it’s worth.”

At the harbor they located a small ship. Two unusual-looking soldiers bundled in camouflage cloaks were snoozing right on the pier nearby. They greeted Faramir in a decidedly not-by-the-book manner, looked the two spies over appraisingly and started getting the ship under way at once – quite competently, as far as Tangorn could tell.

“Leaving before dawn, Prince?”

“You know, that there’s no caveat about traitors in that order is indeed an oversight; you want to stay to see how long it’ll take them to figure it out?”

Faramir was prophetic – the very next morning a courier brought ‘Amendment No. 1 to the Royal Decree 3014-227: No extension of amnesty for the criminals wishing to defend the Motherland to those guilty of crimes against the state’ to Pelargir. By that time the prince’s ship was halfway to the port of Harlond, where the Ithilien regiment was forming. They would not have been safe there, either, but when policemen with an arrest warrant showed up in the Ithilienians’ camp, it turned out that the wanted men had just left – what a pity, less than an hour ago! – for the other shore of Anduin as part of a scouting party. Yes, the raid will be long – a month, maybe more; no, the party is working independently with no communications; if you wish, you can go beyond Osgiliath yourselves and look for them among the Orcs. What? Well, then I can’t help you, my apologies. Sergeant, see our guests off, they have urgent business in Minas Tirith!

Truly it is said that war excuses everything – in a short time the ‘traitor spies’ were simply forgotten for other, bigger things. Tangorn spent the entire war in Ithilien, fighting without much enthusiasm but bravely and skillfully, protecting his soldiers with all he had – just like he used to protect his agents. This was actually the norm in their regiment, where the relationship between soldiers and officers was markedly non-traditional. Serfs working for their freedom and bandits working for their amnesty, foresters who had spent their lives guarding royal deer and poachers who had spent theirs hunting those same deer, adventurous aristocrats who used to hang out with Boromir and intellectual aristocrats from their pre-war circles – all blended in an amazing alloy that carried an indelible impression of the personality of their demiurge, Captain Faramir. Not surprisingly, Aragorn ordered the regiment disbanded right after the Pelennor victory.