Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5)

by Caleb Wachter

  “The price will increase…” St. Murray mused, “but I believe an arrangement can be made. You must understand, however, that alacrity is not the primary attribute for which I have contracted this particular captain—that attribute would be discretion.”

  “Understood,” Jericho nodded as he made his way to the driver’s side of their vehicle, “I don’t have anywhere specific in mind just yet, but if we find anything else that points to this Tsushima connection then we’ll need to check it out before heading back to the tribunal.”

  “Understood,” Tera St. Murray acknowledged as Jericho slung the duffel containing their gear—including his trust hunting rifle—into the back seat. “Good hunting, Mr. Bronson.”

  “You as well, Ms. St. Murray,” he replied with a curt nod before closing the hover-car’s door and firing up the engine. A quick check showed all gauges well within tolerances, and he lifted the hover car off the platform before accelerating as fast as the vehicle could go toward New Lincoln.

  Six hours later, Jericho pulled the modified hover car into a parking slot opposite the same building he had leapt from after Adjusting Mayor Cantwell.

  “Is this really wise?” Shu asked, having awoken just a few minutes earlier at Jericho’s urging. “I think there’s an old saying about ‘poking the bear’ that might apply here.”

  “He’s scheduled to come out in a few minutes,” Jericho explained. “I want to see how heavy his security detail is before we take the next step. Speaking of which,” he prompted, “how are we coming on the backup plan?”

  Shu shook her head irritably, “I still haven’t confirmed receipt of the package, but it should show up before end-of-business today.”

  A few minutes later the Vice Mayoral candidate and current Chief Investigator of New Lincoln, Adewale Afolabi, emerged from the city’s most central government building flanked by a cadre of reporters all looking to catch a quote with their hover-drone-mounted cameras and hand-held microphones.

  They were too far for Jericho to hear what was being asked, but Afolabi’s stern visage throughout the twenty meter walk to his car suggested that the questions weren’t exactly of the cordial variety.

  Jericho’s eyes scanned the throng but he saw no obvious security detail. “Smug bastard,” Jericho snorted after Afolabi got into his car and drove off, “he doesn’t have even one person on protective detail.”

  “Maybe he’s smug because he thinks he’s in the clear?” Shu asked with a duplicitous grin.

  “Maybe,” Jericho allowed as he pulled the car from its parking slot and headed toward Afolabi’s residential district.

  “This is a stupid plan, Jay,” Shu protested for the fifth time in as many minutes. They had picked up the parcel they had been awaiting nearly an hour earlier, and it was well past dark when they had parked on the roadside opposite Afolabi’s residence.

  “Duly noted, Shu,” he said calmly, “but this guy deserves some up-close-and-personal attention if we’re going to get everything we can out of him—and I do owe Masozi a bit of payback after missing out on the Keno Adjustment. Now give me the Mark.”

  Shu made a sour expression before producing the Mark of Adjustment and slapping it into his open hand. “I verified it all in the last thirty minutes,” she explained, “not that any of it was all that difficult after following the threads St. Murray dug up for us. Say what you will about her prickly demeanor; I’d still love to get my fingers into her info-nets,” Shu sighed wistfully.

  “Let’s keep it professional, Shu,” Jericho scolded as he tucked Captain Sasaki’s tanto into his belt beneath his overcoat. Sexual barbs and innuendo were ever-present in Shu’s dialog, it seemed, and Jericho didn’t want anything distracting them during an Adjustment.

  “What did I say?” Shu asked with mock innocence.

  “Keep Afolabi in the iron sights,” Jericho instructed, gesturing to the rifle.

  “You don’t think you can take him?” Shu asked with a note of concern in her voice.

  “Afolabi?” Jericho scoffed. “Even with my bad arm sawn all the way off, I’d still be able to take him down. No,” he said with a shake of his head, “I’m more concerned about whatever backup he might have lurking in the shadows, at least at first. If nobody springs from the shadows at the outset, just focus on doing your part like we talked. I’ll try to give you a clear line of sight when it come to that, but don’t hesitate even if all you get is a bad shot—you might only get one chance. Just remember that if I light my cigar—”

  “Got it,” Shu interrupted confidently as she inspected the rifle in the backseat of the car. She handled the weapon with just-below-expert competence, and Jericho was satisfied that she would provide ample backup should the need arise. It was a relatively short shot—no more than fifty meters—and the weapon had been well-maintained.

  Jericho then exited the car and walked across the street toward Afolabi’s house. Afolabi had purchased his residence using an inheritance fund disbursed by his late aunt, and it was located in one of the few detached home neighborhoods within New Lincoln’s city limits. The house was built on a lot measuring fifty meters by ninety meters—a veritable parkland compared to most people’s living quarters.

  Had he not benefited from his aunt’s posthumous largesse, he never could have afforded such relatively opulent accommodations. As it was, the annual property taxes were more than most people of Afolabi’s station could afford to spend on rent or mortgage payments.

  There was an attached garage on the house, and the door to that garage was open as Jericho made his way up the short driveway. The lights inside the garage were on, and the Chief Investigator himself was standing in front of a workbench as the first drops of rain began to fall on the drive’s pavement.

  “Chief Investigator Afolabi,” Jericho greeted as he approached.

  Afolabi looked up from the workbench. “Do I know you?” he asked neutrally, but his eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s as they snapped up and down Jericho’s form.

  “We’ve never been properly introduced,” Jericho replied, offering his hand, “I’m Jericho Bronson; I was the Adjuster of record for Mayor Cantwell.”

  Afolabi froze for a moment as recognition lit in his eyes, but he accepted Jericho’s hand with a firm grip and corrected, “I stepped down from my post as Chief Investigator after announcing my candidacy for Vice Mayor.”

  “Vice Mayor Elect, then?” Jericho asked pleasantly as Afolabi tightened his grip. “Save your strength, Vice Mayor Elect,” Jericho said as both his smile and grip tightened, “you’re a big man but you’re out of shape. With me it’s a full-time job—and I’ve done very well for myself.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Afolabi grunted as he reluctantly released Jericho’s hand and the two separated, “that business with General Pemberton, for example, took more than a few people by surprise.”

  “I’m going to admit to no small measure of my own surprise by your willingness to reply,” Jericho said, his curiosity piqued by Afolabi’s bluntness as he produced the Tyrannis Mark and placed it on the work bench. “Tell me: why not deny involvement in any of it?”

  “Deny it?” Afolabi scoffed. “Why would I deny it? I’ve been part of the greatest revolution in the Chimera Sector since the Great Collapse—I’m proud of what I’ve done here.”

  “You’re proud of trying to have Masozi killed?” Jericho asked tightly, surprised for a second time in as many minutes—but this time he was surprised at just how angry he felt at the other man’s callousness.

  “I had nothing to do with that,” Afolabi said dismissively. “Don’t you think I would have tried to stop something like that from taking place in my own backyard?”

  “So Stiglitz was acting on his own…is that your story?” Jericho asked disbelievingly. “It’s awfully thin.”

  “I know plenty about your little order’s eccentricities, Adjuster,” Afolabi spat. “You can’t kill me unless you satisfy your ‘reasonable certainty’ threshold—and you can’t do that
because, frankly, I’m too smart.”

  “I’ve found that people who brag about their intelligence do so for the same reason women wear gaudy jewelry after their curves flatten out, and men buy sports cars after their hairlines retreat with the last vestiges of their virility,” Jericho said conversationally. “It’s only after recognizing the absence of something that one feels compelled to boast about it.”

  “You think me a peacock, then?” Afolabi asked with a thin sneer.

  “I think you’re a tyrant,” Jericho replied evenly as Afolabi toyed with a nearby wheel-saw, “but I don’t think you’re a very smart one.”

  “Why is that?” Afolabi’s eyes turned hard.

  “Because smart tyrants leave cleaner paper trails,” Jericho explained, producing the contents of the package which Shu had received an hour earlier at a postal box that was little more than a dead drop.

  Afolabi sighed, “We’ve already gone over this, Mr. Bronson; you can’t link me to the bombing of Investigator Masozi’s apartment building, nor can you substantiate the baseless claims of my involvement in Mayor Cantwell’s death—for reasons which should be abundantly clear to you, of all people.”

  “I killed Cantwell, all right,” Jericho agreed as he flexed his spasming forearm muscles. “But you should take a closer look at that Mark before I execute it—it’s not for tyranny.”

  Afolabi’s eyes narrowed before flicking down to fix on the Mark of Adjustment—an Infectus Mark, which had been duly requested and received by Shu not long after she and Jericho had landed on Virgin.

  “See…” Jericho said as Afolabi’s eyes remained locked on the Infectus Mark, “I knew you’d keep your hands clean since your payoff in all of this was the Vice Mayor’s office and, I assume, a Governorship a few years later. As such, you wouldn’t want anything that could be construed as tyrannical actions linked back to you; you would have made that perfectly clear to Stiglitz at the outset of your little association.”

  “I’ve never accepted a bribe,” Afolabi said stiffly, “and I’ve never taken money from the public. This is a trick—and a bad one at that.”

  “The evidence on the Mark says otherwise,” Jericho said pleasantly as the spasm in his forearms thankfully abated. He took a pointed look around Afolabi’s garage—which was itself several times the size of Masozi’s old apartment—and said, “Your aunt left you this house, didn’t she?”

  “She did,” Afolabi said with open annoyance, “but I don’t see—“

  “You paid your taxes for this place just three days ago, correct?” Jericho interrupted.

  “That’s a matter of public record,” Afolabi snorted. “Am I supposed to be impressed that you can perform a thirty second search on the local data net?”

  It was Jericho’s turn to snort, “No, you’re not. But as I said: your paper trail doesn’t exactly suggest the intelligence you boasted of a moment ago.”

  “I don’t follow,” Afolabi said with a hint of annoyance, and Jericho had to give the man this much: he was able to keep calm under pressure.

  “Let me show you,” Jericho offered, clicking the central, eye-shaped icon on the Infectus Mark. A holographic image sprang into being above the Mark, and that image showed a series of financial records in painstaking detail.

  “Those aren’t my financial records,” Afolabi scoffed. “It doesn’t look like my paper trail is the one suggesting substandard intelligence, Mr. Bronson.”

  Jericho fought back a smirk as he opened another series of financial records, “Correct; they’re not, Mr. Vice Mayor Elect. These are the records of your neighbors—twenty two of them, to be exact—and it shows the gradual increase in local property taxes since you bought this house using the inheritance funds granted you by your aunt.”

  The twenty two houses’ individual, overlaying graph lines showed a consistent, identical increase in property tax rates during Afolabi’s residence in the neighborhood. Since he had first resided there, the taxes had gone up by eighty two percent due to the neighborhood’s increasingly affluent residents.

  “Your house,” Jericho said, allowing the smirk to play across his lips as the line representing Afolabi’s property tax rate appeared, “followed the same increase for the first four years, but then its tax rate plateaued. As a result, you’re currently only paying two thirds as much as your neighbors based on the assessed value of your home.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Afolabi said incredulously, “you’re here to audit my property taxes?”

  “Audit?” Jericho repeated with mock confusion. “No, Mr. Vice Mayor Elect; I’m here to prove political corruption on your part and carry out the people’s will in the matter.”

  Afolabi was somewhere between annoyed and concerned, but he hid the latter fairly well as he drummed his fingers on the workbench beside the circle saw. “The truth, Mr. Bronson, is that we don’t need you any more—and soon we’ll be rid of your order’s existence entirely.”

  Jericho ignored this last and pressed a button built into the Mark’s side, causing another series of images to appear. “It also seems you’ve been under surveillance for quite some time, Mr. Vice Mayor Elect,” he explained as the image of a man’s face appeared at the center of the hologram. “This man, R.L. Watchman, is a businessman of relatively modest means. I assume you remember him?”

  Afolabi snorted, “A petty, self-centered toad who never learned to let go of a ridiculous grudge.”

  “Be that as it may,” Jericho allowed, knowing precious little of the man in question and not wishing to get bogged down in details, “nineteen years ago—when you were a lowly patrol officer—you pulled him over for a routine traffic stop just after midnight. The report indicates that you suspected him of driving while intoxicated, but the video record was reviewed and it was found that your stated reason was less-than-justified—to say nothing of him having not a drop of inhibiting substance in his system. You were let off with a verbal reprimand for the unlawful stoppage, but no enduring sanction was placed in your permanent record.”

  “I hope there’s a point somewhere in this,” Afolabi growled.

  “There is,” Jericho assured him graciously before continuing, “after you performed the stop, you logged that Mr. Watchman’s driver’s license was expired by three days. You refused to permit him to drive his family—consisting of himself and his four children, aged three through fifteen—home in the middle of the night, or to provide them with a ride in your cruiser. As a result, he and his children walked nine miles in the dark, on a relatively high-traffic road with no shoulder, to reach their home.”

  “I was under no obligation to provide him with transportation,” Afolabi snorted. “Besides, it was twenty years ago.”

  “Regardless of the review board’s findings—or the fact that your brother had previously been an employee of Mr. Watchman whose employment had been terminated a few weeks prior to your unlawful traffic stop, which was a detail that somehow failed to make its way into the public record,” Jericho continued blithely, “Mr. Watchman took out a full week’s worth of front-page ads in the local data nets demanding a public apology—a demand which you, and your department, roundly ignored. After the ads were finished he publicly declared that he would set aside money each year to use in an ad campaign against you should you ever reach a high public office. During the last two decades,” Jericho said, silently approving of the businessman’s perseverance, “he has apparently conducted several audits of your finances and official activities at personal expense—and he hasn’t been alone in his disapproval of your professional actions, garnering donations from at least three dozen families who share that sentiment.”

  “There was nothing to find,” Afolabi said coldly. “They wasted their time and money.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Jericho said as he flipped to the next set of images on the Mark. They showed a record detailing petitions filed by the same neighbors whose taxes had increased—petitions which applied for the same exemptions Afolabi ha
d successfully gotten for himself, which forestalled the rising property taxes of his residence—and showed that not one of them was granted the same exemption, though several had superior cases based on residence period, personal finances, and other factors.

  “Again,” Afolabi said with a contemptuous snort, “sore losers.”

  “Most of them were willing to accept that possibility,” Jericho admitted, “but here’s what proves political corruption on your part—”

  “Enough,” Afolabi interrupted. “You’re going to have to leave; I have no interest in continuing this little show of yours.”

  “You’d rather I just Adjust you?” Jericho asked pleasantly, prompting a red laser dot to appear in Afolabi’s chest as Shu played her part perfectly. Afolabi’s eyes followed Jericho’s and settled on the laser dot for a few seconds before Jericho continued, “I thought we might be able to work out a deal that spared your life.”

  Afolabi’s eyes narrowed as they moved from the dot to pierce Jericho’s with iron resolve, “I don’t buy it…but even if I did, you don’t have reasonable certainty—you’ve got no leverage.”

  “I’ve got more than you might think,” Jericho warned, and Afolabi glared silently for several seconds, prompting Jericho to continue with the presentation. “This man,” Jericho gestured to the image of Agent Stiglitz which he had captured via his rifle scope during his third New Lincoln Adjustment on the day he met Masozi, “was represented, by you, as a member of Virgin’s Interplanetary Investigative Unit. Since the IIU’s roster is a matter of public record, I checked their files. I don’t have to tell you what I found—rather, what I didn’t find—do I?”

  “His credentials checked out,” Afolabi said, stiffening for the first time in the conversation to this point, “I can’t be blamed for—“

  “—for falling victim to such a clearly criminal person’s falsified documents,” Jericho finished for him, having already anticipated this particular turn in the conversation. Afolabi was playing right into his hand, and he had only a few more moves to make before he got everything of value from Masozi’s former boss. “No, you can’t,” he said affably, “but Stiglitz’ actions were aided by your complicity in his scheme—unwitting though that complicity might have been. That makes you connected.”