Tales of the Republic (The Complete Novel)

by M. G. Herron

  Their food supply was supplemented by a delivery from the government’s own depleted ration stores. Fuquan sent it out that morning, surely part of the reason for Khan’s ire in the senate. The large brown woman on the news was saying how she appreciated the extra food, but that it would have been better if the government had sent the food before those poor people got killed.

  She wasn’t wrong. Ming ripped his eyes from the screen.

  “It’s a biobug,” Ming said. “A listening device.”

  “Damnit, Ming, that will get you thrown in prison.”

  “Leave that part to me. I need your help with this.”

  Ming set the thumb drive on Bohai’s electronic reader. The light from the screen lit his face as he pulled open the long document. His glasses reflected the words as he scrolled through it, and after a minute his eyes widened.

  “Khan will ruin me if I bring these charges against him. You’re asking me to commit career suicide.”

  “What kind of career will you have if those people march on the Capitol building and set fire to the senate?”

  “You’re talking treason.”

  “No. I’m talking high crimes and misdemeanors, which is what Khan would be charged with if this works.”

  “It’s thin, Kai. And if it doesn’t, he will crush us.”

  Ming knew that to be true. He took a deep breath and nodded.

  Bohai’s phone rang.

  “I have to take this,” he said. He answered the call and muted the television. “Hey honey. Right. Oh, really. That’s a sensible diagnosis.” He practically fell back onto the padded cushion of his chair. “Tell Susan that we’ll reimburse the hospital. Wire the money from our shared account.”

  Ming sucked his lips between his teeth and bit down on them. He was as glad as Bohai to hear that the girls were safe again, but his worry for them compromised Bohai’s focus. It was a difficult proposition to convince Bohai to help him take down Khan. But with his attention divided, Ming was fighting an uphill battle.

  Bohai hung up the phone. He swung his chair back around to face Ming.

  “I’m sorry, Kai. You’re a good friend, but this isn’t the right time—with everything that’s going on right now politically, and evidence that circumstantial. It’s too risky. After the protests end, we can take it through the right channels. We’ll get it done. But I can’t help you right now.”

  Ming gritted his teeth, and checked his watch. Another two hours gone, and nothing more to show for it.

  The scare with Po had shaken Bohai more than he thought, but Ming understood. Hadn’t he been that man? Afraid to step out of line? Always going through the right channels? And where had that gotten him except to see his best friend gunned down in the street?

  His dreams were still haunted by the twisted body of that young boy they’d hit, too. Maybe that boy and Ari would both be alive if Ming hadn’t been so worried about going through the right channels.

  “Nevermind,” Ming said. He scooped up the thumb drive, breaking the connection with Bohai’s computer, and picked up the water bottle. “Forget I was ever here.”

  CHAPTER 23

  UNDER CONSIDERATION

  By the time Ming hurried back to the front of the building, the senate had broken for a recess. He didn’t find Senator Fuquan inside the chamber. She was not in her office either which, unlike Bohai’s, was only a short walk from the senate floor—another perk of seniority.

  Ming knocked on the wooden door bearing Fuquan’s name.

  “She went for one of her walks,” Fuquan’s secretary, an older woman with her long gray hair done up in a severe bun, informed him.

  “A walk?”

  “I know better than to try to stop her. If you hurry, you might be able to catch up. She typically uses the west entrance.”

  “Do you mind if I leave this here for a moment?” With his best innocent smile, Ming set the water bottle on a bookshelf in the corner, where it wouldn’t be knocked or accidentally mistaken for trash.

  “Sure,” she said, shrugging as she returned to her paperwork.

  Ming thanked the woman, and, exhaling with relief, left the room, relieved that he didn’t have to sneak the biobug through security a second time.

  He stepped out of the building a few minutes later. It was hot as hell at high noon. The sun glared off the polished stone of the steps, and his damp button up shirt clung to his chest even before he reached the lawn at the bottom of the third flight of steps. Ahead of him, alone on the stone path, a petite figure with shimmering purple-green hair strolled slowly, her hands clasped behind her back.

  Ming didn’t want to be panting when he caught up to Fuquan. Now that he had her in his sights, he slowed his walk and gave himself time to catch his breath.

  She walked quickly for a woman half a foot shorter than him, so they were at the edge of the lawn before Ming finally came near her.

  Fuquan turned to walk along a stone path next a shallow koi pond at the edge of the property. The polyfiber walls of green field tents were visible on the other side of the wrought iron fence—more decoration than security. Soldiers patrolled the perimeter of the camp in pairs with sleek black automatic rifles held ready in their hands. Another group of men and women gambled at a folding table, but they were sullen, sour-faced, grumbling as they hunched over their game.

  “Are you following me for a reason, magistrate?” the elderly senator said without looking back.

  Ming finally drew up alongside her. “What if I said I was concerned for your safety?”

  She barked a bitter laugh. “I’d say you were full of crap.”

  “Guilty. But the terror alert is Orange. I’m sure secret service would be nervous knowing you’re walking around outside alone, in plain view.”

  “Let them sweat. An old body like mine needs the exercise and fresh air. The one thing they never tell you about this job when you’re getting into it is how much goddamn time you spend at a desk. It’s not healthy. Besides, how can I help govern a country if I never see it for myself?”

  “That’s a valid point.” Ming thought that perhaps he’d seen too much of it lately.

  “I was sorry to hear about your accident.” She nodded to his bandaged hand. “And your friend. My deepest condolences to you.”

  Ming cocked his head and his lips curled up in with surprise. He didn’t think himself important enough to even be on her radar. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  He gripped the hope in his belly down to keep it from flying off. After walking for a moment in silence, Ming decided to take a roundabout route to the point. “I admire the effort you’ve put in to obtaining aid from the UN’s World Food Programme.”

  Fuquan snorted. “Lot of good it’s done. They keep telling me that the region is over quota and they’ll take our application ‘under consideration.’” She used air quotes to emphasize the phrase.

  “Is there any way to change their minds?”

  “One way, but it is distasteful to me. The application I filed was for food aid from South America—Brazil, primarily. If we were willing to accept aid from Cascadia, in the Americas, we would probably get it. At four times the cost. We’d be paying off that debt for years—and that’s assuming we don’t have any more problems of our own to deal with.”

  Ming nodded his understanding. “It would hamstring our economy. We might never recover.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Still, putting in the application opens the door on the discussion, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Bureaucracy, the great mire,” Ming said.

  Fuquan smiled. “You could say that.”

  “I have a similar quandary.” Ming hesitated, but figured that he had no other choice now. “I was hoping to offer my assistance with the World Food Programme application, and in return you might hear a proposal of my own devising.”

  “And now we come to the point,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” No fooling this woman. “I, t
oo, have waded into the bureaucratic swamps and gotten stuck. Last year, several ration deliveries failed to arrive in the district where I served as commissioner. Others arrived on time, but they were short when I weighed them. I filed reports to Magistrate Alber, and when I took over as magistrate I submitted several more complaints to the Agricultural Commission myself.”

  Senator Fuquan was looking at Ming intently now.

  “Delivery drivers skimming rations in lean times is not unusual,” Ming continued. “So, at first, I chalked it up to the human element. People were hungry, so they took food when they could—the delivery drivers, perhaps, or people who worked at the ration center. Then the riots began and I got…sidetracked. Recently, however, I looked into the reports again. It turns out that some were written off as errors without my knowledge. Other complaints the Agricultural Committee claims they never received.”

  “How unusual,” Fuquan said, although her tone told him that the news came as no surprise.

  “I can’t seem to make any headway, but someone of your standing might get different results, don’t you think? I would be eternally grateful if you could look into this for me.”

  “Our mutual friend Senator Khan is in charge of the Agricultural Committee. You should report this to him.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Fuquan’s expression remained unreadable. She smiled, readjusted her hands behind her back, and continued walking. When she came to the corner of the garden, where the wrought iron fence made a hard right and went back toward the Capitol building, Fuquan stopped and looked through the bars to where dozens of army vehicles were parked in neat lines.

  Ming followed her gaze. Beyond the rows of jeeps and motorcycles, beyond a dozen armored cars carefully backed into a row on the outside of the makeshift parking lot—a courtyard with a fountain at its center reserved for foot traffic in normal times—the sun glinted off the headless shoulders of a mech in the bed of a large truck. Several engineers barked orders and maneuvered the truck into position. Two men got up on the truck and tied a tow line around the torso of the heavy machine. After securing it to the hitch of a second truck, they hauled the mech upright, and then set it down to the pavement with a noisy crash.

  “Are those the mechs from Telerethon Square?”

  “They recovered three of them, from what I understand.”

  Ming suddenly understood why Fuquan walked all the way out here. It was a cover. He also realized that she probably knew more than she was letting on.

  “I thought the protestors destroyed them.”

  “A few, but these machines were designed for war. Worst case scenario, they need to be refinished or have a few parts replaced. But I know how much we spent to build the mechs—the general won’t just leave them lying in Telerethon Square to rust.”

  “And the protestors just let the army come take them back? After what happened?”

  Fuquan shrugged. “Apparently they didn’t want the mechs there during the memorial service. They asked the army to come take them.”

  “If they’re operational, why did they have to tow them back here? Why not just activate them and walk back?”

  “Precisely. The engineers claim their batteries are full, but they won’t start. I am waiting to see what else they find.”

  A patrol unit turned the corner on the outside of the wrought iron fence and stopped in front of them. A young, nervous-looking blond man who seemed to be in charge of the group approached them.

  “Please return to the Capitol building. We’re on high alert right now.”

  “So sorry!” Ming said before Fuquan could open her mouth to respond. “Are we not allowed to walk the grounds during Orange? I always get the color codes confused.”

  “Just a precaution, sir. For your own safety.”

  “Of course, of course. It’s so hot out here anyway. The senator just needs a moment to rest in the shade and then we’ll be heading right back.”

  Fuquan appeared to be overcome with the heat. She tottered over to a spot in the shade and sank onto a bench near the edge of the koi pond.

  The young lieutenant hesitated. When Ming and Fuquan continued to sit, he eventually marched off to continue his patrol.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Ming showed her the thumb drive and explained how it contained all the complaints he filed, cross-referenced with the weights of the ration shipments to and from Fields.

  “And what proof do you have that Senator Khan was involved?”

  “I’ll have that by tomorrow morning,” Ming said, with a confidence he didn’t feel. Or else I’ve failed, he thought.

  “No promises,” Fuquan said. “But I’ll see what I can see and make a decision from there.”

  A second truck arrived with another mech on its side. This one had black soot marks on its chest. The soldiers wrestled it to the courtyard with their ropes and set it to stand by the other inactive war machine.

  Ming pursed his lips, and set the thumb drive in Fuquan’s palm.

  “I think you’ll find it very helpful,” Ming said. “And perhaps when Khan has been exposed, you can spend your energy on the World Food Programme instead of fighting him and his warmongers in the senate.”

  The thumb drive disappeared into Fuquan’s tiny hand, and she chuckled bitterly. “I like how you think, magistrate. But when you’ve been in the senate as long as I have, you come to realize that there will always be warmongers. Every Republic throughout history has had them—men who believe violence is the solution to their problems. This country might be better off without Khan’s poisonous rhetoric—”

  “Khan just wants war so he can start deporting refugees on a massive scale,” Ming insisted. “This isn’t about freedom, it’s about self-interest.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with that. But if he’s gone, someone else will rise to the occasion.”

  He stood and offered Fuquan his hand to help her up. They turned back down the path the way they had come and began to walk together.

  “That may be true. But all we need right now is a small window. I, for one, would like to see people planting seeds.”

  CHAPTER 24

  PLANTING SEEDS

  The guards greeted Fuquan by name when they passed through security. Still, this time they received a thorough examination.

  Ming retrieved his water bottle from Fuquan’s office, said his goodbyes, and made his way back to the press area.

  Several reporters glanced at him when he walked into the room. They looked just as quickly back down at their handheld devices. Kai Ming was just a magistrate—a nobody.

  And nobody was exactly who he wanted to be.

  Ming checked his watch. The senate was set to reconvene at two in the afternoon. It was fifteen minutes shy of one o’ clock now. He lingered in the press area, a short walk from the chamber, waiting for Khan and his assistant to pass through on their way to the senate.

  Ming passed time by resting on a wooden bench set into a corner, and ran over his plan one more time in his head.

  The thumb drive he gave to Fuquan contained the reports he filed about the ration discrepancies. But the true bombshell his files contained was that they laid out a path to impeachment for Senator Khan. If it was only a few reports that didn’t make it to the right desk, it would be too easy for Khan to chalk it up to failures of bureaucracy—botched paperwork. Someone checked the wrong box or failed to file the right form.

  Ming had taken it a step further. The files accused Khan of negligence of duty and maladministration. Stealing rations in a hunger crisis certainly matched those charges. But he couldn’t be sure they would stick with such thin evidence.

  If he wanted this plan to work, he had to gather the rest of the proof himself.

  His busted hand, which lay in his lap, throbbed with each beat of his heart. The pain was a reminder of why he was doing this, why he was about to break the law himself to bring a corrupt senator to justice. Wasn’t that hypocritical?

  If he
went through with it, then maybe Ari’s death wouldn’t have been for nothing. Impeaching Khan would make the thrashing Ming took in front of the Agricultural Committee mere days after Ari’s death worthwhile, too. The Committee hadn’t even offered condolences for Ari’s death. And with his friend’s body still missing! Ming forced his breath through his nose to calm himself. It was Khan, that day, who had given Ming the idea. A certain kind of relentless symmetry, to be sure, to level charges of negligence against the man who had accused him of the same.

  He had one chance to get it right.

  Ming was counting on the senator’s grandeurs of greatness—his belief that people wanted to hear what he had to say and that he deserved to be the one to show them the truth of their country’s true values—to bring him through the media area again this afternoon. And Ming was vindicated. Senator Khan could have taken the long way around, like most people, but why would he? Khan loved the attention.

  The senator swaggered down the hall and into the press area. He said something about taking action to prevent any further tragedies from occurring, yadda yadda, and the reporters were hooked. When he began to spout that age old drivel about how most refugees were on welfare (untrue), Ming began to tune him out.

  Instead, he eyed Khan’s burly, mustachioed assistant as he huffed and puffed against the wall. Harvey had entered the media area breathless and sweating. He fumbled his armful of supplies—once again holding Khan’s jacket, the poor sod—from one arm to the other. He popped open the cap with a loud click, which drew a smoldering look from Khan where he was speaking several feet away.

  The man pushed away from the wall, and walked toward Ming’s bench.

  Magistrate Ming sat in the middle of the bench and pretended to readjust his wrist brace. He looked up when Harvey stopped in front of him, breathing heavily and looking at Ming with irritation plainly written on his face.

  “Oh,” Ming said, smiling. “Sorry. Here, have a seat.” He slid to one side and set his own water bottle between them.