In the Dark, Part Nine: Denoument

(Yes, it's been a while. Sorry! The previous post was here, the first post was here, but there's a plot synopsis as part of this one, so you might be okay just reading it. Your call.)

I sat first at my own table, my back to the decorative fireplace. The Councilmen sat next: Mario, accompanied by a pair of bodyguards, and Adrianus, with his own men. I spotted a gun on one of them, hidden (poorly) beneath a coat. My own flechette gun was loaded and holstered. I didn't expect to have to use it here, in a meeting with Councilmen, but an ambush on the way home seemed, at the time, quite likely.

The Tyrant sat last, across from me, beginning the meeting. "My agent," she said, nodding to me, "Has informed me that your presence is required for the preservation of the Città del Profondità. As duly elected Tyrant, I have exercised my right to summon any citizen of the City for its own preservation."

"A right you will maintain," said Mario through gritted teeth, "Only so long as you may prove its necessity in every case. I have been given no justification for this summons!"

This was my moment. I cleared my throat and spoke. "If you'll listen a moment, Your Graces, you'll see I have every reason to bring you here today. It's a long story, but necessary."

"Over the last two days, I've been investigating a plot to blow up the city. After finding explosives placed in such a position that, if detonated, they would destroy the city, I was attacked by a group of thugs, seemingly assigned to guard the bomb. I then investigated further, consulting both of Your Graces, the office of the Tyrant, and certain other sources in an attempt to discover who placed the bomb. While investigating, I was attacked again, by Councilman Adrianus's own guards, and later by two other people, separately, each of whom escaped after failing to kill me."

"That's the outline. Now, there are two questions that come from this; two crimes which must be answered for. The first: who is trying to kill me? And the second: who set the bomb?"

"The immediate assumption would be that they are one and the same. After all, I found the bomb and was investigating it. But the attacks didn't come immediately. I had time to travel to the Tyrant's office, talk to her, go home, change clothes, and travel to Councilman Adrianus's residence before I was attacked. There was a reason, therefore, that I was attacked only after I met with Councilman Adrianus, and only until I'd awoken and managed to tell the Tyrant what I'd learned from our discussion. Someone didn't want me to tell what I'd found out. And my conclusion, at the time of the discussion, was that His Grace was innocent. I was attacked to put blame on him. After all, if I were killed after meeting with him on the case, killed after an attack by his own guards, suspicion would immediately fall on him. Councilman Adrianus wouldn't have attacked me with his own guards, not then. He has subtler tools. Logically: he did not launch the attacks on me. Can we agree on everything said so far?"

The Tyrant nodded. She was just listening for form. I'd already told her all of this, just before the meeting. It was the Councilmen's agreement that mattered.

Visibly reluctant, Adrianus nodded. He didn't like the bit about "subtler tools", I was guessing, but he wanted himself cleared of the attacks. I was more worried about Mario. But he, too, agreed, finding no way to object. I continued.

"I'll come back to the attacks later, but for the moment I want to talk more about the bomb. Actually, about the thugs guarding the bomb, because they're the things that bugged me since I started investigating this case. Where did they come from? Who paid them? And why were they there?"

"It took me until the end of my investigation to learn the answer to the first two questions, but the answer to the last one is obvious if you just think about it, as I realized somewhat later. If they'd actually been ordered to guard the bomb, they would have been inside the rim, with it. Standing outside, not only were they conspicuous (which, as a side note, started the entire investigation), but they wouldn't have been able to guard the bomb from any maintenance worker or smuggler who decided to use that particular part of the rim, and entered from outside. It's unbelievably idiotic for the thugs to have been there; unless their purpose wasn't to guard the bomb, but rather to reveal its presence."

"The bomb was never intended to destroy the city. It was planted in a suspicious place, conspicuously guarded, and left there to incriminate someone else. The thugs, and their positioning alone, reveal that, though I suspect that if we checked the bomb carefully, we'd find that all or most of it was doped, harmless."

"It's obvious that the bomb came from the Franks. No petty smuggler would be able to bring in that much in the way of high-grade explosives. Odds are, their ambassador made the same offer to our traitor that their last one made to an undercover agent: blow up the Città del Profondità, and they'll make the traitor rich. The Franks eliminate us, and the traitor becomes vastly wealthy. But the traitor decided to take it one step further; he betrayed the Franks, took their bomb and used it to frame someone else, not to blow up the city."

"The first the ambassador heard of this was shortly after I discovered the bomb, about five minutes after I called the office of the Tyrant to inform them of what I found. One of the thugs, a man named Alex, had survived the attack on me. I spoke to him, though not for long; but then he vanished." I had to be careful here. It was important that Mario had imprisoned and interrogated Alex, but I couldn't admit that I'd been poking around his dungeons and impersonating his sheriff. "Someone, probably one of the Councilman Mario's guards (who are, after all, responsible for the district), found him lying on the ground and took him away. Quite quickly, he found out about the explosives, and panicked. Rather than going through His Grace's chief sheriff, who had (unbeknownst to his employer or subordinates) been bribed to quietly ignore any reports of the thugs or the bomb they guarded, the guard contacted His Grace directly. Around this time, Councilman Mario would have also heard my call for reinforcements from the Tyrant to investigate the bomb, exercising his right as Councilman to monitor all communications from or to his district. He, too, panicked, and not thinking too clearly, called the Frankish embassy, and warned the ambassador to run. We know this last because the embassy's phone lines are tapped, so we have a recording of the call."

"This would be incriminating at first glance. It's entirely possible that whoever tried to frame the Councilman planned for that reaction. But we already know that the traitor had sold out the Franks. Why would he then warn them? There is absolutely nothing for him to gain, and after details of the case became more clear, the Franks would have every reason to kill him to prevent testimony about their attempt to destroy the Città del Profondità."

"There is, however, some question as to how Councilman Adrianus knew that the ambassador fled immediately after he did, when speaking to me. He told me that the ambassador had left for a "family emergency", and pointed to Councilman Mario, among others, as a friend, naturally arousing my suspicion of that latter worthy. But a friend, however close, would be unlikely to be told that the ambassador had left; he was fleeing from incrimination and voiding of his diplomatic immunity! He would have told no-one that he'd left until he was already safely away from the city; except, of course, his co-conspirator, who could give evidence on him, and would need time to escape."

I grinned tightly. I'd touched a nerve. Continuing, I told the group, "This is not conclusive evidence, of course. Neither is the fact that Mario's mint could not make the coins that filled the thugs' pockets, while Councilman Adrianus's is one of the few that could. But the fact that, if found guilty of treason, Councilman Mario would be unable to bid when the geothermal vent powering the Città del Profondità gave out, and you, possessing the rights to the second-nearest vent, would be almost certain to win the rights to power the city for the next ten years, and the ensuing wealth... why, I do believe that's means, motive, and opportunity."

Adrianus stood suddenly. His bodyguards stood moments later. "I've had enough of this nonsense," he told us. "You have no right to detain me here, no proof. I'm leaving."

My hand crept toward my holster. Still sitting, I told him, "As a member of the Tyrant's Service, I hereby place you under arrest for conspiracy to commit treason and mass murder. If you resist arrest, I have the right to use any means necessary to bring you down."

He froze, then bolted for the door. His guards went for their guns.

I drew first, firing my flechette gun even as it came out of the holster. One guard lost his face; the other fell, bleeding. I tossed aside the flechette gun, its single shot exhausted, scrabbled behind me on the fireplace's mantelpiece and picked up the gun I kept there. I ran for the door, vaulting over the front desk. Adrianus had already made it to his limousine, gasoline engine roaring. It began to pull away as the chauffeur revved the engine, too slowly. I aimed quickly from the doorway of my house, fired two shots. The limo accelerated; then, suddenly, it braked with a horrific screech and stopped. The passenger-side door opened, and a body fell out. Then the door slammed shut again, and the limo fled.

Councilman Adrianus was dead.

I went back inside, walking slowly. I kept the gun in hand as I re-entered the back room. Councilman Mario and his guards still sat there, having done nothing during the brief fight. Neither had the Tyrant.

"Is he dead?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Enough confirmation of his guilt. As a traitor, I hereby confiscate his land, putting it and all his possessions into the custody of the Crown. His seat on the City Council will sit absent until a suitable replacement is found."

Mario started up, enraged. "You can't do that!" he shouted, furious. "It violates every principle upon which this city was founded!" His guards had gone for their guns when I entered with my own in hand; now they stood, one leveling his weapon at me, the other aiming at the Tyrant.

The Tyrant, seemingly unfazed, smiled. "Do you really believe that?" she asked him, mockingly.

Mario said nothing.

"I know you tried to kill me, Your Grace," I told him. "You'd subverted Adrianus's guards beforehand. You'd probably been working on it ever since you realized that the contest for the next geothermal vent would be between you and him. You hadn't realized that he was responsible for the bomb, but when I went to visit him, you decided to try to frame him for it. It was a perfect chance; and what a coincidence, that he was actually guilty!"

"You have no proof," Mario snarled.

"No, I don't," I agreed. "Nothing but circumstantial evidence. That's the only reason that you're not in the same position Adrianus is. So right now, you can walk away, scot free."

"As long as I don't object to the confiscation of Adrianus's estate," he growled.

I nodded, said nothing.

He thought about it for a few moments, then, looking like he was chewing lemons, agreed. As he walked out the door, he whispered in my ear: "You and the Tyrant you serve, you've been accumulating power, for the last fifteen years since we foolishly created the position. There's always some "emergency", some reason to keep holding elections every year, to keep putting in a new Tyrant. But each one only lasts one year; and one day, one will slip up, and the Council will take it all back."

I smiled, nodded, waited for him to leave. Then I turned back to the Tyrant, who had stood by now. "He really doesn't know," I said to her. "That each Tyrant is carefully briefed and provided with all the support we can muster; that the bureaucracy behind you has been working to preserve the sole piece of democracy in this corrupt city. He has no idea. I don't think any of them know." I sighed. "I still wish I could've nailed Mario today, though. The slimeball."

"This was a great step forward, though," she agreed, "We've finally seized a seat on the City Council. I'll probably be able to open it to public election after we get the evidence to take Mario down. The more shortsighted Councilmen, which describes most of them, will agree that attacking a Tyrant's agent is intolerable, especially with the Franks still working against us at every turn; and they'll lose just a bit more power." The Tyrant stood, walked to the door. "Will you be coming with me?" she asked.

"No," I told her. "I've gotta make one call first. There's a man, an informant named Jack, the one who started me on this case. I think he deserves some thanks."

This concludes In the Dark. Sam Black, the Tyrant's best agent, struggles on.