Birth of a Monster (26 page)

He then resumed his icy demeanor and
said, “You may now catch up on your other duties, which you have
most likely been forced to neglect on my account.”

He then headed towards his room, put on
a fresh set of clothes, and headed to the senate.

In The Calm Room, a new bill had been
drafted.

Chapter 47

When Governor Sehensberg picked up the
day’s copy of The Sivingdel Times, which had been delivered to his
countryside mansion by courier, he knew that within one or two
seconds of gazing at the front page, he would know whether he had
committed a calamitous mistake by following the instructions of the
anonymous correspondent who had somehow delivered a letter to his
private study in spite of guards surrounding the house, or acted
wisely by seizing a valuable opportunity.

If he had made a mistake, at a minimum
his legacy would be tarnished. At the worst, he could be looking at
being impeached, indicted, and convicted for carrying out
executions far beyond the constitutional scope of his authority,
even during an emergency.

His heart beating rapidly, he took a
deep sigh, and looked down:

GOVERNOR TAKES BOLD STEPS,

CRUSHES CRIMINALS
RESPONSIBLE

FOR RECENT CRIME SPREE!

“Like a sick man on the operating
table, our republic needed bold actions to recover from its nearly
mortal wounds. The governor proved himself to be like those rare
historical figures who, when faced with crisis, took the steps
necessary to stave off utter chaos and anarchy. By invoking his
constitutional power to declare martial law, he used this valuable
instrument to enable our brave police officers to catch and punish
those guilty of some of the most heinous acts of criminal terrorism
our city has ever seen.

“But the governor, showing a singular
insight into the situation, realized that merely catching the
ringleader of the terrorists and putting him and his accomplices on
trial would not be enough to save our republic from the brink of
disaster. Facing scoundrels so brazen as to burn a police station
in broad daylight, murder the police chief in his own home, and
attack a carriage full of statesmen on a public street, Governor
Sehensberg wisely chose not to give the terrorists an opportunity
to obtain liberty by means of some other dastardly criminal attack
carried out by those fragments of their gang still at
large.

“By public execution after obtaining a
full confession from their ringleader, a vile rogue named Crabs,
the governor brought a pulverizing hammer down onto their
organization in front of the entire city, and sending a clear
message: This is what will happen to those who threaten to plunge
our city into fear and anarchy.

“But what will make Governor Sehensberg
go down as perhaps one of the noblest statesman our city or state
has ever seen was his bold act of ending martial law as soon as the
guilty were justly punished, thus showing his confidence that order
has been restored to our city and showing his respect for the rule
of law.

“Other governors may have waited a
month or two before terminating martial law, for fear of the
criminals striking again. But that is what makes us cognizant we
have no ordinary governor. Only those who truly revere the
importance of executive restraint within a constitutional,
republican government could so quickly relinquish the awesome power
of martial law after having wielded it for so short a
time.

“With the restoration of order, and
with criminality battered into pieces, could it be that we find
ourselves near the dawn of a golden age in Sivingdel?”

Governor Sehensberg cried tears of joy
and relief as he finished the article and then looked at several
other newspapers’ front pages for that day. At worst, they spoke
with mild approbations of the governor’s actions, and most were
near The Sivingdel Times in terms of their flattery.

So great was his relief that not even
for a brief moment did he consider the ramifications of having made
a bargain with the true mastermind of the recent
attacks.

Chapter 48

When Zelven and his three comrades
entered the outskirts of Sivingdel, they were met by fellow Varco
agents, who warned them the city was under martial law and that the
police were aggressively roaming the streets.

This was not exactly welcome news to
Zelven. Things had been in a bit of a downward spiral as of late.
Their wholesale distributor, Mr. Hoffmeyer, had been losing market
share hand over fist, and Zelven dreaded to see how low it had
plunged this time.

At one point, a convoy of twenty wagons
laden with Smokeless Green had been necessary in each trip to
supply the city’s insatiable demand, but after Mr. Hoffmeyer had
expressed doubt about distributing the load of the two wagons they
brought last time, Zelven decided to bring just one on the next
trip, and he was worried whether even that would be too much for
their impotent distributor.

He had asked the higher-ups for
permission a long time ago to go after this Mr. Brass character but
had been inexplicably denied. He had renewed his request several
times but without achieving a different result except being warned
never to ask again. His superior had then told him in a hushed
voice that it was a matter of if, rather than when, they went after
him, but the timing would come from the top.

He hoped that meant he couldn’t be held
liable for the nearly complete loss of Metinvurian involvement in
supplying Sivingdel’s Smokeless Green—at least he had heard a
consensus amongst his fellow Varco agents that Mr. Brass was not
being supplied by any of the Varco. If today’s delivery went as
badly as he suspected it might, he was not going to look forward to
going back to the outpost they had in Dachwald—which served as the
midway warehouse between here and Metinvur—with the exact same
cargo he had come with.

He was beginning to hate this entire
operation with a passion, and he had never even been told what the
point of it was, though he and his fellow agents had spent
considerable time discussing it. It was clearly done with the
intention of enriching the Metinvurs and possibly to wreak havoc in
the affected areas, but whether it was being done as a precursor to
invasion, as some personal act of vengeance against one or more
rulers, simply as a long-term revenue booster, some combination, or
something else entirely was unclear, since any one of these motives
would have seemed logical to him.

As they entered the city, he saw what
appeared to be checkpoints on some parallel streets, which was
something entirely new to this city, though they were very common
in his home country. Then, he realized he was heading straight
towards a checkpoint, with no possibility of evading it without
causing considerable hullabaloo. He gulped, not having the
slightest idea what to expect in terms of the severity of the
inspection.

“Hello, sir,” said a cop whose friendly
tone was belied by his tough-looking face.

“Good day to you as well,” Zelven said
with intentional coolness.

“What are we transporting
today?”

“Lumber, nails, doors, carpets—sundry
hardware and household items from Dachwald.”

“Do you have a bill of lading showing
the goods?”

Zelven handed it to him
immediately.

The cop looked it over and then looked
at Zelven, appearing to be more interested in what he could learn
from Zelven’s face than from the document. What he saw must have
satisfied him because he said, with a softening of his stern
expression, “Good day to you, sir.”

Then, he put a police stamp on the
document, and added, “Just show this right away if you get stopped
again, and you’ll breeze right through.”

“Thank you, sir,” Zelven
said.

The officer nodded and then motioned
for him to move along.

When Zelven arrived to Mr. Hoffmeyer’s
warehouse, he felt uninspired as he got out of the wagon and
approached the main office. This mundane courier work wasn’t
exactly utilizing his training.

He walked in and calmly asked the
secretary—who recognized him from his many deliveries—if he could
go ahead and drop his goods off at the usual place.

“You can check and see if
anyone is there, but people are beginning to simply stop showing up
to work. Mr. Hoffmeyer hasn’t been seen here for about a week, and
he left no word with anybody as to where he went or when he’ll be
back or . . .
if
he’ll be back.”

Zelven heard the genuine concern in her
voice and knew instinctively he was going to be hauling this load
right back to Dachwald. And with the way things were going, he
would probably meet up with the same cop, even if he was extra
careful to take a different path out of the city, who would
probably get one of those annoying hunches cops tend to get that it
would be a good idea to check the back of Zelven’s wagon and see if
there was anything there suspicious.

And then . . . things could get
ugly.

But if he left the load here without
being paid, that wasn’t exactly a pretty scenario either, as his
bosses were not likely to be happy and might even suspect he made a
side transaction as a passive-aggressive means of showing his
discontent with the overall operation.

One thing at a time,
Zelven.

“Yes, I’ll check,” he said
calmly.

A frown in the direction of his
colleagues was the only necessary communication as to the way in
which things were heading, and he promptly slapped the reins
against the horses and then directed them towards their usual
warehouse delivery spot.

They went past several short, but large
buildings, before arriving at the one on the end.

Zelven felt mild optimism as he saw
several men in there busily unloading cargo from other wagons. He
didn’t recognize them, but the arrangement to date had been that
every month Mr. Hoffmeyer provided them with a series of certified
invoices on a per-wagon basis.

Mr. Hoffmeyer had always assured them
that no worker in this building would be of the inquisitive type
and would pay the amount on the invoice and unload the content
without question or inspection of the cargo. So far, Mr. Hoffmeyer
had always upheld his end of the bargain.

Zelven pulled the wagon in, but by the
time he got out of the wagon he noticed several men coming towards
him that did not look like workers in the slightest.

“Good afternoon,” said the man in
front, pulling out a badge.

His name was Detective
Hoffstedt, and he was no stranger to Mr. Hoffmeyer’s very
profitable side business. Chief Benson had informed him he was to
pay no heed to any reports of Mr. Hoffmeyer being involved in sales
of contraband, which, given Hoffstedt’s knowledge of Chief Benson’s
ways, was plain speak for,
He’s a major
contraband supplier who pays his quota on time and is consequently
untouchable.

But Chief Benson had lost his head
recently, and the police headquarters had been burned to the
ground, and that slightly changed matters. There was a major vacuum
of leadership in the police department due to almost all the brass
having been lost in the fire and subsequent explosion, and that
meant cops who stood out had a golden opportunity to get noticed
and get promoted.

He had personally led a crack group of
tough patrolmen to Mr. Hoffmeyer’s house to turn it inside out. He
suspected he had been behind the attacks, though without getting
his fingers dirty lighting the match. It all made sense to
Hoffstedt. Mr. Hoffmeyer had been losing market share to the point
of becoming irrelevant. What better way to get rid of his
competition than by burning down the police station, getting a
martial law response, and paying for the police to go after Mr.
Brass and hunt him down?

After all, Mr. Hoffmeyer’s name had
been kept under tight wraps for the most part by Chief Benson,
whereas every trooper in the city was well aware of Mr. Brass. He
would have been the most likely suspect for the police headquarters
attack. But Hoffstedt knew better. Mr. Brass had no reason to do
that; he was winning the game, and he surely had enough money to
pay whatever tribute that crooked old Chief Benson
demanded.

No, Mr. Hoffmeyer was the guy. That was
for sure. And as for the late chief’s demise, that had Mr.
Hoffmeyer’s paw prints all over it. Who else besides the chief
would have suspected an obscure has-been like Mr. Hoffmeyer as the
mastermind behind the police station burning?