The Bar at the End of the World

by Tom Abrahams

  “Then how will she help us?”

  “She’ll know if the Tic developed that weapon,” said Archibald. “She was intimately involved in their bootlegging operation. If there is some new technology the Tic is using or testing, she likely would have heard rumblings.”

  “Remind me again how long Adaliah was embedded?” asked Archibald.

  “Years.”

  A smile spread across Archibald’s face, deepening the already canyonesque crow’s feet at his temples. His irregular nose shifted, accentuating its misshapen appearance. He set down the glass and ran his damp hand across the top of his crew cut.

  “You’re a sly one, Frederick,” he said. “That’s why I like you. That’s why we work so well together.”

  “Thank you,” said Frederick. “I try. I have to admit though, when she disappeared, my faith was shaken.”

  Archibald nodded, stood from his desk, and walked around it to the simple wooden chair on the opposite side. He pulled out the chair by its lattice back and sank into it, dragging himself toward the desk by grasping its edge with his hands. He waved the back of his hand at the Marine.

  “You’re dismissed,” he said. “Go get those injuries looked at.”

  The Marine saluted his lieutenant. He spun on his bootheel, then marched from the room, shutting the large door behind him.

  Frederick motioned toward the door. “That was a slip.”

  Archibald sighed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Truth be told, it wouldn’t be the worst thing if rumors of a turncoat spy circulated among the ranks. It’ll climb back up to the other lieutenants and only helps to validate our position.”

  Frederick shrugged. “Maybe. Or we look like we can’t control our own assets.”

  Archibald leaned back, the simple hinges on the chair creaking under his weight. He put his feet up on the desk, crossing his legs at the ankles.

  “We need to find these people with these new hi-tech weapons, detain them, and question them,” he said. “If they’re merely sacrificial Tics, so be it. But I have a feeling there’s something bigger at play.”

  “Why do you say that?” Frederick asked.

  “It’s just a feeling.”

  “Tell me more.”

  Archibald rubbed his chin. “We’ve been talking about the possibility of a mutiny within our ranks for so long, I’m wondering if maybe the threat is from the outside.”

  “Outside?” asked Frederick. “How? You mean the Badlanders?”

  Archibald shook his head and stared at the floor. He wasn’t sure what he meant or how to explain it. It was a gut feeling that something was off. The balance of things had shifted.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have a sense that whatever is happening here isn’t coming from our own people. There’s an outside force working to destabilize us. I can’t put a finger on it.”

  “You’re overthinking this,” said Frederick. “You’re being paranoid. Even for a man whose job is to be paranoid, you’re going overboard here. There’s no real evidence of anything happening outside the protectorate. Nothing at all.”

  Archibald grunted. In the ensuing silence, Frederick scanned the large red and black tapestry hanging behind his friend. It was adorned with scenes of horses and eagles. There were angels and, on one patch, a rotting corpse.

  Archibald noticed Frederick’s attention had shifted, and glanced over his shoulder at the faded images. “You look at those every time you’re in here,” he said. “You like them?”

  “They haunt me,” said Frederick. “It’s like they judge me.”

  “Now who’s paranoid?” asked Archibald. “Which, by the way, is your job, not mine. You’re the one in charge of spies, the master of paranoia.”

  “First of all,” said Frederick, “it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you. And that’s not what I mean,” said Frederick. “What I mean is that they speak of a time long ago and one yet to come.”

  Archibald raised an eyebrow. “That’s not at all cryptic for a man who lives under cloak and with dagger.”

  “They’re biblical, right?” asked Frederick. “The horsemen, the eagle…they represent the end of days.”

  “Yes,” Archibald replied, studying Frederick’s face. “It’s a graphic representation from the New Testament.”

  Frederick’s focus danced across the images. He appeared deep in thought.

  “It’s called the Apocalypse Tapestry,” said Archibald. “French. Created for Louis I in the fourteenth century. Amazing that it still exists. Almost as amazing as all those twentieth-century motorcars the Tic keeps running. You’d have thought they’d be rust buckets by now, as I would suspect most wall hangings of that era were long ago burned or tunneled through by moths.”

  “Louis, huh?”

  “The Duke of Anjou.”

  “Funny you’d have these here,” said Frederick, “given they’re from a man named Louis.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Our own nemesis seems to be a lieutenant by the same name,” said Frederick.

  “I’d never thought about that before,” said Archibald. “I guess that’s how little energy I give to that sycophant.”

  “He has the commander’s ear,” said Frederick. “We have to spend energy on him. He’s diametrically opposed to us. He’s fighting us.”

  “He’s not winning,” said Archibald. “We’ve got our backing. But you’re right in that he’s got the commander listening to him.”

  “The tunnels only have so many openings into the city. We’ve got eyes and ears working for us.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?” asked Archibald.

  The door creaked open. A young, frail woman stood there. She saluted and asked for permission to enter.

  Frederick waved her into the room. “Take a seat.”

  She crossed the room, her shoulders back and her stride surprisingly confident given her waiflike appearance. She nodded at the men and stopped several feet from them. She stood at attention.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “I’ll stand. I’ve been off my feet for a while.”

  Frederick motioned to her and said to Archibald, “This is Adaliah.”

  Archibald studied her. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Her skin was pale, alabaster save for the yellowing at the edges of bruises on her cheeks, neck, and arm.

  There was something about her, however, that mesmerized the lieutenant. An intensity of spirit. A defiance in her stance. Like she’d seen things, done things most couldn’t or wouldn’t.

  “Adaliah,” Archibald said, “I have questions for you, as does Lieutenant Frederick. May I call you Adaliah? Or would you prefer something more formal?”

  “Li,” she said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Call me Li. Nobody calls me Adaliah anymore.”

  “Li it is,” Archibald said, nodding. “Are you sure you’d rather stand? We have much to learn from you.”

  She bristled and pulled back her shoulders. She looked straight ahead, avoiding his stare.

  “I’m fine. Thank you, sir.”

  “Let’s get to brass tacks,” said Frederick, leaning forward at his desk. “We know where your mark is. The bootlegger Ezekiel Watson?”

  She winced at the mention of his name. “Yes,” she said. “He’s in the city, correct?”

  Archibald eyed her for a moment, uncertain she knew the current circumstances or the exact whereabouts of the man she’d been assigned to find, seduce, and use. Frederick nodded at him, urging him to answer her.

  “Yes,” said Archibald. “He’s here. What do you know about that?”

  “Only that after he disappeared, the Tic told me they’d recovered a note,” she said. “It was his handwriting. He wrote that what me and him had together wasn’t real.”

  She brought a hand from behind her back to dab the sheen from the corners of her eyes. Archibald saw the gruesome wounds to her fingers. Her nails were gone.

  “Why did he leave?” as
ked Frederick.

  “Long story,” Li said.

  “We have time,” said Frederick. “Why don’t you take that seat?”

  He motioned to the armchairs opposite Archibald. Finally, she sat. Her knees bumped the desk and she scooted back in the seat.

  “He left, I’m pretty sure, because of a man named Mogilevich,” she said. “He ran the club where I worked.”

  “The off-grid Tic club?” said Frederick.

  “Yes. Mogilevich was my boss there. He hired me.”

  “Go on,” Archibald urged.

  She told the story of the handsy employer who’d gone too far several times. Archibald decided the details of Mogilevich’s indiscretions, the unwanted advances, and the bar itself were too specific to be falsified. The stale smell of cigarettes and the foul odor of beer, the scum on the floor and the dim light that hid the faces of the patrons—the filth of the place rang true.

  Even for a spy, some things were too difficult to make up out of thin air. Her left hand trembled as she detailed the day that ended his inappropriate behavior. She balled it into a fist on the armrest, apparently aware of the quiver. Archibald saw all of this. He took mental notes.

  She described the man as oily. He was average in every way and wore eyeglasses. She said appearances were deceiving. The glasses gave him a studious appearance, made him look vulnerable. According to her, he wasn’t.

  “There was a woman named Rose,” Li said. “She worked the club like me. I’d made it clear to Mogilevich I wasn’t interested in him. I wanted to follow the rules, get paid, and go home to my boyfriend. He knew that.”

  “What were the rules?” asked Archibald.

  “Look good, fill orders, keep quiet. See no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.”

  Archibald nodded. A smile flickered and disappeared. “Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru,” he said.

  “The three mystic apes,” Frederick said. “I didn’t take the Tic for being Japanese scholars.”

  “I don’t think they are,” said Li. “I think they have rules, that’s it. There’s nothing mystic about it.”

  “Perhaps,” said Archibald. “Though I’m one who believes there’s a little bit of mysticism in everything. There are things beyond our control that bind us, lead us down our paths whether we choose them or not.”

  “Continue, Li,” said Frederick. “Tell us what happened.”

  “Mogilevich stopped messing with me after a while. He was never too aggressive, I think because I let him know the deal. Rose didn’t. She never laid down any boundaries.”

  “Boundaries?” asked Frederick.

  Li rubbed her palms on the arms of the chair. Perspiration bloomed and evaporated. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming her. He’s the—was—the creep. I’m just saying she didn’t tell him no. And he kept pushing it further and further. Then he got rough.”

  “With Rose,” said Archibald.

  “Yeah.”

  “What does that have to do with Ezekiel?” asked Archibald.

  Li looked past Archibald toward the tapestries on the wall behind him. He knew she wasn’t looking at them though, not the way Frederick had. She was somewhere else now. She was in the Tic bar.

  “It was the end of the night,” she said, her body tense. “We were cleaning up. The bartender, Markus, cut out early. So it was Mogilevich, Rose, and me. I went to the ladies’ room. When I came back, he had her pinned down on a table, holding a knife to her throat. She was crying. I grabbed a bottle from the bar and hit him with it. Then it got worse.”

  “What kind?” asked Archibald.

  Li blinked and refocused her attention on him, drawing it from the tapestries. Her brow pinched with confusion. “Of what?” she asked of the non sequitur.

  “What kind of liquor was in the bottle?” he clarified. “The bottle you used to hit him.”

  “Whiskey.”

  “What brand?”

  “Old Crow.”

  Archibald nodded. He was satisfied with the specificity and haste of her answer. “Go ahead with the story. You hit him with the Old Crow…”

  “Yeah,” Li went on. “That got him off her, but it made him angry. He turned on me. He told me I had no idea what I was doing, how powerful he was, and how he would use that power to make me miserable. We got into it. I struggled with him. He pinned me against the wall. He had the knife on me and said he would cut out my tongue.”

  She paused for a moment, her mouth half-open. “I kicked him a couple of times. We were struggling. I held him off, but I was getting tired. The knife was so close to my face. My training could only help me so much.”

  “Then what?” asked Frederick.

  “Rose screamed at the same time Mogilevich’s eyes went wide,” she said. “His face froze like that. His grip tightened. Then he let go of me and fell to the floor. Zeke stood behind him. His hands were bloody. His face was twisted in this weird way. It was like he was mad and scared all at once.”

  “He killed Mogilevich?” asked Frederick.

  “With the broken neck of the Old Crow bottle,” she said. “He’d never killed anyone before. He started to panic.”

  “Panic how?”

  “He knew, we all knew, that we couldn’t hide Mogilevich’s death for long,” she said. “Everybody in the Tic knew him. We had to figure out what to do.”

  “So he tried to run,” said Frederick.

  She shook her head. “Not at first. We took care of the body. We acted like nothing happened. I showed up to work. Zeke did his runs. We were good for two weeks.”

  Li licked her lips. Thin pink lines of blood bloomed along several of the cracks.

  “But Markus asked questions,” she said. “And Rose, poor Rose, couldn’t keep her mouth shut. When they came for her, we knew we’d be next. We talked about leaving together. Zeke wanted to get in the car and drive. He knew people in other protectorates who could help us. They were Tic suppliers who wouldn’t rat us out. We could get far enough away that maybe we could escape them.”

  “But that didn’t happen,” said Archibald.

  Li shook her head. Tears welled in her glossy eyes.

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Because he knew who you are,” said Archibald in a tone that suggested he knew the facts. “He knew you worked for us.”

  “He didn’t,” she said firmly. “I told him I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave and live a life on the run. He tried to get me to change my mind. I wouldn’t. And then he was gone.”

  There was something tender in the way she spoke about him, a lilt in her voice. The tension in her face softened. Archibald recognized the signs. She’d fallen for the mark. She was in love with him. He wasn’t the spymaster Frederick was. He didn’t have to be. Her feelings for Ezekiel were as plain as day.

  This meant he couldn’t be sure of the reliability of whatever she said regarding the bootlegger. Still, she had come back. She didn’t run off with the man. If she had tried, she wouldn’t have gotten far. Archibald was certain of that.

  “So you don’t think he found you out?” asked Frederick. He stood next to her with his hands tucked underneath his pits.

  She shook her head and sniffed. “No,” she said, regaining her composure. “I don’t believe so.”

  “Then what did he mean in his note?” said Archibald, a harsh edge to his voice. “That’s decidedly on the nose for someone in the dark.”

  “I’m not sure,” Li said.

  “It’s also strange, don’t you think,” said Archibald, his volume increasing as he spoke, “that in the minutes or hours after he left you alone, with a note decrying the truth of your relationship, the Tic appears at your door and takes you? They interrogate you, waterboard you. They take your fingernails, strip you naked and humiliate you, imprison you. Is there more?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you understand my skepticism here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Archibald leaned back, exhaling. The chair creaked. He brought
his hands to his face, matching his fingers to one another and tapping them together in a triangle at his nose.

  “Waterboarding,” he said wistfully. “Brilliant if you think about it. Such a precious commodity, yet they’ll use it as a tool of frivolity. It speaks to their defiance of the law, don’t you think? To their disdain of our society, our protectorate, and what we provide for the people.”

  “I don’t have an opinion about it,” said Li. “But I wonder where this is going, and I’m not sure I understand the line of questioning. You know what happened.”

  Archibald stood from his desk. He walked around it, his fingers trailing on the solid surface, and positioned himself in front of her. She seemed even smaller this close, like a twig. It was surprising to him she’d survived the Tic’s treatment at all, let alone arranged extraction.

  “There’s something about you,” he said. He motioned to Frederick. “I trust my friend Frederick. I believe in his judgment. But I don’t trust you.”

  The words dripped like acid, seeming to sting her as he spoke them. She flinched. Her steady, confident gaze faltered. It was the second time he’d noticed it.

  Frederick took a step forward, uncrossing his arms. He held up a hand toward his equal. Maybe he sensed the same thing Archibald did. That no matter how much the woman might deny it, she was connected to the bootlegger. If her allegiance to the Overseers, to the protectorate, was wavering, Archibald believed Frederick knew better than to push too hard. At least not now.

  “Archibald,” Frederick said, “I don’t like this. Adaliah has served us well. She’s regularly reported Tic activity. We’ve learned more about their inner workings since she went under than in all the previous years combined. There’s nothing not to trust.”

  Archibald locked his gaze on her. His expression flattened. “I’m not so sure about that. Regardless of the intelligence she’s offered, the Tic functions with impunity.”

  “I’ll prove it to you,” Li said. “I’ll prove my loyalty to the protectorate and to Commander Guilfoyle.”

  Frederick took another step forward. He waved her off. “That’s unnecessary, Ada—”

  “What do you propose?” Archibald cut in.

  Frederick interjected again, “Archibald, I—”

  The head of the TMF raised his hand. “Let her speak, please.”