BOB's Bar

by Michael Anderle

  “Whisky is whisky,” Ryck muttered. “Just something to get you drunk.”

  “Pretentious small batches. The Chinese loved it,” Ibarra said. “But Shannon was definitely there to see to my demise. I had my…sources, let’s say, in the government, and Uncle Sam’s attempts to remove me from the public consciousness with tax issues, public slander, and more than one ‘faulty engine’ on my private jet must have annoyed them, so they sent a professional.”

  “What made you so annoying?”

  “Not being controllable.” Ibarra shrugged. “The world’s first trillionaire. Monopolies in robotics, energy solutions, and space exploration. I buy a summer house in the Nevada plains, and land prices go through the roof on speculation I’m building another factory. Realtors hated me. None of this rings any bells for you? Ibarra. Marc Ibarra.” He shifted to a corporate headshot pose.

  “Still nothing,” Bethany Anne said.

  “The powers-that-be knew a war with the Chinese was on the horizon, and I’d remained somewhat aloof about just how willing I’d be to support such a conflict. Can’t have that! Imagine if Ford had said ‘Yeah, nah’ to building tanks during WWII? My first daughter had just been born.” Ibarra looked down at his glass and was silent for a moment. “And my revised will was in the county record books, so they knew what would happen if I met an untimely demise: control of Ibarra Industries would go to my trusted friend—who was a complete son of a bitch and in the government’s pocket—until my little girl reached eighteen.”

  “Maybe the will was a mistake,” Ryck suggested.

  “The will was bait. Like I said, I had my sources. So there I was in the bar, watching Shannon across the room. Had my team of well-armed former SEAL and Delta and Secret Service types around me. Honestly, if she could get through all that and off me I deserved to die. Jimmy was not happy that I’d gone out to tempt fate.”

  “Your Jimmy sounds smart,” Terry Henry chimed in.

  “He had his moments.”

  “You really certain this Shannon was there to kill you? This still sounds like a very bad pass at me,” Bethany Anne said.

  “It certainly does,” Amanda said to Bethany Anne, before looking at Marc. “You know she’s a vampire, right? Or did that pass you by?”

  “I’ve been incorporeal as of late, so her being a vampire is not beyond what I can accept right now. As for Shannon, nothing got by Jimmy,” Ibarra said. “Anything electronic—I’ve said too much. Damn this is strong!” He pushed his shot glass away. “The big boys in Shannon’s didn’t-exist organization sent her on orders of the most V of VIPs. Saw the kill order myself.”

  “And you just let your ass flap out there where she could find it?” Terry asked.

  “Love your metaphor. That’s the thing about sources—if you act a certain way when you learn something, the other side might realize someone’s got their ear to the door or there’s a leak. I was so new to the game that I didn’t believe the threat was real. Ah, to be that young and stupid again! Mostly young. Anyway, I kept to my normal schedule but did up my security quotient a bit.”

  “And? Why weren’t you terrified when you saw her?”

  “I didn’t know she’d show up. I was in my private booth speaking with an Indonesian industrialist about rare-earth mineral deposits when she walked in—which was shocking, since I was certain she was on a plane over the Atlantic at that moment. I was more confused than anything, because she wasn’t the suicide-bomber type. She also wasn’t the mass-murder type…at least not by that point. She was an artful assassin.”

  Tanis shook her head. “Seems like some caution would have served you well.”

  “So you panicked?” Ryck asked.

  “A little, yes. There was panic, but there was also a poker face!” Ibarra shook a finger next to his head. “If I tucked tail and ran soon as I saw her she’d opt for a messier attempt the next time. I was a bit squeamish about collateral damage back then. I had a half-hour allotted with the Indonesian, and those were thirty long minutes.”

  As Bethany Anne smirked, she looked at BOB. “Got Coke?” She turned back to Ibarra. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess she didn’t kill you.”

  “She got close,” Ibarra said. “Damn close. Previous attempts on my life had all failed miserably. Again, Jimmy was a top-notch guy. You left a clue online to your plans, Jimmy’d know about it before you hit send on that text message. For that whole half-hour she just sat at the bar in this little red number with gold trim, ignoring every guy that came sniffing. I never caught her looking at me. Such a pro!”

  “And then?” Tanis asked.

  “And then I left. Three bodyguards in front of me, three behind. Made our way through the side exit the classy places in Vegas have for high rollers who don’t want to deal with walking the floor. I got three steps into the hallway when I heard a hiss and felt mist on my face.”

  “Not a spritz of cologne, I take it.”

  “A neurotoxin derived from sea-snake venom. Remarkable stuff; would look like the resulting tear in my aorta was from undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, which was exactly what the state-appointed coroner would have put on my death certificate.” Ibarra touched his chest and smiled as he felt his heart beating.

  “You’re here talking to us, so something didn’t work out at planned,” Ryck said.

  “I didn’t die that day,” Ibarra

  “Yeah, there’s a ‘but’ coming,” Amanda said.

  “But human beings are creatures of habit. My habits almost got me killed, and her habits kept me from dying. My habit—and my near-fatal mistake—was that I was on a schedule, and I always moved the same way with my security detail. I was in the middle. Always. The route I’d take from the bar to my helicopter was known, and the flight plan was on file. My Indonesian business partner wasn’t as security-conscious as I was, and blabbed when and where we were going to meet. Shannon got wind of this, so she knew where to set her trap.”

  “But this Jimmy of yours and anything electronic…” Ryck said.

  “She had gotten into the access hallway days before.” Ibarra nodded slowly. “Set up the poison aerosol in a sprinkler head on a timer. A manual timer. Smart cookie, that Shannon. She figured the reason that all previous hits on me had failed was because I had someone like Jimmy helping me out on the electronic warfare side, so she set an analog trap. My security never detected anything.”

  “Why poison and not explosives on a timer?” Terry asked.

  “A bomb is so obvious. Has to be murder. Out-of-the-blue heart attack from undiagnosed Marfan syndrome? Too bad, so sad.” He rubbed a knuckle against the side of an eye. “No one suspects a thing.”

  “Just like the Spanish Inquisition,” Cal intoned.

  “Wait, she set a manual timer—like on a machine or something—and nailed you? She must’ve had that planned to the second. Don’t buy it,” Bethany Anne said, and looked around.

  “That was why she showed up,” Ibarra said. “She knew—stay with me—she knew I knew about her. I’d have had to, if her commo was compromised. She also knew—don’t roll your eyes like that, it’s unattractive—that I knew I couldn’t freak out at the first sign of her or I’d admit I knew about her. Conclusions follow.”

  “I hate spies.” Bethany Anne sighed heavily. “And could give a shit if you think something is unattractive.”

  “Almost there. But me leaving right at the end of my scheduled time with the Indonesian wasn’t unusual. I could leave right then without any suspicion. I could’ve hung around a bit longer if I’d wanted to, but seeing her had freaked me out.”

  “You left as soon as was explainable, and she had your route timed perfectly to hit you with the poison.” She tilted her hand side to side. “Not bad.”

  “I knew you two were alike.” Ibarra pulled the bottle away from BOB when she went for another drink.

  “I told you she and I were both creatures of habit, and her habits bit her in the ass. Jimmy—that glorious bastard—was aware of he
r previous hits and use of that particular poison, so he had my bodyguards carry an antidote. I had a few rough seconds where I felt like my ticker was going to explode before Ramses—I poached him from the Secret Service—saved my bacon with a hypodermic needle to the chest. Hurt like a son of a bitch.”

  “Why didn’t—” Ryck started to say.

  “Because Jimmy was also a son of a bitch, and he wanted to teach me a lesson. I was so sure I could go out and about and Shannon wouldn’t touch me that I tempted fate against Jimmy’s advice. Bad idea. So I got to think I was dying for a few seconds—and I was—before Jimmy’s antidote kicked in.”

  Tanis chuckled. “Rough lesson. I approve.”

  “No kidding. After that I curtailed my public appearances, and put plans in motion to get Shannon off my case.”

  “She scared you shitless,” Amanda said.

  “Seems like she would be a hard person to shake,” Tanis added.

  “Shannon was state-sponsored, and the nice thing about the muckity-mucks in government is that you can distract them easily enough. The individual who ordered my death was…removed. Shannon was involved in that removal, and World War III followed.”

  “You started World War III to distract Shannon?” Ryck asked.

  He shook his head, “I wasn’t that desperate. The war was inevitable. Happy coincidence. The Chinese economy was imploding before the kill order. I knew the banks weren’t going to bail them out, and lots of other people saw the war coming, too. That asswipe in the government got scared and decided to take out some people he thought would be a threat to the war. One person he had killed was Shannon’s mentor.”

  “Not a smart move,” Terry said.

  “Trying to burn Shannon and her coterie of spy-types was the bigger mistake. They—out of some misplaced notion of honor and duty—turned on the bigwig and killed him. I didn’t have to get directly involved.” Ibarra smiled. “But when you kill someone like that—no matter the reasons—there are consequences. Shannon and the last survivor of her team went underground. Vanished off the face of the Earth. Jimmy helped.”

  “Helped?” Bethany Anne asked.

  “You’re in the business world long enough, you get a nose for talent. Shannon was a rare bird indeed. She was a professional—not the type to keep after me just because she took a shot and missed. It was just business. The higher-ups who burned her? That was personal. So we kept tabs on her and Ritter, that pal of hers, for years, and then I had need of someone with her talents since the war had gone a bit sideways from my projections.”

  “What were you doing in this war, other than making money selling things?” Ryck asked.

  “I’m with the general. What were you doing in this war?” Terry Henry wondered.

  “War is always good for business, but my concerns were never so base as mere dollars. Jimmy and I needed a status quo. A new Cold War between East and West that would keep budgets high, technology advancing in the right direction, and above all, no nukes, or at least no more nukes.”

  “Seems like that’s a decent alternative to young men and women killing each other for wearing a different uniform,” Amanda said.

  “I knew I’d find a reason to like you,” Ibarra said.

  “You mean to say you haven’t fallen for my charms already?” Amanda said, grabbing her boobs and wobbling them suggestively while giving him an exaggerated wink. Tanis swatted her arm and Amanda sat back with a chuckle. “Sorry. Do carry on.”

  Marc shook his head and smiled before returning to his story. “Plenty of people out there thought that way. But there were a few, a group of high ranking Chinese admirals and generals—we called them ‘the New Mongols’—who had gotten a taste of conquest and decided they wanted more. They were strong enough that the armistice on the horizon almost turned into a full-scale invasion of Alaska and Hawaii.” He swirled his shot and took a small sip.

  “So I contacted Shannon. The two of them were in some Mexican fishing village, and not even a nice one. Spies on the run are such skittish creatures—a stranger takes an interest in them and they bolt. Then you’ve got to find them again, and it’s just work, work, work.”

  “You went yourself,” Bethany Anne said.

  “Pulled up to the mariscos stand they ran and ordered a fish taco. Not sure how close I came to getting shot in the face, but they were amenable to talking after they were certain I’d come alone. I laid it all out: that I knew who they were. What they’d done. Everything they’d done. And that I needed them for a task to save the planet from all-out nuclear war.

  “Did she fall for your charms harder than we have?” Amanda asked.

  “Well, Ritter was a soldier who got roped into Shannon’s world early in his career but never really lost that edge. He’d sat out World War III thus far and it was gnawing at him, so he was interested. Shannon seemed to like the settled life even though her tacos were shit, but I could tell her ears were up. I offered them work, and promised they’d only be used to keep the balance. As edgy as the American-Soviet Cold War was, no cities vanished in a bright flash of light. And spies…they saw themselves as the guardians of that balance.”

  Bethany Anne nodded to BOB and another Coke appeared, bottlecap already removed. “And you were lying?”

  “Yes and no, which means yes. Did I need them to end that war? Yes. Did I have other things down the road that would be a bit…fuzzier? Also yes. They probably picked up on some of that, but my offer was pretty strong. Besides, running a taco stand versus being in the game wasn’t much of a choice. They fed their tacos to the alley cats and away we went.”

  “So you actually got to know her in person?” Tanis asked.

  “Shannon was…difficult. There was a sadness to her from a mistake she had made many years before all this. Poor girl never forgave herself, and to keep it all away she needed a target; something to focus on. From the tequila odor she brought into my car that day I could tell she’d been dealing with that demon the wrong way.”

  “How’d her first assignment go?” Terry asked interestedly.

  Ibarra looked up and shook his head quickly.

  “Mess. Dead bodies everywhere. One got away, and Jimmy had to take care of that in an ugly manner. Had to cycle through three Chinese Communist Party chairmen using bribery, embarrassing photos, and some seemingly genuine graft before we got the armistice, but the job got done. Shannon and Ritter came to Phoenix afterwards and worked for me behind the scenes.”

  Ibarra pushed his half-empty shot toward BOB, who ignored it.

  “Decades of irregular work,” he said. “I kept them both in rejuvenation treatments, plastic surgery—whole nine yards—but toward the end I realized I had to kill her.”

  Bethany Anne spit out her drink. This wasn’t how she would support someone in her group. “Come again?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

  “Well, we’ve all been there,” said Cal. “You know…metaphorically.”

  “Not in the ‘she knew too much’ vein of killing someone. It was all a consequence of the plan—a plan Jimmy and I spent decades on.”

  “Jimmy was ok with this? Seems like he’d have come to respect her after all that time,” Terry asked.

  “They never met, and I never told her or Ritter about Jimmy. His rules, not mine. Jimmy had his mission, I had mine. Has it worked? Not for billions of dead people, but at least there are still some around to curse my name. I knew how it would end for Shannon…which was where I screwed up.”

  “Do tell,” Ryck urged.

  “I got greedy. Lazy. Became a creature of habit. See, you fine folk…” Ibarra motioned to the others around the table, “are all perfectly unique and fascinating people. Shannon was no different, but she had a skill set and I could trust her, so I decided I needed her—even after she was dead. I worked brain scans into her physicals. Had body cams on her during missions that were so discreet even she couldn’t find them.” He tapped next to an eye.

  “You were going to clone her or something?” Tanis
said.

  “Not clone…copy. Losing her would have been like King Arthur losing Excalibur. Thor losing Mjolnir. You get the idea. Part of Jimmy’s and my plan to save humanity involved changing the human reproductive cycle.”

  “You don’t enjoy getting laid?” Amanda asked, an incredulous expression on her face.

  “Now,” Bethany Anne eyed him, “you’re just getting creepy.”

  “Not like that. In vitro humans grown quickly, and then procedurally generated minds are inserted into the bodies. Amazing achievement in genetics and biology. But I decided I’d use all the data I’d collected on Shannon and…make a copy. Mold the new body that would become Shannon to match her memories.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  Ibarra took back his glass.

  “Who’s to say? I mentioned habits before, right? The plan was about to enter a critical phase, and I became trapped in my habits. I always kept either Ritter or Shannon near me and sent the other on a mission if needed. I needed Ritter to watch over my granddaughter, so Shannon had to stay with me.

  “Then Ritter and said granddaughter vanished—part of the plan, mind you—and I…cut Shannon off. Locked myself in a vault and died there, along with everyone else on Earth. I could’ve told her the plan. Admitted it all to her. Unburdened decades of lies…but in the end I lacked that courage.”

  “You…died?” Ryck said.

  “And got to watch my corpse rot. Lousy planning, but by the grace of God the plan worked and I was rescued.”

  “Still dead.”

  “Very, but those details aren’t important. Shannon had died on Earth just like everyone else. The Xaros were thorough in that regard. But once Earth was back in human hands, the procedural program got off the ground and I had Shannon again.”

  “The clone,” said Tanis.

  “Copy, and I put her to the same use. Taking care of a dissident here, a little not-quite-a-suicide there. Delicate times…and I killed Shannon again. Completely necessary, because her mind was unraveling…but I just ordered up another copy.”