Deadwater Inn

A standalone spypunk story

☛ Leo Vaughn writes unusual fantasy for unusual people, rep’d by Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency. His novels are coming soon to a bookstore near you.

Deadwater Inn is a series of standalone short stories—basically Casablanca meets the Cold War in the multiverse. You can jump in anywhere without prior reading.

Come on, don’t be shy. The water’s cold and moody.

—

Harlan set two cloudy glasses of scotch on the table and slid into a rickety chair. The shades were drawn in this private upstairs room, the better to watch without being watched. It wasn’t great, this life, but at least he was still alive—and at least he had Gabby Jack. The brown tabby had curled himself into rumpled blanket on the floor for a long nap, which was just as well. There was nothing to write home about here.

Across the little table, Montpelier slouched closer to the window, elbows on his knees, squinting through an opening in the curtains while his dark, narrow tie swung like a noose. The dingy room rendered him a mountain of dark flannel. He was coming apart at the seams, white stubble and folded jowls, all sweat-stained at the cuffs and collar.

Damn you, Montpelier.

The man hadn’t returned to this backwater dimension in some time. How pleasant his absence had been.

But Harlan was in no position to make life what it ought to be. He swirled his whisky, sniffed it, and set it down in disgust. The stuff had no appeal anymore. He watched Montpelier for a good minute—watched the older man’s little rodent eyes fixating on the street view. There really was nothing else to do. Harlan couldn’t get this man out of his life or keep him out of the Deadwater Inn. When Montpelier came through the portal on some mad caper for the American CIA, he would come here for a whisky fix and an under-the-table hire. It would never change. There were no other options in this dimension.

Montpelier threw him a guarded glance, as if sensing his despair. The man’s face was wide, riven with vertical furrows, those little eyes packed into his flesh too far apart. “I said, I have a job for you.”

“What’s in it for me?” The words crawled out before Harlan could stop them.

Montpelier scowled. “Feeling ornery?”

“I said, what’s in it for me.”

The spymaster sipped his scotch without sniffing it. The corners of his mouth turned up while his hard, little eyes bored into Harlan. “I’ll tell you where your wife is.”

Land’s sakes—if that wasn’t a twist of the knife. It was Montpelier himself who’d recruited Nora to his dirty work after their little family had fallen apart. Tell me where she is? Harlan’s head pounded and spun, though he’d drunk nothing. Of all the dirty, nasty tricks Montpelier had ever played, this took the cake.

Yet Harlan looked away and laughed in spite of himself. He studied Gabby Jack’s impeccable repose. The cat had his own kind of peace. Why couldn’t Harlan have it too? Montpelier always knew how to get him. There was only one possible answer.

“Fine.” Harlan’s voice shrank with defeat. “I’ll help.”

“That’s the spirit.” Montpelier turned back to the window, watching.

“So what’s the job?” There was no point in reminding the man that Harlan wouldn’t do anything that endangered his business, his customers, his cat, or his used book collection. The job would certainly do all three by the time it’d moved through all its twists and turns.

“I need you to watch the portal. A Soviet agent is coming through. Just watch him and grab a picture of him if you can.” Montpelier nodded toward the shrouded tripod and telephoto-equipped camera in the corner of the little room.

“And you can’t grab a candid shot yourself?”

“He can smell me.” Montpelier grinned sheepishly without turning away from the window.

“Smell you? Are we speaking literally, or is this the stench of your rotten, warmongering soul?”

Montpelier threw him a glare, then spun back to the window. “Literally. Don’t be an ass. He has heightened abilities. I have to make my escape in the next twenty minutes.”

Harlan pushed his drink away and studied Montpelier, who still squinted out the window. For a CIA job, this didn’t actually sound too bad.

Montpelier snatched his whisky and downed it, then slammed the glass on the table. “I’m off. You have everything you need?”

“Always.” He couldn’t help but grin. Sick or not, there was some satisfaction in pulling levers that might reverberate all throughout the multiverse.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ll have your gold, and your wife’s location. Which is highly classified, by the way.” Montpelier stood and crossed the room.

Gabby Jack looked up, a half-sleeping scowl on his face, and watched him.

Montpelier grabbed his fedora and overcoat off the rack, pulled them over himself, and slipped out of the room.

§

Harlan waited at the curtain-break, the telephoto lens aimed squarely at the street. Down there, the rusted girders and crumbling asphalt gave way to the strangest thing. It was pure, green grass that came down to the edge of this ruin. Beyond it, though the space lay in the heart of the city, the green grass swept up in ramparts and mounds carved out by powerful hands eons ago. Farther still, as the eye crawled out from the Deadwater Inn, the grass rose higher and higher until the dark forms of megaliths crowned it. Nearly a mile distant, the standing stones still looked huge.

Between them was the portal.

There was nothing to betray it to the eye, other than the general strangeness. But there, in the center of those leaning and leering teeth of stone, a man could step into any dimension he wished—if he knew the right step.

Harlan squinted and checked through the viewfinder. The magnification seriously darkened the image, but there, in the bulbous glass ringed with dirt, a figure trudged down one of the earthen ramparts. The figure disappeared into the trench, then climbed the next dike with smooth, resolute steps.

The man was too far away to distinguish any features. Harlan checked his watch in the dim light. This had to be the Soviet agent. He was right on time.

Harlan peered through the viewfinder again, tracking the figure with a slow glide of the camera on the untightened tripod mount. It was too early to shoot. Once the man stepped off the grass onto the blasted pavement, his eyes set on the doors of the Deadwater Inn and his tongue hallucinating the taste of real Russian vodka, the shutter would fly.

§

Montpelier stood over the little table, squinting his tiny eyes at the photograph. “That’s really him?”

“That’s the man who came out of the portal at 8:17PM.”

Montpelier shook his head. “Son of a bitch.”

“I followed the instructions.”

“Of course you did.” Montpelier threw the photograph down in disgust. “Do you know who this is?”

“How would I know?”

“He’s one of ours.”

A mistake? But no, Harlan had obeyed to the letter. The man had come at the precise time.

“I’m not busting your chops,” Montpelier said. “He’s a dirty traitor. He sold us out.”

Harlan blinked. He hadn’t seen that coming.

“Oh, and your wife?” Montpelier leaned closer, his nasty eyes glittering. “She’s imprisoned in the Lubyanka.”

“The what?”

“The Soviet prison. Back in our world.”

No. It couldn’t be. She never should’ve gone into spying. “Is she all right?”

“We don’t know. But now we have leverage.” Montpelier picked up the photograph and shook it. “I’m confident we’ll work out an exchange.”

Harlan sat down heavily. Of all the news he’d expected, he’d never thought of this. Imprisoned? The poor girl. She didn’t deserve such a hard knock.

But Montpelier had leverage. He had dirt, and cloaks, and daggers galore.

Harlan looked up. “Is it too much to ask you to prioritize this?”

A fatherly softness emerged under the spymaster’s eyes. “I was already planning to.”

§ § §

Text © 2026 by George Anderson. All rights reserved.

Banner artwork created by Bianca Yamakoshi. © 2026 by George Anderson.

No AI technology was used to write or edit this story. Likewise, no AI technology was used to generate or modify any visual content associated with this story. Read the No AI Statement for full details.