The bar could have been any other bar in the United States, dark and dank, filled with the musk of smoke, mildew and spilled beer. It was significant only because of the small group of men and women huddled around a large round table in the back corner. They were the only occupants of the pub save for the wait staff who walked about bemusedly, taking orders and serving drinks with expressions of not quite remembering something that should surprise them, if only they could remember what it was.

From a distance, the meeting did not look portentous. In fact, even from the middle of the pub, the occupants looked rather like a group of pensioners out for a quick drink before a rousing game of bridge, or possibly an early bedtime. Sitting with his back to the door, an elderly Japanese man placidly nursed a steaming mug of what might have been coffee or might have been hot rum. He was chatting quietly with the white-haired woman to his right, a roly-poly grandmotherly sort who was knitting what was either a scarf or a very badly designed hat. At her elbow, a 50-ish businessman with salt-and-pepper hair and skin the color of groundsel tree bark sat talking somberly with a statuesque blonde woman who looked no more than 25 and a tiny aged Chinese woman with piercing eyes sunken deeply into a leathery, dried-apple-like face. Finishing the group, to the left of the Japanese man, was another strange trio – a grey-haired woman with ruddy cheeks dressed absurdly in what almost looked like wizard's robes, laughing boisterously with a white-haired, pipe-smoking man in a worn corduroy jacket and a youthful black man in a well-cut pinstripe suit. Four seats still sat noticeably vacant.

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