Free Nemesis by Tim Stevens

towards the laboratory personnel working on the contents of the suitcase. He was no longer smiling.
    ‘Your analogy is crap, Jacobin. I’m a one-off, for your purposes. If my staff establish what you wish them to establish, you’ll have no more use for me.’
    Rossiter sighed. ‘Your cynicism is troubling. But I suppose it has survival value.’
    The grin was back on the man’s face, though he said nothing.
    *
    I t took twenty-three minutes, according to Rossiter’s wristwatch.
    One of the lab techs stood upright, at last, and turned towards Rossiter and Dokkuma at the far end of the room.
    He raised his gloved hand. Made a circle with his thumb and forefinger in the gesture universally recognised as the sign that everything was as it should be. Except, Rossiter had heard, in Brazil, where it meant arsehole .
    Rossiter put down his empty mug. Extended a hand to Dokkuma.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said.
    The man’s grip was firm without being crushing. ‘You’ll forgive me if I get a little vulgar. But I need a guarantee that the balance of the funds have been paid.’
    ‘And you’ll have it.’ Rossiter took out his phone, a pay-as-you-go he’d been handed in the helicopter. He keyed in a number, then attached a text message with a nine-digit code. Reception wasn’t the best here, on an island in the North Sea with the winds gusting down from Siberia, but he saw that the message had been transmitted successfully.
    ‘It’s all yours,’ he said.
    Dokkuma picked up his own phone. Dialled a number by pressing a single key. Rossiter knew the call was to somebody monitoring the bank account Dokkuma had specified.
    The Frisian listened, watching Rossiter as he did so.
    He put the phone away.
    His smile this time was broad.
    ‘A pleasure doing business with you, Jacobin.’
    ‘Likewise.’
    *
    T he Eurocopter lifted into the buffeting night, embarking on its third trip with Rossiter as a passenger.
    He couldn’t make out Dokkuma, or any of his people, or even the lorry, on the ground below. The lights had already been killed and this end of the island was a smudge of blackness in the surrounding sea.
    A face appeared beside Rossiter, leaning into the cockpit. It was McCammon, the leader of the team which had freed Rossiter, and the man Rossiter came closest to trusting with his life.
    Rossiter said, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the chopper: ‘Yes.’
    McCammon disappeared once more.
    Although he couldn’t see him, Rossiter imagined the man holding the small box in his palm. He visualised McCammon’s thumb sliding over the two buttons on the upper surface, pressing down on one, and then the other.
    The depressing of the buttons sent independent signals to two devices.
    The first was the one inside the canvas sack one of Rossiter’s men had dropped beneath a bench in the laboratory while they were waiting for Dokkuma’s staff to complete their work on the suitcase. The device was composed of plastic explosive with an incendiary overlay.
    The second object resembled a mobile phone. Rossiter had dropped it into Dokkuma’s jacket pocket as they’d turned towards the door of the laboratory to exit. It, too, contained plastic explosive.
    He heard nothing over the howling of the rotor blades and the thud of the engines. But, hundreds of feet below, he saw the flash of light, the eruption of black chunks of masonry against an orange bed of flame.
    It was possible that some personnel might escape unscathed. But that didn’t matter.
    The main targets - the laboratory, and Lars Dokkuma himself - had been eliminated.
    Rossiter thought about what he’d said to Dokkuma.
    Yes, cynicism had survival value.
    But sometimes it wasn’t enough.
    The Eurocopter angled north-west, out to sea, putting distance between itself and any local radar systems. It was sufficiently fuelled to keep it airborne for a few hours more. But it would need to land again at some point.
    The destination had been a point of contention between