‘Mr Roditz, pleasure to meet you in person at last, you enjoying your tour?’
‘Yes, most informative, can I ask why I cannot enter all the labs?’ He gestured to the opaque glass screens along the corridor. Colonel Briggs interrupted with a scripted response, ‘Sorry Sir but that area is not appropriate for the level of service package you have selected.’
‘That sounds like my TV service at home. General what would get me in that room?’
‘Well Mr Roditz, Colonel Briggs is correct, that lab is two levels up from your current service.’
‘How much General? I can transfer the money now.’
Roditz gestured to his associate.
‘The current rate for that level of service is fifteen million Euros extra per operation.’
‘I will require five operations involving more widespread devastation, so would forty five million Euros be acceptable in advance?’
‘Yes Sir, that would be agreeable, Colonel could you give Mr Roditz’ associate the details, while I escort him personally around the lab?’
Briggs and the associate left to process the transaction, The General and Roditz entering the viewing area of the chemical warfare laboratory. A team of five scientists in protective bio-suits continued working, oblivious to the voyeurs.
‘What kind of weapons do you have access to General Mastasson?’
‘Extensive access to nerve agents, knock out gases, some limited biological agents, poisons, depending on the target area, and desired death toll.’
‘What if I wanted to wipe out a city, and make it look like someone else?’
‘Simple, we would ensure that your opponents were caught in possession of a small sample of the agent, either before or after it was released.’
‘Excellent, one other question.’
However, Roditz did not get to ask it, as General Mastasson struck him across the neck hard, rendering him unconscious, Briggs neutralising his associate in the corridor outside, it was thirty minutes before they both regained consciousness.
Roditz stood up, bleary eyed, not fully conscious, banging his nose on the Plexiglas wall in front of him.
He regained his bearings, and realised he was in a glass box in the centre of a white featureless room. His associate in the adjacent box was fully alert, a fearful look upon his face, his mouth moved, shouted something, but Roditz could hear nothing.
The General’s voice came over a speaker in the roof of the box, about eight feet above him.
‘Mr Roditz, not as comfortable accommodations as you are used to, but it is meant to be practical not pretty.’
‘What do you want Mastasson?’
‘Simple Mr Roditz, your opponents have offered me a substantial amount of money to make you disappear.’
‘So why are we talking?’
‘Because I run a business, and I wondered how much you valued your life?’
‘You would not dare kill me, and besides my associate has all the account numbers, you need us both.’
‘Well actually your associate spilled your account numbers and access codes to us before you woke up.’
The General smiled and nodded from inside the protected viewing area, the double layer of reinforced glass keeping the test area isolated. Roditz cursed in his native language and punched the glass wall between him and his associate, breaking the skin on his podgy knuckles.
‘It is not really fair for you to blame him, considering what we threatened him with. What we require is your other private accounts, the ones he does not know about.’
‘I do not understand?’
‘Oh my dear Mr Roditz, after you killed all those innocent people in your country, you and your friends transferred all their savings and pensions to offshore accounts; and we want that money to let you go.’
‘You are bluffing, you cannot bully me! You are just an arrogant American, with a tin pot rental army.’
Mastasson’s tone changed, ‘Mr Roditz, I am the best supplied most successful contractor in the world, and as far as tin pot, I could destroy your country with my existing forces!’
The General regained his calm, his face returning from crimson to the comfortable mocha created by the tropical sun.
‘But that would not get us the information, so watch your friend very carefully for the next three minutes.’
The associate in the adjacent glass box could not hear the conversation with Roditz, all he heard was the fan in the top of the box going onto boost, blowing air onto his head. Unfortunately for the associate it was not just air, accompanying it was a fine vapour, which covered him and in his panic caused him to inhale rapidly, increasing his exposure.
‘Mr Roditz what you are seeing is the gas immediately inhibits the enzyme that helps transmit nerve signals, causing the entire nervous system to become isolated and uncontrollable. The test subjects muscles all begin to contract as they receive no signals on what they should be doing.’
The associate began to twitch and convulse violently, his body smacking against the Plexiglas, causing his nose and left wrist to break with the force of impact. With blood gushing from his nose, and his damaged arm flailing uncontrollably, the final stage began.
He collapsed on the floor his legs propped against one wall, his face the other. A sustained contraction of the diaphragm, the large muscle below the lungs and above the intestine, restricted his breathing. Roditz watched as he struggled for breath, his body killing itself, face turning purple, eyes bulging. The resulting asphyxiation rendered him unconscious and brain dead within minutes. His twisted corrupted corpse lay staring at Roditz with still, clear eyes.
Roditz was only a few feet away, his back sweating through his linen shirt, despite being pressed against the cold Plexiglas of his container. Mastasson came onto the speaker, his voice calm and authoritative.
‘Now Mr Roditz that was the effect of weapons grade VX nerve gas, we wanted to see if that batch was still lethal, as you can see, it is. We have another batch to test yet, the account numbers if you please.’
Without hesitation, Roditz gave all the numbers and access codes, Briggs entering them into a laptop and transferring all funds within minutes.
Roditz went whiter than Mastasson thought possible for a man of his anaemic complexion, as a familiar face came into his view, his opponent Mr Benesova.
‘Mr Roditz, I am so glad to see you in such a disadvantageous position.’ The Slavic accent making the words more sarcastic than they were meant. Roditz did not reply, but The General spoke anyway, ‘Mr Benesova employed us to recover all the funds you stole and we have achieved that for a generous percentage. Now we need to test that other batch of gas, goodbye Mr Roditz.’
Roditz screamed and shouted in his native tongue and English, jumping between them as his mind attempted to persuade his captors to release him, to no avail. The General had switched off the microphone in the glass box, and was pointing out the gas controls to his other client.
Five minutes later Roditz was dead alongside his associate, his expensive suit soiled and bloody, his face distorted with a tortured expression. Similar to all the men, women and children he had personally tortured and executed. His body would be left for the VX to be extracted and neutralised from the cabinet, then incinerated and the ashes disposed of with the rest of the island’s waste.
General Mastasson escorted his client to the waiting seaplane, handed him a memory card with all the accounts he would need to recover the stolen funds. Briggs remained behind, to supervise the clean-up, he was unhappy at The General’s actions, he felt that their original mission which he signed on for, was not a priority. Over the past few years and months, The General was enjoying the power, rather than the satisfaction that he and Briggs had enjoyed when they began Unit Zero 3. The unlimited power had corrupted his honour, casualties had increased. Briggs would have to monitor the situation very closely if he wanted to protect his men.