Nemesis by Tim Stevens

him out onto the verge.
    *
    B eyond the wall, the ground dropped at a sixty-degree angle into the mist.
    The slope was scrubby and pocked with rock outcroppings. It wasn’t quite a ravine, Purkiss reckoned, but when he tossed a pebble into the murk he heard the clicks of its progress becoming ever more faint.
    He lowered Asher backwards over the wall so that his waist was balanced on the top. The centre of gravity was just far enough beyond the wall that if the man struggled, or tried a manoeuvre with his legs, he’d tip himself all the way over.
    Before dragging him the few feet to the wall, Purkiss had searched him. There’d been a tiny .22 pistol, flat as a saucer, strapped to Asher’s right ankle beneath his sock. Purkiss pocketed it.
    He leaned across Asher’s waist, pinning him to the top of the wall, and reached down and knuckled his breastbone hard.
    The arms flailed, vaguely at first, then in a more focused effort to push away whatever was causing the pain in the front of his chest. Purkiss saw the head lift, the reddened, vein-engorged face try to bend towards him.
    ‘A fifty-foot drop,’ Purkiss said. ‘At least. Plenty of rocks on the way down. If you don’t break your neck, you’ll almost certainly break one or more limbs. And you’ll be stuck down there, until I make my way down and find you.’
    The eyes peered wildly up at him, the features grotesquely distorted by gravity. The man’s tie flopped over his mouth and he spat it away.
    ‘You’re not SIS,’ Purkiss continued. ‘Nobody in the Service for twelve years refers to it as MI6. You had no idea what I meant by Big Sister . And you’re not even British. Your accent’s first-rate, but your idiom is off. You said sidewalk . And I guess . You’re American.’
    He felt the torso writhe beneath him. He eased off, allowing the squirming movements to tip the body a few millimetres further over the edge.
    ‘Not a good idea,’ Purkiss said. ‘You need to be clear on this, Asher. If you try to bluff, or stonewall me, I will let you fall. I want Rossiter. Want to find him more than anything else I’ve wanted in a long time. I need to find him quickly. I haven’t time to mess about.’
    Gravity had pulled Asher’s upper lip back in a snarl. His eyes rolled, seeking the sky, the wall, Purkiss’s own face.
    ‘I’ll fabricate a car crash,’ said Purkiss. ‘You were killed. I was injured. It’s foggy up here. Nobody will ever be able to prove anything different. You’ve read about me. You know far more about me than I’ll ever know bout you. You know what lengths I’m reputed to go to. So - and I’ll ask this just once - who are you?’
    The exposed teeth clamped together, and Purkiss thought the man was going to swear at him, or plead with him, or both.
    Asher hissed: ‘I’m CIA.’

Eight
    ––––––––
    A sher stared straight though the windscreen. His jaw worked intermittently, as though he was tasting something. Purkiss had noticed the thin smear of blood at one corner of his mouth, and thought the man had bitten his tongue at some point.
    He hadn’t soiled himself. That was to his credit.
    Purkiss sat back against the passenger door, facing Asher. He didn’t think the man would risk a sudden move.
    A solitary lorry had rumbled past, a couple of minutes earlier. It had slowed for the briefest instant before its driver seemed to decide that the Mercedes didn’t look like it had crashed, or broken down.
    Other than that, they were alone.
    ‘The Company is involved because of the missing physicist,’ Asher said. ‘Mossberg.’
    He hadn’t abandoned the accent entirely, but it had slipped a little, so that the American rhotic Rs were evident, the vowels a little longer than before. His tone was matter-of-fact, without a trace of humiliation.
    That was another point in his favour.
    Purkiss waited.
    ‘The exchange, Rossiter for Mossberg, was brokered by Washington,’ said Asher. ‘Your Prime Minister made the final