Points of View

Prologue

Prologue

Agent Mayberry gave his flippers a final triumphant flick as he swam up to the low stern of the drug baron’s large, expensive yacht. He pulled himself up and climbed quietly over the guard rail. He removed his helmet, flippers and breathing apparatus and waited, listening for a few moments. All was quiet, other than the faint sounds of late night jazz music coming from the casino in Saint Tropez.

He crept forward to the main stairway and began to descend it slowly. He reached the lowest stair, as the main cabin door suddenly opened and a waiter with a tray began to back out from it. Agent Mayberry waited until the man had closed the door before giving him a precision tap to the back of his neck with the gun barrel. He grabbed the tray crisply with his free hand and held it as the waiter slid down to the floor in an untidy heap. Balancing the tray carefully on the lifeless body, he leaned over for a look through the keyhole but was unable to see anything due to a key being in the lock. Without hardly making a sound, his gun at the ready, he slowly opened the cabin door and looked in.

The portly gangster was snoring softly, sound asleep in an armchair, with an empty bottle on the table beside him. Agent Mayberry holstered his gun then pulled out a pair of handcuffs from his waterproof hold-all. He snapped one cuff around the metal frame of the chair and the other one around the man’s wrist, who did not stir. After trying to awake him with a couple of slaps to no effect, the intrepid agent decided that the gangster must be drugged. He glanced around the cabin and noticed a safe with its door hanging wide open on one wall. Of course, the waiter had to be responsible. He dashed back out of the cabin and grabbed the waiter’s tray again then began to examine what was on it. Yes, there it was; under the cloth cover, the secret file he wanted.

Agent Mayberry allowed himself a triumphant grin; another mission was accomplished successfully. He removed his cell-phone from an inside pocket and called HQ. “You can send the SWAT team in now, sir, to pick him up. I’ve managed to capture someone else who was after the file. Have a look at him.”

He aimed the cell-phone at the waiter and pressed the camera button. After a few moments there was a gasp from his chief at HQ. “Well done, Agent Mayberry, that’s Igor Ivanovov. We’ve been after him for some time.”

He awoke with a contented smile for Mrs. Enright, the housekeeper, as she entered his bedroom and placed a tray on his bed beside him. “Wake up, Master Horace! It’s breakfast time.”