NUMBER SEVEN
CODENAME: LUCKY
STATUS: ACTIVE, OFF DUTY
LOCATION: CASINO DE MONTE CARLO, MONACO
I was in the casino, standing at the bar. I wasn’t even working. I’d just finished an opp in Morocco and I was due to start another in Rome in less than a week. I was only there to blow off steam.
A woman started buying my drinks. She’d been pretty, you could tell, that bland kind of prettiness that gets on magazine covers, but time and adversity had made her beautiful.
We talked. She told me that she was a recent widow and then I recognised her. She’d been a model until she married that dodgy so-called billionaire, Dex Lowenstein. I missed the end of that scandal while I was digging my way out of a prison in the Moroccan desert. She filled me in on him fleeing the serious fraud squad on his super yacht, falling overboard off the South African coast, and the sharks leaving just enough of him to identify the body.
Most of his apparent wealth evaporated when he died. She was in Monaco with the yacht because she had to sell it. He left her with nothing but a couple of houses, mortgaged to the hilt, the yacht and its contents. She told me that she was planning to have some fun in the yacht before she had to sell it and asked If I’d like to join her.
How could I say no? A beautiful woman planning to drink her way through her late husband’s collection of vintage champagne on a luxury super-yacht?
We had a lot of fun that night. And the next day. The following evening I’d just returned to the master bedroom with a fresh bottle of champagne when in burst the aforementioned dripping wet, fat, old man in very tight swimming trunks that were doing him no favours. I was so surprised that I almost missed the two heavily built young men accompanying him. I didn’t miss the guns they were carrying.
They weren’t professionals. They were far too close to me and clustered together. If I’d been alone I would have killed them but I couldn’t see any way to do that while guaranteeing Mrs Lowenstein’s safety.
The man in the trunks demanded to know what MI6 had on him. I said, 'I don’t know what you’re talking about.'
That didn’t fly because someone recognised me in the casino and told him exactly who’d gone off with Mrs Lowenstein. I was forced to admit that I didn’t know what MI6 had on him because I didn’t know who he was.
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Yes, Number Six, I know you’re desperate to show how clever you are. Yes, it was Dex Lowenstein. I didn’t recognise him right away because the tiny trunks did tend to draw the eye. When I explained that he pistol whipped me.
When I came round I was still on the yacht but I was bound and suspended from the cabin ceiling. Dex was still there and still in his trunks. The two heavies were off somewhere searching for something. I could hear them moving furniture around and cursing. Mrs Lowenstien was still in the room, tied up on the bed, looking bruised and trying not to look frightened.
I apologised to her. She apologised to me. Dex started punching me in the kidneys. I’ve been hit harder by a 12-year-old but I didn’t tell him that.
Once he’d punched himself into exhaustion he cut the lamp cable and stripped the insulation off it and started asking me questions.
He said, 'What do MI6 know?'
I said, 'I haven’t got a clue.'
He tried to shock me with the lamp cable but he didn’t notice that I’d lifted my feet off the deck and I wasn’t grounded. I did some dramatic screaming and that seemed to cheer him up.
He said, 'You must know. You’re here looking for me.'
I said, 'Sir, I have absolutely no interest in you. I am only here to fuck your wife.'
He got right up in my face and threatened to burn my manhood to a blackened stump if I didn’t take him seriously and talk. So I head-butted him. I got him right on the bridge of the nose and he went down like LowenCorp stocks . The thud brought the two heavies running.
I said, 'Gentlemen, you seem like intelligent men. Dex isn’t going to pay you. He’s stiffed everyone he’s ever worked with. Google him. We’ll wait.'
They signed into the yacht’s WiFi, had a look, and then started kicking him.
I said, 'I’m on holiday. I don’t have a lot of money with me but I’m sure we can come to some mutually beneficial agreement.'
Then Mrs Lowenstein joined in. She told them that while she didn’t have a lot of ready cash she did have several cases of very expensive wine that they could easily sell to one of the hotels or restaurants for a few thousand. Then she got this look in her eye that reminded me of you, Number Two.
She said, 'You really are a strapping pair. I’ve always wanted to try a threesome.'
And that was it. They freed her and cut me down. I spent the rest of the evening on deck drinking Dex’s Cognac and listening to the noises coming from the cabin. It sounded like she was having fun.
I called in to HQ to tell them that Dex wasn’t dead. That’s how I heard about Number One. The Boss said to just throw Dex over the side and the less said the better.
#
'You bought your way out of it?' said Three. 'I am disappointed in you.
'Not bought, exactly,' said Seven. 'The youth of today have no stamina. Once they’d passed out Mrs Lowenstein and I threw them over the side too. I’m sure they were fine. Unlike Dex they were neither tied up nor weighed down.'