The Aphrodite Conspiracy

By Michael J Lawrence

Matthew Palmer's world is about to be shot to pieces – literally.

A millionaire's wife goes missing in Cyprus and Englishman Matthew Palmer is in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong girl...

The thirty-something entrepreneur has swapped his business life in the UK for a forty-foot yacht and his dream to run a diving charter service in the land of Aphrodite. The days are filled with the hot Cyprus sun and warm sea, the nights with… well, life just doesn't get any better.

A chance meeting with the beautiful but elusive Katherina piques Matthew's curiosity and has him following her two miles out to sea and down into one of the world's most dangerous wrecks in the dead of night. Barely surviving an attack by barracuda and then having to rescue the trapped girl from the depths of the dead ship draws on every ounce of skill and reserve plunging Matthew headlong into a bloody conspiracy of extortion, kidnapping and murder.

Bereft of everything but his life and deported as a suspect, he returns to the UK to track down the source of his humiliation.

Under the tanned and easygoing exterior Matthew's need for revenge festers like an unexploded grenade and at thirty thousand feet over the French Alps on the night flight home a would-be assassin pulls the pin…

"Mike Lawrence's premiere novel moves along at a cracking breakneck pace, a real exciting page-turner that puts recent James Bond novels to shame."

Graham Rye - Editor & Publisher, 007 MAGAZINE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael J Lawrence
• Release date: Aug 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9780955780127

Michael J Lawrence

Brought up on a literary diet of Alistair MacLean, Clive Cussler, Ian Fleming and similar writers of the nineteen sixties and seventies - Michael has been a wannabe writer since he was old enough to read. But with more than forty years of career and parenthood getting in the way it is only now that his first dynamite novel The Aphrodite Conspiracy gets to see the light of day. Michael has written this story to be easily savoured by anyone wanting to escape from everyday life into a rip-roaring thriller. As an accomplished Divemaster and owner of one of the fastest production motorcycles on the face of the earth, Michael is no stranger to the world that he writes about. Set in Cyprus and the UK, The Aphrodite Conspiracy is not a story written purely from imagination... Graham Rye, The Editor & Publisher of 007 Magazine describes The Aphrodite Conspiracy: "Mike Lawrence's premiere novel moves along at a cracking breakneck pace, a real exciting page-turner that puts recent James Bond novels to shame." Michael lives in Dorset, on England's stunning south coast.

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What others are saying about The Aphrodite Conspiracy...

Mike Lawrence’s premiere novel moves along at a cracking breakneck pace, a real exciting page-turner that puts recent James Bond novels to shame.

Graham Rye - Editor & Publisher, 007 Magazine.

My wife and I have just finished reading the Aphrodite Conspiracy whilst on holiday and wanted to let you know it was fantastic.  We were captured by the twists and turns in the story and fast paced action throughout.  Perfect holiday reading and definitely one of the best fiction books I have read!

Ian Burrows

THE APHRODITE CONSPIRACY

by

Michael J Lawrence

Smashwords Edition

© 2012 Michael J Lawrence. All rights reserved.

In this work of fiction, the places, events and devices are either products of the Author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The characters in this story are entirely fictitious, and any resemblance to any person living or dead is entirely coincidental.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter One

Their expressionless beady eyes followed my every move, calculating, judging distance. Their long, lower jaws gaping to reveal rows of teeth like broken glass. Three of the predators circled me warily, never breaking eye contact even for a second while the rest kept their distance. There was no comfort in that distance though, with the ability to accelerate to thirty miles an hour in the time it takes to blink, my reactions wouldn’t be fast enough, an attack would be swift and bloody.

My heart was pounding like a bass drum, but a show of fear would not help. I controlled my breathing as best I could, pinched my nose and blew hard to equalise the pressure building in my ears. The pain went away and I kicked my legs up, continuing downward in a sky-diving position fighting the gruesome thoughts of being hit from behind and shredded by the razor teeth of a six-foot barracuda with a bad attitude. At thirty metres an alarm beeped loudly from the dive-computer on my wrist and I reached for the inflator hose and pressed one of the buttons. Air shot into my buoyancy jacket and my rate of descent slowed to a few inches per second from the previous imitation of a concrete block.

The gigantic black shape shimmered mirage-like in the gloom and the giant bronze propeller blades of the M.S. Zenobia appeared within arm’s reach. The stricken roll-on roll-off ferry lay on its port side, the once gleaming blue and white superstructure now mottled brown and green with undersea growth, the home to a myriad of undersea creatures. I hovered gently to get my bearings, the bubbles from my regulator streaming upwards past my ears, then sank further letting my legs fall to vertical and at forty two metres my fins brushed the ocean floor sending little clouds of sand puffing up around my feet. A voice in my head questioned my sanity and I slammed a mental door on it, opening up the one with the image of the auburn-haired goddess who I was following into one of the most dangerous wrecks in the world.

I’d swum through the lower decks dozens of times; vehicles littered the bottom like a child’s discarded toys. She had entered the wreck; it’s decaying cargo unstable after three decades of seawater eating at the restraining chains of the juggernauts hanging on them. Rust corrosion is not an exact science; the chains could break tomorrow, in another two years or in thirty seconds. The possibility of being crushed to the ocean floor by a forty-ton articulated truck sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. We were two miles from the nearest land and at this depth we had less than ten minutes of air. I lifted the instrument console floating next to my left thigh and studied the luminous face of the air gauge. Some quick mental arithmetic and a deduction that if I didn't find her in the next five minutes I would have to leave her to the hungry barracuda whose shadowy movements followed me relentlessly. I exhaled warily and watched more bubbles shimmy their way to the surface. They were circling closer.

Flicking the switch on my dive-light a shaft of brilliant white punched through the gloom like a laser. The predators flicked their powerful tail fins and were gone in the time it took me to blink from the intensity after the dark descent. No doubt they were watching from a distance. In the light the enormity of the ship immediately became apparent; stretching nearly six hundred feet from bow to stern and over eighty wide. I played the beam along the dirty brown steel plates of the rusting ferry, searching for the gap. A dark spot gave it away and I plunged into the blackness of the wreck, ignoring the voice in my head, which had re-opened the door and was yelling at me to leave her.

It was black as pitch inside and like swimming through a large hotel in the dead of night. A shudder rippled down my back and I wondered briefly whether curiosity had the same effect on divers as it did on cats. In reply my thoughts executed a U-turn and flashed back forty-eight hours to the first time I'd seen her by the pool, the playful smile on the sensuous mouth as she'd caught me watching her. I smiled to myself and checked the computer on my left wrist - eight minutes. I swung the light and my attention forward again and cursed into my mouthpiece, my only visual aid was now completely useless. Like headlights trying to penetrate fog, the beam bounced back at me from a billion particles fizzing in the water. My fins must have kicked up some silt, I couldn't see a thing.

Now effectively blind and deaf to all but my breathing, which was sounding louder by the second, I swallowed hard and fought to control the feeling of helplessness that was rising within me. I hate wreck diving at night, the feeling of claustrophobia is overwhelming. Swimming under thousands of tons of water is fine when you can see, but enter a wreck, where shards of jagged, rusting metal can slice through wetsuit, skin and breathing equipment - and survival suddenly becomes a lottery. I wasn't even sure I was the right way up, gravity plays very little part in a world of weightless, three-dimensional movement, but breathing out and watching the bubbles pass over my head confirmed my instincts.

There was no time to wait for the muck to settle. I closed my eyes and called up the map logged away in my mind’s eye, trying to recall decks, doors, companionways and the holds of the ship. It was no use; my brain was in temporary paralysis. I turned slowly three hundred and sixty degrees, shadows moved in the light-beam and the adrenaline pumped harder. Shit, they’d followed me in! I bit down hard on the mouthpiece as they moved again hurtling toward me. I jerked backwards to avoid the impact of the gaping jaws and gleaming razor teeth that materialised in the light beam and smashed my head on the bulkhead behind me. Something grabbed my arm, wrenching my shoulder, a blow to the side of my face rattled my brain to the core and everything went black. My mask had taken the full force of the bullet-shaped head of the barracuda, flooding it instantly as the airtight seal around my face lost its grip and the strap slid off my head. My nose felt like it was broken and water flooded into my unprotected nostrils.

Don’t breathe in! Don’t breathe in! Don’t breathe in! the voice in my head was screaming at me. I snatched frantically at the water behind me. Once. Twice. The third time my fingers closed around something, mask strap or a shred of passing weed? I groped some more and with relief found the strap of my mask.

Fitting it back in place over my stinging eyes and purging the water out took just a few seconds and I could breathe normally. My right shoulder felt like it had been dislocated but it was still functioning, the muscles burning from the force of the hit from the second barracuda.

I gently probed around the nose cover of my mask, it hurt like hell but wasn’t broken. All I needed now was my dive-light which I must have dropped; my heart to stop trying to beat a hole in my wet-suit, then the situation would be back under control. I took two long, deep, calming breaths reached down and grabbed hold of the safety cord attached to my weight belt and prayed that it had halted the disappearance of my only means of navigating out of this hellhole. The nylon rope terminated eighteen inches from my belt, the end torn and frayed. The cold fingers of after-shock slid up the back of my neck making me shudder; that rope had a breaking strain of over a quarter of a ton. No wonder my shoulder ached - the attack from the second barracuda had torn the shackle clean away. I cursed my own stupidity - in my haste to get down here I had broken two cardinal rules of survival, I hadn't brought a spare light and I hadn’t attached a life-line to the outside before penetrating the hull.

With zero visibility I had no idea how to get out. Swallowing hard against the sudden dryness in my mouth I checked the still luminous face of my watch, I had to put my arm almost onto my mask to see through the muck. Only five minutes left.

A few deep breaths pumped enough oxygen to allow clear thought. I couldn't continue the search without light and if I didn't find an exit real fast the voice in my head was going to be proved right. Come on Palmer, THINK! I turned another slow circle, peering desperately into the all-engulfing gloom, looking for a sign, anything that would give me a clue as to the direction Katherina had taken. My compass was useless, I watched it rotating slowly as the huge mass of the ship confused it totally. How could I have been so stupid as to neglect the basic rules I had taught hundreds of other divers? Diving alone is the quickest way to die. Talk about ironic. A sudden flash of light jerked me back to reality. I blinked and shook my head, unsure if it was real or wishful thinking.

Another flash.

Turning toward it, I kicked hard against the water, swimming as fast as possible, both arms outstretched in case I ran into a wall. The light stabbed out again with a gleam of pink and relief flooded through my body, I'd found her. Suddenly there was clear water, it was still black as pitch but the murk had gone. Another flash, inspiration this time; this had to be the lower lorry deck for there to be clear water, the corridors are so narrow that even a gentle movement kicks up years of undisturbed silt. The lorry decks are so wide you never touch the sides.

Her beam lanced through the water like a World War Two searchlight over London. I spread my arms wide to act as brakes as I didn't want to appear suddenly in front of her. I remembered only too clearly the effect six feet of muscle and teeth appearing in my light beam had on me a few seconds earlier, I wouldn’t want to inflict that on anyone.

Too late...

I heard the muffled scream at the same instant as her torch beam hit me full in the face and blinded me. I jerked my upper body back as I sensed rather than saw her arm sweep past my chest, the razor sharp blade of the knife gleamed wickedly in the reflected light. I backed away, spat my regulator out, and waved hoping she would recognise me - the light left my face. Counting to five with my eyes shut to get used to the dark again, I groped around until my hand closed around my regulator and replaced it.

She had the light in front of her now, shining vertically. Her hand was in the beam, thumb and forefinger forming a circle. OK. She'd recognised me. As I swam towards her she signalled that something was wrong. I reached for her and manoeuvred the light between us to show me her face clearly - her eyes were wide open but the pupil size looked normal. The rush of air bubbles from our regulators seemed to be dancing together in the still water, so her breathing was no more laboured than mine. If there was nothing physically wrong then it had to be a piece of equipment stuck on something, she hadn't moved. Taking the torch from her hand I played the beam down behind her back. I groaned involuntarily, her air tank was firmly wedged into the open cab window of one of the trucks whose chains had not yet given up their strength and plummeted to the bottom of the dead ship. Holding tightly onto the valve at the top of the cylinder I braced both feet against the side of the weed-covered cab and pulled hard. My fins were not the best means of maintaining a good purchase and my left foot skidded off the door and into the void beyond, sending clouds of weeds and silt swirling into the clear water - the cylinder remained wedged.

Katherina’s fingers dug into my right forearm and pulled. I let go of the cylinder and floated round in front of her, bringing the light between us so we could communicate. She made a slashing motion across her throat with her left hand - she was out of air. There was no panic in her actions, she showed me her air-supply gauge, I glanced at it, my eyes widening, and then back at her - she just shrugged. This was one cool lady. There was no more time for thinking, tucking the torch under my arm so it pointed at her chest I rapidly began undoing the quick-release clips that held her gear on. She shrugged the harness off as I ripped open the last buckle. The only connection between her and the jammed equipment was now her regulator. I yanked my emergency regulator clear of its quick-release and held it towards Katherina. She took the final lungful from her own cylinder, spat out her mouthpiece and replaced it with mine. The alarm on my computer shrieked urgently - it was time to get out. I slid an arm round her waist and pulled her toward me.

She twisted violently away, reaching for something out of my line of vision. I swung the light to see what was so important and not three feet away was a white rope - My God, she'd actually come down on a safety line, but where from? I thought I knew every way into this ship.

This was no time to look a gift horse in the mouth; I grabbed the line with both hands and pulled us along it hoping the worst was over. If we had a way out then all I had to concern myself with was making our air supply last to the surface. As we followed the rope I played the torch beam into the depths of the once bustling lorry deck in an effort to get my bearings. Everything was the same colour, a muddy green and brown. Nearly thirty years is more than enough time for millions of sea creatures to colonise a new home.

The old adage 'To err is human, to really screw-up you need a computer' was never so true. A freshly commissioned vessel on its maiden voyage, the Zenobia’s ballast-control computer pumped thousands of tons of sea water into all the wrong tanks. The ship developed an unrecoverable list and eventually sank. No lives were lost, but it went to the bottom with a full cargo and over a hundred articulated trucks.

Katherina tapped me on the shoulder, I swung round with the beam, the rope disappeared over a sill and into a corridor. The width of the passageway meant a change of position. I stopped, brought the light between us once more and signalled for her to hang on to my air tank. With Katherina riding pillion and using the torch as a headlight it left me free to concentrate on getting us out fast. As we moved off I checked the air supply - two minutes; the computer indicated that I'd already been down for eight minutes, I'd no idea how long Katherina had been down there but it was longer than allowed for a dive that deep. I held her legs firmly between mine and flung us along the rope. The hand-over-hand pulling motion became automatic and my thoughts switched to the possible reasons she could have for risking her life; another minute trapped and her only alternative would have been to abandon her aqualung and try to reach the surface on one deep breath. I shuddered inwardly at the thought, also wondering how she'd managed to get trapped in the truck at all and then the barracuda sprang to mind; they must have followed her in and not me. She must have backed away from them, jammed her tank in the open window and drawn her knife in case they attacked.

There was very little headroom along this section; with the ship lying on its side it meant that the corridor width became our only height space. I searched my memory for the length of this corridor, but the details stayed forgotten, buried with all the other information I couldn't recall; my mind filled with the urgency of getting out and the effort of pulling us along the rope. I felt a tug on my high-pressure line, Katherina was checking the instruments. Damn. I didn't want her to know how little air we had left. The hose went slack again and I felt her hand squeeze my shoulder.

The colour of the darkness changed imperceptibly and I sensed the nearness of the final doorway. My muscles found an extra burst of power and we shot out of the wreck like torpedoes. We drifted for a moment as I looked up to get my bearings, the dim but welcome shadows of our two boats tied together filtered down by the hazy light of the full moon. The surface looked flat calm. I threw a glance back to where we had emerged and made a mental note of the position of the doorway. I looked over my shoulder curiously at Katherina; she must have had help to find that.

A low-pitched whistle snapped my attention back to the dwindling air supply, my regulator was the culprit and the noise coincided with my inhaling. I reached for the instrument console and glared at it, the air gauge was hardly registering and the depth gauge next to it read one twenty. One hundred and twenty feet to the surface and all that fresh sea air.

Reaching for the side of the ship I grasped the deck railing and pulled us along it, heading for the point where the surface buoy was anchored to a lifeboat davit. It was getting harder to breathe now as I sucked the tank almost dry and I was tiring, my heart beat harder and I could feel the blood rushing around my head. Fifteen feet to the buoy-line and one hundred and twenty to the surface. I pulled harder, it was like trying to raise a ship’s anchor by hand.

As I reached the rope I took a final lungful of air and spat out my regulator. In practice I had come up from a hundred feet on one breath many times and Katherina would need the little remaining air. I took us upwards as slowly as my aching chest and the thoughts of a ruptured lung would allow; the sound of Katherina’s rhythmic breathing became louder and louder in my head as I fought to mentally over-ride the spontaneous instructions from my brain telling me to breathe and re-oxygenate my lungs. I felt a movement behind me and Katherina swung round in front. I opened my eyes from the concentration of maintaining a slow rise up the rope. There was enough light for me to see her eyes widen in concern as she realised I wasn't using the scuba unit. She picked up my regulator and tried to get it back into my mouth, I shook my head and clamped my teeth together hard; she understood, wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me. I grinned despite the situation; this was one hell of a length to go to just to get a beautiful woman in my arms.

I risked a look at the depth gauge - fifty feet. We were rising too fast! The air inside my buoyancy jacket was expanding like the air in my lungs. I had forgotten to release some and in a belated flash of inspiration I stuck the exhaust valve in my mouth and pressed the button taking a good long breath. The vice-like pressure in my chest eased and our rate of ascent slowed. I checked my depth gauge, forty feet; Katherina’s eyes met mine and I winked at her. Forty five seconds later we exploded to the surface in a cocktail of froth and air bubbles beside her Zodiac inflatable. Snatching one of the ropes attached to the side I hauled myself on board gulping beautiful sea air down in relief. I dragged Katherina in after me and we collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the boat.

Are you OK...? I gasped in between breaths. I got no further, my head exploded in a galaxy of stars and everything went black.

Chapter Two

I groaned and forced my eyes open, blinked twice and shut them again. The light was blinding.

Light?

I rubbed my eyes and tried to sit up. It was impossible, something was holding me down. The realisation that it was my scuba gear started my befuddled mind working, I snapped open the four catches secured across my chest and fifty pounds of equipment released its gravitational pull, a split second later my weight belt went the same way. Katherina, I called.

Standing up identified a whole new set of problems, my head hurt like hell and I still had eighteen inches of plastic attached to each foot. I slumped groggily onto one of the deck seats and undid my fins, slinging them into an untidy heap by the saloon door. I rested my head on my hands and groaned. My head hurt, but there was something else; something I couldn’t put my finger on. I pondered for a moment. Then, as the man discovered when he sat on a hill all night wondering where the sun went – it dawned on him. I leapt off the seat as if electrocuted. I was sitting on a deck seat in my own boat. I spun round wildly looking over the side for Katherina’s inflatable. It was gone.

KATHERINA, I shouted this time. Still no answer.

Holding my pounding head I staggered into the saloon, maybe she was inside. Why was I looking for her when her boat had gone? I thought. Maybe I just didn’t want to believe the blindingly obvious.

Katherina? I pushed open the doors to the two cabins, they yawned back at me indifferently. She wasn't in the shower either. Puzzled, I wandered back out of the saloon and onto the sundeck, squinting as much against the blinding sun as the blinding pain in my temples. I surveyed the scene around me. It was daylight. I checked my watch; seven-thirty in the morning, my boat was still tied to the Zenobia’s marker buoy, Katherina’s inflatable had gone and I had been non compos mentis for the best part of five hours. It didn't make sense, why would she leave like that? I lifted a pair of powerful binoculars out of a locker and tried to focus them on the distant shore. My eyes weren't functioning correctly and I had to blink several times to clear them. I turned a slow three hundred and sixty degrees; there was nothing moving – anywhere. Swinging round I focussed once more on land, the huge leisure complex of the Hotel Aphrodite gleamed white against the barren browns and tans of the sun beaten landscape. The wooded slopes of the Troodos Mountains soared three and a half thousand feet into the clear blue sky creating a dramatic backdrop that looked like it had changed little since the island’s cultural beginnings in the seventh millennium B.C. I tilted the binoculars down slightly and cast my eyes over the golden sandy beaches and pale creams and whites of the picture-postcard villages. It was hard to believe that one of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean has such a tempestuous recent history. The near perfect climate and the charm and hospitality of its people belie the struggle that has been part of Cyprus’ heritage since July nineteen seventy four when Turkey invaded from the north. Over a third of the island was occupied, expelling nearly a quarter of a million Cypriots to become refugees in their own country; forbidden to return to their homes and businesses. Historically, parts of Cyprus will never recover, with monuments, Byzantine churches and antiquities destroyed in the event. Now the United Nations keep the peace along a line drawn across the island from south of the Morphou Bay on the west coast through the capital Nicosia to just below Famagusta on the eastern seaboard.

Dropping the binoculars back into the locker I sighed and swapped them for my first aid kit, seeking a remedy for the steam hammer in my head. I popped two pain-killers into my mouth, locked the box, went down into the galley for some orange juice and swallowed half a tumbler to get rid of the tablets. After refilling the glass I wandered out on deck and climbed the ladder to the flying bridge. My head was having trouble coping with the pain let alone all the questions that were trying to kick start my brain. Why had she gone? What had she got to hide and was it worth her life? She obviously thought so.

Retrieving the key from its hiding place under one of the sun bed cushions, I stuffed it none too gently into the ignition and pressed the starters. The twin four hundred horsepower Volvo turbo-diesels rumbled satisfyingly into life and the warning lights blinked off one by one, signalling all was well in the engine compartment.

I scrambled back down the ladder and released the mooring rope from the marker buoy. The boat drifted free while I gazed around in silent appreciation. There's something special about this time of the morning, everything is fresh, silver wavelets on the deep blue of the Mediterranean sparkle in the early morning sun, the beaches are empty, the air smells new and I feel like I have the whole world to myself. Huh. I muttered, this was one morning I would have liked to share.

Sliding into the helm seat I nudged the throttle levers forward a notch. Sundancer pulled gently forward, hardly making a ripple on the flat calm of the blue water while the deck quivered beneath my feet like a racehorse under starter’s orders. I slammed the levers forward against the stops, changing the tone of the engines to a muted roar and churning the water at the stern into boiling froth as eight hundred horses bit hard and deep. The bows lifted three feet out of the water and the five-ton power cruiser became a missile, skipping over the water at forty knots. I grinned automatically, despite my anger, trying not to think of my bank balance diminishing with every one and a half miles per gallon. I spun the wheel hard over and pointed toward Larnaca, settling down in the seat with the sun, wind and spray coursing over me. I turned my thoughts once again to the green-eyed goddess who had a penchant for trying to kill herself diving on wrecks at night.

She was in the pool the first time I spotted her. My attention was grabbed by the fact that everyone around the pool was watching the water and not reading books, newspapers or dozing. Few people can plough down an fifty-metre swimming pool non-stop, length after length and make it look effortless. This girl made it look like Olympic gold was just for runners-up. The style was flawless, cutting through the water with a minimum of effort and gaining maximum forward momentum. It was beautiful to watch.

My pace slowed as I reached the balcony and I paused leaning on the rail overlooking the water. There was no clue to her appearance; all that was visible was a flash of long, tanned legs and a trail of dark hair as she streaked down each length before tumble-turning and powering up the next. My appreciative stare was interrupted by a surreptitious wave from the pool-side bar. I grinned back at Stellios, the hotel’s aging, lecherous barman and he pointed to the swimmer and held up ten fingers. At first I wasn’t sure whether he meant she was a perfect ‘10’ or that she’d done ten lengths at that speed. Then he stuck ten fingers up again followed by five.

Twenty-five? I mouthed silently and he nodded. She had already broken the kilometre barrier and was showing no sign of slowing down, I was mesmerised. Stellios appeared beside me with a tray of empty glasses and one full one.

Brandy-sour? I asked. His expression said ‘as if I’d bring you anything else’ and I took a long slug of the ice-cold brandy mix whilst still watching the girl.

Nearly as good as you huh?

I shook my head slowly. Better, I was approaching a coronary last time I tried that many.

His face split into a wide, dazzling white-toothed grin, remembering the day a few months ago when I had to prove that my credentials as a diving–instructor were well earned.

True, he nodded solemnly, but if you hadn’t insisted you could do it with two kilos of diving weights around your waist you would have beaten him. And he knows it.

I chuckled at the memory and vowed never again to take a bet when I was pissed. Nicos, the resident diving school instructor had nevertheless been magnanimous in his triumph, vowing that he would always use my boat and my services for off-shore dives. We’d been good mates ever since.

At the end of the thirtieth length she stopped, stood up and walked slowly to the steps leading out of the pool, arms raised, wringing the water from her mane of hair. Her bikini top was having difficulty restraining the firm body thrusting against it and the minor adjustments she made raised blood pressures all around the poolside.

Dragging my gaze from her I scanned the perimeter of the pool, registering the effect she had created. The unattached males were ogling her blatantly; the accompanied ones were more discreet, watching over the tops of magazines and newspapers or from behind dark glasses. The women ignored her very existence or squirmed uncomfortably as they wished they'd paid more attention to their fitness video ‘burn’ than the one they were currently getting from the Cyprus sun.

Stellios watched me with impenetrable brown eyes. In fact, everything about Stellios was brown. His skin was the colour and well-worn texture of a favourite leather jacket; the only non-brown areas were the whites of his eyes and his teeth, which matched the startling white of his uniform jacket.

Wow! I muttered.

He chuckled and strode purposefully back to his domain in the thatch-topped circular bar across the pool area. I watched him lean over the counter and within a few seconds he was heading for the girl with his silver tray bearing what looked like a brandy-sour and a single red rose. The randy old sod! He was old enough to be her grandfather, well almost. He caught me grinning in disbelief and shrugged as if to say ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

She was perched on the edge of a sun bed, patting herself dry with a big fluffy towel as Stellios approached her, the distance was too great for me to hear what was said, but he presented the tray with a practised flourish and then pointed at me. The smile froze on my face and the entire