Mauritius Intrigue

airport

Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport – Mauritius

Everyone at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport supposed Ian Dennis was another British tourist on holiday. Only a few police officials knew the MI6 agent was there to investigate the murder of an accountant from Scotland and the brutalization of her child. The recent string of robberies was unusual for a small island, but this was no robbery.

“G’morning, Dennis. Good flight?” Winston Permalloo shook hands. Supposed casual chauffeur, he was actually a lieutenant on the Police Force, which handled security and military functions. Permalloo was the only covert agent native to Mauritius and an MI6 double-agent.

“Bloody didn’t sleep a wink. Thanks for the pick-up, Permalloo.”

Dennis’s bags retrieved, they arrived at the car.

“All secure. We’re free to talk, Dennis.”

“Just how the hell did enemy agents assassinate a top SIS data analyst who had the perfect cover?”

“That’s what you’re here to help me find out, Ian.”

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to take a location and Google street maps image and use them as the prompt for writing a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150.

Today, the Pegman takes us to the island of Mauritius which is in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. The island has a fascinating history and culture and would certainly be worthy of a vacation visit someday.

Doing my research, I discovered that last July, the murder of a 47-year-old woman was reported. The act was supposedly to have been committed by robbers and witnessed by the victim’s ten-year-old autistic son.

I used that as the jumping off point for my small story. It does seem strange that on such a small piece of real estate, it would be possible to commit what amounts to a crime spree and not be detected after very long.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

The mystery continues in The Lady is Murder.

I’ve expanded the original stories into a small series. The first chapter is called The Mauritius Robbery Affair: Arrival.

29 thoughts on “Mauritius Intrigue”

    • Thanks. I initially considered writing an “end of the world via plague” story with Mauritius being Earth’s only sanctuary, but I’ve written too many of those already. Then I saw the news story about that poor woman and his son and thought, “what if it was just meant to look like a robbery?” The rest unfolded from there.

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    • True. Unfortunately, I know nothing about MI6 in real life or the island police force of Mauritius to finish it. Fun fact: occasionally I see that someone on that island actually reads my blog.

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    • Thanks. I kept the identity of the “enemy agents” vague since if I specified one government or the other, it would politicize the story. Also, I’d have to read further about the factual basis for my fictional tale, but it seems the Mauritius news isn’t published very often. The July issue seemed to be the latest.

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    • I can’t tell you. I reached the 150 word limit. 😀 Actually, I don’t know. I only leveraged a news item about a murdered woman and decided to turn it into a spy story. I’d have to do a lot more research to fill the rest of the tale out. Instead of doing that, I became distracted and wrote a short piece of science fiction, alternate history, Biblical fiction, and fantasy called The Journey West of Eden which, while completely different from this story, I think is equally compelling.

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      • well not all of the movies are created equal – blah on two of them – lol
        and I am not sure Ludlum books even inspired the most recent “jason Bourne” which seriously lacked because they forgot to hire writers… lol
        and right now I am reading the “icarus agenda” from the late 80s – i buy these quarter books at a used book store and it is so fun to explore books I would not pay full price for.
        anyhow, this fiction piece is REALLY similar to what I ma reading- 🙂

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      • Being really cheap, I try to find books at my local library. Once I even got my hands on a first edition hardback of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. The paper for each page was so think I kept thinking two pages had stuck together.

        Honestly, I didn’t have Ludlum in mind at all when I wrote this.

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  9. Pingback: Different Climbs (#whatpegmansaw) – priorhouse blog ~

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