Only about a dozen or so people knew that Olivia Lewis, the woman discovered drowned in a fast-flowing stream near Bethesda after a storm, was a retired SIS operative. She never carried a gun, for her talents were in finding the right approach to a target and then getting them to tell her anything she wanted.
Aging MI6 agent Ian Dennis took part of his training under her decades ago, which was when she had confided with him. He knew why she was murdered. She had owned the first draft of one of World War Two veteran Leslie Bonnet’s short stories, which contained a seventy-year-old secret he had learned while training pilots in China.
Now the draft was missing, and it was a race to discover the true location of lost Sichuan Temple, which legend said contained an ancient device more powerful than all the world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to take a Google Maps image and location and use them to inspire crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150.
Today, the Pegman takes us to Gwynedd, Wales.
Of course I looked up the county of Gwynedd and discovered, among many other things, that World War Two veteran turned author made his home there after the war. Before that, he had spent some time in China in 1943 helping to create the Chinese Air Force as a service separate from their army.
I also found a 23 December 2013 BBC news story that reported a woman had drowned in a stream in Nant Ffrancon near Bethesda after a storm.
The lost temple is totally made up, though loosely based on this news article.
I created the beginning of yet another “Ian Dennis” mystery just for fun. Some of you may remember Ian from my short series The Mauritius Robbery Affair.
To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.
This could be the framework for a thriller, James. Let’s hope whoever gets to the temple first will destroy the weapon before anybody is tempted to use it as a threat.
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Well, it is in China, so getting to it will be a bit of a chore, depending on who took the manuscript. Thanks, Penny.
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Really interesting tie-in. Leslie Bonnet sounds like a novel in himself.
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Initially, I was going to have him be the focus of my story, but at least according to Wikipedia, he didn’t seem “dramatic” enough, though his life was certainly interesting.
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That’s great James! Sounds like a thriller waiting to be written.
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I’ve got so many things waiting to be written, I hardly know where to begin. Thanks. 😉
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Such sweeping strokes of a story over these three well-crated sentences. Good one, James.
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Thanks, Kelvin.
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I like the fact that you wove your tale around Olivia!
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Thanks, Alicia. She definitely was the lynchpin of the story, and sadly, she’s based on a person who tragically drowned.
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Intriguing tale of derringdo… can’t wait to read more…
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I wasn’t planning on continuing this one, actually. *blush*
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I love the way you do the background research to your story.
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Thanks. It’s half the fun of writing.
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Dear James,
Intriguing story. Of course your title put me in mind of one of my favorite shows of all time. Of course that had more to do with Illya Kuryakin than actual content. 😉
Shalom,
Rochelle
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I name all of Ian Dennis’s missions that way in homage to “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” TV show. I think a lot of girls thought actor David McCallum was pretty “hot.”
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Even in his old age, Ducky Mallard still cute. 😉 It seems the girls were divided in the day…either Napoleon or Illya.
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I had to look up McCallum on Wikipedia to get the “Ducky” reference. He’s still alive at age 83 and apparently going strong.
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Just look up NCIS. 😉
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The start of a great thriller – when’s the next episode due ???
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Actually, I wasn’t planning on continuing the story line. I’ve got a lot of other projects I need to be paying attention to, and don’t have the bandwidth to address this one. Maybe someday, I’ll develop my Ian Dennis short series which started with Arrival (although the apparent dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program would render it obsolete).
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Full of intrigue, James. It definitely could be part of a series… if you should choose the mission 😉
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“If any of your IMF force is killed or captured, the secretary will disavow…” Yeah, I get it. 😉
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A new adventure for Ian. Looks like this one’s going to take him all over the world.
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It might if I had time to write it. Thanks.
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Very thrilling.
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