Ape Swain is an adventurer.
For all his life, Swain has had that name. While he has at times been called Alfred Paul or Anthony Phillip or Arthur Patrick or others, it is always with the A.P. initials, hence the nickname of Ape.
Of course the fact that his arms were much longer than normal and his legs were considerably shorter than normal gave him a decidedly apish appearance, especially with the hairy arms, chest, and back that he had had since puberty. Now at 34, he was resigned to the strange reaction he routinely got from people and used their unease and underestimating to his advantage. If people wanted to get the mistaken idea that he might be brutish and slow and, best of all, dim-witted, who was he to prove how wrong they were before he had made a profit off their mistake.
The three-book series about Ape Swain is a strange one. He most certainly is not a secret agent for any government but he does deal in international intrigue so he has a place here. But readers looking for standard spy-fi motivations may be surprised by Ape's 'what's it worth to you?' attitude. Ape is a businessman first, last, and only. Politics is just something that gets in the way.
Swain starts off the series a worker-bee, following orders like everyone else but opportunity knocks and Swain shows that he is as smart as he is resourceful and he takes advantage of it. That changes the series considerably but Swain's ability to get the job done, and to find some way to make a decent profit doing it, stays just as strong. And while he eventually becomes wealthy enough to hire people like he used to be to get the job done, he is a take-charge guy and would not dream of it.