The Colours: A spy thriller packed with intrigue and deception

by T. M. Parris

  The Colours

  By T.M. Parris

  Clarke and Fairchild Thriller Book 3

  Copyright © 2021 T.M. Parris

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or treated as fictitious with no factual basis. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  The Clarke and Fairchild series of novels

  is written in British English.

  Within this novel, a billion is a thousand million.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  The Clarke and Fairchild series

  Author note

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Chapter 1

  John Fairchild lay on the baked earth of the Baja California desert keeping his binoculars trained on the mansion in the distance. Heat radiated through his clothes and dust caught in his throat. He’d been lying there without moving since dawn, but he wouldn’t be there much longer. As soon as he was sure this was the place, he’d sent the exact co-ordinates to his client Zack, who then sent them via some back channel to the Mexican authorities. It was purely a matter of what kind of priority they would give it now.

  “Anything?” said a voice in his ear.

  Zack, on the other end of a satellite phone connection, was frustrated. A US agent, working for the Drug Enforcement Agency, had infiltrated a huge drugs cartel and passed on the location of a secret pot plantation somewhere in this desert, prompting the fury of the man behind the cartel, notorious Colombian drug boss Chico Quesada. That down there was Quesada’s house. And inside that house was the unfortunate US agent, who was snatched off the street in Guadalajara several days ago. Fairchild had traced him here, where they were holding him captive.

  In other situations Zack would be sending in Marines right now, dropping them loaded with weaponry from helicopters. But this was politically sensitive and proper procedure had to be followed, which meant waiting on others. Not something that came easily to Zack. Fairchild, a paid hire in all of this, could stand it, but he didn’t want to think too much about what was being done right now to the guy in that house. So he understood his friend’s impatience.

  “Anything?” repeated the voice. Fairchild was Zack’s eyes and ears right now. Officially Fairchild wasn’t here at all, of course.

  “No, nothing. Hang on. Wait!”

  Fairchild saw movement below, a door opening, figures appearing.

  “Two people coming out. No, three. One of them is Quesada. It’s him and a couple of minders.”

  They moved fast and made sharp, impatient gestures. One of them had a phone to his ear. They headed for one of the jeeps at the front of the mansion.

  “They’re leaving, Zack. In a hurry. They must have been tipped off.”

  “Any sign of law enforcement?”

  “Nope.”

  “Shit! We needed to get him right here to make this stick. Any sign of our guy?”

  “No, he must still be inside.”

  “Crap.”

  “They’re on the move.”

  The three men were now in the jeep, whose tyres spun into life, raising a cloud of dust.

  “Can you get after them?”

  Fairchild was already on his feet, head low, trying to keep some kind of cover while making for his four-wheel drive.

  “Sure.” He kept speaking to Zack through his clip-on mic. “But they’ll make me if I follow them. We’re in the desert, Zack!”

  “Never mind that, just keep them here! Don’t let them go anywhere until the goddam police arrive! You got a tracer on that jeep, right?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “What do you mean, we’ll see?”

  Fairchild said no more until he was back at the vehicle. He started the engine and the screen showing the locations of his tracking devices flickered into life. All of them were operational, and all but one still clustered around the front of the mansion. That one was moving away fast, taking a route that wasn’t an official road. As Fairchild reversed and manoeuvred after it, he heard the faintest sound of a siren on the wind.

  “Sounds like the police are here,” he said, pulling the steering wheel hard to coax the SUV the shortest route after Quesada.

  “Great. Just as the guy leaves. How convenient.”

  “I’m after them. They’re off road. They’re going to know I’m here, Zack.”

  “Good! Give them some trouble. Take out their tyres!”

  It was easy for Zack to say, sitting in a base somewhere north of the border. The land rose up in front of Fairchild and the engine moaned as he accelerated upwards, his wheels spraying dirt. Then it levelled off and Quesada’s jeep came into view. That meant they could see him. Almost immediately a side window lowered and a head and shoulders emerged along with an assault rifle. The shooter opened fire. Bullets punctured Fairchild’s bonnet.

  He braked. The dust rising from their jeep helped; Fairchild steered left and right, a crazy path. But the shooting continued. A bullet hit the windscreen and cracked it. The jeep sped up. Fairchild was losing ground. With one hand he pulled out a gun, lowered the side window and fired off a round. But from a distance with his left hand it wasn’t going to achieve much.

  “You still there?” Zack crackled in his ear.

  “Yeah, but they’re getting away.”

  “Well catch up!”

  Fairchild put his foot down, reminding himself to increase his fee next time he worked for Zack. Whenever he drew closer the shooting started again and he had to drop back. As the land rose and dipped, the jeep would disappear from view but its dot remained on the screen.

  “Where are they heading?” asked Zack.

  “No idea. There’s nothing out here. They’re going straight for the middle of nowhere.”

  But jus
t then Fairchild topped another rise and in front of him all became clear. Low-level sheds nestled between small natural hillocks, and stretching alongside all of them a long flat area made the perfect landing strip. A flimsy turboprop taxied at one end.

  “Shit, Zack! There’s a whole runway here! I see hangars, storage sheds, a light plane on the move. They must be using it to transport the drugs.”

  “Holy fuck! How did we not know about this?”

  It was a good question, but now wasn’t the time to try and answer it. The jeep had pulled in next to a hangar, and the plane was lining up on the runway. Fairchild, on higher ground, was an easy target for the bodyguards, who jumped out of their jeep and started firing on him straight away. Fairchild climbed out and crouched behind the vehicle listening to its windows crunching from the bullets. He could smell diesel mixed with dust. He peered round just enough to see Quesada, covered by his minders, running for the plane.

  “Zack, he’s getting into the plane. It’s about to take off.”

  “Well, stop him!”

  “How? You think I’ve got anti-aircraft guns here? No one said anything about planes. Can’t you find them with satellites?”

  “You mean like we found the airfield?”

  Zack had a point. Fairchild risked another peep round the wing of the SUV. A bullet dinked the metalwork, far too close for comfort. The plane was powering down the runway. The minders were heading back to their jeep. It was not a good time to hang around.

  “I’m out of here, Zack. There’s nothing more I can do and these goons are going to come after me now.”

  Fairchild jumped back into the SUV and spun the wheels as he steered sharply away. In his mirrors he saw Quesada’s men in the jeep coming straight for him. As he drove off, the plane rose into the sky.

  “He’s in the air, Zack. He’s gone.”

  “Shit.”

  “And so am I. Got to make myself scarce.”

  Fairchild tuned out the string of expletives in his ear and focused on trying to stay ahead of the approaching jeep.

  Chapter 2

  Vauxhall Cross wasn’t Rose’s favourite place in the world. She’d prefer to be out in the field. Admittedly, the MI6 riverside headquarters looked the best it could possibly look today, and the view from Marcus Salisbury’s office was probably the best in the place, as befit the top dog, the person who used to only be known as “C”. Behind the man’s head, the Thames glittered in the sun and looked vaguely blue. Along Millbank, north of the river, the landmarks of London lined up, grey, solid and respectable, familiar as the face of an old friend. Yes, Rose loved her country. Of course she did. That was what it was all about, protecting this nation and her fellow Brits. But she’d still prefer to be out there getting on with the job, chasing down the threats wherever they surfaced. Her six-month stay in London hadn’t been unpleasant as such, but she was desperate for it to be over. Which was why she was sitting here today making a special effort to impress the boss.

  Salisbury didn’t look too impressed.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Clarke,” he said. “I’m sure plenty of people in this building would love to spend a month or so in the south of France. But as you know, we’re supposed to be engaging the limited public resources at our disposal to address clear and current threats to our nation.”

  “That’s exactly what this is,” said Rose.

  She already knew Salisbury wasn’t favourably inclined towards her current mission. It was Walter, her line manager of indeterminate but considerable seniority, who had taken on that argument and won. The result was Rose’s appointment as the head of a small team whose imprecisely specified remit focused entirely on one person. Some day, Rose hoped, Walter would tell her what kind of hold he had over Salisbury that enabled him to secure the Chief’s support, however reluctant. So far, Walter wasn’t talking.

  “Gregory Sutherland,” she said, “is a real and present threat to this country. He was a traitor when he worked for MI6 back in the sixties, and his opinion of us hasn’t improved since then. When he crossed over into the USSR, he established himself within the KGB and used their vast resources to pursue his own aims. He built contacts within criminal circles using the street name Grom, and carried on in similar vein within the FSB after the break-up of the Soviet Union. He has vast amounts of money squirrelled away, which he’s desperate to get his hands on now he’s been kicked out of Russia. He’s still a manipulative, effective operator, despite his age. He has ample means and motive to mobilise all kinds of causes against us. That’s what he does. We need to neutralise him, take away everything he could use as a power base.”

  Salisbury had already heard all of this, of course. From the expression on his face, the man was unmoved.

  “Gregory Sutherland died in 1969. The idea that this man you’re chasing, this disgraced Russian spymaster now in exile, is in fact British, is ludicrous. Do you have a shred of evidence that proves they’re one and the same person?”

  “You mean like a DNA test? That would be very difficult to achieve. But people have met him. Spoken to him.”

  “People other than John Fairchild?”

  Salisbury’s contempt was obvious. MI6 seemed to divide itself into two parts, those who liked the rootless mercenary John Fairchild, and those who didn’t. One of Salisbury’s first actions in the top job was to order an investigation into John Fairchild, specifically into whether he was acquiring information from trusted officers and selling it on. The investigation went nowhere, though Rose wasn’t sorry it happened, as her role in it enabled her to get back into the Service after she’d been dismissed for an intelligence failure when working in Croatia. And after her experiences with Fairchild, she had some sympathy with Salisbury’s view of the man.

  “Have you met him, then? Gregory Sutherland?” asked Salisbury.

  “I’ve seen him. From a distance.”

  He picked up a pen and repositioned it without looking up at her. That was the kind of thing he did when hearing something he didn’t like. Deliberately undermining, of course. When in PR or political mode, it was all different: warm smiles, reassurances, firm handshakes. Salisbury was the archetypal “safe pair of hands” favoured by risk-averse politicians and bureaucrats. Someone you could trust to deal with things in a sensible and responsible way. But he didn’t necessarily show that side to his own staff, particularly when they were giving him bad news.

  Finally he sighed and gave her a quizzical look.

  “It doesn’t sound very definitive, does it?”

  Patience, Rose. “The Russians aren’t struggling to believe it. As soon as we fed it through our FSB sources that Grom was actually British, they turned on him. They must have done their own checks and realised his identity was false. So there has to be something in it. Enough to dirty our reputation, at least.”

  This was one of Walter’s winning arguments, Rose was sure. Even the possibility that a corrupt senior FSB officer could turn out to be a UK citizen, trained and previously employed as a British intelligence officer, was enough to damage the reputation of the Service. Which already had a somewhat mixed reputation when it came to Soviet double agents.

  Salisbury leaned back in his chair. In a light grey suit but no tie, his dress was formal enough while nodding towards the trend to informal. There was nothing eye-catching or remarkable about Marcus Salisbury. In a spy, that could be a good thing. In the head of a spying service like this one, Rose wasn’t so sure.

  “He’d been using a false identity for more than forty years,” he said. “Clever guy.”

  “Yes,” said Rose seriously. “Very. And he hasn’t lost his touch. Somehow he got out of Russia six months ago despite his own team turning on him without warning. An unarmed septuagenarian vanishes into thin air while topping the most wanted list of one of the world’s most oppressive states? We’ve been looking for him ever since. So have they.”

  “And now you think he’s sunning himself on the French Riviera?”

  “No. We
think that’s where his money is.”

  This was the real purpose of the team that Rose had been appointed to lead six months ago. Through the hands of corrupt bureaucrats and their business and mafia associates, Russian money was exported from Russia in large quantities, to end up stashed in offshore accounts or invested in property and other assets across the globe. With the new security focus on Russia as a threat, teams of analysts already monitored these flows as best they could. Rose’s team was doing exactly the same thing, only focused on a particular individual. They made use of financial intelligence expertise known as FININT, but with a specific Russian in their sights. At least, that was what everyone thought. Because the idea, the mere possibility, that this Russian was in fact British, was, to put it mildly, sensitive. That was why Rose enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy. A privileged position, which she felt she’d earned, having suffered at the hands of Sutherland’s manipulative cruelty herself.

  “You know that tracing Sutherland’s wealth has taken us right across the globe,” she continued. “Of course none of it is in that name. As you said, officially Sutherland died over forty years ago. Mikhail Khovansky is how the Russians know him. But most of it isn’t held in that name either. We’ve managed to link a whole web of trusts, shell companies and nominee accounts back to him. Cyprus, Panama, the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands – it’s pretty complicated. He wants to keep it hidden, but the Russians are trying to find it. As far as they’re concerned, it’s stolen money and they want it back. Never mind that most of them are also on the take. They see it as a particular insult, a corrupt thieving Russian official who isn’t even Russian.”

  “And this is helping us how?” asked Salisbury languidly. “We’re already watching expropriated Russian funds across the world. Extra resources for a bespoke team just for one person is – well—”

  Wasteful? Unjustifiable? Rose barged back in before Salisbury could hit upon his preferred offending adjective.

  “We’re working closely with FININT. Sharing everything we can. We’re adding to their pool of intelligence. We can identify his associates and flag them up. The people who helped him set all this up, the bankers, the accountants, the lawyers. Many of them won’t have a clue who he really is or what he’s done, but some might be more deeply involved than that, and if they are, they’re not friends of ours. We’re learning a lot about Russian capabilities as well, now that we’re going after the same target.”