The Colours: A spy thriller packed with intrigue and deception

by T. M. Parris

“Why?”

  “Because he’s unstable. Unsafe.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What happened to make him suspicious? What was going on in there?”

  “It was just a big mess. A bad idea from the start.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “No, there isn’t. You’re seeing things that aren’t there. You think there was a plan and there wasn’t. It was just chaos.”

  She looked at him as she drank her espresso.

  “You’d better be telling me everything, Pippin.” She had a particular way of saying his name.

  “It’s time for Pippin to leave,” said Pippin. “Things have got out of hand. Pippin needs to disappear.”

  “No,” said the woman. “Not yet. We need to find out what Gustave is planning. His contacts. Who put him up to this.”

  “Nobody did. It was his own stupid idea.”

  “You don’t know that. He’s naïve, certainly, but people like that can be manipulated by others. We need to know who’s pulling his strings. Who’s behind all of this. What’s the plan now?”

  The woman’s face required an answer.

  “Not Paris. The journey is too dangerous. Gustave said something about Marseille. He claimed to have contacts there.”

  “Well, there you go! In Marseille he could link in with anything. Crime rings, smuggling, radicals in North Africa, this could easily be part of something bigger. You have to stick with it. It’s important.”

  “It’s dangerous. They have guns. Gustave tried to kill me. He shot at me. Why wouldn’t he do that again?”

  “Well, why would he do that again?”

  Pippin had an answer to this, but he wasn’t going to share it with the woman.

  “You need to rebuild that trust,” she said. “Take things back to how they were before. And stick with it. I know you can handle it. When the others said you couldn’t, I spoke up for you, you know. They thought you wouldn’t see it through but I said you were tougher than you looked. That you’d do the right thing. That you’d realise what was at stake.”

  On the face of it, she had a misplaced faith that there had to be a plan, motivation, logic. What Pippin had realised, lying awake in his tiny bed with half a billion dollars rolled up underneath him, is that there was no plan. Gustave was chaos. Gustave was a force of nature. Anger and drama and statement and rebellion. Violence, yes – he remembered the man’s gun pointed at him. He would kill and destroy, but for nothing. Because there was no purpose to any of this, no carefully-considered exit, no endgame.

  The woman left. Pippin left. He watched her walk away. But he didn’t follow her, not this time. He didn’t need to, because he already knew what he needed to know.

  Pippin liked to be clean. When he slipped away he didn’t leave a shadow. This woman did. When Pippin disappeared, he was gone, invisible, no trace, just thin air. This woman left a mark, a wake that someone like Pippin could travel in for a time, to discover her secrets, other corners that she’d frequent, other conversations that she’d have, and realise that there were things he couldn’t tell her. There were things he couldn’t tell anybody.

  He looked up, and imagined a night sky above the cafe full of stars bursting like fireworks. He realised he was crying.

  Chapter 25

  They were in the car on the way to Monaco when they heard the news.

  “Here we go,” said Ollie, sitting in the back. Yvonne was driving and Rose was in the front. “The Freeport has released the entire list of stolen items. Reported online in the last five or ten minutes.”

  “Put us out of our misery, Ollie,” said Rose. “Is it on there?”

  A brief silence as he read, then: “Yup. It’s there. Portrait of Theo by Vincent Van Gogh. Latest sale value five hundred million dollars. That’s a lot of zeros.”

  “What did they take, anyway?” said Yvonne, glancing at Ollie in the mirror.

  “All sorts.” He scrolled down the list. “A real mixture. Some high value items, but others aren’t worth a lot at all. If it was a theft to order, it was a hell of a complicated order.”

  “They hit the jackpot, though,” said Rose. “They must have known the Van Gogh was there.”

  “Must they?” asked Ollie. “They couldn’t have just lucked out?”

  “It would surely have its own security in there, wouldn’t it? Be in a separate vault or something. Not just in a warehouse with everything else.”

  “I guess. So maybe they took the Van Gogh, then just filled up the van with whatever else they could grab.”

  Does that sound professional to you?” asked Rose.

  “They robbed a Freeport, though,” said Yvonne. “And they got away. That’s not easy.”

  “With someone on the inside,” said Rose. “You can get into almost anything if you have someone on the inside.”

  “You know something,” said Ollie. “The Van Gogh is worth fifty times as much as the rest of the haul put together. If they intended to steal it, why bother with the rest? Wouldn’t it be cleaner just to go straight for the portrait and take off?”

  “This could have been the Russians,” said Rose. “Some local thugs with their strings pulled by the Kremlin. They lifted the Van Gogh for their Russian government friends, then picked up some other stash for themselves.”

  “So what about our target?” asked Yvonne. “How’s he going to react?”

  “Badly,” said Rose. “He was counting on that painting. If he’s lost it, financially that’s really going to hurt.”

  “It could still have been him behind it,” said Ollie.

  “True,” said Rose. “It could be his way of manipulating things. Steal it before anybody else can, then somehow make sure it’s recovered later. Put it on the market then to maximise its value. He’s a real game player, is Grom.”

  “I guess that could work,” said Yvonne. “But it didn’t go to plan, did it? If it had, one of those robbers wouldn’t be dead right now.”

  The flow of traffic slowed as they entered Monaco. Rose shook her head.

  “Unbelievable how a country smaller than Central Park can be so obsessed with cars. I’m amazed it’s not gridlocked all the time.”

  “There’s always space for a Ferrari,” said Ollie philosophically, as they started moving again. They entered one of the many road tunnels crossing the principality.

  “We need to find these thieves,” said Rose, going back to their business. “We’ve got a clear direction now, we need to focus our efforts on figuring out who they are, what they’re about and what they’ve done with the goods.”

  “We won’t be the only ones,” said Ollie. “A bunch of people are going to want exactly the same thing. I don’t think I’d like to be them.”

  “You don’t want five hundred million dollars?” Yvonne glanced in the mirror again. There was something of a rapport building up between the two of them.

  “Not if it gets the Russian mafia on my back,” said Ollie. “And Grom. I’ll get by without. Anyway, you’d never sell it for that kind of money on the black market.”

  “Fairchild can help with this, can’t he?” said Yvonne to Rose. “He said he knew people in the black market.”

  “Yes, he did.” Rose hadn’t been too keen on this option, or indeed any option giving Fairchild centre stage, but they’d have to consider it now.

  “This one okay?” They’d emerged from the tunnel and Yvonne was slowing to enter a car park, again underground.

  “Sure.” They turned and went down the ramp. Rose had been keeping an eye on who was behind en route, but she wasn’t taking any chances. “We’ll get out together and separate in the stairwell. I’ll go in first.”

  She outlined a route which would give Yvonne and Ollie time to check her for shadows.

  “And you check each other, too, before you approach. Clear?”

  “Sure,” said Ollie carefully. Rose was keeping her concerns about the moped rider to herself, but her
caution was causing her young team to pick up on something. No matter: if it sharpened their senses it was a good thing. Hers were maybe a little too sharp.

  A few minutes later she emerged alone at street level and made for the centre of Monte-Carlo.

  Chapter 26

  Rose brought her entire posse with her. But they didn’t arrive all at once. Rose buzzed first and came up in the lift alone. She stopped before entering the penthouse itself.

  “Do we know it’s clean?”

  “I swept the whole place. It’s clean.” Fairchild had spent a while working round the apartment with a bug checker. Apart from the print, there was nothing here of real interest. Rose stepped inside and looked round the grand reception room. She wasn’t as impressed as Zoe had been.

  “It seems like his kind of place,” she said. “He isn’t someone who shies away from making a statement. Any idea what it’s worth?”

  “I know exactly what it’s worth.”

  She looked at him. “You bought it?”

  “I made an offer. The opportunity arose.”

  “Seriously, Fairchild? Wasn’t that a bit provocative?”

  “He won’t even know. It’s through the company. Nothing’s in my name. The tenancy carries on uninterrupted. As far as he’s concerned, it’s simply a change of management agency. And why would he care about that? He’s not going to show up here, is he? Especially now.”

  The intercom buzzed. Rose checked the camera and took it upon herself to let them in. Fairchild watched her as she surveyed the place.

  “Someone comes in to clean” she said. “No dust.”

  “Of course. It’s fully serviced. That’ll be my people from now on.”

  “Well, that might be useful. Hello!” She’d noticed the two washed glasses draining in the kitchen. “Someone had company.”

  “That was me, I’m afraid.” Fairchild wasn’t going to mention Zoe to her. That woman was getting herself into enough trouble without Fairchild making it any worse.

  Rose looked at him quizzically. “You’re helping yourself to the guy’s drinks, now? And inviting people round? Is that normal practice for your letting agency? I must remember to avoid it.”

  “It’ll all be put straight.”

  Fairchild was on edge today and her presence wasn’t helping. She was being managerial, part of the establishment, the same establishment that had been so indifferent about the fate of his parents, hadn’t felt it was judicious to lift a finger to try and find out what happened. Yes, he loved the woman, loved who she was. But he didn’t love what she was.

  The others were at the door now. He let them in, eyeing the equipment they were toting.

  “There’s no point setting up bugs in here,” he said to Rose. “It’s an empty flat. Waste of time.”

  He sat on the sofa and stretched out. Rose’s foot soldiers looked to her. She’d certainly bounced back all right. In fact she’d done very well out of Grom. She’d seen an opportunity and taken it. She was ambitious after all, he’d always known that. If she weren’t, they’d never have met. Who was he to have a problem with it? He could be single-minded. So could she. He just didn’t like what she was single-minded about.

  Rose considered. “Well, we’re here now and we’ve got the gear, so we may as well make use of it.”

  She nodded to them, and they busied themselves appraising lampshades and air conditioning grilles. Spooks. He hated them sometimes.

  Rose wandered off, looking round the other rooms. He lay on the couch and stared at the ceiling. Rose returned and sat down on the other end of the couch. She was some distance away.

  “You’ve seen the news, I take it,” she said.

  “I have.” It was why he was in such a foul mood.

  “Did they steal your piece?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “Is it worth a lot?”

  “No, not really.”

  He could sense her looking at him.

  “What is it, exactly?”

  He sighed. “It’s a Japanese print, very similar to the one that’s hanging up in the bedroom upstairs.”

  “Oh.”

  He heard her get up and leave, then return and sit down again.

  “Very pretty.”

  He didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “So what do you think they’re playing at, these thieves?” she asked. “What’s their plan?”

  “No idea. Do you have any clever theories?”

  He heard her shift on her seat.

  “Come on, Fairchild. You’ve seen the list of what they took. What does that tell us about them? You’ve been inside the place. You’ve got an idea of how it operates. What’s your impression?”

  Reluctantly, he put his feet on the floor and sat up to look at her.

  “They must have known the Van Gogh was there. Something of that value would have had stand-alone security in a separate vault. They must have had a specific plan for that item, and access to its unique security codes.”

  “What explains the rest of it? It’s such a mixture, the values and styles.”

  “In the warehouse everything is packaged. Unless they’re working from an inventory list with reference numbers, they won’t have time to open things up and take a look. It’s not like raiding a museum or a private home where it’s all on display.”

  “But the Van Gogh alone is worth way more than the rest of them put together. Why bother with any of it once you have that?”

  “If you take what something achieves at auction at face value. But values don’t necessarily hold. The whole story around that auction was to create a piece of theatre and ramp up the price. On the black market it won’t be worth anything like that.”

  “It’s still a Van Gogh. People out there will pay handsomely to possess it, even if they can’t show it to anyone.”

  “True,” Fairchild said. What was eating him, he had to admit, was why they felt it necessary to swipe his low-value print when they were already carrying something that was almost priceless. Couldn’t they have just left it alone? “Maybe they fell out with each other,” he suggested. “One of them ended up dead, after all.”

  “What do you think they’ll do now? If you were in their shoes, if you had all that and you wanted to cash it in, what would you do?”

  “Bury it for a long time. Years, even. Break it up. Handle each piece separately. There are specialist fences for particular genres. I’d go international. Smuggle them out one by one. The Van Gogh must have been stolen to order. It could be out of the country already.”

  A pause. “You said you had contacts. Fences.”

  “I suppose you want me to ask around.”

  “If it’s not too much trouble. I’d have thought you’d want to anyway, if you care about getting your piece back.”

  How she hated having to ask him for help. But she was right. They needed each other, in fact.

  “They could have gone anywhere. Tell me what you know and what you can find out via Paris Station. The police must have something by now, not least from all the CCTV cameras they have here. Knowing where they were heading would give me a starting point.”

  “All right. We’ll keep you in the loop.”

  Another pause. Ollie and Yvonne were elsewhere, installing MI6 electronic ears in every corner. Rose stood and walked around the room, opening drawers and cupboards.

  “Why do you keep that print of yours in a Freeport, if it isn’t worth much?” she asked. “It must cost an arm and a leg storing it in there.”

  Was this something he wanted to share with Rose? She might run off and relay it all to Walter, he supposed, but then Walter already knew.

  “My parents passed it to me. I don’t know why. I can’t think of any particular reason why they would bequeath that print to me in particular.”

  “And Grom has one just like it? How similar are they?”

  “Very similar. Made by the same artist and probably the same printer.”

  “What does that mean, Fair
child?”

  “I’ve absolutely no idea.”

  “You need to investigate that. Put them both in front of an expert.”

  “Yes, that idea had occurred to me. Two slight problems, though. One of the pieces has just been filched.”

  “All the more reason for you to get on the tail of these robbers.”

  “And the other doesn’t belong to me.”

  “The one upstairs? Take it. Grom probably stole it himself. The guy’s a thief on a grand scale. Besides, it’ll take him ages to find out. He’s not about to show up here.”

  He’d already had the same idea. In some ways, he and Rose did think alike.

  The two youngsters reappeared. Rose and Fairchild made some arrangements for staying in touch. After they’d all gone, Fairchild went back to the guest bedroom, removed the print, rolled it and stashed the frame in an empty cupboard. He took one last look around the sumptuous apartment, MI6 now recording every whisper, and left.

  He wouldn’t come back here again.

  Chapter 27

  Pippin was lying in bed staring at the ceiling when Gustave hammered on the door below. A quick shouted conversation seemed enough for Mme Boucher to let him up the stairs. But maybe he’d managed to get his gun back and was waving it about. Pippin didn’t move. If Gustave was going to shoot him, he’d prefer to be comfortable while dying. He tried to still his heart. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know this would happen. He had to steel himself and get through it; he had no choice. But even so, when the door flew open, his gut did a somersault. He stared up at the fury and angst that was Gustave’s face.

  He saw surprise there too. Despite the dramatic entrance, Gustave wasn’t expecting him to be there. Pippin had hoped not to be there, but it didn’t work out that way.

  “You think you’re such a clever little operator, don’t you?” Gustave said. “Did you really think you’d get away with it, you and Henri? I should have shot both of you.”

  He filled the tiny room, but he wasn’t, as he had been in all Pippin’s imaginings of this moment, carrying a gun. Pippin didn’t respond. Gustave sat on the chair, just as he’d done the first time he’d barged his way in there.