The Colours: A spy thriller packed with intrigue and deception

by T. M. Parris

  “So you see,” she said, “it’s really in your interests that nothing bad happens to me. Think about that when the questions start coming from those clients. Maybe the discrepancies could be written off as – administrative errors.”

  Of course Bernard would have to stump up the money to rectify these so-called errors. That was his problem. Zoe had always suspected her boss secretly had a pretty high net worth himself. And if it weren’t enough he could borrow, couldn’t he? He was a banker after all.

  The restaurant was almost empty. She should be getting back to the yacht. She stood. He barely registered.

  “Well, goodbye, Monsieur,” she said politely. “I’ll be in touch. Let’s both try and stay safe, shall we?”

  He sat, still as a statue, as she walked out of the restaurant.

  Chapter 48

  It was, Rose admitted to herself, not much more than a hunch which caused her to get on a train to Arles. Very similar to the hunch which took Fairchild to Marseille. It turned out he was right, though. She hoped she was too, as to say the team was stretched would be an understatement. Ollie and Yvonne were in Monaco trying to cover the penthouse building, the super-yacht and as much of the bank as they could. As time went by it became less and less likely they’d catch up with Zoe, and they urgently needed to focus more on their prime target. Grom was what this was all about, and that was why Rose was in Arles. But she wasn’t ready to give up on Zoe just yet, so she came alone. And besides, this was only a hunch.

  Rose was keeping Walter reasonably up to date. He knew about their missing informant, and he knew about Grom’s unexpected presence in Monaco. He’d also come back and confirmed what Rose had already realised about the mysterious Pippin. But what to do about it? This started as a search for one man and his wealth. Now they were trying to find three different people: Grom, Pippin and Zoe. And Rose hadn’t yet told Walter that she’d ejected Fairchild from the team. She had no regrets, but Walter wouldn’t see it her way. In her last briefing she was circumspect about who was where, and avoided the topic of Fairchild completely. Walter also didn’t know about the moped rider or the man in the red shirt, a matter which had by necessity been shoved to the bottom of the pile.

  So why, if they were so short of people, was Rose in Arles? This had to do with a big unanswered question: where was Grom’s painting? Police reports confirmed it wasn’t part of the stash on Gustave’s bonfire. Somewhere between the Freeport and Marseille it had gone missing. It could only have been taken by one of the thieves. In Gustave’s care it would have ended up in flames. The driver could have taken it. Would he have known what to do with it? And then were was Pippin. Pippin, who had the Letters of Van Gogh in his room. What if he got his hands on it? Knowing what she knew now, that idea opened a whole new raft of possibilities.

  Hiding something valuable didn’t necessarily mean locking it up. It could simply mean putting it somewhere no one would think of looking. Except maybe someone who knew you very well. Thinking afresh about motivations and where they might lead, weighing up all the options, that was what had sent Rose to Arles.

  She started with the Yellow House, Van Gogh’s own name for his home here, which he dreamed of turning into an artist’s colony. The Yellow House didn’t exist any more, having been bombed accidentally by the Allies during the Second World War. An irony that seemed to sit nicely with the constant misfiring and self-destruction that marked Van Gogh’s life. Rose was hoping there’d be something here, a memorial, a token, a wall or building of some kind. But no. It was, disappointingly, just a piece of green space in the middle of a traffic roundabout.

  Where else? In her head Rose saw a painting of a cafe with tables outside under a night sky filled with luminous stars. And another of a late-night bar, people sitting alone in a dimly-lit room. But there was also the hospital, with its cloistered garden, a place of recovery for the troubled artist. She went there next. As she’d expected, tourists thronged the yellow arches. The information boards showed Van Gogh’s paintings of the garden. You could tell, more or less, where he’d been when he painted them – in an upstairs room. Upstairs was closed to the public. No matter.

  Rose made a number of circuits of the garden to check out the most likely-looking doors. Upstairs was some kind of staffing area, the entrances protected by a combination code. She could, if she stayed in the right place, observe someone punching it in, but it was a tiny place and not much traffic came through at all. In the end she got lucky. A staff member breezed out at some pace and let the door close behind them, except that it didn’t quite click to, and Rose could saunter up and push it open.

  She crept upstairs and found offices and storage rooms, random furniture and objects. What a waste. As she worked her way silently round the upper floor, she didn’t encounter anyone. The historic spot where Van Gogh must have been when he painted the garden was marked by desks, boxes and shelves. She started rifling through them.

  Voices approached. She ducked down behind a desk and two people chatting walked straight past. She waited until they had gone then continued searching, not really knowing what it would look like but confident she’d recognise it when she found it.

  And she did. In the bottom of a deep musty-smelling drawer she caught sight of something older and rougher that didn’t belong. Nestled within tubes of paper was a rolled canvas, smaller than she’d expected. She picked it up.

  He’d brought it home. He’d brought the thing the closest place to home he could think of. What Rose didn’t know was whether he expected someone to find it. Or was he hoping this would be some kind of final resting place?

  She wouldn’t risk causing damage by unrolling it; this was definitely the portrait. She stowed it in her bag and left. Now back to Grom, back to Zoe. She tried to enjoy the walk through the historic town centre without thinking about what was stashed in her backpack. But she felt her neck prickling. That sophisticated internal warning system was clanging, telling her something was wrong. An instinct so deep she couldn’t pinpoint what had set it off.

  She quickened her pace through the narrow lanes. Walking fast down a long straight road she made a sudden turn into a smaller side street. She was at a disadvantage; she wasn’t expecting this and didn’t know the town. She got out her phone and called up a map, but doing this on the fly was difficult. She stopped abruptly next to a tourist trinket shop, glanced in the window and looked back. A guy walking along, hands in his pockets, stopped just after she had. He didn’t look at her. He was fumbling in his pockets, as if his phone had just gone off. But then she saw his lips move. She went cold. That guy wasn’t alone.

  She glanced the other way. Clear so far, from what she could tell. She set off and hung a left, checking she was still heading towards the train station. The street bent round ahead of her. Behind, she knew the guy was there. He wasn’t exactly subtle. He had Russian secret service written all over him. They didn’t have to be subtle. There wasn’t much they needed to be afraid of.

  She turned a corner and a man sitting at a table outside a cafe raised his head and looked at her. Her breath caught in her throat. It was the guy on the moped. He turned away, speaking into his phone. Coincidence? No way. It was the same guy, and he’d been looking out for her.

  She could go right or left before she reached the cafe. She checked the map again as she walked. Right would take her up to the amphitheatre, left down to the river. Right was better. But at the next right, she glanced up and a woman walking down towards her caught her eye. She then looked past Rose, but it was too late to disguise the recognition. Rose sped up and carried on. A street on the left was clear; she took it.

  Out of sight of the watchers she broke into a run and darted left then left again to double back on herself. But somehow the first guy was already there, just standing and watching. She turned back the way she came. Now the woman was approaching, no longer trying to hide her interest. Rose turned again and continued down. She needed to loop back but was running out of space. She tried
a right but the street bent round and came out at the cafe where the moped guy was sitting before. He was standing now, waiting for her. And when he saw her, he started out towards her.

  Back down, then, towards the river. It was the only route open to her. And that was when she realised she was being pushed in that direction. The lack of subtlety was deliberate. She was being caught in a trap.

  She could still outrun them, or out-manoeuvre them. She came out on the road by the river. There was no bridge nearby. Her three pursuers emerged behind her. She broke into a sprint along the embankment. Maybe she could break free of them and shout for help, claim it was a mugging.

  A screech of car tyres made her accelerate. Her breath rasped. She was sprinting so hard her legs burned. She was ahead of them all, but they were close enough that she could hear them breathing.

  A black car with tinted windows mounted the kerb in front of her. She dodged but it left no space to get past. Two guys got out. They spread, cutting her off. It was no use. She was trapped. The three watchers came up behind her. She couldn’t get away from them now.

  The back door of the car opened and a man got out. Well dressed, white hair, solidly built, less solid than when she last saw him. More gaunt, more determined. Suddenly Rose had no breath left in her. There was a pause. Everyone waited.

  “Hello, Rose,” said Grom. “Let’s take a ride.”

  Chapter 49

  Fairchild didn’t have to work hard to discover which was Grom’s super-yacht. From the walkway on the level above, he saw two goons standing, arms folded, staring into one of the shiny white giants while their colleagues moved around on board turning the place over. A port official of some kind was standing nearby, nervously talking into a mobile phone. This wasn’t an official search. The Russians were systematically ransacking Grom’s possessions, looking for the portrait, yes, but also just grabbing whatever they could. No sign of Rose’s posse watching here. No sign of Zoe either. If she showed up she’d be in a lot of trouble.

  The proceedings were attracting stares. Fairchild watched briefly, then walked on and called in at the harbourside office of one of Monaco’s premier yacht brokers. He could have browsed in the window, but like a genuinely high-net-worth individual he walked straight in and engaged the sales manager with a set of informed questions that a well-heeled resident new to Monaco might have about the ins and outs of owning one of these boats. The sales manager, a boarding-school-English gentleman with blond hair and a blazer, helped him out for some time before Fairchild steered the conversation where he wanted it.

  “So, the one out there? There seems to be something going on with it. I hate to be indelicate, but it looks like some kind of repossession to me. Maybe someone’s called in the administrators?”

  The manager knew what he meant. “There’s been some speculation about it today. Not on our books, though, that one.”

  “Curious,” said Fairchild. “If it were up for a quick sale, I might be interested. It would need some work but it’s along the lines of what I’m after. I could do with spending the money fast, if you know what I mean.”

  The two salesmen exchanged glances and the other one picked up the phone. “Let me see what I can find out,” he said.

  The blazered salesman showed him brochures of sleek modern craft, and explained the merits of buying an existing yacht versus the preferred current trend of having one purpose-built, until the phone calls yielded something.

  “Apparently it’s changed hands very recently. The owner’s picked up a smaller sailboat at Port de Fontvieille. He must have sold to a dealer. At quite a low price probably, given it was all done in a hurry. Want me to investigate?”

  “What kind of price?” asked Fairchild.

  The broker told him. Some staggering amount.

  “And what about this other craft, the sailboat?”

  Downsizing didn’t sound like Grom. Was he planning some kind of daring escape by sea? Or maybe someone else was.

  “A classic forty-footer, I’m told. Completely different. Not worth anything like the one out there.”

  “And it’s at Fontvieille?” The neighbouring Monaco port. The conversation moved on to the principality’s berthing options and eye-watering fees. Fairchild made his excuses as politely as he could, and left.

  He jumped into a bateau-bus to cross the port, then a taxi round to Fontvieille, the other side of Monaco’s royal palace. It wouldn’t be long before it occurred to the Russians to do a bit of research on top of old-fashioned looting and intimidation. They could have done that already and be there right now, but their focus still seemed to be very much on the dumped super-yacht. At the other port he scanned for traditional forty-foot sailboats. He didn’t know what, or who, to expect when he found it. So it was relief he felt when he caught sight of an athletic, dark-skinned figure busy on the deck of a classic wooden yacht named Ocean Joy.

  He was only just in time. She was coiling the last rope just as he got there.

  “So you know your way around a yacht, then?” he called out, trying to sound casual.

  Zoe looked up. She was alert, pre-occupied. When she saw Fairchild she glanced around, watchful.

  “I know enough.”

  The sun was behind her. Fairchild had to shield his eyes to look up at her. Why was he so nervous? In this state of mind everything seemed to get to him.

  “Where’s your crew?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “You’re going single-handed?”

  Impressive, or foolhardy, one or the other.

  “There’s no one I can take. Not on this journey.” For the first time he heard some stress in her voice.

  “It’s quite a journey, too,” he said.

  “You don’t know where I’m going.”

  “I don’t mean where in the world. I mean the path you’ve chosen. They’ll be after you, Zoe. You’re ahead of them now. Do you know how to stay ahead?”

  She looked at him calmly. She knew the situation she was in, what she was doing. For now.

  “You’ve done well getting this far,” he said. “The Russians are on board the other yacht right now, pulling it apart. They’ll pull you apart if they find you. Did you know that Yunayev is in Monaco?”

  She stared. That was news to her. But she recovered herself.

  “Well, I’m not intending to stay.”

  “Good.”

  She was doing the right thing, thankfully. Rose had burned a hole in him with her words, shown him a picture of himself that he hated, though recognised. It was over, that much was clear. Whatever was between them, from her side a grudging need, from his a deep unwanted obsession, she had brought a stop to it, and the rising waters of panic, the fear that froze him, feeling the emptiness that would be left after she were gone from his life, that was for him to deal with. Probably a good thing, anyway, he’d told himself a thousand times. It was unhealthy for both of them.

  Rose was right; the world was big and there were plenty of places he could go to be away from her. He should have left already but couldn’t simply walk out without trying to make things right. He needed to reinvent himself and come to terms with an existence that didn’t include Rose. He also had to make sure, as far as he was able, that Zoe was okay. Standing on that jetty it suddenly came to him that he could do both at once.

  “Take me with you,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. He could hear the neediness in his own voice. He tried to skate over it.

  “I can help you. I can give you the skills you need to survive. The contacts. If this is really what you choose, this life. And besides, it sounds like you could do with a crew.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to?”

  “Because – I owe it to someone.”

  “Who? Why?”

  Direct questions, but he had no direct answers. Guilt, shame, self-loathing, a need to make amends, get at least one small piece of all this right, even if the rest of it were so grubby and wrong. And then the idea, b
orn in that moment, seeing Zoe standing barefoot on the deck, the sun behind her, the sleek hull below representing escape and cutting through the waves and the wideness of the ocean, that this might be how he could disappear, get away from this crushing angst and be somewhere else.

  “I like you,” he said. “You’ve got style. You’re good. But you’re not good enough, not without help. I don’t want to see you a few days from now washed ashore with a bullet in your head. Those people, Zoe, they’re not going to give up. You’ve outsmarted them better than most people could have done. But there are things you need to know. People you need to know. I can help you.”

  He was repeating himself. She was listening, not just to his words but his tone, what he wasn’t saying.

  “Why else?” she asked. “Why do this for me? You don’t owe me anything.”

  He could try the truth. It didn’t hurt every now and then.

  “I need to get away from here. It’s gone wrong for me here. I just need to leave. I need to leave now. Will you take me?”

  She thought for a few more seconds then nodded him on board.

  With a slow motor they edged out of the marina into the open water. She got him to work straight away. She was competent and could have managed alone, but he knew enough about yachts to make himself useful. She set sail as soon as she could, running south east with a solid breeze behind them, the sun sparkling on the surface of the waves.

  In a short while, Monaco was visible no more.

  Chapter 50

  Pippin had nothing left now, no more reserves. Pippin was becoming undone, fraying at the edges, blurring and smudging and cracking. He couldn’t stop crying. The heat of the flame, the blistering of paint, the splintering of canvas played in his head over and over again. A silhouette of a stranger walking away. Gustave, falling back, blood spray catching in the firelight.

  After they left the sirens behind, Clem kept going, out of the city and further still. A sudden lurch and they were bumping violently like they were driving over rough ground. They stopped. It was quiet. When Clem opened the van door, Pippin could see nothing behind the man’s shoulders, no lights or shapes.