The Colours: A spy thriller packed with intrigue and deception

by T. M. Parris

  Anyway, this skipper had a lot to do. She went off and came back in a taxi, laden down with groceries, frozen food, ice cubes, a few bottles. She spent some time on deck checking the rigging then called in at the chandlery shop, which was open late. She spent a lot of money in there, the dock attendant was told. Paid cash, too, which was interesting. Flares, lifejackets, spare halyards, motor parts, cleats, pins and screws: she knew what she was asking for all right. She browsed as well, asking a lot of questions about auto pilot kits, self-steering and winches. Single-handed was an interest, she said, but for the next stretch a crew would be good, if anyone could be found at short notice? The dock attendant’s friend at the chandlery shop knew exactly which bars she could still find the yachties in, even this late. And that was where she went later on, asking around herself to see who might be up for a two or three day trip. It was pretty last-minute, but others had done it before and she was easy-going. With a smile like that she’d probably have a choice. She didn’t seem short of money either. Probably a story behind that. There usually was.

  Word spread quickly in a port like this. By the time the quayside restaurants were closing their doors and the lights were going out in the boats moored across the bay, plenty of folk in Ajaccio had heard about the Ocean Joy and its interesting young skipper.

  Chapter 57

  A reinforced metal gate with video intercom greeted the Russian motorcade. The gates swung open to let them all through. Inside, two armed guards stood on either side of the gate. Rose spotted others in the grounds, though it was dark by that time. They’d been travelling for no more than an hour. At the top of a driveway, steps led up to an imposing door ranked with classical-style white columns, reminding her of the extravagant Moscow dachas owned by Russia’s super-rich, but this seemed more genuine somehow, and not fake like the hotel they’d just come from. Either it was a Kremlin safe house or this was Grom’s luxury villa recently appropriated by the Russian state.

  Four cars, four prisoners. Grom was in the first car, Rose in the last. They marched Grom inside. He looked slight between his two captors, with his white hair and shorter frame. Grom’s two men were also led inside, the injured one half-carried, and taken down steps into a cellar. Rose too. She didn’t resist. There were too many men with guns for that.

  The door clanged shut behind them all. Was it some kind of bunker or panic room? The door was certainly fortified. It was pitch black. The two bodyguards were muttering to each other in Russian, trying to find a light switch but failing. Their captives would have no reason to think that Rose wasn’t part of Grom’s entourage. The men gave up on the light and sat or lay on the floor. Rose was about to do the same when she heard movement from further within the room. They weren’t alone.

  “Who’s there?” she called, in Russian.

  No answer, but, straining to hear, she could make out laboured breathing. Then, a thin voice, but a voice she knew straight away, though the answer was short and also in Russian.

  “I am.”

  Alastair! Her old university friend and MI6 fellow officer. She could have called out his name with the joy of recognition and relief, but didn’t know what Grom’s posse would make of it. She felt with her hands.

  “Where are you?” she whispered in English.

  “Here. I’m here.”

  God, he was weak. What had they done to him? On hands and knees she moved towards the faint voice, feeling along the cold concrete floor. She touched part of a body, then a hand came towards hers and held it. They stayed motionless in the dark for several seconds, just gripping hands.

  “Pippin?” said Rose, using what she now knew was Alastair’s cover name.

  “More or less.”

  Alastair answered in French. Consistent with his cover, and also the least likely Grom’s Russian goons would understand, though there was no guarantee of that.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Special project. How long have you been down here?”

  “Hours. They – think I know where the painting is. You know about that?”

  “Oh yes, I know about that.”

  “I told them where I put it, but they’re saying it’s not there.”

  “It’s not.”

  Alastair stiffened. “You found it?”

  “We realised Pippin was you. I got to thinking about where you might hide it. And Vincent’s letters were in your room. We go back a long way, Alastair.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry. Sounds like I got you into a lot of hot water.”

  “You weren’t to know. Where is it now?”

  She hesitated. “Not far from here.” Her backpack suddenly felt heavy. No one had searched her: too focused on Grom himself, maybe. If it had to be, it could be their way out of here.

  “You’re here working for the French, right?” she asked. That much she’d learned via Walter.

  “Yes. It was all about Gustave. One of the thieves. They thought he was dangerous because of some group he was mixed up with in Paris. But he was just – I tried to tell them…”

  His voice faded.

  “Take it easy,” said Rose. “Are you badly injured?”

  “That bastard broke my leg! Christ.”

  “Who?”

  “Clem. The other robber, the driver. He’s working with the Russians. He’s the one they should have been worried about.”

  Rose was piecing it all together in her head.

  “Why didn’t you just walk away after you stashed the painting? Tell them where to go?”

  A pause, then:

  “My handler. I spotted her meeting secretly with someone. She was compromised. I thought with Russia but didn’t have any proof.”

  “That’s why you didn’t tell her where you hid the painting?”

  “Yes, and that’s why I came back. I needed evidence.”

  “And?”

  He guided her hand to a pocket on the front of his shirt.

  “I hope it’s still there. It’s sewn into a fold. But they shoved me about pretty hard.”

  Rose felt around, rubbing the material through her fingers. It was damp and clammy, with sweat or with blood she couldn’t tell. Her fingers found something that felt like a spare button.

  “That’s it?”

  Amazing how tiny a listening device could be. Alastair was always up to speed with the latest gadgets.

  “That’s it.”

  “It’s a recording?”

  “If it worked okay. It should have picked up a conversation I had with Clem, earlier today. Take it.” His grip on her hand tightened.

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere. You take it. You’re in much better shape than I am.”

  “Pippin, we’re both going to walk out of here,” she said with what she hoped was calm determination.

  “Rose, I’m not walking anywhere. You should see what he did to my leg. And that’s not all. Take the thing. Don’t let this be for nothing.”

  His voice almost broke; he was close to tears. Now Rose understood. Alastair, vulnerable under cover, couldn’t trust his handler but went back in despite the danger, to gather proof that she was selling secrets. Then he couldn’t get away because she, Rose, had taken the painting. He’d paid a huge price and Rose was partly to blame.

  Rose had to use both hands and tear the material to get the device off his shirt. God knows what Grom’s men thought was going on over here. She pocketed it.

  “Okay, maybe not walk,” she said. “But we’re getting out of here. I have some collateral, you see. Something to bargain with.”

  “You know where the portrait is.”

  “Yes, and I’ll tell them if it means we walk free. Besides, better that it’s going to the Russians than Grom.”

  “Grom? You mean Khovansky?”

  Alastair would only know what had been said publicly about him.

  “Yes. I’ve been tracking him for the past six months. Long story. Anyway, the good news is that he’s now upstairs, captive
of the Russians.”

  “And the bad news?”

  “He has a pretty good idea where the painting is as well.”

  “But he won’t tell them, will he?”

  That was an interesting one. If Grom figured out that Rose picked up the backpack, would he prefer Rose to have the painting than see it fall into the hands of the Kremlin?

  “I really don’t know,” she said.

  Chapter 58

  It was impossible to keep track of time in that pitch black cellar. It could have been hours, it could have been shorter. Grom’s two men were silent. Alastair drifted in and out of sleep. He was in a bad way. But he was still thinking like Alastair. At one point he whispered her nearer.

  “When they had me strung up in the kitchen,” he said, “I was looking around to try and distract myself. You know they have smoke alarms in every room up there.”

  “Really?” That wasn’t unusual, but it was the thought behind it that interested Rose.

  “You know, not all of Gustave’s ideas were crazy,” he said.

  Rose knew what he meant. A distraction, like a fire, might provide a means of escape, activating those smoke alarms.

  “What can you remember about the layout up there?” she asked.

  Alastair gave her a pretty detailed schema of how the rooms on the ground floor interconnected. The training they both did was paying off. Then he sank into silence again. Rose got to thinking about how this could be achieved. She had nothing flammable on her and neither did Alastair, but Grom’s people might. They were both smokers, she’d already noticed.

  She shifted over to them.

  “Hey! Do either of you have a light?” She spoke to them in Russian.

  Silence.

  “I mean, matches or a cigarette lighter,” she said brightly.

  “What do you want that for?” one of them asked.

  “To get the hell out of here.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind how. Do you have something?”

  A long pause, then: “Too late for him. He’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  “This guy. The one lying here. They shot him in the helicopter. Now he’s gone.”

  Rose couldn’t see a thing but imagined the guy talking, sitting there in the dark with a dead body slumped next to him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She waited. Eventually he spoke again, his voice flat.

  “Why should I help you?”

  “You want to get out too, right? We all do. So give me the lighter and maybe it’ll work out. What do you have to lose?”

  Another pause, then a rustle and a clatter as he sent a cheap plastic lighter across the floor to her. She put it in her pocket.

  “Stay ready.”

  “What for?”

  Rose didn’t reply, and went back to sit over with Alastair, who now seemed to be sleeping or unconscious. If they spent much more time stuck down here, he’d go the same way as Grom’s guy. How could she get the attention of their captors?

  As if answering her prayers, the cellar door clanged as someone turned a key in the lock. The door swung open. Beside her, Alastair jerked into consciousness. Light flooded down the steps behind the man who stood in the doorway, turning him into a huge silhouette. Rose heard Alastair take a sharp breath. The man was enormous with a shaved head and some serious muscle. He shone a torch round, resting its beam on each of them in turn as they sat blinking in the sudden light.

  “You.” He pointed to Rose. “You come with me.” He was speaking French.

  The language and Alastair’s reaction told her that this must be Clem. She got up.

  “Why me? What’s this about? You know I’m not one of Khovansky’s lackeys. I just got caught up in this.”

  “Never mind. You’re coming with me.”

  While Rose was talking, she managed to get the backpack on without drawing attention to it. She wanted it with her. It could be their passport out of there.

  Clem led the way. Odd that he came for her on his own when the place was crawling with Russians. But it gave her the chance she needed. With Alastair’s description fully in her mind, as soon as they got up the steps she darted back, off into another room. Clem turned and sprinted after her instantly. She was already through another door before he got there. She hung around behind the next door as he went straight ahead. She double-backed. What she wanted was half a minute in the kitchen, which Alastair remembered with extraordinary detail, without Clem knowing she’d even been in there.

  Why didn’t Clem shout out for help? Alastair was sure he was with the Russians but he didn’t seem to want their assistance. Never mind: it was better for her.

  In the kitchen she turned one of the huge ovens right up to the highest setting and put the cigarette lighter inside. She stuffed the oven with whatever she could find that would burn: towels, pages from a recipe book. On the hob she turned on the gas without lighting it. Then she ran through to the front of the house, discarding the backpack and throwing it into a corner.

  It worked. Clem grabbed her as she made towards the front door.

  “Do that again and I’ll break your jaw.”

  He gripped her wrists behind her back and shoved her forward into a large room full of parlour furniture. On a variety of elegant soft furnishings sat Grom and some unamused Russians. It took her a moment to realise that Grom’s hands were tied behind his back and his ankles bound to the legs of his chair. Other than that he looked relaxed and in control.

  A particularly annoyed-looking Russian addressed Clem in French.

  “Why you bring her? We wanted to talk to others.”

  “That was my idea, I have to admit,” said Grom smoothly in Russian. “I actually think that Rose here might have the best insight into the whereabouts of the painting.” He turned to Clem.

  “What was the scuffle? Did she try to escape?”

  That was in French.

  “It’s fine,” was Clem’s short response.

  Grom looked directly at Rose. “I’m right, aren’t I?” Now he was speaking English. “You were the last person off the helicopter. You know where the painting is. The question is, what price do you want for it?”

  Rose then understood why Grom was sitting there as if he were holding court. He was a fluent speaker of English, French and Russian, like herself. Clem spoke only French. The Russians’ grasp of English and French was limited. Clem may be working with the Russians, but Grom was doing all he could to turn them against each other. From the body language in the room it seemed to be working.

  Now Grom addressed the Russians.

  “She knows where the painting is. She was the last person to see it.”

  They didn’t look impressed.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “Work it out for yourselves. It wasn’t on the helicopter, was it? So someone must have carried it off. She was the last one off, apart from you.”

  “She’s one of yours,” said a Russian. “Just make her tell you.”

  “Oh, she’s not one of mine,” said Grom. “Far from it. She’s a British spy. Sent here to try and get the painting off me. She’s unlikely to want you to have it either.”

  He made a sudden switch into French, which he spoke too quickly and quietly for the Russians to follow.

  “Did you see a backpack anywhere? It must be in the house. She brought it here. She’s hidden it somewhere.”

  Clem’s face didn’t change.

  “I’m giving you a chance to get it first,” Grom said, more urgently. “Go look for it! Now!”

  “Enough! Enough!” One of the Russians interrupted this flow. “You stop talking to him. You talk to us. You’re our prisoner. Our property. You tell her to tell us where it is.”

  Something could happen in the kitchen any second. The longer this confrontation went on, the more chance it had to build up into something big. Grom looked at the Russians with no sign of fear or defiance.

  “You’d better tell her yourse
lf. She isn’t going to listen to me.”

  The Russians turned to each other. If her kitchen stunt didn’t work, she was headed for an interrogation session like Alastair’s. But just then, what she’d been waiting for finally happened.

  The explosion was loud enough to make everyone jump. The Russians were on their feet. Tinkling glass, then a deep roaring. Two of them ran out. Grom was looking at her, a curious smile on his face.

  “What have you done, Rose?”

  Rose looked blank.

  The smoke alarms went off, a deafening clanging. The remaining Russians ran out, leaving her, Grom and Clem together. Rose looked up to the ceiling.

  “Do they have sprinklers in this place?” she asked innocently, in English.

  Grom’s face changed. Clem was still standing there.

  “Go! The backpack! Find the thing before it gets ruined!” Grom shouted in French.

  Still Clem didn’t move.

  “What are you doing! Go and get it! It’s in the house, I’m telling you! It’ll end up burned, or soaked! I said I’ll give you a cut, just get the thing before it’s destroyed!”

  Clem remained. He didn’t trust either of them enough to leave them on their own. Or else he didn’t take kindly to being shouted out. Impossible to tell which. His face had no expression.

  “I’ll tell you where it is if you get me and Pippin out of here,” said Rose, in French.

  “Who the hell is Pippin?” said Grom.

  “One of the thieves. He’s in the cellar. He’s injured. Clem here broke his leg.”

  Clem didn’t seem repentant.

  “What’s so special about him?” asked Grom.