by John Gardner
Traitor’s Exit
John Gardner
Copyright © John Gardner 2014
The right of John Gardner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1970 by Frederick Muller Ltd.
This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
To Geoffrey Piper
With gratitude
“Burgess was introduced to Mrs Maclean as ‘Styles’; she had not met him before, she said.”
The Great Spy Scandal: Research by Donald Seaman, Ed. John S. Mather.
‘I admit that I have known Communists.’
Kim Philby
“Exit pursued by a bear.”
Stage direction from The Winter’s Tale: William Shakespeare
Table of Contents
Chapter One — So Set ‘Em Up Joe
Chapter Two — Have You Ever Heard Mission Bells Ringing?
Chapter Three — Come Fly With Me
Chapter Five — Last Night When We Were Young
Chapter Six — I Said To Myself This Affair Never Will Go So Well
Chapter Seven — Sometimes I Think That I’m On The Right Track
Chapter Nine — A Day In The Life Of A Fool
Chapter Ten — My Way
Chapter Eleven — In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning
Chapter Thirteen — Where Or When
Extract from The Secret Houses by John Gardner
Chapter One — So Set ‘Em Up Joe
‘ “Stuff your bird.”
‘ “That’s what I’m trying to do,” said Tony.’ I read aloud.
‘What sort of crap is this, David? Whose little masterpiece are you hawking about now?’
David Plume was my agent — literary as opposed to provocateur, secret, house or theatrical.
‘Put it down, Rex. You wouldn’t go into your bank manager’s office and start ferreting through other people’s statements.’
‘That’s the trouble. I daren’t even talk to my bank manager on the phone and…’
He took the manuscript from me, holding it like the Holy Grail. ‘If you really want to know, this is a winner. The genuine article. A first novel by a boy only half your age and, to be truthful, it has more commercial and literary potential than anything you’ve written for the past four years.’
The word literary hurt, but it was the half your age that stuck. If there was one thing that made me see crimson it was the age bit. Like David’s junior partner, the whizz kid he’d just brought into the agency, who’d said, ‘Rex. Loved your last book, you must be getting randy late in life. The sex in it. Kee-rist.’
‘How old do you think I am, for Pete’s sake?’
‘You’re forty, aren’t you?’ He must have been every bit of twenty-six and you know it all then.
So you’re past it at forty? So what do they think happens? You suddenly go soft the night before your birthday and the glands fold up on you while you scream for rebirth? To them it’s like the only thing that mattered in life. There’s a whole heap of stuff more…Isn’t there?
Anyway, David put the manuscript back on the desk, and I remembered the times when he handled my manuscripts like that.
‘Sit down,’ he said, the anger fading. ‘We’ve got to talk.’
‘You’re telling me we’ve got to talk.’
‘Now don’t take that attitude. I’ll tell you what I’ve got going. It’s not much but there are some irons in the fire.’
‘Irons! I want alchemy, David. Irons I don’t want. Gold I need.’
He fixed me with that come-on-old-boy-don’t-let-it-get-you-down look. ‘Rex, you know the fairy tales don’t always have happy endings.’
‘There’s no need to rub it in. I know Gascoigne Close wasn’t as good as it should’ve been.’
Gascoigne Close was my fifth book in the series. Five years. Half a decade and five books. Garbage all of them. Superior garbage mind you, no fish heads unless they were Harrods’ best salmon. Gascoigne had started as a joke. The big spy boom was on. You remember that? The time when every second publication was a spy book, and if they’d laid all the secret agents end to end nobody would have been surprised.
Anyone who could write got on the bandwagon. There were blind spies, spies stoned, spies sexy, nervous, queer, transvestite. Most of it was a load of old horsefeathers, but one or two of us seemed to break through and hit the market. My boy Gascoigne was one of them. No gimmicks or laughs. Just straight, fast suspense writing.
You had to have all the ingredients, mind. Gascoigne got thumped in the crotch now and again, just for a diversion, or slashed at with a Samurai sword whilst balanced on a two inch plank over a pool of Piranha fish. Nothing fancy.
Every twenty pages he had to get into some girl’s knickers, but even that was done with taste. Not like some of them who hoisted themselves on and off without so much as a by your leave.
I wrote Gascoigne First every night after work for four weeks, then finally stuck the whole lot into an envelope and sent it off to David Plume whom I’d met while covering one of the many social shindigs for the capitalist rag that paid me coin of the realm for doing just that.
The wheel started spinning like it was never going to stop. David was doing the dealing and we had the movie rights sold, publication in ten countries (an American publisher paid all of twenty grand in dollars) and I was up to my arse in loot.
You don’t need a degree in economics to work out the rest. I did Gascoigne, Freedom, Gascoigne: Berlin and Gascoigne Comes standing on my head with one hand on the nearest available and the other on the I.B.M. typewriter. Instant success, like it came in cans with free gift wrappers you just send in for more.
Then they finally did the movie of Gascoigne First with Roy Buster as Gascoigne. You remember Roy Buster? You’re lucky. There’s a guy to be remembered for the egg on his face. Gascoigne First the sexational spy movie of the year, starring Roy Buster and Madeline Spry (and she was, folks, I still have the scars to prove it). Directed by…Oh what the hell, it died the death. But this crummy producer still thought he could turn out movies from my books. And who am I to argue? He bought options on Gascoigne Comes, Gascoigne: Berlin and Gascoigne, Freedom.
Options he bought. And that’s the funny thing about the movie business. People can buy options on your words, but there’s this clause in the small print that says you’re going to get a bundle of money when they make the movie. So thinking the great general public can’t live without your movies, you go out and buy the world. But, while you’re carving up the West End with an American Express card the producers are thinking to themselves, this is a book that should never have happened. Sure enough, nothing happens. Then the credit companies, bank managers and finance folk get cold bowels and, worst of all, you find that the words are not making beautiful patterns any more, while the publishers become less amicable.
I should have used a magnifying glass on those contracts before stepping out into the cold hard world. Gascoigne. Created by Rex Upsdale, supershit who turned all that lovely money into creaking beds and empty bottles.
That’s why I got mad. And that’s why David was angry with me.
‘You’ll just have to hang on, Rex. Finish the book and hang on. In the meantime I’ll do my best for you with what we’ve got.’
The flat was like a public convenience after a dysentery epidemic, mainly because I had not had any of my harem up for a couple of weeks. The reason for that was the same as all the other reasons. Financial palsy. Birds, as you, dear reader, will already know, do not, under normal circumstances, offer their wares, plus the privilege of cleaning the flat and washing the dishes, unless you fill
their smooth little stomachs with expensive delicacies first, to the accompaniment of soft lights and sweet music. I couldn’t even afford the Musak and strip lights of Chez Wimpy. Maybe for younger muscle the girls will do it…But let’s not get on that kick again.
It was lunchtime and the larder did not bulge with ingredients fit for Robert Carrier, so I settled for a small glass of rheumatism mixture.
I had left the bills unopened that morning. They were all repeat orders anyway. Yet there was one letter that looked interesting. It was. A cheque for fifteen guineas: the kind I was wont to use for paper spills in the good old days.
This was payment for a special assignment. About a month before, my old chum Richard Grimsdyke, editor of Bookpeople, had telephoned.
‘Rex,’ he chanted. ‘Do me a favour?’
‘Depends. Long time no hear.’ We are full of the chatty wit-strung dialogue us literary gents, you know.
‘There’s a pretty spectacular book Putney Press’ve got coming in April.’
‘Pretty from Putney Press?’
He ignored me, quite rightly.
‘It’s about Kit Styles.’
‘Book of the month? Pulitzer Prize?’
‘Ha-ha-ha.’ That was his insincere laugh. ‘Well, Book of the Month, yes probably. Seeing as how you are an expert I thought it might add a bit of weight if you reviewed it.’
Now that was the real old come on. What he meant was, we’ve tried Len and J le C and they won’t cough, so we’re landed with handing the cookies in your direction.
‘How much?’ I asked him, trying not to let the lean and hungry £ signs get into my voice.
‘The usual rate’s ten. Guineas that is.’
‘Naturally, but I don’t think my agent…’
‘But for you,’ said Grimsdyke. ‘We’ll make it fifteen and do the deal direct. Let’s forget about your agent.’
‘Let’s do that. Shoot the words to me chum, quick as you like.’
An uncorrected proof copy arrived on the following afternoon and I began to read. It’s easier than writing anyway.
Like everybody else I had heard of Kit Styles and knew the rough outline, but I’d never bothered with the details. This book was written by an uncommonly smart professor who had done a mountain of research. What I read made my gorge rise, and the rising of my gorge is something to be seen.
Normally I do not get uncontrollably angry. A little out of sorts with the Prime Minister or the jolly Chancellor of the Exchequer, maybe, but that’s only natural. My philosophy is that while governments wax and wane the system remains unchanged because the Civil Service is behind the whole thing. Only occasionally do I find myself warming up under the Van Heusen detachable. But what I read about Comrade Styles set me blasting off in all directions.
Well the Kit Styles’ book is out now, not to mention around sixty-four other pamphlets, pot boilers and thick volumes on the subject. So you all know about Kit Styles. If you haven’t read all the books then you’ve just got to have seen it in the posh Sunday heavies. That is unless you only buy the posh Sunday heavies to impress your neighbours.
Some people do that. Others have more weird ideas.
Styles was the largest traitor of the Cold War and we handed him everything on a plate. A silver plated plate. And why? Because he went to the right academy for young gents and the right university. His papa was a baronet and that helped. In short, Styles had class. He was also, as they seem to have the cliched habit of saying, a product of the thirties, which makes him sound like pottery alsatians and dancing ladies, or Miss G. Fields and that vomity interior decor which still persists in some provincial movie houses.
When Kit went up to Cambridge he got hit hard by the let’s-fight-for-equality doctrine that the Commies were spreading around at the time. Burgess and Maclean got themselves munched by the same bug, probably in the company of young Styles. In any case all their crowd were young and intelligent and here was this great big world opening up, so they rebelled.
Nowadays when you want to rebel there are more openings. You can smoke pot, join the latest craze — which may be wearing flowers in your hair — go to San Francisco, demonstrate for mixed lavatories, heave bottles at football matches and all that kind of swinging mother-loving jazz that’s part of the trendy scene of living.
Anyhow, Kit Styles was a member of the party even at his old alma mater. Then he dropped out of sight, turning up again at the start of World War II with…guess what? Prizes for the gentleman with the wart on his pecker and the lady with the dimpled boobs. You guessed right. Kit turned up with a job in intelligence.
As the war progressed, so did Kit. He graduated on the old boy network to what they used to call Special Intelligence. By the time the Axis were laying down their arms and the combined might of the United States, Russia and Britain were simply laying, Kit Styles had settled himself neatly into a snug nook in our security service.
That was one of the things that made my red and white corpuscles simmer. The ease with which Styles infiltrated, or, if you’ll excuse the crudity, penetrated our espionage system. Think of all that juice and gravy he was able to send back to the faceless fur-hats in the Kremlin.
And while we were out catching the small fry and letting other folk defect, Kit sat there, untouchable and trusted. We even sent him into the field. Turkey and Washington. Actually, now it can be told, it was Washington and the custard pie merchants in the CIA who first rang the bell on Styles.
‘Man, you got spies in your camp,’ they told their British opposite numbers. And their British opposite numbers just stuck the ferrules of their umbrellas up their right nostrils and muttered. ‘Camp, maybe, ducky, but whom could we possibly accuse?’
‘Try Styles for size,’ said the ruthless men from the land of the free, where they drink mint juleps in the odd moments between whopping coloured ladies and gentlemen and being whopped by coloured ladies and gentlemen.
‘Kit?’ said our lads. ‘Dear old Kit who never did anyone a bad turn, except maybe putting a live frog into potty Caruthers’ bed. God what a night that was. You mean to tell us you’re shopping old Kit? Four letter spherical objects to you, dears, and you can stick ‘em just where the old age pensioners stick their immorally earned extra lolly.’
‘Ask him anyway. Just for the laughs,’ said the CIA, downing several quick bourbons on the rocks.
‘Kit?’ they said, very gently, like it was raining cotton-wool haemorrhoid soothers. ‘Kit? You’re not by any chance a horrid Communist agent, are you? I mean we know that in the days of your foolish youth you were a sympathizer. But, well, what we mean is…God it’s so embarrassing, please don’t take it the wrong way.’
And Kit Styles answered, without a blush. ‘Me? Communist? Agent? How dare you. I shall take umbrage — twice daily in water.’ But he nosed a rodent all right, because, in spite of our people patting his head, Comrade Styles went on holiday to Berlin (‘just lookin’ up some old chums in the Embassy, doncher know’) and hopped it smartish over the wall.
About a year after that he stood up in the Kremlin and exposed himself, in the less colourful sense, and let a crack or two of light in on how we lost the Cold War. Hence the spate of words I had spent on traitor Kit Styles.
The piece I turned out for Grimsdyke was, I must admit, even a shade more caustic than James the First’s celebrated assault on tobacco.
When Grimsdyke read the piece he all but snapped his favourite editing pencil. He even called me to say how great it was and that he would not alter a single line and boy had I knocked hell out of Styles and mauled the Establishment.
Upsdale for King. Upsdale the hero. Rex Upsdale, scourge for freedom.
And now they had paid me; which meant that the article was probably published.
I gulped down a mouthful of lunch and heaved myself over to the typewriter for another stint sitting looking at pieces of blank paper. If it went on like this I’d have to wear goggles to protect myself against snow blindness.
/> The doorbell rang about three. I know it was three because I had postponed work at two-thirty in order to go out, cash the cheque and buy a few assorted meagre goodies, like another bottle of Scotch whisky, Tetley tea bags and some of those biscuits which were just like grandma used to make. They weren’t actually because my grandma came from straight non-cookery stock and her biscuits tasted like rancid lard, if you could get to chewing them without cracking a molar on the way through.
I opened the door and there were two men standing there who looked as though they had been built straight from the Pennine Chain. They were both big, only one was bigger than the other. He wore a houndstooth check overcoat. His mate had on a ‘B’ movie belted raincoat. They both wore hats and the sun was shining.
Their appearance did not bode well and I wished that I had stayed out and bought more comestibles.
‘Mr. Upsdale?’ Asked houndstooth check.
‘Which Mr. Upsdale do you require?’ I do not believe in disclosing my identity to the first Thomas, Richard or Harold who comes ringing my bell. I figure that the that-must-be-my-twin-brother technique is not quite dead. Certainly you might be able to ward off trouble with it for an hour or two before the credibility gap sets in.
‘Mr. Rex Upsdale,’ said the other with a certain firmness. It was the kind of authority I had observed when one of those characters in blue with a helmet tells you your driving is below par.
‘That’s me,’ I said as though I’d had a bout of amnesia.
‘I wonder if we might have a word with you Mr. Upsdale.’ The larger of the two put on a distinctly servile air.
‘Come in.’ It was a lousy line but utilitarian.
When they got inside they seemed to fill the whole room, their eyes doing the chameleon trick, taking in everything. I wondered if one of my creditors had made me bankrupt. With my luck I’d be the last person to hear.
‘Ah-hem,’ I noised, hoping they would open up the door to some whole new source of learning and knowledge.
