Traitor's Exit

by John Gardner

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were waiting in the hotel. Waiting for you to lower Styles to our room. We were going to get him out and Slattery was supposed to meet us with a car.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Slattery rang. Told us to clear out and meet him. The whole thing had been blown. We did the cloak and dagger bit around the cafe. Then, finally we had to go out and meet Slattery in his car. He said there’d been one hell of a panic and the Ivans were on to us. Said it was every man for himself. Mostyn said what about you and Hester. Slattery thought we ought to come over and take a look...that’s it.’ He raised a finger and looked as though he had struck gold. ‘He told Mostyn to say we’d been held up at the Embassy. You know I don’t think Slattery has anything to do with the Embassy.’

  ‘No, Boysie,’ I said as calmly as I could muster. ‘No. That fact has been evident for some time. But how does it add up?’

  ‘Ask Hester. She’ll know.’ He spoke in innocence.

  I looked up. The clowns were staring at us and I realized that the caravan was slowing down. We were stopping. I exchanged glances with Boysie who had gone bleach white.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I asked the clowns in English, that being the only language I am really conversant with.

  Together with their wives they shrugged and looked more miserable. Then, the smallest Romanian got up, walked to the door and climbed out. He returned, smiling, but I noticed that the faces of the others became grave as he gabbled his news to them.

  We all sat still and tense for five minutes or so until the engine started up and we moved forward again.

  About an hour later we stopped for the second time and there were noises of activity from outside.

  The rear door of the van opened and Mullka heaved himself in, smiling. He spoke briefly to the clowns who looked grave at first but quickly began looking at us and laughing.

  ‘I feel a distinct sense of unease,’ said Boysie. ‘I don’t particularly like being laughed at either. Not unless I’m doing the funnies.’

  ‘Well.’ Mullka turned to us, his arms spread wide and his smile benevolent as Santa Claus. ‘We have arrived. The village is now only thirty kilometres from Finnish border. Whole place is turning out to see our show and we get things ready now. The arc lights. Everything.’

  I was about to ask if we could help when he held up his hand. ‘Only one small problem. Whole area is swarming with police and soldiers. All asking difficult questions. Wanting to know if we meet with any strangers on road. Many helicopters flying around. They stop us a few miles back. Helicopters land and police ask questions. I have talked with your friends and we think it best if tonight you really join our circus.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Boysie looked blank.

  ‘Tonight,’ said Mullka with a great deal of dramatic presence. ‘Tonight you become clowns.’

  ‘Clowns.’ Boysie was repeating, not asking.

  Mullka guffawed. ‘Why not? Mankind is all clowns.’

  ‘Mostyn as well?’ Boysie’s mouth was open in a vast, incredulous, gasp of laughter. ‘Christ, Mostyn a bleeding clown.’ He rolled over on to one of the bunks in helpless mirth.

  ‘Sure.’ Mullka joined in the laughter. ‘We get ready now and I take clothes for your friends. Later I come back and dress you myself. Personally.’ He departed, taking a couple of the Romanians’ costumes with him.

  The Romanians left the caravan to help with the setting up outside. Boysie capered around like a schoolboy. ‘Ever since I was first taken to old Bertram Mills’ I’ve wanted to be a clown. But Mostyn? Oh, my sainted aunt, can you bear it, Rex?’

  As it happened I could not. Clowns have never impressed me over much and I was still worrying over the problem of who was trying to screw who or what.

  Within the hour, music was coming from outside. From one of the windows we could see that the high wire and trapeze gear had been erected on a patch of dry open ground.

  ‘The village green, I suppose.’

  ‘Looks more brown to me.’ Boysie thought that was hysterical.

  A crowd was beginning to drift together; men, women and children with craggy peasant faces. There was a strange sense of occasion: laughter and excitement. As I watched, some of the gaiety rubbed off. In the back of my mind Eartha Kitt sang The Day The Circus Left Town and I twitched nostrils, recalling the childhood smell of animals and sawdust, the odd magic of seeing a show under the grubby canvas of a tent.

  Then I spotted a uniform among the crowd. My stomach turned over. Another uniform and yet another.

  ‘Soldiers and police in abundance,’ I told Boysie.

  He grinned. ‘Clowns.’ Another grin. ‘Clowns.’ It was all he could take in.

  It was best to play along with him. ‘What do you remember most about circuses when you were a kid?’

  ‘Oh.’ It was a long drawn out sigh. The noise of memory being retraced. ‘I remember the spectaculars. Today they’d be tat on television, but then, in our village, they were like the real thing. They did Dick Turpin’s Ride To York and Custer’s Last Stand. The lot. Real people on real horses and the guns going off fit to deafen you. I remember after we saw Dick Turpin’s Ride To York at the circus I took Betty Moon and Daphne Strong up Redhouse Hill and Daphne Strong let me kiss her in the bushes and I glowed like a Guy Fawkes bonfire. Christ I wish I had my time over again.’

  I knew what he meant.

  The Romanians returned and began to get ready for the performance, tossing a brace of costumes over to Boysie and myself. We climbed into the baggy trousers and strange frayed shirts, like children involved and lost in a game of dressing up.

  Mullka reappeared, sat us in chairs and began to prepare our make-up.

  ‘You will be Augustes.’ He told us. ‘Here we have only one Clown. This is Jan.’ He pointed to the tallest of our three Romanian brothers, now resplendent in sequined coverall costume, his face stark white with make-up. ‘Jan is the Clown, you will be Augustes.’ He picked up a stick of make-up and began to work expertly, first on Boysie’s face and then on mine. It took about twenty minutes to transform us, Jan coming over to assist with the fringed wigs and bulbous stick-on-noses.

  Mullka held a mirror in front of me. The face which stared back was unrecognizable: the big red nose and diamond patched eyes, the perpetual unchanging grin. I looked at Boysie, only Boysie was not there. The change was fascinating. As I looked he began to emerge through the facade: Boysie Oakes himself, not the face with its half moon scarlet smile, but the whole character of the man, the buffoon, the fool within. For a second the van seemed to chill. Someone, somewhere, once said that in movies there was something frightening about a man coming in, smiling and friendly, then shooting his victim.

  Boysie was staring back at me, and, for an instant, one could detect some recognition in his eyes. We knew each other for what we were.

  There was a real smile now behind the painted grin. ‘You know something?’ He turned to Mullka. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since I was a kid.’

  Mullka nodded. ‘It is natural. Now, perhaps you are able to see yourself.’ He put his big hands on our shoulders. ‘Listen to me carefully. Go now to the first caravan. My caravan. Your friends are waiting and they have been dressed. Soon we start the show, but a word of warning. Clowning is an art so I do not want you to join in the show unless it becomes necessary for your safety. Just stand on the edge of the crowd and make them happy. I think after the show the police will leave us alone, then we see how best to get you to Finland.’

  Some children on the fringe of the crowd spotted us as we walked up the line of caravans. They began pointing: laughing and cheering. Boysie broke into a little halting jog trot and waved at the children who cheered louder, keyed up for the performance to start.

  I peered into the crowd, hopping up and down, following Boysie’s lead. Something kept catching my eyes, pulling them back towards the same point. And I did not want to look.

  Among the peasant faces w
as another face, one I knew. The gaunt face of a skeleton man, now dressed in a fur cap and shabby overcoat which he dragged round him to keep out the chill of the evening.

  It was already dark and the glaring floodlights cast shadows over the thin face.

  I increased speed, hopping faster, goading Boysie towards Mullka’s caravan.

  Out in the crowd, the skull face turned and Slattery looked straight at us. His mouth curved up and he smiled.

  Chapter Ten — My Way

  My senses told me that our entrance into Mullka’s caravan should be dramatic. My brain gave the correct signals, and the words, ‘Slattery’s out there in the audience’, were already formed in my mind.

  It was the sight of Mostyn in Augustes make up, dressed in a loud ginger-checked baggy suit, that annihilated the drama.

  Boysie and I clung to each other.

  Hester, clad in a similar fashion to Mostyn, shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘And for an encore we do We’re A Couple Of Swells,’ she mouthed.

  Eventually I got my breath back and held up a silencing hand. ‘I have news.’ Having lost the chance of playing it for drama I opted for plain ham. ‘Our lean, bone-shaped friend, Slattery, is among the crowd.’

  Mostyn all but spat. ‘Let me have men about me who are fat.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Hester, genuine relief in her voice.

  We all looked towards her.

  ‘Why?’ Asked Mostyn.

  She hesitated. ‘Perhaps he’ll pull us out.’

  ‘He did a damned good job in Moscow.’

  ‘Do you realize,’ I spoke directly to Hester, ‘that he was going to leave us to face the music alone in Moscow. He got out. Every man for himself.’

  ‘What did you expect him to do?’ she bridled. ‘If something goes wrong, people have to be sacrificed.’

  ‘I’m not going to be sacrificed for that.’ I pointed towards the prone and still figure of Kit Styles.

  ‘You’d take the money though.’

  ‘The original job wasn’t risky. I was taking money for that. This is a right highwayman’s job.’

  ‘Always is,’ said Boysie philosophically.

  ‘The trouble is,’ drawled Mostyn, ‘that nowadays Security and Intelligence work is treated as a joke. In my day...’

  We jeered him into silence.

  ‘Anyway,’ I turned to Hester again, ‘how well do you know Slattery?’

  ‘Slattery’s a good man. He’s a dedicated agent. One of the best.’ She sidestepped the question.

  ‘I didn’t ask if he was good. I asked how well you knew him.’

  ‘I’ve worked with him before.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Probably quite a lot. Who do you work for Hester? What outfit are you really with?’

  ‘That should be obvious. Who else but us would want Styles out?’

  ‘If you mean that one of the British Intelligence Agencies wants Styles you’re talking a load of old cobblers.’

  ‘Now look here,’ Mostyn pomped his way in.

  ‘No, Colonel Mostyn. You listen to me.’ When I am roused there’s no stopping me. I remember when I was five and a mixed infant at St. Jude’s C. of E. Primary, the vicar told us he was going to say grace before school dinner and I shouted out ‘Well hurry up, I’m bloody hungry’.

  Mostyn recoiled like a Bofors gun. Few people spoke to him like that. Mind you it was easier when he was tarted up like a clown.

  I plunged ahead. ‘Boysie and I have been having a parley. This whole thing stinks. It’s not just a job that’s gone sour. It was wrong before we started. Why, Colonel Mostyn, would any regulation-ridden British Intelligence Department want to get Kit Styles out of Russia? Why? The snotty-nosed chinless wonders at the Foreign Office may act a bit stupid at times, but they aren’t complete idiots. Back in London Styles could do nothing but cause trouble. We’ve been had, on toast with baked beans we’ve been had.’

  ‘Yes...but...’ Mostyn dried. ‘Obviously...there....You tell him Hester.’

  Outside, the sound equipment blared a fanfare backed by applause. The circus was starting its performance.

  Inside the caravan you could hear Styles’ regular heavy breathing. Hester stood in front of the low cot on which he lay. The rest of us were grouped round in a half circle. Behind the make-up, Hester’s eyes flicked to and fro.

  When she spoke, the voice was soft, nearly a whisper. ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet? Don’t you really understand why we’ve got to get him back?’

  ‘Who’s the “we”?’

  ‘Styles is a political degenerate. A traitor.’

  ‘If you align yourself with the West, yes.’

  ‘Whom did he betray?’

  ‘Britain of course, and...’ The truth suddenly hit.

  Hester nodded. ‘Britain and the United States,’ she said calmly.

  For the first time I recognized the slight accent. A trace of New England.

  ‘The CIA?’ asked Mostyn with a note of distaste.

  ‘No. Dirtier than that. The CSS, Central Security Service. Do you recall how Kit Styles defected?’

  I recalled because I’d read all the books. ‘He went to West Berlin and drove across Checkpoint Charlie like any other tourist. Only he didn’t bother to come back,’ I said.

  Hester nodded again. ‘At four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, just two hours after a gentleman from your Foreign Office visited him. At four-thirty two CSS agents arrived at his hotel. They had orders to get him to Washington. Alive if possible. He had already gone and there are no prizes for guessing what the guy from the Foreign Office told him.’

  ‘Go over, Kit, or you’re a dead duck,’ said Mostyn gravely. ‘As I remember it was Fairbrother. He was Style’s fag at Eton.’

  ‘My God.’ I felt sick with the stupidity of it. ‘And the CSS have been sulking and holding a grudge ever since.’

  ‘I don’t know about the CSS.’ Hester gave a dry laugh. ‘Tom Slattery and I have been holding a king-sized grudge.’

  The noise outside was rising to a crescendo. I glanced out of the window. The open space was bathed in light and The Bellicovis were getting to the whirling end of their act. Behind the concentrated faces of the crowd the small lights of the village shone, a painted backdrop.

  ‘Tom Slattery and yourself, eh?’ Mostyn, ludicrous in clown’s costume, was standing in the middle of the van, fingers steepled as though in prayer. ‘Why you and Tom Slattery?’

  ‘We were the agents assigned to pick up Styles in Berlin.’ Hester was smiling behind the painted mask. ‘The CSS is very particular. We failed.’

  ‘Nobody knows you when you’re down and out,’ observed Boysie.

  ‘That’s about it. And that’s one of the reasons we picked you. Rex had no experience in the field but circumstances were right. Boysie, and Colonel Mostyn had experience. Also they’ve been through the business of being kicked out of the Service. Tom and I thought you’d understand.’

  ‘You organized the whole thing?’ asked Mostyn.

  ‘We used every old friend, every contact and every dollar we had. I don’t know how Tom has found his way down here, but it’ll show you what determination we have. We are going to complete the mission to Berlin. We’re going to get Styles to Washington or finish him.’

  Mostyn was silent. When he spoke, all the old authority was there. ‘That’s a pleasure you may well have to forgo. I’ve never heard of such a stupid, mock-idealistic business. I haven’t the slightest intention of being involved with getting Styles out. My job is to get us over the frontier now. All of us, except Styles. I didn’t trust these people to start with.’ He swept an arm around the caravan. ‘But there’s no doubt that they’ve smuggled people out before. Yet I doubt if they’d do it if they knew what we’ve really been up to.’

  Hester opened her mouth to speak but was silenced by the caravan door swinging inwards and Mullka making an entrance, back first
. He hurriedly closed the door and leaned against it.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The big man gulped air. ‘You will have to get out of this van. There is trouble.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Soldiers. They are searching the caravans. They started at the far end. Soon they will reach here. You must come out and look as if you belong with us. Leave your friend.’ He indicated Styles. ‘We will do our best to hide him. If anything goes wrong make for the border. Straight on up through the village. There is only one road.’

  ‘No.’ Hester stood firmly in front of the cot.

  ‘Hester.’ I said sharply. ‘I understand your motives for wanting to abduct Styles. I think they’re stupid, selfish and unreasonable, but I understand them. What I can’t forgive is the way we’ve been implicated. You’ve put a lot of relatively innocent people in danger...’

  ‘You’ll all get paid.’

  ‘It’s not a question of money.’

  ‘It was the lever that got you into this.’

  ‘Yes, and I was horribly wrong, wasn’t ? I suddenly find that I don’t like being bought. But this is the crunch, so be sensible Hester. Do it our way. My way. Leave Styles, he’s made his decision and it’s all over. Leave him and come out with us.’

  Mullka was still by the door. ‘We do what we can. Please come outside. Al is just finishing his act. You enjoy that. And your friends the clowns will be giving their famous performance with their ancient motor car. Most clever and very funny. But you must come and stand with the rest of our people or we can do nothing to help you.’

  ‘You see?’ Mostyn turned to Hester.

  ‘I see, but I’m not coming. I’m still going to try and get him out. Tom Slattery’s here in the crowd, he’ll help.’

  Mostyn looked at me. ‘Chivalry to one side, I don’t like leaving a girl, but...?’

  Boysie nodded and the three of us moved towards the door.

  I turned back and made one last appealing gesture to Hester who shook her head violently. Through the window we could see that Al Kapstan was coming to the end of his act: filling his mouth with petrol and shooting it out, holding a naked torch to his lips so that flame gushed from his face.