The Exit Club: Book 5: Old Comrades

by Shaun Clarke

  As soon as he had received their backing, his deep depression, which he had often felt was rooted in feelings of impotence, lifted dramatically and he plunged into his work for the Association, which he could now do full-time, with renewed enthusiasm and vigour.

  As the covert purpose of the Association, under the umbrella of Paddy’s Vigilance International, was to find work for unemployed former SAS members, and as Paddy himself appeared to have lost his initial enthusiasm for it and, indeed, seemed in general much less energetic than he had been, Marty advanced on this side of the operation with all the energy and commitment that he had formerly given to the regiment.

  He did, however, also take it much farther than Paddy had done and, while Paddy increasingly withdrew from the business, turning up at meetings less and less, Marty quietly started finding work for members as military advisers and personal bodyguards for any government or individual with anti-communist and pro-democratic policies.

  ‘To hell with the accusation that we’re supplying mercenaries,’ he said to Taff who, also recently retired from the regiment, was keen to be used in any capacity in which his singular deadly skills could be exploited. ‘Without this particular kind of so-called mercenary, a lot of people would have no security at all. I don’t care whatPaddy says to the contrary. What we’re doing is justified.’

  ‘Paddy’s out of it anyway,’ Taff said. ‘He hardly ever comes into the office any more– and when he does come in, he’s usually depressed. He’s also losing weight and seems lethargic. I think he may have problems.’

  ‘What kind of problems? His health?’

  ‘Either that or domestic.’

  ‘Let’s keep an eye on him.’

  Though not regaining his lost weight, Paddy came back to life when the press began producing articles about the recent series of assassinations of certain highly placed men, particularly weapons manufacturers, arms dealers and individuals known or suspected to be involved in terrorist activities, both at home and abroad. As some of those assassinations had been carried out with the bombing of cars – as was the case with the assassination of Sir Charles Alfred Seagrove – and others with weapons firing nine-millimetre bullets, Paddy was convinced that they were being carried out by members of Marty’s Association: all former SAS men.

  At first he kept quiet about it, merely passing the odd, sarcastic comment, but finally, after a particular assassination, perpetrator unknown, he stormed into Marty’s Association office in the West End Premises of Vigilance International, looking surprisingly old and gaunt, but temporarily energized with rage.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he said, waving a newspaper under Marty’s nose, letting him see the lead story about the most recent assassination. A former IRA commander, widely believed by British Intelligence to be responsible for the purchase of arms from Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, had been found the day before lying beside the open door of his car in the long-term car park of Heathrow Airport, shot twice in the heart with ninemillimetre bullets, apparently just as he was about to get into the vehicle after arriving on a shuttle flight from Belfast. ‘If not you personally, then one of your damned Association members. Isn’t that the truth, Marty?’

  ‘No,’ Marty lied, knowing that the latest ‘cleansing’ operation had been carried out with cold efficiency by Taff. ‘I know nothing about it.’

  ‘I don’t believe y ou, Marty. You wanted to do this kind of thing, you suggested it to me, and now you’re actually doing it, using Vigilance International as a cover.’

  ‘That’s bullshit, Paddy. If you came into the office more, took a bit more interest, you’d know more about what’s going on and stop having these crazy ideas. The Association is finding work for its members and protecting the interests of the regiment, as originally agreed. That’s all it’s doing, believe me. Nothing else. All the rest exists solely in your head.’

  In fact, while some members of the Association did that and only that – work at administration and find employment for retired SAS comrades – others, such as Taff, were jumping at the chance to put their specialist skills to good use. These were men highly trained in demolitions, a wide variety of weapons, technological surveillance systems and, not to put too fine a point on it, the ‘neutralization’ of their fellow man. Indeed, some of them had been at it so long that they could no longer imagine life without it and certainly wouldn’t think of it as murder.

  Though Taff was one of them, the most obvious example, he was certainly not alone and had plenty of back-up when it came to doing the dirty work. They had been doing it for a long time, had neutralized half a dozen, when Paddy finally exploded in Marty’s office – but Marty still denied it. He persisted with those denials for months, but Paddy never accepted them.

  ‘I know it’s you,’ he said one day, sitting behind the desk in his own office, looking ravaged, clearly in failing health, though he refused to discuss this. ‘I don’t give a damn what you say. I know that you and members of your damned Association are behind all those killings. Don’t talk about cleansing, Marty. Don’t cover it with euphemisms. You’re running a private vigilante army and neutralizing– murdering – a lot of people. An unsavoury lot, certainly, and few will weep for their loss, but you can’t act as jury and hanging judge and expect me to support you.’

  ‘It’s not what – ’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me, Marty. I’m not listening any more. I know what’s going on and I think it’s the very opposite to the highly moral crusade you clearly believe it to be. I’m not blind, Marty. And nor am I dumb. Though I haven’t been coming in here much lately – I’ve been too disgusted to do so – I’ve come in enough to check what’s been going on and I happen to know that apart from your so-called cleansing activities, you’ve been using the Association, under the umbrella of my Vigilance International, to sell the services of former SAS men to any despot who wants a private army. I think it’s disgusting.’

  ‘I don’t do that,’ Marty said. ‘That isn’t true at all. I only sell security advice and military training to any organization or government that I deem to be worthy. I don’t sell to communists, fascists or despots. That’s absolute bullshit. I’m only doing what you taught me to do and I apply the same principles. I sell to the same kind of people you were making propaganda films for. I sell to those whose political aims we share and I’m bloody careful about it.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Paddy insisted. ‘You may have been careful at first, but now you’re being corrupted by the necessity to finance the Association – that and your blinkered puritanism. You’re blind to your own faults.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You began by selling our services only to those who shared our values, but recently, as I’ve given less attention to Vigilance International, with a subsequent drop in income, you’ve been forced, in order to keep the Association financially sound, to turn a blind eye to the true, longterm motives of those you’re dealing with. They’re no longer people who share our political aims: they’re just the people who’re most keen to buy our services – your services – and who’ll pay you to have them. You’re now selling to the highest bidder, Marty, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is, Marty. It’s reflected in your present lifestyle, which has, if I may say so, improved immeasurably these past few months. The Mercedes Benz, the five-star restaurants, now the search for a larger house… Why the hell do you need a larger house when you live all alone? You’re living high on the hog, old friend.’

  This could not be denied. The clients of the Association paid handsomely and promptly. Indeed, Marty had been surprised by just how much he was offered and, although he had poured a lot of income into the Association, in the end there was more money than the Association could ever use and so he had started to keep more forhimself… then more… and more still. Now he was a man of considerable means and saw nothing wrong with it. He was earning it, after all, by doing good, so he h
ad no need for guilt.

  ‘You’ve lived very nicely all your life,’ he retorted, justifying himself, ‘being blessed with a privileged background, a good education, and inherited wealth. You were having a pretty good time, Paddy, with a nice home and fancy cars, when I was laying bricks for a living and didn’t know champagne from cheap white wine. Given that, I’m surprised that you should resent the recent improvement in my lifestyle. I work bloody hard for what I get and I take my few pleasures where I find them. You’ve had them all your damned life.’

  ‘There’s nothing more pitiful than working-class resentment of the middle classes – and I’m surprised that you, of all people, should suddenly display it. That, in itself, is a sign of how you’ve been corrupted. You didn’t resent me before.’

  ‘You probably just didn’t notice.’

  ‘If the resentment had been there, I’d have noticed, and it just wasn’t there. You resent me now because I criticize what you’re doing and you can’t stand that. You think you’re a man of principle – as indeed you once were– and the very suggestion that you may no longer be so makes your blood boil. This isn’t an issue of class, Marty. It’s a question of morals.’

  ‘My blinkered puritanism.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So where does that come from?’

  ‘Your so-called cleansingoperations.’ Paddy raised his right hand, begging Marty to be silent, cutting him short before he could utter another denial. ‘In other words, your assassinations. You always had that moral streak, the need to separate good from evil, but somewhere along the line, probably when you were with Diane, you let it blind you to the possibility that you might sometimes be wrong. You became unyielding, perhaps even fanatical, and you started looking neither left nor right, but only to the front, following the rigid lines of your puritanical reasoning and brooking no argument. You saw enemies everywhere, saw them getting away with murder, and so in order to bring them to what you felt was justice, you turned into the very kind you most despised: those who believe that the end justifies the means, no matter what those means are. In short, you became a common criminal – and that’s what you are now. The end doesn’t always justify the means – and your means are criminal. I wash my hands of you, Marty.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Marty said, feeling rage and fear at once, understanding, even as he denied it, that Paddy was right. ‘But even if you were right, which you’re not, how would you wash your hands of me?’

  ‘By closing down Vigilance International and going into retirement. Which is just what I’m going to do.’

  Though shocked to hear this, Marty tried not to show it. ‘You’re retiring?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because of the Association?’

  ‘Amongst other things. I’m also tired. I have a few health problems. Angela complains that the business keeps me travelling all the time, that I’m rarely at home, that we never do anything together,that it’s time for a change. She wants to move back to London– it’s where she was born – and so we’re selling the house in Hereford and moving into a flat in Highgate. We’ll live modestly there.’

  ‘Those reasons seem sound enough to me.’

  ‘They’re reason enough in themselves, but in the end, it’s you, Marty. I don’t believe a word you say. I know damned well what you’re up to. You and Taff, the born soldiers, the ones who can’t live without war, without excitement, have created your own little war to keep boredom at bay. You can’t live in retirement, can’t tolerate normal life, the commonplace, and so you’ve found a way to continue being soldiers and come up with a justification for it: the so-called cleansing of corruption where you find it and bugger how you do it.’

  He waited for Marty to say something, but Marty had run out of things to say.

  ‘Well, you go ahead, Marty, but do it without my help. I’m packing it in, closing Vigilance International, and whatever you decide to do in the future, you’ll have to do it without my help. I won’t be part of a vigilante group and that’s all there is to it. I’m folding the company next month. After that, the Association is on its own. I don’t wish you good luck.’

  Which is how their friendship ended, bringing joy to neither party, but when Paddy closed down his company, sold his house in Hereford, moved to London, Marty used the connections had made over the past few months to build up the business of the Association and rake in even more money. This did not take very long (the need for exceptional military and security skills was growing quickly, dramatically) and he buried in the rich soil of success any doubts that still nagged at him.

  Within a year, he was dealing with anyone who would pay and justifying what he was doing by continuing his ‘cleansing’ operations through the Association. A lot of those whom he deemed to be corrupt, or who threatened the regiment he loved dearly, or who were, in his view, politically dangerous, were ‘neutralized’ with all the skill that the men of the Association had developed over the years through fighting for their country. They were men who thrived on danger and needed excitement; men who said ‘neutralize’ instead of ‘kill’ and viewed the deed pragmatically, as something that simply had to be done. They were men who did what they had to do if they believed it was right. Marty knew that and used it. He became wealthy doing it.

  Nevertheless, he was lonely. About eighteen months after Vigilance International was closed down and the Association took over the company premises, Marty moved out of Belsize Park and into St. John’s Wood, into a house that was too big for a single man. He was even lonelier there. Most of the rooms remained unused. The few that were used were occupied only by guests, most from the Middle East or the Third World, visiting him solely to discuss business before flying off elsewhere. They expected good security and Marty obliged, first hiring bodyguards for his visiting VIPs, but eventually deciding that he needed similar for himself and putting a couple full-time on the payroll. Though he felt more secure with them, he also felt more like a prisoner in his own home. In the silence, he heard the creaking of his bones and understood what old age meant.

  He was lonely and knew it. Most of his friends were dead and buried. His best friend, Paddy, was now an enemy; and Taff, who was neither friend nor foe, could glide across the face of the sun and not cast a shadow.

  Of course, Marty had his children, but in truth he rarely saw them; he had loved them in his own, distracted way, but they had not been his life. The regiment had been his life. His way of life had not been normal. He was a man who had lived his life for war and now had no war to wage.

  Yes, Paddy was right, at least regarding one thing. He, Marty, had created his own war. He had used the Association to fight a battle that could never be won. Now, he was tired. He felt neglected and lost. He was tormented by Paddy’s other, more damning, accusations, wondering if they were true.

  Were they true?

  Yes, they were.

  Marty knew this when his intelligence produced a

  list of names of men who were working on top-secret high-tech warfare systems that were being sold to emerging Third World countries and, in one reported instance, to the Khmer Rouge. Marty knew it when he decided to neutralize all those men – eleven in all– and personally helped Taff and other members of the Association to carry out the task. He knew it, too, when he found himself suggesting that since the numbers were so large and the victims so widespread, a greater variety of methods of neutralization should be employed. This would encourage misinformation about the deaths and obscure the fact that a single group was responsible for them. Some of the deaths would have to look like assassinations – this would be a warning to the authorities – but others should look like suicides, thus causing confusion in the minds of the media and, ultimately, the public.

  When the Association had voted in favour of this, the project commenced.

  The first victim was a former SAS signals expert, now working for Plessey on the System X digital communications project that was known to be related to national defence. Marty and
Taff took care of him by arranging a fatal car crash.

  The second victim, a senior metallurgist working on an electronic warfare system for the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham in Oxfordshire, was found dead under his car in his closed garage, his mouth aligned with the car’s exhaust pipe, after Marty and Taff paid him a visit.

  The third victim, also at the Royal Military College of Science, was blown up in his yacht when Marty and Taff, who had escorted him there at gunpoint, left him tied up on the deck, then activated a button job when cruising well away from the yacht in a stolen SBS inflatable.

  The fourth victim, employed by the Plessey Naval Systems at Addlestone, was electrocuted in a shed in his home, his teeth wrapped in electric wires plugged into the mains socket. As Marty and Taff knew, this was originally a form of torture, often leading to death, practised by the guerillas in Malaya and Borneo. In using it to neutralize the scientist, he and Taff made the murder look like suicide.

  The rest of the victims had all worked for Marconi on a wide variety of top-secret, defence-related projects that Marty believed would end up in the wrong hands. They therefore had to die and did so by different means, some of them deliberately bizarre. This confused those investigating the deaths and led to much speculation. No one knew if the deaths were suicide or murder, but the cases were closed as unsolved.

  Then Taff was killed.

  Eleven scientists had died when Taff was found dead, shot cleanly through the heart with two ninemillimetre bullets as he was stepping out of his car to enter his bachelor pad in Holland Park, London. No motive for the murder was established, but Marty knew who had killed him.

  A 9-Milly, he thought. Two bullets straight to the heart. A double tap by an expert.

  When Taff was executed, Marty’s world blew apart and he realized, in grief and despair, that he had been given a message. He took it to heart, let it tear away the veils, and accepted that he had let the Association – and himself – take things too far.