by Shaun Clarke
The monumental story of the SAS in war and peace…
Marty Butler is a conscript soldier who has his baptism of fire with the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa in 1941, where his fearlessness and love
of action set him apart from even the best soldiers. It is therefore not long before he is singled out to become part of the newly formed SAS.
During the next five decades Marty fights bloody wars and engages in highly dangerous counter-terrorist activities in Malaysia, the Middle East, Northern
Ireland and the Falkland Islands, rising high in the ranks because of his skill and commitment. But against a growing tide of political corruption and international terrorism, Marty begins to use his deadly skills for his own personal mission, with shocking implications – for himself, for those who love him, and especially for those who have crossed him.
Epic in its scope, meticulous in its detail, and highly controversial, The Exit Club is the ultimate novel about the SAS – riveting fiction rooted in dramatic fact.
The Exit Club
The Ultimate Novel of the SAS
Shaun Clarke
All five parts of The Exit Club were first published in a single volume in Great Britain in 1996 as a Coronet paperback by Simon & Schuster Ltd
Copyright © Shaun Clarke, 1996
ISBN 0-671-85478-X
This ebook edition published in 2014 by Shaun Clarke The right of Shaun Clarke to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the Author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this ebook publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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The Exit Club
We are the pilgrims, master, we shall go Always a little farther; it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow Across that angry or that glimmering sea…
From Hassan by James Elroy Flecker
Book Two
Bad Boys
31 JANUARY 1991
In the rented Mercedes Benz in the leafy street in St John’s Wood the old man picked up his newspaper. Scanning the article already practically memorized, he was shocked once more by the list of so-called ‘suicides’ and appalled by their bizarre and cruel nature.
( You’ve surely gone beyond the pale, you and your friends, but you know what you’re doing. All the victims worked on national defence projects that you disapproved of, so you did what you thought was right. How wrong can you be?)
Eventually he put the paper down and glanced across the road, studied the security guards in the grounds of the mansion house and noted that the front door was still closed. Checking his wristwatch, he saw that he was early, so he leaned his head back against the seat, closed his eyes, relaxed, and tried to work out just how they had gone about it.
( It’s perfectly natural that first they turned on their own. They turned on their own to protect themselves and then it got worse. It’s a natural progression.)
No accident, then, that the first victim was a former SAS signals expert who had gone to work for Plessey on the System X digital communications project. That project, the old man knew, had defence connections; and the signals expert, upon retirement from the SAS, had obtained his place in the project through the socalled ‘Association’. They would have wanted something in return. By this time, they had turned that way. They would have wanted feedback, some kind of covert monitoring, and knowledge of where the project was heading, for good or for ill. Should it have taken off in a direction they disapproved of, they would have asked their former SAS colleague to take remedial action, no matter how drastic.
Maybe that’s what happened. They had asked and been refused. Their former SAS colleague, feeling secure in his new job, might have stuck by Plessey and rejected the demands of the Association. He would then have become an enemy, working for the other side, and the Association would have been compelled to neutralize him and make it look like suicide.
( You would have known how to do that, you and your friends.)
The former SAS man was collected from his house in Cornwall by two men. According to his wife, the men seemed to know him and certainly he went willingly with them, saying they were going fishing and driving off with them in his own BMW. He died when his vehicle ran off the edge of a cliff and plunged into the sea far below. The two men who had gone with him were not found at the scene of the accident. The cause of the accident was unknown, though it was thought to be suicide.
(I can see you both now. You’d been friends for a long time. Two honourable men blinded by obsession, convinced that the end justifies the means and that the Association, your secret organization, is always right. Well, damn it, you’re wrong.)
They help their SAS colleague land the job with Plessey shortly after his retirement from the regiment, but he decides not to do what he’s told and so they pay him a visit. They say they want to have a talk and, when he attempts to reject them, they offer veiled threats against his family, his wife and children, and that does the trick. He agrees to go with them, tells his wife they’re going fishing, and then they force him to drive them away in his own car to their prearranged RV on that Cornish clifftop. There, still in his car, he’s rendered unconscious with chloroform, which will leave no trace in water, and then propped up behind the steering wheel. The ignition is turned on, the accelerator is jammed down, and the vehicle goes over the edge of the cliff and he dies in the sea. The two men then walk back to the Association car that has been waiting for them at the killing site. They are driven away.
(Yes, that’s how you would have done it. You learned tricks like that in Northern Ireland and never forgot them.)
Opening his eyes, the old man glanced across the road and saw that the security guards beneath the swivelling CCTV cameras were leaning lethargically against the bonnet of the Rolls Royce, signifying that they weren’t yet expecting their boss to materialize. Aware that the individual inside the house was running a little late, simultaneously annoyed and relieved to be delayed, the old man lowered his gaze to the newspaper and saw, in the article, that the former SAS man was not the only victim working for Plessey.
Indeed, no. Another scientist, employed by the Plessey Naval Systems at Addlestone, had been found electrocuted in a shed at his home near Esher, reportedly after locking himself in. That scientist, the old man knew, had been working in weapons intelligence on a project requiring digital communications like those of the highly secret System X. The linked projects, it was rumoured, were being developed for sale to Iran and other equally repressive regimes, to be used for illegal surveillance and other dubious purposes. The Association would not have liked that and might have moved to prevent it.
Thus the two socalled ‘suicides’ at Plessey and the others elsewhere. All the dead men had worked on secret defence projects and all those projects were interlinked. The pattern was clear now.
He was determined to stamp out all aid to repressive regimes, the old man thought as he gazed through the window of his Mercedes Benz at the big, guarded house across the road. The rumour that the work at Plessey would benefit such regimes was enough to make him try to stop those projects with neutralization, a euphemism for killing.
(It had to be the work of the Association and you’re still its head. For this reason, I must neutralize you, my friend, and put an end to it.)
The second killing was clear-cut. They would have had covert intelligence operating around the house and ascertained the second victim’s working habits. They would have learned, as his wife later confirmed, that he often worked in the evening in the shed in the back garden of his home. Trained in silent killing techniques, they would have gone there in the evening, sneaked up behind him and, instead of slitting his throat, covered his mouth with a rag soaked in chloroform, exactly as they had done with the first one.
In the tropical forests of the Far East where they had learnt their silent killing techniques, in the mean streets of Belfast where the law of the jungle had reigned, they may, they surely must, have seen how men were broken when electric wires were tied around their teeth and charged with short bursts of current. That hurt, but did not kill. Only a full, extended charge could do that. So to make it look like suicide, like the doomed scientist’s own work, they rendered him unconscious, then tied electric wires around his teeth and plugged him into the mains. As their victim was dying, they locked the door from inside, clambered out through the side window, closed the window from outside and made their escape without being seen or heard.
His wife had said the door was locked. But no one checked the window. Almost certainly, although that window was closed, the lock wasn’t on. It was as simple as that.
The old man stared across the road, feeling grief and rage together, waiting for his best friend, once a good man, to emerge from the house.
(Please come out. Let it end today. Pay your dues and be done with it.)
He had come a long way for this.
Chapter One
‘Yes,’ Marty said impatiently as he buttoned up the tunic of his Territorial Army uniform, before going out for another weekend, ‘I’ll admit it. I detest bloody peacetime. That’s why I joined the Territorials. What’s wrong with that?’
Lesley sighed, not wanting another argument. She was sitting by the blazing coal fire in the spacious living room of their large, detached house with garden in Weybridge, Surrey, to where they had moved the previous year when Marty realized he had made a lot of money. The flickering light of the flames fell on Lesley’s pale face and made her brown eyes shine. ‘I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I just wish you were home more.’
‘I’m home enough,’ Marty said, though he knew it wasn’t true. ‘I only attend a couple of nights each week and one weekend every month. I don’t think that’s too much.’
‘It wouldn’t be,’ Lesley insisted, ‘if you weren’t working so much as well. But when you’re not with the TA, you’re running all over the place for your work. The fact is, you’re hardly ever here. Don’t try denying it, Marty. At this rate you’re not even going to see your children growing up. I don’t think that’s right.’
‘Most men don’t see their kids growing up,’ Marty said, though he felt guilty about not seeing John and Kay enough. ‘They’re too busy working.’
‘Says you!’ Lesley retorted. She was in an armchair, knitting, still slim and curvaceous in a woollen cardigan and grey skirt, her short auburn hair framing delicate features and those troubled brown eyes. The domestic kind, she had knitted all her own cardigans and Marty’s pullovers; but instead of being grateful for this particular economy, Marty viewed it as something that only revealed another difference between them.
She’s rooted to home and hearth, he thought, while I yearn to be fancyfree. That’s it in a nutshell.
Gazing down at her, he could scarcely believe that it was now 1951 and that the marriage was already a decade old. It had not been an easy marriage. For a start, they’d had only that one night together in the Savoy Hotel before being parted for four years. Marty had spent that time either in North Africa, fighting with L Detachment, SAS, or in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany where he had ended up with Tone after their capture outside Benghazi. Released at the end of the war, they had been returned to their original unit, the 9th Rifle Brigade, then demobbed in September 1945.
Six years ago, Marty thought, but I keep thinking it was just yesterday. I’m growing old already.
Returning to the wife with whom he had shared only one night of marriage, he felt that he was facing a stranger. Lesley had spent most of the war years working in a munitions factory in North London while wondering if her husband was alive or dead. Eventually informed by the War Office that he was still alive and about to be released from a German POW camp, she had written that she was looking forward to seeing him again; but in fact, when he turned up on her doorstep, she was clearly as nervous as he felt. Marty knew that this was because they’d spent only that one night together in bed, that it had been fraught with sexual uncertainty, and that being forced to start all over again would be far from easy. This turned out to be true.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Lesley had put down her knitting and was gazing steadily at him as he adjusted the army beret on his head and prepared to leave. Disconcerted by the tone of her voice, he nervously lit a cigarette.
‘Obviously you’re going to,’ he said. ‘What is it, Lesley?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Do you still love me, Marty?’
‘Of course,’ he said automatically, though the question had taken him by surprise, particularly since Lesley wasn’t normally the type to raise such intimate matters. ‘You know I do. Why ask?’
‘Because I don’t think it’s true,’ she replied in her quietly direct, often devastating, manner. ‘I don’t feel your love, Marty. I don’t think I ever did.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘That’s bloody rubbish, Lesley.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s absolutely true. We’ve never really been all that close. We liked each other and had respect for each other, but I’ve never felt loved. At least, not after you returned from the war. Only when we were young, before we were married, not after that. It all changed after that. Was it my fault, Marty?’
He thought carefully before replying, not wanting to blame her wrongly, aware that he may have been as much at fault for the distance between them. It was possible, he thought, that neither of them was responsible. Like the hundreds of couples who had married when the war began, he and Lesley had married on impulse, then found out, when reunited, that neither was as the other had imagined. Though he couldn’t bring himself to tell her this, he made a stab at the truth.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I mean, I loved you when we married, but we were a lot younger then and young people need to live together and adjust to each other. We didn’t have that opportunity and that was the rub. We were married, had one honeymoon night, then were parted for four years – nearly five. When we finally met each other again, all that time later, we were virtual strangers to each other and should have had more privacy than we got. As you may remember, when I got back, we had to stay on in Crouch Hill with my mum and dad. I think that put an even greater strain on our relationship and drove us farther apart. It was nothing to do with whether or not I loved you. We simply never had a chance to get really close and, yes, maybe now it’s too late. That’s the truth of it, Lesley.’
At least part of it, he thought. Certainly it was true that when the war ended they had been obliged to stay in his parents’ house in Crouch Hill, sharing his old bedroom right beside his parents’ room. That had made Lesley, in particular, extremely self-conscious when attempting to make love, fearful of being overheard. To complicate this situation, Marty’s promiscuity with the whores of Cairo had given him sexual urges that Lesley, with her middle-class moral values, was unable to accommodate. Lesley was, in his view, a fundamentally loving, maternal woman, easily shocked in bed, shying away from anything too uninhibited, and more concerned with the emotional than the physical. This had often frustrated Marty and led to diminishing returns with regard to thei
r sex life. That problem, combined with their lack of privacy in his parents’ home, had increased the distance between them.
‘Is that what you really think, Marty?’ Lesley asked. ‘That it might be too late for us?’
He glanced at her through the smoke from his cigarette, feeling love and pain. They had lost each other somewhere along the line, but the love was still there. It was just different, less romantic, not blind, and it was hurting both of them.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I only know that we’re both different and that we can’t go back to being what we were. You’re a fine woman, Lesley, a good mother, and I respect you for that; but though I try to be a decent husband and father, I need other things.’
‘To get away. To live in a man’s world. Your work, the pub and the TA. Is that what you mean?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. I’m too easily bored with routine, with domesticity, and I have to get out. That’s why I do all the things I do.’
‘Dangerous things.’
‘Yes.’
‘You enjoyed the war too much for your own good.’
‘Well, I can’t deny that.’
It was true that he believed the best time of his life had been serving in North Africa with L Detachment and the Long Range Desert Group. The contrast between his recollection of those days and his present life here in Surrey kept him awake at nights, increased his boredom during the day, and too often drove him out to the pub where he could talk to other demobbed soldiers about common experiences. Those conversations always reminded him of the sheer excitement he had felt during the SAS raids against Axis airfields and the enormous respect he had gained for men like Paddy Kearney and Bulldog Bellamy.
Even his incarceration in the German POW camp had been infinitely more exciting than what he was doing now. If nothing else, his three years as a POW had strengthened his feelings of camaraderie with his fellow prisoners and made him even more addicted to a man’s world of danger and endurance.