The Exit Club: Book 4: Conspirators

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘What’s dangerous about it?’ he asked, trying to suppress his frustration, though barely able to do so and realizing that this was the first time he had ever felt annoyed with his friend.

  ‘The secrecy,’ Paddy replied. ‘The very idea that we can have an organization that protects the regiment and its founding principles by covert actions against those who don’t agree with us. And, even more dangerous, by covertly taking action even against supposed enemies outside the regiment – individuals in the War Office, Whitehall, perhaps even the media. That’s very dangerous indeed.’

  ‘Who dares wins,’ Marty said.

  ‘That motto has its limitations. It’s the regimental motto – no more than that – and certainly we can only act upon it in the context of war. Don’t try to take that motto out of context. It will do you no good.’

  ‘I believe in that motto. I’ve lived my life by it. Without it, I wouldn’t be where I am and you bloody well know it.’

  Paddy grinned and nodded affirmatively. Marty nodded as well, also grinning, though he didn’t feel all that happy. In fact, he felt deep resentment at Paddy’s reluctance to go all the way with him.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, trying to lighten the conversation, ‘let’s put this bullshit aside for the moment and concentrate on the main function of the organization: to aid retired members, or those about to retire, by finding them gainful employment. You’d agree, wouldn’t you, that it isn’t always easy for former SAS men to find decent work in Civvy Street?’

  Paddy nodded again. ‘It’s a sad fact of life that the specialist skills picked up in the SAS aren’t in great demand in Civvy Street. Indeed, their SAS skills often render them virtually unemployable. It’s not easy to get a routine job when you’ve been in the SAS.’

  ‘Right,’ Marty said. ‘The prospective employer tends to imagine you’re some kind of wild animal just let out of its cage.’

  ‘Not quite, but he certainly thinks you’re not likely to settle down to some commonplace tasks. I think that’s the main problem.’

  ‘So we have to find work suitable to our own kind – and that means security and bodyguard work. If that’s the only kind of work we can get for them, then we should go out and get it.’

  ‘God, you’re inexhaustible,’ Paddy said, but he was grinning again. ‘All right, I’ll help you with the organization, the Association, but only if we agree on certain ground rules. We can form the organization officially under the umbrella of Vigilance International and use some of our empty offices for its headquarters. Our services will include advice on security aimed at anticipating and preventing the violent overthrow of democratic governments, but the organization will not otherwise seek to exert political influence. Indeed, so long as we remain a strictly commercial operation, we won’t be able to become involved in politics, which should keep our hands clean.’

  ‘And the services of former SAS men as bodyguards?’ Marty asked eagerly.

  Paddy sighed in mock defeat. ‘Okay, Marty. Vigilance International will also supply instructional training and actual security men or bodyguards where required, on the strict condition that they only be used for defensive purposes and on behalf of friendly, anticommunist heads of state. Should the situation change at any time, those men will be withdrawn without any notice given. These qualifications will be incorporated into the organization’s principles and included in any contracts drawn up with clients. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘You’re grinning like a Cheshire cat,’ Paddy said, stubbing his cigar out in the ashtray and indicating with a wave of his hand that he wanted the bill. ‘Stop looking so satisfied with yourself.’

  ‘I’m a kid with a new toy,’ Marty said. ‘I just can’t help myself.’

  ‘I’m sure I’m going to regret this,’ Paddy said.

  ‘You won’t,’ Marty assured him.

  When the bill had been paid, they left the busy restaurant and stepped out into Maiden Lane. It was a bright summer’s day and the girls passing by were exposing as much skin as possible in provocative clothing. Provocative at least to Marty who, though no womanizer, was at that age when every pretty girl reminded him of lost opportunities.

  He and Paddy turned down Bedford Street and stopped in the Strand, where Paddy waved down a passing black cab.

  ‘So what are your plans for the rest of the day?’ he asked. ‘Are you seeing Diane?’

  ‘Yes, I’m staying in her place for the weekend.’

  ‘I never fail to be surprised that your relationship’s continued,’ Paddy said. ‘You seem like such an odd couple.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Marty asked rhetorically.

  Paddy grinned and nodded in agreement as he slipped into the rear of the black cab. Before it moved off, he rolled the window down andlooked out. ‘We’ll formally set up the organization at the next meeting,’ he said. ‘By that time I’ll have everything in order regarding the paperwork and the offices. You’ll soon be part of Vigilance International, so I hope you’re pleased, Marty.’

  ‘I am. And thanks, Paddy.’

  Paddy waved again as the cab pulled away from the curb and inched into the dense traffic of the Strand, heading for Fleet Street. Satisfied, Marty walked to Charing Cross Underground to commence his journey to Notting Hill Gate, where Diane still lived in the same flat. His visits to Diane were now so frequent that he kept everything he needed in her place and never had to bring anything with him to London. It was pleasant to travel light.

  The world’s certainly changing, Marty thought as he emerged from Notting Hill Gate station and passed a large poster showing the legendary Russian ballet star, Rudolf Nureyev, kneeling on a tigerskin rug, stark naked except for the Arab turban around his head, with an equally naked girl crouched between his outspread thighs, her bare breasts covered only by her long hair and Nureyev’s hands. An advertisement for the new Ken Russell biographical movie about Rudolph Valentino, it was a symbol to Marty of how far values in the country were slipping. Nor was he overwhelmed with pleasure at the sight of the many theatrically wan young men, many wearing make-up, including lipstick and eyeshadow, who hung around the station entrance, looking suspiciously like the androgynous rock star, David Bowie. Marty tried to be liberal in his thoughts about this changing world, but he couldn’t quite manage it. He felt very old-fashioned.

  As he turned into Kensington Church Street, he consoled himself with the thought that his refined organization, to be called the Association, was going to be placed on a proper footing and could, perhaps, protect some of the ‘old-fashioned’ values represented by the regiment. Those values were his, also, and he felt a burning passion to protect them, no matter the cost.

  Letting himself int o Diane’s flat with his own key, he found her stretched out on the settee, wearing tight blue denims and a loose shirt, drinking a gin and tonic while watching a TV news item about the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner by four Palestinian terrorists at Mogadishu airport in Somalia. As he had been one of those who had secretly advised the crack German antiterrorist unit, GSG-9, with regard to a rescue attempt, he was thrilled to see that the eighty-six passengers had been rescued just before the terrorists’ deadline for blowing up the plane. The daring rescue had been led by two British SAS soldiers, Major Alastair Morrison and Sergeant Barry Davis.

  When the news flash ended, Diane turned the TV off and said, ‘Christ, these terrorists are spreading like fungus. It’s a whole new world out there.’ She rolled off the settee and stood up to smile at him. ‘I see that some of your SAS mates were involved in the rescue. I bet you’re burning with envy.’

  ‘Bloody right.’ Stepping up to her, he slid his arms around her, pressed her into him and kissed her full on the lips. She was skin and bone these days, too much smoking, too little eating, and even in his embrace she was like a coiled spring, too tense for her own good. She was obsessed with her work, with conspiracies, and it was eating her up.

  ‘You’re becoming too old for this kind of thing,
’ she said, slipping out of his embrace and picking up a packet of cigarettes. ‘It’s all planning for you these days.’

  This was a truth that Marty had to constantly face, but it still hurt to hear it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they did a bloody good job. Not one passenger hurt.’

  ‘Those passengers were just lucky, Marty. One mistake and they would have copped it, too – from the terrorists or from the men trying to rescue them. It was a hellof a gamble.’

  ‘In a situation like that, there’s no choice. Can I pour you another?’

  She flicked her lighter on, lit her cigarette, exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘Why not?’ As Marty was pouring the drinks, she sat back on the settee and asked, ‘So how did your lunch go?’

  ‘An enjoyable feast. Particularly since I wasn’t paying. That restaurant is way beyond my means.’

  ‘Paddy did the right thing, getting out of the service. Financial security’s guaranteed if you stay in, but the money’s pathetic. If you want to live the way Paddy lives, you have to get out and do something else.’

  ‘I don’t want to live that way. I just enjoy sharing it vicariously. My lunches with Paddy are my treats. I’m content with that.’ He handed her the glass of gin and tonic, then raised his own glass in the air. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’ They both drank. Diane rested the glass on her lap and blew a couple of smoke rings. ‘So is he going to buy this idea of yours?’

  ‘Yep. The Association will be a subsidiary of his Vigilance International and we’ll staff it with former SAS men. The company already offers advice and training on security matters, so Paddy will use that side of the business to put our own men forward as security guards or personal bodyguards.’

  ‘Dodgy.’

  ‘Don’t you start. Paddy and I have argued it through and think we can handle it.’

  ‘Just don’t let it obsess you, Marty. That’s in your nature. You’re basically a moral puritan and becoming more so as you get older. Stick to helping your former mates get work and don’t do anything else.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I know you. You’ve talked enough when you’ve been in your cups. You and that crowd you’ve been meeting every month in the West End. You do more than just talk about old times.’

  ‘Oh, do we now?’ Marty wasn’t pleased to hear that he let his tongue slip when drinking, particularly as he’d been drinking more in the past few years, trying to deaden the pain of loss and what he felt was a general shrinking of his horizons. That was bad enough, but to learn that he had talked about the meetings was truly disturbing. ‘So what do we talk about?’

  ‘You’re a kind of pressure group,’ Diane said. ‘You swop stories about men who do things you don’t approve of– fellow SAS men, high-ranking officers, civil servants in Whitehall and elsewhere– and you dream up ways to stop what they’re doing or make them fall into line.’

  ‘We’re just trying to uphold the values of the regiment,’ Marty insisted, ‘and protect it from anyone who threatens it. I think that’s worth doing.’

  ‘It may be worth doing, but if you go about it the way you do – covertly– you run the risk of becoming a law unto yourselves and that can’t be a good thing. It makes you conspirators. You’re also judge and jury. Situations like that can get out of hand, becoming corrupt and destructive.’

  Marty sipped his drink, trying to contain his anger. ‘You’re paranoid, Diane. You see conspiracies in everything. Ever since you’ve involved yourself in investigative journalism, particularly regarding Northern Ireland, you’ve been seeing spooks in every corner. I’m not the one who’s obsessed. You’re the one who’s like that. If you’re not careful, your work’s going to drive you bonkers. Even now, you can hardly sleep at nights. You have too many bad dreams.’

  Still drinking, she looked flushed and agitated, which was not a good sign. ‘I’m obsessed because I know what’s going on,’ she said. ‘I know what governments get up to behind closed doors, what they hide with their bland words, how they say they’re doing one thing while they’re doing another. I also know that I’ve been marked in certain quarters as a troublemaker and I’m certain my phone’s been tapped. You think this is a free country, Marty? If you do, you’re deluded.’

  ‘Why would they have you down as a troublemaker? Why would they tap your phone?’

  ‘Because of Northern Ireland – my repeated exposures of their dirty tricks there. They bugged my phone when I started publishing articles about the inhumane treatment and torture of political prisoners in Long Kesh and Castlereagh. Those articles led to complaints from the European Court of Human Rights and the complaints are becoming louder every day. Those bastards are worried about that.’

  Whether or not what she said was true, Marty knew that she meant it. Certainly, for the past year, she had been convinced that she was being watched and that dirty tricks were being used against her: smear stories in rival newspapers, anonymous complaints to the Press Council, valuable mail going missing, her phone being bugged, and so on. Marty believed that all of these things were possible, but he didn’t like to admit it. At least he didn’t want to increase her fears by agreeing with her. She was already close to being a nervous wreck and getting worse every day.

  ‘What makes you think your phone’s been bugged?’

  ‘Because they found out things about me that could only have been learned from my telephone conversations. Damn it, Marty, they’ve bugged me!’

  ‘I don’t believe the British government is in the habit of bugging the phones of honest citizens.’

  ‘Don’t bullshit me, Marty. They’ve bugged the fucking phones of half of Northern Ireland. They’ve bugged plenty here, too – criminals, political activists, politicians, other journalists– and the more they do it, the more widespread it becomes. The more routine it becomes, the easier it becomes to get permission to do it. Christ, even your precious SAS taps phones. Isn’t that true, Marty? Didn’t you have to do that for your surveillance in Northern Ireland? Come on, sweetheart, admit it!’

  ‘No,’ he brazenly lied, ‘we didn’t do that.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ she repeated.

  Of course, she was right. He was giving her bullshit. Though initially he had been shocked by what he and the others had been forced to do in Northern Ireland, the more he thought about it, the more he accepted that some methods of surveillance were unavoidable. He was even coming to accept that certain dirty tricks could only be fought with the same methods. His informal Association had, after all, been forced to use some dirty tricks in order to stop the actions of certain individuals who were acting against the interests of the regiment: confidential regimental policy decisions had been leaked to the press; certain individuals had been pressured by members of the Association into retracting published opinions; SAS officers who tried to introduce unpopular measures had been harassed in various ways until they backed off; even ordinary NCOs and troopers with unhealthy attitudes had found themselves coming under fire… Though he had his doubts about such measures, increasingly he had come to accept the necessity for them. In certain cases, the end justified the means. This was a hard fact of life.

  Finishing his drink, he placed the glass on the mantelpiece, then went over to sit on the edge of the settee, beside Diane’s outstretched body. Her face was gaunt. Her eyes under the fringe of blonde hair held an unnatural brightness. They were also bloodshot with drink – she drank too much these days – and he knew, when she stared at him and smiled, that she was close to the edge.

  ‘You look lovely,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a really sweet liar. I look hellish and you know it, but you’d never dare say it.’

  The butt of her cigarette was smouldering between nicotine-stained fingers, so he removed it and stubbed it out in the ashtray, then turned back to lean over her.

  ‘You need a break,’ he said. ‘Get away from all this. You work all the time – you don’t do anything else – and the things you write are starting to t
ake you over, blocking out everything else. You’ve become obsessed with politics, with the filth of it all, and your obsession’s becoming unnatural and eating you up. Let’s go on a holiday, Diane, and forget this shit for a while.’

  Her smile was slightly mocking and oddly sensual; her green gaze was steady. ‘I hate holidays, Marty. They’re so boring. Dawn to dusk with not a fucking thing to do. I just need work and sex.’

  The open-necked shirt was hanging loose over her denims, so he slid his hand up under it, felt the bones of her ribcage, then cupped one of her small breasts in his fingers and lightly rubbed the nipple. When the nipple stiffened, she closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Yes, Marty, that’s all I need.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ he told her, though the feel of her aroused him, making him feel younger than he was, lost in sensual reverie. She was going mad, he was convinced, but he needed what she could give him and he knew, when she turned her body towards him, that she would hold him by that. He squeezed her breast with one hand, unbuttoned her shirt with the other, let it fall away, rustling, on both sides and pressed his lips to her bare skin. She sighed and arched her spine. He ran his tongue down to her belly. She unzipped herself and tugged her denims lower to let him kiss her down there. Yes, he felt younger. The self-deception was necessary. He licked her stomach, her pubic hair, her inner thighs, and was briefly renewed. Too many years had gone by, too many loved ones had died, too many friends had been lost in the wars that had helped shape the century. He was losing himself as well. He sensed it even as he stroked her. This man and this woman, together, were losing track of themselves. He and Diane. Two idealists turning bitter. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but he could no longer stop himself.

  He put his tongue inside her. She gasped and then groaned. He licked and sucked to consume her and in turn be consumed. He wanted to lose himself, to forget what he most feared: his ageing, his disillusionment, his shrinking horizons, his growing feeling of isolation in a rapidly changing world.