The Exit Club: Book 5: Old Comrades Read online

  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.

  Designed in the Isle of Wight, Great Britain, by www.inkdigital.org

  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 Five

  OLD COMRADES

  31 JANUARY 1991

  Eleven men dead, the 70-year old man thought as he sat in his rented Mercedes Benz and gazed at the big house across the road. Eleven men good and true. Dead by electrocution, by carbon monoxide poisoning, by injection and fatal car crash, garrotted, blown up, lost at sea.

  ( Eleven innocent men. You did all that and more. Much more. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true – and you’re over there right now.)

  Waiting for his friend to emerge from the house and meet his fate, the old man thought of the wives and children of those dead scientists and winced at what they had suffered. He knew what pain was – he now lived with it every day– and understood that no kind of physical suffering could match the anguish of grief.

  This knowledge was based on personal experience, his past year of hell on earth, caused by the knowledge that he was dying and that his family would suffer. A growing tumour in the brain. The physical pain was bad enough. But even worse, more unbearable, was the pain that he had caused his wife and children when he gave them the doctor’s diagnosis and told them they must be prepared. His wife and daughter had wept. His son had hidden his shock in silence. He, the old man, had devastated their lives with the news and that felt worse than his own pain. Now he knew just how the families of the eleven unfortunate dead were suffering. He had to make his friend pay for that.

  ( I’m personally responsible. I taught you all you know. I did it for good reasons, my motives were honourable, the cause just, but then the world changed and you took what I had taught you and perverted it totally. We both came a long way to get to here, but we could not have imagined it.)

  His skull contracted and filled with pain, reminding him of his mortality. He swallowed a tablet, waited for the pain to pass, and then sighed with relief.

  Not moving from where he sat, feeling secure in the expensive, rented car, he lifted the newspaper from his lap, placing it on the seat beside him, then again slid his hand around his waist to feel the leather of his Len Dixon holster, now worn smooth with age. It took him back through all the years, to the very beginning, not quite as far as Oxford, when his faith had been intact, but to those early days in the North African desert where he had fought a just war.

  That’s where he had met his friend, gauged his potential and nurtured it, determined to make him a good soldier and succeeding in doing so. His friend had been young then, unsophisticated, lacking discipline, but he had shaped up to become an excellent trooper and a fine human being. They had remained friends for years.

  ( We’re still friends. Surely that’s why I’m here. It’s the respect and the love I still have for you that has brought me to this. I have come here to save you.)

  His friend needed to be saved, to be redeemed by death, to make amends for the wrongs he had done and die as he had lived.

  It had begun a long time ago, with his apprenticeship in the desert, and since then he had learned the deadly skills that had led him to carnage. Eleven scientists had died, mostly innocent men, and the man who had killed them had done so with uncommon skill. His talents were wide and varied, perfected in many wars, wrought in steel and iron, forged in fire and fury, finely honed in dark jungles and blazing deserts, on icy mountain peaks and in stormy seas, in mean streets and booby-trapped houses where death held dominion.

  The killer, now a victim, had learned how to fire weapons, handle explosives, track his quarry, kill by stealth; he knew all about surveillance and the covering up of trails; he could neutralize, terminate or cleanse without leaving a trace behind. He had learnt those skills over the years, as the world spun and changed, even as he had changed with the changing world to become someone else: an angel of vengeance.

  Almost certainly, if not solely responsible, he had done his fair share.

  (How many out of the eleven were yours?)

  The old man removed his shaking hand from his worn holster as his heart beat too quickly.

  (You surely started on your own, but your friend eventually helped you and together you were even more deadly, one supporting the other. Well, no matter how many you did alone, it now makes little difference. Your friend is dead and soon you will come out of hiding to face the same fate. There’s no point in counting.)

  Yet it pained the old man. He felt responsible for what had happened. As he looked across the road and saw the guards behind those ornate gates, he could only think of the good in the man he was going to kill. He had once been a young man, impetuous but decent, honest and courageous. He had fought in North Africa, in Malaya and Borneo, in Oman and Aden, in Belfast and the Falklands, even in London, for what he strongly believed in. Alas, the world had changed, eroding all he had valued, and so losing faith, his soul shrivelled by disappointment, he had gone all out for vengeance. Not alone, but certainly leading the way, he had set out to right all wrongs that he felt had destroyed his world. In so doing, he had become even more corrupt than those he thought were his enemies.

  (It’s my fault. I was your mentor and friend. I took you into the desert, made you live in the jungle, taught you how to stalk and kill, how to cover up your tracks, and then I filled you with the kind of idealism that always turns upon itself when disillusionment sets in. You believed in just wars,
in the defence of the realm, and you took your pride from being with a regiment that stood for all you believed in. Then the world changed and the nature of war changed with it, becoming dirtier, more brutal, forcing you to lend your support to all you despised. When that happened, you took what I had taught you and used it to other ends. I am as guilty as you are.)

  Sighing, wiping tears from his rheumy eyes, the old man studied the guards in the driveway of that big house and saw that they had taken up positions by the front door and main gate. That meant his friend was about to come out. He was late, but he was coming out at last and this had to mean something. His partner was dead. Almost certainly, he had heard about it. If he had, he would know who was responsible and would be thinking about that as well. He would not be frightened

  – that was not in his nature– but certainly he would have contemplated the matter, wondering what he should do. He would know his own time was coming, but would not know where or when, though perhaps he didn’t care anymore and was in secret agreement. If this was so, he would deliberately make it easier for his own executioner.

  Please do that, the old man thought as he straightened up in his seat in the gleaming Mercedes Benz, blinking against the brightening morning light and preparing himself.

  (Do the honourable thing, old friend.)

  He saw the guard at the front door raising the handset of the walkie-talkie to his lips and speaking into it. He saw the second guard, at the main gate, listening in on his handset, then slipping it back into his pocket and becoming more alert. He saw the chauffeur emerging from the garage and heading for the Rolls Royce. He saw that someone was coming out.

  In the few minutes left to him before the end came, the old man saw two lives fusing together as one, to engage the same fate.

  He wanted it quick and clean, without fuss, with courage, and he prayed that his victim, his friend and comrade, would be wanting that also.

  Almost certainly, he would. Indeed, why would he not? He was a man who had lived a life of violence and would die the same way. There was justice in that.

  The lost years unravelled in the old man’s mind and resolved all his doubts. He saw himself as a happy, naive young student in his room at Oxford College; as a drunken, rebellious 8 Commando officer in the MPs’ cells in Bab el Hadid; as an exuberant SAS lieutenant in the vast white plains of the North African desert; as a patriotic, determined escaper in Colditz Castle; as an emaciated, exhausted captain in the steaming jungles of Malaya; as a contented husband and father in his family home in Hereford; as a well-fed, successful businessman in London and the Middle East; as a welcomed guest in pinstripe suit in the Paludrine Club in Bradbury Lines; as a lonelier, much older man in his small apartment in Highgate; and, finally, as this broken old man in this rented Mercedes Benz, dying from a brain tumour and waiting to kill his best friend before taking his own life.

  He saw himself with old school chums, with university pals and girlfriends, with his wife and his children, with his doctors and nurses, with his parents and a host of other relatives… and, of course, with his best friend. He saw exactly what had happened to his best friend and why it had to end here.

  Let his will be done, he thought.

  He knew.

  (We all knew.)

  Chapter One

  Taff knew. He had always known. These days, when Marty gazed into Taff’s baby-blue eyes under the head of healthy blond hair, at that schoolboy face with its slight, distracted smile, he did so in the full awareness that Taff understood what they must do and was willing to do it. There was no fear in Taff, no hesitation or doubt; he was a man without ego or malice or cruelty, but he had been born with the instincts of a killer and now they were finely honed.

  Being a professional soldier, Marty, like Taff, had killed a lot of men and understood that brutal though it might seem to outsiders, it was an unavoidable evil in a violent world. All democracies needed protection, needed men like him and Taff, the ones who could do the dirty work while others, the ones who believed that they were important, kept their hands clean. Taff knew this and had always known it, hiding the knowledge behind his otherworldly smile, but since joining the Association, since talking through its possibilities, he had made it clear that he believed his special skills were not being used nearly enough, nor for the right reasons.

  Marty wanted to use the Association to more ambitious ends – to right a few wrongs, clean up some of the scum, remove those who aided the terrorists who were turning London into a battleground– and he knew that Taff, for one, would not hesitate to do what needed doing.

  The problem was Paddy.

  Ever since the Iranian Embassy siege, Marty’s burgeoning frustrations had turned into an outrage that kept him constantly on the boil. The sight of Abbas Lavasani’s dead body being dumped on the pavement outside the embassy had convinced him that what was needed was prophylactic action against terrorists or those who aided them, even if indirectly– this included arms dealers. He was convinced that the regiment’s role was now strictly limited and would be more so in the future, to be used, in the absence of a major war, only for the odd counter-terrorist operation or the usual surveillance work in Northern Ireland.

  He was also mindful of the fact that while the regiment languished ineffectually in Hereford, arms dealers and fellow travellers were helping to turn the streets of London– and the whole of Europe– into a battlefield and were being handsomely rewarded for their sins. The Association could do something to either reduce this or to stop it altogether, but he had yet to persuade Paddy of the need for it.

  Unfortunately, their differences of opinion on the matter had caused friction between them for the first time in their long relationship. That friction had been noticeable ever since Paddy’s angry outburst in the French pub nearly a year ago, on the day of Lord Mountbatten’s assassination by the IRA. Though Paddy and Marty had not fought since then, there was now a distance between them that had not been there before. Marty deeply regretted this, but was not put off by it. He still hoped to persuade Paddy that the use of the Association for the neutralization of undesirables was the justifiable means to a worthy end.

  The opportunity came when he had lunch with Paddy in their favourite pub in Hereford and the subject of the embassy siege came up.

  ‘I have to hand it to you,’ Paddy said. ‘That was a hell of a job and you men did it well. You should be proud of yourselves.’

  ‘The shortest, quickest battle we ever fought,’ Marty responded.

  ‘Yes, It must surely have been some kind of record.’ ‘I think so. Fifteen minutes to clear the building,

  thirty-five minutes to check the premises and conduct an undiplomatic reception for the rescued hostages, then another fifteen minutes to pack up our kit and move out of the FHA. Sixty-five minutes from start to finish, then back to Hereford. Not bad at all, Paddy.’

  ‘Pretty damned exceptional, I’d say.’ Pleased, Marty continued: ‘About two and a half hours after the siege ended, the CO handed control of the cleared embassy back to the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and that officially ended our involvement in the affair.’

  ‘Received a congratulatory visit from the Home Secretary, I believe.’

  Marty grinned. ‘He came to the Regent’s Park Barracks just before we were driven back to Hereford in the same vans that brought us to London. An emotional man. He even had tears in his eyes as he thanked us for what we’d done.’

  ‘Well, you certainly deserved that. Five hostages released before the assault, nineteen rescued, and only two dead, neither killed by the SAS. On top of that, there were no SAS casualties. I’d say that was superlative.’

  ‘Unfortunately, not everyone thought so. Though five of our men were personally decorated by the Queen, certain segments of the media still criticized us for using unnecessary force and practically destroying the embassy building. I mean, there we were, tasked with the rescue of hostages in a building reportedly wired for a Doomsday explosion and
defended by a bunch of fanatical terrorists who’d already killed two of their hostages– andwe’re the ones accused of using unnecessary force! You just can’t please some of them.’

  ‘They should have kept the press out of there altogether,’ Paddy said. ‘The SAS is supposed to work in secrecy and that means they should never be seen on TV, discussed on the radio, or even read about in the papers. All that’s gone since the Princes Gate siege and I think it’s a bad thing.’

  ‘I agree,’ Marty said. ‘I’m proud of the way our lads handled themselves, but I certainly don’t like the way the operation was blown up by the media. We’ve always tried to remain in the background, but the siege of the Iranian Embassy has destroyed our anonymity and possibly even made us notorious. Personally, I hate the thought of that.’

  ‘Your disapproval comes too late, Marty. Because of that single operation, the regiment’s become the most well known in the world– it hasgained notoriety. It’s now the focus of relentless public and media scrutiny. That won’t be helpful to future operations. It won’t be easy to deal with that.’

  ‘We’re trying,’ Marty said. ‘In the absence of a major military challenge, we’re now concentrating on intelligence-gathering and security while trying to sink back into our former anonymity.’

  ‘You’ll never get that back,’ Paddy said. ‘Once you’ve lost it, it’s gone for good. From now on, you’ll always be working in the spotlight and that won’t help at all.’

  ‘All the more reason,’ Marty responded, seeing his golden opportunity, ‘to use the Association for jobs that can only be done covertly. Because the Association is virtually anonymous – or, at least, is seen as an agency whose sole purpose is to find legitimate work for former members of the SAS – we can be covert in a way that the regiment can’t. We can do things it can’t do.’

  Paddy stared flatly at him, considering his reply, clearly annoyed that Marty had returned to a subject that had become a sore point between them.