MATT HELM: The War Years (27 page)

“I agree with Blue One.  This will be our only chance at these
Werwolfs.
Let’s do it.”

We dragged the bodies out into the woods, got back in the truck and headed for the Castle.

Chapter 32

As we pulled up beside the checkpoint at
Schloss Hülchrath
, at a little after 1:30 in the morning, it appeared that our games with the insignia and papers were wasted effort, which was a good thing, considering we were short three sets.  The guard who came out of the shed obviously was expecting us and recognized Blue One.  He didn’t even look in the back, just saluted and waved us on.

We pulled into the wide circular driveway leading to the entrance to the castle, and parked among a dozen or so other cars and trucks in a parking area opening off the driveway to the left side of the entrance.  We all got out and stood there for a few moments, getting our bearings.  I saw the two guest houses to the left of the parking area, with several trees in front of them.  I looked at Martinson, who nodded at me.  The trees would give us a hiding place so the soldiers wouldn’t see us until we let them, once they were well out of the houses.  I picked out a tree in front of the Commandant’s house and pointed to it, telling Martinson and Blue Eleven, “I’ll be there.”  They did likewise with two trees in front of the soldiers’ house.

Seeing we were ready, Blue One said, “OK, let’s go.”  The plan was for all 11 of us to go into the castle first and then Blue Eleven, Martinson and I would take our places outside once the inside soldier or soldiers were handled.  As we opened the door, we saw two soldiers sitting at a small table playing cards.  Apparently Commandant Weiss liked keeping his guards in pairs.  They stood up and saluted as we entered.  Blue One greeted them and asked if they could show us to our rooms.  They seemed to like that idea.  We were a little later than expected and they were losing sleep.  As they turned toward the corridor leading to the bedrooms, Blue One grabbed one from behind, his hand covering the soldier’s mouth, and expertly slit his throat.  Martinson got the other one from behind with a garrote while Blue Three slipped a knife up under his ribcage into the heart….

After a pause to let the adrenaline rush subside, Blue One looked around at us.  “Three minutes from right … now” – we all checked our watches – “Silver Bullet starts in earnest.  Move!”

As the others started down the corridor, Blue Eleven, Martinson and I went out the front door to take our positions.  That left us over two minutes to wait for the shooting to begin….

My guys were alert.  The almost simultaneous blasts of eight grenades going off at once was deafening, even through the walls of the castle, followed shortly thereafter by machine gun fire from eight weapons.  In less than 10 seconds after the grenades went off, the two soldiers came flying out of the door, holding pistols in their hands.  One was coming straight toward my location while, unfortunately, the other veered off at an angle, making it impossible to get them both at once.  Taking the easy shot, I put half a magazine from the MP38 into the guy running toward me and then turned to get his partner.  I saw him duck behind a tree a few feet from the one I had used, so I got back behind mine so I could see both his tree and the door to the guest house, figuring I’d take whomever showed up first.

About then, I heard machine-gun fire from the next yard.  Considering the soldiers in the smaller guesthouse had most likely been asleep, they had pretty quick reflexes.  That was the last coherent thought I had before the grenade went off.  I briefly saw pieces of the soldier behind the tree fly out before the blast hit me….

I remembered Martinson assuring me that he had got the Commandant and, later, someone saying that the operation was a complete success - other than me, of course, our only casualty.  I don’t remember much else of that three-day trip other than pain.

Chapter 33

After a few more weeks of pain in a London hospital, I was transferred to a Washington hospital for a little plastic surgery and, thanks to Mac, a decision…

I once knew a singer, a terrific baritone with Metropolitan ambitions, whose voice left him suddenly for no apparent reason.  And there was a sports car driver I remembered, headed for the big time, who cracked up badly and, although his injuries seemed to heal all right, never quite managed to win another race.  Something had gone and he could never get it back.  Sometimes, in a dangerous business, meeting the right kind of girl does it; suddenly you feel you've just got to keep on living for her, and you can't face the big risks any longer.  Other times, you just come so close to death and survive that you're no longer willing to come that close again.

In our business specifically, sometimes there’s a conscience factor.  Although Mac had done his best to kill it, I still had a few remnants left.  It had started with Frieda and continued with the necessary – but sick-making – butchery of the
Werwolfs
.  Not the ones in the castle or the soldiers in front of the guest houses – they were fair game so far as I was concerned – or even the three in front of the
Wegberg Gasthaus
.  My conscience, small as it was, wasn’t bothered by that kind of killing or shooting a designated target at 300 yards, or even three feet.  No, what bothered me a little was the cold-blooded murder of the seven unsuspecting
Werwolfs
who had eagerly jumped into the back of a truck with nothing on their minds but a weekend of good food and comradeship.  Of course, what they would have been planning would have been bad for our side … but good from their viewpoint.

Who was I trying to kid?  So it bothered me – I could live with it.  Hell, I could even justify it.  Over three years working for Mac had had a profound effect on my way of thinking, not that I had that far to go.  We have a recognized oversupply of human beings; we can spare a few of the less desirable specimens.  That might make me a monster with a rather dangerous philosophy, but there’s a need in this world for monsters of the highly specialized, self-disciplined, narrowly focused kind, bound by a set of rules.  OK, so the rules weren’t the kind you’d expect, but rules they were, rigidly followed by Mac and his
M-Group
.  Actually, I was quite proud of my membership.

So, what was the problem?  Was I bothered by coming so close to dying?  Well, yes;  I’m rather fond of life, but not inordinately so.  Not so much that I could no longer take the risks that went with the job.  At least, I didn’t think so – you never really know until the next time you have to.

I put down my empty iced tea glass, got up out of the chair with some minor effort, got in bed and turned out the light.  Sleep was nowhere in sight, so I just lay there thinking.  For some reason, I remembered dove hunting with my father in New Mexico, where we'd moved earlier from Minnesota.  The dove's the greatest little game bird on this continent.  I don't talk about it much nowadays - when you mention shooting perfectly legal game in season people act like you'd cut your mother's throat with a dull knife.

We'd had a dog with us, a big German Shorthaired Pointer named Buck.  Old Buck had been imported straight from Europe by a wealthy rancher, a friend of Dad's, who’d then had a heart attack.  He'd given Buck to Dad so a good dog wouldn't be, well, wasted on somebody who couldn't hunt him right.  You don't use a pointing dog to find doves, of course, not like when you're hunting pheasants or quail.  With doves, you just scout around until you find a place they're using, a field or spring or gravel pit, and you hide in the bushes and take them as they fly by.  We worked Buck as a retriever on doves, to locate and bring in the birds that fell.  They're hard little devils to find in any kind of cover without a dog, and Dad was very particular about shooting game and letting it go to waste.  That evening, I remember, we were late getting home because we'd spent half an hour stomping through some tall weeds locating my last bird.  Buck had been retrieving for Dad and hadn't seen it drop, but he finally found it.  If we hadn't, we'd still be out there looking for that dove, I guess.  Dad wasn't about to have a good day ruined by a lost bird.

I remember getting out of the old pickup in front of the house, letting Buck jump out of the rear on command, and gathering up the guns and hunting vests and shooting stools.  It was a long reach for me into the pickup since I hadn't got my height yet.  Dad had gone ahead to open the gate.  He was waiting while I got a good grip on all my gear so I could follow.

He had said, "That was a fine shoot, Matthew, but we must rest that field tomorrow or we will burn it out; the doves will become frightened and stop using it."  He didn't have a Scandinavian accent as much as a Scandinavian way of speaking.  He went on, "Now you go feed the dog while I start plucking the birds."

I had a sharp picture in my mind of him standing there in his beat up Stetson and worn ranch clothes with the old Model 12 Winchester that had a slip-on rubber recoil pad to lengthen the stock to fit him, since he was a tall, long-armed man.  He'd never, that I remembered, got around to having a longer stock made although he was always talking about it.  I could see the little swinging gate and the rural-type mailbox on a post.  The lettering on the box was easy to read: "Rt. 4, Box 75, Karl M. Helm."

Helm.  Matthew L. Helm, son of Karl and Erika Helm.  I guess I was thirteen or fourteen at the time.  I was a feisty young fellow.

My mother always claimed we were distantly related to some old Scottish royalty. Although I'm Scandinavian, whose family is strictly anything?  Quite a few Scots migrated to Sweden at one time or another.  There was a guy named Glenmore.  He had a claymore for hire and times were tough at home, so he went over a few hundred years back to swing his blade for a royal personage named Gustavus Adolphus, who happened to have employment for gents handy with edged weapons.  Apparently he married and stayed on after the wars were over.  My mother had documentation, charts, family trees and more in a pile of stuff I was paying storage charges on.    It seems that Robert Glenmore, Earl of Dalbright, if that's the proper way to say it, had two sons, Robert and Edward, in that order.  Robert stayed in Scotland as far as I know.  Being the oldest, I guess he had something to inherit if he stayed.  Edward went to Sweden by way of Germany some time around 1631.  He married over there and had kids, who married and had kids, and so forth, until my mother came along.  She married, went to the U.S., and had me.

My father's side of the family apparently originated in Sweden, at least as far back as he had bothered to track, which was to the late 1500s and a Baron named Stjernhjelm.  As Swedish titles go to all the children, I could have been a Baron, myself, but my folks renounced all foreign titles when they became American citizens.  It's required, I understand, but it seems a shame.

In the midst of this half-dozing free-association, I suddenly sat straight up in bed.  All at once, I had no more doubts.  I knew what I was going to tell Mac.  I was getting out of the assassin business.  Not for any of the usual reasons – or perhaps for a little bit of
all
the usual reasons.  Couple all the things I had been through in the last three years with my sense of family, passed on to me by my mother and father, and add in Beth…

No, not Beth – we hadn’t known each other long enough for her specifically to be a reason – but the idea of a Beth.  If I went back to work for Mac, I might never have a chance for a family of my own; hell, if I went back to Mac, I might be dead in a few weeks or months.  I've long since faced the fact that, in the business I'd chosen for myself, I would probably die a little earlier than I otherwise might.  Up until now, it had seemed a fair trade-off.

Now, I was having strange thoughts – thoughts of a family with a son or two, thoughts of a wife waiting at home when I got back from my nice, normal job where the greatest danger was the daily commute.

And it
could
be Beth.  I hoped it
would
be Beth.  But even if it wasn’t, I
wanted
a Beth….

Chapter 34

The last time I saw Mac, he was sitting behind a desk in a shabby little office just off 12th Street in Washington.  Somehow he always managed to arrange his offices, wherever they might be (I could remember one in London with a grim view of bombed-out buildings) so that he had a window behind him, making it hard to read his expression against the light, which I suppose was the idea.

"Here's your war record," he said as I came up to the desk.  He shoved some papers towards me.  "Study it carefully.  Here are some additional notes on people and places you're supposed to have known.  Memorize and destroy.  And here are the ribbons you're entitled to wear, should you ever be called back into uniform."