MATT HELM: The War Years

by Keith Wease

  “Your folders have papers and IDs which should get you through any checkpoints on your way back to France, along with directions, routes, and alternatives in case the primary escape route is compromised or you get separated for any reason. You will all meet at the airport at 1:00 AM the morning of Friday the 26th for your flight and parachute drop to the rendezvous with Blue One. Until then, you’ve all got a two-week vacation. Any questions?”

  I had about a dozen or more and, most likely, so did everybody else, but no one spoke up. Mac had that effect on people.

  Once Blue Two had finished, Blue One nodded. “It sounds good,” he said. “Now here’s the plan for handling the 10 Werwolfs you’ll be replacing....

  Chapter 31

  We picked up the first two Werwolfs in a mid-size town called Liege. It was almost too easy. They climbed into the back of the truck and were each grabbed by two “Blues” while a third used a garrote. The air got a little thick with an ugly smell from the men at our feet. The sphincters had let go as they often do. Carting dead bodies around isn't quite the nice clean fun they make it seem in certain jolly murder mysteries, literary and cinematic. Thirty minutes outside of the town, we carried their bodies into a small grove of trees and left them there, after transferring the insignia and their papers from their uniforms to two of ours. Two hours later, we did the same to three more in Aachen. That left five in Erkelenz.

  We pulled into Erkelenz a little before midnight. The weather was beginning to clear by then, but with the dissipation of the cloud cover, the temperature was dropping. What little heat that was coming through the back window of the cab wasn’t helping much. Well, I’d spent colder and more miserable nights in my life, but five dead men behind us and many more soon-to-be-dead ahead of us seemed to just make it colder. The looks on some of the others’ faces told me they weren’t too comfortable with up-close-and-personal cold-blooded murder either. That’s the hard part for some in this business – you can’t always just pull a trigger from 300 yards away and watch someone fall down. I guessed Mac had carefully chosen who would do the holding and who would do the garroting. Martinson had handled two of them.

  We parked at the side of a building with a sign proclaiming it to be the Wegberg Gasthaus. Gasthaus translates as ‘Inn.’ Blue One had decided it was too risky trying to handle all five of them at once, so the plan was for him to go into the Inn and, on some pretext, send out two of them first. That worked just fine for the first two; however, when Blue One came out with the other three, one of them, a Wehrmacht Colonel, decided to pull rank and insisted upon sitting in the heated cab. That was definitely not in the plan. Realizing this was an argument he couldn’t win, Blue One pulled out his pistol. The other two officers, who had been heading for the back of the truck, turned to watch Blue One’s reaction and, seeing him with the pistol, reached for their own. I grabbed for my pistol, yelling, “Blue One, shoot!”

  As I got one of them, an MP38 opened up beside me and both men fell to the ground. Without turning to see who had shot, I jumped out to see if Blue One needed any help. He didn’t. The Colonel lay on the ground as Blue One put a final shot through his head. He said quietly, “Let’s get out of here,” and jumped into the cab. I turned to see Martinson and Blue Ten making sure the other two were dead. We all jumped into the truck and the driver gunned it.

  We didn’t stop for the next 30 minutes, until we were clear of the town and on a back road in the middle of the woods to the West. Blue One and Blue Three came around and got in back with us. He didn’t appear overly worried. “I don’t think anyone saw the truck,” he said. “At that time of night, by the time the police arrive, all they’ll have is a story of one German officer sitting down with five others at a table in the restaurant. Two left and, a few minutes later, the other four left. There was some shooting, with three bodies and three missing officers.

  “Sooner or later, some German soldiers – drivers and aides staying at the inn for the weekend, while their commanders had some business – will identify the three bodies and two of the missing officers. Nobody will know who the sixth officer was. There will be much confusion and conjecture, but I doubt anyone will connect the officers to a certain Castle a few miles West of the town for days.”

  “Why not?” someone asked.

  “Given the secrecy surrounding the entire project at Schloss Hülchrath, it is extremely unlikely that any of the Werwolfs’ aides or drivers knew anything about it or, for that matter, the destination of their Commanders’ weekend business trip. By the time the Werwolfs’ various Commanders are informed of their deaths, assuming any of them can put the pieces together, we should be long gone. It is my opinion that we should continue as planned; however, that is up to Blue Eight, according to my instructions.”

  I started to look around when I realized I was Blue eight. Mac was being clever again. The team didn’t really need a leader unless something went wrong. Depending upon what went wrong, Blue One would normally be viewed as the decision-maker, being the man on the spot. Apparently, Mac trusted me more to make – or not make - an abort decision.

  There comes a time in every operation when the wheels are turning, the die is cast, the cards are dealt, if you please, and you've got to carry on as planned and hope for the best. I can name you names, too many of them, of men I've known - and women, too - who died because some last-minute piece of information made them try to pull a switcheroo after the ball had been snapped and the backfield was in motion. When that point comes, to scramble the similes even further, you just take the phone off the hook and walk away from it. You don't want to hear what the guy at the other end of the line has to say. You've done your best, you've learned everything possible in the time at your disposal, and you don't want any more dope on any part of the situation, because it's too late and you can't do anything about it, anyway.

  “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 arou
nd 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 title
s 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.