MATT HELM: The War Years (19 page)

It was about then that Monk's explosion went off, which seemed a little extreme for a celebration, but I had a job to do.  I was reasonably sure that Yvette would take care of it for me, but my job was to make sure.  As I got near the rocky beach, I saw a lone figure walking from the water toward a small beach house, his silhouette clearly visible in the moonlight.  As he approached the light streaming from the open door of the beach house, I recognized Kiersten a moment before he called out in German.

"Charlene, my pet, what's taking you so long?"  He held his arms out as though expecting her to run into them.

I was still in the shadows and I knew he couldn't see me with the bright light in his eyes, so I pulled out my Woodsman, intending to finish the job right then.  Before I had a chance, there was a small, solid thud, the sound of something hard and sharp burying itself in something moderately soft.  Well, to be honest, I'm not that good at sounds; I'd caught the glint of the throwing knife before it struck.  Kiersten's mouth opened, but no scream came out, just a barely audible - at my distance - gasp of pure agony.  Then there was a rattle of dislodged stones beside him as she ran from the side of the beach house and threw an arm around his neck while the other hand groped for and found the weapon buried under the armpit, wrenched it free, and drove it home a second time.  By the time I reached her, she'd laid him down and was squatting beside him, wiping her blade on his shirt.  She looked up at me.  Her eyes were strange and shiny; for a moment she was just another dangerous predator crouching over its kill, not quite human.  Or very human, depending upon your definition of humanity.

She was a unique specimen in a world of tender ladies who couldn't bear the thought of guns or violence.  Keeping her leashed would be an offense against nature, like calling a beagle off a rabbit or asking a good pointer to ignore a covey of quail.

"So?" she whispered.

I didn't feel it was the right time to point out that she'd been very lucky that the German hadn't screamed; and that we don't like that throwing-knife routine even when silence is not important. 

There's a lot of bone in a human body, and slipping a blade accurately between the ribs is difficult enough at contact range.  From ten or twelve feet away, it's strictly a game of chance.

"You did fine," I said.

"Bullshit!  I got lucky.  I was planning to take him at the house, but he came in all excited and insisted that we go out for dinner.  This knife was the only weapon I could get my hands on.  I carry it in my purse all the time - for protection, I told him.  He thought it was cute, the sexy little French girl with the sexy little knife."

Actually, on second look, the knife did seem a little sexy, with the pretty carved hilt and the etched steel blade.  I hadn't noticed before - a weapon that has just killed a man looks deadly to me, always.

She seemed to feel the need to explain something to me.  Well, a talking jag is a fairly common reaction after a kill, especially among women.  Yvette continued, "He used to make me dress up in a
femme fatale
getup, with the knife slid down in my stocking.  It turned him on.  We would pretend that I was trying to kill him and he would take the knife away from me and hold it to my throat or stomach while he made love to me.  He also liked to cut me, just a little."

She took a deep breath.  "Look at me, chattering away like an amateur."  She smiled wryly.  "Anyway, I thought it was a sort of poetic justice, to kill the pig with this knife that he liked so much."

"Sure," I said, "I understand."  Actually, I did.  In this business, it's not often that you get to kill someone you hate, and we're human - regardless of opinions to the contrary.  When revenge and duty go hand in hand, why not enjoy it?  Tina had taught me that.

"The job got done, that's what counts," I added, softly, looking down at her.  Then she stood up and I really looked at her as a person.  She was quite pretty in her one-piece swimming suit, still a little wet and revealing the small swell of her erect nipples.  I saw her eyes change as she watched me staring at her and I remembered another common reaction after a kill - common to both men and women.

She took a small step toward me and whispered, "It would be a shame to waste this lovely beach house on such a beautiful night, wouldn't it Eric?"

I tried to think of a suitably flippant reply, but my mouth was suddenly dry.  I just moved forward and picked her up and carried her inside....

Afterward, we lay there feeling luxuriously relaxed after the long tension.  She was smoking a cigarette I lit for her, after pouring two glasses of Kiersten's favorite Margaux.  I wasn't much of a red wine fan, but this tasted pretty good.  Perhaps I just hadn't spent enough money before.

Finally, I had gone out and dragged the body around the side of the house, thankful that nobody had come by.  When I came back, Yvette had refilled our glasses.  As I sat down on the bed beside her, she turned to me with a strange look on her face. "Who was she, Eric?" she asked gently, "This Tina, that you love so much?"

I stopped with the wine glass halfway to my mouth.  I frowned at her, then remembered my momentary lapse in the throes of passion, so to speak.

"I'm sorry, Yvette," I said, "it was just a slip of the tongue."  She didn't seem to be upset, just mildly curious.  "I wouldn't exactly call it love - we only spent two weeks together, a couple months ago.  I guess it was just so recent, that I'm still used to using her name."

"Who's kidding who?" she laughed.  "I'm a woman, and I'm French.  I know when a man is in love."  She held up her hand.  "Don't try to spare my feelings, Eric.  I am not so fragile, especially now.  Besides," she went on, "you're not really my type.  I've got a sweet young man waiting for me in London.  After the war, we will be married, and I'll tell him some beautiful lies about my thrilling adventures as a courier for the Resistance, and how I stayed true to him, and he will tell me some beautiful lies and we will live happily ever after."

I had to laugh at her practical approach to life.  She was doing what she could for her country and then she would do what she could for her husband.  It was a typically French attitude.  "And I'm just a temporary diversion, is that it?" I asked with a grin.

"Just so.  And a very beautiful diversion."  She stubbed out her cigarette and drank the last of the wine in her glass.  Lying back in the bed, she opened her arms and said, "Come here, Diversion, I am not through with you yet."

She wasn't.

We stayed in the beach house until dawn when the troops arrived.  Within a few hours Cherbourg was liberated, so I guess you could call the mission a success.  We took a couple of days getting back to London, where Yvette promptly disappeared with her boyfriend, and a couple more days reporting to Mac.  I never found out if the Taussig technique was used again - at least I wasn't involved if it was - but I had my suspicions on at least two other occasions.  Mac wasn't the type to pass up a winning strategy.

Chapter 21

While things were being sorted out following the invasion of France, I had some free time, but Tina was off on another mission.  I had a feeling Mac was planning things that way, but was afraid to ask him - he might have told me the truth.  After a few days I got bored and reported back to the camp just in time to be grabbed for instructor duty.  As the pace of the war increased, and our casualties mounted, Mac was recruiting and training faster, and more of it was being done here in Britain.  In between assignments we occasionally filled in to help out.

I didn't mind it.  Actually, I got a kick out of teaching the finer points of sniping and knife work.  I was more effective now, having gained some insight by practicing in the field.  I found that there's nothing like a few close calls to sharpen your teaching techniques, and the students tend to pay more attention to someone who's been there and done it.  Theory is all well and good, but I think our educational system would be better off if the teachers and professors were forced to practice their trade for a few years before they were allowed to teach it.

In addition to the new recruits, there were a few oldtimers like myself at the base, mostly between assignments.  There were some new faces I hadn't seen before and a couple more that I
had
seen and wasn't particularly interested in seeing again.  From their reactions they weren't interested in renewing old acquaintances either.  That was the normal attitude at the base - you would walk into the canteen and find a couple of tables full with the latest training class, and the rest of the tables occupied by one or, at most, two diners.  Oh, we still had a few agents who liked to socialize but, for the most part, we had all learned the futility of developing a friendship with people that might very likely be dead or missing the next time you heard their name mentioned, or whom you might have to leave behind on some mission.

There was one exception, one of Mac's first recruits - the class before mine - named Smitty.  Smitty was on permanent administrative duty, the only one of us - "us" meaning field agents - who was.  Smitty's job was to coordinate the information coming in on what were referred to as "standing targets" - people that Allied Command wanted eliminated but whom we hadn't gotten around to yet or weren't considered important enough for an assigned target.  Mac had expanded this information and instituted a new procedure the previous year, in what he called the "recognition room," in response to developments in both Germany and the Soviet Union.  Apparently, Mac's approach to warfare was no longer unique - not that it ever had been.  Our profession had roots going far back in history, but in modern times, it was not the sort of profession one talked about or - heaven forbid - officially sanctioned.

Very handy fellows to have around, we killers.  You can feel fine and self-righteous about disapproving of us when you don't need us; and you can feel fine and self-righteous about handing us medals when you do - provided we're wearing uniforms.  If you don't wear a uniform and pick a specified individual on which to practice your trade, then everyone shudders and screams bloody murder.  Someone once pointed out that the Victorians had a thing about sex but had no big problems with death, but modern civilization seems to have it reversed.  Well, I told you I had been born a couple of centuries too late.

Actually, although you won't hear the word used too often - Mac likes the word  "remover" - the correct terminology for our type of work is "assassin."  I did some research once on the subject.  It seems there was this bloodthirsty priest or lama or guru or whatever the word was back then, living up in the rocks of ... well, I don't remember where, but it was somewhere in the Middle East.  He was called "The Old Man of the Mountain" and had a kind of religion, a murderous kind of religion, and a bunch of fanatic followers.  He fed them hashish and sent them out to kill.  Over time, they were called
Hashishin
, which eventually became
assassin
. That's where the word came from.

Anyway, the Germans and Soviets both had developed their own little bureau of assassins and Mac was now compiling files on them as information became available from the field, British Intelligence and God knows where else.  Sometimes I wondered if Mac didn't have his own intelligence network in place, unknown to us and our allies.  I wouldn't put it past him and some of his information was so accurate as to be frightening, such as the file on the General's neighbor on one of my previous missions.

I suppose the British had some people more or less engaged in our specialty, but we never saw anything on them.  However, Mac had amassed a lot of information on the Soviet and German agents in our line of work, including photographs and sketches where available.  The Soviet agents, being our allies, were included ostensibly so we could avoid killing one if we ran into him or her in the field.  Actually, Mac had once hinted to me that the Soviet files would come in handy after the war.  He had no faith that we would continue to be allies after the reason for our collaboration, Germany, was out of the picture.

The German agents, however, - along with the "standing targets" - all carried standing orders: "Terminate on sight, mission allowing."  As the information in the recognition room grew, Mac needed someone to coordinate it and brief us field agents whenever we were on base.  That's where Smitty came in.  Smitty was probably the only one other than Mac who knew us all.  He was invariably friendly and helpful; whenever we got back to base and he saw us in the canteen, he would limp over to say hello and discuss our recent mission, offering congratulations or condolences as indicated.  Even the most obnoxious agent liked, or at least tolerated, Smitty, even though there was a downside.