MATT HELM: The War Years (22 page)

I had miscalculated the extent of Frieda's natural paranoia.  As I stood up and reached behind me to pull the Woodsman from my belt, she jumped up from the chair and leaped in front of Krueger, who was standing by his desk.  She already had the derringer out and pointed towards me - I think she sensed my decision, or saw it in my eyes, as I made it.

If she had been a professional, I would have been dead right then, but she had apparently never even fired it before, as she was straining on the trigger, completely surprised by the pressure needed to fire the ridiculous little gun.  She started to bring up her other hand to help, but by then it was too late.  I had more than enough time to bring my own pistol up and think the situation through - hell, even if I waited for her to fire the little monster, using both hands, the chances of her hitting anything while struggling against that incredible mainspring were practically nonexistent.

It had been the idea of a lovers' quarrel - my original idea - that had led to the next logical progression, given the then changed situation.  Obviously, Frieda couldn't shoot herself from across the room - a suicide required powder burns - so who else would shoot her?  Since it couldn't be an enemy agent, it would have to be a jealous lover, a third party.  As the thought had occurred to me, I'd put it into action - surprised that she hadn't yet got her other hand on the gun.  Aiming just above the outstretched derringer, I'd started firing, letting the pistol drift upwards and to the right a little with each shot.  The first five bullets had gone into her upper chest and neck, and the last four continued the diagonal pattern, two going into Krueger's neck and face and the final two missing them both altogether.  As they had fallen, I could see that, as I had hoped, at least two bullets had penetrated her neck and entered the doctor's chest. . . .

With a little push in the right direction, it was a perfect set-up.  There was no evidence of a struggle, no weapons on either Frieda or the doctor to confuse the issue - just the picture of a brave woman trying to shield the doctor from her jealous lover and both of them getting shot by a panicky amateur who got lucky.  All I needed was a final touch to the scene so even the stupidest investigator would come to the right - from my viewpoint - conclusion.

I thought for a moment, then decided that a jealous lover who was unbalanced enough to shoot two people wouldn't waste time in regrets and probably wouldn't be all that rational.  He would want to justify his action, at least to himself.  Hoping that I wasn't being too clever, I bent over and daubed my forefinger in a puddle of blood.  Feeling a little Machiavellian, I carefully drew a large “A" on Frieda's forehead, figuring that at least one person in the local police department would have heard of Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter
and draw the obvious conclusion.

I wiped my finger on Krueger's shirt and, gathering up the doctor's notes, walked out into the night and threw up…

It happens like that, and at the time I envied Nick - my ice-cold and now missing classmate - and the fanatical Jacob.  They wouldn't be standing there puking their guts out because the mission required the death of an innocent little girl.  I had been relieved when she gave me an excuse to shoot her, but I would have in any case; hence the attack of conscience.  Well, I could live with it - I hoped - and would consider myself lucky if all I had to worry about was losing my dinner.

A couple of months later - I got back to London using the route I had described to Frieda - I narrowly escaped being blown up by one of the new "V-2" missiles.  It gave me a new perspective on the havoc that the German's could have created had they been able to perfect a guidance system.  I was told by Mac that our experts agreed that Krueger had been on the right track and, with the papers I had brought back, we should eventually be able to develop our own version of a guided missile, although without a genius like Krueger, it would take years.

That made me feel a little better.  I had saved the world from destruction - for the time being - and that made up for the death of one unimportant little girl - didn't it?

Chapter 25

It was some time in late November '44.  They brought this big kid up to me on the airfield saying that since I was lone-wolfing it this trip there was plenty of room, and if I didn't mind, it would save their making an extra run.  He wasn't one of ours - he was OSS or something - and I wasn't crazy about having any outsiders knowing where I'd been dropped, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

Nobody bothered to introduce us.  We didn't have names around that place, anyway; we were just cargo to be delivered.  I shook hands with the boy, that was all.  He was a knuckle grinder.  Then they called that the plane was ready and he wheeled toward it with that same aggressive football readiness of a big man who expects to be hit hard and intends to stay on his feet nevertheless.

We hadn't talked on the way across the Channel.  We were just two young guys with different destinations, sharing a taxi for a few blocks, and I was wondering, as always, if this was the night my chute wouldn't open or I'd land in some hot wires and fry to death.  He had his own thoughts, of a similar nature, probably.  He didn't even wish me good luck when it was time for me to drop, but I didn't hold that against him.  We had no sentimental traditions or customs in our organization, but in some outfits, I knew, just as among some hunters, it was considered bad form to wish anybody luck at parting.

"So long, fella," was all he said.

I never have liked people who call me fella, so I just gave him a nod as I went out.  The hell with him.  If you want to make buddies, join the infantry.  The umbrella opened fine, and I landed in an open field, and I never saw the guy again.

The mission involved a prison-break operation at St. Alice.  My job was to take the commandant out of action with a scoped-up rifle just before they blew the gates.  I got the damn commandant, all right, but nobody else showed up.  Well, that wasn’t completely unexpected.  Mac had warned me of the possibility, when we planned this cockamamie mission in the first place.

I knew I was in trouble when Mac started the meeting with a bone-chilling question.  “Eric,” he asked, “How high is your pain threshold?”

I paused for a moment, absorbing the implications in the question.  “How high does it have to be, Sir?”

He raised his eyebrows a little.  They were jet black, in startling contrast to his prematurely gray hair.  “Fair enough,” he replied.  “Let’s just say that this mission may require you to endure some unpleasant, but not permanent, damage in order to persuade someone that you are important enough to pass on to his superior for expert interrogation.”

Mac speaks English, not gobbledygook.  He remembers the nice distinction, almost forgotten nowadays, between convince and persuade. Decimate means, literally, to kill one-tenth of.  You can't decimate to the last man - there are always nine left.  It may be used loosely to mean inflict large losses upon, but it does not and cannot possibly mean to massacre or annihilate.  Disinterested does not mean uninterested and presently means in a little while - not at present and the fact that some permissive dictionaries have already adopted the recent bastard usage doesn't make it sound any less affected and pretentious to his ears or mine.

My mind tends to work like that sometimes.  It picks up on the inconsequential while processing the reality on some deeper level.  Mac waited patiently.  “With all due respect, Sir, damage from ‘expert interrogation’ is usually more than unpleasant and, more often than not, fairly permanent.”

He gave me a reproving look.  “It is not in the plan to allow the ‘expert interrogation’ to take place. You will have a back-up team, comprised of two of our field men, plus an I-Team.”

The “I-Team” was a rather specialized group of interrogation experts.  I was beginning to get the idea. “You want this superior, I gather?”

“We very much want this superior,” he confirmed.  “We know
what
he is, but have no idea of who or where he is.  Over the last year, it has become clear that someone is training agents and infiltrating them into some of our intelligence and operations units, and at least one fairly important group within the French Resistance.”

“… And I’m the bait.”  It wasn’t a question.

“You’re the bait,” he confirmed.  I was a little surprised as Mac often talks around the point.  “There are certain elements within the German intelligence community that would dearly love to get their hands on a member of our little group, if for nothing else than to prove to their superiors that we actually exist.”

Mac looked at me for a moment, taking my silence as assent.  He wasn’t much for asking for volunteers.  His attitude was that when we volunteered to join the organization, we automatically volunteered for whatever assignment we were given.

“The man’s name, at least on his papers, is William Price, known as ‘Bill.’  He was born in Indianapolis of an American father and a French mother, graduated from Indiana University with an Engineering degree, and volunteered for the Army in 1942.  He was commissioned and served with an intelligence unit for two years.  Shortly after D-Day, he was assigned as liaison to a unit in the French Resistance.  Two months later his unit was ambushed and only he survived, with minor injuries.  He eventually made his way to another unit, where he was gratefully accepted.

“Here’s what he looks like.”  He handed me a rather grainy photo, obviously blown up from an official photo ID.  “His vitals are on the back.  There’s no question that a Bill Price with the proper background existed.  The only question is whether this is the same Bill Price who survived the ambush and is now leaking intelligence to the Germans.  I guess it would matter to his parents and friends, but to us it makes no difference.”

“It’s been confirmed that he is, in fact, a spy?  Or is that part of my assignment?”

“It has been confirmed sufficiently enough that he may be getting suspicious.  I was requested to make him a designated target, until an alternative was proposed.”  I knew better than to ask whose alternative.

“There’s a prison camp outside of a town called St. Alice, with only a small contingent of relatively new and mostly ill-trained guards.  Price has been briefed that a ‘specialist’ has been assigned to take out the Camp Commandant just before he and his Resistance group blow the front gate.  They may actually show up.”

“May?”

“As I said, he might be getting suspicious.  Rather than take the risk of going through with the prison break, he just might decide to blow it off and take you himself, with or without some help.”

Chapter 26

My left ear itched.  Once early on, as the British say, I went through a door carelessly and got a leg shot out from under me, even though I'd had a feeling something was wrong.  So now I respect any little warning tickle.  In my line of work, you get these premonitions a hundred times, and ninety-nine times nothing at all happens; but it only takes once.

I rolled to the right several times, ending up on my back with my rifle pointing behind my previous position.  Nobody was there.  Feeling a little foolish, I started to get up when I heard a rustling sound coming from about 20 or 30 yards into the trees, behind the rocks I had chosen for my vantage point to target the Commandant.

With Mac’s warning on my mind, I had arrived at the prison camp hours before the scheduled break, just in case someone was being cute.  I’m pretty good in the woods, if I do say so myself, so I had carefully scouted the area and had come to the conclusion that I was alone.  I picked a spot between some rocks that gave me a good view into the camp, but shielded me from behind by a couple of boulders and the tree line that started just a few feet behind me.  I had several cold hours of boredom ahead of me, but that was pretty much a given for a dedicated hunter. As I was now hunting a different prey, some of whom shot back, I considered a few uncomfortable hours to be a reasonable trade-off for ensuring I didn’t get shot in the back.

Apparently, someone had arrived after I had and, rather than try to hunt me down, simply waited for my shots to give away my position.  It was kind of rough on the Commandant, but it’s the choice I would have made….

Unless this Bill Price was stupid – and the evidence argued strongly against that – he wouldn’t try to take me by himself in the middle of a fairly large wooded area.  Even two people would have a good chance of missing me altogether.  That meant he had at least two others with him, maybe more.  I listened carefully and heard the same sound coming from a little to the right of the previous direction.  He was circling around my position.  Pulling myself up into a crouching position, I headed just to the left of the direction of the rustling sound, intending to get behind him.  When they're hunting you, particularly if there are more of them than there are of you, it so seldom occurs to them that you might have the temerity to turn around and come hunting them.