But there he was. Christiansen saw him turn around, raise his gun as if he wanted to try a shot, and then, apparently thinking better of it, turn and run. Perhaps he didn’t like the distance. Perhaps he had seen the gun in Christiansen’s hand and didn’t like the odds. Either way, he cut into a side street, nearly knocking down an old woman pushing a shopping cart. They were putting on quite a show for the neighborhood.
“Okay, you son of a bitch.”
Christiansen almost laughed. He had forgotten about the wound in his shoulder. He had a long stride, and he knew he was gaining. He would run the bastard into the ground.
But when he reached the corner he knew he had been suckered Raincoat was waiting for him—he knew that even before he saw him He was just standing there, the gun held steady in both hands, like a man shooting at targets in his back yard.
Someone yelled. Christiansen didn’t let himself slow down; he just made a dive for the front end of a car that was parked by the curb. He heard a shot, then another, and then he hit the pavement and rolled. He didn’t have any idea if a bullet had found its mark. A truck swerved to avoid him, tires squealing like a maimed animal
The impact had nearly kicked the wind out of him and his elbows felt as if they had been broken with hammers, but Christiansen landed right side up and ready to shoot back. He managed one round—it ricocheted off the stone wall with a whining sound and hit nothing. There was no one there.
Hell, he hadn’t missed by much. The son of a bitch was running like a jackrabbit. It seemed he didn’t want to die either.
Christiansen got to his feet and discovered, to his intense relief, that everything seemed to work. There were no fresh bullet holes in him, and he wasn’t falling flat on his face. He would settle for that. He still had to catch a certain someone; there wasn’t time to get killed.
There were little clumps of people standing around on the sidewalk, watching him. They all had the same stunned, uncomprehending expression on their faces—didn’t they have sense enough to get out of here? It wasn’t hard to get shot in the middle of a war zone.
No one was being clever now. Raincoat was running for his life, pure and simple. Christiansen started after him.
It was a track meet now, and Christiansen had the longer legs. Raincoat must have known that; he was up on his toes like a sprinter, putting everything he had into it. He wouldn’t last long that way. They turned another corner, no more than forty yards apart now.
At the next street down, at right angles to them, a trolley car was coming—not very fast, but fast enough. If Raincoat didn’t stop, chances were he would go under the car—another gruesome little accident statistic. If he did stop, Christiansen had him.
The trolley driver rang his bell in warning. He must have seen what was happening, although the car didn’t seem to slow any.
But Raincoat either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He wasn’t stopping for anybody.
“Hold, dammit!” Christiansen shouted. He let himself slow a little. There was no way. . .
Except that there was. At the last second, Raincoat threw himself over the tracks like a broad jumper—he couldn’t have had more than a few inches of clearance, but be made it. He almost deserved to get away.
By the time the trolley had passed, Christiansen was well behind. His quarry had the lead back. He hadn’t even broken stride. Christiansen was beginning to feel the wound in his shoulder again.
They kept on for two more blocks. They were both tiring. And then, quite suddenly, Raincoat disappeared through the open gateway in a high board fence. By the time Christiansen caught up with him, he was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared into what looked like a lumberyard.
There were stacks of finished boards everywhere, set up in rows, turning the place into a warren of narrow, dark little alleys. Except for the gateway, which was wide enough to accommodate the truck traffic, the board fence went all the way around on four sides, so there was no other way out. They would settle their business right here.
Christiansen waited a moment, pressing himself up against the outside of the fence—he had no desire to walk into the same trap twice—and then he hurtled through the gate, aiming for the edge of a pile of uncut logs that could offer some protection.
All he felt was the soles of his shoes touching down on the packed earth. He didn’t think he had ever run so fast in his life. All he heard and saw was the pop, pop, pop of a pistol going off somewhere to the right and the tiny sprays of dust as the bullets dug into the ground around him
But the fourth one caught him. Just as be reached the log pile he felt the impact an inch or so to the left of his spine. It was like being smacked with an axe handle. His legs gave out under him and he hit the ground face first.
His gun was lying in the dirt just a few feet away—he had to get to it. Raincoat must have seen him stumble and guessed the rest. He would be moving in for the kill. Christiansen began to force himself up onto his hands and knees. The slightest movement and his back felt as if someone were trying to tear it open with a pair of cargo hooks.
But there was no choice. He could hear footsteps running across the open yard. In another two seconds he would be either armed or dead.
He threw himself down, clutching at the pistol and just catching it with the tips of his fingers. He rolled over—God, he could hardly even breathe—and brought the pistol down so he could steady it against his bent knee. There was nothing left to do except wait and hope.
But Raincoat wasn’t that stupid. He wasn’t going to just rush in like the Gadarene Swine—he probably knew as well as anybody that no one has to be in perfect health to pull a trigger. He would take his time, listening for the silence that meant he didn’t have anything more to worry about.
Christiansen dragged himself to the side of the log pile so he would have something to rest his back against Raincoat wasn’t more than ten or fifteen feet away—you could almost hear his heart beating. He was waiting for the right moment. By now, if he had been paying attention, he had to know that Christiansen was hurt bad but still alive. It was a question of who would make the first move.
Because there was a time limit, of course. They hadn’t been very private about their little brawl, and by now someone must have called the police. It wouldn’t be very long before this yard was crawling with American military police, and they would both want the thing settled before that—Raincoat so he could get out of there and Christiansen because the other man had seen Esther Rosensaft.
Because, of course, Raincoat was Colonel Hagemann’s boy. He had been gunning for Christiansen—that was why he had pulled his shot when Esther threw herself in the way—but the girl was the kind of little bonus in which his boss would be very interested. Raincoat had to be put out of his misery.
By sheer force of will, Christiansen managed to push himself up into a standing position. He was reasonably sure now that the bullet had broken a rib. He wasn’t sure whether it had touched the lung, but in practical terms it hardly mattered. He couldn’t seem to keep any air in his chest.
He was so busy thinking about how much he hurt that it was only by accident he noticed the shadow on the ground, not three yards away.
It was late afternoon. The sun was setting, and the yard was laid out along an east-west axis so that the spot where Christiansen was standing was in deep shade. And just to the front of the log pile was Raincoat, who apparently hadn’t thought to look down.
Or perhaps he didn’t care. He seemed to be slightly crouched, as if he was about to make a dash across the open space between the log pile and a stack of finished boards not ten feet away. Perhaps he was counting on surprise. Christiansen brought up his revolver, cocking the hammer as soundlessly as he could.
And then, there he was—just a flicker of movement. Christiansen turned his head a little, enough to let him see and also enough to slow him down for just that tenth part of a second, and fired.
Had he got him? He didn’t know. And then be noticed a tiny spatter
ing of blood on the ground and knew that the score was now more or less even. Raincoat had a bullet in him too.
Why hadn’t he fired? Christiansen had seen the gun. Perhaps he had been hit before he had a chance. And now he was trying to drag himself away. All he had in his mind now was escape. You could tell from the sound of his gasping.
Christiansen forced himself away from the wall of log and discovered that, yes, he could still put one foot in front of the other. The time for being smart and cautious was over. He was going after his man.
Raincoat was waiting for him. He was standing there, leaning against a stack of wooden pallets. He was holding his side, just below the heart, and his left arm was hanging straight down, but he still had his gun in that hand. It was a Luger—standard Wehrmacht issue.
To look at, he was about what you would expect. Average height, close-cropped black hair. The lines around his mouth said he would never see thirty again. His black eyes seemed to burn in their sockets. He looked exhausted. He had come to the end of his tether, and he knew it.
Christiansen walked up on him slowly, but the man made no attempt to raise his weapon. When they were perhaps fifteen feet apart—close enough that there was no chance of missing—he stopped. The big British service revolver was aimed just an inch or so to the left of the man’s breastbone.
What the hell. It wasn’t written in stone that you couldn’t take a prisoner alive—he might even have a few things to say that would make it worth the risk. Why not give the poor bastard a chance for his life?
“Drop the gun. Go ahead—drop it.”
But no one was buying. Slowly but deliberately, the man started to bring up his left arm. He wanted it the hard way.
Christiansen fired, once. The impact jerked the man backward, as if he had been pulled from behind. He lay there in the dust with his knees almost touching his chest, as dead as they make them. Christiansen walked over, took the pistol from the lifeless hand, and pulled open the magazine. It was empty. There hadn’t been a bullet in the chamber.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
That was the moment the cavalry arrived.
With much squealing of tires, two U.S. Army jeeps came tearing in through the lumberyard gates and pulled up with a jerk on either side of the spot where Christiansen was standing over the body of the man he had just killed. He turned around to find that, to the right and left both, he was staring down the business end of an M1 rifle.
Fuck it—he was tired of heroics. He dropped the Luger and the revolver, muzzle first.
The American lieutenant who crawled out of the passenger seat of the right-hand jeep had a pistol of his own, a .45 automatic which he insisted on pointing at Christiansen’s head.
“You take it easy, fella,” he said. He was a hell of a lot more nervous than he needed to be. “You got the whole neighborhood upset. Jesus, what did you think you was doin’?”
Christiansen decided it was time to stand on his dignity. Slowly, so that no one got excited, he pulled his wallet from the inside pocket of his overcoat.
“I’m Captain Inar Christiansen of the Norwegian Army,” he said, giving each word all the weight it would bear. “This man took a shot at me, and I followed him here.”
“Oh, yeah? And who’s he—Martin Bormann?”
It was a joke. This boy was one of the smart ones. Nobody was going to put anything over on him. All at once, Christiansen discovered that he was fresh out of patience.
He reached down and grabbed a handful of the dead man’s shirt. He was tired and his back fell like it was broken, but he didn’t care anymore. The fabric gave way with one great yank—everything just peeled off, shirt, overcoat, the works.
“Hey, fella, you can’t. . .”
“Look for yourself, stupid.” Christiansen growled. The corpse pitched over on its right side, almost naked from the waist up. With the point of his shoe, Christiansen pushed the arm out of the way.
And there it was. tattooed just under the left armpit, the SS blood-type number.
13
At a quarter to ten that evening, Christiansen still hadn’t returned to the hotel. Esther was desperate enough to suggest phoning the police, but Herr Leivick wouldn’t hear of it.
“If he’s alive he’ll send us word, and if he isn’t there is nothing we can do to change that. In either case, we shall have to leave Vienna—our anonymity here is at an end.”
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled unhappily. He had liked Inar; anyone could see that. He didn’t believe he could still be alive after all this time. Esther wanted to crawl into his arms and cry.
“You should have seen the look on his face,” Itzhak kept repeating to Herr Leivick. “A hole in his shoulder big enough to put your hand through, but he didn’t care—he didn’t even seem to notice. Inar isn’t afraid of anything. The way he went charging after that goddamned Nazi. I think he was ready to tear him apart with his teeth.”
It was Inar now. Not Christiansen, or that goy bastard, but Inar. And Itzhak was happy because he had found a new hero, and heroes can’t be killed. It was like an axiom in geometry. Itzhak was the only one who was happy.
Esther wished he would shut up.
So they waited. Herr Leivick packed his suitcase and made coffee, and they sat around in a silence interrupted only occasionally by Itzhak’s assurance that all would be well, that the man who had tried to kill them in the secondhand clothing store was dead in a ditch somewhere and that nothing as insignificant as a bullet could prevail against the House of Israel’s new god.
But Esther was not so convinced. She had seen, time and time again, that courage and virtue were helpless against the superior power of evil, and all she could find it in her heart to do was to mourn. She wished she had been left to go mad in Mühlfeld Prison. She wished the shot that had wounded Inar could have killed her first—anything before this. It just wasn’t in her to surrender love once more. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t cared about her, just as long as she could be free to love him in peace. Now, finally, she had found something—someone—to love more than her own life. If he really was dead, then she didn’t care what happened to her.
“Have some coffee, my dear.” Herr Leivick pressed the cup into her two hands, molding his own around them as if he didn’t trust her not to spill it. He knelt beside her chair, his eyes full of kindness. “It’s a hard thing, I know, but you and I both have experience of hard things. There’s nothing to be done about it, and it’s still possible he may be alive. Inar is no sacrificial lamb.”
She touched his face with the tips of her fingers, trying to smile. He only wanted to comfort her. How could she possibly explain that there was no comfort for what she felt, that even the sound of his words stabbed her through like a knife with a broken point? She couldn’t say any of that, so she said nothing, and tried to smile.
They waited in silence, the coffee untouched. Finally Esther set the cup down on the floor.
That was just before the telephone rang.
“I’m in my room,” he said. Yes, it was Inar. She could hear his voice as Herr Leivick tilted the receiver a little away from his ear so that she could listen. It was really he.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
“I’ve been the guest of the American military police. They’ve been patching me back together. Come on down, if you like, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
That was all the invitation they needed. Herr Leivick fished through his jacket pocket until he found the key, and then all three of them went down the back staircase to the room Inar had rented for himself and Itzhak after he and Herr Leivick had decided she needed a room to herself.
Inar was sitting on his bed. His shirt was off, and his whole chest was wrapped in heavy bandages. He looked tired; his skin seemed almost gray. He was drinking a glass of water.
“I killed him—self defense.” He showed his teeth in a ferocious, mirthless grin. “Nobody minded. The war crimes office in Nuremberg had him on their lists. His nam
e was Pilsner, just like the beer.”
“And he was working for Hagemann? You have no doubts?”
Herr Leivick sagged into a chair. He seemed afflicted, almost as if he had received news of a close friend’s death.
“Would I kid you, Mordecai? He was SS, a real hard case. Nobody was going to take that one alive.”
“I see.”
No one seemed to be paying attention to her, so Esther sat down quietly on the bed beside Inar. She just wanted to be near him. There was a patch of gauze taped onto his rib cage just below the shoulder; the dried blood showed through from underneath like a glowing ember. She would have liked to touch it, but somehow she couldn’t summon the courage.
He glanced down at her and smiled
“It’s where they took the bullet out,” he said. “It broke the rib, followed it around to the side, and then ran out of steam. It was lying right under the skin.”
Herr Leivick made a noise in his throat, as if he wanted to clear it.
“Do the Americans know who you are now?” he asked.
They know who I am. but that’s all.” Inar shrugged his massive shoulders—his body smelled warm and clean. “They were very friendly once we’d sorted out who had been trying to kill whom. They even drove me back to my hotel. I gave them an address in the International Zone, thanked them very much and waved goodbye, and then took a cab back here. Don’t worry about the Americans.”
“Does it hurt a great deal?”
“I’ve felt better. What do you expect, Mordecai? I’ve got two new bullet wounds, but they’ve got company—old residents in the neighborhood. I’ll mend. But, you know, we have to get her out of here.”
The Linz Tattoo Page 21
