The Linz Tattoo

by Nicholas Guild

Then Egon Hagemann seemed to find himself. He discovered politics—or at least that side of politics concerned with breaking people’s noses and throwing bricks through plate-glass windows. Membership in various Freikorps. Joined the Nazi Party and the SA in 1927. Transferred to the SS in 1930. From there the only direction was up.

  And now he was living in splendor because he had convinced the Syrians that he could deliver the formula for a nerve gas that would finish the work of the Final Solution.

  And Just to be sure he survived to see it, he had talked his Arab sponsors into buying him this fortress by the briny deep.

  It was wonderful, the confidence the Germans placed in such things. When they had overrun Norway in 1940, one of the prizes that interested them most was the heavy water facility at Vemork—they wanted the stuff for their atomic weapons research, and Vemork was almost the only large-scale producer in Europe. Anyone would have supposed they would have taken adequate precautions against sabotage.

  The plant itself was located on a little notch in the rock face of a mountain. The workers had to cross over a suspension bridge from town and, for the rest, the place was considered impregnable. After all, you could guard a bridge easily enough, and who in his right mind would try scaling a six-hundred-foot rock face?

  Nevertheless, four Norwegian commandos, some of them men Christiansen had trained with, had climbed straight up from the frozen riverbed with enough plastic explosives to put the place out of business for months. They even got out alive, which just went to prove that anything was possible.

  Perhaps not anything. There was one crucial difference: the Vemork team had merely to reach its target, plant a few charges, and run, while in this instance it would be necessary to capture Hagemann and take him out, alive. Further, at Vemork the Germans had been so sure of themselves they hadn’t even bothered to patrol the cliffs. Hagemann was unlikely to make the same mistake.

  But one mustn’t complain. At least the cliffs weren’t six hundred feet high.

  The wind was beginning to pick up as the sunlight faded. Christiansen’s little boat began to buck slightly against the restraint of the anchor rope, and he was glad he had thought to bring his rain parka. He slipped his arms into the sleeves, lit a cigarette, and had another look through the field glasses to see if anyone was moving up there.

  At twenty before five he saw his first sentry, just a man in a checkered coat walking along with a rifle slung over his shoulder. No uniform, of course. Sometimes one becomes conscious of an expectation only after it has been disappointed. Needless to say, Hagemann wasn’t going to call attention to his people by dressing them up in SS black.

  Christiansen would wait and see how long the fellow took to make his circuit. It would provide some idea of the size of the property, and also of how much time an assault team would have to get up that rock face to level ground. One could hardly start the second he turned his back.

  The man wandered by, his eyes down on the ground and his hands in his pockets. If he was thinking about anything it was probably his dinner. He wasn’t really expecting anything to happen—he was bored. After a few seconds he disappeared behind a clump of trees.

  It all seemed so straightforward now. Hagemann was up there; all that was required was to go get him. It wasn’t a matter of success or failure—Christiansen expected that he would probably be killed—it was simply that now everything was very clear.

  He had even written what was in effect his will, disposing of the only piece of property he had that could be said to have any genuine value. When they had stopped off in Bern for a day and a night, Christiansen had left Esther behind in their hotel room and had gone to visit his old composition teacher, who, with the war over, had returned to Europe and was teaching at the conservatory. They had spent an hour together, drinking tea and talking about New York and what everyone was doing now and whether there was any future in this serial music that was such a hot item just then with the avant-garde, and at the end of it Christiansen had left behind his cello, along with a letter to be opened in three weeks’ time. If he wasn’t back to claim it by then it was a safe bet he would be dead somewhere, and the cello would go to Juilliard. They would find someone to do it justice.

  That only left Esther. He couldn’t give her anything except the cello, which she wouldn’t want and which wasn’t really his anyway—a great instrument like that, a work of art in its own right, is never more than out on loan. Perhaps the only thing he could do for Esther was to find some way of getting to Hagemann, so she wouldn’t have to be the bait in their trap. The bait—that had been his idea to begin with. Poor little Esther, who said she loved him. He didn’t have a lot to be proud of on that side.

  Hagemann was up there, waiting for her.

  At a few minutes after five, two men appeared at the top of the cliff. Neither of them was the sentry, who hadn’t returned. They weren’t part of the troops. They both were wearing expensive-looking overcoats. The taller man’s was a double-breasted camel’s hair, quite stylish with a wide turned-up collar, and the other man’s was blue. The shorter man was wearing a hat, which shaded his face, but he seemed a dark-complected sort anyway. They stood together talking—perhaps they had come outside expressly for that purpose, to be away from everyone.

  It was impossible, at that distance, to make out their features. They were just two men, tall and short, light and dark, watching the sea. They could have been anyone.

  And then the sentry’ came by again, and stopped to give the taller man a crisp straight-arm salute, and Christiansen knew at once.

  . . . . .

  Hagemann returned the man’s salute, raising his hand and then opening it so that the gesture appeared to be nothing more than a friendly wave. He disliked performing these little military ceremonies in front of Faraj, who seemed to find them somehow rather humorous. Faraj was a civilian, without any great respect for the soldier’s view of the world.

  Of course, given the current state of the Syrian army, that wasn’t really such an unreasonable attitude.

  They waited in silence until the sentry had disappeared out of earshot, and then Faraj turned to him and smiled his tranquil, maddeningly diplomatic smile.

  “You must understand our impatience, Colonel,” he said soothingly—it was almost as if the man fancied himself in a boudoir. “The best estimates are that, even after you have provided us with the formula, it will require at least two weeks before we can begin generating tactically useful quantities of the gas. We must have results soon if we are to justify the very considerable expense. . .

  “Yes, my friend, all in good time. The girl arrived by train less than two hours ago. Do you see how the Mossad delivers her into my hands?”

  Hagemann allowed his eyes to rest on the cold Mediterranean horizon. He hated Faraj. The man was always at his elbow; it was almost like being under arrest. He hated the constant reminders that time was running out—as if be needed reminding. Faraj was like an omen of failure.

  There was a single boat out on the water, its slim mast sticking up like a needle. Most likely it was some silly English tourist out dragging the bottom for a few muddy-smelling turbot. The Spanish fishermen were all comfortably back in their berths by this hour.

  “Perhaps it is the Norwegian,” Faraj broke in suddenly. His unreadable smile was still in place when Hagemann turned to look at him. He could even have been joking after his macabre fashion. “Perhaps his intention is to climb up these cliffs and murder you in your sleep.”

  “That he plans to murder me I have no doubt, but I’m sure Christiansen can think of some easier method of approach.” Hagemann smiled in his turn—it was necessary constantly to be reassuring the lesser races that one was not afraid. “After all, he is an economical man.”

  Nevertheless, Hagemann rather wished he had thought to bring his field glasses with him.

  He had had no indication of Christiansen’s whereabouts for over a week, not since the news of Pilsner’s death in Vienna. It had not been ne
cessary to inquire into the circumstances of that event.

  One’s old sins came back to haunt one. Hagemann did not have to ask himself why this Norwegian was hunting him. Kirstenstad had been a turning point in both their lives.

  Of course it was possible that Christiansen was in Spain. It was even possible that he was collaborating with the Jews, although that was not a conclusion that Hagemann rushed to embrace about an enemy whom be had come to respect. Anything was possible, but there was no immediate cause for alarm. Everything would sort itself out now very quickly.

  Yes, very quickly. Christiansen might hang him in a broom closet, or the Syrians might lose patience and leave him in a shallow grave somewhere with a bullet hole in the base of his skull. Those were the alternatives to success, and he was not quite as confident of success as he led Faraj to imagine. But it was none of Faraj’s business if a cold, sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of. . .

  “You should come to the Café Pícaro with me this evening,” he went on, turning back to contemplate once more the presence of that lone sailboat on the horizon. “You will be able to see our Miss Rosensaft with your own eyes—along with her new ‘husband.’ It will confirm for you how agreeably things are progressing.”

  “She is surrounded by an army of Jewish agents—you said as much yourself.”

  “That is perhaps overstating the case. All we can say with conviction is that Leivick has been in Burriana for several days. If he brought anything like an army with him, I’m sure my own people would have detected them by now.”

  The tops of the waves had long since been dyed a smoky red, and it was growing cold. After so many months in Damascus, Hagemann was glad to have returned to the chill dampness of Europe, even as that was represented by Spain. Syria was a kind of hell, fly-ridden and suffocating, unbearable winter or summer. But the Syrians needed him. They had given him back his rank and a reason for living.

  Still, he hated them. The Syrians were all like Faraj—corrupt and effeminate. The Jews, who were at least Europeans, were a thousand times superior in every way. Leivick was a man it was possible to respect, at least. But Faraj. . .

  But Europe had been a dead world for him since 1945, a place that had forgotten how to listen to the voice of its own heart. It would not do to grow too contented here, where the fascist police merely tolerated his presence for reasons of sentiment. Syria commanded his loyalty now, and history had seen to it that the Jews were his implacable enemies. One had to learn to deal with the world as it was.

  And now Esther had come back. What a shock it had been when that shabby lawyer of von Goltz’s had turned up in Beirut. Hagemann had fancied himself hidden from the whole world, but the General had known precisely where to send his final message: “Find Esther if you need something to trade for your next meal. If you have an ear to listen with, she can tell you where to find the process book.” Only those few sentences and a brass key. the sort that might have fit a post office box or, much more probably, a bank safe-deposit vault. What a delicious joke he must have thought it, writing that note on a piece of stationery with “U.S. Army, Provost Marshal’s Office” embossed on the letterhead.

  Of course, he had hardly needed von Goltz to remind him of Esther.

  Only an imbecile would mention the word “love” within the context of a slave labor camp, but Esther had meant something to him nevertheless.

  What had there been about the war that could have made him into what he had become? Nothing, except its terrible cruelty—and the need to keep from going mad. He had known enough men who had finally had enough, walked quietly to their tents, and shot themselves through the roof of the mouth. He had decided very early that he would not be among the ones who ended that way.

  But Esther had defeated him. One could embrace cruelty, making it into the religion of a cruel age, but finally a girl hardly into her teens turns to one with dark, frightened eyes and all resolution simply fades into nothing.

  All the great conquering nations of history had included women in their booty. From Achilles to Genghis Khan the victorious warrior had carried off the wives and daughters of his slaughtered enemies. It was a traditional right. Esther had been no different; she was part of the spoils of war, and he had felt himself free to do with her as he liked. There had been others before her. There was nothing different about Esther.

  Except, of course, that in the end he had accepted with relief when the General had said, “Don’t distress yourself about the girl. Leave her to me, and I shall see to everything. There will be nothing left for the Russians.” Except, of course, that von Goltz hadn’t had any intentions of killing her.

  Had she ever understood the power she exercised over him? Was that something a woman was born knowing? Of course, she had hardly been a woman. She had hardly been more than a girl, but she might have seen him with a woman’s eyes. When she had pretended to be so afraid, had she merely been playing on his vanity?

  The war had left him with many such questions. The war had been like fire from heaven, a mad time.

  Before—and in all the time since, hiding from what had become the law—he had never thought to do such things, think such things, as the war had made seem so natural, the accustomed pattern of human life. It had been like no other time, and he both missed it and was glad it would never come again. The war had been such freedom as perhaps no man should have.

  In May of 1918, Hagemann had come home from the Ardennes on his one and only leave, and everything had been as he had left it. His mother was still alive then, still keeping up the tiny house in which he had been raised. By then he had already killed four men in combat, one of them with a broken bayonet, but she still treated him like a child home from school. “It will be all right,” she had told him, over and over, stroking the side of his shaven head with her soft, warm hand. “I’m sure your officers look out for you and wouldn’t allow such a young boy to come to harm.” Behind the lines, Germany was unchanged, unchangeable.

  And then, of course, it had changed. Defeat had brought with it the moral chaos of socialist governments and revolutions and soldiers who had to beg for bread. Hagemann could remember how, straight after demobilization, still in his sergeant’s uniform, he had wandered around the streets of Munich, his heart black with anger. All the suffering and death of the Great War, and this was how it had ended. How he had hated Germany then.

  “It will all come right of its own—you’ll see,” his mother had told him while she struggled to keep them both alive on his mustering-out pay, money suddenly worth next to nothing. “Only they shouldn’t have sent the Kaiser away like that. It wasn’t respectful of them.”

  And she would watch him as he drank his ersatz coffee, feeling his rage without understanding it. For her, somehow, the world still made sense—that world of Sunday services, her little home, her son somehow mercifully spared from the war. She felt no need to go searching after something to light the darkness inside.

  “Believe, Obey, Fight!” Hitler had told him. What more did he need? What more was there? It had filled the vacuum in his soul. It had given him back his honor and his reason for living. It had led him, step by step, to his terrible awakening, to this place and this web in which he found himself tangled.

  From September of 1939 until the very last, he had never been out of his uniform. Germany was a place he traveled across in a troop train. The war had been the whole of life. France, Norway, Russia, Poland—and, finally, Waldenburg. He had been a different person.

  And now he was working for the Syrians, quite an ordinary military commander. He ordered men killed and sent others to their deaths, but that was no more than every commander did. He carried everywhere the knowledge of what was possible for him, but he was once more a man like other men.

  And now Esther was back. It would be strange to see her.

  “You will see,” he said, almost as if to himself. Faraj had to crane his fat, nimble little neck to hear. “I will have the girl back
within twenty-four hours, and then, very soon, we will know everything.”

  “Will we? You were always most convincing in Damascus, but some of us have come to wonder if perhaps you weren’t depending too much on a scribbled note from a man about to be condemned to death. Von Goltz might have been playing with us all—what would he have to lose or gain?”

  Faraj looked up at him, smiling like a cat. One might have supposed he was merely posing a hypothetical question, of no real interest to anyone.

  “You did not know him, so how could you possibly understand?”

  The sun was almost gone now. In a few minutes it would be dark. It was time to go back to the house, but Hagemann found that he was unable to bring himself to move. The white mast of the little sailboat caught the last of the light and glistened as it pitched to and fro.

  “The General was a curious man,” he went on, forcing himself to look away from that distant patch of water. He returned Faraj’s smile, hating him. “He has set us a riddle, but by his understanding of the rules the riddle must have an answer. He no doubt expected that I should fail—he always underestimated me. But if I solve it—when I solve it—then it shall be as he said. When we have the girl, you shall have gained your victory over the Jews.”

  “But at this moment it is the Jews who have this Miss. . . What did you say her name was?”

  “Rosensaft. Esther Rosensaft. But, of course, she is only part of the answer.

  “What? You mean she can’t tell you after all?”

  Faraj took off his hat and wiped his brow against his coat sleeve. When he was excited or panicky, his eyes bulged and his neck had a way of swelling, as if it might burst any second.

  “Consider, my friend.” Hagemann put his hand on the man’s shoulder, giving the impression he expected he might otherwise topple over, like a plank of wood. “Would the Jews put this girl so easily within my reach if the answer were really hers to give with a word? I told you, we are in the presence of a riddle.”

  Yes. “If you have an ear to listen with, she can tell you. . .” Poor Esther—one could not simply wring the answer out of her, like water from a damp rag. The General had been too clever for that.