The Linz Tattoo

by Nicholas Guild

  The three of them were standing together in the shadow of a shop awning diagonally across the intersection from the Guard station’s front entrance. It was the lunch hour—sacred in all Latin countries—so the shop was closed. The streets were nearly deserted. Everything was quiet, which meant that any bored policeman who happened to glance out the window because he had nothing better to do would be sure to notice them. In Christiansen’s case, this could present difficulties.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” he said, lighting another cigarette. It was his third in not quite twenty minutes. “That might be best.”

  The other two men stepped out into the sunshine of the quiet, wind-still street. They didn’t look behind them, but Dessauer could feel Christiansen’s eyes on the back of his head. It wasn’t until they had passed around the front of the Guard station and turned the corner onto the next street that he lost that sense of being watched.

  “What will we really do if they don’t put him in the same cell with Mordecai?”

  Faglin only glanced at him for a moment and then went back to his study of the building directly behind the Guard station.

  “We’ll go through on the other side and hope we find Mordecai there. What choice do we have?”

  “And leave Christiansen behind?”

  “Yes. There won’t be time to get him out as well.”

  “And he knows that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit.”

  “Nobody ever said he didn’t have guts. Not even Hirsch.”

  There was a large dog with a heavy, matted coat, brown with black patches, lying on a doorstep, stretched out to make the most of the sun’s heat. He lifted his head to watch them as they went by and then turned back to lay it between his paws again. The sight of them seemed to depress him.

  “What are you going to do about Hirsch?”

  “Nothing.”

  Faglin stopped and looked up at a third-story window framed in shutters that had been painted a bright blue. He smiled, as if at something funny.

  “If I planned to do anything about Jerry I would have done it before we left the hotel,” he went on. “Jerry’s all right—he’s the practical type. He’ll stay in his room and sulk for a while and then it’ll be business as usual.

  “We’ll go in through there. Let’s hope everyone is having lunch out, unlikely as that is.”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes off the window with the blue shutters.

  They went around the next corner and found the entrance to the apartment building. It really wasn’t anything more than a tenement, with an outside stairway and only one door per story. They had rented a car and had it parked just out of sight, not half a block away, but they still had to get to it. The stairway was completely exposed—it would be a problem if the police came around fast enough to catch them before they made it down to the street. That was the sort of thing they would have to worry about when the time came. You couldn’t expect to have everything.

  Christiansen was still under the awning when they got back. He still had a cigarette between his lips, and the remains of four others were on the sidewalk in front of him, each rubbed out with the toe of his shoe so that they looked like squashed insects. He reached down and picked up a knapsack that had been resting against the outside wall of the shop, handing it to Faglin, Then he took the revolver from under his belt and gave it to Dessauer.

  “Keep it warm for me,” he said. In the shade, his eyes looked as if he were already dead.

  “Sure.”

  He walked across the street and, without a pause, as if it were the sort of thing he did every day, opened the left side of the double doorway to the Guard station, letting it swing closed behind him when he disappeared inside.

  “Just like that,” Dessauer said under his breath.

  “That’s right, kid. Just like that.”

  Faglin made a gesture to indicate that he would take this side of the building and that Dessauer should go around and watch at the other window.

  The dog was still there. This time he didn’t even trouble to look up as Dessauer took a station on the sidewalk in front of him. Dessauer glanced at his watch. It was three minutes after one.

  He tried to imagine what was going on inside the station. What would Christiansen do, just walk up to the front desk and announce, “I understand you gentlemen have been looking for me”? He might, come to think of it.

  And what would the police do? At this hour, all the senior officers were probably off home, enjoying a little nap after lunch—Christiansen would be counting on that. The desk sergeant wouldn’t dare risk trying to interrogate him; he would leave that to his superiors, so they could take the credit. He would content himself with a body search, which was why Christiansen had given Dessauer his gun, and then he would toss him in a cell and settle back to wait. The rough stuff would come later, when they could all feel themselves on safer ground.

  How long would all that take? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Dessauer looked at his watch again and found that exactly two minutes had passed.

  He thought he could hear a telephone ringing somewhere, but he couldn’t be sure. The sweat was collecting under his armpits. His hands were cold, so he slipped them inside his overcoat pockets. It was seven minutes past one.

  No, he couldn’t blame Esther for liking Christiansen better. Dessauer wasn’t at all sure he would have had the nerve to walk into that place—in Spain they punished murderers with the garrote. They strapped you down in a chair, put a loop of rope around your neck, and twisted it with an iron bar until it crushed your windpipe and you strangled.

  At sixteen minutes after one, a hand appeared in the cell window and the fingers closed around the middle bar. It was a left hand, and the pale winter sunlight made the scar on the back glisten like silver.

  Dessauer had to force himself to keep from running. This time he went around the back of the building. As soon as he reached the other side he saw Faglin standing on the opposite sidewalk, looking up at the barred third-story window like a man in love. When he noticed Dessauer, he hoisted the knapsack to his shoulder and came over.

  “Well? Hand or button?”

  “Hand. Lucky for Christiansen.”

  “Lucky for us too. We’ll need him to help cover our escape.”

  The tenement had been built probably at around the same time as the Civil Guard station, but the brick was a slightly different color. The Republic had favored brick; brick was more “proletarian”. The back of one building was flush up against the back of the other; you couldn’t have fit a business card in the space between them. Faglin and Dessauer trudged up the stairway together to the landing on the third floor. There was no bell, so Faglin knocked at the door. When there was no answer right away, he knocked again.

  Finally the door opened. The man inside was perhaps thirty years old, with a stubble of beard and uncombed black hair that had a tendency to fall forward into his eyes. He was wearing an undershirt that showed off his heavy arms and. shoulders, and there was a napkin in his right hand. He looked annoyed.

  “Si?”

  Faglin only smiled at him, swung the knapsack down from his shoulder, and pulled a revolver out from beneath the flap. He rested the barrel against the man’s chest and pushed. The man stepped back, the door opened wider, and everyone was inside. Dessauer closed the door behind him.

  The whole family was there—mama, grandma, a boy of perhaps five with long, thin legs, a baby in a highchair. They were sitting around a table covered with the remains of the midday meal. Papa, the one in the undershirt, had retreated back to his wife’s chair, where he stood with his hand resting on the wooden backrest. They were all staring at Faglin’s gun—enchanted, like mice before a cobra.

  “Any of you speak English?” Faglin asked. He almost seemed to be pleading.

  “Yes,” the wife answered. “I work at Gibraltar two year.”

  She smiled tentatively, as if afraid she might be thought to boast. She had a round, brown face and remark
ably large eyes.

  “Then tell your family that we have no wish to hurt anyone, that if everyone behaves himself we’ll be gone from here in just a few minutes. Just do as you’re told and everything will be fine. Understand?”

  “Si—yes. “

  She nodded emphatically two or three times and then translated for her husband, who seemed less than convinced. He looked first at Dessauer, and then at Faglin, and then turned back to his wife, to whom he spoke in a low, anxious voice.

  “He wishes to know what you plan to do.” Again the tentative, apologetic little smile.

  “We have a couple of friends in the Guard station. We’re going to get them out. There will probably be shooting, so let’s see if we can’t find somewhere you and your family will be out of the way.”

  They were Spanish, and old enough to have vivid memories of their civil war. They knew all about the virtues of being out of the way.

  “Please, then, will you tie us up?” the woman asked. She held up her hands, the wrists together, as if to explain what she meant. “The Guards, you must understand. . .”

  Faglin nodded. They all knew all about reprisals.

  There seemed to be three rooms in the apartment. In the front was the main living area, with a few chairs, a sofa covered in worn rose-colored fabric, a dining table and, crowded into one end, a kitchen. The two bedrooms were shallow and wide and opened directly out into the main room, and both of them had tiny windows. Faglin made a gesture toward the one on the left.

  “You’ll all be much safer in there—with the door open. Just remember, the only way anyone can get hurt is if he tries to be a hero. Keep your heads down, and in half an hour you can get back to your lunch.”

  The little boy got down from his chair and took a few steps toward Faglin before his grandmother seized him and held him to her. From the protection of her arms he continued to regard the intruders with large, curious eyes he had obviously inherited from his mother. When Faglin smiled at him he found no difficulty in smiling back.

  “Itzikel, take them in and tie them up—and don’t make a big production of it. Let’s keep everybody comfortable. “

  Faglin took a coil of clothesline out of his knapsack and watched through the door as Dessauer did his work. The little boy seemed to think it was all great fun and could hardly wait until it was his turn.

  The other bedroom was apparently mama and papa’s. There was a crib for the baby, a four-drawer dresser, and a double bed, all crowded together in a space hardly twice the size of the bed alone.

  “Our flat in Haifa isn’t much bigger than this,” Faglin said as they stood together just inside the doorway. “One bedroom for the wife and me and one for the girls. At least we don’t have to have mama out on the couch.”

  He grinned, but in a way that suggested the thought of his family caused him some pain.

  “Come on. Let’s get to it.”

  He crouched by the wall that adjoined the Guard station, resting his hand against the plaster as if trying to feel a pulse. Then he used the knuckle of his middle finger to tap the surface.

  “I’ll bet the builder saved himself a little money,” he said finally. “I’ll bet this is a single layer of faced-over brick, and he counted on the adjoining wall for insulation and support. I’ll bet we can punch straight through, like poking a hole in a loaf of bread with your thumb.”

  “What are you going to use?”

  Faglin ran his fingers down the wall once more in a loving gesture. It was obvious he was enjoying this.

  “A shaped charge. I’ll draw myself a little circle with plastic explosives and bevel the edges so the broadest side is flat against the wall. When she goes off, the force of the blast will all go in that direction—right on through to the cell next door. Nothing to it.”

  He dumped out the contents of his knapsack on the bed. There was a knife with a flat point, a battery pack with two bare wires protruding and what looked like an egg timer attached to it with black electrical tape, and about four meters of something resembling window putty, a tube of the stuff, wrapped in what might have been waxed paper. Faglin began peeling away the wrapping. It was like watching a snake shed its skin.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Dessauer asked, the fingers of one hand nervously tracing the crease in his trousers. “I mean, isn’t there a chance the explosion will kill them on the other side?”

  Faglin looked up from where he was sitting on the bed. His face was masklike, and his fingers never stopped stripping away the paper wrapper.

  “Christiansen knows what’s going to happen,” he said. “Let’s hope he’s smart enough not to belly up to this particular wall. Beyond that, we just have to trust to luck.”

  In about five minutes he had most of the explosive free from its wrapping and coiled up in a pile on his knees.

  “That should do it—we don’t have to blow a hole they can walk through.”

  He twisted off the last piece and threw it back into his knapsack. Then he stood up, stepped over to the wall, and began pressing the long strip of explosive, as soft as modeling clay, up against the plaster with his first finger and thumb. When he had described a circle and blended the two ends together, he took the knife and used the flat point to shape the edges. When he was finished, the explosive was about three fingers wide against the wall and its spine narrowed to a right angle. Faglin attached the timer by the simple expedient of pushing the bare tips of the two wires into the explosive near the bottom, so the battery pack could rest on the floor.

  “We’ll give it fifteen seconds,” he said. “All the time in the world considering we only have to step into the next room.”

  He twisted the dial around a quarter of a turn and took his hand away, just as if the thing had become white hot. Dessauer thought the ticking it made was perhaps the loudest noise he had ever heard.

  “Let’s move it—fifteen seconds isn’t that long.”

  They went outside and closed the door. Faglin took the pistol out of his belt and held it at the ready, the muzzle pointing toward the ceiling. Both of them seemed to have stopped breathing.

  Was it really only fifteen seconds? Whole minutes seemed to go by, and still nothing happened. Dessauer could feel the blood pounding in his neck. He tried to count—one, two, three—but his heart was going too fast.

  “Itzikel, give me Christiansen’s gun.”

  Faglin held out his hand and Dessauer put the revolver down on the palm, where it looked awkwardly large and out of balance.

  “I suppose we—”

  The explosion was not so much a sound as a physical shock, like being struck in the chest with the points of someone’s fingers. The whole room, in one instant, seemed to start forward—plates, spoons, picture frames, a pair of silver candlesticks that might have been a wedding present, all sorts of loose objects suddenly dashed to the floor as if of their own volition. And then, of course, when you had almost decided that it would never come at all, the ghastly, tearing boom of the explosion, like the sound of a giant clearing his throat, made you want to clap your hands over your ears and sent a painful stab to your eyes. The door to the bedroom flew off its hinges and hit the table before bouncing to the floor.

  Faglin didn’t waste any time. The bedroom wasn’t a room anymore—it was simply the space that held a heavy cloud of white plaster dust. But he threw himself inside, his body cutting a slot through the chalky haze.

  Dessauer followed him and in a few seconds, after he had wiped his eyes, he could see what looked like the mouth of a tunnel. The explosives had done their work. Bars of light were shining through from the holding cell in the next building.

  “Christiansen, catch this!” Faglin shouted. His arm went through a low arc and Dessauer heard something land with a thud inside the hole. It was the revolver. Almost at once there was the sound of a single shot.

  A few seconds later, Mordecai’s head and shoulders became visible as he crawled through from the other side on his hands and knees. He lo
oked up at Dessauer’s face, blinked in the dusty light, and smiled. Dessauer reached out to take his hand and pull him through. There was a handcuff around his wrist, but the chain had been broken.

  At almost the same moment there were several more shots fired inside the cell, this time from more than one weapon. One bullet came through and buried itself with a thud in the plaster wall not a hand span from Dessauer’s right knee.

  And then there was silence.

  And then the light from inside the tunnel went dark and Christiansen pushed the upper half of his huge body through, his shoulders scraping against the ragged sides of the hole. He threw out his arms.

  “Help me out,” he shouted. “I don’t fancy getting shot in the ass.”

  As soon as they were all through, and Christiansen had stood up from his crouch, Faglin made a gesture toward the door. Surely by then the Guards must have figured out what had happened, and the four of them still had two flights of stairs to get down before they even reached the street.

  “You lead,” Christiansen said, putting his hand on Faglin’s arm. “Then Mordecai, then Itzhak. I’ll pull up the rear.”

  Faglin nodded. It was almost as if they had agreed on everything in advance. As he pushed through the door to the outside landing, Dessauer thought he could hear the baby crying.

  They spaced themselves about five meters apart as they started down. Christiansen waited by the open door, his revolver already cocked, still watching the bedroom door to see if any more Guards would have the nerve to come through from the cell. The stairway shook under their weight, and the sound of their footsteps on the wooden risers was a sullen roar.

  Dessauer had already made the second landing when a Guard with a rifle came around the edge of the building. He brought his weapon up to his shoulders—it was aimed square at Faglin—then there was a short, high-pitched bark of gunfire and the Guard toppled over, dead before he hit the ground. Christiansen had shot him from above, and the bullet had gone right through the top of his head.

  “That way!”

  Pointing toward where they had left the car, Dessauer looked up at Christiansen. But Christiansen waved him on, as though he didn’t care. Two more Guardsmen were already on the street, running for the cover of an alleyway. One of them lost his hat, and it bounced against the cobblestones with a click. He was carrying what looked like a machine gun.