The Linz Tattoo

by Nicholas Guild

  When Faglin came back out onto the dock, he was still carrying the knapsack. He looked very pleased with himself.

  “She must be carrying a hundred gallons of petrol, “ he said. “I rigged a small charge directly under the fuel tank and wired it to the starter. She’ll go up like a Roman candle the first time anybody tries to take her anywhere. “

  “Is there enough left over for your other job?”

  “Plenty.” Faglin hefted the knapsack to show how heavy it still was and then dropped it into the stem of the sailboat. It gave Christiansen the fantods to watch how carelessly the man handled enough plastic explosive to send them all to glory, but one had to assume that he knew what he was doing.

  “Then let’s get out of here—the night won’t last forever.

  Christiansen and Itzhak carried the dead guard out to the end of the pier and pitched him into the water, where he landed with a loud splash. Then they all climbed back into the sailboat and cast off. Within a few minutes they could hardly even see the shore. Christiansen steered them well out and finally dropped anchor about half a mile from the deserted cliff face that he had chosen for the assault.

  He checked the luminous dial of his watch. It was five minutes after two.

  “We’ll wait here for a while,” he said, “just to get the sentry’s rhythm. I could use some of that coffee.”

  Faglin handed him the thermos, and he unscrewed the top and carefully poured himself about three ounces. It was still extremely hot and as bitter as death. Three ounces was about all anyone would want.

  He looked up at the cliff face, which in that darkness he could not even see, and he felt his heart twist inside him. He had sounded confident in front of the others—he had had to, otherwise they would never have agreed to such a lunatic idea—but in the quiet of his own soul he was not at all sure he could pull it off. He would have to get a line up to the top of those bluffs, and then he would have to pull himself up on it, and all in the pitch dark. He didn’t have any clear idea how high the cliffs were—seventy feet was nothing more than a hopeful guess—and the highest he had ever had to climb on a rope was about two thirds of that. And this time he would be working against a time limit and, to top it all off, with a left hand that couldn’t even bear to work the strings of a cello for longer than twenty minutes at a stretch. No, he wasn’t sure he could pull it off.

  Esther was up there, alone with that maniac. She had been more afraid of that than of death itself, and he had handed her over to him. If he ever got her out, it would take him a lifetime to make it up to her.

  And, quite suddenly, it occurred to him that that was precisely what he wanted. With Esther it was possible, for the first time in years, to consider what the future might be like. He wouldn’t have to be alone anymore, the prisoner of this obsession with revenge. The world was wider than that, something Mordecai had understood and had tried to make him understand.

  Well, by now it was all somewhat academic. In a few hours either he would be dead or Hagemann would be dead, and then revenge would be put to rest.

  “What will you do when it’s over?”

  It was Faglin—he was sitting right next to him on the prow. Christiansen hadn’t realized he was so close.

  “I don’t know. Go back to America, I guess. Get a job somewhere teaching music. I hadn’t thought about it much.”

  “You won’t go home—to Norway, I mean?”

  “No. You?”

  “Take a couple of weeks off and see if my wife and children still recognize me.” He laughed, but not very convincingly. “If we don’t get Hagemann, I’ve decided I’ll try to move them to safety. I couldn’t just leave them there, not if the Syrians . . .”

  “If we live long enough for you to get home you won’t have to worry about the Syrians, and if we don’t there won’t be anything you can do about it.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “You’re damned right. So the only sensible thing to do is to succeed. We’ll kill Hagemann, and lay this secret weapon of his to rest, and then you can go home and I can spend my remaining days teaching the cello to juvenile delinquents. How does that sound for a program?”

  Faglin smiled thinly. He didn’t believe it either.

  “I think I need a cigarette.”

  “They might see the light from up there.”

  “No.” Christiansen shook his head. “Not at this distance. And, besides, we’ll know when they’re up there when we see their flashlights.”

  He lit the cigarette, cupping the match behind his hands, and drew the smoke into his lungs. As usual, it didn’t make him feel any better. That was something else he would do if he survived until daylight: he would give up smoking. He would give up all the vices of wartime.

  When he saw the first pale flickers of light up on the cliffs, he dropped the cigarette into the water and heard it go out with a sound like the clicking shut of a door lock. He looked at his watch. It was two-twenty.

  “Now we’ll see how long it takes for him to make the circuit.”

  The light grew clearer and then died away as the sentry retreated back into the surrounding woods—there was a stretch of only a few yards where he would have an unobstructed view of the sea. From the way the beam had remained steady, it was clear the man was only using his flashlight to keep from stumbling in the darkness. Hagemann’s men, obviously, did not regard themselves as being under siege.

  Christiansen found himself wishing that he had brought a change of dry clothes. It was god damned cold out here on the water, but one couldn’t think of everything. He wouldn’t die of discomfort. He tried some more of the coffee, but it didn’t make him feel any warmer.

  “We’ll establish an order for going up the rope—first me, then Itzhak, then the equipment, then Faglin. Itzhak, if it comes to that, have you got a weapon on you—something silent?”

  “No.”

  Faglin reached into his pocket and, when he brought his hand back out into the moonlight, a vicious-looking blade, about seven inches long, shot out of his fist with a sound like splintering glass.

  “Be my guest,” he said, handing the knife to Itzhak, hilt first. That seemed to solve the weapons problem.

  “Have either of you guys ever done any of this sort of climbing?” They both shook their heads, and Christiansen experienced a certain sinking feeling. “Well, there’s not much to it. You just wrap the rope around your chest clockwise and let it hang down between your legs. Then, when you cross the right foot over the left, you’ve locked it in place and you can just hang there for a bit. You don’t have to be pulling with your arms the whole time, but when you do, use both arms together and pull straight down.”

  “And you expect a couple of city Jews like us to go up seventy feet of rope like that, in the dark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  They all laughed. They were all scared, but it was all right to be scared. Everything was permitted except failure.

  “How long are we going to wait out here?” Itzhak asked. He was getting impatient—that was good.

  “Until we know how long it takes the sentry to make one round, remember?”

  “Well, there he is. “

  “No, that’s not him. That’s—”

  Christiansen looked at his watch. It was twentyeight minutes to three. Twelve minutes. Yesterday evening, all those ages ago, the sentry circuit had been slightly more than twenty-five minutes. Either he had taken to running it, or. . .

  “I’ve got some bad news, gentlemen. They’ve doubled the guard.”

  24

  They waited forty-five minutes, just to be certain. The sentries were passing every twelve or thirteen minutes, so it was reasonable to assume that there were two of them, rotating around Hagemann’s compound like moons.

  That meant that he would have less than twelve minutes—more like eight or nine—to set the rope, shinny up seventy feet of cliff, and be there to meet the next one when he came by on his rounds. There would be no
room for error or human frailty. If any one of them messed up, they would all be dead in a matter of minutes.

  Christiansen brought the boat in almost straight up to the cliff face. He couldn’t use any lights, of course, and if he tore her belly out on a rock it was bound to be awkward. But the water was fairly deep just there and he got within about fifteen feet before he felt the keel scraping against the sandy bottom. He dropped anchor—it was almost unnecessary—and fetched up the grappling hook and line he had purchased in Barcelona. It weighed about three pounds, which was the perfect weight for a long throw, and this was going to be the longest throw Christiansen had ever made in his life. He just hoped that if he actually did manage to get it up there, the goddamn thing didn’t ring like a gong against some rock or other. The sentries had the odds heavily enough in their favor as it was.

  It was nearly four when they could look up and see the sentry’s light flickering overhead. Morning came down by the sea—they were running out of time, along with everything else.

  Christiansen stood on the prow of the boat, the grappling hook in his hand and its line uncoiled and lying loose so that it wouldn’t hang up. He let the hook slide through his hand until it hung down nearly to the deck and then, very slowly, began swinging it around so that it described a circle almost parallel with his body. He was just limbering up. The first one had to be right because there wouldn’t be time for a second.

  The light overhead disappeared. He would give the man two—no, two and a half—minutes to get far enough away that he wouldn’t be likely to hear anything, or make much of it if he did. There were no guarantees, however; when he got to the top—if he got to the top—he might find the son of a bitch up there waiting for him.

  He was swinging out over the water now, wider and wider. His arc was probably close to ten feet across, and he could hear the tearing sound the hook made as it swept through the air. One chance, only one. He had to put everything in him behind the throw, and he had to know when to let go.

  Finally, with one last sharp twist of his body, he released the line and it shot up into the darkness. He waited—it seemed to take forever. He imagined the hook coming straight back down on him. It would probably kill him. It would be just as well.

  But there was nothing. No impact, no splash, just silence. The rope hung in the air, disappearing into the vacant night. He gave it a gentle tug and then another, harder. It was holding. The hook had found something to get its teeth into. God damn him, he had done it.

  Itzhak and Faglin were standing in the back, just trying to stay out of the way. He waved them over.

  “Okay. This is your one and only lesson,” he murmured, pulling on a pair of canvas work gloves. He felt as if the whole world were up there on that bluff, peering down at them. “The line goes around the chest, like this, and then one foot straight over the other. You clamp it with your right foot and when you want to climb you let go, just a little. See? Wrap your right arm around the line and pull with both hands. Got it?”

  Neither of them said anything. What was there to say? Christiansen locked his hands together over his head and pulled up. He had about six minutes to make the bluff.

  It was all right for about the first forty feet. You did this sort of work with your back muscles more than with your arms, and Christiansen had never let himself slide after the war. After all, his war wasn’t over yet.

  But then, at forty feet, his left hand began to bother him—just a little at first, but then more and more—until he felt as if he didn’t have the strength left to hold a pencil. By fifty feet he hurt everywhere and his lungs ached. His back, where he had taken Pilsner’s bullet, felt ready to tear open, and he could hardly feel his hand at all. If the top was up there, he hadn’t seen it yet. He would give himself a fifteen-second rest, he decided. He clamped the line between his feet and let his arms down.

  It was a mistake. He had to catch himself to keep from toppling over, and the instant the strain was off his arms they felt as if they were made of stone. He thought perhaps he had never lifted anything in his life as heavy as his own hands.

  He couldn’t go on. There was just no way he could go on. He would hang there for maybe another minute and then he would fall. He was as good as dead, and he hardly minded at all.

  When the fifteen seconds—or what felt like fifteen seconds—were over, he reached back up, his arms breaking, and took the line again. One more pull. What the hell, he wouldn’t be any deader for falling that extra foot and a half. One more pull.

  And then another, and another after that. He no longer tried to open his left hand; he just let it slide up the rope. It seemed to slip just a little more each time. One more pull.

  Finally, when he was finished for good, when there was nothing more inside him, he saw where the line seemed to dig into the cliff face and then vanish. It was the top. It had to be the top.

  One more pull. Just one more.

  With his left hand he reached up and felt the flat surface of the bluff. A few more feet, just that, no more, and he could rest.

  One more pull.

  Christiansen lay there, his face buried in the fallen pine needles, trying to catch his breath and summon up the courage to move. He pulled his arm down toward his head and looked at his watch. It was two minutes after four—he had made the climb in eight minutes. The sentry would be walking straight over him in another minute and a half.

  Get up. Get up, get up. Get up or they’ll kill you while you lie there with your nose in the mud, feeling sorry for yourself. Get up.

  He got up. First to his knees—one doesn’t rush these things—and then, finally, to his actual and authentic feet.

  The grappling hook had landed almost ten feet back from the edge of the cliff and had caught on a tree root. Christiansen just had time to pick it up and to press his back against the tree when he saw the first tentative jabs of yellow light from the sentry’s flashlight. Within a few seconds he could hear the sound of the man’s boot breaking a fallen twig. He held the grappling iron in both hands and waited. There wasn’t any time and he was just too fucking tired to try anything fancy.

  Almost at once the little trail was as well lit as the back terrace at an evening party. The sentry would come right by Christiansen’s tree—they would practically brush shoulders. Christiansen held his breath and waited.

  The man was muttering to himself, something about the goddamned sergeant and missing his tea. Just a word or two. Just enough to make him human. He was just out for a night’s forced patrol. He carried his Mauser over his shoulder like a parcel.

  Christiansen let him pass, waiting one heartbeat, and then stepped out into the trail and swung down on him. One of the grappling iron’s prongs caught the man square in the side of the head and just tore it away.

  The sentry was dead at once. He didn’t even stiffen. He just fell straight down. There was blood everywhere, spattered around like paint. It was gushing out just over the dead man’s right ear, from a trench you could have stuck your whole hand into. Christiansen was wet to the elbows—he even had to wipe some of it out of his eyes.

  But there was no time for horror. There was no time for anything. The sentry’s flashlight was lying on the ground, still on. He picked it up, switched it off, and dropped it into his pocket. Then he grabbed the corpse by the arms and dragged it into the bushes and out of sight.

  The grappling hook was lying on the ground, right where Christiansen had dropped it. He picked it up again and dug it into the tree root. He took the line and shook it wildly. That would be Itzhak’s signal to start up.

  When the line went tight, Christiansen sat down with his back against the tree and closed his eyes. For a few minutes at least there was nothing he could do about anything. And he couldn’t remember when he had been so tired. He had been in Spain less than forty-eight hours. He had killed nine, maybe ten men—he couldn’t even remember. It was all beginning to seem just a little pointless. What could be worth all this? What had he done with his li
fe that he was sitting under a tree, trying to clean a total stranger’s blood off his face?

  Finally he decided he was weary of his own low spirits, so he went over to the cliff edge to see how Itzhak was doing on the line. He wasn’t doing very well.

  “Give me a hand, can you?”

  Itzhak was stuck about twenty feet from the top. If he rested a bit he would be able to make it, but there wasn’t any time for resting. Christiansen took the line in both hands and began pulling him in. At the end, he held the line in his right hand and reached down for Itzhak with his left.

  “Grab the wrist, not the hand. The hand isn’t much good anymore.”

  When they were both up, Christiansen lay down on the soft ground, spent. He would never get up again. He was sure of it.

  And then he remembered the second sentry.

  “Do you know what it means to ‘make your bones?” he asked. No, Itzhak hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. “Well, you’re going to make your bones tonight, kid. Go hide yourself by the trail and kill our friend when he comes by on his watch. Did they teach you how to do that?”

  “Yes.” Itzhak swallowed hard. “But couldn’t you—?”

  “No, I couldn’t. The way I am right now, I’d muff it. He’s all yours.”

  He made a vague gesture with his left arm. He really was exhausted.

  Itzhak took the knife Faglin had given him out of his pocket and pressed the little lever on the hasp. The blade shot out with a snap so that the thing nearly jumped from his hand. He really didn’t seem to like the look of it.

  “Fine—if you can’t you can’t. I’ll—”

  “No, you’re right. I suppose I have to learn sometime.” The forced grin in Itzhak’s face wasn’t fooling anyone.

  “Not if you really don’t want to.”

  “I really don’t want to, but I think I’d better.”