The Linz Tattoo

by Nicholas Guild

  “Let’s get out of here while we still have the chance.

  Everyone’s dead anyway. Come on.”

  “He’s got Esther! He’s here and I’ll find him. He’s—”

  “He’s not here. Nobody’s here but the dead.” Faglin was beginning to look a little wild. “Come on, Christiansen—let’s go!”

  They could already feel the fire on the second story, and as they went down the staircase it was like descending into a furnace. Some of the walls were already in flames, and almost every second there was the sound of breaking glass. The smoke was so thick they had to cover their faces to breathe. There was nowhere to go but outside.

  They came onto the lawn just in time to see the great chain-link gate slide open and a car shoot by on the driveway. Faglin raised his Sten gun and fired after it, but he wasn’t really trying.

  A few seconds later there was the hollow sound of something Christiansen hadn’t heard since the war. He could see the explosion almost at once. He found himself wondering where the hell Hirsch had ever found a grenade launcher.

  “Do you think that could have been Hagemann in the car?” Faglin asked. Christiansen shook his head.

  “No. Hagemann isn’t stupid. He would know we’d have something as obvious as the front gate covered.”

  But, of course, he didn’t know for sure. Could Esther have been in that car? Could that be her, right this instant, burning to death because she couldn’t get the doors open fast enough? If it were so, he would kill Hirsch. He would. . .

  “He suckered us good, pal.” That was what Hirsch had said, only that afternoon. Hagemann, that bastard, what was he—?

  Suddenly it was all made clear for him. It was as if he could see into the man’s mind, as if they had had the same thought together. Down there on the road into town, probably not fifty yards from the front gates, a car full of Hagemann’s men was burning like a tar ball, sending smoke and dark red flames into the night sky. It wasn’t a way anyone would want to die.

  Hagemann had sent them, or at least allowed them to go, to take what he must have known was a foolhardy risk. Neither Hagemann nor anything that Hagemann cared about was in that car, but they had served his purposes just the same. It was Mordecai in the slammer, all over again.

  “He suckered us good, pal.” Yes, he had. But maybe not this time.

  “They were a decoy.” Christiansen put his hand around the barrel of Faglin’s Sten gun—if he was right, he was going to need more to bargain with than just a pistol. “Those guys in the car, they were sent out to die so Hagemann could have a running start.”

  Faglin was looking at him as if he had grown another head.

  “Give me the grease gun. Everyone else is dead—you won’t need it. Let go, dammit!”

  As if his fingers were operated by springs, Faglin released his grasp on the weapon. Christiansen took it and handed him his pistol. He didn’t say anything more. There was no time now for formalities.

  There was a narrow iron ladder that could be let down the cliff face to the beach and Hagemann’s private dock. Christiansen had seen it through his field glasses that first evening. It looked as if it probably worked like a fire escape—you released a catch at the top and the ladder came down in sections, one telescoped inside the other. That was how the sentries got up and down and that was how Hagemann would reach his boat.

  That side of the bluff was heavily wooded, so Christiansen had only the most approximate idea where Hagemann was headed. It was simply a question of choosing your direction and going as straight as the screen of trees and undergrowth would let you. If there was a path, Hagemann was the only one left who knew where it was.

  And, of course, there was always the chance that he had left behind a couple of his boys to cover his escape.

  But Christiansen wasn’t thinking about Hagemann’s boys. He just ran. He kept his head down so the tree limbs he couldn’t even see wouldn’t catch him quite so often in the face, and for the rest he only thought about one thing—getting there. He wasn’t even carrying a flashlight, but no one was going to stop him. He didn’t give a damn what they had.

  And then, of course, his foot caught on a tree root and he found himself suddenly rolling through the bushes like a hedgehog. The palms of his hands were scraped raw when he stood up again and he had to hunt around for the Sten gun. It gave him a chance to listen. There was someone out there, trying just as hard as he was to keep still.

  Hagemann? Could it be Hagemann? Then he heard the rasp of metal against metal and he knew whoever was out there, waiting for a shot at him, definitely wasn’t Hagemann. Hagemann was already lowering his escape ladder.

  Which meant that he had found some poor boob who was enough of a fanatic and a damn fool to hide in the bushes and protect his retreat.

  Okay, if he wanted to die for the cause, that was his business.

  Christiansen peered into the darkness, looking for the shadow that wasn’t supposed to be there. He was a big target, so why didn’t the stupid bastard take a shot at him? Come on, buddy, what’s the—

  There was a sharp little cough, like someone with an iron windpipe clearing his throat, and a tiny flash of light. Then another, and Christiansen felt something strike his leg, just an inch or two below the hip. He didn’t wait. He turned and fired, and the burst from his machine gun was answered almost at once by a high-pitched scream.

  It was only when he took his first step that he realized in any concrete way that he had taken a bullet himself. Well, so what? It wouldn’t kill him anytime soon.

  The poor chump was still screaming. Christiansen walked up to him and found him lying on his side, his back against a tree. Something on the ground beside him reflected a dull gleam of moonlight. Christiansen reached down and picked it up. It was a flashlight. When he turned it on he saw that the man’s insides were leaking out through his fingers. His pistol was there beside him, but he had forgotten all about it. He was a goner; all that was left to him now was fear and pain and, finally, death. Christiansen took the pistol, put the muzzle against the man’s temple, and pulled the trigger.

  Now it was strictly between the two of them. There was just himself and Hagemann, with Esther as the prize.

  He didn’t have any trouble finding the ladder after that. Hagemann had turned the floodlights on. Apparently he didn’t fancy breaking his neck as he climbed down seventy feet of slippery iron rungs.

  And Hagemann had one other problem. As he stood at the edge of the bluff, looking down at the struggle that was going on beneath him, Christiansen could see quite clearly why Hagemann hadn’t made good on his escape yet. Because Hagemann was carrying baggage. He had Esther between himself and the ladder, with one arm around her waist, and he was finding it tough going.

  They were almost to the bottom. They never looked up, either one of them, but Christiansen had no doubt that Hagemann knew he was there.

  There wasn’t any time to lose—he had to get down there, and the ladder was the only way. And he could only use the ladder as long as Hagemann was still on it and had both his hands full.

  He transferred the Sten gun to his left hand and started down, two or three feet at a time, using his arm to lower himself and letting his feet catch on the rungs when he needed to brace himself. And all the time all he could think about was getting shot in the ass when Hagemann reached the bottom and had a hand free again.

  But by then Esther knew he was there. He could look down and see her face as she stared up at him. At least she knew she wasn’t alone.

  And when he felt the shudder of release when Hagemann jumped off and onto the stony beach, he knew she was down there trying to keep him alive. He could hear the brawl.

  And suddenly there they were, hardly more than fifteen feet apart, almost where they had left off the afternoon before. Hagemann had his arm across Esther’s throat, and he was struggling to free the Luger from his belt, shaking her viciously, like a dog with a dead rat, while he fought off her hands. It was a battle he was
destined to win.

  But not for a few seconds yet. Christiansen was perhaps twelve feet from the ground—he let himself come down one more time against the ladder and then pushed himself free. He could feel himself falling through the cold air, seemingly adrift, and then he hit the stony beach with a scraping sound and a jolt violent enough to buckle his legs underneath him like the magician’s collapsing hat. He lurched to one side and landed on his left arm, but he had Hagemann in his sights the whole time. Once more, they had achieved a stalemate.

  Finally Hagemann got his pistol free. For a wild moment he seemed ready to point it at Christiansen, but then he thought better of the idea. After all, how could he hope to win against a gun that sprayed bullets like a god damned garden hose? He wasn’t such a fool as that—no, the pistol came up until, once more, it rested lightly against Esther’s throat.

  “You see?” he said. “Once more I have the girl. And I will shoot her just as quickly now as yesterday. How can you win, Christiansen? Tell me. How can you hope to win now?”

  There was a cut on his face. It was fresh enough to be bleeding heavily, coating his cheek. His white jacket had blood on it too and was streaked with smoke and dirt. It looked as if Hagemann had been having a rough time of it just lately.

  And, finally, it could be he was just pushed too far in his mind—his eyes said that. He looked half crazy with that mixture of fear and exultation that comes to men who almost don’t give a damn anymore whether they live or not, who are ready to stake everything on one last gamble. He was crazy like that. And he didn’t care who died with him.

  “Are you really demented enough to think you can play the same game with me twice?” Christiansen forced himself to laugh. The sound of it shocked even him—it was a hollow, cruel laugh, almost a mad laugh. Almost inhuman. “Take one step backward, just one, and I’ll blow you to smithereens. The girl will just have take her chances.”

  Hagemann might be loose from his moorings, but he wasn’t stupid. And he was never rash. A strange, speculative look came into his mad eyes—he was calculating the chances that Christiansen was bluffing.

  And all Christiansen could do was to wait while he made up his mind. Because he wasn’t bluffing. It wasn’t a situation in which he would dare a bluff. If Hagemann so much as stirred, he would open fire. He would aim high—he would take the top of Hagemann’s head off and hope for the best—but he would have to fire. You didn’t bluff a man like Hagemann.

  And it was possible Esther might make it. People had survived some pretty terrible bullet wounds—they did it all the time. But if he let her go with that lunatic. . .

  But Hagemann didn’t attempt to move. It seemed he wasn’t going to commit that particular mistake.

  “Where are your friends the Jews?” he asked. He was smiling. He was a man who knew all there was to know about the Jews.

  “They’re up on the bluff, killing what’s left of your Praetorian Guard. But they’ll be along directly. They don’t like you much, you know that, Hagemann? You haven’t made yourself popular.”

  Something very odd was going on. While they had been talking—and it was part of the reason Christiansen was bothering to talk at all—Esther had slipped her hand down to the opening of Hagemann’s right jacket pocket. She never took her eyes from Christiansen’s face, and her eyes were damp and large and frightened, and all the time he had the feeling that she was trying to make him understand something. She wasn’t pleading with him to save her—it was something else. Something she obviously thought was more important.

  And this while the muzzle of Hagemann’s Luger pressed against the side of her throat. She was braver than any twenty men.

  What the hell did Hagemann have in his pocket?

  “Then why not?” Hagemann’s smile turned into a demonic grin. “I would as soon you killed me as they—sooner. After all, you and I are at least of the same blood, and you are a real soldier, not some ragged partisan. I have no inclination to be butchered like a kosher steer.”

  “Does it matter to you so much then how you die, Hagemann? If it was such a matter of honor with you, you might have blown your brains out like your friend back up at the house.”

  “Who—Joachim? You mean he actually did it? He’d been looking for an excuse to restage Götterdämmerung since the end of the war. No thank you. I am not so mad as that.”

  “Then maybe it’s just possible that you and I could cut a deal.”

  Christiansen tried very hard not to look at Esther as he spoke. He didn’t want to think about her, about what she might or might not want or feel. He could worry about all that later—if there was a later—and then he would make it the business of his life, but not now. Now there were only two people on that beach, himself and Colonel Egon Hagemann. That was enough.

  Oh how he hated that man. It was as if he was experiencing it all for the first time, as if he had never known about Kirstenstad and all the rest of it until that very minute. What a pleasure it would be to kill this one—preferably slowly, an inch at a time.

  “My friends the Jews will be down here in about three minutes, I figure. And they aren’t the least sentimental about Miss Rosensaft. So if we’re going to reach an understanding I suggest we don’t waste any time. I’ll trade you your life for the girl, Hagemann. Take it or leave it.”

  “How? To be led away from here in chains?” Hagemann shook his head, and the muzzle of his pistol dug a little deeper into Esther’s neck. “How long would I live? An hour? A week? Until an Allied war crimes tribunal could put a noose around my neck? No thank you, Mr. Christiansen—I would just as soon die here and now.”

  He seemed to be waiting. It was a test of resolve, and there wasn’t any doubt that Hagemann was ready to die. The only hope was that he might still be prepared to live, if the terms were right. Christiansen lowered the barrel of his Sten gun a foot or two, just to show his good intentions.

  “I said your life, Hagemann. This is the deal. You let the girl go, and you throw down your pistol. In exchange for that I’ll give you sixty seconds. No more, no less. What you do with them is your business.”

  For just an instant, Hagemann’s eyes glanced toward his boat, which was still tied up at the end of the pier, white as a marble tomb in the light from the floods. Like a sensible man, he was considering his chances. It was sixty feet across the beach, then perhaps twenty-five feet to the end of the dock—considering the surface, a distance a man could cover in, say, ten to twelve seconds. Then up into the boat, which he could have started and moving within another fifteen to twenty seconds. Given that it was Hagemann’s, there was probably an arsenal on board anyway, so he wouldn’t have to worry so much about time. Yes, sixty seconds would be all he needed. But, of course, he wasn’t so stupid. . .

  “And what possible guarantee would I have that you wouldn’t simply kill me, Christiansen? Why should I believe that you are prepared to be so sporting?”

  But he was smiling again. Every man has his giveaway, and that was his. That tight little smile that said he felt himself to be master of the world.

  “You haven’t any choice, do you. You can believe me, or you can die.”

  “And if I accept your offer, do I have your word that you will stop hunting me down like an animal, Mr. Christiansen? I’m getting tired of spending my life waiting for you to turn up. Will you call it square between us?”

  “You heard the offer—sixty seconds. Just sixty seconds.”

  Hagemann’s soft laughter pulsed through the air, fading out into the growl of the waves.

  “I wouldn’t have believed you, Mr. Christiansen—I would have known you were lying to me. You’ll never stop, will you.”

  “No. I’ll never stop.”

  They stood there, facing each other on the edge of the land, the blind sea murmuring in their ears, filled with their hatred for one another. It was a moment when each felt he understood the other’s heart. It was a moment that had become almost unbearable.

  And then Christiansen
allowed himself one furtive glance at Esther, and what he saw in her face made him understand. Yes, of course.

  “First the gun—throw it well away. And then the girl. Make up your mind, Hagemann. There isn’t any more time.”

  Things might have gone either way in the pause that followed. Hagemann seemed not to know what he dared believe.

  “On your word as an Aryan, Christiansen?” he asked finally.

  “Yes, if that’s what it takes. On my word as an Aryan.”

  It must have been the hardest decision he had ever made in his life, but finally Hagemann did ease the barrel of his pistol away from Esther’s throat. He held it up, as if to show it off to Christiansen, and then, very gently, he tossed it to one side. For another instant he stood there holding her, as if he couldn’t bear to be parted from her, as if he were waiting to see if he was about to die.

  Quite suddenly, he pushed her away, starting back from her like a man who had been bitten by a snake. Her hand was still clenched around the opening of his jacket pocket, and as she fell she ripped it away with her, the pocket simply coming off in her grasp, the contents spilling out onto the beach, tinkling as they struck the stones.

  And, of course, Hagemann understood. He stood staring at her, his face dark with hatred.

  “Run, Hagemann. Sixty seconds—don’t push your luck.”

  And that was what he did. His eyes dropped to the muzzle of Christiansen’s Sten gun, and then widened with terror, and then he ran. His footsteps ground against the pebbles.

  And Esther was down on her hands and knees, searching among the loose stones.

  “He had it in his. . . I know it’s here. I know. . .”

  “Come away, Esther. There’s no time.”

  “But it’s here.” She looked up at his face, pleading but determined. Nothing would move her. “It’s here. . . It’s— Yes, I found it! See? I. . .”

  There really was no time now. Hagemann was already climbing the gangway to his boat. Christiansen took Esther in his arms, giving her the only protection he had left to offer. He covered her with his body and lay down on the beach.