The Linz Tattoo (28 page)

“Dark raincoat? Hat? Itzhak!”

Christiansen thrust his way toward the door,
releasing the girl so that she collapsed to the floor in a little
heap. Outside on the sidewalk he could see someone running, running
because he had missed his chance and now two men with guns would be
hot on his ass.

Dessauer was still standing there, holding
the revolver in front of him, motionless as stone. Christiansen
grabbed his jacket lapel and shook him until he came out of his
trance.

“Get her out of here,” he shouted. Dessauer
stared at him for an instant, and then nodded—he had come back to
life. “Use the back way, but watch yourself. They might have
someone waiting, so stay off the streets. Steal a car—do anything.
Just get her back to the hotel. And thanks for saving my neck.”

There wasn’t time for anything more. Their
eyes met for just a second and then Christiansen hit the door,
making the little bell jangle with panicky excitement. When he
burst out onto the sidewalk, a couple strolling by turned to stare
at him as, gun in hand, he went charging down the street like a
hundred-meter runner. There were more people outside; it was the
hour when offices began to close for the day. The man in the
raincoat had about a seventy-yard head start and a crowd to hide
in. If he had a car anywhere in the neighborhood, Christiansen
would never catch him.

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 spattering 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.