The Linz Tattoo (37 page)

For Joachim the theoretician and for Lutz the
street brawler it was all so obvious, so straightforward. He envied
them the clarity with which they saw the world.

But, for all that, he was committed now. When
once one begins with the annihilation of a people, there can be no
turning back. He, Egon Hagemann, through no particular wish of his
own, found himself locked into a vendetta; the Jews and their
allies would hound him to his death if he did not strike first. One
could hardly blame them. There was no right or wrong in the matter.
Those were simply the terms of engagement.

So the Jews must not have their nation. As
one of their own had said, let them be blown about forever by the
cruel winds of history. This Israel they longed for was not going
to be his death, so let it be theirs.

All, perhaps, save one.

She was not precisely beautiful. Esther had
never been beautiful—her particular charm had resided in nothing so
superficial. As she sat near the stage, her face turned away so
that all he could see was the line of her cheek and, occasionally,
the bright glimmer of her left eye, she still made something inside
his chest contract with a peculiar mingling of cruelty and
tenderness. She was the child who had lived long enough to see
everything, who understood him as no one else did in the wide
world. Even when he had tormented her until she wept with fear, it
had been like an act of mercy, a concession to his weakness, a
contemptuous admission of what a nature such as his seemed to
require.

And now she held von Goltz’s secret in her
tiny hand, and his life, and such heart as the world had left
him.

And in five or six minutes, as soon as there
was an intermission and enough quiet for a few words between old
friends. . .

Ernst managed these things very well. He had
been a good lieutenant—no originality as a commander, but strong on
the details—and he had found his natural place in life as the owner
of a sleazy Spanish night spot. He was on excellent terms with the
local police. There was nothing within these four walls that he
could not manage, including the temporary removal of an unwelcome
husband.

The music died away. The stage was empty.
Hagemann glanced toward the door, saw Ernst standing there with a
corporal in the Civil Guard beside him, and nodded. It was time for
the real performance to begin.

Ernst went down to Esther’s table. He was
perfect. He leaned down with the confidential air of a good waiter
troubled about a problem with the bill, and whispered something
into the Jew’s ear.

“I am very sorry,
Senor
, but there is
a gentleman here from the police who wishes a few words—something
about an irregularity in your passport.”

It wasn’t necessary to hear. Hagemann could
read it all in Ernst’s face, and the way that boy’s head snapped
around to the entrance, where Ernst’s tame constable was waiting
with such a show of refined, professional patience. It was
delicious.

Of course, the Jew’s reaction would tell
everything.

And, yes, he did precisely what Hagemann had
expected. He rose from his chair, touched Esther on the
shoulder—that was important, the little sign that she was to stay
behind and wait for him—and left with Ernst. In a moment the
policeman had taken him outside, where a car was waiting. This was
not a problem that could be settled there in the street; it was
official and required the Jew’s presence at headquarters. They
would be gone for at least an hour.

Hagemann could only shake his head. How
stupid did they imagine him to be? They had, of course, expected
that he would use some device to maneuver the husband out of
everyone’s way, but did they have to fall in with it quite so
readily? The fool didn’t have to be so very willing to leave his
bride behind. They might as well have written him a note and sent
it around to his table: “We are setting a trap for you, and there
is the bait. Please respond.” It was all so painfully obvious.

But, of course, what did he care? He was
willing to go along with them, up to a point.

Esther did not look around. She did not let
her eyes follow her husband away. Her face was turned resolutely
toward the stage. She gave the impression she was waiting for
something to happen.

Hagemann’s bodyguards, thick-necked men
chosen for loyalty and a certain cruel dexterity rather than
intelligence, watched his face, waiting for a sign. Instead he
turned to Faraj, putting his hand on the man’s arm, as if to hold
him in place.

“Now, my friend, you will have perhaps a more
entertaining performance to witness. It is a pity you won’t be able
to listen. I expect my little Scheherazade will have a fascinating
tale to tell this night.”

And he smiled, hating the waxy little Semite
for whom all this was merely politics and war, for whom he had to
make speeches that masked the longing that ached in his chest like
a bruise.

Even when he sat down at Esther’s table,
almost touching her left arm with the sleeve of his coat, she
didn’t so much as glance at him.

“So. You were expecting me then?”

“Yes.”

“You saw me when I came in?”

“Yes.”

At last, as if with great effort, she managed
to turn her head to look in his direction, although whether she saw
him through her clouded eyes was another matter. She was coiled as
tightly as a spring; she seemed about to fly at him with her nails,
or perhaps merely to run away. Or perhaps, in some dark place in
her mind, she took a kind of pleasure in this reunion. She had
always been just that way with him, poised between fear and
temptation, as if fear were as necessary to her as breath.

“You could have denounced me to your husband,
Esther. He would, I’m sure, have been glad of this chance to play
the protector, the avenging knight. Why did you miss the
opportunity?”

“Because you would have killed him.”

“Would I have? Yes, perhaps I would.” He
smiled and picked up the champagne glass that stood next to her
tiny beaded evening bag. His mouth was dry—it was a sensation not
unlike the fear that precedes a battle, the fear of the unknown.
Why should that be? What was there he didn’t know about Esther,
except how it was she always seemed to. . . But the champagne
tasted like stale beer, and he felt no better for it. “Or perhaps
you had another reason for your reluctance. This young man of
yours, he doesn’t have the look of one who has ever been behind
barbed wire. Perhaps he wouldn’t have understood?”

The man who played the piano came back and
sat at his instrument, setting a large, heavy-looking glass of red
wine down on the bench beside him as he began leafing through the
pages of a score. A few of the patrons watched him expectantly, but
he was not about to touch the keys before the end of intermission.
There was all the time in the world.

“No, I thought perhaps you hadn’t told him
about me.”

She dropped her tear-laden eyes and her hands
drew together in her lap, where they were almost hidden from view
below the table. She had always been a remarkable actress.

“Leave me alone, Colonel,” she said finally,
her voice thick and slightly blurred. “I have a chance for a new
life. I’m married, and I want to live like everyone else. Can’t you
find it in you to leave me where I am?”

“No I can’t, Esther. I couldn’t possibly do
that, not once I’ve seen you again. You couldn’t really expect it
of me.”

He wanted to touch her. More than almost
anything, he wanted to feel his hands on her thin, young shoulders.
She was young—she couldn’t be more than twenty, probably not even
that. He hadn’t realized until that moment how he had yearned for
her, but it was not to be, not now. This was not Waldenburg.

“What have you done with my husband?” It was
merely a question—she asked it in the calmest voice.

“He is with the police. Presently they will
discover that there has been a terrible misunderstanding, and they
will drive him back here and return him to you with a handsome
apology. How did you happen to come to this place, Esther?”

Yes, she was very good. There was no tiny
start of surprise; for a moment she seemed not even to have heard
the question. And then she looked up at him with a painful
smile.

“It was close to the hotel—I’m on my
honeymoon, you know, and he wanted a bit of nightlife. Where else
could we possibly have gone?”

“Yes, of course. Where else?”

The boy who played the trumpet was threading
his way among the tables, exchanging a word here and there with the
regular customers, careful not to spill the tapered beer glass he
carried. The intermission was nearly over.

“I could take you back to your hotel myself,
Esther. Where are you staying?”

No, the first panic was over now. She merely
shook her head.

“I don’t like your husband, Esther. I don’t
like the way he touches you.”

“Is that surprising? He is my husband and,
like me, a Jew. Why should you like him? He’ll survive without your
good opinion.”

“Will he?”

“You wouldn’t dare. You wouldn’t. . .”

“Wouldn’t I?” He smiled. They were playing an
old game and they were both perfectly familiar with the rules. He
allowed himself the luxury of drawing a shade closer to her. She
didn’t pull back. “What have I ever not dared, Esther? Shall I kill
your husband? Or shall I simply tell him why he had so little
difficulty with your maidenhead?”

“You are a bastard!”

Yes, it was just like the old times now. She
was cornered and full of hate. Her eyes burned. Now she no longer
had the burden of choice.

“I won’t be happy until I’ve seen you again,
Esther.” He allowed his hand to come to rest over her arm. “In
fact, I must insist on it. Tomorrow night, I think—at your hotel
room. Don’t trouble yourself with the details. I’ll see to it that
your young husband is safely out of the way.”

. . . . .

The Café Pícaro was very proud of its
theatrical effects. Sometimes the dancers would perform bathed in
pink light, or the curtain in the rear would be a swirl of golden
flecks. It was all achieved with the aid of a few colored lenses
and an arc lamp worked from a cramped little space under the roof,
where the ceiling dropped about three feet directly behind the
stage.

A man would sit up there, watching through a
tiny window no one even noticed was there.

“Just change the lens every so often,
Señor
, and everyone will be quite satisfied. It makes no
difference—one must simply keep the eye from becoming bored.”

That was what the man said. The space was
entered through a door above the stage. There was a stairway. The
man had a key to the building and came so early and left so late
that hardly anyone even remembered what he looked like. For a
consideration, he was perfectly willing to disappear for an evening
and allow another to fill his place. One of Ernst Lutz’s waiters, a
Spaniard of carefully concealed Republican sympathies, had told
Christiansen all about him.

So, with the exchange of a few hundred
pesetas, Christiansen found himself in possession of the best seat
in the house. It wasn’t the show that interested him, however; it
was the audience.

From the moment of his arrival, at about ten
minutes after nine, Egon Hagemann, former colonel in the Waffen-SS,
former commander of the Fifth Brigade, was within easy pistol
reach. All that would have been necessary was to break out the
little window and start firing with the revolver Christiansen
carried in the pocket of his coveralls. It would have been a dead
cinch.

Of course, Hagemann had his bodyguards, and
the minute they saw the holes starting to pop open all over their
leader’s shirt front they probably would make it pretty hot for the
man locked up in a space not much larger than a packing case.
Still, he might conceivably survive. It wasn’t the fear of death
that restrained him. For one thing, Esther was down there.
Hagemann’s goons, realizing the boss had been set up, would
certainly see to her as well. And then there was the fact that he
had, after a fashion, given his word.

So he crouched up there, sweating, miserable
and unseen, for close to two hours. He had come to observe, to
confirm his worst fears or, just maybe, to learn something useful,
not to settle his private score.

Besides, something new had entered into the
equation. He was discovering that Hagemann had to share his
hostility with, of all people, Itzhak Dessauer.

For close to half an hour before Hagemann
even arrived, they sat at their little table, in plain view of the
whole room, and drank champagne. Esther, cold as ice, as if she
were waiting in line at the post office, and Itzhak, with his face
full of longing and his damn hands all over her.

He had left them at the Barcelona station
only this morning—had it really been so short a time?—like a couple
of children in a dancing class, the introductions barely over,
uneasy in their new clothes, uncertain about the steps,
embarrassed, hating the whole business and each other into the
bargain. Itzhak particularly—the boy had acted as if he was made
out of wood. And now, only a few hours later, they had that
indefinable air of people who understood each other’s secrets.

Nobody had to draw Christiansen a
diagram.

What he couldn’t understand was why he was
taking it so hard. It didn’t matter, after all. It wasn’t as if
Esther were his property; or even, for that matter, his girl. They
had had a little interlude, which now, it seemed, was over. What of
it?

The little bitch.

Of course, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t warned
him.
“I will do what is necessary—no more. . . Would it offend
you?”
She had understood what was coming. He could have stopped
her with a word, but he hadn’t thought to speak it.
“Would it
offend you?”