The Linz Tattoo (50 page)

How could she keep from telling Hagemann
about the tattoo? Eventually she would have to tell him
something—with a man like that, one was better off not having any
illusions. She could tell him anything except about the tattoo. She
had to keep that buried within her, so deep that she would forget
about it herself.

But she would have to tell him
something.

And he would have to be allowed to extract
it from her by torture. It was the way his mind worked—if he didn’t
have to take it, he wouldn’t believe it. She would have to think of
something, something she could give him when in the last moment her
strength failed her. Perhaps it would even be necessary to think of
two lies. Perhaps he wouldn’t believe the first, thinking that he
hadn’t yet reduced her to the point where she would abandon such
little stratagems, where all she would want was for the pain to
stop. Yes, she would need two stories. Anything—it didn’t matter
what they were—so long as she forgot about the tattoo.

Why hadn’t she guessed before? That night in
Vienna, when Inar had looked at her arm so strangely and had sent
her off in tears to find Herr Leivick, why hadn’t she seen it then?
Because she had been too busy being in love with Inar, that was
why.

And that was why she had tried to kill
herself, and why she would tell Hagemann lies as he burned away her
fingertips. At Waldenburg she had belonged to herself, so her only
purpose had been to survive—she had had a right to do anything she
had to if it would keep her alive. But it was different now. Now
she belonged to Inar,

It was better this way. When life was its
own purpose it became simply a burden, a thing heavy with
accumulated shame. This way she could hate death without believing
that it was the worst.

She lay down again, feeling strangely
tranquil. Perhaps it was merely the effect of the brandy, but for
the first time in as long as she could remember, fear had become
something that didn’t fill her up, like the air in her lungs. She
could be afraid. It was all right to be afraid. It didn’t matter.
She could turn her mind to something else. She would find the lies
to tell Hagemann.

23

“We’ll need to do something about him before
we get on with the rest of it. If we let him stay there, he’s bound
to hear us.”

“Can we be so sure it’s even
Hagemann’s?”

“Of course it’s Hagemann’s,” Faglin snapped
impatiently. “God damn it, Itzikel, who else around here is going
to put an armed man to looking after his boat?”

Christiansen merely shrugged. “I don’t think
we can ignore him.”

“It’s just as well. Who likes leaving
Hagemann with an escape hatch? While you settle things with the
guard, I can wire the boat.”

Faglin grinned. That was very much his line
of country.

They were perhaps three hundred yards off
shore, in Christiansen’s rented sailboat—whispering because sound
carries well over water, and because the guard who stood with his
back to them at the foot of Hagemann’s private wharf, bathed in the
half-light that filtered down from the compound above, was paid to
listen.

“We’ll have to land further up.”
Christiansen raised his arm and pointed out at the invisible
shoreline. “Just you and me. Itzhak can bring the boat back down to
provide a little distraction.”

“How about it, Itzikel? You think you can
sail her a quarter of a mile without piling up on the rocks?”,

Itzhak didn’t seem to think he was being the
least funny, so Faglin patted him on the arm.

“It’s okay, kid—just a little joke to break
the tension.”

“You don’t have to worry yourselves about
me.”

“Fine. Then we won’t.”

Christiansen smiled at him in the darkness.
There was only the palest sliver of a moon, which was fine except
that they could hardly see each other. He was being as nice as he
could to Itzhak. The kid seemed to think he was planning to murder
him over that business with Esther—it seemed to be the translation
of every look and word and gesture that passed between them, as if
that was all they had to think about—and tonight of all nights they
needed their minds clear. So Christiansen was being as nice as he
knew how. If, they both got out of this alive, which seemed a
remote enough possibility, all was forgiven.

Hagemann’s dock was just about the worst
place imaginable for trying to jump someone. The beach, if you
could call it that, was nothing but a narrow apron of loose rock—no
sand, nothing to cover the sound of footsteps. The only possible
approach was directly under the cliff face, where enough loose dirt
had fallen down to provide a little path a man could walk on
without raising the alarm as surely as if he had brought along a
full symphony orchestra just to keep from feeling lonely. When
Christiansen had seen it yesterday in daylight, he had nearly
decided that Hirsch was right and the place was impregnable.
Nearly.

There was a fair breeze this night, coming
straight down the shore, which was both good and bad. Even Itzhak,
who had learned everything he knew about sailing in the last hour
and a half, wouldn’t have any trouble steering for Hagemann’s dock
once Christiansen and Faglin had been landed farther up. But the
wind also carried sound, so the kid was going to have to put on one
hell of a show if that guard wasn’t going to hear them coming.

Christiansen raised his sail—a dark red one,
since he didn’t particularly care to have it pick up the reflection
of anyone’s searchlights—and headed the little boat’s nose as close
into the wind as he could. She bucked a trace, but before long they
were a good three hundred yards up the coast.

When he and Faglin jumped into the water it
was only chest deep, which was cutting it a shade fine for the
keel.

“Take her out a bit,” he said to Itzhak, who
was peering over the side at them, precisely as if they were a
couple of mermaids. “Come in on him from the sea, and try not to be
too subtle about it.”

By the time the water had dropped to their
waists they could no longer see the boat at all. When they came up
on shore they might as well have been alone in the world.

“Good God, I’m cold,” Faglin muttered. And
he was too. His teeth were chattering. Anyone would have been
cold.

“Count your blessings, and hope you live
long enough to die of pneumonia. “

“Very funny. Doesn’t it bother you at
all?”

“Yes, but I’m used to it. You fought your
war in the desert, I fought mine in northern Europe. We used to
say, if water doesn’t have ice floating in it that means it’s warm
enough to make tea. Now, not another word until we’ve seen to the
guard.”

As they stood by the shoreline they could
hear the waves dragging the shingle back and forth. It was a
melancholy sound, suggestive of life’s final futility. Clackity,
clackity, clickity, clack, on and on, like a death rattle.

When they reached the cliff face and were a
little sheltered from the wind, they took off their trousers and
sweaters, wrung them out as best they could, and put them back on.
There was nothing they could do about their shoes except empty
them.

They crept along, trying not to stumble—they
could hardly see each other, let alone the path in front of them.
There was absolutely no light until they were almost level with the
dock. When they could see that, they crouched down and waited for
Itzhak and the boat.

It was only a floating pier, running twenty
feet or so out from the shore and anchored to a couple of massive
posts. Hagemann’s motorboat was just visible at the end, a ghostly
white shape bobbing slightly in rhythm with the waves from the
almost tideless Mediterranean. She was sleek and luxurious-looking,
the kind of boat that had never been intended for anything except
the amusement of people with too much money. It would have been
interesting to know how Hagemann got the Syrians to pay for
her.

The guard was nothing but a shape huddled
against one of the posts. He was smoking a cigarette—they could
just make out the plumes of smoke—and he was huddled up after the
fashion of soldiers who have grown weary and bored with sentry
duty. He wasn’t looking at anything. His thoughts were somewhere
else.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour before
they had any sign of Itzhak, and they heard him before they saw
anything.

He was singing, the little bastard: “Sixteen
men on a dead man’s che-est, yo ho ho an’ a bottle of rum.” And
then the sound of slurred laughter drifted across the churning
water.

“Hi there! Anybody home? I can’t get my
fuckin’ motor started again.”

The guard reacted quicker than one would
have expected. He brought the rifle down from his shoulder and
glanced around, as if he couldn’t make up his mind where all the
noise was coming from. He must have had a flashlight in his pocket,
because very quickly there was a thin beam of light playing over
the sand. If he pointed it toward the cliffs they were all
finished.

“Come on, pal. Give us a han’, will ya?”

That settled everything. Now he knew where
it was. The flashlight caught the side of Christiansen’s boat in
its beam and ran down the mast until it encountered Itzhak’s
smiling, innocent face. The guard raised his rifle.

The kid had maneuvered in to the side of the
dock, close enough that he could almost have reached out and
touched the hull of Hagemann’s gigantic pleasure craft. He was
sitting on the stern, not even trying to steer, not more than
fifteen feet from where the guard was peering at him over the
sights of his rifle. It was a bad moment.

And then Itzhak raised the thermos bottle he
had been holding between his knees, which turned it into something
of a standoff.

“Be a sport, pal. I been flounderin’ aroun’
all night, God damn it. Give us a han’, an’ we’ll have a li’l
drinkie, jus’ you an’ me.”

If he was scared—and who the hell wouldn’t
have been scared?—he didn’t look it. What he looked like was just
another damn fool of a tourist, out on a little toot that had gone
ever so slightly wrong. He was a good boy. He was doing great.

And the guard seemed to be buying it, at
least to the degree that he wasn’t going to shoot anybody out of
hand. He lowered his rifle just a little and took a few tentative
steps toward the dock. He wasn’t quite fool enough to go out onto
that spit of creaking, heaving wood, not just yet, not until he was
a shade clearer about what was going on. But, for the moment, at
least, he wasn’t going to kill anybody either.

And maybe, just maybe, the supposed contents
of that thermos were not without interest. There wasn’t anything in
it except coffee, but he didn’t know that.

“Come on, be a sport—you know anythin’ ’bout
engines?”

The guard was watching Itzhak now. He was
all attention, and his back was to the cliffs. Christiansen didn’t
wait any longer. Keeping a hand on Faglin’s shoulder, he stood up.
He didn’t want any help—this sort of thing was supposed to be his
specialty.

It was distance of perhaps sixty feet—not
very far, except that the rocky shore crunched like a cement mixer
with every step he took. There were no covering noises except the
clicking of the stones as the waves drew them back and forth and
the sound of Itzhak’s voice. It was to be hoped he wouldn’t run out
of things to say.

Christiansen paced himself. Every time the
waves rushed up the shoreline he stood still, waiting. When they
receded he would risk a few carefully placed steps. He had to be so
cautious—all that loose rock could sound like an avalanche, and
there was always the risk of tripping in the darkness. Out the
water would go. One, two, three, four paces closer. Then wait.
Fifty feet, then forty, then thirty. . .

“How ’bout I throw you a
line—you tie me up? You got a phone around here I could use?
Come
ON
, sport.
Be a sport. “

It was an open question whether Hagemann’s
guard understood one word of this singular monologue. He hadn’t
spoken. He was merely watching, waiting, listening. . .

Christiansen was only about twenty-five feet
behind him now—standing there, waiting for the waves to fall back.
He could rush the guard now. Even if he were discovered, he would
have at least a fifty-fifty chance of reaching him before he could
take aim.

It wasn’t good enough. If the guard fired
the rifle at all, the game was up and they were all dead.

He reached into his pocket and took out his
coil of catgut. It was the only way.

The guard was getting restless. In a second
or two he would make up his mind about what to do. If he shot
Itzhak, they were finished. If he stepped onto the pier,
Christiansen would never reach him.

The waves slid back down, and the sound of
the clicking stones returned. A few more paces. Now just fifteen
feet.

“Look, pal, I’m tired of waitin’.” Itzhak
climbed down from the prow of his boat, stumbling as his feet
landed on the pier. It gave the guard something new to think about.
It was perfect timing.

Ten feet, now seven, now five. . .

Itzhak started down the pier toward them. At
the last possible moment he caught Christiansen’s eye. Did the
guard notice?

But it was too late for him. Christiansen
dropped the noose over his head and pulled tight.

In the first second the guard went rigid.
They all did that. The only thing he could think about was that
cord around his neck, cutting into his flesh, choking him as it
closed around his windpipe. His hands flew up to his throat—it was
a reflex; he couldn’t have helped himself. Itzhak rushed forward to
take the rifle from him before he remembered to fire it.

Christiansen just hung on. There was nothing
else to do. The man was clawing at the cord, fighting, trying at
least to turn around, but Christiansen yanked him down to the
ground, put a foot on his shoulder, and kept pulling. The guard’s
head was turned away—there was always that saving mercy; at least
you didn’t have to watch their eyes while they died—but he could
still see it, the whole death agony. It was mirrored in Itzhak’s
face.