The Linz Tattoo

by Nicholas Guild

  He ran back to Esther’s empty room. Maybe it would have been quicker just to kick in the first door he came to, but that never even crossed his mind. All he could think about was the phone in Esther’s room.

  He picked up the receiver and for perhaps as long as three seconds couldn’t understand why he didn’t hear it buzzing. Then he glanced down and saw the tape over the cradle.

  The clever bastard. The god damned, fucking clever bastard.

  He took the knife from his pocket, glad he still had sufficient presence of mind not to start just clawing at the stuff with his fingernails, and within a few seconds he had the cradle loose. How much time was that wasted? Where the hell was Hagemann now?

  “Yeah?”

  It was Hirsch—he had picked up the phone in the middle of the second ring. He sounded almost as if he had guessed how much had gone wrong.

  “Hagemann’s coming down the stairs—yes, right now! He’s got Esther with him, so have a care. He’ll kill her in a second if you give him that long. And he’s got another man down there waiting for him. His driver.”

  “Anything else? What are you doing upstairs then? Jesus, Christiansen, what is—?”

  “Just stop him, dammit.”

  Christiansen hung up—he couldn’t stand it. He just couldn’t stand it another second. What was he doing up here? He didn’t have the remotest idea.

  He had to get downstairs.

  The fire escapes—the fucking fire escapes. He would have to use the back one, or Hagemann would see him coming and leave Esther on the curb with her brains blown out.

  This time he did break down doors. He got a running start on the one directly opposite Esther’s and went through it as if it had been made out of paper. There was a middle-aged woman asleep on the bed, fully dressed with just a blanket over her legs. The scream she let out when she started awake and saw Christiansen striding through her room, glaring at her as if he would have liked to break her neck, could have been heard in Saragossa.

  “Shut up, you old bitch!” he cried savagely. He hated the damn woman and didn’t even know why.

  He threw open the window, crawled outside to the fire escape landing, and began clambering down the metal stairs that swayed under his weight and his urgency. When he reached the second landing he lost patience and jumped over the rail, hitting the cobbled alleyway with a jolt that nearly sent him sprawling. He could already hear the sounds of pistol shots.

  Oh God, he thought—the idea ached in his brain like a wound—oh God, if he’s killed her. . .

  As he reached the mouth of the alleyway, where it opened up behind the hotel, he could see a huge gray Mercedes as it drew away down the main street.

  He was too late. He was already too late.

  In the lobby of the hotel, just inside the main entrance, lay the body of a man who had been shot through the heart by someone who knew what he was doing. He had just died, from one instant to the next, with no trouble to anyone. He was curled up like a baby, sleeping the sleep of innocence on the polished wooden floor. He was nobody Christiansen had ever seen before, but it didn’t take a degree in logic to figure out how he had got there.

  Otherwise, the place was nearly empty. In Spain, people had enough sense not to hang around when the fireworks started.

  Except, of course, for Hirsch.

  He was on his knees beside the main desk. His gun was on the floor in front of him, and he was bent over at the waist trying to keep from toppling onto his face. He was holding his left arm just above the elbow. There was a lot of blood leaking out between his fingers. When he saw Christiansen, he looked up and grinned.

  “Sorry, pal. Close but no cigar.”

  “Did he take Esther with him? Is she still alive?”

  “Yeah. I got the driver, but then I ran out of luck. I don’t know why Hagemann didn’t finish me off, except maybe he didn’t feel he had the time.”

  “How bad are you?”

  Hirsch laughed softly. All right, it had been a stupid question.

  “I’ll have some trouble with my golf for a while, but I’ll mend. Not soon enough to go up that cliff with you, but I’ll mend. You’d better get out of here.”

  He had a point. Christiansen had been pushing his luck with the police all day.

  “He diddled us, pal.” The expression on Hirsch’s face was pained, and not only from the hole in his arm. “You think maybe that’s why he grabbed Mordecai, to decoy us away from here so he could take the girl? He suckered us good.”

  What was there to say? Christiansen didn’t pretend to know how the man’s mind worked, but it was possible—more than possible. Hagemann was a clever, devious bastard.

  “I’ll call here tonight—seven o’clock. Try to be stitched up and finished answering official questions by then.”

  “Don’t worry about me—is it my fault if unknown persons start firing guns in my hotel? Hey, Christian. . .”

  “What?”

  “You really are a son of a bitch.”

  “Take care of yourself.”

  Already, even as he walked down the sidewalk away from the hotel, Christiansen could hear the high pitched tinkle of the police siren—so perhaps he hadn’t killed them all after all. He ducked under the shade of a shop awning and waited for the car to pass by.

  There was nothing to do now—nothing to do until it had grown dark.

  22

  It was a large room. the bed stood in the center of a thick white rug, almost like the skin of an animal. Otherwise the floor was covered with small square tiles the color of brick and polished so they seemed to glow. They were like ice. Esther took off her shoes so she could feel the cold. It reminded her that she was still alive.

  Hagemann had left her completely alone. He was so sure of himself that he hadn’t even bothered to lock the door.

  Why shouldn’t he be? Where was there to go? This house was a prison, with armed guards patrolling the grounds. She wasn’t even sure where it was. She might as well have been back at Waldenburg.

  She sat down on the cold tile floor, wrapped her arms about her knees, and let her despair overcome her. She could feel the tears running down her face, but otherwise she had no sensation of crying. She felt dead. She would never get away from Hagemann. He would keep hold of her until he grew bored, and he would kill her. There was nothing to look forward to except death. She would never see Inar again. She might as well be dead. She almost was.

  Why hadn’t Inar saved her from this? Why hadn’t he killed Hagemann when he had had the chance? Why hadn’t he taken his revenge and let her die where she could still see his face?

  “You won’t mind it so much, my dear,” Hagemann had said. “After all, we’ve grown accustomed to each other.”

  He had thrust her in through the driver’s door of his car and, with his hand still clamped around her wrist, had driven them away from the hotel. One of his men had been waiting for them in the lobby, and when Hirsch killed him Hagemann had stepped over his dead body almost as if it hadn’t been there. He had shot Hirsch—had he killed him? Esther didn’t know.

  He had driven fast, all the way back here. She should have had the courage to open the door and throw herself out. She shouldn’t have been so very afraid of a little pain.

  Because now she would never get away.

  “You will have to tell me everything you know, Esther. You must tell me the truth if I am to keep you alive and unhurt. I have to know where von Goltz hid the formula, and you are the key. I shall get the truth out of you one way or the other.”

  “I don’t know anything. The General never told me anything. I tell you I don’t know about any formula!”

  And he had merely smiled. He was looking forward to hurting her. He knew all about how to hurt her.

  And then he had left her in this cold room.

  At Chelmno, sometimes, when someone in the women’s barracks had had enough, she would find a way to kill herself. She would make a run for the fence and the guards would shoot her or
she would die on the electrified wires. It had happened almost regularly. Once the girl who had slept next to Esther had stuffed strips of her dress down her throat until she had strangled. They had found her in the morning, cold and stiff. She hadn’t uttered so much as a sound.

  The means of death were everywhere. She couldn’t stuff pieces of cloth down her throat—she hadn’t the courage for that; a person had to be half mad with despair to do a thing like that—but she could find something.

  All she had to do was to get up and look for it. Was she such a coward that she couldn’t even get off the floor to find the means of saving herself? No, she was not such a coward as that.

  It was a bare room. There was a fireplace, blackened and cold, as if it hadn’t been used in years. There was the bed. She opened a closet and discovered that it was empty. Nothing else. Why was the bed there? Surely no one could have slept in this room. She looked out one of the windows and saw that she was on the second story. Hagemann must have brought her up a flight of stairs. Why couldn’t she remember that?

  There was nothing. She couldn’t help feeling a certain shamefaced sense of relief, as if she had been reprieved at the last second. And then she remembered the glass in the windows.

  Suddenly there was no air in her lungs. Her hands were sweating, and the pounding of her heart seemed to course through her whole body like a throb of pain.

  She didn’t want to die. She was a coward, but she didn’t care—it was too much to think of. She didn’t want to lie there in a sticky little pool of her own blood, her eyes still open, staring out at nothing, feeling nothing, something to be cleaned away and buried in a hole. To be nothing—it was awful.

  Still, she would do it. The windows were barred on the outside, but that wouldn’t prevent her from escaping. She would put her fist through one of the panes—what did she care if she cut herself; wasn’t that precisely the point?—and she would pull loose a piece with a sharp enough edge. . . She had heard once that you should cut vertically along the wrist if you meant it—one deep slash and it would all be over.

  It shouldn’t he painful. After the first shock, why should there be any pain? It couldn’t take very long to bleed to death. In an hour, or two, they would find her. . .

  She walked over to the window and looked outside again. A man with a rifle over his shoulder was passing by on the lawn outside. He would be the last human being she ever saw. She doubled up her fist, wondering how hard she would have to hit the glass before it would break.

  No—this wasn’t the way. She would never have the nerve to do a thing like that twice. Better to save every last little scrap of courage until she really needed it. There were some old fireplace implements lying around the empty grate; she went back and got an ash shovel. She would use the knobby handle—it would do very well.

  As soon as she struck it against the pane, and the glass splintered, an alarm bell went off, so loud and so suddenly that she almost screamed.

  There was no time now. Pulling with her fingers, feverish to have it done with before anyone could come to stop her, she worked a thin, slightly curved piece loose from the window frame. It looked as if it had been waiting just for this moment.

  She got down on her knees—somehow it was too much to do the thing standing up—bunched the skirt of her dress up around her waist, and used the hem to wrap one end of the long sliver of glass. She pressed her left forearm down on her thigh so that the back of her hand was against the knee and raised the glass to strike. One deep cut—she was ready. She. . .

  At first it was only the shock—no pain, no sound, nothing more definite than the sense of having been violently transformed. Was this what it was like to begin dying?

  No. She glanced down at her arm, and there was no blood. Something else had happened. She didn’t know what it was.

  And then she felt it. First the pain—in her head, a sense of being crushed, a throb of suffering—and then the white flash of light that made everything seem sharp and hard, and then the weakness. Her hand let go of the sliver of glass. She didn’t have any choice about it; the hand simply opened and the glass fell into her lap. And then she felt herself falling forward. The floor was coming up at her. It would strike her in the face, and she found herself hoping that it wouldn’t hurt too much.

  It didn’t. It never happened. The floor simply dissolved, turning first red and then black and then disappearing into oblivion.

  . . . . .

  When she woke up she didn’t know where she was. Her face hurt—that was the one certainty. With her eyes still closed she tried to turn her head, but the pain was so bad it made her feel as if she would have to vomit. She lay still for a moment and the sensation passed away.

  And then she opened her eyes and saw Hagemann. He was sitting beside her. She was lying on the bed in the room with the tiled floor, and now she remembered everything.

  The feeling of shame was even worse than the aching in her head. You stupid, cowardly, worthless little slut, she thought to herself. You couldn’t even succeed in cutting open your veins.

  Hagemann was watching her in an odd, speculative way. It was almost as if he had only just discovered her existence. She didn’t like it—it filled her with unfocused dread. She had thought she would always know what to expect from him, but she had never seen that expression on his face before.

  “You set off the alarm,” he said, and then his lips shaped themselves into a thin smile. “All the windows in this house have been wired. The guard thought you were trying to escape—that was why he hit you.”

  “He hit me?”

  “Yes, with the butt of his rifle. I expect it hurts.”

  Yes, of course it hurt, but she didn’t care to say so. She turned her face away from him and discovered, after she had done it; that she could move her head without feeling sick. So she would recover after all.

  “But you weren’t trying to escape, were you—at least, not in the sense my guard imagined. I would have thought you were the last. . .”

  There was something in his voice, something almost like uncertainty, as if suddenly he found himself no longer quite the master. Yes, she would look at him now. Yes, it was there—whatever it was.

  “Would you really have killed yourself, Esther?”

  “I don’t know.” It was the truth. Now, having spoken it, she would never know.

  “It wouldn’t have worked. It takes a long time to bleed to death through a slashed vein. Hours, in fact. You were wasting your effort.”

  But even if he was right, it didn’t matter. Anyone could have seen that in his face. Somehow, she had won something from him.

  “Esther,” he said, reaching out and, with the tips of his fingers, delicately brushing a strand of hair out of her face, “Esther, it won’t be like Waldenburg this time. I’ve changed—everything has changed. You needn’t be frightened. You won’t try to harm yourself again, will you?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, if I can find the courage.”

  “Then you’ve changed as well. It used to be that nothing was more important to you than staying alive, but not anymore, it would seem.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Then we must make very certain that you never have another opportunity,” he said, the thin artificial smile disappearing. “I cannot allow you to throw yourself away, Esther. There is much more involved here than merely your one wretched little life, precious as that is to me. I shall have to take steps to see that you behave yourself.”

  “What is it that you want from me, Colonel? What is it?”

  “My dear, do you really mean to tell me that you don’t know?”

  Suddenly she was tired beyond bearing. She wanted nothing more than to be left alone—to die if that was possible, but if not, merely to sleep. Hagemann’s voice was just a buzzing in her ears, something that kept her awake. What was it all about? No one had told her. She had never wanted to know. She didn’t want to know now.

  “Shall I tell you then?”

  “
No. Don’t.”

  “Yes, I rather think I ought to tell you.” He smiled again. He was the old Hagemann once more, and nothing had changed since Waldenburg. “I shall need you now. Perhaps you have the answer without knowing it. At any rate, I don’t suppose you’ll be of any use at all if you don’t understand at least in a general way what I want you to tell me.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out, holding it up between first finger and thumb for her to look at. It was a little circle of thin gold chain, a loop hardly big enough to go round his thumb. And from the chain dangled a key.

  “There’s a box, Esther. A safe-deposit box in a bank somewhere. This is one key, and you’re the other. Von Goltz had this sent to me after he was arrested, along with a cryptic little note about you. You see, he knew they were going to hang him. He didn’t care anymore how the world would go on without him—he wasn’t choosing sides. He didn’t care about anything except his little joke.”

  He put the key back into his pocket. He was so sure of himself. He was so convinced he had won.

  “Do you see my situation now?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders, as if he couldn’t understand how such a thing could happen to a man like himself. “I had only the one key before, but now I have both. I don’t know the name of the bank—I don’t even know where it is. But you do. Somehow, in some way I’ll come to understand, von Goltz made you the vehicle of that information. And you’re going to give it to me.”

  He seemed for a moment to be looking at nothing, and then Esther realized that he was looking at her arm, her right arm, where the scar was still fresh from when the doctor in Vienna had removed her tattoo.

  He took her by the hand, as if for a closer inspection, and then let it drop back down to her side.

  “What is that, another suicide attempt?”

  “No—they rescued me from a Russian prison in Vienna. I was wounded.”

  It was only at that moment that she realized why Herr Leivick had insisted that the number be removed. Yes, of course. It was the second key.