The Linz Tattoo Read Online Free PDF Page A

never seen such an exotic creature before. For all its calm,
there had been something wild in his voice as he talked about that
morning in 1942. But when he spoke again, his tone was once more
empty, without inflection, almost dead.
    “You soldiers of the Fifth Brigade, you
killed nearly everyone In the village that day,” he went on, like a
man reciting a story learned by heart. “Hardly a soul escaped. I
wish I could claim that I wanted to avenge them all, but I can’t. I
just want the man who murdered my parents.”
    The cigarette in Christiansen’s hand had
burned down almost to his fingers—he seemed to have forgotten it
was there. Finally he put it out, grinding out the ember under the
point of his shoe. Becker watched the whole performance with a kind
of morbid fascination.
    The strain was beginning to tell on him. It
had been three years since Becker had worn a uniform. He had lost
his soldier’s bearing, he looked faintly ridiculous standing there
at attention on top of a kitchen chair. His nose was beginning to
run, although he hardly seemed to notice it, and every so often, to
keep from falling, he would have to catch himself as he swayed a
few degrees to one side or the other. And now he was trembling—just
slightly, just enough that he couldn’t keep his shoulders
still.
    “I can tell you how to find him,” he said
finally, his voice thick, as if the noose were choking him already.
His eyes cast about the room; he seemed to be looking for a way to
escape. “Why shouldn’t I? I don’t owe him anything—I thought you
were from him, come to clean me away. Maybe if you kill him, I can
start to sleep at night”
    “Then tell me where to find him.”
    “Not where—I have not seen the Colonel in a
long time and he keeps his movements a secret. But I can tell you
how to find him.”
    He forced himself to smile. His lips drew
back from his teeth in a grotesque manner. They were in each
other’s confidence, he seemed to be suggesting. Hagemann was the
common enemy.
    It was a lie, of course. There was a network
that kept the survivors of the Fifth Brigade safe and solvent.
There was money to procure new identities for men still hunted by
the Allied War Crimes Commission, money to finance new lives—how
else had “Herr Bauer” come by his tobacco shop?
    But what difference did any of that make?
Gerhart Becker wanted to live.
    “What can you tell me. Sergeant?”
    “There is a girl. . .”
    His sentence trailed off as he heard
Christiansen’s dry, mocking laughter.
    “No—really—there is a girl I’ve heard he’s
looking for. He—”
    “Half the men in the world are looking for a
girl, Sergeant. And you know as well as I that the Colonel’s is not
precisely a romantic disposition. I’ve heard all the stories. There
were probably hundreds of girls.”
    But something in the way Becker kept twisting
his head from side to side, as if he were trying to saw through his
neck with the catgut noose, made him stop laughing.
    “Go on then, if you must. Tell me about this
girl.”
    “She is a Jewess. She was his mistress—in the
camp.”
    “Waldenburg?”
    “Yes. She was the General’s before that. The
General gave her to him. My colonel was obsessed by her.”
    “If she was at Waldenburg, she’s probably
dead.”
    “No.” Becker swallowed hard. He seemed to be
telling the truth. He wanted to be believed. “The General made sure
she got away alive. She is alive somewhere—you have only to find
her and Hagemann will come to you. Even if he has to follow you
into hell itself.”
    “Why? What’s so special about her?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Egon Hagemann in love? Christiansen didn’t
believe it. But he believed Becker’s story. A girl. A girl who had
probably lost herself somewhere in Europe, who could be anywhere.
Who could be dead, for all Becker knew.
    Still, it was more than he had had that
morning. He was perhaps a step or two closer to the Colonel
Hagemann who had butchered his