The Linz Tattoo by Nicholas Guild Page A

murdered a former SS sergeant
named Gerhart Becker, living in that city under the alias of
‘Bauer.’”
    Astonishingly, there was no reaction.
Christiansen never so much as blinked—they might as well have been
discussing the railway schedule. It seemed that nothing about this
man, absolutely nothing, was going to be easy.
    “Three months before that, in Sao Paulo, one
Dieter Kurtz, also formerly of the SS, was found in a closet by his
Brazilian girlfriend, hanging from one of the hooks. He had been
strangled with a length of very heavy catgut, the E-string from a
double bass to be precise.”
    He glanced at the cello which Christiansen
was still holding delicately by the neck, but once again, the man
might as well not have been listening.
    “I happened to be in Sao Paulo just then,”
Leivick went on. He had decided not to be impressed with this
display of unnatural calm. After all, as Christiansen must have
realized perfectly well, the Mossad was not exactly a police
organization. “I was negotiating with Kurtz over a piece of
information. He was badly frightened and, as it turned out, he had
reason to be. If you had waited just one or two more days, Mr.
Christiansen, you would have saved me a great deal of trouble.”
    “What makes you so positive any of this is my
business?”
    “That was a double bass you were playing ten
nights ago in Havana, wasn’t it, Mr. Christiansen? I was sitting
rather far from the stage, but I don’t think I could have been
mistaken.”
    The cold blue eyes narrowed slightly—the man
was actually amused. Of course he had killed Gerhart Becker and
Dieter Kurtz—and, could it be, one or two others about which even
the Mossad remained ignorant?—and clearly he didn’t give a damn who
knew it. All at once Leivick felt a certain helplessness.
    “It would seem that we’ve been following the
same trail now for some time.” Leivick shrugged his shoulders, as
much out of resignation as anything else. There was no point in
threatening such a man. “We watched from a window across the street
while you climbed down onto Becker’s roof. We watched you leave an
hour and a half later. As a matter of fact, it was Becker who
alerted us to you, when he delivered that note to your hotel.”
    “Had you been trying to make a deal with him
too? I’m surprised you didn’t call the police the minute you were
aware of his danger.”
    The very blandness of the remark carried a
certain contemptuous irony—what business had anyone to hold
commerce with vermin like Gerhart Becker? Christiansen rose
suddenly from his chair, strode across the room to where his cello
case was lying on the floor like an empty coffin, and, with
touching delicacy, slid the instrument inside, like a father
lowering his favorite child into the grave.
    “We had made a decision by then that you were
the more promising lead. Did you know that for over a year now
Colonel Egon Hagemann has been having his former associates from
the Fifth Brigade assassinated? Under the circumstances, it was a
natural enough mistake. We thought you might lead us back to
him.”
    That, at least, elicited a reaction. As he
stood up from buckling the case lid closed, the muscles in
Christiansen’s jaw were working as rhythmically as a heartbeat. The
unreachable man had at last been reached.
    Yes, this one too knew what it was to hate
with soul-killing intensity. He was human after all, and a
casualty.
    “Is all of this about Hagemann? Is that it?”
Christiansen leaned back against the dresser, his arms folded
across his chest, making him look even more massive. “Because if
you have some private arrangement with Hagemann, you can just
forget it. As soon as I find him, he’s a dead man.”
    Leivick, who had remained seated, threw
himself back into his chair until it creaked distressedly. He was
hungry past imagining, he felt as if the walls of his stomach would
begin caving in on him at any moment.
    “Mr. Christiansen,” he said at last,