Finally it was over. It was always
surprising, and just a little sickening, to realize how long it
took a man to strangle. The body had been limp for a long while,
and then some subtle change took place, that strange thing that
marked the difference between mere unconsciousness and death.
Christiansen, when he was sure, allowed himself to let go. As he
loosened the cord, the last breath the man had ever taken rushed
from his lungs in a drawn-out, mechanical wheeze, and Itzhak,
wheeling around, supported himself against the closer of the two
posts and retched loudly. Christiansen didn’t blame him a bit.
“What should we do with the body?”
It was Faglin, who had probably seen worse
things. He was standing beside Christiansen, his eyes darting
between the guard’s corpse and Itzhak, who was still busy being
sick.
“Drop him in the drink and let the current
carry him off. If somebody looks down and sees he isn’t there,
maybe they’ll just think he’s off somewhere taking a leak. Better
that than somebody stumbles over a stiff.”
“Right. You take care of that. I’ll see to
my own business. “
He stepped up on the pier and climbed aboard
the sailboat to pick up the knapsack he had brought with him from
his hotel room. Then he disappeared up a short steel gangway and
into Hagemann’s boat.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. . . It’s just,
I’ve never seen anybody die like that before.”
Itzhak was sitting at the foot of the pier,
wiping his mouth, trying hard not to look at the dead body that was
curled up almost at his feet.
“Don’t worry about it. You played that scene
very well, by the way.”
Christiansen had been through it all
himself. He knew what the kid was feeling, that mixture of
gratitude and appalled consciousness that, yes, he had helped to
kill a man. Like a lot of other kids, not that many years ago, who
had suddenly found themselves in uniform to fight the great war,
Itzhak was fast coming of age in a world where manhood was
indistinguishable from the taste of blood, and he was entitled not
to be too crazy about it.
When Faglin came back out onto the dock, he
was still carrying the knapsack. He looked very pleased with
himself.
“She must be carrying a hundred gallons of
petrol, “ he said. “I rigged a small charge directly under the fuel
tank and wired it to the starter. She’ll go up like a Roman candle
the first time anybody tries to take her anywhere. “
“Is there enough left over for your other
job?”
“Plenty.” Faglin hefted the knapsack to show
how heavy it still was and then dropped it into the stem of the
sailboat. It gave Christiansen the fantods to watch how carelessly
the man handled enough plastic explosive to send them all to glory,
but one had to assume that he knew what he was doing.
“Then let’s get out of here—the night won’t
last forever.
Christiansen and Itzhak carried the dead
guard out to the end of the pier and pitched him into the water,
where he landed with a loud splash. Then they all climbed back into
the sailboat and cast off. Within a few minutes they could hardly
even see the shore. Christiansen steered them well out and finally
dropped anchor about half a mile from the deserted cliff face that
he had chosen for the assault.
He checked the luminous dial of his watch.
It was five minutes after two.
“We’ll wait here for a while,” he said,
“just to get the sentry’s rhythm. I could use some of that
coffee.”
Faglin handed him the thermos, and he
unscrewed the top and carefully poured himself about three ounces.
It was still extremely hot and as bitter as death. Three ounces was
about all anyone would want.
He looked up at the cliff face, which in
that darkness he could not even see, and he felt his heart twist
inside him. He had sounded confident in front of the others—he had
had to, otherwise they would never have agreed to such a lunatic
idea—but in the quiet of his own soul he was not at all sure he
could pull it off. He would have to get a line up to the top of
those bluffs, and then he would have to pull himself up on it, and
all in the pitch dark. He didn’t have any clear idea how high the
cliffs were—seventy feet was nothing more than a hopeful guess—and
the highest he had ever had to climb on a rope was about two thirds
of that. And this time he would be working against a time limit
and, to top it all off, with a left hand that couldn’t even bear to
work the strings of a cello for longer than twenty minutes at a
stretch. No, he wasn’t sure he could pull it off.
Esther was up there, alone with that maniac.
She had been more afraid of that than of death itself, and he had
handed her over to him. If he ever got her out, it would take him a
lifetime to make it up to her.
And, quite suddenly, it occurred to him that
that was precisely what he wanted. With Esther it was possible, for
the first time in years, to consider what the future might be like.
He wouldn’t have to be alone anymore, the prisoner of this
obsession with revenge. The world was wider than that, something
Mordecai had understood and had tried to make him understand.
Well, by now it was all somewhat academic.
In a few hours either he would be dead or Hagemann would be dead,
and then revenge would be put to rest.
“What will you do when it’s over?”
It was Faglin—he was sitting right next to
him on the prow. Christiansen hadn’t realized he was so close.
“I don’t know. Go back to America, I guess.
Get a job somewhere teaching music. I hadn’t thought about it
much.”
“You won’t go home—to Norway, I mean?”
“No. You?”
“Take a couple of weeks off and see if my
wife and children still recognize me.” He laughed, but not very
convincingly. “If we don’t get Hagemann, I’ve decided I’ll try to
move them to safety. I couldn’t just leave them there, not if the
Syrians . . .”
“If we live long enough for you to get home
you won’t have to worry about the Syrians, and if we don’t there
won’t be anything you can do about it.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“You’re damned right. So the only sensible
thing to do is to succeed. We’ll kill Hagemann, and lay this secret
weapon of his to rest, and then you can go home and I can spend my
remaining days teaching the cello to juvenile delinquents. How does
that sound for a program?”
Faglin smiled thinly. He didn’t believe it
either.
“I think I need a cigarette.”
“They might see the light from up
there.”
“No.” Christiansen shook his head. “Not at
this distance. And, besides, we’ll know when they’re up there when
we see their flashlights.”
He lit the cigarette, cupping the match
behind his hands, and drew the smoke into his lungs. As usual, it
didn’t make him feel any better. That was something else he would
do if he survived until daylight: he would give up smoking. He
would give up all the vices of wartime.
When he saw the first pale flickers of light
up on the cliffs, he dropped the cigarette into the water and heard
it go out with a sound like the clicking shut of a door lock. He
looked at his watch. It was two-twenty.
“Now we’ll see how long it takes for him to
make the circuit.”
The light grew clearer and then died away as
the sentry retreated back into the surrounding woods—there was a
stretch of only a few yards where he would have an unobstructed
view of the sea. From the way the beam had remained steady, it was
clear the man was only using his flashlight to keep from stumbling
in the darkness. Hagemann’s men, obviously, did not regard
themselves as being under siege.
Christiansen found himself wishing that he
had brought a change of dry clothes. It was god damned cold out
here on the water, but one couldn’t think of everything. He
wouldn’t die of discomfort. He tried some more of the coffee, but
it didn’t make him feel any warmer.
“We’ll establish an order for going up the
rope—first me, then Itzhak, then the equipment, then Faglin.
Itzhak, if it comes to that, have you got a weapon on you—something
silent?”
“No.”
Faglin reached into his pocket and, when he
brought his hand back out into the moonlight, a vicious-looking
blade, about seven inches long, shot out of his fist with a sound
like splintering glass.
“Be my guest,” he said, handing the knife to
Itzhak, hilt first. That seemed to solve the weapons problem.
“Have either of you guys ever done any of
this sort of climbing?” They both shook their heads, and
Christiansen experienced a certain sinking feeling. “Well, there’s
not much to it. You just wrap the rope around your chest clockwise
and let it hang down between your legs. Then, when you cross the
right foot over the left, you’ve locked it in place and you can
just hang there for a bit. You don’t have to be pulling with your
arms the whole time, but when you do, use both arms together and
pull straight down.”
“And you expect a couple of city Jews like
us to go up seventy feet of rope like that, in the dark?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
They all laughed. They were all scared, but
it was all right to be scared. Everything was permitted except
failure.
“How long are we going to wait out here?”
Itzhak asked. He was getting impatient—that was good.
“Until we know how long it takes the sentry
to make one round, remember?”
“Well, there he is. “
“No, that’s not him. That’s—”
Christiansen looked at his watch. It was
twentyeight minutes to three. Twelve minutes. Yesterday evening,
all those ages ago, the sentry circuit had been slightly more than
twenty-five minutes. Either he had taken to running it, or. . .
“I’ve got some bad news, gentlemen. They’ve
doubled the guard.”
24
They waited forty-five minutes, just to be
certain. The sentries were passing every twelve or thirteen
minutes, so it was reasonable to assume that there were two of
them, rotating around Hagemann’s compound like moons.
That meant that he would have less than
twelve minutes—more like eight or nine—to set the rope, shinny up
seventy feet of cliff, and be there to meet the next one when he
came by on his rounds. There would be no room for error or human
frailty. If any one of them messed up, they would all be dead in a
matter of minutes.
Christiansen brought the boat in almost
straight up to the cliff face. He couldn’t use any lights, of
course, and if he tore her belly out on a rock it was bound to be
awkward. But the water was fairly deep just there and he got within
about fifteen feet before he felt the keel scraping against the
sandy bottom. He dropped anchor—it was almost unnecessary—and
fetched up the grappling hook and line he had purchased in
Barcelona. It weighed about three pounds, which was the perfect
weight for a long throw, and this was going to be the longest throw
Christiansen had ever made in his life. He just hoped that if he
actually did manage to get it up there, the goddamn thing didn’t
ring like a gong against some rock or other. The sentries had the
odds heavily enough in their favor as it was.
It was nearly four when they could look up
and see the sentry’s light flickering overhead. Morning came down
by the sea—they were running out of time, along with everything
else.
Christiansen stood on the prow of the boat,
the grappling hook in his hand and its line uncoiled and lying
loose so that it wouldn’t hang up. He let the hook slide through
his hand until it hung down nearly to the deck and then, very
slowly, began swinging it around so that it described a circle
almost parallel with his body. He was just limbering up. The first
one had to be right because there wouldn’t be time for a
second.
The light overhead disappeared. He would
give the man two—no, two and a half—minutes to get far enough away
that he wouldn’t be likely to hear anything, or make much of it if
he did. There were no guarantees, however; when he got to the
top—if he got to the top—he might find the son of a bitch up there
waiting for him.
He was swinging out over the water now,
wider and wider. His arc was probably close to ten feet across, and
he could hear the tearing sound the hook made as it swept through
the air. One chance, only one. He had to put everything in him
behind the throw, and he had to know when to let go.
Finally, with one last sharp twist of his
body, he released the line and it shot up into the darkness. He
waited—it seemed to take forever. He imagined the hook coming
straight back down on him. It would probably kill him. It would be
just as well.
But there was nothing. No impact, no splash,
just silence. The rope hung in the air, disappearing into the
vacant night. He gave it a gentle tug and then another, harder. It
was holding. The hook had found something to get its teeth into.
God damn him, he had done it.
Itzhak and Faglin were standing in the back,
just trying to stay out of the way. He waved them over.
“Okay. This is your one and only lesson,” he
murmured, pulling on a pair of canvas work gloves. He felt as if
the whole world were up there on that bluff, peering down at them.
“The line goes around the chest, like this, and then one foot
straight over the other. You clamp it with your right foot and when
you want to climb you let go, just a little. See? Wrap your right
arm around the line and pull with both hands. Got it?”
Neither of them said anything. What was
there to say? Christiansen locked his hands together over his head
and pulled up. He had about six minutes to make the bluff.
It was all right for about the first forty
feet. You did this sort of work with your back muscles more than
with your arms, and Christiansen had never let himself slide after
the war. After all, his war wasn’t over yet.
But then, at forty feet, his left hand began
to bother him—just a little at first, but then more and more—until
he felt as if he didn’t have the strength left to hold a pencil. By
fifty feet he hurt everywhere and his lungs ached. His back, where
he had taken Pilsner’s bullet, felt ready to tear open, and he
could hardly feel his hand at all. If the top was up there, he
hadn’t seen it yet. He would give himself a fifteen-second rest, he
decided. He clamped the line between his feet and let his arms
down.