As if his fingers were operated by springs,
Faglin released his grasp on the weapon. Christiansen took it and
handed him his pistol. He didn’t say anything more. There was no
time now for formalities.
There was a narrow iron ladder that could be
let down the cliff face to the beach and Hagemann’s private dock.
Christiansen had seen it through his field glasses that first
evening. It looked as if it probably worked like a fire escape—you
released a catch at the top and the ladder came down in sections,
one telescoped inside the other. That was how the sentries got up
and down and that was how Hagemann would reach his boat.
That side of the bluff was heavily wooded,
so Christiansen had only the most approximate idea where Hagemann
was headed. It was simply a question of choosing your direction and
going as straight as the screen of trees and undergrowth would let
you. If there was a path, Hagemann was the only one left who knew
where it was.
And, of course, there was always the chance
that he had left behind a couple of his boys to cover his
escape.
But Christiansen wasn’t thinking about
Hagemann’s boys. He just ran. He kept his head down so the tree
limbs he couldn’t even see wouldn’t catch him quite so often in the
face, and for the rest he only thought about one thing—getting
there. He wasn’t even carrying a flashlight, but no one was going
to stop him. He didn’t give a damn what they had.
And then, of course, his foot caught on a
tree root and he found himself suddenly rolling through the bushes
like a hedgehog. The palms of his hands were scraped raw when he
stood up again and he had to hunt around for the Sten gun. It gave
him a chance to listen. There was someone out there, trying just as
hard as he was to keep still.
Hagemann? Could it be Hagemann? Then he
heard the rasp of metal against metal and he knew whoever was out
there, waiting for a shot at him, definitely wasn’t Hagemann.
Hagemann was already lowering his escape ladder.
Which meant that he had found some poor boob
who was enough of a fanatic and a damn fool to hide in the bushes
and protect his retreat.
Okay, if he wanted to die for the cause,
that was his business.
Christiansen peered into the darkness,
looking for the shadow that wasn’t supposed to be there. He was a
big target, so why didn’t the stupid bastard take a shot at him?
Come on, buddy, what’s the—
There was a sharp little cough, like someone
with an iron windpipe clearing his throat, and a tiny flash of
light. Then another, and Christiansen felt something strike his
leg, just an inch or two below the hip. He didn’t wait. He turned
and fired, and the burst from his machine gun was answered almost
at once by a high-pitched scream.
It was only when he took his first step that
he realized in any concrete way that he had taken a bullet himself.
Well, so what? It wouldn’t kill him anytime soon.
The poor chump was still screaming.
Christiansen walked up to him and found him lying on his side, his
back against a tree. Something on the ground beside him reflected a
dull gleam of moonlight. Christiansen reached down and picked it
up. It was a flashlight. When he turned it on he saw that the man’s
insides were leaking out through his fingers. His pistol was there
beside him, but he had forgotten all about it. He was a goner; all
that was left to him now was fear and pain and, finally, death.
Christiansen took the pistol, put the muzzle against the man’s
temple, and pulled the trigger.
Now it was strictly between the two of them.
There was just himself and Hagemann, with Esther as the prize.
He didn’t have any trouble finding the
ladder after that. Hagemann had turned the floodlights on.
Apparently he didn’t fancy breaking his neck as he climbed down
seventy feet of slippery iron rungs.
And Hagemann had one other problem. As he
stood at the edge of the bluff, looking down at the struggle that
was going on beneath him, Christiansen could see quite clearly why
Hagemann hadn’t made good on his escape yet. Because Hagemann was
carrying baggage. He had Esther between himself and the ladder,
with one arm around her waist, and he was finding it tough
going.
They were almost to the bottom. They never
looked up, either one of them, but Christiansen had no doubt that
Hagemann knew he was there.
There wasn’t any time to lose—he had to get
down there, and the ladder was the only way. And he could only use
the ladder as long as Hagemann was still on it and had both his
hands full.
He transferred the Sten gun to his left hand
and started down, two or three feet at a time, using his arm to
lower himself and letting his feet catch on the rungs when he
needed to brace himself. And all the time all he could think about
was getting shot in the ass when Hagemann reached the bottom and
had a hand free again.
But by then Esther knew he was there. He
could look down and see her face as she stared up at him. At least
she knew she wasn’t alone.
And when he felt the shudder of release when
Hagemann jumped off and onto the stony beach, he knew she was down
there trying to keep him alive. He could hear the brawl.
And suddenly there they were, hardly more
than fifteen feet apart, almost where they had left off the
afternoon before. Hagemann had his arm across Esther’s throat, and
he was struggling to free the Luger from his belt, shaking her
viciously, like a dog with a dead rat, while he fought off her
hands. It was a battle he was destined to win.
But not for a few seconds yet. Christiansen
was perhaps twelve feet from the ground—he let himself come down
one more time against the ladder and then pushed himself free. He
could feel himself falling through the cold air, seemingly adrift,
and then he hit the stony beach with a scraping sound and a jolt
violent enough to buckle his legs underneath him like the
magician’s collapsing hat. He lurched to one side and landed on his
left arm, but he had Hagemann in his sights the whole time. Once
more, they had achieved a stalemate.
Finally Hagemann got his pistol free. For a
wild moment he seemed ready to point it at Christiansen, but then
he thought better of the idea. After all, how could he hope to win
against a gun that sprayed bullets like a god damned garden hose?
He wasn’t such a fool as that—no, the pistol came up until, once
more, it rested lightly against Esther’s throat.
“You see?” he said. “Once more I have the
girl. And I will shoot her just as quickly now as yesterday. How
can you win, Christiansen? Tell me. How can you hope to win
now?”
There was a cut on his face. It was fresh
enough to be bleeding heavily, coating his cheek. His white jacket
had blood on it too and was streaked with smoke and dirt. It looked
as if Hagemann had been having a rough time of it just lately.
And, finally, it could be he was just pushed
too far in his mind—his eyes said that. He looked half crazy with
that mixture of fear and exultation that comes to men who almost
don’t give a damn anymore whether they live or not, who are ready
to stake everything on one last gamble. He was crazy like that. And
he didn’t care who died with him.
“Are you really demented enough to think you
can play the same game with me twice?” Christiansen forced himself
to laugh. The sound of it shocked even him—it was a hollow, cruel
laugh, almost a mad laugh. Almost inhuman. “Take one step backward,
just one, and I’ll blow you to smithereens. The girl will just have
take her chances.”
Hagemann might be loose from his moorings,
but he wasn’t stupid. And he was never rash. A strange, speculative
look came into his mad eyes—he was calculating the chances that
Christiansen was bluffing.
And all Christiansen could do was to wait
while he made up his mind. Because he wasn’t bluffing. It wasn’t a
situation in which he would dare a bluff. If Hagemann so much as
stirred, he would open fire. He would aim high—he would take the
top of Hagemann’s head off and hope for the best—but he would have
to fire. You didn’t bluff a man like Hagemann.
And it was possible Esther might make it.
People had survived some pretty terrible bullet wounds—they did it
all the time. But if he let her go with that lunatic. . .
But Hagemann didn’t attempt to move. It
seemed he wasn’t going to commit that particular mistake.
“Where are your friends the Jews?” he asked.
He was smiling. He was a man who knew all there was to know about
the Jews.
“They’re up on the bluff, killing what’s
left of your Praetorian Guard. But they’ll be along directly. They
don’t like you much, you know that, Hagemann? You haven’t made
yourself popular.”
Something very odd was going on. While they
had been talking—and it was part of the reason Christiansen was
bothering to talk at all—Esther had slipped her hand down to the
opening of Hagemann’s right jacket pocket. She never took her eyes
from Christiansen’s face, and her eyes were damp and large and
frightened, and all the time he had the feeling that she was trying
to make him understand something. She wasn’t pleading with him to
save her—it was something else. Something she obviously thought was
more important.
And this while the muzzle of Hagemann’s
Luger pressed against the side of her throat. She was braver than
any twenty men.
What the hell did Hagemann have in his
pocket?
“Then why not?” Hagemann’s smile turned into
a demonic grin. “I would as soon you killed me as they—sooner.
After all, you and I are at least of the same blood, and you are a
real soldier, not some ragged partisan. I have no inclination to be
butchered like a kosher steer.”
“Does it matter to you so much then how you
die, Hagemann? If it was such a matter of honor with you, you might
have blown your brains out like your friend back up at the
house.”
“Who—Joachim? You mean he
actually did it? He’d been looking for an excuse to restage
Götterdämmerung
since
the end of the war. No thank you. I am not so mad as
that.”
“Then maybe it’s just possible that you and
I could cut a deal.”
Christiansen tried very hard not to look at
Esther as he spoke. He didn’t want to think about her, about what
she might or might not want or feel. He could worry about all that
later—if there was a later—and then he would make it the business
of his life, but not now. Now there were only two people on that
beach, himself and Colonel Egon Hagemann. That was enough.
Oh how he hated that man. It was as if he
was experiencing it all for the first time, as if he had never
known about Kirstenstad and all the rest of it until that very
minute. What a pleasure it would be to kill this one—preferably
slowly, an inch at a time.
“My friends the Jews will be down here in
about three minutes, I figure. And they aren’t the least
sentimental about Miss Rosensaft. So if we’re going to reach an
understanding I suggest we don’t waste any time. I’ll trade you
your life for the girl, Hagemann. Take it or leave it.”
“How? To be led away from here in chains?”
Hagemann shook his head, and the muzzle of his pistol dug a little
deeper into Esther’s neck. “How long would I live? An hour? A week?
Until an Allied war crimes tribunal could put a noose around my
neck? No thank you, Mr. Christiansen—I would just as soon die here
and now.”
He seemed to be waiting. It was a test of
resolve, and there wasn’t any doubt that Hagemann was ready to die.
The only hope was that he might still be prepared to live, if the
terms were right. Christiansen lowered the barrel of his Sten gun a
foot or two, just to show his good intentions.
“I said your life, Hagemann. This is the
deal. You let the girl go, and you throw down your pistol. In
exchange for that I’ll give you sixty seconds. No more, no less.
What you do with them is your business.”
For just an instant, Hagemann’s eyes glanced
toward his boat, which was still tied up at the end of the pier,
white as a marble tomb in the light from the floods. Like a
sensible man, he was considering his chances. It was sixty feet
across the beach, then perhaps twenty-five feet to the end of the
dock—considering the surface, a distance a man could cover in, say,
ten to twelve seconds. Then up into the boat, which he could have
started and moving within another fifteen to twenty seconds. Given
that it was Hagemann’s, there was probably an arsenal on board
anyway, so he wouldn’t have to worry so much about time. Yes, sixty
seconds would be all he needed. But, of course, he wasn’t so
stupid. . .
“And what possible guarantee would I have
that you wouldn’t simply kill me, Christiansen? Why should I
believe that you are prepared to be so sporting?”
But he was smiling again. Every man has his
giveaway, and that was his. That tight little smile that said he
felt himself to be master of the world.
“You haven’t any choice, do you. You can
believe me, or you can die.”
“And if I accept your offer, do I have your
word that you will stop hunting me down like an animal, Mr.
Christiansen? I’m getting tired of spending my life waiting for you
to turn up. Will you call it square between us?”
“You heard the offer—sixty seconds. Just
sixty seconds.”
Hagemann’s soft laughter pulsed through the
air, fading out into the growl of the waves.
“I wouldn’t have believed you, Mr.
Christiansen—I would have known you were lying to me. You’ll never
stop, will you.”
“No. I’ll never stop.”
They stood there, facing each other on the
edge of the land, the blind sea murmuring in their ears, filled
with their hatred for one another. It was a moment when each felt
he understood the other’s heart. It was a moment that had become
almost unbearable.
And then Christiansen allowed himself one
furtive glance at Esther, and what he saw in her face made him
understand. Yes, of course.